m1mic's blog

'Twas the week of Christmas, and sitting at work;

Up pulls the meter maid, who I think is a jerk.

Looked out at the cars, all parked in row;

The curbs were hard to see, all covered in snow.

She approached a Kia, all black and dark;

Too close to the crosswalk, that car was parked.

Out came the ticket book from this wannabe po-po;

and she suddenly realized that the car needed a tow.

On the phone quickly, she called in the yellow rig;

Smug and happy; she probably wanted to dance a jig.

Car was loaded up and off to the impound lot;

^* Please note: The Idaho Humane Society's employee lacked civility and so I see no reason to be civil back to them in this recounting of the tale.

My mother in law recently passed away after a sudden illness and one of the many loose ends that my wife Sarah had to take care of was what to do with the pets (two dogs and a cat). Princess, an eight year old, white, short haired, Free Take One, Wal-mart cardboard box special, ended up coming home with us. Problem is, she has something wrong with her and likes to lash out and attack at random times. Also, she is a little bit incontinent, and was peeing everywhere but the litter box (the counter, in a plant, on some towels) and may have had some sort of eye infection.

First off, congratulations are in order if your business has taken that giant leap of faith and dove head first into the murky waters that is Social Media (SM).  The pressure to prove the value of taking on such an endeavor can be great, and no, there is not a magic indicator to show an accurate Return on Investment (ROI).  You just have to believe in what you are doing and what you're gut is telling you.  Just like scuba diving, you will need to be patient while you learn to use the equipment and you will bump into a few unseen obstacles along the way.  Since there is no real clear path to SM Rockstar status, people will forgive the occasional slip ups as you find your way.  However,  here are a few newbie SM faux pas avoidance Tips from Your Potential Customer:

It's kind of weird the things that trigger childhood memories, but was reminded about one of the first cable channels I got into; WGN Chicago. Random tidbits:

• Harry Carey was awesome even when the Cubs didn't field a decent team
• Positive that if I was on the Bozo the Clown Grand Prize Game I would sink those ping pong balls in all six buckets
• Learning is half the battle and since G.I. Joe was on five days a week, we completed 2 and 1/2 battles a week.
• A sports car with roof hinged doors can fly if you had the right M.A.S.K.

In a previous post, I walked the user through how to setup a cron job to automatically create a nightly mySQL backup (see http://ejhildreth.com/content/setting-cron-mysql-backups). This is great but has one huge flaw: The database backups keep piling up unless I manually remove them. Since scripting makes the computer work for me, I fired up VIM and created some new shell scripts.

Earlier today, I was giving a former co-worker (@mlsamuelson) a hard time on Twitter about the contents of the whiteboard that he left behind. Like the true good friend he is, he immediately gave me a hard time back! In response to his counterstrike, I took matters in my own hands and took the whiteboard hostage with my weapon of choice, a copy of today's newspaper to prove what day it was, and sent him the photo: