type | Croncast - Life is Show Prep

Muttonchopologist, Big Time Rush, 2 Kids

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:41:51 -0500

Episode: #665
Length: 31:55
Format: mp3

To listen to this and all new Croncast episodes Get Cool!

Late, apologies
I spent day searching for a new air conditioner
No luck
Then found one from our storage room
Kris, FTW
Family happy and I am as I type these notes
Well, not really notes
It's a good episode
Enjoy!

Tags: big time rush free concert nyc muttonchopologist 2 kids

Partner Whiplash, Full Facemask, Psychic Dominance

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:22:35 -0600

Show: #555
Length: 27:56
Format: mp3

To listen to this and all new Croncast episodes Get Cool!

Being married to your best friend
You gave me whiplash!
I would charge $20 for that
The memory was priceless
Betsy gots paid to blog
She grabbed my hands
Told me she was a psychic
She was setting up the dominance
First you must be mind raped
You have to cooperate
He should chew on my hair to know more about me
I wore a pant suit
He tells me, "You're the type of woman that takes a lot of time with her appearance."
My job was wiping developmentally delayed kids
Not professional
I wore splatter resistance cotton to work
Success in a box
So why do I need to go see one, now?
You can't wear a full face mask in NYC
The bus driver wouldn't even let the dude on the bus
Tell me how I was freaking out?
He was wearing a rubber fucking suit
Maybe it was skeevey subway dude?
You win
You would prefer that I not work and pursue a comedy career
Why does that bother you?
My friends are jealous because you are letting me do what I want
But you're not
You, my lady, are comedian
You have this opportunity, you should take it!
Oh! And if you use the Twitters, check out Ville - http://ville.ag

Tags: psychic connections rubber suit professional blogger comedian face mask

Season 23 Ep 20: Croncast Sampler

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:10:43 -0600

Show: #555-Sampler
Length: 4:58
Format: mp3

To listen to this and all new Croncast episodes in full Get Cool!

Tags: psychic connections rubber suit professional blogger comedian face mask

Structured Data: Follow-Up to Palegroove Blog Post

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:02:54 -0500

In the my previous post at Palegroove, "Improving your SEO with RSS in 3 easy steps," I shared some insight about how to setup your RSS feed URL's so that they are search engine friendly. After reading the post again, well, I missed explaining why search spiders like feeds so much. The answer is structured data.

PC Magazine defines structured data as, "Data that resides in fixed fields within a record or file. Relational databases and spreadsheets are examples of structured data. Contrast with unstructured data." I'm sure a future revised version will include XML or RSS ;-).

When your content is placed into feeds it has the benefit of being described by a template - structured data. It is described by elements in the feed the same as mine, CNN.com, Apple, Microsoft or anyone else with a RSS feed. RSS is the ubiquitous, defacto standard for syndication. The simplicity of RSS as a standard to describe your content's title, description, dates, content, enclosures, etc makes it a magic API for search engines, developers and database administrators. Your website doesn't do this. It is full of unstructured data.

On your site the post titles could be in a h1-6 tag, div or a legacy table cell with a style applied to it. This makes it harder for search engines to understand your content. Sure, there are insanely engineered algorithms that are in place to create associations between the content on your site and the code that is used to display it, but RSS makes it uniform and much easier for search companies to cache, categorize, rank and re-syndicate your ideas. The primary reason is that the feed describes the data types instead ot telling a browser how to display it.

So, like I said in the last post, "Treat your feeds with the same care that you do your pages," with the caveat that maybe you need to treat them better because the next iteration of the web is being built on structured data.

Tags: RSS SEO structured data feeds seo

Think differently about RSS and its uses

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:18:54 -0500

It's been quite a while since I wrote a blog post and it was time to get down with the reality that some things can't be said in 140 characters or less.

Over the weekend, as some of you may of you noticed, I live photo blogged my Saturday afternoon date with Betsy and our trip to Goodwill. For me it was a time to watch Betsy as she navigated her adopted habitat and to see her operate in a way that is far from the norm in our everyday lives.

I knew this was going to be an interesting experience. Why not share it in as many ways as possible (distribution to: Flickr, Twitter, blog and RSS) with as many people as possible? One input with multiple outputs across the various Croncast audiences.

Making it happen is a lot easier than you think with email and RSS.

First. it is the camera phone that takes decent photos. Second, is the phones ability to send email with photo attachments. Third, is a place to email the photos that has an RSS feed or other API connectivity to other applications. Tons of sites like Flickr, Seesmic and Tumblr offer these and can even do some of the distribution for you. Get these three things in place and sharing your experiences in near real-time has never been easier.

