Made the switch to Wordpress

If you're reading this post, you've found my old blog. I have officially moved im.seeking.balance to Wordpress and you can find it at http://imseekingbalance.com

Thanks Blogger, it's been a ride, but Wordpress is WAY more fun!

Pessimistic or Analytical?

I keep thinking lately I might be seen quite differently than I perceive myself. I consider myself an optimist. In general, that is. Since some time in my early 20's when I really sensed ovewhelmingly that things would always work out well for me... I used to joke around that I had my own private angels in heaven watching over me. Any time I'd get into any kind of freaky situation, financial or otherwise, right at the last second something will happen to fix everything and I live happily ever after.

When it comes to my work, on the other hand, I think I might be seen as more pessimistic than I am. A co-worker and I were discussing this just yesterday and we both seem to suffer from the same thing:

In any situation I tend to immediately see how something can be improved - be it and idea, a thing or a process, a program, a design or copy or what have you - and don't stop to celebrate everything that's right about.

Maybe it's just a bad habit, or maybe it's just the way I'm wired, but either way, I think I sometimes bring people down. It's not inherantly a bad trait I don't think; rather, I think it comes from my analytical mind. See, I'm a problem solver. I love improving things, making things more efficient, more effective, easier, quicker, better... and in order to do that, I need to look at how things could be better.

I think I really need to stop and verbalize all the ways something is great rather than skipping right over that part and diving in to improvements. It might improve the way others perceive me.

Photo: pusgums on flickr

There's nothing like clarity

Yesterday I was asked to have some artwork created for some signs. I responded that I was happy to do so and would need some specs in order to determine the right creative. This is what I received today:




A scanned PDF file of three pieces of cardboard. Awesome.

Urban Shore is now on Facebook

I figured it would be a good idea to get the conversation started on Facebook in order to generate ideas to fuel my reviews for the Urban Shore blog. So now I've created an Urban Shore: North Vancouver City Living Facebook group. It might prove to get more of a community feel to it there - discussion boards and posted items I'm sure will be a benefit.

New Blog Site: UrbanShore.ca

I'm not sure if it's just a God-given trait of all mankind or if it's the artist in me, but I constantly feel the need to create something. I have this overwhelming yearning to create something of value to the people around me; something that will enhance the lives of others.

Whether it's writing, singing or playing music, writing or sharing intimate conversation with people, the drive to create seems to be rooted in this longing to contribute to the betterment of mankind.

I am on the edge of creating something new right now - a new hyper-local website/blog about urban living in the City of North Vancouver - and mostly the mid to lower Lonsdale area. This is my neighbourhood and I think it's the best place to live anywhere. I really just want to find a way that all of us who live here and love it can share ideas about the best places to shop, eat, play... all those places that make this community unique.

And so now, urbanshore.ca is live. Welcome. Sit down and stay a while. Tell me what you think are the best places to enjoy this vibrant place. Share it with me.

Life In The Kingdom Starts Now

This weekend has me filled with a renewed excitement about my faith, my church, my life and my ability to relax in the middle of the craziness. Tomorrow marks the launch of a ten week series on Life In the Kingdom that will include Sunday sermons, a book study and weekly small groups. I'm hopeful this shift of focus will help put my faith right back in the centre of my life where it belongs and that I'll gain valuable insight and inspiration to live it out every day no matter what my environment or circumstance.

Today is a day of preparation for the upcoming 10 weeks. It's a day of prayer and fasting and I also have the privilege of being a part of the worship team that will be leading our congregation tomorrow, so today we get to rehearse, which is just a big bonus for me. This morning's biggest challenge was getting up and not pounding a giant mug of coffee with cream and sugar - probably my biggest vise. Instead I've opted to get through the day drinking herbal tea. I was surprised how relaxed I was about it... I'm usually just mean when I don't have my coffee, but I guess God's in the house ;)

It seems the last few months have seen me get busier and busier as I delve into some areas of exploration in my life. It's good to take a step back and spend some time focused on what really matters. I'm grateful for the opportunity.

Awful Ads

Sometimes I'm ashamed to be in the field of marketing. This video makes me throw up a little in my mouth. I love some of what the Canadian Dairy Farmers are doing - I LOVED their Canadian Cheese Rolling Event concept, but this is just shameful.

How to promote your business or company on Facebook

Judging by the crowd of people sitting on the floor in the "How to Market Your Blog, Business & Brand on Facebook" session at BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2008, people want to know how to promote their business or company on Facebook.

Facebook is one of the world's fastest growing social networking sites and facilitates some of the easiest, most comprehensive sharing strategies within any single online community. Here are some stats from the Facebook Wikipedia Page:

According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008.[69] ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 132.1 million unique visitors in June 2008, compared to MySpace, which attracted 117.6 million.[70]

According to Alexa, the website's ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th in terms of worldwide traffic, from September 2006 to September 2007, and is currently 5th.[71] Quantcast ranks the website 15th in US in terms of traffic,[72] and Compete.com ranks it 14th in US.[73] The website is the most popular for uploading photos, with 14 million uploaded daily.

Blogs, businesses and brands all want to get seen by those users. Today's session from Shama Hyder on Facebook Fortunes (even if, as she admitted, the term came from Mari Smith) attracted a crowd. And Shama's advice was good IF (and this if is HUGE) you ARE your company. If you and your company, business, brand etc. are one and the same, i.e. you are a public figure, artist, internet rockstar, performer, realtor, author or you own your own business that you never want to sell (along with its identity), everything Shama said is golden. Do it. Follow her advice.

***If, however, you are an employee of a company that you do not own and may not be a part of forever, I don't recommend you do it.***

Companies can use Facebook as a complement to their online and offline marketing efforts in a number of ways. I'm going to outline some of the ways I use Facebook to facilitate sharing of information about my company by our most loyal of followers as well as how to use the built-in marketing tools Facebook provides. These methods have made Facebook my company's #1 referring website since we launched the redesigned grousemountain.com last December.

A little disclosure so you understand the bigger picture for me: 50% of my traffic comes via search engines and 36% comes direct. Referring sites in total make up only 13% on average, so these numbers matter, but they're not everything. Facebook is not referring the bulk of my traffic, but Grouse Mountain is an established business with a membership component so the majority of our customers already know where to find us. We have huge brand recognition within our industry. For smaller, newer or lesser-known companies, I think the interaction you can create with Facebook can be very valuable, and that goes beyond just click-through-rate.

Facebook tools that I'll discuss include groups, fan pages, event listings, targeted social ads and share widgets. This is going to be a bit long, so please bear with me. Other tools that I'm less familiar with and will not discuss include marketplace listings, polls, applications and beacons.

Before I launch into what you need to know, I'll start by saying join Facebook. Join as a human being. Upload a photo of yourself, put in a little information, go find your friends and family members and connect with them. It's fun and you'll like it. Now that I've said that, reconsider before friending everyone you've ever heard of or met for business purposes. Again, I'm saying this as an employee of a company. It's not that I don't want to connect with some of my business contacts, but I don't want to share my personal life with everyone I know and I DO want somewhere to share my personal life with my friends. Not only that, but my friends don't really care what I'm up to at work though most of them understand I will occasionally spam them with the latest thing I'm working on. They understand, though... they're my friends. My real friends. Well, most of them are.

Building Facebook Groups for business conversations

Facebook Groups are mini communities centred around a specific topic. When you build a group, your personal profile is listed as the creator. This is where people will be able to see who you are and, if you've left your profile open at all, a little about you (more on profiles at the end). I think the best use of groups is for something that's ongoing (best not to build a group for a one-time event - there are event listings for that) but maybe not your entire corporate identity.

