Having been a professional proofreader in my past, I can’t help but get a kick out of some unusual translations between language that enter into marketing copy.  I recently had the wonderful opportunity to travel on the bankrupt Alitalia airlines.  I say recently, because to me any travel is good travel.  I was disappointed that the gentleman at my check in from my original departure point told me I could not enroll there in their MilleMiglia Program because I’m always hopeful I’ll start doing so much travel I will be able to cash in a get a free trip, though I usually just get some subscription to a magazine I don’t really need cluttering up my reading bin in order to salvage use of miles.  Anyway, I was checking out the airline’s partners, to see if perhaps I was already a member of one of the affiliate airlines, and under Alitalia’s SkyTeam Partners, I got a chuckle out of the statement “The SkyTeam Awards scheme is one of the major advantages you get from the SkyTeam Alliance.”  Darn, an italian scheme I could be part of, and don’t even have to join the Mafia!

New Horizons

A new year is on the horizon, and it’s a good time to pare down and get rid of the old and allow psychic space to welcome in new opportunities.  I will upload a scan from a great photography book here, a book that I’ve enjoyed leafing through several times, and which I plan to drop off at a Panera Bread’s book share table or Goodwill truck.  I thought it a fitting image to accompany some wise words from Stephen Pollan, that I found in a a clipping about a book of this called Second Acts.  Pollan says one is never too young or too old to change.

Here four good nuggets to spur us forward to achieve those dreams that may need some dusting off and some timelines attached:

1. PUT YOUR DREAM INTO WORDS. Use specific language.
2. CAST LOTS OF IRONS IN THE FIRE.  Don’t get stymied by shortcomings or past disappointments.  Fuel your hope for the future.
3. EXAMINE BARRIERS YOU FACE.  Are obstacles internal? Be honest and confront internal stumbling blocks (self-generated doubts, irrational fears, internalized attitudes of others that may not be helpful) Or are they external, and can you enlist help?
4. CONFRONT YOUR HURDLES.  Rank them by difficulty, and tackle the most difficult first.

Holiday shopping continued

There’s an interesting trend that retailers use to boost return visits and additional sales, POS coupons on receipts.  CVS is a big user of this marketing strategy, using current purchases to try to bring us back to the store soon for a discount on a product we’re apt to buy, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how my “extra care” account was targeted as a likely purchaser interested in $10 off  “Morphbot Mutater [sic] Buggy Remote Control Cars (Reg. $29.99)????

All I want for Christmas is my….Waterbuffalo.

I recently had the opportunity to flip through a wish book of a different color.  It was “the most important gift catalog in the world,” Heifer International’s glorious books of gift options–the opportunity for those more financially secure to share with others throughout the globe with the gift of livestock or other resources.

Heifer’s approach is to help people obtain a sustainable source of food and income. Recipients agree to share the offspring of gift animals with others in need, and are taught about sustainable agricultural production. Such “agroecology” is especially important in areas where land is overused or exploited for immediate gain at the cost of future usability.

from the gift catalog:

Frittering away more time

Well, I must own up to being a hypocrite.  I’ve found more ways to waste time to fill the pockets emptied by my recent housekeeping of my daily schedule.  I will memorialize them here, and then more on. I think I wrote before about Rob Ford’s “The edge of Flash”.  I justify the time I spend once a quarter or so investigating Rob’s new delicacies in the bejeweled world of Flash animation online as being a sort of virtual art gallery tour.  And he always delivers up some site with a unique new animated game.

The “got milk?” site is really a sweet detour if you have a few minutes to spare.  Ahem, my To-Do list beckons!

(Still seeking)

PS…Next post…yet another interesting diversion and an alternative to eBay surfing for the odd and unusual.

PPS…also want to investigate the motives people have for blogging…they seem to break down into categories like “professional/PR/resident topical expert”; “comic relief/online stand-up sitting down at the computer”; “activism/advice/sharing helpful ideas”; “self-confessional”; “alter-ego, glamorous personification”…  guilty of all the above!

Avoiding cobwebs in the mind, like spider solitaire

There’s nothing like a good, ole’ fashioned to-do list to get me stoked to get things done.  That and

combined with the necessity of stripping off of my computer some time-sucking applications, like its preloaded games.  I finally had to remove spider solitaire as it was interfering with my sleep cycles!  I also have been trying to free my inbox from newsletters and email subscriptions that are not that productive for me any more.  Sort of like Feng Shui for my email inbox.  Too bad I have this insatiable curiosity!  I just found another one as I was looking through time management resources.  I will see if it’s worthwhile.

