It’s our baby’s 16th birthday today, our middle teen graduates in a couple months and I’m feeling the last of my hair graying, but hey, life could be worse. Oh and yes, we’re coming to the end of month number four in rebooting our offline business and I can’t (and wouldn’t anyway) complain there. Positive attitude, karma, all that I believe in.

About the only thing I’m disappointed in lately is my online time. I’m feeling out of balance with the stuff I enjoy doing online. Don’t worry friendly readers, I’m not going anywhere and not going to start making excuses for not posting more to the blog. If you see me doing that then this blog has jumped the shark. 

I’ll get my writing mojo back in good time. I do have time to sit and write but where I would have been doing that a year ago, I’m now using that time for offline volunteer work in the community. I’m feeling a lot better about my contribution to society in the offline world.

As I write this my Google Reader is poised rather serendipitously at 777 items unread.

It’s nice being able to keep that number under 1,000+ and some might recall this was done by unsubscribing from any feed that averaged more than 3 posts a day. I’m happy with how this has kept my reading volume in check, but the negative to this is that I do not feel as connected. Ying, yang.

What do you think, is this good or bad? Probably bad for our online business. Maybe bad for both our businesses since one of my 2009 goals was to make our offline business more connected online. So improvement is needed on this front going forward. Balance, balance, balance; the key of life.

The online connected drug

Being online is like a drug, isn’t it? It’s a bit scary in fact.

To become sobered by just how scary online can be just read stories like the alleged Craigslist killer with a women’s panty fetish:

Philip Markoff, the accused murderer now known as the "Craigslist Killer," appeared to be collecting women’s panties, which investigators believe were "souvenirs" from his alleged victims, two law enforcement sources told ABC News. The panties, found during a search of Markoff’s house, are one of the reasons investigators believe there could be more victims who have not yet come forward…

It would seem this Markoff guy might have gotten in way over his head with gambling debts. Balance, balance, balance. Or in this guy’s case IF he turns out to be found guilty (and please remember: innocent until proven guilty), imbalance would be the correct word to use.

Although I’ve not used enough to judge Craigslist seems like an online service that plenty of normal, sane people use for buying, selling, trading and finding people and things but when you get into large enough numbers online the darker side of humanity is exposed.

But enough of the scary side of being online. Let’s focus on the positive side. There are plenty of good reasons to stay more connected online.

I’ve tried to keep online time spent in check by reminding myself that it is foremost a work place and secondarily for social interaction and entertainment. Just as I don’t want to spend too much time at the office, I shouldn’t spend excess time online. Even if our internet connection is 24/7, we don’t have to be. Balance, balance, balance.

Gone are the days of gadget shopping and multiple weekly trips to Best Buy. I think they miss me judging by the increase in sales-related emails they’ve been sending and in a couple cases phone calls from the store. You know you are shopping too much at a retail store (balance!) when the store starts having withdrawal symptoms.

Someday I’ll make time for that stuff again, but I’m happy replacing this with the local Eagles club and working longer and more focused work days. For the most part I’m still taking at least one day a week off and not working late every night so no fear of burning out.

But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the (good) online stuff. It’s not like missing smoking, which was a habit I managed to shake 23 years ago, but it’s close. To rip a line from Arnie: I’ll be back.

The Easter bunny was good to the Mariners in their season opening road trip leaving them with a sweep of the Oakland A’s and a split with the Minnesota Twins. It’s also good seeing a true team effort with new manager Don Wakamatsu getting in everybody except Matt Tuiasosopo.

The Mariners are coming home with Ken Griffey Jr. likely to see a gala reception / celebration:

Hall of Fame broadcaster Dave Niehaus will read "An Ode to Safeco Field," third baseman Adrian Beltre receives his second Gold Glove Award and Ichiro Suzuki receives his eighth. There will be a salute to the second World Baseball Classic with a "Parade of World Flags".

Can’t wait to see Ichiro who is currently on the DL get back into this lineup as well. It’s way too early to get too confident about anything, but hey, we couldn’t have scripted a better start. How’s your favorite MLB team doing?

Yikes, my wife asked me about the game system OnLive before I’d even heard about it. OnLive is a service that looks to be a lot like the Vudu is for movies, only for games. It was announced earlier this month at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC). The games will work on TV or PC and are streamed through a central server. OnLive has a beta sign-up page (done) and will be inviting players this summer.