Currently, it does take a little more skill to distribute the photos to Twitter. However, if you get creative you can breathe life into photos that wouldn't normally have existed after it was consumed/viewed in a photo sharing site or through an RSS reader. It is worth the effort to figure this out, it's the next stage of content distribution online.

How do I know? Google Reader shared feeds are the perfect example. Typically once someone reads a post in their reader it has reached the end of the line. But if someone shares it with Google Reader it then gets added to the individual users shared RSS feed and resyndicated. A new life for that content. The same goes for photos that end up in Flickr or a Flickr RSS feed.

In my case, live photo blogging and my ability to cast a wider net wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for the Flickr RSS feed from my account. It is the magic API that feeds (pun intended) the river of resyndication that allows me to give that new life to our content.

Here's how it goes down:

1. Upload photo from phone to Flickr with subject line used as image title
2. In the body under the photo begin with an asterisk (*) if I want the photo, title and description to be a blog post also
3. In the body under the photo begin with a carat (^) if I want the title and a link to be a tweet
4. Add both asterisk and carat (*^) for blog and twitter
5. A PHP script grabs the Flickr RSS feed and reads it for asterisks and carats every two minutes and sends the photo, title and description where it needs to go
6. If it goes to the blog the title and description will be run through a keyword generations script
7. If it goes to Twitter only the title is sent and a shortened url is created to link to the photo

What all of this does is allow me to create multiple channels of distribution that can reach the different audiences that follow us. There is a bit of overlap with multiple audience members subscribed to the same services but quite a few are not. We have the Twitter audience, the blog audience, the flickr audience and the RSS audience. We also have our podcast audience but they are not really a part of this type of delivery

Summary: Look for ways to utilize sites like Flickr as a content management portal, if even from your mobile phone, to cast a wider net across your network. Work to find that one point of contact that has the lowest threshold for allowing you to get your media and thoughts online with the ability to resyndicate your content without having to lift a finger. Well, too many fingers. And make sure that it has an RSS feed!

Tags: flickr live photo blogging RSS as API seesmic tumblr twitter

Make better RSS feeds by not making them

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:00:20 -0500

Did you pick the content of the RSS feeds that you are syndicating from your site right now? Or did you let your readers pick?

Within reason my guess would be that most of you answered, yes then no. I know on my sites, even this site, I would have answered the same.

The solution isn't to create more feeds. The best solution is for publishers to create no feeds at all. Let your readers make their own.

Here are a couple examples why this is a better method for content syndication than relying on your own editorial skills.

Example 1: How not to do it.

Don't get me wrong on this, CNET is offering nearly all of its content up for syndication. This is an excellent strategy to create value from older content. However, do readers really need the option of subscribing to 100 plus predefined RSS feeds? Simply, no.

Finding feeds for the topics you are interested in is difficult. The worst of it is that you can only access them individually, i.e.; you want 10 of feeds, copy and paste them one by one into your feed reader. Sounds like a party to me. If you have more skills you might use a service that rolls all of them up into one feed for you. I would guess that about three people have done this.

Why overwhelm your readers like this? And besides, it is pretty intimidating for someone new to the RSS game. Shouldn't they be able to access your content in a way that makes it relevant to them?

Example 2: How to do RSS right.

What you see above is one of two flavors of how to let your readers pick what they receive in RSS feeds. It's a simple and easy to use text input that allows readers to enter keywords and phrases that they want in their feed. There's nothing fancy, easy access to old content in the straight-forward way that RSS is delivered; updates of the newest items first and set number items in the feed, usually twenty-five.

What the second screen shot shows is the magic of thinking differently about RSS feeds. This image demonstrates what happens when someone clicks on the 'advanced' link. The reader is then given control over every aspect of the RSS feed. They choose the content, when it is delivered, how much content, in what order (none of this newest stuff first mumbo jumbo - great use for episodic content) and how many updates to get at a time.

Who is better to choose than the person doing the consuming? RSS needs to be like Burger King where a customer can have it their way.

When this concept is applied to large volumes of content the value of it increases with each new article or podcast. Imagine if you could have this type of access at the NY Times or with your local paper. Even the obits from 30 years ago are now of value again. Value to the reader and value to the publisher with ad inventory.

The future of content syndication isn't in prescriptive channels created by publishers. The future is in the subjective choices of the consumer. They neither need or want every product that you have to offer.

We need to be smarter about our syndicated content via RSS and take into consideration how to make that user experience more satisfying. Whether it is by allowing users to pick topics or order of updates, something needs to change. Why? Because it is all about attention; the premium of which is measured in subscribers, influence and the influence of those subscribers.

Tags: RSS CNET readers consumers interaction

Kosso and Phreadz get some 1938 Media love

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:06:35 -0500

For our non-nerd audience you might not have ever heard of Kosso, general purveyor and developer of internet goodness, this video will help.

His new project is phreadz.com. Think of it as a swiss army knife for social video.

Best of luck, my English phrend.

Tags: Kosso Loren Feldman 1938 Media Phreadz.com

Maggie's haul

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:23:52 -0500

right now this betta is try to kill my fingers.

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime Player. Note: During the download process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

Tags: download quicktime video visit player

Visit Sudan with Daniel Patterson

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:28:58 -0500

I met Daniel a few months ago and thought I would share video and links to some others from his globe trotting UN Tour. This is a great set of videos.

A little background, Daniel is the Chief New York and United Nations Correspondent / Social Media Evangelist for Talk Radio News Service and a skilled podcaster.

Tags: United Nations Talk Radio News Service Daniel Patterson Sudan truck

Rant: Strategic blog commenting? Strategic tweeting?

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:23:42 -0500

Listen up Mr. and Mrs. internet marketer, your actions are sour, insincere and totally transparent as to your desire to dupe someone into clicking your link in an attempt to make a buck. You are full of shit and we know it. And, your students suck even worse at it.

Here is one example of "strategic blog commenting" by an idiot following the advice to get Google alerts for keywords related to his/her own site:

"Thank you for providing such useful info about dogs. The picture at this page is beautiful and love to eat one, look delicious." - Internet Marketing Douche Bag (real name hidden to protect the innocent)

The user email was admin@ourdataentry.com and the user URL linked back to a site about dog care. I'd say contextually there is something amiss here since the photo, other comments and title all indicated that the post was about hot dogs.

In this group I am not talking solely about the automated comment spammers that originally made our lives miserable but this new wave of get rich quick, "My internet marketing coach told me to do this" and internet marketing coaches, themselves.

As you and your people strive for authenticity, I believe that is one or your credos, maybe that term is no longer used, but you are about as authentic as a Gucci purse at a swap meet.

The entire reason for this post is because the comment above showed up next to a message from twitter that I was now being followed by 'helpmycashgrow'. Are you kidding me? You people make my head hurt. He also dropped this gem - "At work right now, at least i'm "supposed" to be working". Sir, you give me the confidence to let you help me grow my cash.

So now that people are strategic tweeting as a piece of their better mouse trap I would also like to call out the ass kissers on twitter, those trying to make an impression with someone that they don't know by disparaging another twitter user who comments directly with the person you are trying to kiss up to. Just don't do it. Might turn out that the disparaged and the ass kissee are good friends and the ass kissees other friends read that you are disparaging their friend.

Again we can see you for what you are but when you stoop to a troll level it is even more apparent that you have nothing to add except a desire to, as you perceive it, move up the food chain.

My hope is that you will all go back to infomercials and ripping off the elderly with home improvement scams. But I am guessing your type is here to stay and I just need to get better at filtering you out.

Tags: Internet Marketing Coaches Suck Teach Yourself and Save Your Money

I surrender: Trading Creative Commons for Traditional Copyright on Flickr

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 08:27:02 -0500

The photo above, which I titled "I surrender", seemed apropos for this post.

I would like to preface what follows with this caveat: This post is more about emotion than it is copyright law, of which I am not an expert nor even remotely qualified to comment on. This is merely my observations as a content creator on Flickr.

When I opened my Flickr account I used a Creative Commons Attribution only license. This came to an abrupt end after a few weeks when I found one of my photos being used in a for-profit blog with the attribution copy in 4pt type in the footer of the post. Did the user of my photo meet the terms of the license? Possibly, but to minimize my contribution to his post wasn't cool. I felt ripped off.

At this point I switched over to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license that I hoped would alleviate the commercial peeps from using my images without permission. I thought it might also motivate others to give proper attribution.

It did . . . once. This year I was approached by a company that wanted to use the photo as part of their mapping software. It felt great to have someone ask to use a photo, even if it was for free. Their agreement allows me to retain all of my creative and publishing rights. Nice.