Groups are great for specific promotions, products and shared experiences. One of the ways I have used Facebook Groups is with our Build Your Own Park project, where we decided to engage our terrain park riders to tell us what features they wanted to see in the park and how they thought it should be set up. For more ideas, just Google "innovative Facebook groups".

Facebook Groups allow users to share without hesitation. They can blast it out to everyone on their friends list with one click. This is the fastest way to share info if the info is worthy of sharing. Groups include photos, posted items, discussion boards and walls; each item can be removed as the administrator sees fit or set to 'admin only', which means users can't post items (that's a strategic decision you need to make depending on your goals). They aren't customizable with applications (yet) but allow for multiple editors and you can message all members direct to their inbox. The only downside here that I know of, is that groups are limited to 5000 members (that I didn't know - heard it from Shama Hyder; my groups have been more niche than that so I've never reached the threshold).

Building Facebook Fan Pages promotes identities

Fan Pages are ideal for many companies, celebrity personalities or specific products or product lines. Two very important things to note with regards to fan pages:

1) People cannot share fan pages to their entire list of friends
Promoting a fan page is harder than a group - you need to put more effort into getting the word out. The only sharing mechanism is for posting to profile (where the item shows up under someone's posted items) or sending to a friend as a message (it arrives at the friend's inbox, but can only be sent to 10 friends at one time). And, while your friends will get a note in their news feed when you become a fan of any particular Fan Page, this sharing limitation makes Facebook Fan Pages much harder to grow.

2) Fan Pages include a mandatory 'Reviews' application
With the Reviews application, people are free to review your product and the reviews cannot be taken off a fan page. If no one reviews it, great, no reviews. If they do and they didn't like your product, tough. You can, however, set the reviews to only show based on a person's friends i.e. if I visit the page I see only reviews written by my friends but even when that option is exercised, I can always click 'see all' and get the rest if I want them.

Fan pages don't limit membership and include discussion boards, a wall, posted items, photos, videos and many applications can now be added to fan pages, which makes them way more customizable. Also, if you're a blogger or internet rockstar, or you have a corporate blog, you can use the Notes application to import each entry as a note so each time you post to your blog, your fan page gets updated. This is not an option with a group.

One of the benefits to larger companies that may have multiple administrators (or employee turnover, for that matter) is that when the administrator posts anything on the page it posts it from "Fan Page Name" instead of from your personal profile. If you have multiple people administering a page the fans can't tell who did which part. This can be good or bad and I'll leave it to you to weigh the pros and cons for your company. One point to note: If you comment on a note in your own Fan Page, the comment WILL show up from your personal profile. So when you write the note, it's the corporate identity and when you write a comment on that note, it will show up as your own.



You can message all fans, but it goes in an area called 'updates' within the message centre (click on your inbox and you'll see a tab for updates) rather than the actual message inbox, so it really comes in as a 'marketing' type message. That isn't all bad, though, because most people only become a fan of companies and people they really want to hear from and, as many have said before me, people don't want to be friends with companies anyway. When a new update is sent, the user gets a notification and link on their home page when they log in.

Using Facebook Event Listings to promote events

Event listings are exactly what they sound like. Use Facebook Event Listings to create and share event information surrounding a single date (I'm not a fan of using these for multi-day events because they don't show up as "upcoming" once the start date passes). Events can be structured in such a way so you can show the invitation list, see how many people have been invited and who they are, how many people haven't responded, how many people have RSVP'd yes and how many declines you get. People can share events to their entire list of friends or post to their own profile.

An example of an event listing on Facebook is The TechSet Presents: Poolside in Vegas though in this case they chose to show only 'yes' responses and 'maybes' (sometimes it's better not to show how many people declined - again, a strategic decision). Events use photos, videos, posted items and walls and all of these items can also be removed or set to 'admin only'. You can also set events to private, public, invite only or open so anyone can invite anyone else. Lots of options here.

Note: You can post an event as an individual or as a business with a Fan Page. If you post it from the Events link on your home page you will be considered the host. If you post it from within a Fan Page, the company/identity name will be the host.

Facebook's targeted social ads are simple to use

Facebook has made placing ads so simple, anyone could do it. Now, it's not appropriate for everyone, but most B2C companies can find value here. In fact, after this, I'll probably devote an entire blog entry to targeted Facebook social ads. Very cool stuff.

Facebook ads are the small ads that appear on the right hand side of a person's profile pages (see sample, right). With the new Facebook design, users are now served up two ads on almost every page they visit (except their home/news-feed page). Those ads are served up based on carefully selected targeting options; often they're so well targeted I love getting them because they're entirely relevant to me! With Facebook social ads you get a tiny headline (25 characters), a tiny photo (110 x 80px), and a very small space for copy (~135 characters with spaces). These need to be written with the precision and skill of text search ads, but Facebook gives you all the metrics to see which ones are more effective so you can switch out the less effective ones (though it doesn't do it automatically like Google does).

You can target by geographic region, gender, age, marital status, education level, sexual orientation, workplace and keyword. Most of these are self-explanatory; workplace and keyword are very interesting. While I've never targeted ads based on workplace, this has huge implications for HR professionals and B2B companies. Many large organizations have Facebook networks devoted to their employees; these are part of the targeting criteria. For instance, you could target employees of Intel, Microsoft, Google, Buzzlogic, or any number of other organizations - there are hundreds to choose from.

Keyword targeting, however, is where you can fine tune after you get past all that demographic info. You can target people by any keyword they may have put in their profile, be it a favourite band, movie, sport, religion, book, interest, activity or cause. Anything anyone may have included in their profile is game. Furthermore, you can also add social actions to your ads: You can choose to have your ad served up, whenever possible, with a photo of a friend who is a fan.

Example: My Grouse Mountain ad is getting served up to Bob and Bob is friends with Joe. Joe is a fan of Grouse Mountain's Fan Page. Because of that, Bob gets that ad with Joe's photo and a note saying "Joe is a fan of Grouse Mountain". That makes it all that much more relevant because now when Bob sees it he thinks "hey, Joe is a fan, let me check it out..." See how that works?

You can buy Facebook Social Ads on a CPC or CPM basis and even my most targeted campaigns have worked out to roughly $0.30/CPM or around the same per click. You set your daily maximum and your time parameters and start the campaign. I could also get into the whole strategy aroud where your ads are linking, but I won't. I'll just say I think in most cases I think it's better to send the ad clicks to your website rather than your Facebook page, group or whatever.

Facebook Share widgets promote your web content

Finally, Facebook has a widget that's easily added into any web page that allows a person to send the page to their profile as a posted item. I am going to start this section by saying I can't find the share code on Facebook anymore... it seems they aren't promoting this as an option any longer, however, it still works (probably because many have used it when it was promoted). They also, incidentally have a bookmark for this too. This code (pardon me if it's messy - I'm not a coder), embedded in your page, will allow your customers to post the page to their profile:



And it will look and work like this:

Share on Facebook

Note: It can be a little trickier with a blog entry because the URL inside the code must be the exact code of the page you want to share, so presumably that's the post permalink. You will need to either know exactly what that permalink is ahead of time to put it in there, or go back and edit it once the permalink is generated.

