Then, out of lazy Sunday curiosity, I started checking into Cholula’s brand online. It was nice to see they have a decent looking website and some cool “wearables” in their online store. However, their marketing site is entirely in Flash (navigation, forms, content, etc.), the baseball caps have sizes (WTF?) and they have no social networking presence, at least not anything actively operated by them. Apparently I’m feeling semi-activist today, so I chose to write them a letter with a laundry list of my thoughts. Here it is…

Hi, there. First off, I absolutely LOVE Cholula Hot Sauce! I was first introduced to it a few years ago and it was tasty from the first time on. Lately, I’ve been using it on just about everything possible and we need at least one bottle in our house at all times. So thanks for making such an awesome product!

Second, I’ve been a bit bummed that Miejer, the largest grocery chain in Michigan (in size of the stores and number of stores), hasn’t been carrying Cholula – at least the one closest to me. I’ve had to go to other stores (usually Kroger) just to get my Cholula fix. And then today, while crusing the aisles at Meijer, they had it on the shelf! Even though we have an unopened bottle at home, I bought another one just to reward them for stocking it (plus it was on sale). So, I definitely think you need to give Meijer credit on your Store Locator for carrying it now. Plus, you’re missing some Kroger stores in my zip code on your interactive map, so it’s due for an update anyway.

Third, seeing your web site for the first time today, it looks great. Simplistic but very tasteful… just like your hot sauce! However, the entirely Flash-based site is really annoying to be honest. Having  the little loader pop up every time I want to go to a different page gets old real quick. Not to mention, if I’m trying to tell others about Cholula while at a party, out at a restaurant, etc., people can’t look up the site on their iPhone, iPods, iPads, etc. With the mobile Internet device audience rapidly expanding, you may want to do something to address that. Just in case you didn’t realize, this is what your site looks like on my iPod Touch (it’s identical in functionality to an iPhone except the phone part):

http://bit.ly/bhWLmV

Again, the site looks great, but having it in all Flash is becoming more of a liability these days than it is an asset.

Along the same lines, you should really get your brand on Twitter and/or Facebook. You’re really missing an opportunity to connect with current and potential fans by not creating a presence there. Social commerce is the new way to create a loyal base of  customers. If you’re not in there creating your brand, you’ll either be left behind or someone will fill in the gap. See what the parody of BP’s PR department is doing at http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr as an example of what happens when an company doesn’t work to create their own name in the social networking realm. Actually, it looks like some variations on your name have already been swept up on Twitter. Not sure if you have someone on this yet, but you really should. Heck, I’d even be willing to help get things started if you don’t have anyone who is expert level at that kind of stuff.

Finally, I’m also interested in ordering a Cholula baseball cap (more promoting to others!). I can’t quite decide on red or black yet (red seems best tho), however my biggest hang-up was on the sizing. Why no One-Size-Fits-All option like every other hat I have? Are they fitted hats or something? I like them a lot but I have no idea what size I need to get. Is there actually a difference? I’ve just never really seen hats come in S, M, L, XL sizes to know what size I need.

So, again, Cholula is AWESOME, AWESOME stuff. Keep up the great work making a fantastic product that I love recommending to others. Especially up here in the northern Midwest, where the notion of hot sauce is usually some extra black pepper in our ketchup. But you’ve made a believer out of this guy from Scandinavian heritage. Thanks!

Sincerely,

Blake Nyquist

I suppose I should have devoted any activist tenancies to something much more meaningful to the world. I hear there’s a an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and there are children in need of clean water all over the globe. However, other than giving money to some charity (which we do a bit of already), I usually can’t contribute anything based on my knowledge and experiences. Providing substantive feedback to Cholula about their online brand is something that I could use my background to create, so I did.

Being I sent this out on a Sunday, I certainly don’t expect an immediate response. However, I’m very curious to see if there is any kind of reply at all. If I do get anything back, I’ll add it in the comments.

Have you ever taken time to provide a boatload of feedback to a large company that may or may not care? If so, how, why and what was the result? Also, have you ever tried Cholula® Hot Sauce? Isn’t it amazing??!!? Submit a comment with any of your thoughts on this stuff.