So, I have been thinking about my experiences over the last year with my Flickr account. There have been both positive and negative experiences but mostly positive. However, for some reason the negative ones have won out. I recently switched my photo licenses back to traditional copyright with all rights reserved.

I look at this move as putting up a fence or at least a no trespassing sign. If someone asks for permission to use one of my photos I will almost always give them permission to use it. I am flattered every time that I see someone linking, posting or asking for permission to use a photo.

What are your thoughts? Should I go back to a web 2.0 style license and get over it because we live in a re-mix culture?

Tags: photo copyright Flickr Creative Commons content creator

Chicago Public Radio Waiting Room

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:12:54 -0500

Another shot from the other night.

I am still unsure what to think of the meetup. I have never been bullish on Chicago's tech community and this event didn't change that.

For some reason Chicago still tends to lag behind the coasts even with a level playing field called the internet.

I think the culprit is the culture and the industries that employ most of the tech people here like banking and insurance.

Maybe, it is just me and the type of tech community that I am seeking to be a part of. Could be that the coasts and the vibrant innovation that is occurring in the Boulder (yes, I said it) fit me best.

Tags: chicago tech community coasts tech cocktail podcamp chicago

Major eBay Affiliate Program Changes

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:40:03 -0500

No clue how I missed this but one of major contributors to keeping the Croncast server humming, the eBay affiliate program, is being overhauled by eBay.

eBay will no longer use Commission Junction to run their program they will be taking it in-house. It will be interesting to see how eBay changes the program and what their reporting interface will look like. Hopefully, it will be easier to read and offer more information about the types of sales and leads that affiliates generate for eBay.

My only real concern is what the payout structure for affiliates will look like. With all the recent changes in seller's fees and feedback it makes me a bit nervous that eBay will lower the payouts to affiliates. I've become accustomed to accepting their money and very much like the $25 for new signups and fifty-percent of sellers fees.

The new program goes in to effect on none other than April Fools Day 2008.

Are they trying to send affiliates a message?

Tags: iPod eBay affiliate program commission junction

A Cinch message for March 06, 2008 1:03 PM

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:03:52 -0600

Download size: 213.83 KB

Tags: BlogTalkRadio Cinch Kris Smith Croncast

It took us a long time to get here

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:59:48 -0600

For over 3 years we worked hard to produce a show that we are proud of. In that time you have become friends with us even if we have never met face to face. I feel comfortable sharing with you.

Betsy and I are swamped right now with all the changes in our life. It has been a very hectic last few weeks. I leave tomorrow for a six day business trip. This trip has taken quite a bit of coordination and as I type this there is more that needs to be done.

For the next week to two weeks the shows will probably be sporadic. I will try to release a show on schedule during this time on MWF's. Some might be new and others will be best of clips that we have picked out.

Back to the beginning of this post. We don't want to lose your support and friendship. This is simply a tough time for us to get time to produce shows. Once the dust settles we'll be back on schedule. Plus, we'll have a couple weeks of show prep all built up.

Tags: Croncast Kris Smith Betsy Smith funniest podcast

Season 19 Ep 20: Ant Races, Co-working, Apologies

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:56:49 -0600

Croncast - 2008-03-03.mp3
Show: #467
Length: 18:12
Size: 12.6mb
Format: mp3

Show us some love and leave us a review at iTunes

Man!
First off, apologies for not getting the shows last week out.
We are close to reaching a stasis in our lives
Balance is needed so that we can get the shows out on time and back into our routine
Oh, boy
Little tension here
I am really interested in co-working type of setup
Rooms for rent
That isn't the same
What do you need space for?
What people like about co-working aspect is similarity
We got stuff in common
I don't want a cubicle
I used to spray paint when I was a kid
Ant races

The Resale Queen Podcast is now here! Every Saturday by 9 a.m. CST

Tags: spraypaint colored ants saddles website building apologies

There comes a time . . .

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:15:53 -0600

Yes, there does come a time when a man must leave his lair. Landing where else but a caffiene pushers store with free wifi for an hour. After that I'll hit the evdo.

The new 12+ hour workdays are making my little cubby less appealing. Need sunlight, though I still believe that the sun is out to get me. I need environment less conducive to sitting still.

Listen to quick Cinch that I did on my way to the coffee joint.

