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.

It’s a month old now, but I’ve been meaning to write on this post that, from its title, claimed to be a tutorial on Unix-based command line redirection. I use *nix systems on a regular basis, and I actually got suckered into clicking to this article. It was a waste of time. And then I got even annoyed by thinking about things on a deeper level. I hate thinking.

The post literally mentions the most elementary use of the > and >> operators, and that’s it. That alone is not a waste. Redirection is indeed a powerful capability, and it’s good to spread word to the masses about its usefulness. However, there is a bit more to command line redirection, and the fact that the author provided no other information about it is a shame. And that leads to my main point…

Selfish blogs suck.

In all fairness, the post in question and the site are coming from the Mac OS X point of view, where the target audience may not necessarily be command line fanatics. (Not getting into any anti-Mac talk here. Only saying the average Mac user likely does not use the command line often, if at all.) However, my issue is not just with the limited scope, but with the selfishness of the article.

If the intention is indeed to teach newbies (and not just make money from ads), shouldn’t one combine some concepts that might not otherwise be thought of by the reader on their own? I realize there are people who automatically fire off the RTFM response, but the supposed target audience will not even know where TFM is. Go ahead and leave extra stuff out of your post if you have not the time or desire to add it, but show the readers where they can find it! Don’t leave them stuck on your site if you’re only going to tell a part of the story. Alas, what I can only see as the desire for a few extra pennies from AdSense got in the way of an otherwise decent tutorial. No, let’s call it a tip. Which brings home my second point…

If you’re going to teach someone to fish, show them more than just how to tie a hook on the line.

Such a limited post with no hints at more information is not only selfish, but it doesn’t do the reader much good. The very first comment on the post sums this up nicely. The commenter, a self-proclaimed idiot in command line use, thanks the author for the “insight”, and then asks why/how they would use this. Even better, a responder offers a cryptic g++ execution as if to suffice as an example. I really doubt someone asking about command line redirection recognizes such compiler calls from the shell.

If the original poster had simply added a few outside sources (see below), it could have been a vastly more valuable post. Other than a quick “try it out” at the end, there is no hint that other facets to redirection exist. What about a suggestion to add & to the end of the command to run the job in the background? Unfortunately, I see this “Quick! Let’s post something, anything!” approach all too often in the blogging-for-dollars world that exists these days. Even more disappointing is when the major aggregator sites validate theses types of posts by put putting them on their popular pages, which is exactly where I found it.

Sure, no one (especially, yours truly) is perfect, and the blog that is the current target of my angst is by no means the worst offender of such things. Also, by nature, the Web is a tangled mess of all sorts of good and bad “stuff.” I just like to think these grumpy, old man posts I make every so often might do something to create more good than bad. In the end, if you happened to read this whole thing, remember to follow the spirit of the World Wide Web and make sure to spread around the link love. It makes everything more useful and me a little less grumpy.

Oh, if you came to actually find out more about command line redirection, please check out these EXTERNAL links:

• I/O Redirection from the Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
• Redirection and Process Substitution
• Wikipedia Article for Bash (the default OS X shell – with segment on Redirection)

And, should you desire to be a better blogger, try these on for size:

• Zen and the Art of Remarkable Blogging
• How to make ‘related articles’ for your blog

10 Reasons Brett Sucks

1. He stole all my G.I. Joe figures and vehicles, then absolutely demolished them. Those things could be worth serious money now!
2. He makes one phone call and gets a $350 baseball glove sent to him. Not because he needs it; just because he can.
3. He lives in Tampa. Period. Can’t tough it out with the rest of us Yanks anymore.
4. If you google “brett nyquist blog“, his web site doesn’t even show up. Mine does. HAHA!!! There’s no excuse for that at all. Thanks for the extra traffic, bro!
5. He tells me he’s going to send me a birthday present. Nothing shows. That’s just plain cold.
6. He bailed on what would have been the third year running of celebrating Thanksgiving in Lansing, MI. Fine, Lansing isn’t a hotbed vacation spot, but you don’t mess with tradition like that. No bucket of beer for you! (Yes, I do mean a bucket. It’s big.)
7. He has other people buy him plane tickets for vacations.
8. He gets the Best Buy product replacement plans. And he uses them about 8 times for each item. Lame.
9. He works (if you can call cutting and pasting “work”) only 6 months out of the year. The other half of it he just rides around in a bus playing on his laptop and listening to his 4 iPods.
10. He lies about sending me birthday presents. Warrants repeating.