About Facebook Profiles and Privacy

You can control the privacy level on just about every item of your profile - your contact info, your 'about' info, your employment info, education info, interests, photo albums, videos etc. based on who you want to see what. As a corporate person who has a private life, I highly recommend you consider who can see what. Any portion of your profile that you leave open to everyone, or your network, or friends of friends can, well, be seen by those groups of people. You can pick and choose who can see what and I highly recommend you take some time to get to understand these privacy settings. I can't begin to explain them all here. If business networking is important to you, leave a limited profile available to everyone and use the messaging feature to communicate. You don't have to be friends with someone to message them back and forth, but if you're not friends it's harder to keep track of them - there isn't a non-friends contact list option. Once you've set up whatever you want public (either entirely public to the world or public to your network/geographic location), set the rest to 'friends only'. Then, when someone tags you in a photo at the bar or doing something you'd rather your business contacts didn't see, there's no fear. You can choose to have some stuff available to 'friends of friends' in case you want old friends to find you - education info for instance. You can choose to put your home address and telephone number on your profile and make it visible only to your friends or even to selected people. Again, so many options here so go and have a solid look through the privacy section - you'll find it at the top right of every page you see.

With that, I'll leave you to digest the above info. If anyone has any additional feedback, ideas, comments, or just wants to tell me they think I'm plain wrong, feel free to leave a comment. Alternatively, if you'd like me to go into further depth with any of the above topics, let me know and I'll do that too. I'd love to hear from others who are using Facebook as well; I'm one of the crazy fans who leaves it open all day so I can see what's going on there. At the same time, please don't be offended if I don't accept your friend request. As I said, I use Facebook almost exclusively for personal relationships, so if you'd like to connect professionally, please follow me @seeking_balance on Twitter (I'll more than likely follow you back), connect with me on LinkedIn, or find my friendfeed and connect with me that way.

Blogworld 2008: After the E&E Conference

So here I am at day one of Blogworld & New Media Expo 2008 and I'm up way too early after last night's TechSet party at the Bare Lounge at the Mirage. My visit to Las Vegas began with having to remove my flipflops to get through security at YVR, receiving Oreos and raisins on my Philipine Airlines flight, and losing about $80 within 10 minutes at Circus Circus, but I'm having a great time here.

The E&E Conference was decent... good info, but not much that was new. The highlights for me were meeting Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines and Gary Vaynerchuk's keynote, no matter how profanity-riddled it was. He's a captivating guy and, incidentally, very nice - he shared a cab with me after the TechSet party and he paid. Thanks @garyvee.

The general trending topic of the E&E day and this morning's Keynote from Richard Jalichandra of Technorati is authenticity and transparency, and I completely agree. Companies have to embrace their human face. Now it's my job to go back home and inspire the owners and executive of Grouse Mountain to embrace this critical change of thinking. We can no longer afford to hide our thoughts and actions behind boardroom doors. It's time to show the world that we care, we're human, and we want to enrich your lives with what we have to offer.

What's so great about bloggers?

The more time I spend in the social media world, or 'space' as the techset like to call it, the more I am starting to wonder how far the boom will be heard.

The boom I'm talking about is the notion of giving bloggers their due and, ultimately, the same perks as mainstream journalists. For as long as newspapers have existed, companies have been pitching journalists on new story ideas in hopes that one of them will pluck their story out of the pack and write something that will generate real interest. They've held media-only events, given special access for the best interview spots, arranged for interviews with top executives and given away tons of swag at industry events. They tirelessly write their press releases, amass the largest list of contact information possible and painstakingly invite each worthy individual to put pen to paper on their behalf. And still, the fear always exists that even after choosing their story, the writer may still sway that carefully crafted story another way and paint that company in a dim light. Today's PR world has shifted.

I've just been reading Miss604 on my feeds and think what The Vancouver Canucks have done to highlight bloggers is quite brilliant. And as my mind begins to wander as I ponder ideas I could implement to garner the same kind of attention from bloggers for Grouse Mountain, I'm reminded that the canucks are not the only ones doing it:

• Molson just held an exclusive event for bloggers;Vancouver blogger Duane Story tells all about 'Brew 2.0' Vancouver.
  

• Kate Trgovak - a.k.a. MyNameIsKate - regularly receives an assortment of laptop bags hoping to make the list of Funky, Chic and Cool Laptop Bags she keeps.
  
  
• Even the Christian music industry is on board. The Worship Community recently tweeted a message enticing bloggers to seek out a free CD with the following message:

"Darrell Evans (the writer of “Trading My Sorrows”, “Fields of Grace”, etc.) is getting ready to independently release his brand new worship CD next month. It’s called Nothing Less Than Everything.

I am looking to give away a free pre-release of the album to bloggers who will commit to getting the word out through a CD review on their blog, etc. I am looking for 10 people. If you have a large readership, that would of course be a plus.

If you would like to be considered, please email the following to..."

These are just a few examples I've noticed in the last week.

If companies are not getting involved in Blogger Relations as a new function of their PR department, they're going to miss out. Check out Lee Odden's Blogger Relations 101 if you don't have a clue what I'm talking about (at the bottom of the entry he also gives you another giant list of reading to consider). Bloggers are not only writing far more content than many of the mainstream columnists in your local paper, many of them have large crowds of followers... and not just oh-yeah-I-saw-that-article-on-my-way-to-the-sports-section followers, but measurable followers who specifically subscribe to their material.

The challenge for people like me (marketing types) and our cohorts (PR people) is to figure out where the line is drawn between giving people free stuff just because they write a blog and putting out meaningful pitches to influential bloggers in our area of business. Chris Brogan and his many readers share some insight on his post How Does The Web Define Authority? but the answer is still elusive. The truth is, not every blog gets read, but those that do are worth a little attention. Kudos to the Molson and the Vancouver Canucks for getting on board.

Where do you think that line should be drawn? Subscribers? Alexa rankings? Google page rank? Technorati? Which bloggers make the list of desirables? Tell me...

Photo: sskennel

Work Life Balance and other Impossibilities

This week has really put me to the test. Every time I'm faced with sick-kid scenario, I find myself questioning everything about my life, the validity of my job, my value as an employee, and most of all, my worth as a mother.

I got a call from the daycare on Tuesday noon-ish that mini-man had woken up with a fever of nearly 107 degrees. I immediately packed up in the middle of lunch with a friend, threw my laptop in my bag and ran out of the office. I took mini-man to the emergency room only to be told it's probably a viral infection and to just give Tylenol until it goes away. Other than the fever, he seemed perfectly normal... not even a runny nose. Anyway, by Wednesday morning the fever had broken and he seemed almost back to normal. I tried working from home that day as best I could, but eventually had to get out in the afternoon if only for a walk to the pharmacy and a stop by the little playground near our home.

Working from home with a 2 year old is next to impossible. I think all those people out there who do this regularly either have a nanny in the house or they're not getting a lot done. Every two minutes it's "Look! Mommy look!" Or, "I need help!" And, yes, everything is an exclamation. All I can really get done is look through my email, send a few files here and there as people request, and delegate a good deal. Microsoft Outlook Web Access is awful and times out every 10 minutes or so it seems; it doesn't allow me to open an attachment without saving it first to my local machine and then opening it from there, which adds time to everything I do. Furthermore, half my working files are actually sitting on my network at work, so I can't access all the things I usually can.

I really have a hard time with this. I really take pride in being very good at my job, so when I can't do it to the best of my abilities, I get really down. To make matters worse, I have some kind of deep seeded issue which makes me want approval from everyone around me, so God forbid I let anyone down. You might as well tie bricks to my feet and throw me off a bridge. Incidentally that's the same reason I do all sports alone... I hate the possibility that I might slow anyone down, so I just do what I do by myself. So being out of the office is hard. I know it puts extra pressure on the other members of my team - both above and below me. Being a perfectionist doesn't help either. In many ways it's what makes me good at my job, but it also will likely send me to an early grave.