I also have a new blogging project that I started up last week, that’s been going well so far. It’s about something a bit more interesting than my personal life, so hopefully I can get it going and get some readers to enjoy it as well.

Well, that’s enough of an update for now. Cheers!

We then made it over to the Citadel, a large fortress from 100s of years back which also has an amazing mosque built by the original Muhammed Ali in 1830. Plus a great view over nearly all of Cairo. Our second great tour guide who was amazing to have at the museum did not disappoint at the Citadel either.

Last stop was Cairo market area. This is about exactly what you’d expect from packed little shops as far as you can see trying to peddle their wares to every tourist walking by. Everything is negotiable. Couple good stories from there too.

It’s midnight and we leave in 3 hours for Luxor and Nile cruise. Excited but I should get some sleep. Probably no wifi until retun to Cairo on Friday. Until then, I’ll continue with the picture taking. Peace out.

Well my loss of sleep is this blog’s gain. One word… Pyramids! Wow, how utterly amazing. We went into 2 today. Words nor photos can do them just. They are absolutely immense and amazing.

We were among the very last to get into the Great Pyramid of Cheops today. It’s a bit of trek up into the burial chamber, but very worth it. The chamber was basically emptied out by the time we got there. So we decided to try out the acoustic properties due to the special construction. Amazing echo and reverb for such a small room. Was very cool.

The Sphinx was also part of today’s tour. Its size pales compared to the Great Pyramids, but still extraordinary. Craftmanship of the adjacent buildings is still quite visible and hard to believe considering the lack of precise tools so many thousands of years ago.

After the tour, but much crouching in pyramids and hiking all over, we enjoyed some tea and snacks at the Four Seasons in Giza. Uh, rather nice place. Oh, and Jill had to argue with our assigned security guard, his boss and some police major that we didn’t want him to follow us around for the evening. That’s a story itself.

The evening plans finished with dinner at a great Lebanese restaurant. Then hanging out at Ali’s apartment again. Tomorrow is the Egypt Museum to see even more of this ancient history.

Okay should get some shut-eye so I make it through the day. Good night.

Now that my brain is full of all sorts of neat ideas to save time, money and sanity while enjoying it all, I need to share some of these with you my loyal readers. I recommend the following for all three of you. Some of these go to other sites, but I found them first on Lifehacker.

• Google Calendar goodness (and stop the no scheduled events emails)
  Good read on making use of Google’s handy Calendar application.
• Top 10 Network Utilities
  Fun list for the geekier crowd. Coming in at #2, DD-WRT router firmware is something I’ve been meaning to try on my wireless router for some time. And earning the #1 spot, I’ve been making use of Hamachi for nearly 2 years now and highly recommend it for extremely easy and secure VPN connections.
• Mastering the Windows Key
  This is a good one for any computer user. Despite debate and evidence to the contrary, I’m a firm believer in the keyboard being faster than the mouse at least in such cases as covered in this short video clip. I already use all of these shortcuts to save time navigating Windblows (aka, Windows).
• Use Google Calendar for Long Term Memory
  Another Google Calendar article, but with a twist. This covers recording stuff in the past for future reference.
• Retirement Savings: Setting up a Roth IRA
  Some good info on getting your Roth IRA going. (from Get Rich Slowly)
• Apply the 80/20 Rule to Your Life
  It’s a widely held economic theory that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes. That theory has been extrapolated to many different areas. This article applies it to your life.
• Launch: Parallels v3.0 Now Available
  I’m still not a Mac fan, by any means, but this Parallels software keeps pushing me. To have a solid Unix based system with a professional GUI AND be able to easily run the obligatory Windows apps sounds very appeal. Oh, wait… they’re still outrageously expensive. All the same, it’s interesting to read what’s going on there.
• Delete a Locked File in Windows
  I’ve wanted/tried to do this on numerous occasions. The Geeks Are Sexy blog tells you how.
• Da Vinci’s Streamwriting Technique
  I haven’t read through all of this one yet, but I think this is supposed to help you get your thoughts out on paper (or text editor) to help you achieve your goals. Let me know if it works!
• Simple Way to Save: The 60% Solution
  This article isn’t quite as drastic as it sounds. It’s a good read on how to avoid over-managing you finances and still have plenty for savings, retirement, plus some fun money even after all the bills are paid.
• Finances: Devote 15 Minutes a Day to Frugality
  Megan would probably claim that I spend hours on frugality everyday, but these are some good money-savings tips. Check out the rest of The Simple Dollar for more great financial tips.