I really need to focus my “free” time on stepping up my language study. I’m planning a trip to Europe in late December and I think my facility with Spanish will finally let me spin off to somewhat intelligible Italian.

It appears others are equally obsessed with the game (see Keith Devens’ detailed account of his game) and their personal winning percentages, with I did realize is affected by the level of the game setting…my computer came with 3 levels and the default was the intermediate difficulty level, which my games before I pulled the plug on the insanity left me hovering around 13% wins.

Part of my resolve to yank off the application was my horror of gambling as a vice.  I recently went to a local casino (in Florida we have a couple of pockets of legal gaming due to Miccosukee Indian reservations).  I lost 14 cents.  I guess I don’t qualify as having a gambling problem.  I like my money too much to let go of it.

But time is money, right? Yes, a good trade off–forfeit the dubious enjoyment of mind-numbing computer games that carry probably millions of combinations (one online source touted “zillions” of games–is that a real term?) for the real payoff of communicating in real time with real people in a very limited opportunity of foreign travel.  Okay, that’s good prioritizing.

That’s one thing I should do when constructing my “to-do” lists…a little prioritizing, though I finally simply having a new list each day guarantees for me a certain higher level of productivity.  (Some say having a “Not to do” list may help too!  So I’m trying out something called Ta-da List.   Brian Benzinger has a whole slew of other applications summarized on his informative site which reviews webproducts, called Solution Watch.   I got a little curious when I saw the trail of Brian’s writings there ended around the 3rd quarter of 2007, so Google led me to find out that Brian started up something called Parallel and was last seen on Twitter.  Hhhmmnn…the new “crack”-type addiction for bloggers.  He has re-emerged to my knowledge yet, but he’s a bright young guy, so I hope all’s well.

Mr. Right and the cheering, rooting section

While quietly clickety-clacking away on my laptop in a local library this past week (my alternate office, beside the Panera Bread cafes), I was joined at my table by a nice gentleman who asked to share the space.  We started talking a bit, between my working on a flyer design for a dance studio I frequent, checking Facebook messages, etc.  Earlier in my visit I had browsed the library shelves, picking out choice selections from the new and mustier holdings, including a smattering of Italian language self-study books and European travel guidebooks.  After paying a whopping fine that had been nagging on my conscious for previous overdue videos, I’d checked out my picks of these selections, and also a book called,

Why Mr. Right can’t find you : the surprising answers that will change your life– and his,

by J.M. Kearns, which I’d recommend to anyone with a toe in the dating pool. It basically advises how to rethink one’s parameters and be open to all venues to meet people.  For women, it has great descriptions of the thought process men go through in screening a potential Miss Right.  And for men, it has some eye-opening explanations of some really stupid myths women cling to subconsciously that limit their peripheral vision.

So, happily, I ended up getting together with this new found friend from the library later, at a coffee shop, which led to a nice boating expedition, and while I don’t think he’s Mr. Right, it was nice to make a new friend.  And friends are the sustaining nectar that feeds the lonely hearts during their search for love, hopefully distracting them from the wistful moments that inevitably surface from time to time when one flies solo.  They are our cheering section, that we celebrate birthdays with, who listen to our tails of the maybe’s were exploring, who counsel or just nod sagely as we describe the frustrations of dealing with relatives we’d at times like to disown, or know when to call at just the right moment.  I’m glad to have quite of few of these buoyant souls, who encourage me in whatever hair-brained or perhaps brilliant new plot I want to hatch.  Like occasionally, my blog entries.  : )

Avoiding the Panera Paunch

I’ve become a huge fan recently of a place called Panera Bread.  Actually, it’s not one place, but a chain of coffee shops that stepped to fill the void vacated by the greedy swarming monster named Starbucks, in offer in the latter’s stead the free wi-fi that so many students, entrepreneurs and otherwise disenfranchised souls depend upon to be linked in, hooked up, and online.  You can find a Panera or other free wi-fi spot (local public libraries are pretty good but of course, it’s shhh to cell phone use there) on several websites like ilovefreewifi.com

UPDATE –SEPT. 25, 2008—PANERA BREAD has recently blocked attempts to access

I try to keep the “latte factor” low on my visits to my new “office,” for reasons of both physical and fiscal health.  Like today, an E.T. bagel (no, not the extraterrial kind, but the savory “everything” bagel) was the lessor evil of choice, lightly toasted by the cheerful counter girl, and enjoyed with a wee bit of real butter.  One of the things I like about this one particular outlet is that it’s blessedly less than a mile from home, and has a parking garage with thus-far free parking, as the building boom in this area has over-estimated for the moment the retail and business visitor traffic to the area across from a major retail shopping maul, er, mall.