While chances are good we’ll be getting the OnLive Microconsole unless the pricing is insane, I’m not too excited yet how this will go over. It’s from Steve Perlman, founder of WebTV (and we know how well WebTV went over) and also Quicktime. And speaking of pricing:

the OnLive team isn’t offering up any details other than to say "we can price it substantially lower than the Wii." That’s according to John Spinale, the company’s VP of games and media, who kept mum on other costs like subscription fees and new game prices

Techtree.com has a sensationalistic headline declaring this to be a ‘threat to consoles’ which is doubtful, but adds the following useful intel about the game companies involved:

So far, nine third-party game publishers, who include Electronics Arts, Ubisoft, Warner Bros. Interactive, Take-Two, THQ, Epic Games, Eidos, Atari, and Codemasters, have committed to involve themselves in the game distribution service. These game publishers would also be retailing games as usual.

Xbox Live sort of rules the roost in our home and many others. If you want a great online game experience, it’s tough to compare the quality and diversity of titles to what’s available currently on Xbox Live. Yesterday we went and picked up the Guitar Hero: Metallica and enjoyed playing.

On the plus side potentially for OnLive, we’re digging how convenient the Vudu is hooked up to the TV, despite it being yet another TV-connected gadget. With Satellite in HD, Xbox Elite, PS3 and Vudu we don’t have enough HD jacks to handle all these gadgets. Going to have to get one of those HD selector boxes. Anybody seen a good price on one of those? I checked out on at Best Buy that was like $200. No way. Got to be something much, much cheaper than that. I’m thinking $50 range.

Will have more to say about OnLive when I can dig in and check it out firsthand.

On Tuesday night I went through the Eagles initiation ceremony. If I told you what happened I’d have to kill you so will skip the non-public details, but suffice to say I’m now an official Eagle member. I’ve the got the schedule of events on my wall for reference although I don’t have the member card yet. The Eagle who presents my card is on vacation and will give to me when he returns.

Last night Kara, my oldest son and I went for the all you can eat Taco dinner. For $6 you could fill right up. Afterwards Kara and I stuck around for the speed bingo from 6:30pm-8:00pm.  Our first official night of offline social networking didn’t result in much social activity other than playing a game, but it was fun and we recognized a few people there.

I think that’s part of what we need to work through with our offline social networking. Attending and getting involved with enough events that we recognize and remember more people in the community. I’m not sure how many of these type events we’ll need to attend before we start building upon the number of people we know in the community but our goal is to attend at least one event a week.

Compare and contrast this to online social networking. It’s a lot easier to do things socially online, but a lot less personal so there is a give and take.

Kara’s initiation into the Eagles will happen on April 14. She was a bit disappointed that her initiation didn’t happen the same night as mine, but the women and men have different initiations in the Eagles.

Oh, and to answer the question I’ve now heard a couple times: no, the Eagles aren’t just for ‘old people’ – we’ve seen a number of young people there (not in the bar area, of course).

If you haven’t heard by now one of Seattle’s two main newspapers, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is publishing its last paper today:

"The mood has been lousy in the newsroom," said the 20-year P-I employee. "It’s one thing to lose your job; it’s another thing to lose a group of friends who you have worked with very closely for a long period of time and it’s still another to lose an institution that’s mattered in Seattle since the Civil War."

The P-I has been publishing for roughly the last 146 years. I feel for the folks who are losing their jobs naturally, but I’m glad the business isn’t getting any kind of bailout.

I was tired of bailouts before the first one and now congress is wasting time arguing over how to tax the bailed out AIG bonuses. We need to let companies fail like the PI. Yes, it’s painful, yes it is sad, but this is the way things go. Eventually everything dies. A business should never be so big that it can’t fail and I never would have thought I’d live in a time when the government would insist on not letting a business fail.

Back to the newspaper business. The P-I is going web-only. I was listening to a radio talk show yesterday talking about how difficult it would be for them to make it as an advertiser-supported operation. That they should sell something. I don’t think selling generic online newspaper subscriptions will work either.

So what will work for newspapers?

How can newspapers make money online? Custom, personalized news service might be one way. Let each subscriber get a service with news direct to them that they are specifically interested in. I know that one can already go out and do this with services like Y! Pipes, but newspapers who take all the geek out of online services and put it in online subscribers hands quickly and easily may find a market where people will pay. But that’s only going to last until everybody gets internet savvy. Then where to make money?

Perhaps offering the ability to hire a reporter. Imagine being able to pay for a reporter to follow a story you are interested in and report back the findings. Bloggers might buy if the prices were right.