When my head starts spinning about how ineffective I am in my job while taking care of the most important blessing in my life, I start questioning my worth as a mother. Why do I worry so much about work... shouldn't my head be on this little man I'm tasked with raising - teaching to be a human being? What am I teaching him? Am I teaching him that work is more important than family? Am I teaching him that a person is supposed to spend all day in front of the computer or the TV? Am I teaching him that he's not important enough?

When push comes to shove, my family is more important than my job. There, I said it. If you were considering asking me to work for you but you changed your mind when you read that, fine by me. I really do strive to find a balance in my life... balance between solo time, family time and work time. I need time where my family gets my undivided attention. I need time to hang with friends and time to exercise and play music. I need time to live my life and time to share it with others. As it is this week I ended up skipping my measly two workouts I usually fit in so that I could spend additional time working when big-man came home to occupy mini-man, but I can't and won't dedicate my life to a cubicle.

Now mini-man isn't cleared to return to daycare until Monday, so we're making the most of it...



Yeah, he looks real sick to me.

I'd love to hear how other people are achieving this somewhat elusive work-life balance I keep hearing about... especially working moms. How do you do it?

On the topic of Personal Branding

Yesterday I downloaded a Free eBook on Personal Branding from Chris Brogan. Firstly, I have to say, I highly recommend reading just about every blog post he writes. No, seriously... subscribe. It'll be good for you if you want anything to do with social media. I get his blog right next to my local news from News 1130 each morning as I sit and drink my coffee.

Having said that, I felt either the title of this eBook was off, or something was just missing for me. Maybe I am the one who's just not getting it despite being a relatively savvy person when it comes to marketing, branding and social media, but this piece seemed to lack a reference to the 'personal' aspect of personal branding.

The eBook is filled with references to relatively unknown people. Sure, they are all superstars in their respective lines of business, but the concept of personal branding extends well beyond the tech world. This eBook should be called "Personal Branding in the Digital Space" or "Personal Branding for Bloggers". The truth of the matter is that personal branding existed well before the internet.

The biggest thing I battle with is that I can put out this 'brand' that is me... you can read my thoughts on twitter, you can read my blog, you can check out my profile on LinkedIn, you can google me and find out how long it took me to run the Sun Run or see that I once won 1st place in a kickboxing tournament, but none of that matters if what I project in person doesn't match what I'm putting out in the digital world.

I suggest that personal branding also has a lot to do with your real life person... how you dress, what you look like, what type of glasses frames you choose, whether you wear nice shoes, what kind of car you drive or if you drive a vespa. If you are into sports or if you are into remote control cars, that's going to make a difference to how people see you. I get a very different impression in my head from someone who wears designer clothes (my boss) than I do from someone who wears yoga pants, hoodies and flip flops (me). A person's commitment to personal integrity and decency also play a huge role in my mind. I'm shocked to see CEOs/CMOs/CTOs using the phrase "WTF" on twitter, for instance. Not only is it unnecessary, but I can't picture these people using the same language in person; that is still considered poor form in the boardroom as far as I know. Certain personalities, sure... but then I guess that just really does come down to personal branding.

So it's not that I want to knock what Chris Brogan is saying, because everything he's said is right on the money. I just think people really need to consider more than just the footprint they're leaving on the internet.

photo: jeromeinsf on Flickr

The Beauty of Twitter

I have to say, I'm in LOVE with Twitter. I just discovered it a few months ago and already I've gained more knowledge from the people and events I follow there than I have from any other single source ever.

I think it gives me the opportunity to feel like I'm on the leading edge. It puts me among the first to hear about some of the coolest, funniest, most shocking or most interesting news and events in the world and on the web and I've NEVER been that person before. I was always the awkward kid trying to get in on the conversation but walking in the road to hear what was going on on the sidewalk.

I logged in last night (well, opened the window - who am I kidding? I never log off) to find out that an earthquake had just taken place in San Francisco... 4 minutes ago! I also followed Twitter Search last weekend for #Gustav and saw minute-by-minute accounts of those people who were actually there on the ground in parts of Louisiana. How cool was that?! I realized then and there that by the time the newspapers are printed, what they're telling is no longer news.

Twitter is where I heard about the BlogWorld & New Media Expo that I'll be attending in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks. Twitter is where I've heard about BarCamp Vancouver, which I'm waitlisted to attend at the moment. Twitter is where I hear from and even interact with some of the greatest minds in Social Media today such as @chrisbrogan, @mitchjoel, @briansolis and my local favourite @roxyyo, blogger for the #1 e-commerce blog in the world, GetElastic.

I only hope one day I can contribute as much to those who follow me as I'm getting from those I follow. In the meantime, here's a little vid to get you laughing:



Thanks everyone!

New Squidoo Lens: Blog World & New Media Expo

This morning I created a new squidoo lens for the BlogWorld & New Media Expo, taking place this year on September 20-21 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I'll be attending this event, along with the E&E Conference on the 19th. I love squidoo because I can see all the relevant information about the event on one page... google news, blog mentions, twitter stream, flickr photos, youtube videos and other random comments about the event without having to search various locations.

Here it is, enjoy!

Almost a Vegetarian

Yeah, so I've been following this Maple Leaf Foods listeriosis outbreak along with the rest of the country. If I wasn't borderline vegetarian before this, I most certainly am now. I've never been a huge fan of meat. I really only eat meat that looks entirely pristine - if it's processed it doesn't have any chunks in it; if it's fresh it is all meat with very little marbled animal-looking stuff. I just get turned off when I think hard about what I'm chewing.

So, as the story was breaking a week and a half ago I was actually off from work with some kind of infection causing severe cramping and stomach upset, so honestly at that point I was avoiding the news. I didn't need to hear about it between trips to the can. I tend toward being a hypochondriac anyway, that I figure if I don't think about it, it's not a possibility.

That said, I've now opened my eyes to the reality and keep watching the list of recalled meat closely for any indication that I or my family have consumed the listed products. I think so far we're mostly in the clear - we tend to get most of our deli products from Real Canadian Superstore, which uses Ziggy's brand meats I believe. At the same time, we do occasionally get meats from Safeway (big-man gets Capicollo there; RCSS doesn't carry it).

Here is a message from the CEO of Maple Leaf Foods:



Now, I heard on the news last night that even cheeses are affected... Yikes! What are we supposed to eat? This is just one more piece of evidence that cereal is a perfectly acceptable dinner food, as I have always suspected.

Sweet Serenity

Big-man has taken mini-man on his first guys weekend. They've gone with a friend of ours and his two boys camping at Cultus Lake. Big-man is much braver than I; the thought of taking a not-quite-two-an-a-half year old camping for 3 nights scares the you-know-what out of me. It sounds like WAY more work than I'm interested in taking on, but then I've always been a little on the selfish side.

While they're off galavanting around the lake, the woods and the water slides, I get a weekend to relax and recharge my mommy batteries.

Today is Friday evening and I have enjoyed sitting to watch the evening news while eating take-out sushi (the sushi isn't unusual, but the news is - big-man can't stand watching anything to do with what's going on outside our apartment... I have yet to figure out why that is). I have also completely cleaned up and re-arranged mini-man's room, gotten rid of a garbage bag full of my old clothes, cleaned and moved a few large toys that I'll take to a friend this weekend, and listened to Hillsong United with Brooke Fraser singing Hosanna over and over again:



Tomorrow I plan to sleep in until at least 6am and then do whatever I want for the rest of the weekend :)

Unconditional Love, yes. But unconditional respect?

A book review and a concept to ponder...

