August 16, 2010
A List: Things Mom Does at Home
Yesterday we had our weekly family meeting. The kids had been complaining too much about having to work around the house so this week I gave a lesson to help the kids understand how much work mom does every day, all day, for us. Heidi had prepared a long list of chores she does. Not exhaustive of course, but long enough that it got the message across that her chore list is a million times longer than ours. The list filled one printed page which I handed out to the kids. For dramatic effect I told them we'd only printed the first page and it went on for many more pages.
Seems like a worthy list to immortalize, so I've included it below. I'm guessing if mom's everywhere added their list of daily tasks this would grow to hundreds and hundreds of pages.
| Things Mom Does to Keep the Family Running | |
| buy stamps pay house payments stock bathroom with toilet paper stock rooms with tissue clean sheets make beds with clean sheets vacuum carpets pay water bills tidy up every room every day set up play dates drive kids to music lessons plan parties and celebrations notice when you need new clothes shop for new clothes recycle old clothes dust furniture plan menu for the month make shopping lists buy groceries put groceries away keep lists of groceries we need rotate food storage clean litterbox clean fishtank replace shower curtains sweep and mop floors pay allowance take you to library choose audiobooks organize toys and games pay power and gas bills put gas in car pay car insurance bill schedule dentist and doctor appts. drive you to doctor appointments wait with you through doctor appts. plan fun excursions make packing lists for trips buy plane tickets for vacations sort dirty laundry wash dirty laundry dry clean laundry fold clean laundry put away clean laundry fill empty water bottles pay tithing turn off lights you've left on open/close windows to keep house cool plant garden water garden weed garden water lawn rake leaves pick fruit from garden notice when you need new shoes shop for new shoes for you recycle your old shoes organize medicine and first air stuff buy dental hygiene items keep memorabilia of your life take photos of your life edit and print photos of your life clean bathrooms find petsitter when we go away feed cats | feed fish buy birthday gifts for you and others wrap gifts make jam clip your nails make desserts make dinner make breakfast make lunch clean up after meals set the table make bread or rolls take you to the beach help you take care of your body renew your library books work in the office pay cable bills pay phone bills reserve campgrounds for you notice when you need new pillow buy you a new pillow (or mattress cover) find a babysitter for you write thank you notes on your behalf put money into your college savings acct. get guest room ready for visitors wash curtains email your teachers help you write talks help you with homework help out in your school classroom organize and maintain 72-hour kits make cookies take you shopping to spend your money remove wallpaper/paint rooms make vacation books reserve rental car for vacations notice when you need new backpack buy you a new backpack/lunchbox/etc. read books to you take trash out put in new garbage bag pack lunches prepare after school snack walk you to bus stop pick you up from bus stop pay preschool tuition pay health insurance bill pay dental insurance bill buy new cat/fish food and litter run errands mend your clothes/blankets take pets to vet annually help you plan Halloween costume prepare Christmas lists print Christmas cards write and mail Christmas cards put money in savings every month take scraps to compost bin keep your bedroom organized sort through and donate things reduce reuse and recycle take you to playgrounds arrange for you to visit museums chaperone your field trips |
Posted by mike in Society at 7:45 AM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2010
Riding to New Hampshire
I'm off on a long ride this afternoon, riding from Malden, MA up to Bear Brook State Park in New Hampshire. It's a 60+ mile ride. And for a sea-level, use-to-flat-roads rider, the elevation has me a bit worried.
Update: I made it. Yes, it was long and exhausting. The hills were more than I'm used to, but doable. That stretch of uphill from mile 21 to mile 35 was a lot, and the last bit starting at mile 56 took some digging deep.
So glad I did it.
Posted by mike in Recreation at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2010
Growing Business with Email Marketing
At New England Xpo for Business in Boston today listening to Corissa St. Laurent from Constant Contact talking about email marketing.
I really don't like getting email from companies, why would I attend something like this? Because I've had customers ask for it, and understanding how to do it right will benefit customers and business.
Some Facts
It takes, on average, 5-10 communications with a company before a customer will buy your product.
It is 6 times more expensive to get a new customer than to retain a customer, and return customers spend 67% more. After 10 purchases a customer has referred up to 7 people.
1.4 billion people use email on the world. 87% of consumers online time is spent reading emails.
What is Email Marketing
Email marketing is not SPAM. It is delivering professional communication, to an interested audience who has asked to receive your email, that contains information they find valuable.
Building trust means setting expectations (how many, when, what), matching expectations, abiding by SPAM laws (include physical address and opt-out), and gaining permission.
