lake thoughts
The Third Wave of Storms Hitting us around 9:30
This is the first one that actually brought us a lot of rain.
Trick is to Catch the Raccoon Not Your Cat
It has been a long night. I worked until about 4. The raccoon came twice while I was up, which basically let me first figure out that the dogs weren’t going crazy over nothing and then it let me get a picture of it. I figured it wouldn’t be back again that night after being chased off by our pack of dogs.
So I went to sleep, or at least laid down. Then the damn raccoon came back 2 or 3 more times. The dogs went ape shit each time making all kinds of racket. Our neighbors light started turning off an on, they apparently didn’t realize that we had an intruder and that are dogs weren’t just being noisy.
By morning (90 minutes later) my wife was getting up for work, she fed the dogs and the damn raccoon came back again!
This time the dogs chased the raccoon up the lattice work on our back porch and then finally the raccoon got tired of essentially hanging from our wall/ceiling on the porch and just climbed up on our roof.
We haven’t seen it since. It might still be on the roof for all I know, but the pesky booger is probably sleeping off his fun in a hollow somewhere. 
Last night I couldn’t do much about the thing. It was too quick and jumpy to take a shot at it. It looked relatively friendly, not rabid so I was inclined to shoot it anyway, at first. But after it came back 5 or seven times, and as my sleep was put off more and more, I was becoming more tempted to shoot first and bury the raccoon later.
Fortunately, for the raccoon, I was aware enough to know that shooting at things (in the general direction of my neighbors house) would not be a smart idea anyway. 
Unfortunately, the live trap was out somewhere around the barn, it was dark and I couldn’t find it in the dark. So I had to wait until the sun came up to actually start doing something useful.
So now the sun is up, I’ve found the trap, got it set, and baited with cat food.
The raccoon probably won’t be back until 1 am tonight, and one of our 2 cats will probably manage to get themselves caught a couple times by then, but hell, I don’t want to go through another night like last night and the cats have been caught before without any harm to their health or sanity.
Posted via email from Brett’s posterous or follow me on twitter @brettbum
Applied for Job in Position of Ass Kissing Weasel at Nail Communications (recently sourced by Vibram to promote barefoot running)
Its been 10 years since I last applied for a job and in the space of about 14 hours, I have now applied for 2!.
First, I sent off a message to Tony Post sking to pay him to let me work for Vibram USA. I sent off a introduction request through my Friend Michael Bayer of Utterli fame. He also worked in the venture capital industry in New England prior to Utterli.
Then I came across this quick press release in Adweek that a company called Nail Communications, a flash heavy marketing firm, had been sourced to create a micro site for Vibram FiveFinger shoes to spread the concept of barefoot running to the masses. So I did a quick search on Nail Communications to figure out who they were and found this very funny (saying that in a non kis ass way) job posting on LinkedIn.
At first glance, it looks like someone might have hacked their company linkedin account or something, but if you read the ‘But’ in the Job Description, you will see that they are actually trying to screen out Ass Hat weasels instead of hire them by the droves.
Sorry Social Media douche bags, they didn’t really want those kind of skills.
So of course, I applied.
I keep my LinkedIn profile up to date, but I don’t bother with a resume anymore. So being the prospective Weasel applying for this job, I didn’t include a resume. 
I’m basically looking for 3 things out of this
- I want to work with Vibram, directly, indirectly or whatever
- Any company with this wicked level of sarcasm has got to be a good company (probably a pitfall in there somewhere . . .)
- Who could pass up an opportunity to apply for this kind of job and still call themselves a blogger?
Here’s my cover letter for the job (don’t copy and paste it and apply yourself! It is now copyrighted by yours truly!
Greetings,
First I just wanted to say that your profile head shot is amazing! There are attractive people on LinkedIn and then there are people operating at a whole new level like yourself.
