HEY Bitter Stewardess Lady!

Yeah, I called you a stewardess. Deal with it. What the hell is your problem anyway?

You ask me to hand over all of my trash and discards so they don't get left in the seatback pocket and then refuse to actually take them from me? Instead, you reach for the magazine that I was finished reading, pull your hand back, execute a piercing look and then walk away.

"What the heck was that?" I asked the lady sitting next to me.
"I have no idea," she replied.
"I've never had that happen to me before."

As punishment, you've been charged with using a toothbrush to scrub all armrests of this calamitous, end-of-the-world-we're-all-gonna-die swine flu pseudo epidemic (which we all now was started by the face mask manufacturers) on all planes that you board this week. Deal with it.

By the way, I was the one that left two magazines, an empty bottle of water, 2 pieces of plastic and about eight of those pollen cards from Wired strewn about my seating area.

I hear Virgin serves Absinthe in the air now... enjoy my free magazines United Air, they may be the last you see for awhile... well, I mean, like, after I fly you to Chicago next week.

Time Doesn't Trail, It Leads

If you believe that you will someday achieve your dreams, then one thing is already guaranteed, each day brings you closer to that reality.

• Hours carry the sun and moon toward the time when everything is yours.
• Minutes melt away the mountain of patience that you must endure.
• Seconds count down to the explosion of your envisioned happiness.
  

Think not of the time that has been lost and never regained; look toward the future that is approaching for your dreams are closer now than they were when you starting reading this.

Time doesn't trail, it leads.

As always, I appreciate your comments.

1 Email = 1 Thing

I follow about thirty RSS feeds, not many, but a mixture of friends and well-known professionals. Add to that about another twenty email newsletters and I think I get a healthy smattering of what people think works best for their readership.

Lately, I've noticed some things that FAIL for me.

1 EMAIL = 1 THING
My friends in Silicon Valley, the Seminoffs, once said, "You can save a whole lot of money and skip a business education if you just do this... when sending an email, make it about one thing."

Not three things, six things or four things--ONE THING. We like to read in bite-sized nuggets. This concept applies to many forms of communication: email, blog posts, advertising, web site copy. The attention span of multi-tasking humans is very short because we're not reading the paper at the breakfast table anymore. We're skimming the feed reader or checking out the first paragraph of the shared link on Facebook. The USA TODAY is a prime example of bite-sized nugget news, as is the full day's worth of news every half hour that you can find on the various 24-hour news channels.

I've recently started following a blog called "Newspaper Death Watch" because I've been speaking to a fascinating gentleman in the KC area that is working hard to re-invent the dying industry. This blog is making one post per day, great, but the problem is that their solitary post is really 4-5 posts rolled into one post. Unfortunately, I know this, but I still rarely read past the first nugget in my feed reader for their daily post. If they were to cut those additional items out and paste them into multiple posts, then I'd be more apt to read them.

It's not 1 Post = 1 Thing; it's 1 Post = 5 Things.

Why? The problem is that reading their daily post is kinda like reading the bill and then the earmarks added to the bill. A headline captures my eye and prompts me to read more. When I discover that there are additional, unrelated items at the end of the item that captured my attention... well, I get annoyed and I opt out. If you break them up into their own posts, then I can scan the headlines and choose to read the other items that interest me.

The second problem is that if I share this post on a social network, like Facebook, then my friends only see the first paragraph of the lead item. In fact, if I thought a friend was interested in a sub-item I'd have to cut and paste it into an email instead of leveraging the ability to share it because it's buried in the post. Newspaper Death Watch is missing out on an opportunity for me to send specific bite-sized nuggets.

In the business world, I've found that I can get a quick response if I use the 1 Email = 1 Thing philosophy because I also try to make the email short and to the point. Recipients have stated that they like getting short emails even if there are several of them to address. Humans inherently want to check off tasks and they will address the easy ones before the hard ones, so take advantage of that by making your emails quick, understandable and easy to answer.

Move to the top of the pile, 1 Email = 1 Thing.

The New "K"

Attended my first game at The New "K" last night. For those that aren't in the KC area or don't follow the new stadium trend. K stands for Kauffman, more specifically Ewing Kauffman, who was the long-time owner of the Royals back in the day when they were good.

A few years ago, Kansas City voted to renovate our existing stadiums instead of build new ones. Arrowhead and Kauffman were designed well from the get-go. In fact, the Royals stadium was one of the first where the seats were all angled toward the action. And Arrowhead, as you may know, has been one of the loudest stadiums in the NFL from day one. Their needs were more on the exterior than the interior: bathrooms, concourses and concessions.

So, let's evaluate it for those particular upgrades...

BATHROOMS: This is a tough one for me to evaluate because I was on the club level. However, there were bathroom attendants standing outside of the mens' and womens' areas that seemed to clean the rooms at least once during the game. My biggest concern was that they've screwed up the design by pulling out all of the troughs and inserting individual urinals. Face it dudes, when you run to the john between innings after 3 or 4 beers, you don't mind going elbow-to-elbow to avoid standing in a long line. They've screwed this up at many stadiums around the country and the "K" seems to be the latest. BATHROOM GRADE: C.

CONCOURSE: The concourses around the stadium used to be really narrow; it was like trying to make headway on the floor of a U2 concert or like trying to swim upstream in both directions. They've done a fantastic job of opening up the width of the concourses so that it's easier to get around and the lines at the concessions no longer impact movement. PLUS, you can now walk all the way around the stadium, which was never the case until this year. CONCOURSE GRADE: A.

CONCESSIONS: Big fat effing FAIL. That's all there is to it. 1). You can't even get popcorn, nachos or a pretzel on the Club Level. You have to walk up or down to another level. We showed up super early for the giveaway, so I had a couple of courses. 2). Every single effing thing I had was lukewarm and soggy. BLECHT. Fries, hot dog, pretzel and onion rings... my aunt said her cheese steak was cold, too. CONCESSIONS: F-.

I'll be back out at the park on Tuesday night and will spend some time in the outfield areas. I've seen about nineteen of the stadiums around the league and most of them have included these SRO area in the outfield that are pretty entertaining.

Aside from sh1tty concessions, I dig my new "K!"

All Aboard!

It's kinda hard to make a 7:45am 4-miler when you wake up at 7:30am. Oh well. I jumped out on my own run at 7:45 and eventually ended up running the last mile of the KC Trolley Run backwards (which is uphill, ack) until I saw my sis, then I turned and led her home on that last mile.

I'd not seen this particular run before, so it was great to see so many people out there! And, I'm super proud of my sis for becoming a runner after having always been an elliptical trainer chica.

I'm a soccer guy myself, so I have a tendency to run too fast for distance. I'm that walk/jog/run person that passes you and then you pass me back. :-) But, the energy from the crowds at the 5k and 4-mile races is too much fun to pass up. Plus, now that I'm back home in KC, I run into a bunch of friends during the races. WOOT!

See you at the next race?