I have plenty of theories about what makes a relationship work and what doesn't (in college, I wrote a book on the subject and sold it to guys for $50 on the Internet. Sold nine copies...I think my mom still keeps them in her basement.)
But if I had to say there was one rule that has served me particularly well, it's this:
Always think twice before saying something that might hurt their feelings. Never think twice before saying something that will make them feel good.
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Today was very surreal. A guy skied past me as I was walking up Broadway. Young kids were having a snowball fight in the middle of an intersection usually congested with traffic. The Barnes & Noble I frequent (though a lot less frequently than I'd like as of late) was almost empty. Michelle and I rented a bunch of movies, bought Raisinets and Cheetos, made save the date cards, and laughed a lot.
Today reminded me of growing up. Every other year or so, we'd have massive snowstorms. The city pretty much shut down, and we'd all head over to a friend's house hoping to get snowed in. School would be cancelled, and the next three days we'd eat junk food and watch movies and make forts or igloos and have snow battles.
One year 20 neighborhood kids came together in the middle of a blizzard to play football - everyone wearing five layers of clothes, bouncing off each other like bumper cars, no one able to catch the ball (which was fine in this case, since no one was really able to throw the ball either.)
Today, I felt like a kid again. At one point, I almost took the couch cushions and made a fort out of them.
Amazing how rare and fleeting those moments are.
Seth Godin certainly caused a ruckus with his post on stamps.
The premise of electronic stamps is to begin charging people for the privledge of sending email, theory being that spammers would be significantly deterred if they were charged for sending unsolicited mail.
This is a complicated issue. At first glance it seems like a no-brainer - your inbox is cleaner, spam goes down, ISPs make boatloads of cash in the deal as the de facto conduits between parties.
But a number of questions come to my mind. NOTE: When considering the merits of the following questions, keep in mind I'm an idiot.:
- I've yet to use an email tool that knows when an email is coming from a company and when it's coming from a person. There are numerous implications there - sending personal emails (I can think of dozens of old friends and new friendships that were cultivated are rediscovered via email) to schools sending messages to their students at their email address of preference (hint: not the school's email account) to notifications from free services like Friendster. These would either become paid transactions (introducing the same friction that keeps me from sending letters to people,) or be relegated to a folder that is collated with all my other junk (forcing me to wade through all the spam anyway.)
- Spammers have an enormous bag of tricks they can employ to send email - spammers who use an unknowing man or woman's account to send out messages could potentially be making someone financially responsible for the activity. The need for email fraud litigation or some form of recourse on the part of the victim is now necessary - costs ISPs will now have to take into account.
- Making a move to RSS would make segmentation and targeting difficult. One of the big tenets of Permission Marketing is for messages be as targeted, personalized and relevant as possible. With email and a simple sign-up form, I have the ability to market to as granular a population as I wish - something the subscriber appreciates and leads to greater revenue opportunities for me. RSS has a ways to go before it can provide the marketer with this power.
- Are there price controls? AOL, Yahoo! and the like may publish well-known, publicly available information regarding price. But outside of the major mail services, how do I found out what ISP is behind some corporate email address and what their prices are? Wouldn't I have to essentially 'opt-in' to each service? Competitors will certainly be hot on GoodMail's footsteps, likely with different pricing models, etc. How does regulation of this work?
- Most importantly - will there be commemerative Elvis birthday e-stamps I can use?
In spite of these drawbacks, I wonder if there's a happy medium here. The practice of e-postage would undoubtedly decrease spam, but it should be a hoop restricted to businesses. Perhaps tracking IP addresses or domains by volume would help - if a particular domain or IP address/range sends mail that exceeds a certain quota, the ISP begins to charge for it. Just a thought.
A complicated problem, and a viable attempt at solving it. But not without problems of its own.
I love online banking. Between online bill pay, statements that are constantly updated, the lack of junk mail and live chatting whenever I need it, it's very close to the perfect service provider solution.
Unless I want to open a new account.
I needed to open a new checking account and decided to do so online. I live in New York but still use Colorado for my permanent address. When I set up the account I specified Colorado as the state I'd like to bank in. After completing the application you're told to wait five days, which I did. You're then told to print out a bunch of paperwork, sign it and mail it away. You're then told to wait some more.
You're then told that the bank mysteriously set up your account in Florida, via a middleman in North Carolina. You're told that they don't really know why this happened, but as a result, they'll need to change your application to Colorado. Then they tell you to wait for approval.
Then they tell you to print out the same forms again, sign them and mail them to a new office in the state in which you're banking. Then you're told to wait.
You then discover you've been approved - not by receiving an approval, but by receiving two emails. One tells you how to order checks (you just have to call with your account number that you don't know,) and the other tells you how convenient your online banking will be (you just need your account number that you don't know and you pin that you haven't selected.)