This is why my brother Brett sucks. Once I retire, I’ll have more time to publish the full list. Thanks to Leeks for the inspiration and a great original post!

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

In reality, that’s probably not the easiest concept for a young child to grasp. However, you’d think more people actually capable of understanding the notion would try to follow it… most of the time… even occasionally… at all!

Give and You Shall Receive

This topic is something I’ve been thinking about recently. It started by reading a blog post on the most efficient way to get what you want. I suppose the title and even the article make things a bit self-serving, but the author’s notion would certainly improve upon society’s current state. The post was more web/business related, but the author’s simple method of getting what you want could certainly apply to one’s personal life.

The idea is to flip your question about how to get something into a question about what you can give. This recipe has been shared before in many different variations, mostly famously by John F. Kennedy, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be shared again. Obviously, not everyone has these types of thoughts at the forefront of the minds, so I say it should be repeated as often as necessary.

As I already mentioned, the article’s bent steals some of the altruism by converting a “take” into a “give”. The ideal would be for people to just give, and not decide to do it based on getting something in return. However, the nature of giving does indeed put one at “risk” for not getting anything in return. I’ve often found that the act of doing something for someone else is the reward itself. Any reciprocation the recipient chooses is pure bonus at that point.

What Do We Give to Get an Answer?

The other reason this topic was on my mind today is a guy at work was recently lamenting about the sad condition of today’s society. As the world continues to get smaller, we’re all the more exposed to deeds that are done purely for the sake of harming others. Whether it’s computer hackers stealing financial information or some tyrannical government committing genocide of its own people, these acts are committed by those with zero sense of ethics. If only they would earnestly put themselves in their victims shoes for a moment, I have no doubt they would rethink their actions.

Why doesn’t everyone feel this way? Have people never experienced receiving an unconditional gift, so they don’t know how it works? Are some people just not capable of giving to others? Is there anyway people can be more aware of reciprocal treatment, rather than acting against it?

I don’t have a clue what the answers are for improving use of the Golden Rule. I’ll leave that for you to contemplate and discuss. Hopefully, somebody will find a solution that works. Maybe some already are.

Since we flew out to MT (get to drive 650 miles to MN next week), we had the joy of going through security at the Lansing airport yesterday afternoon. Everything was fine, until my carry-on bag needed to be scanned again. Odd. Then, they needed to search my bag. Even more odd. The TSA employee went right to my side pocket and dug down to the bottom. He pulled a pocket knife out of my bag. It was the smallest swiss army model you can get… tiny blade, file, toothpick, tweezers, that’s it. I hadn’t seen that thing in over a year. Oops! Dialogue then went like so:

“Is this your pocket knife, sir?”
“Yep.”
“You know you can’t have this in carry-on luggage?”
“Yep.”
“Do you have any checked luggage, sir?”
“Nope.”
“Would you like to check this bag, sir?”
“Nope.”
“Would you like to bring the knife back out to your car, sir?”
“Nope.”
“Would you like me to confiscate the knife?”
“Yep.”

That was the end of my pocket knife, or at least my possession of it. The TSA employee walked off and deposited it in some metal bin in the wall to join its contraband cousins confiscated from countless other unwitting passengers. I know the TSA is just doing its job, and I’m thankful for the additional security, but I was still amused for some reason. The guy just seemed so full of himself for thwarting any dubious plans I may have had for the little pocket knife that I didn’t even realize I had with me. Good job pulling something out of a bag that a machine told you was there!

I guess this isn’t really much of a rant, but my point is I think the TSA could use some interpersonal skills training so they at least act like they’re a little more understanding when it’s obvious people have unintentionally violated one of their policies.