Second, I read a quick press release in Adweek mentioning that Nail Communications has landed the Vibram account. When I did a Google search on Nail Communications this job posting came up. My first impression is that Nail Communications must have a rogue ex-employee still operating the controls of the company Linkedin Profile. Then I realized that in actuality someone just had a good sense of humor.
Regardless, I want to work on the Vibram account. Just last night, around I sent a connection request through my friend Michael Bayer asking for an introduction to Tony Post. In the letter to Tony, I basically said that I wanted to help him in any capacity, money was no object, I’d pay anything!
I have been running in Vibram FiveFinger shoes since September, and I am sold on their functionality hook, line and sinker. I drove about 800 miles each way to buy my second pair at a store that stocked KSO Treks.
Over the years, I have worked in many fields including intelligence, sales, taxes, accounting, finance, contract management, process management, account management etc. My customers and accounts have included Verizon Wireless, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, The Sports Authority, Office Max, Office Depot and more.
In new media, social media and the blogosphere, I have worked as a writer, ghost writer and product evangelist for the last four years.
I have not been to Rhode Island before, but no my way around an airport and the interstate system. I work from a wifi dock office (fishing dock on a lake across the water from Charlotte, NC).
I would love to help on this project, because this product is rock solid and needs all the help it can get. It has great word of mouth momentum, but that type of momentum can rapidly turn against a brand or product if its not harnessed and managed quickly. There is some evidence that this could already be happening due to product shortages and slow responses on the facebook group among other things.
Best Regards,
Brett H. Bumeter, llm
OK, fun is over, now back to the daily grind of working by the lake…
seriously wish it would stop raining, I need to go running and put some miles on my toes…
Next Stop Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas – Almost Next Stop
It is Thursday night and I’m writing this article early. Saturday, I’m flying to Las Vegas for my third Affiliate Summit. I’m going to be a mentor this year helping at least one person officially and probably 2 other people unofficially navigate Affiliate Summit West for their first time.
Its not even half way through the month of January and frankly things have been a good bit nutty after the holidays.
From a financial perspective I’m racing to make ends meet coming out of the holidays and a short working month of December. The month of January and February are both looking very good, but cash flow is not timed terribly well right now, so I’m doing everything on the cheap and as conservatively as possible this month.
Delta Maxed out my Amex
I’m also heading to a WordCamp in Boston next weekend, after Affiliate Summit. I will be sitting in at a couple Genius Bar sessions helping to show people how to design WordPress themes from scratch for the first time.
I was trying to keep my trip cheap, so I went onto Delta.com to book my flight using the last of my frequent flyer miles on Delta ( I used to live in Atlanta and have been trying to get these things used up all year long). Delta links my profile to my Amex and even when I pay for a flight entirely with skymiles, they secure the order with my Amex.
Well last Friday when I tried to book my order things went completely bonkers on the Delta site and without me pushing any buttons, the site automatically booked and confirmed a flight that I did not select, nor want.
Even worse it charged the order to my Amex with real money not frequent flyer miles and that maxed out my card!
I needed those funds on that card to book my hotel in Boston, so after the order I didn’t have a airline ticket and didn’t have the funds for a hotel!
I called Delta immediately after and they said they had cancelled my order. Five days later however, my card had not yet been credited and Delta.com couldn’t process my frequent flyer mile order with a maxed out Amex!
I called them up and they initially told me that I was shit out of luck, no refund.
I re-explained the problem and they relented and offered to give me a refund afterall. But a day later it still hadn’t gone through. So this time I called Amex and essentially disputed the charge. But another day after the dispute and my card is still maxed out.
Its now about 36 hours before I head to Vegas and I have no idea if I’ll be able to get my trip to Boston fixed before I would have left next Friday.
CES Was a Wash This Year too
Every year I always say that I’m not going to go to CES next year. This year ended up being that year for real. But my friend Joe Klein and Michael Butler did make it and had a good time. A new friend here in Charlotte Robert Enriquez (aka NC_SEO on Twitter) also went for the first time himself.