Download size: 629.35 KB

Tags: BlogTalkRadio Cinch Kris Smith Croncast

A Cinch message for February 19, 2008 7:30 AM

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:30:02 -0600

Download size: 561.79 KB

My Cinch Feed

Create your own Cinch feed.
1. Call (646) 200-0000 and talk
2. Hang up
3. Subscribe, Share or use as API your RSS feed - http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/your_phone_# Ex. http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/3125558282

Tags: BlogTalkRadio Cinch Kris Smith Croncast

A Cinch message for February 18, 2008 5:18 PM

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:18:24 -0600

Thank you Mr. Edwards

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 10:02:03 -0600

Bryan Edwards has picked up that I am a stats junkie. This morning he sent over a link to Last.fm stats for Croncast plays.

With my stereotypically schizophrenic stats checking, I hadn't looked at the site in nearly a year. Today, it looks much better and seems to have more new features that are actually useful. Though, it does seem a bit cluttered.

If you want to track your listening habits and find other who dig your type of tunes Last.fm is one of the best sites.

Tags: statistics Last.fm Bryan Edwards Croncast

Make the Flickr PHP API not so ugly and easier to use

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:11:15 -0600

For months I have been bypassing the Flickr API and using RSS 2.0 feeds instead. The reason? They come with all the photo stream data that you need in a nice little package. Things like title, description, tags, date taken, date uploaded, image dimensions, etc.

What is missing from the RSS feed the ability to load comments with a photo and choose how many items are returned in the feed. The API, however, will let you load hundreds of images and load comments for each photo.

There is a catch though. The API is broken up into about a 75 different calls. Not one single call to the server can match the data that is returned in the RSS feed. To get the same data I need to make approximately 8 different calls to Flickr. Not good.

What use is the API?

It gives me the ability to create a historical back up of my photos in their most basic form with urls, date, descriptions (with html stripped) and tags. It also gives someone building an application a rich data source to do some of the things that Flickr isn't already doing - the purpose of an API.

After working with it for a few hours I became frustrated. PHP is my poison of choice and the PHP examples that Flickr uses all return serialized data. Which is great and easy to work with if you already know what the XML namespaces are but without them it is hard to access the data. And in some cases impossible without printing out the serialized array and looking at it because the returned serialized array's keys don't match the XML namespaces. Not to mention children are buried in deeper arrays that aren't as easy to access as say $title = $item->photo['title'].

Here's how I cleaned up the mess. If you are PHP guru then I am sure you could get this down to one script.

An 'include' script, sort of. View this script by URL on your server to see all name spaces:

1) Create a new PHP file declaring xml as file type - header("Content-Type: text/xml")
2) Use the url that Flickr supplies to return content in REST format
3) Comment out the line for serialization
4) Use PHP's file_get_contents() function
5) echo the returned XML

A loader script:

1) Create a loader script
2) Call the include script - $resp = simplexml_load_file("YOUR INCLUDE SCRIPT URL");
3) Get the data out by name space, the same ones that Flickr documents

To view the name spaces that you will want to access simply open up the include script by url in your browser.

For now I will stick with the RSS 2.0 feeds for blog submissions but once I have some free time I will be using the API code above to create a cached archive for my own safe keeping.

Tags: photo frame digital Flickr API PHP simple simplexml_load_file

Twitter background guidelines

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 10:21:12 -0600

Ever wanted to make an interesting Twitter background? Here's how I did it.

Side note: This post comes to you straight from an email reply to fellow long-time podcaster Michael Geoghegan in regards to my Twitter background.

Also of note, this layout works best on higher res monitor settings. I imagine that most active Twitter users that are going to be viewing the site as opposed to sms or mobile versions are on high res settings. That said, let's roll.

Creating your background
-----------------------------

File Dimensions: 2048 px by 1707 px (no clue why i used these dimensions but I am sure I knew what I was doing at the time)
Branding Dimensions: 80 px by 587 px
Coordinates: X=20, Y=14
Horizontal position: 20 px from the left (give yourself some padding)
Vertical position: 14 px from the top (will line up your graphic with the top of the twitter logo. our eyes like symmetry) File size and type according to Twitter: "Images must be smaller than 800k. GIF, JPG, PNG."

Aesthetics
------------

Color palette: Pick colors that match that with default Twitter stylesheet colors. If they contrast too much follow the Change Background directions above and change the colors for Text, Name, Link, Sidebar fill and Sidebar border as needed.
Recommendation: Choose colors that work with the default and save yourself the headache of matching the CSS to your image. Follow Twitter's lead.

Uploading your background
------------------------------

Change Default Background: Login and click 'Settings' >> click 'Design' >> Select 'Use my custom style below' radio button >> Upload your image

It took me quite a bit of time to get a background image that I was happy with. There was a lot of editing and uploading again, and again until I got it right. I would suspect if you're like me your experience will be much the same. So have patience when getting it just right. And remember that you are working within someone else's website and can't control all the features.