You then try online chat, but in order to have a conversation you need to know your account number and, you guessed it, your online pin - a second pin number that you also haven't selected.
Online banking is a beautiful thing, but online account creation leaves a lot to be desired.
I just blew up Basecamp.
Our company had been searching for a project management solution for a long time before I first joined the team. They had evaluated the pros and cons of Microsoft Project and other tools, and had deemed them all too user-unfriendly for their purposes.
In I trotted with the diea that we use Basecamp, then a fairly new tool on the market. It's brand promise is that project management will be painless - the interface is elegant, it doesn't take any time to train new users, and it allowed us to keep in contact with our clients on a regular basis. The company embraced the idea, and I looked like a genius.
Fast forward to today - we've been using Basecamp for almost a year now, and every project we've started (roughly 250 of them) are in the system. As much as possible, we've moved away from email communication to posting messages and attachments on Basecamp. It was a little hairy (think 150 late milestones greeting you every morning, 150 to-do's that someone in the company has to update every day,) but it got the job done.
Until yesterday.
I've long had a reputation for doing something first, then asking for permission. Usually it makes me look like the proverbial 'go-getter.' But sometimes it blows up in my face.
We had a server that wasn't being utilized much. It seemed like the perfect repository for all the files we'd be storing in Basecamp (nearly 8 gigs as of last week.) So of course I set this up without asking for permission, without really notifying anyone. Why deal with IT and all the headaches that comes with? I had the access info to set everything up myself - let them deal with the 30 other things they have going on.
Yesterday, they shut down the underutilized server. And every file that's ever been stored on Basecamp - every design mockup, every revision of copy, every data set - was wiped off the face of the earth.
We were able to back it up after discovering the problem, and we have the 8 gigs of files in safe hands. But clients can't get to them. And since we used Basecamp, and agreeing to what amounts to a 'use at your risk' policy in doing so, we can't make any modifications to the file paths to represent the new location of said files.
I've learned three lessons in the past 24 hours.
- There is a definite downside to a limited customer service model.
- As much as it pains you, it probably makes sense to talk with IT before making minor decisions...like where to store every piece of client communication your company has.
- I'm going to be fired within a week.
You're probably living in Manhattan or Brooklyn or someplace nearby. And you're probably looking for a dog. You probably have been praying for a cute, 7 year old mutt who you think is named Oscar - at least he looks like an Oscar.
You are in luck. A co-worker saved this dog from the pound, and is desperately looking for a new owner. If you're interested or know someone who might be, send me an email (sean at this url.)
You're such a good person for doing this.
I'm tired.
I'm tired of spending 14 hours a day checking off an inexhaustable supply of to-do's, serving as a floor operator in an enormous assembly line of inputs and outputs that never end.
I'm tired of going home at night, too tired to write or work out or paint or make dinner or think.
I'm tired of emptying my vastly depleted reserves of creativity over and over again, without time to recharge, without time to stand back and appreciate an accomplishment, without time to even think about whether one approach is preferable to another.
I'm tired of putting 80% into a job when for so long no less than 150% was acceptable.
I'm tired of spending week after week in the most interesting city in the world without taking advantage of the countless opportunities to meet and learn from people much more intelligent than myself.
I'm tired of only being able to devote a few minutes a week to my wedding.
I'm tired of eating poorly, sleeping poorly, loving poorly, living poorly.
Today I'll be grabbing a bite to eat with a guy I find extremely interesting - a guy just a few years older than myself with an amazing track record. A guy who seems to utterly carefree, happy, healthy.
I'm hoping there's a pill or something he takes that I can buy at GNC.
My observations from tonight:
- A few bad calls, but I have to say the birds were outplayed.
- Whichever team I root for in the Superbowl is guaranteed to lose. Keep that in mind before placing a bet - it may be prudent to give me call beforehand and ask my advice.
- Disappointed in the commercials this year. The funniest thing though is that in spite of the volumes of literature and case studies testifying to the fact that a 30 second spot doesn't come close to paying for itself, agencies continue to be great at convincing their clients to spend the money necessary to advertise their pain reliever to a massive audience that couldn't care less.
- New York is full of people who didn't even realize there was a game yesterday. I'm not sure who is wiser, them or us.
- I'm not 18 anymore, and my body cannot handle two dozen hot wings in a single sitting.
- I got a little misty when I saw Bill Cowher, too. A good man, definitely deserves it.
If you're looking for design inspiration, do yourself a favor and visit The Generation Church website. This very well could be the most stunning site I've seen in the past 12 months.
I knew Sean growing up, and was always humbled by his intelligence. These days I'm similarly humbled by his design aesthetic. Just watch - in five years he'll be touring the country on the CSS speaking circuit with Doug Bowman and Jeffrey Zeldman. And I'll be asking for his autograph.