All in all, I’m kind of glad I missed the show this year, even though I would have preferred to have made that choice and not be forced into it by circumstances. Anyway it worked out as I have been getting a lot of website design work done for quite a few different customers. (more on that in a future post).
Dancing Last Weekend
Among other things I also had a chance to go out dancing with my wife Becky and some of her teacher friends. I had a great time as I love to go dancing. I could do that full time if I weren’t in my thirties. It wasn’t the best club I’ve ever been too, but it got the job done, we had fun and that’s a good thing.
Broken Laptops and Replacement Cell Phones
My Palm Pre finally died last week and I had a replacement shipped to me by Sprint (I pay for insurance on my Pre). This was my second Pre to die (I now have my third Palm Pre). I think its a great phone, but they are not terribly durable.
Once I get back from Affiliate Summit, I’m going to by a spare battery for the phone as well, as the standard battery just doesn’t cut it.
The keyboards on both my laptops flaked out again. I was able to rebuild my primary laptop keyboard, its less than a year old. Its a Toshiba and I love the little thing, but it sucks that the keyboard died.
The other laptop is 4 years old and despite spending 3 hours trying I was not able to get the laptop going again. In both cases, I think the plug for the keyboard on the Toshiba laptop motherboard is a bit defective and it basically causes the keys to seem to stop working.
So now with my older larger laptop, I will always have to plugin a keyboard via USB to type anything. I also feel like I am on borrowed time with my newer Toshiba laptop, so I will probably have to get ready to get a new one sometime soon. I really hoped that I’d get at least 2 years out of this laptop, and am a little miffed that it didn’t even make it a year before becoming unreliable.
Dragon Riders of Pern Series
I’ve recently been listening (re-listening/re-reading) all of Anne Mcaffrey’s Dragon Riders of Pern novels. I’ve read these more than a half dozen times and just enjoy the story. This time I’m trying to read them in chronological story order.
I’m also reading Love is the Killer Application by Tim Sanders, which is a good book and I think I’m getting some useful information out of it.
The White Dragon, Harper Hall Series and All the Weyrs of Pern are my favorites.
Meetups and Conferences
I am over due scheduling a WordPress Meetup in Charlotte and will definitely do that no later than tomorrow. Plus, I am now going to be scheduling the next Charlotte WordCamp picking up this responsibility from Jason Keath the founder of Social Fresh, who also ran the first Charlotte WordCamp. I’m looking forward to this experience and even more so looking forward to giving people access to some great WordPress resources, information and a people! I just learned this yesterday so you can be assured that I will have a lot more to talk about on this topic in coming days.
Frozen Lake
The lake is frozen, but I did just receive a new kerosene wick for my heater, so I am looking forward to getting back into my dockoffice, primarily so that I can do some video and audio work. Outside of my dockoffice I have not found a good location to record video or audio. Every where I work outside of my office is WAY TOO NOISY!
So that’s what I have been up to, if you have caught up with me, please drop me a comment with a link or two to your own blog and let me know what you have been up to lately. I’ve been fairly conversant with folks on Facebook, but haven’t been making the blog rounds as much as I would like, so give me a bread crumb (hyperlink) and let me catch up with you!
Kids Wading Through the Mud
There are two ways into the water at our place. One is off the dock and into the deeper water where it is relatively sandy. The other way is to wade in from what we call ‘duck island’ a muddy sand bar created where the creek and the lake meet up.
The kids like to wade from time to time, especially when the water is not that warm. The price they pay for this activity is mud between the toes.
Kids Wading in the Lake & I’m Cleaning My Desk
After a long long winter (yes its nice and sunny here today and we are not getting snow like some crazy friends of mine in Denver) its time to do some spring, desk cleaning. My desk is cached with dust, dirt, grime, and pollen.
I cleaned off the top of the desk a couple weeks ago, which involved scraping off some duck crap before actually applying a cleanser. The lower part of the desk is going to require removing all of the booze that survived the winter (ergo didn’t get drunk on St Pattie’s day or New Years) and then spraying down the glass shelves and scrubbing them.
I think I’m going to play a movie or something on the projector here on the dock while I’m working. The kids as you can tell below are busy wading in the water. Its very important for them to test the water and prove to me that its warm enough to swim in. If they can wade in there for a couple hours without turning blue, then maybe in another week or two it will be warm enough for me to start getting some exercise in the lake.
The Cleaning . . . um Mix
(wasn’t the best mix, just what I randomly pulled up on YouTube)
Setting My Projector up on the Dock
I’ve been working from a WiFi Cove on Lake Wylie for more than a year now. All that time, I thought about setting up my projector out on the dock, but never got around to actually doing it. Then I flew out to Vegas on Sunday to meet with my friend/business partner Joe Klein of New Media Creative. On the way out there, I watched Jim Carrey in ‘Yes Man’ which was a damn good movie from a motivational perspective. Damn good movie anyway, but perfect for watching just before going to a brainstorming meeting with a business partner.
So a few days later I return home from my trip, I sleep for about 14 hours to recover from Vegas and a bit of an allergy thing I had going on before I left, which totally leveled my voice on Tuesday while I was in Laughlin at Joe’s. So I get home, setup my computers on the dock on Friday, and get down to the business of setting up my projector on the dock.
My father-in-law received an old projector screen from a friend a few months back and its been sitting in the shed/barn/guest cabin(three rooms, 2 down and one loft above, that is finished, so its actually all of these things combined. The screen was too small to use inside, but putting it outside on a 10 x 10 covered dock, it is about perfect.
Now, I have a few challenges with the projector on the dock setup.
- First and foremost, I need to insure that the screen does not block the view which kicks ass.
- I need to make sure that the light from the sun doesn’t wash out the picture through out the various times of the day.
- I need to make sure the elements don’t trash the screen with rain, wind, dew, bugs etc.
- I the projector has to be able to hit the screen without impediments like chairs or people casting shadows.
All of those things were mostly easy to cover. I used some rope to tie the ends of the screen down on the lower corners. I re-angled my high top bar desk in one corner and position the projector off of one corner aimed at the screen.
Of course I completely screwed up with the screen and pulled it down too far the first time I opened it. That means, I’ll have to take the thing apart and fix it later. lol I love projectors and the ability to work on a computer with a screen several feet away (great for not burning out your eyes and working with groups of people) but retractable screens, can give you a run for it sometimes.
The angling over everything turned out just great for afternoon sessions when the sun angles down from the other side of the dock. The brightness works for everything from mindmapping to movies (currently playing Yes Man while I type this). Its a little darker than I’d like, but my bulb on my projector is about 400 hours past the time when it should have burned out. Its about one third as bright as it was when it was new, but still bright enough that it works, so I haven’t replaced it yet, and keep hoping for the day when it blows out on its own so I can justify spending $400 to buy a new one . . . but then again if I keep watching this movie, I’ll probably just buy one anyway!
Now for the record, the movie trailers for Yes Man, don’t really do it justice. It is very funny, as much as you’d expect from a Jim Carrey movie, but its also got a great plot, story, and acting as well from all the actors involved. So if you haven’t seen this movie, yet, I highly recommend it, especially if you are on a plane for Vegas heading to a brainstorming meeting.
If you are going there to gamble, well then, this may not be the best movie for you after all….
Interesting Packaging
Yesterday, I received a rather remarkable package. It was a box with a printer toner cartridge. Now printer toner cartridges are normally about as exciting as well, printer parts.
The interesting thing was not the cartridge itself, but the protective packaging that it came in. It was some type of super bubble wrap.
Everyone knows that the old fashioned variety of bubble wrap is addictive as hell, but this was more of a functional bubble wrap and not the playful stuff that you have to squish and pop between your fingertips until every last bubble has been devastated.
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