Update: This is the background that I based this tutorial on - Croncast background all by itself if you want to use it as a guide.

Here's my current background at work (note: it is now free-form) - http://twitter.com/croncast.

Tags: template size twitter background Michael Geoghegan twitter

Pepsi Super Bowl Commercial Bob's House

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:42:22 -0600

Tim gets it right in his post "The Stuff Super Bowl Ads Are Made Of" when he says,

It truly has the stuff that Super Bowl Ads are Made of and looks like it will be one of the most talk about ad campaigns of this Super Bowl Season.

Wanna see it?

As Tim mentions in his post there is quite a back story here of how this commercial came about. It was originally produced by a few PepsiCo employees that are part of the EnAble group. Their version wasn't very Hollywood but very effective as a treatment or proof of concept because the story is told so well.

Look for some more buzz and talk in the next few weeks about this commercial as well as follow up videos.

How would I know? I mentioned on a podcast that I had a consulting gig that changed focus, right? Well, the team that is working this inside Pepsi and the digital team at a NYC agency are at the top of their game and will give this campaign legs beyond this one ad.

Tags: deaf sign language joke EnAble PepsiCo Super Bowl

Season 19 Ep 6: Hire Kris, Styrofoam Cups, All Caps

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:52:39 -0600

Croncast - 2008-01-18.mp3
Show: #452
Length: 28:19
Size: 19.5mb
Format: mp3

Show us some love and leave us a review at iTunes

View Kris's resume or download it

You wanted more than Wheel of Fortune?
Now you got it
Sure you want it
How to tickle a nerd?
Let us see funny stuff in our stats
From Google searches
Yeah I look for the search term
You know that your IT people got their space
They all need a little space
Evidently we are more exciting than a blue haired lot lizard
Those I dig, they were funny
I'm glad you are getting tickled
Not those industries
If I could reach a lower point in my wife's eyes . . . don't know what it is
Things couldn't be going much worse for me
Instead of life preservers I'm getting styrofoam cups
I am smiling and laughing because I know you are on cusp of something terrrible
Monday was going to awesome
Back story
Interviewing and meeting with people
Turns out they didn't want me for the job that I had applied for
We really want you
What do you want to do?
What would you want me to do if I worked here?
What does my resume say to you?
In all honesty, I haven't read it
Nice
So they loved me
For the last two months we'll get back to you
We are figuring this out
We know how to make it happen
When job hunting you are in a hurry but no one else is
The key is to not come off desperate
I asked what the culture was like
Sure I ended up over dressed
I'm applying for every job that I can
Everything and anything
Manager at Caribou Coffee, you bet
Come Monday most likely we'll be selling the Maguar
We've learned a lot over the last two years
Kris explains how his job ended
Next time all the other cats get gone
We did the best thing we could do at the time
If I would have waited three weeks I might not have had a job
We thought being proactive would be better
Betsy is keeping us afloat in food and small bills with china sales
The eBay sales have been
Listen, it even gets worse
I am fucking everything up
It's me
I'm not doing it on purpose
But it is surely me
Betsy runs her business like a busy mommy
So she gets an all caps email
Directed at the software that she sold for me
It's not my fault he doesn't get it
Oh, my God I am going to kill Kris
For this software, you have to be a nerd!!!!
If you aren't you won't even know what this software is
Not just a nerd but an audio nerd to know what Yellow Tools is
Yeah, I went after him
Not my fault he typed in all caps
Reaching pretty low lows
Wasn't listening to the Wheel shows better?
Man, this is depressing
Got a line on a gig?

Tags: styrofoam google searches low lows Wheel of Fortune interviewing

How to tickle a nerd

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 07:32:56 -0600

Do you know how this is done?

I can tell you how to tickle this nerd. And not it that way, pervert.

I check stats on Croncast many times a day, usually paying great attention to the searches that come in from Google and few months I noticed that someone was sending messages by searching for "croncast 'your funny quip here'" and then clicking through to the site. Funny stuff. So we asked people to do that for a contest of sorts and we read them on the show.

Today, someone searched these gems that I can't pass up sharing:

croncast better than mail order colostomy
croncast more satisfying than blue haired lot lizard
croncast cured my tennis elbow with a magic eraser

These are the types of things that make checking stats fun, and not to be forgotten, doing the show.

Tags: Google site search Croncast joke search tickle a nerd