I’m sure there are plenty of other, perhaps better creative ideas for newspapers. If you have some, feel free to plant them in the comments are above and maybe we can help some other newspapers going web only.

In the past I’ve written here about why the newspaper business has many challenges ahead and I believe many, many more newspapers will fold in the coming years. Also how this has become a cliched, cyclical spring story. I’m not sure what spring and newspaper business death have in common, but they do. Next spring bet on hearing about even more papers folding. Must be quarterly timing or something.

Whatever the case, I’m nostalgic but not surprised the Hearst company didn’t find a buyer in the last 60 days for the P-I. Think I’ll go out today and try and buy the final edition. Probably the collectors will have gobbled them already. There you go, another idea:

Reprint old editions and sell them on eBay at a premium.

Curious thing happened yesterday. Client stopped in and mentioned that they’d stopped by twice and we weren’t in before realizing we had a new entrance door. I then started checking with other clients who stopped by and several admitted being confused at first by our new entrance door.

Time for pictures, a new insurance entrance door blog post and big loud d’oh!

We changed our entrance door from wood to glass and while it looks much nicer and more professional, it confused some clients who were used to seeing a particular entrance type. Even though we added a more commercial open/closed sign and business hours and a sign next to the new door with our business name the new glass door itself was still causing confusion.

As simple as a door. Wood versus glass. It occurred to me that for years we’d had the same door and people were programmed for seeing a very specific entrance to our business. Like changing your hair from blonde to brunette.

To the right of our business is an apartment and they have a seldom-used secondary door that looks very similar to the door we used to have and some clients were trying that door which is almost always locked. Even though that door was a good 10 feet from our entrance door people were checking that door, seeing it was locked and driving away.

Yikes. So I talked to the neighbors and created a sign with a big, green arrow pointing to the left as the correct insurance door. Got their permission to put on their secondary door and am hoping this will do the trick in easing the confusion.

I never contemplated that a new door in the same business location would cause any confusion. How could I have done a better job explaining we had a new door? I came  up with the following ideas:

• make a blog post before the new door was installed letting clients know that our entrance door had changed.
• call clients who regularly come in and let them know. It’s not like we have so many since we are rebooting our business this year that it would have taken a long time to make these courtesy calls.
• email clients and let them know of the change. We are doing a better job than we had before collecting email addresses, so sending out a blast email just letting folks know could have been helpful

Truth of the matter is that I never even considered that changing an existing business door would do anything other than have clients say: “hey you have a nice, new door.” Live and learn, all right. I’ll be more careful in the future. Although in the 15 years we’ve been in business this is the first new door we’ve had installed, so who knows when or if ever we’ll have this scenario present itself again.

Speaking of green, our company logo color, happy St. Patrick’s Day to all those who celebrate. Don’t be drinking too much green beer tonight and stumbling in the wrong doors now..

In another life or some fantasic parallel world I’m full time game programmer. I enjoy programming games and it’s usually one of the first things I do whenever I’m learning a new world: put together a quick game. Though I may stand corrected, but I believe I’ve programmed a game in every programming language ever ‘learned’ to date. I hesitate to use the word ‘learned’ as I feel like programming is an ongoing learning process, not something that you ever wake up one day and say: “I’ve learned it, next!”

Sony is celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Everquest Massive Online Multiplayer Role-Playing Game and Beckett magazine has an interview with the EQII team where the subject of what it is like working at a game company:

Some people have the impression that working in a game company is a lot of goofing off and playing games all day long. It’s a business though. The ultimate goal is to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. It’s like a regular job, but with even more stuff and benefits from it. I think as a team, and as a company, there’s probably 30-40% more dedication than I’ve seen in any other environment. People are willing to stay extra hours at night to get something done, or come in on weekends. It’s not like we’re out for four hour lunches every day. We don’t ride scooters in the hallway. There seems to be a perception that working in a gaming company is just all fun and games, but it’s not. It’s really a business, it’s hard work, and the people who work here are very passionate about making sure we make every effort to make sure that the game stays fun.

I’ve always envisioned that actual work at a game company isn’t just playing games and entertainment so the above paragraph isn’t sobering. Even if you are a games tester you still have to report back on what you are doing and often times play the same levels over and over and over and over again. That could be more boring that debugging tens or hundreds of thousands of lines of code. But even so, I think it would be a lot of fun working at a game company.

Our middle son, a teenager, wants to get into working at a games company or being a pro gamer or perhaps even both. I’m going to be showing him this article and reminding him that no matter how fun any job appears to be on the outside, it’s still work on the inside. And work isn’t always fun.

One of my favorite parts of Saturday Night Live over the years has been the repeatable skits like the classic Mr. Bill, the Coneheads, Da Bears with Chris Farley (anything with Chris Farley), Eddie Murphy as Mr. Rogers and most recently MacGruber.

I’m not a big fan of any of the current SNL cast, but these MacGruber skits are a riot. Thanks to NBC and Hulu you can watch a bunch of them. Hilarious.net has collected all of them to date as well.

MacGruber is a spoof on the 80s show Macgyver, the guy who could get out of jams using normal household objects. I can’t get the MacGruber theme song out of my head.

Over the weekend I hung my first interior door which at times was equally comical. Was able to bust up the tense moments by singing the MacGruber song.

I’m sure some might disagree but I think MacGruber is an SNL classic skit and worthy of tuning in each week to check out – or DVR through to see if there are new episodes. Or just wait for Hulu to have them. What do you like, if anything, about the current SNL?

My first reaction to Skittles.com turning their homepage into a hashtag (anybody who puts #skittles or mentions Skittles in their Twitter update) search result from the Twitter conversation was not positive. I mean look at this mess of an eyesore of two overlays:

But once past the terrible web design, I started thinking about marketing. Much more positive thoughts streamed in.

Skittles doesn’t have to keep this homepage for very long and I suspect when they see some of the hashtag spamming and racial slurs being posted through Twitter, they will get rid of it. It has succeeded in getting some passionate, web savvy folks talking about Skittles a lot more than they were yesterday. It’s got bloggers talking about them. Skittles is getting their name out there. A round of applause.

Then I started thinking about what Skittles, the candy, are. They are tiny pieces of yummy candy that, like Starburst, have many different packages of flavors. You munch a couple of them here and there. They are tiny like Twitter updates. Lots to be compared between the two. What kind of people munch on Skittles anyway? It’s a pretty good analogy to making Twitter updates. I give the marketing department thumbs up on this experiment as long as they don’t keep this gimmick running very long and let it get further vandalized. Here’s my famous Skittles tweet:

Sweet, can finally scratch off my life goal list making it to the #skittles homepage!

Now let’s hope we don’t see this copycatted by other ‘small’ things from marketing department. This is a one-off marketing idea and the other companies who jump aboard are not going to fare nearly as well in the buzz department.

WAIT - Wasting the buzz

But wait, this marketing buzz might be mostly for not. Just looked at the Google search results for Skittles and check out the results:

Notice the prominence of “Products” by Google? Now look what happens when you click on the Skittles product page link. It leads to a 404 not found IIS server message:

What? Did the marketing department forget to tell the webmaster that people might follow the buzz and try to maybe look up products? This is wasting the buzz! Skittles web monkeys get the wrench to this ASAP or your buzz will disappear like, well, the taste of skittles in your mouth.

How would you feel about someone coming to your house and littering on your porch under the guise of it being ‘temporary’ when you are the one who has to pick it up? Would that still be littering? Sure it would. These temporary blog posts for style detection are bogus. They might be temporary to the blog and blogger but some of them still show up in reader’s feeds like this:

Just say no! Like this provides any sort of reader value?

There are less intrusive and more intelligent ways to detect the style of a blog post if that’s the aim of the software/service. Yeah, I’m looking at your Windows Live Writer even though this post is being written using that system. I just say no whenever asked this question because I don’t want any readers to see this trash. And for the systems out there who think it’s cool to do a temporary blog post to detect blog ownership, that’s even more stupid. If you’re the blog owner you can put some sort of image or file on the server that isn’t in a blog post to show you own the blog. Heck you could sandwich in a verification code at the end of a legitimate post and that wouldn’t be temporary trash.

I purposefully blurred out the offending blog above because I don’t want this to be about the offending blogger, but the system which is stupid. There were actually two of these in my RSS reader this morning. Two bloggers who didn’t realize that there is no such thing as temporary in the RSS world.

Once you hit publish and it changes the RSS feed it is released and somebody could see it somewhere else. One of your readers, your mother, the pope, the President, a terrorist, anybody. Do you want everybody to see your temporary trash? As a reader and blogger I sure don’t. Just say no!

Oh, and got to love the 13 FeedFlares attached to the signature. Yeah, I’ll digg this, stumble it, add to mixx, share in Facebook, yadda, yadda. Argh.