Okay, the truth is this is not really a book review per se, but definitely a concept to ponder from the book I'm currently reading. I know, I know I said I have the attention span of a flea... truth is it is VERY rare for me to read entire books. I'm more of a blog, newspaper, magazine-if-I'm-bored, rss feed kind of reader. But every so often it's nice to curl up in bed and read something of the printed and bound variety.

I'm currently reading Love and Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs, by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. It's based on the theory that what men and women actually need out of a marriage differs. Now, you might think, "Well, duh!" But the truth is, as humans, we generally try and offer people what it is we want from them, rather than offering them what they need. The result is that each can be left without the fulfillment they're seeking and, thus, the painfully high divorce rate.

The foundation of Dr. Eggerichs' theory comes from scripture:

Ephesians 5:33 states: "Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband."

When I got married, I thought what we were doing was committing to living together because we loved each other. What I didn't realise at the time, is that God's plan for marriage involves more than that. Firstly, the commitment is not to exist in the same space with one another, but to act. The commitment is to act with love towards one another, whatever form that really needs to take and so I've recently decided to dive in to figuring out exactly what that means.

The Ephesians passage above is interesting. Notice it doesn't say the wife is to love her husband. Huh. Men are commanded to love their wives as he loves himself! Wow. That's quite a tall order. But women are commanded to respect their husbands.

The truth is, we women and society as a whole, really expect unconditional love from our husbands. We believe its our right... whether we get ugly or fat or don't keep the house well enough, don't earn enough money, don't dress nicely or use enough wrinkle cream... we expect our husbands will love us no matter what. Unconditional, right?

Well what about the concept of unconditional respect?

Often we consider respect to be something a person earns by making right decisions, doing the right things, saying the right things. That's how a person earns respect, right? It can't just be given no matter what, right? Well, it would seem that's exactly what this scripture is saying. In the same way that women are still worthy of love from their husbands no matter what they do or how they behave, our husbands are worthy of our respect for who they are as individuals whether we agree with all their decisions, actions or convictions or not.

It's a great book and I would highly recommend it to anyone trying to figure out why their marriage isn't exactly what they signed up for. It's funny how more and more I find the words written in the bible just make sense when put into practice. Ironic?

Just a thought to ponder...

God uses pornography

I know I said my blog is G rated, and it is... well, mostly. With exception of a couple of words I'll keep it clean here. But I feel the need to share something that I found yesterday while innocently browsing audio podcasts on itunes. I was looking for marketing stuff and Christian stuff, semons etc. Then I saw something odd:



Do you see it? Let's look closer...



There it is. Right there in the middle... yep, you can read: xxxchurch.com - #1 Christian Porn Site. Huh.

To say I was taken aback is a serious understatement. At first I was shocked, then I was trying to figure out how that is justified. I figured, yeah, there probably are people out there who have found a way (in their heads only, mind you) to justify the use of pornography as acceptable to God somehow. I don't doubt that. God loves us all just the way we are right? God made us in His image and if we enjoy porn then God does too, right? Yeah... go ahead and believe that if you want. I finally decided just to move on despite wondering what on earth audio porn would be anyhow (ew); I tweeted about it and let it go.

It wasn't until this morning that I actually started talking to big-man about it and we both got curious. I was really apprehensive about going to the site. It's not that I'm a prude. Well, I guess I am a little, but it wasn't always that way...

I didn't make a decision for Jesus until I was 29 years old. I'd been in three long term relationships by then, lived with two partners, random encounters with others and have seen probably as much porn as the next person. I'm not saying this to glorify the sinful experiences of my past, but just to share that I'm not as crunchy as some of the Christians you might meet in your lifetime. But clicking on a site that would most definitely be offensive and could quite possibly challenge my beliefs was a bit of an uneasy proposition.

So this morning big-man and I decided to have a peek. It was like looking at something gross with one hand covering my face and fingers spreading open slowly, slowly to reveal whatever it was that was on the other side. What we found was one of the most raw, real ministry efforts we've ever seen. The site was created by a group of Christians looking to reach out to those people who use porn whether recreationally or addictively.



One of the most lofty goals they have is to open a church on the strip in Las Vegas. They have some compelling stats on the sex trade in Vegas to back up their reasons too. Sobering stuff. They're even looking for missionaries to help with their efforts in las vegas. That would certainly be challenging - I have not received that calling, but perhaps you have?



Pornography and other sexual sin can ruin relationships. It eats away at the core of what God intended for sexuality. I don't care if it's pornography, pre-marital sex, homosexuality, beastiality, incest, voyeurism, pedophilia, homosexuality or withholding sex from your spouse (yep, that's a sin too... are you guilty?), God calls it sin. Sin is sin, and you can be a Christian and fall to any of the above.

Just watch these confessions or check out any of the testimonials on this site for a glimpse into the lives of those who have suffered... like this one: Confesions of a beautiful, wonderful, interesting human being.

So yeah, God uses pornography. God uses porn like he uses any other struggle we face... to draw us to himself by showing us how much we need him; how broken we are; how far we are from how He intended humanity to live. Are you guilty?

The Registration Frenzy

Do you ever have one of those moments you regret instantly? Those ones that usually involve a 'send' button? Yeah, I had one of those yesterday.

Any mothers in North Vancouver know what I'm talking about... it's North Van Rec Registration Day. Now I am the first to admit we here in North Vancouver have one of the best, most comprehensive, recreation commissions anywhere. We have access to a host of programs across a wide range of facilities, all at prices that are highly subsidised by our local government. It's accessing those programs that can be a bit tricky.

The Fall Leisure Guide comes out early to mid August every year and showcases the myriad programs available for September through December. Well this year the magic date was August 20th: the date when registration began for the aforementioned programs.

Big-man and I decided we needed to get mini-man back into swimming lessons. He's quite the swimmer now - able to swim unassisted with water wings on and will willingly put his face in the water and blow bubbles. He also will swim under the surface of the water from one of us to the other and will jump in and swim up to the surface on his own (okay end bragging here). Now because he's still under 3 (he's actually a little under 2 1/2) he has to be in the parent participation program: Tiny Splashers. We decided, along with my mother-in-law (hereby referred to as 'Nona') that he would take a weekly lesson with Nona. As such, I ended up having to brave the repeated redials in order to get him in for the desired day/time slot.

I started calling at about 6:58am. Dial, busy signal, disconnect, talk, redial, busy signal, disconnect, talk, redial... I finally got through and put on hold at about 7:07. I was excited it hadn't taken as long as I'd thought it would, though 10 minutes of dialing feels like longer than it is. So there I was trying to get dressed while holding a phone to my ear and listening to CBC radio (couldn't they pick something a little more upbeat at that time in the morning?!), trying to fix lunches and get mini-man breakfast. That's a lot of multi-tasking. Not only that, but I was also trying to speed up the process by refreshing their online registration system in order to see if I could get in faster that way. Every couple of minutes a voice would come on saying something to the effect that they appreciate my business and that I'd be served faster if I hold rather than dialing back. About 7:22 it happened...

I heard an awful clicking sound and my heart sank. I got hung up on. I mean, it even sounded like someone picked up my call and put the receiver down on the base... no joke. I lost it. I can't even explain how angry I was in that very moment. I'm ashamed, really. So what do I do? I go online. I go to their "contact us" page and find a form.

I have to say, that level of anger is not a good thing to have when writing an email that someone is going to actually receive. I do believe I didn't use any profanity, but I really came off as a jerk. Not only that but the moment after I submitted the message I got through to their online registration form and was finished about 5 minutes later.

