Morning GRRRRRRRRR.

My tire's flat again... Firestone plug didn't work or they didn't plug both holes even though I told them there were two.

I've no energy this morning.

My condo is going to be delayed until who knows when (again). It was initially scheduled to be done in May 2008.

Condo delays are probably going to interfere with road trip to Chicago and plans to party as long as the Cubs are in the playoffs.

Maybe this is just a bad start to what will end up being a fantasmic day... after all, there is beer on the agenda for later.

Giving $1 a Day...

If you were to give $1/day to someone/something for the next year, who/what would you give it to?

Cubs Magic # = 4

Say no more... well, delay your hockey beard and keep your goat on a leash.

An RSS Tutorial for My KC Peeps

So you want to be on top of the bigBADbob? Well, who doesn't? But get your mind out of the gutter, we're talking about the BLOG here, people.

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". It is a way to easily distribute blog updates to a wide number of people. From your perspective, you can be notified as soon as I write something new on my blog... which we all know is directly proportional to the amount of red wine that is currently circulating through my liver.

I'm gonna make a guess and assume that no one is ready for a feed reader tutorial and that no one is using Thunderbird as their email client. What did you say, BBB? Nevermind.

So, my RSS feed is as follows, you will need this for your email client:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/bigbadbob

If you are using Yahoo! Mail, follow these step-by-step instructions.
If you are using Hotmail, you're on your own... good luck with Microsoft help.
If you are using Gmail, follow these step-by-step instructions.

If you hear Sheneneh Jenkins in your head saying, "Ummmm mmmm, honey, no you didd-ent. I use my own feed reada," then shout out in a comment to the post since you probably don't need any help.

OK, back to the beatings...

I'm not one for negative campaigns ads, but I'm posting this one as an example of how an organization can successfully use video to achieve their goals (repost from The Agitators).

DISCLAIMER: I'm always hesitant to believe what I see because I'm too much of a relativist... there may have been reasons (or earmarks) to support action or inaction. First, watch the video:

The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund has done well to tell their story:

1. GET ATTENTION: The headline does a good job of that, "Put Palin's Awful Wolf-Killing Record on Television."
2. STIMULATE EMOTION: The word "killing" always draws emotion. Killing animals even draws more ire. Their word selection is excellent: gunning, brutal, needless, indisputable.
3. REINFORCE WITH REASON: They use bullets (pun intended) to cover exactly why this is necessary. The bullets (pun intended) are the logical alibi for the emotional reaction that they've already created within the viewer. The bullets also reiterate what is said in the video.
4. CALL TO ACTION: It's simple and you can do it NOW. Now is always important and you'd be amazed at how many entities forget to ask for what they want. In this case, donate NOW!

At the time of this writing, I think they'd raised more than $600,000 even though their goal was $100,000. Now that's good use of marketing!

If you'd like to see the appeal, please visit the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund page.

Let's Sweeten the Mood Here, eh?

Yo, where my BBBs at?

Google Adsense Support Bails in Mid-sentence

File this one under my lifetime of bad customer service karma. I think there's a whole book of stories that I could write about Blue Shield, DirecTV, Bank of America, San Diego Water & Sewer, Prinicipal Financial, Yahoo!... it would go on and on and on about how I get the big finger when it comes to things that aren't even my fault.

It goes a lil' somethin' like this, hit it...

My blog (yes, the one you are reading) has been around for awhile. The Adsense publisher ID that was originally created for it has expired because there was a long period of inactivity a few years ago. Apparently you can't renew an existing, expired ID. I couldn't create a new ID on the Google Account that I normally use because it is tied to a client's Adwords account. So, the Adsense team told me to create a new ID. No prob, new ID created.

Now, all I have to do is replace the old publisher ID on the blog with the new one. Simple, right? NOT!

1. I'd deleted the earlier support email, so I couldn't follow up on that ticket number
2. I couldn't relocate the area on the support site that allowed you to submit an email.
3. Nor could I find the answer to my question.
   
4. I used Google to find the support email address in a third-party forum.
5. Google automatically replies and says to use the help section and support forum.
6. I reply and say that I've already been there and nothing helps me.
7. They reply and say that I need to create a new publisher ID (which I've already done).
8. I reply and say, "Have you even read my support inquiry? Stop lowering your queue response times and please re-read about my problem."
   
9. They reply and say that I just need to remove the existing ad code and replace it with the new ad code.
10. Sounds easy enough, except that everytime I try to change my publisher ID nothing happens. So, I reply to them giving the specific issue, step-by-step, that I'm experiencing.
11. Their reply, "Due to the high volumes of emails we receive, we're unable to individually respond to your inquiry. Please find instant, reliable answers to all your questions in our online help resources."

ARE YOU F-ING KIDDING ME?

This conversation has been going on for over a month and they are just going to bail on me like that with one of your templated answers?

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Totally Deflated

Cool shot of the flyover, eh? Well, what's not so cool about it is the fact that I was OUTSIDE OF THE STADIUM TO TAKE IT!

Maybe you can chalk it up to trying to make last minute plans or that I assumed that my TailDate had been to a game before... but I told her on Saturday night that the best way to the game is via the Chiefs Express (she's way up north and I was carpooling from the south) and that we arrive between 9-10am for the tailgate.

Just to be safe, I texted her a little before 8am to make sure that she was still going to make the game. Didn't hear back from her until almost 10am when I was pulling into the stadium parking lot. She was hungover and had no idea how to get to the game (GRRRRRR!!! That's why I texted you two hours ago!).

So, skip over the frustration and multiple phone calls part and just know that I eventually told her that she wouldn't make it before we went into the game and to forget about it. But, as I was walking into the game, she called and said she found a ride... that she's "not a quitter!" So, I felt I had no choice but to wait for her.

We made it into the game and watched the Chiefs offense blow all four tires. To make it enjoyable, we heckled "Edward" Shane Leckler and Sebastian "Twinkle Toes slash Polish Powderkeg" Janikowski. Although I must admit that I later asked Lechler if he would switch over and play QB for us (he was a backup QB in college at A&M).

Now, how will my TailDate get home? She said that she had a ride home, but that fell through. I'm not going to leave her sitting on the curb somewhere, so we decided to go someplace and wait for her ride, but then ended up just coming home to play Rock Band 2. After some time playing, I said that I needed to get on the road to take her to her car because I was really getting tired. Her car was in a parking lot from partying the night before and when I dropped her in the lot, I ran over a mudflap with two screws poking out of it. It was a slow leak, so I nursed the car all the way back home, stopping at stations along the way to push more air back into it. Yeah, I blew all my quarters, but it was better than changing the tire out in my frustrated, tired state in the dark.

So there you have it... totally deflated. But at least I didn't play as badly as the Chiefs.