Zen vs. Desk Rage

Hindsight is so crystal clear sometimes.  I found a new term…“desk rage” which, according to Monster.com, is on the rise.  Like the article suggested, I decided to count to 10 and walk away.  In my case, the 10 is 10 weeks, or perhaps 10 months.  I really need a sabbatical from the foot-wearing, mind-numbing rat race.  I’m not really cut out for corporate America I suppose.   A long-time friend in Europe recently wrote me that I am “un-American” in my language usage.  I think he means a bit more colorful with my turn of phrase; and in the corporate world I’m often a square peg in the proverbial round hole, and rather than follow the lead of Cinderella’s stepsisters, I’d rather not cut off a toe to fit the shoe.  Though I did have to let a podiatrist recently cut off a wee bit of a toenail to fit my passion–dance.

So, checking out of the race, and joining another parade, I’ve picked up the public relations campaign for a international dance competition as one of my first freelance clients for my marketing and communications services.

Returning to freelance work promoting this competition combines my love of ballroom and Latin dance and zeal for meeting new people with my constant search for creative problem solving and immense need for self-expression.  I know I’m in for many hours logged in front of the computer–researching, writing, sending emails, putting together proposals, designing marketing material; back-to-back phone calls–convincing, cajoling, appeasing, negotiating, explaining, listening, questioning, answering; and both frustrations and celebrations.  But the silver lining that shimmers through these murky unknowns is the freedom of self determination.  Let’s see how it goes.

Hi-Jacked!

I spend hours and hours on line, and enjoy flitting back and forth between my Gmail inbox, Linked-In, Facebook, YouTube, the occasional celebrity gossip page, blogs of the moment, etc., like some dizzy little bee collecting pollen for honey (my own blog).

One of my favorite quick reads (and a favorite because it is short and sweet) is MarketingProfs snippets. Today’s article asked, What Will You Do if Your Brand Gets Jacked?

Worse, what will you do if the “brand” that gets jacked is YOU?

This week I’ve had to ask myself just that. I’ve had a profile posted on Match.com for a bit more than a year. An odd email was sent to me out of the blue by a tantalizing playboy/pilot type that had been torturing me with on and off flirtatious emails. The cryptic message he sent recently…”Now I know where you went!” with a subject line “Pond getting bigger!”. We went back and forth for a while, him teasing that I was up to some shenanigans with my profile, and me being clueless about what he was referring to.

Finally he writes me the profile name of my impostor, and sure enough, I did a search and there I was! My new handle–”Bellagirlforu.”

Bottom line, I’d been hi-jacked. Yes, Identity Theft 101. Apparently some shyster had downloaded my profile pictures and text, and uploaded them with a location of Yonkers, New York, for a probable funds-wiring scam.

Besides plagiarizing much of my original text, I’d been given some new past-times (watching hockey?!!), a promotion and raise (I’d become a VP of Sales & Marketing for an unspecified Ad Agency), and swapped my genetic make-up for a new ethnicity: “I am a mix of italian, greek & hungarian. What a mix!!” Among my alter-ego’s favorite things was posted the appalling: ” I love to cook almost any kind of food. I like the color red because it reminds me of excitment [sic] and passion.”

Well, I guess I can choose to do a few things…pursue some remediation, ask for pallitive measures from the Match wizard behind the machine and do as Yolanda of Match customer service instructs, write the executiveteam@match.com, and maybe I’ll escalate my concerns by dropping a note to folks like Craig Wax, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Match.com or some Chinese menu combination of these 4 options (thanks Jeremiah Owyang):

Option 1: Continue legal path: Rail against Match about the abuses of this invasion of privacy, holler ’til I’m blue in the gills and generally allow myself to feel violated.

Option 2: Join the campaign: See how I can help Match and others who use their site and other like CareerBuilder and Craig’slist learn to identify and thwart these pesky fake identities and apparent phishers.

Option 3: Redirect focus on issues: Just blog about it here, and perhaps be slightly flattered as well as amused that someone would think my photos scintillating enough topurloin for romance.

Option 4: Walk away: Fuh’get about it. Maybe that’s what will happen in a couple of weeks, as the sometimes bizarre parade of real characters flashing up through Match-generated emails blots out the odd events of the week.

Let’s see if Match will step up and deliver as they suggest their users do, and “Be a Good Citizen… Put your best self forward, be truthful, be courteous and be upfront” and help their subscribers to be able to do that as well. I promise to provide an update in a future blog installment if I hear anything back from the Match people.