Once the registration was over, I had forgotten about being disconnected. I was just happy the entire process was over and in only about a half an hour... not too bad all things considered. It was only later that morning while sitting at my desk at work did I remember what happened. Actually it was upon receiving a phone call that I suddenly became keenly aware of what a jerk I'd been. "Hello..." I answered. "Hello. This is Ann Greenwell calling from the North Vancouver Recreation Commission..." oh no! I'd forgotten... Not only had I been extremely rude in my email to them, but the woman calling me used to be a business connection of mine when I used to place advertising in the Leisure Guide. Oh no. I don't know if she remembered me or recognized my name and/or phone number, but that just goes to show you should really think twice about voicing your opinion in the heat of the moment.

Lesson learned. Hopefully...

Anniversary Weekend

August 14th was our 4th wedding anniversary. We were married on the anniversary of our first date, 5 years earlier, so it's really easy to remember yay! This year big-man surprised me with a lovely overnight away to the most unusual spot: The Silver Reef Casino just outside Bellingham, WA. I actually think it's technically in Ferndale, but that doesn't really matter. You might think that sounds like an odd plan, but for us it was perfect.

It was a simple plan: son at the mother-in-law's, drive down Saturday morning, enjoy some spa treatments, a little gambling, a nice dinner and some more gambling and more spa treatments, and then back on Sunday. It was very well planned and I have to give props to big-man. He's never been good at surprising me with anything. In 9 years he's never managed to actually surprise me on my birthday, Christmas or our anniversary. This, at least, he had planned entirely up until about two weeks prior when he finally broke down and told me the plan haha... yeah, we're still working on the *surprise* element of gift giving.

So here's how it went...

We left our place about 8:00am Saturday. Given we're up daily by 5am, that was no big deal. We had coffees in hand and a few things packed. It was a beautiful morning so we took off without the front panels on the Jeep (we have a hard top 4-door Jeep like this one where the top pieces just above the front seats come off independently from the rest of the hard top) and left them at home (more about that later).

Here's how it looked coming in to Vancouver from the North Shore:



And this was me all excited taking a pic of myself - yep I'm a big dork:



We then proceeded to accidentally follow Granville all the way in to Richmond instead of switching over to Oak to get on to Hwy 99... oops! So we had a nice little tour of Richmond before we finally hit the last stretch to the border. At the border we hit the duty free for big-man's necessities (read: booze & smokes) before we got to join the 90-minute queue of travellers trying to navigate their way to the U-S-of-A.

Anyway, after the 90 minute wait, lots of pee-pee breaks, the odd tweet and some good quality time, we were through the gates and on our way. We stopped for a quick breakfast at Jack In The Box and then arrived at the hotel at about 11am. Perfect timing.



Actually, the timing was good. They had our room ready even though check-in wasn't until 4pm or something. We had an executive suite on the top floor so there was a little extra security - you had to have a key to a 6th floor room to get the elevator to go there. Big-man had even managed to get the hotel staff to pick up a bottle of sparkling wine he knew I'd like and a long stemmed rose and have them leave it, with a card he sneaked in to them, on the bed in our room. Nice touch.





Pardon the bottle of tequila. That was from the duty free. Newest favourite drink is Blue Agave Full Throttle with tequila *mmm*.

So 11:30am Saturday the first item on the agenda was a couples' massage at the spa. It was good. The massage itself was good, anyway. The guy who was working on me started talking about how he divorced his wife for her putting her cold hands on him to warm up. A little inappropriate given it was our anniversary, but whatever. The Silver Reef is certainly not high end, despite what they'd like to think. At least the price isn't high end either lol.

After the massage we shared our bottle of sparkly. That's all I'm saying there...

Around 1:30 we went for some lunch at Panasia. The thing we started to notice about this 'resort' (and I must use the term lightly, it is actually a hotel and casino in the middle of a series of fields on a native reserve...) is that no one knows anything about anything that isn't part of their job. The hostess knew nothing about the beverages offered, nor did she know anything about the voucher thing we got with our room key. All she knew how to do was seat people at the table. The server on the other hand, knew about the beverages and the voucher, but didn't know what came with our food. We ordered a spicy duck dish that was supposed to come with little pancakes to roll it up in and she was very shocked that we would imply there should have been something else. No harm done. The food was okay. Not great; but okay.

After lunch I quickly threw $150 in the toilet. Well, I might as well have done so at the rate I lost it at the casino. At that point I wasn't having much fun, but big-man was enjoying himself, so we stuck around. When he was up a little, he gave me another $100 which I promptly handed over to the 4-card poker dealer. My excuse is that I was training for Las Vegas when I go to Blogworld next month. Meh. Truth is, I was training my self control from that moment on. I draw the line at $250 without winning a single hand.

Big-man made up for my losses at the tables and we got all prettied up and went for dinner at the Steakhouse.



Big-man, having spent many years in the restaurant industry in both the front-of-house and the back-of-house, was excited about table-side food prep. We ate Caesar salad (prepared tableside), he had a pepper steak (prepared tableside) while I had a lobster bisque and, for dessert, we had bananas foster (you guessed it, prepared tableside). Big-man bitched about the wine service (his glass emptied twice without being refilled promptly or, better still, beforehand), but over all he's just a tough cookie to please. I thought it was fine.

After dinner we returned to the casino where our final tally was me down $300 but big-man up $600. I took a photo of him rolling in the cash on the bed (which is pretty funny) but given he was in his underwear by that point, I figured I'd spare him. Some things are better left private. After deciding to quit while we were (collectively, anyway) ahead, we went for a swim and a hot tub before retiring to the room to watch the Olympic coverage on TV.

Sunday morning we got up and had some really bad coffee. Okay, admittedly I'm a coffee snob. We use a French press at home and use 5 heaping scoops of espresso roast for two mugs of coffee, so hotel coffee just can't do it for me. Big-man had decided to have another massage Sunday morning given he'd enjoyed the first one so much. I, on the other hand, decided to drive in to Bellingham to look for some real coffee... a Starbucks perhaps?

It was then that I realised it was raining. Remember that nice weather I'd said we had? Remember how I said we'd gone with the tops off the Jeep? Remember how I said we'd left them at home?! Yeah. Nice. So I'm driving down I5 towards Bellingham in the rain, with my hood on, in search of the happy green circle. I finally spotted one Starbucks just as I was passing it with absolutely no hope of doubling back. I kept going to Bellis Fair... found a McDonald's but that was definitely not what I wanted. So I decided to drive around some more...

I found the strangest thing: right beside Cost-Cutter was Christ The King Church. No joke. A big church in a mall... it was really weird. I'd planned to miss church that morning, being out of town and all, but then I felt compelled to drive right by the front door... 8:30am service. I checked the clock: it was 8:27am. Now I know when God is talking to me. "Don't miss church. You soooooo need a little godly influence don't ya thing?! You already threw away the money I provided for you playing stupid gambling games, don't you think you ought to think about me just a little while you're immersed in all things worldly? Besides, you'll like it." Yes God. I went in.

It was like violins started playing... as I walked though the door the first thing I saw was an espresso bar. Sweet. Then, I met a woman who works in the children's ministry and gets espresso vouchers for doing so. She was happy I'd dropped in and gave me one. Score! Thanks again, God. I finally make my way in to the sanctuary, wondering if people were frowning upon my attire: yoga pants, a hoodie and flip flops (my usual any time I'm not at work), just in time to see the pastor come in... wearning flip flops. FTW!!

After the service I had just enough time to get back to the hotel, get changed and have a swim and a steam before my mani/pedi appointment at the spa - my final pampering of the weekend.

The drive home was quick; just 10 minutes at the border. We were home by just after 3pm sitting by the pool at the mother-in-law's hanging with our mini-man, who we missed dearly.

It's really important for us to take time away from the hectic pace of everyday life. This was a nice break. Thanks babe... I love you. Now if we can just focus on not killing each other before we do it again, that would be fantastic.

Just joined Technorati

I'm not sure if it's a sign that I know a little about what I'm talking about or not, but I'm proud to at least know where to look to get the right information. It's like, I may not actually be cool, but I know people who are... oh yeah I do.

I'm currently following @mitchjoel, President of Twist Image, on Twitter. His post this morning in his blog Six Pixels of Separation was a great outline of several of the top tools for managing, or at least monitoring, your business reputation online. One of those means, which I have not explored thus far (and the only one to date - yay me!) is Technorati.

So this is how I spend the morning... 5:30am, signing up for new profiles in new online spaces while drinking a very large coffee. I'm still working on laying a foundation online to represent myself. For the record, www.michelleevans.com is not me.

Want to see the real me? Check out my Technorati Profile :)

Google Rant

Dear Google,

I'm very frustrated by your assumed understanding of my needs (or my own lack of understanding of your capabilities, anyhow). I'm especially frustrated with the new automatic login to analytics. That would be uber helpful if I didn't mostly use google for personal reasons. Just because I have analytics and adwords accounts for work doesn't mean that's all it's good for - my google reader, my gmail and my igoogle are all on my personal account, as is that AdSense stuff that served me up canadiancheeserolling.ca... nice AND this very blog.

So I spend a good portion of each day logging out of my natural persona and logging back in as my alter ego: the business woman. I think I'm starting to actually develop some serious mental illness over this point of contention. I can't keep flip flopping back and forth! I'm already at risk of having the shortest attention span on the planet, but make me do it under two different identities and the fragmenting is almost unbearable.

Please, please find a way for me to have two accounts simultaneously. For the love of all things digital.

Sincerely,
A Dissatisfied Customer

PS - if anyone out there knows how to make Google understand my two separate logins from this one machine, please let me know via comment.

Not much of a blogger

Well, it's official: I'm not much of a blogger. It's funny, as much as I think I have great things to say every now and again, I don't actually have time to write them down at the very moment I think them up. I have the attention span of a flea, and thus there are no entries in my blog.

I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with this blog, to be honest. When I started it, I was just looking to ramble some random thoughts as they arose. I still think that's sort of what goes through my head, but it doesn't much make for good reading. There are so many topics I've thought about really pursuing to make me stand out from the crowd:

- Marketing - so many people do it, and many better than I could
- Online Marketing/New Media - see above
- Parenting - with one 2 1/2 year old I'm hardly an expert
- Christianity - well, it's hard to really share those deep places with the world
- Music - I only know about praise and worship music and artists

I'm also thinking of starting to build more Squidoo lenses. They're my latest obsession and I just earned a whopping $0.07! I know... totally thrilling.

Anyway, I'm currently waiting to hear back from my General Manager to find out if I get approved to go to BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2008 in Las Vegas in September. If I do, I'm sure I'll have far more ideas after. Until then, if you find yourself reading this blog, you'll have to make do with my random thoughts in no particular order and with no particular regularity.

Thanks for reading.

A Mommy Milestone... The Play Date

Wow. Someone actually left their kid with me... that was a very new experience for me. I don't think I've been responsible for someone else's kid in over 10 years at least, and at that time it was my ex-boyfriend's kids. Anyway, big-man decides to go out shopping for a new flat panel HDTV with a friend of his. Well his friend has a 3 1/2 year old son... anyway, he left his son with me while they went out. I was terrified lol!

Actually, when they left I didn't even know how old this kid was. I knew his name, that was it. I didn't know if he was potty trained or not, though I assumed he was - and very much hoped he was. I didn't know when he had last eaten, whether or not he had any allergies... oh man, was I nervous! Mostly I was scared that he was going to freak out and want someone who knew him and there would be no one around but me to deal with it.

The two boys quickly settled into playing together and had a great time. It didn't hurt that I basically imposed no rules lol, but give me a break here, I'm a first-time play-date-er.

Sidenote: Please disregard the state of my coffee table; I assume it's easier to just sand off the junk when my kid is older than to try and keep it free from stains, markers, spilled food and beverages etc. Besides, I like that the stains on the table offset the large quantity of play doh that is currently gluing the carpet fibers together beneath it.

Trucks, cooking utensils, duplo blocks and play doh... all were a hit. Then they got a little unruly and had a hard time sharing the coveted play doh machine that squirts out any number of noodle-like shapes. So I figured what better way to entertain two small boys than a couple of knives...

Okay, for those people who also worried about my parenting skills after reviewing my "Mama's Mean" video (some people worried that my son would try and drink anything out of a squirt bottle because I'd allowed him to suck on a water spray bottle once), I'll add a caveat: these are toddler knives and there's not a sharp edge to be found.

That said, I just read a great post on The Art of Manliness called "Quit Coddling Your Kids" and found Gever Tulley’s lecture on “5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kid Do", which suggests that letting your kids play with knives is a good thing.

Anyway... my first play date was a great experience. Little buddy didn't eat a thing, though he did accept a glass of juice during his stay. He turned down a couple of my suggestions to use the bathroom, but turns out he was wearing a pull-up, so no harm done. He was sad to leave, which I suppose suggests his afternoon didn't suck entirely... turns out his parents don't know any other people with kids his age as they're new to the area, so mini-man's first experience of having a friend over to play was a good one for both of them.

While over all the experience was positive, I am more certain than ever that I need to replace my 780 square foot apartment with a large house... preferably before the next play date.

It's always something with Telus...

I just hate them. I hate Telus with every fiber of my being. I have hated them since their sales people lied to me to get me to sign up for Telus TV (they told me I'd be able to get all UFC PPV fights, but the truth was they were still in discussions over licensing) and I have hated them since one of their customer service reps told me, "My manager is only here to make sure I get a pay cheque," when I pointed out their error and requested to speak to someone who actually gave a you-know-what. Apparently, if you do get through their automatic talk-to-a-machine-but-it-can't-figure-out-what-I'm-saying system to a human being, you can't get past the power-tripping CSR who was clearly in the right place at a time when there was a labour shortage in the service industry... oh, like now.

Today I decided to bite the bullet and add a data plan to my mobile device. I have the HTC S640 Iris. I don't mind the PDA, but I still haven't figured it all out even though I've had it over 6 months. I suspect it's actually harder to use than the Blackberry, but I figured I'd be impulsive... what else is new?

Having added the unlimited everything plan I decided to add the Telus Mobile Email. Sounds logical, right? Get my email to my PDA... it's unlimited data, so why not? Well... in the process of installing their handy-dandy software and trying to connect my work email to this thing, it ended up clearing all my contacts and my appointments on my Outlook. Nice.

I now have lost every single contact I had in both my phone and my Outlook - that's all my personal AND business contacts. Not only that, but the lovely Telus Mobile Email says it's working just fine, but it's not actually sending any email to my phone. To make things even more annoying, Telus Mobility said there was absolutely nothing they could do to retrieve the lost records; they referred me to HTC Tech Support. Guess what? Yep. HTC Tech Support can't do anything for me either.

I'm at the mercy of my IT guy. Please let him know what to do. I'm nerdy, but this is really beyond me. I think I'd like a drink...

Cats

So I have an old-ish cat... she's about 12. And she's fat. I'm trying to get her slimmer by switching her over to wet food from free-feeding her dry. She LOOOVES wet food; hasn't had it since she was a kitten. But with her advancing age, I'm not sure her little teeth are doing so well with the dry, so anyway...