So, yesterday (really 2 days ago as of right now, but let’s stick with ‘yesterday’) was the 4th of July, correct? Okay, just wanted to make sure. Anyway, last night we drove down to Wood Street and parked along side Groesbeck Golf Course to watch the Lansing fireworks (I gave them a C-, by the way). After the (lame) finale, we headed home. We crawled into bed at about 11:30, leaving most of our windows opened up to the evening’s cool air, so we could finally get our non-air conditioned house below 90 degrees. Megan crashed and I dug into my new John C. Wright sci-fi novel, Phoenix Exultant.

Almost right at midnight, several small, but not so quiet fireworks started going off. Whistlers, standard bottle rockets, black cats, etc. I had absolutely no problem with that. It was Independence Day! The proudest holiday American’s have all to themselves! How could I be upset for someone wanting to celebrate that, abeit a little late? They quit after about 20 minutes or so. Megan went back to sleep and I kept on reading till almost 1:00. No harm, no foul. Happy 4th of July!!

Now, fast forward nearly 24 hours from that point… Tonight, Megan was exhausted- not to mention she hasn’t felt swell for about 2 weeks- so she went to bed at 10:30. I stayed in the basement for a bit, then came upstairs to do some reading. Midnight comes around, and what d’ya know? Yep. The fireworks return.

I went to the “reading room” a little after they started, thinking they’d be over shortly. When I finished my “reading session”, it was past 12:30 and the obnoxious pyrotechnics we’re still going strong. Same repitoire of rockets, whistlers and such, but now it had gone too far. It’s a day late (2 even!), I’ve got a sick wife trying to sleep, it’s soon to be 1:00 in the morning and I really don’t like people being so blatantly disrespectful of others on a non-holiday weekday. So, naturally, I went outside and hopped in the car to start my manhunt!

I was almost positive “they” were at Post Oak Elementary School, just a couple hundred yards from the house. I took a roundabout way to the next block to mask my point of origin. As I drove past the playground, I spotted a single kid holding a bottle rocket in his hand. He froze like a statue to watch me slowly drive by. Knowing full well that wasn’t really going to do the trick. I pulled the car into the parking lot and turned the brights on him.

He winced as my halogen lanterns spewed 100,000 candelas into his eyes. He knew he was busted. The kid walked around in his little spot on the playground for a bit and gave me some squinty-eyed, defiant looks, hoping I’d leave. He obviously didn’t realize he was dealing with a stubborn Swede tonight. It was then that I noticed the jungle gym equipment he had walked behind was concealing yet another set of legs. Of course! There had to be an accomplice! That level of dliquency surely has to be shared with someone.

The dynamic duo lit off one last rocket as their way of giving me the finger, I suppose. It didn’t matter. Their fun was already done. They started walking off the playground and headed up the sidwalk. The kid I originally saw seemed like he could have been 13 or 14, but the second one barely looked 11. He was tiny!

I pivoted the car a few times so as to keep the high beams on them. I figured it was best to keep them from really being able to see the car, and I definitely didn’t want them catching my license plate. Plus, I wanted to keep them paranoid about the creepy guy in the car, watching them. They went past the parking lot and hit the corner. As soon as they made the turn, they started to run. For an added bonus, I hit the gas a little to make it seem as if I was going to chase. In the five seconds it took for me to reach the end of the lot and look down the street, they were gone. Mission accomplished.

I turned the “wrong way” and headed out to Lake Lansing Road, the main drag by our house. I killed some time cruising around and stopped at the Speedway to grab a donut to replace all the energy (aka, fat cells) I burned in the adreneline rush of the now surreal event. What a night this had become!

As I got back in the car to head home, it dawned on me that I had now truly become a crotchety old man. While I still stand behind their disrespectfulness, in their little pea brains, those kids probably thought they were just experiencing some living on the edge excitement with fireworks. They didn’t realize it was so late. They didn’t know how noisy it was. They didn’t remember they had done the same exact thing at the same exact time the night before. They were only having fun. I had taken that away from them. A portion of their childhood was robbed from them.. and possibly also a clean pair of shorts the way they were running!

But was I really being crotchety? Maybe that’s just how later, wannabe-mature-mostly-but-not-always 20-somethings are supposed to have their fun. I wonder…

In any case, the donut’s gone, so I must sleep now. In peace. And quiet.