26 Feb 11 Sheepish
Once upon a time there was a shepherd looking after his sheep on the side of a deserted road. Suddenly a brand new Porsche screeches to a halt. The driver, a man dressed in an Armani suit, Cerutti shoes, Ray-Ban sunglasses, TAG-Heuer wrist-watch, and a Pierre Cardin tie gets out and asks the shepherd, ‘If I can tell you how many sheep you have, will you give me one of them?’
The young man parks the car, connects his laptop to the mobile-fax, enters a NASA Website, scans the ground using his GPS, opens a database and 60 Excel tables filled with algorithms and pivot tables. He then prints out a 150-page report on his high-tech mini-printer, turns to the shepherd and says, ”You have exactly 1,586 sheep.’
The shepherd cheers, ‘That’s correct, you can have your sheep.’
The young man takes one of the animals from the flock and puts it in the back of his Porsche.
The shepherd looks at him and asks, ‘If I guess your profession, will you return my animal to me?’
The young man answers, ‘Yes, why not?’
The shepherd says, ‘You are an auditor.’
‘How did you know?’ asks the young man.
‘Very simple,’ answers the shepherd. ‘Firstly, you came here without being wanted. Secondly, you charged me a fee to tell me something I already knew. Thirdly, you don’t understand anything about my business….. Now can I have my dog back?’
photo credit: PedalFreak
Tags: armani suit, cheers, flock, gps, laptop, man answers, mini printer, mobile fax, nasa, nasa website, photo credit, pierre cardin, pivot tables, porsche, profession, ray ban sunglasses, sheep, tag heuer, wrist watch, young man
22 Feb 10 The Clipper Club
I’ve been going to get a haircut for months. Yes months. It had been at least six months since I last got one.
My hair is thick, and I’ve never been able to do anything with it. I’ve usually just had a buzz cut all over 2-3 times a year.
Why am I telling you all this? Just to show you what a hopeless case I am, but how my outlook has been recently transformed.
How? Well, those of you who know me know that I am a Twitterholic. I happened to see The Clipper Club one day while I was rambling about in the Twitterverse. Now, bearing in mind what I’ve said above, I was skeptical about being pampered. I’m not really a macho type of guy either, I just need a haircut OK?
My wife told me to go and get a haircut and it would be her valentine treat for me.
So I did. Now I’m converted. I understand the pampering bit now. I didn’t go for the full monty. Just a haircut.
First impressions? I walked into The Clipper Club and I get a great welcome.
That’s always nice. Lori was not only a great barber, but great company for a half hour.
Aside from a great haircut, I left feeling like we were almost old friends!
Lori expressed surprise that I succumbed to her advice. She made a few suggestions in regard to my grooming, and I was more than happy to cede to her professional judgement.
I’ll certainly be going back again, and I won’t wait six months either.
I think I really might have the full works next time too. I quite like the idea of a full neck and shoulder massage. I spend way too many hours in front of this computer!
The after effects?
I’ve taken to using shampoo on my hair again, instead of a bar of soap, and I’ve taken Lori’s advice and started to use Woody’s Pomade to try and get my hair to stay where I comb it, and where I want it to be instead of where it decides to go all on its own!
Check out The Clipper Club
Tags: buzz, charming lady, clipper club, computer check, few suggestions, first impressions, full monty, haircut, half hour, hopeless case, locks, lori, macho type, old friends, professional judgement, sheep, shoulder massage, six months, valentine, warm welcome
06 Aug 08 FriendFeed
I like FriendFeed. No, I really like FriendFeed. It’s been compared to Facebook, but it’s different in my opinion, way different.
How does it work?
Unlike Facebook, you don’t have to sign up to anything. You can simply go to FriendFeed, and search for people. If you know their FriendFeed name you’ll get a page come up with everything they’re doing.
It works by collating all the feeds from all the networks that they’ve addd to their FriendFeed account, so you can can see what video they posted on YouTube, the images they uploaded to Flickr, what they just posted on their blog, and so on. There’s no advertisments getting in the way.
You can join FriendFeed yourself, and add in all your social media networks too, and then folks can see what you’re doing by looking at your page. You can find mine here.
One big difference in the way I use FriendFeed to Facebook is how I define friends.
Facebook encourages you to add your ‘real’ friends and family. Ok, that’s nice, but lets be honest here, while some of them are very nice people, some of them are also very boring online. Do I really need to know what color socks my friend Igor is wearing this morning, or how long he had to wait for the bus? I don’t need, and don’t have time for 101 invitations to dig your ‘patch’. Ok, throwing sheep was fun for about five minutes, but it’s way past old now.
On FriendFeed, on the other hand, I ‘friend’ those that are writing stuff I find interesting, even if I don’t know them very well, or at all. I also, don’t expect them to return the compliment and follow me. A few folks seem to have an issue with that, but all I can say, is, get real!
It’s nice if some people do, as we all like to think we might be mildly interesting to at least a few folks in the world, but the high flying head of an SEO team that writes really useful stuff, probably doesn’t want to read about my relatively mundane existance.
Right now, I’m using FriendFeed a whole lot more than Facebook, for two reasons. Firstly, one click on a bookmark and I’m there. Secondly, there’s simply more interesting, easier to access stuff out there.
Of course who knows what’s around the corner, in the ever changing world of Social Media!
Tags: advertisments, blog, compliment, existance, facebook, fir, five minutes, friend feed, friendfeed, friends and family, images, invitations, media networks, nice people, opinion way, real friends, sheep, socks, whole lot