Making the Connection
Build your list where you connect. During sales call, at events and meetings, in email signatures, and on the web site.
On a sign-up page, include your logo and branding, describe your email content, ask about their interest, ask for additional information.
Keep email very short. You have 11-20 seconds of time once a person opens the email. Make sure you get to the point quickly. Put a strong call to action. "Order now and get 10% off", "Click here for more information", "Forward this to your friend if you found this interesting".
Frequency and Delivery
Create a master schedule. Must send at least 4 times a year or else you are irrelevant. Monthly is good, sometimes daily is important depending.
Day of the week and time is important. Tuesday & Wednesday are generally optimal, between 10am to 3pm, but for something like a night club or weekend getaway Friday might be best.
Getting Email Opened
Must come from the right name. 60% of folks decide on the from name alone if they will open. The from address should be familiar as well.
The subject line is really important. Clever, tricks, and funny subject don't work. The subject should be 5-8 words (30-40 characters) that incorporate the immediate benefits. Magazine covers are good things to look at for examples. Make sure there are no spam words.
One tip is to write the subject line last.
Tracking and Reporting
Tracking is important to learn about the audience. Find out who opened, who unsubscribed, clicked through. Watch trends, see how many are opening, how many are clicking.
Q/A
Use color cop for matching colors and finding good color schemes.
Don't use images for critical pieces of information because they get blocked.
Posted by mike in at 8:27 AM | Comments (0)
May 5, 2010
2010 Road Bike Route: 26 Miles in North Boston Suburbs
In the never-ending quest to find a perfect road bike route I'm trying something new. I used to be happy to battle with traffic and stoplights to go on a specific route that went up through the Fells as a start to a big loop through Malden, Stoneham, Wakefield and Melrose. My favorite part of that route is going over the top of Lake Quannapowitt. However, once you've done some serious riding on long, open, light traffic roads it gets harder to enjoy riding around a busy city with lots of interruption and traffic risk.
Many have suggested the right way for urban dwellers to road bike is to load up the car and drive out to the country where a good riding routes are every direction you ride. This doesn't work for me. I can't carve out 20 extra minutes each way to drive out of the city to a more rural setting and ride from there. If I've got an hour or two to ride I want to be on the bike for that entire time. This means I'm constantly on the hunting for a nice route from my house in Malden.
The route I mapped yesterday, and rode early this morning, heads directly north from Malden. The ride up Fellsway East and then Main Street through Melrose and Wakefield isn't too bad (way better than going north on Route 28 where you dangerously ride in the gutter while delivery trucks race by). Not a ton of crazy traffic or intersections in the first few miles, but the ride really opens up around mile 8 when I cross into Reading. Miles 8 through 20 are what I'm looking for; rolling hills, not too much traffic, wide enough road to let me ride near the white line and not over on the shoulder, beautiful trees, lawns, fields, rivers, etc. After mile 20 you're back to Main Street where things get less perfect for the rest of the route.
No flats today also adds to the goodness of the experience. I had to stop a few times to check my map, but all-in-all it was a great route and ride. We'll see what kind of variants come up through the summer.
Posted by mike in Recreation at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2010
CVS equivalents in git
These days I'm 100% using git for version control. My past two employers were strongly tied to CVS for version control, meaning that means since 2001 I've been using mostly CVS (occasional SVN for side projects).
There are a few things I got into the habit with CVS, and want to see when using git. Here's a growing list of things I'm discovering in git to help with my coding workflow.
Show files that haven't been added to version control
I used to get this information with the CVS update command, where it would say "I know nothing about..."
With git:
git ls-files -o .
And to only show files *after* the ignore rules have applied:
git ls-files --exclude-standard -o .
I've created an alias for this command so it's easy to quickly see without having to remember the option syntax:
alias git-new-files='git ls-files --exclude-standard -o .'
Show names of files that have been updated but not committed
Information that was available from CVS update where it would mark it with "M" to note that the file was modified.
With git:
git diff --name-only .
I suppose there are shortcuts for these, my git skills will grow stronger.
Posted by mike in Technology at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
April 1, 2010
This is what I look like
In case you're wondering, this is what my computer sees when it spies on me through it's built-in camera. I know it can see me without my knowing, overriding that tiny green camera indicator.
Propagating this photo around to appropriate places.
Posted by mike in Recreation at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)
March 31, 2010
Last Day at OpenAir (a NetSuite Company)
Today is my last day working for OpenAir (a NetSuite company), tomorrow I'm onto other things (more on that later).
It's been an incredible 4+ years working at OpenAir (which was acquired by NetSuite in 2008).