Okay, those are some recent highlights. Head on over to Lifehacker.com to read more fun tips.

He turns around and notices me and says something. I’ve got some serious Swedish techno blasting in my ear, so I don’t catch what he’s saying. I hit mute and remove the earbuds. The gentleman was looking for the Lansing Chamber of Commerce, which used to be on the floor above mine. I let him know the Chamber moved a few blocks away before it heads to its new location. Figuring that’s all he needed, I started to turn back to my monitor. Boy, was I wrong.

Turns out, the guy is one of the biggest developers in the Lansing area. And he decided he wants to chat with me I actually first met him awhile ago (been so long I didn’t fully recognize his face), so I knew about his sons attending Minnesota schools like mine. That gave me a few minutes to get into a comfort zone talking with someone I would normally think has no reason to even given the time of day. I then find out why he wanted go to the Chamber. He’s trying to offload a building he owns and was looking for some ideas. Now, he didn’t mention this outright but it was pretty obvious. How? Because he tried getting me to buy it!

Yep, that’s right. I was offered 175,000+ sq. ft. of real estate from a Lansing legend. He was planning on pitching this property to someone and I happened to be it. While I’m fairly certain he was mostly joking, I politely declined. Wowever, he didn’t let up. Did my company want it? Did I know anyone looking for a building? Did I have any ideas for it? He did offer me a “big check” if I helped him get rid of it, but I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to give him a real lead. Just not my mental focus at any point during a typical day. I did throw him a couple ideas for it, which prompted him ask if I could run the place if any of those ideas got setup. Persistent little bugger. Apparently, he does have other possibilities in the works, but he was certainly looking for a backup.

We definitely had an enjoyable and (for me, at least) memorable exchange. Not very often someone like me gets 10 minutes of one-on-one chat time with a local mover and shaker like that. I guess if I anything, I learned that if you have a plan in mind, make sure you follow through with it even if it doesn’t go as expected. I’m pretty sure that’s why I was offered to buy a huge building and I’m equally certain that’s how he got to be so successful.

The Randomness Continues

Still reeling a bit from the exchange with the real estate mogul, I found my way home. I ate dinner with the misses, and headed off for a meeting at church. Things ended early there, so I decided to run down to Barnes & Noble in East Lansing. I had a couple gift cards from my birthday, so I was looking to take advantage of the free “money” before I lost them, as I’ve been known to do. At the store, they announced there was a buy-2-get-1-free sale on all classical music. Before I knew it, I was flipping through CDs. Woohoo!!

With the mad rush that is a classical music sale, there was one other person and the music section employee there. The other customer was a taller guy with a long red ponytail. He started asking the B&N employee some questions about different recordings. Not getting much help, he started directing inquiries my way. It was then that I realized he had quite an Irish accent. Anyway, I was able to answer a few of his questions, which only got him asking more. Even the guy behind the counter started listening and writing stuff down. Again, with just the three of us in the music area, he had nothing better to do.

The Irish bloke turned out to have been recently turned onto classical music, so I certainly wasn’t going lose the rare opportunity to help him pick decent recordings. I’m rather convinced more people would appreciate classical music if they could actually be exposed to great recordings of great works, not all these mediocre versions of obscure works that are often played on public radio. However, that’s a bit beyond the scope of this post. At any rate, we got him all fixed up with some Rachmaninoff piano concertos, some Mahler and (my favorite!) the Herbert von Karajan with Berlin Philharmonic recordings of Brahm’s symphonies.

As we chatted some more, I found out he was in town visiting his adviser from when he worked on his Ph.D. at MSU’s Cyclotron. He even knew a guy I from undergrad class who came to MSU to study nuclear physics. Craziness. That then led to us debating the “coincidentalness” of our meeting. Being that I was taking on a Ph.D. in advanced physics, I somewhat conceded to his argument that it wasn’t a particularly big coincidence. However, had I explained my already coincidental run-in with the Lansing real estate maven, I might have helped my case. In all, we had a fun chat. It was an entertaining end to a rather interesting evening.

Google Reveals Trade Secrets

Okay, so they didn’t really. Grady’s talk and slideshow were rather mundane, actually. The Ann Arbor office is Google’s headquarters for it’s online sales division, so he discussed AdWords and some fluffy stuff about why Google chose Michigan for its new location. The event was put on by the Lansing Ad Club, so it was definitely more geared towards marketing professionals than anything. And honestly, I think any marketer that was already using the AdWords product would have gained little, if anything, from the presentation.

At the same time, it was interesting to hear some about the inner workings of Google and how they keep an entrepreneurial spirit alive in such a large company. Apparently, their new office has been broken up to represent regions (by latitude) of Michigan and the conference rooms on each floor have been named after cities in the regions. He also shared some personal stories of current employees to show they are actually hiring people coming out of the state’s colleges. Then, he went into a more forward-looking segment, talking about connecting with those who have yet to experience 24/7 Internet. I wrote down a few of the numbers he shared in talking about user-proliferation, but I don’t feel liking digging up my sheet of notes. Suffice to say, they were rather impressive.

In summary, considering the $35 entrance fee, I personally didn’t really get my money’s worth out of the event. The one take-away idea I did get was that AdWords can be used to test the popularity of various search terms. The reports from those keywords can then be used to determine tweaks to you website, brochures and other marketing materials. That’s an excellent tactic I’ve already added to my arsenal. People say getting one useful notion out of such a presentation is a good thing, so I guess it was good I went.

Spring Arbor Drama Brings Holocaust Play to East Lansing

The second event of the evening was a play put on by the Spring Arbor University Drama Department. “Meeting in Munich” was written by an SAU professor, but I don’t remember his name now. The work begins with a condensed and translated speech by Adolph Hitler. The professor played Hitler and read the speech in a manner worthy of the original madman. It made all of the old films clips of Hitler’s speeches even more frightening to actually here the translated version spoken as opposed to subtitles. Not that this was the first I realized, but I was very much reminded of how deranged the man was.

The second half of the play was 6 years prior to the speech by Hitler. It depicted a scene the was likely prevalent throughout Germany. A split congregation in a Catholic church argued over allowing the integration of their youth groups into the Hitler Youth, a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. With stormtroopers marching in formation at the onset of the service, there was obvious support for Hitler amongst the church members. Others were greatly concerned that their children were being sucked into an ungodly and unsafe organization by a man who thought himself God of Deutschland. It ended with those speaking out against the Grand Chancellor being escorted from the church for questioning.

For a group of student thespians, this was a very powerful presentation of an extremely sensitive piece of history. There was a question/comment session after the performance, and one of the audience members said she found herself not breathing at times. There was a definite intensity to the acting.

Then, our pastor shared something that I can imagine stuck with quite a few people. He mentioned how the current state of the world (school shootings, wars, genocides, etc.) leaves him more and more seeking absolutes to restore order to all the chaos that surrounds us. But, the play showed him how Hitler and the Nazis used promise of absolutes and order to post-Word War I Germany to get the citizens to buy into his plans. That haunted Pastor, and it haunted me. What was even more frightening was that in trying to choke down the Tom Delay biography, he says something disturbingly similar:

There is a God and, because this is true, there is absolute moral truth.

That just sent chills up my spine. While I certainly could make an entirely different post on that subject alone, let me just say I was all the more thankful that man was eliminated from making any more substantial impacts in American politics. Let’s hope it stays that way.

So, that was my evening. Google and Nazis. Not a likely combination, but certainly thought provoking all the same.

User Generated Media by the Numbers

Now that UGM has broken into the mainstream, there is a lot of analysis being performed on the available data. Hitwise US generates a good chunk of such statistics.

Hitwise sampled 10 million Internet users and found traffic to YouTube exceeded the combined visits count to all four of the broadcast network sites by 500%. In the Hitwise Music category, MySpace increased its related traffic by over four times to 23%. Similar sites and bands taking MySpace into their own hands continues to usurp the powers of the giant record labels. Isn’t it great?!!

User Created Content in 2007

Where does all this leave us? Well, despite the big buyouts taking place in the social network arena, I believe it’s still rather difficult to fully quantify the value of all this content and traffic. However, when such serious cash is involved, you can bet your bottom dollar plenty are going to be trying to take advantage of it. We’ll see more ways to directly and indirectly pull money out of social networks and their unique content. We’re already starting to see end-users earning cash for content. That will likely make things a little less altruistic, but it’s nice to see the little guy get something for his or her efforts.

So really the question boils down to, is it better to be the next YouTube maker or the next YouTube user? I think I know my answer.

All right, so I wasn’t actively seeking out anything on writing. I just happened to stumble upon a couple decent articles in a relatively short amount of time. Lucky me! There have been other articles I’ve seen lately, but these two stuck with me for some reason. That might mean they could be useful. Heh, something useful… the Internet continues to surprise me in new ways.

Writing on Technical Writing

The first I article I ran across was Amy Hoy’s post on the Five Sins of Tech Writing. I believe I’ve seen some of Amy’s articles regarding Ruby on Rails, but I apparently never hung around to check out her other posts. She’s a very thoughtful and well-typed author. She’s even working on a book, and her blog indicates it would be a very decent read. Amy is also a UI designer, so her Slash7 site is a nice bit of eye candy on its own.

The point of Amy’s article is that anyone who’s read any amount of technically based “literature” has surely come across some that totally did not do the job. She basically says unless you are someone who absorbs any style of writing in one pass, you likely have serious problems with the state of tech writing as a whole. I certainly cannot disagree with her.

Technical writing is truly one of the most difficult types of reading for just about anyone. I can’t count the number of times I have failed to get all the way through or feel I didn’t get as much out of the text as I should have. Amy breaks the problems of technical writing into 5 key factors:

• Losing the reader
• Making the reader feel stupid
• Failing to stick
• Being a total bore
• Not providing much-needed context

She then goes into detail on each problem area. The only thing missing are reasonable solutions to the issues. However, Amy knows this and is saving solutions for a later post. Head over and see the original article, so you’re ready to read the “answers” once they become available.

Writing and Thinking More Clearly… and Checking Your Math

The second decent article I read on writing and related subjects was actually a webified PowerPoint presentation. It’s titled “How to Write More Clearly, Think More Clearly, and Learn Complex Material More Easily.” This is a presentation created by Dr. Michael Covington from the the University of Georgia. For me, slide shows can often be as tedious as most technical writing. This set of “slides”, however, get my attention.

Dr. Covington does indeed clearly write out how to do everything advertised in the title. He provides a solid review of the steps to writing effectively and clearly. He covers planning, drafting, revising, editing and even some tips on formating. While, most of us learned these in grammar classes starting in elementary school, it never hurts to review. It’s a great reminder for all those rules that I know I rarely think about consciously.

There was one overlooked flaw in this section, however. This involved the use of some quasi-algebraic “factoid” when discussing writing revisions. In Slide 29, Covington writes:

Time taken to process and n-word sentence is proportional to n³, or more.

Now, I’m pretty sure he could have picked a different letter for his description than “n” and still proved his point. I realize he’s 99.99999999% likely to have meant absolutely nothing by it, but it just seemed weird to me. Surely, I’m not the only person who has read that and tilted their head in reflective pause, even for a second. Has anyone ever asked him to swap in an ‘x’, ‘y’ or ‘m’ instead? Likely totally meaningless, but I had to point it out.

Anyway… The presentation then slides (pun intended) into thinking more clearly. This area covers use of language, logic and epistemology. The language portion involves Covington’s statement that we use language (on some level) to do the majority of our thinking. If we can’t understand the language, we’re going to have difficulties thinking about something. The end result is to beware of “talking about things without knowing what they are.” Know anyone who does this? Possibly yourself?

Okay. I admit it. I have. Yikes!

Dr. Covington, then transitions the language discussion into use of logic, and then epistemology. Epistemology, the study of how to acquire knowledge, or as I call it, learning how to learn, is something I feel is essential to continued intellectual growth. I consider college to be the final chance to be taught how to learn. After that, most people are on their own.
This brings the presentation to its final section on how to learn more easily. Covington mentions three tools for easier learning:

1. Use a suitable learning strategy.
2. Insist on clear understanding.
3. Organize the knowledge for yourself.

Different situations call for different learning strategies, if you don’t have clearly understanding you cannot learn more, and organizing knowledge is unique to the individual. I suppose writing this post is my own way of organizing all this information. And yes, I do believe I might even understand it a little better than I did.

I’ve already pointed you to the HTML version of the presentation, but if you want other forms, you can go to the presentation’s main page to get it in a PowerPoint .ppt or Adobe PDF format.

Happy writing, thinking and learning!

Well, here I am again after a rather lengthy hiatus. (I haven’t blogged since last year!) I had a pretty decent streak of postings within about a month this summer, but I apparently fell off the blogging deep end after that. So, to get back on track, here’s a quick rundown of the rest of my 2006 with photos when available.

Megan’s 10-year reunion in Billings

My last post was actually from Billings, but we had only been there a day at that point. We got to see all of Megan’s family who still live in town and hung out with her high school clan. It was nice and relaxing for me since I didn’t partake in all the happenings (thankfully, not enough estrogen in my system). I read George R. R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords during the course of the trip. Trip photos here.

My 10-year reunion in Duluth

Just a few days after returning from Billings, we loaded up the car and drove 650 miles to Duluth for my high school reunion. What a blast! It was hilarious watching the reactions of people who initially gave me blank stares then looked at my name tag. So many people I hadn’t seen in such a long time. It was great to catch up with everyone, if a bit crammed for time trying to get all the visits in. Also was hoping to see a few folks who didn’t make to the reunion, but I guess there’s always 2016. See you then! Trip photos here.

Megan’s family visits

Over Labor Day weekend, most of immediate Megan’s family came to visit us for the long weekend: Megan’s mom Vicki and husband Lionel from Billings, brother Kyle from Columbus, OH and sister Jill from NYC. We went to a Lugnut’s game, watched some movies and even had a Lebanese feast one night. Good times were had by all. Weekend photos here.

Marriage Encounter weekend

At the end of September, Megan and I went up to Arcadia, MI for a Lutheran Marriage Encounter event. It was an amazing experience and we learned a ton about each other and our relationship. I highly recommend this for any married couple, no matter what state your marriage is in. We were treating it as a tune-up weekend, but it was so much more than that for us and way more for several couples. Trip photos here.

Pinke wedding in Fargo

At the end of October, I was an usher for the holy matrimony of Nathan Alan Pinke and Kathryn Lukens which took place in Fargo, ND. Pinke is a good friend from college and it was great to see him finally find true happiness with a wonderful woman like Katie. And if you flip through the photos, you’ll see the giant reason why Pinke will never do her wrong. I also got to see a few Concordia faculty, my mom, Ken and 60% of the Bentley clan for about 24 hours. Yet another too fun but too short of a trip. Trip photos here.

Thanksgiving

Megan’s brother Kyle and his girlfriend Kylee (no joke) came up from Ohio to join us for Thanksgiving. We had a great time hanging out, eating, lounging, playing games and eating some more. We tried going out Friday night, but I think we just barely made it to 11:00 before calling it a night. Besides, there was more eating to do.

Christmas

Megan had a rather crazy 5-6 weeks leading up to Christmas preparing for and playing in various music performances at church. But that all ceased on Christmas Eve after being at the church at 3 different times that day. Kyle (minus Kylee) joined us again and he wasn’t feeling 100% so we lounged an extra ton the whole weekend. I gave Megan a printout of our itinerary for our Florida trip in February as gift, so I scored some major points there. I did cash them all out later that week when I bought myself a Nintendo Wii, but boy, was it worth it!

Ringing in the New Year

Our friends Robin and Ramon hosted a smashing New Year’s Eve party at their place this year. We had some tasty appetizers, a massive bowl of sangria and a delicious turkey dinner for sustenance. We then played Guitar Hero and the Wii was a big hit until midnight. In the early hours of 2007, we played Apples to Apples followed by a Texas hold ‘em tournament (I won!). I got a ride home at about 5am. I can’t remember the last time I’d been to a party for nearly 12 hours. Good times.

And that sums up the remainder of 2006. I hope you enjoyed. Look for more posts from me in 2007.