I finally have gotten to a point in my life where my mini-man is sleeping past 6am and now the cat is the one insisting I'm up at 5am. At 5am on the nose she takes, I swear, one claw and slides it up the side of a wall next to my bed. A cat claw on a wall in just the right way actually sounds like nails on a blackboard. Well, okay, it does if you're dreaming peacefully.

I keep looking around for things I can throw at her. I'm not kidding. She brings out the worst in me - I'm not a fan of starting my days angry, but I'm not doing so well with this new routine. When she hears me yell "shut up!" I suspect she figures, "Right then, she's up yay! I'll make some more noise." And she starts to wail. All this so she can hurry up and inhale her 1/3 tin of cold yuck. EW.

Champions "Social Night"

I'm not much of a socialite. I'm a little more socially-awkward, nerdy girl with a strange combination of Type A personality and shyness... it's hard to explain. It often gets mistaken for UBER-snobby, but really I just don't feel comfortable making conversation with people I don't know very well unless it's for business and we have something specific to talk about.

So Thursday night at kickboxing I was reminded of the planned "Champions Social Night" by a few equally unsure individuals who asked if I was going, presumably to know if there would at least be someone there they didn't feel horrified to try to have a conversation with.

I've been training at Champions for something like 8 years now. I've basically lost count. The truth is, though, that although I've known the people I train with for that time, I've not truely gotten to really *know* any of them. Those I did get close with don't train anymore. To make matters worse, in the last 3 years I've taken a collective year and a half off, so friendships have formed and tight-knit clicks abound.

A few people asked me if I would go (the self-critical me figures it was likely out of politeness only) and so I reluctantly agreed to step in and check it out. I arrived WAY too early; I thought it was to start at 7:30 or 8pm... yeah, checking the details would have been a good way to go, but that's just not my style these days. So I arrived at 8:30 thinking I'd be there late enough to at least be inconspicuous as I enter. Not so. I was the first person there other than Champions staff... nice. That doesn't make a wall-flower type cringe at all...

Thank GOD for small miracles, one of the gals at the club I've been closer to in the last few years showed up relatively soon after I did, so we had a lovely chat. I came to find out she's got a regular role on Stargate Atlantis, so I now have to watch it even though I don't like science fiction shows, but it's just really cool seeing someone you know on TV. Anyway, I digress...

I ended up having a super fun time, more to drink than I'd like to admit, and didn't get home until 2am even though Mini-Man gets me up well before 6am on a daily basis. Other than being a little tired today (okay, well... a lot tired) I felt pretty good. Not like cardio-class Saturday good, but able-to-drag-myself-and-my-toddler-through-Superstore-for-our-weekly-grocery-shopping-trip good. So at least that was something.

I cringe at the thought of some of the photos that were taken. Something about drinks and dancing makes you feel likely more attractive than you really are. I don't really want the reality check, thank you very much.

Whistler Weekend 2008

So I finally made it out to my friend Mrs. Little's annual Whistler Girls' Weekend... what a fun time! Who knew I'd still enjoy squeezing 17 women into 3 hotel rooms for a weekend of silliness in my 30's? I also finally spent some real time with my new-found half sister - I mean, more than just going for coffee, which was nice. I met her last year after searching for my birth mother and it's been very cool getting to know her; she's a fantastic girl and I really admire her.

Anyway... we got to Whistler about 4pm on Friday the 27th and proceeded to ditch the car with the valet. No need for it when you're staying a stone's throw from everything in the village. We found our rooms, settled in a little and proceeded to socialize around the penis-shaped chip plate as the ladies arrived until our dinner reservation at 7pm. Dinner was awful lol... I mean I didn't really care much, but Mrs. Little herself was mistakenly served a beef burger when she's a vegetarian. EEW... she wasn't at all impressed. The bellini's were good though.

I'm not sure if it's a function of age or something else, but I honestly have no recollection of what took place after dinner on the Friday night *shrug*.

Saturday we got up, got cleaned up, had coffee (no shortage of great coffee shops in Whistler) and went shopping. I spent some good money that I don't have on things I don't need, so all in all a successful shopping outing. After shopping we hit the pool with some refreshments in hand and got friendly with a series of sexy white loungers. The afternoon was made complete with a nap and another shower before attending the pre-bar party...

The pre-bar party began at 6pm with more refreshments, a rousing game of "pass the purple penis", party favours and "how dirty are you" style drinking games... you'd have thought someone was about to be married, but no... this was all just for fun. After the pre-bar party we went to Buffalo Bills for some more refreshments and dancing. The music was awful but we made the most of it...

Those of us no longer used to the bar-star party life left the club at a rediculously early hour and went back to one of the rooms to order pizza and have civilized converstation for the rest of the night. I spent a short but not insignificant amount of time worried about New Young Sister and whether or not she was out on the town alone or if she had a room key, but all was well... she stumbled in at 2am and the photos showed she was well and had a great time...

Sunday morning we all pulled ourselves together and with comfy clothes as the order of the day, made our way to the closest coffee shop to soak up the last of the sun (not to mention caffeine, and ginger ale for those less-fortunate) before piling into our caravan of carpool arrangements to make our way to our final stop - breakfast at White Spot in Squamish.

I arrived home around 1pm on Sunday to hugs and kisses from both Big Man and Little Man. My two greatest loves. Life is good.

Can't wait to do it again next year...

$3. 30,000 people. 2 months... an interesting concept

This might just be one of the most exciting examples of fundraising out there… just simply asking for money. And asking for a personal cause, none less. “Brendan B” from Vancouver, BC is trying to build a network of people using a Facebook group and a website to generate $90,000 in donations to get him to Oxford. The concept is to just simply ask friends and family for money, ask them to pass it on to their friends, and so on, and so on, and so on. If he doesn’t actually raise enough to go, he’s committed to forwarding what he does raise to some other worthy causes.

A New Challenge: Squidoo

So I was browsing LinkedIn Q&A's and came across a recommendation for a site called squidoo. Well, there was no way I could see a word like that with a hyperlink and not get sucked in. Here's what I found:

The idea behind squidoo is that everyone can be an expert on something, so anyone can build a page, or "lens", about it using their own knowledge, web-based sources, rss feeds, content from Amazon, Flickr or YouTube. The first lens I saw was by a woman who I found on Twitter - mynameiskate - who built one on cool laptop bags. I kid you not, it's an entire page on some really cool laptop bags! Oh the irony. Anyway, the point of this is awareness. The more a piece of content is referenced on the web, the more likely it is to be popular, the higher the search ranking. Here is the description of a squidoo lens, as posted on the squidoo site:

• An insanely easy-to-build, single page online.
• Your signpost about something that matters to you.
• A place to recommend your favorite stuff.
• A popular way to get found more on the web.
• A free (yes, free) way to earn a royalty. For you or for charity.
• Word of mouth at your fingertips.
• Squiddylicious.
• Something you should have if you care about getting the word out, about selling something, about changing minds, about sharing info, or if you just love to create, express yourself, and play.

About that royalty... the revenue from the Google content ads on the squidoo lenses get paid out however the author of the lens chooses: they will pay to the general squidoo charity kitty, to the charity of choice of the author, or directly to the author in cash. Brilliant idea for generating a user-base.

So anyway, I got to thinking, what do I know about? Well, interestingly enough I know all about the Grouse Grind and am, in fact, mandated to spread the word about it. So why not build a Grouse Grind squidoo lens and see if it does anything for search engine ranking and increased visitation to the Grouse Mountain website. You really have to check it out to understand it. It basically just amalgamates a bunch of information from wherever you find it in one place. I do think this particular page now has to be the most informative single web page about the Grouse Grind anywhere on the internet.

If it makes any money I'll consider it commission ;)