I have loved working on the product; designing features, collaborating with product folks and other engineers, and coding/testing features and fixes. I have also loved working on production issues; building out the infrastructure, helping scale the application, pushing out releases early on Saturday mornings, refining the release process, being the MySQL go-to guy, and even some physical work carrying of servers between cages.
More than all of the techy stuff, I've loved working with good folks. As a remote employee on a virtual engineering team there was definitely less regular face-to-face interaction than I'd had in previous jobs, yet there was still a great team feeling and spirit of collaboration. And I can't say enough good about the many folks throughout the rest of the company that I got to work with over the years. Perhaps I'll cross paths with some of these folks in the future, but for now it's farewell and best wishes.
:(
Posted by mike in Technology at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2010
Add Arrowheads to Lines in Illustrator
I've been using Adobe Illustrator (CS4 if you must know) here and there for some stuff, just figured out how to easily add arrows to the end of a line:
- Select an object or group (or target a layer in the Layers panel).
- Choose Effect > Stylize > Add Arrowheads.
There's a bunch of choices, and a sizing number for scale.
Thanks Adobe docs, saved me a bunch of future time because I had been doing it manually.
Posted by mike in Technology at 2:41 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2010
Where are we with open source software?
I'm approaching a job transition (more on this later), one that has me thinking about what kinds of things I've really loved during my career as a software engineer.
Four years ago I left Tufts University and transitioned to a considerably more closed environment. Still working in the great open source stack, but not a lot of company interest or encouragement to be actively involved in open information exchange about technical matters surrounding the use of open source software. I suspect this is the case with many businesses; publicly documenting technical issues or solutions to interesting technical problems doesn't always align right with the company vision and culture.
I guess the lack of being able to speak openly has also curbed the amount of time listening. I find myself wondering "what's going on in open source software these days."
I see Jeremy is still talking about it. There's still an Open Source Convention (last time I attended was in 2007). Looks like there's still an Open Source Business Conference as well, but doesn't seem like it's as high profile as it was back in the early 2000s. OSBC makes me think about Matt Asay who still appears to be writing The Open Road (not that I agree him).
I've all but lost touch with the MySQL community (last conference attended was also 2007). Does the same great community still exist, or has the Sun acquisition, departure of Marten Mikos and others, Drizzle fork, formation of MontyAB, and acquisition by Oracle put what was there under the MySQL umbrella to rest? Brian Aker recently documented what's happened with MySQL employees, Planet MySQL seems surprisingly alive with active from both familiar and new folks.
These were some of the most prominent sources of open source news, but the list goes on.
I'm sure *something* has changed, open source software can't be in the exact same position it was 4 years ago. I'm curious to understand what has happened. A few weeks back I introduced the RSS aggregator back into my daily activity, which has been good. Putting a few of these in to start seeing more about where things are.
Posted by mike in Technology at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2010
Barbados Trip Comes to a Close :(
It's hard to believe a week has gone by, but it's our last night in Barbados. Has been an awesome trip, we feel very fortunate to be able to come for a week to unthaw and unwind. We're all feeling sad to have to go, but looking forward to getting back to "normal" life.
Heidi's posted several photo albums of our trip:
Barbados West Coast
Exploring Coral Reef
Barbados South and East
Here's a quick breakdown of our daily activities:
Monday- Arrive
- Secure car
- Learn to drive on left, and look the correct direction for oncoming traffic when turning
- Drive across island
- Find condo
- Swim in pool
- Explore grocery store food options, secure food for week
- Swim at Fitt's Village Esplanade beach until lunch
- Swim in condo pool after lunch
- Drive to high peak in center of island, tour Gun Hill Signal and climb on the Lion carved from stone
- Swim in pool (again)
- Spend day at Folkstone Marine Reserve; swim, snorkel, dig in sand, read, eat lunch, play at playground, eat ice cream, buy souvenirs, etc
- Swim in pool
- Morning submarine ride
- Lunch and afternoon in Bridgetown
- Swim in pool
- Spend day at Crane Beach, 3 of us get stung by jellyfish but sand, water, and waves too good to resist and everyone continues to swim
- Swim in pool
- Late night Island observatory visit to overlook the city, see the night sky and look through telescope
- Pack up and load car early, hit Oistins for lunch
- Wade in Oistins Beach
- Move to new house (inland, more local flavor)
- Swim in pool
- Back to Oistins for dinner
- Church with the locals
- Sunday drive to Bathsheba for lunch, watch surfers, walk on the beach
- Up early to pack
- Swim in pool
- Off to airport
Posted by mike in Recreation at 6:35 PM | Comments (0)
