I suppose that this is some sort of an accomplishment. The post that you are reading is my 200th. It’s time to do my first “State of My Site” post. Because of the occasion, I’m allowing myself this indulgence. Without further ado…

Random Facts about My Posts

I write about quite a few things. I took a look at some of them:

• Posts mentioning Rush: 18 (I know. I would have taken the “over” as well.)
• Book reviews: 11
• Guest posts from others: 5
• Times that I’ve made a cogent argument: 47 (give or take)
• For a visual of my blog’s key words, click here.

Popular Posts

I can never predict which posts will be popular. According to my WordPress statistics, these are the most popular.

• Publishing Mysteries
• When It’s Time to Abandon Ship
• Can Consultants Lead? Three Viewpoints
• The Future of Reading
• The Technology Adoption Life Cycle
• Social Networking in the Workplace
• Cloud Computing and Open Source
• Enterprise 2.0 and Collaboration: Come on, HR!

My Favorite Posts

George Orwell and Why I Write and The Big Lebowski and the State of Book Publishing come to mind.

Future Posts

I will be tackling more small business issues, as they will be the focus on my upcoming third book.

Random Facts about 200

The number 200 has a storied history. According to its Wikipedia page, two hundred is:

• A common ISO-standard film speed for photographic films. However, 200 speed film is being phased out in consumer films in favor of faster films.
• A denomination of the euro note. The 200 euro note was designed by Robert Kalina.
• The size of one side of the main square in Kraków, Poland (200 m×200 m)
• 200 MeV is the temperature of quark-gluon plasma phase transition.
• The name of a car made by the Rover Group — the Rover 200.
• An HTTP status code indicating a successful connection.
• The sum of dollars given in the classical Monopoly game to a player passing Go. This one I actually new.
• A cholesterol level of 200 and below is considered “Desirable level corresponding to lower risk for heart disease”
• “200” is the title of an episode of the television show Stargate SG-1.
• The number of NASCAR races won by Richard Petty.
• A Year.
• A vehicle that has reached 200 mph.
• The North West 200, a motorcycle race held in Northern Ireland.
• The number of runs scored by the Cricketer Sachin Tendulkar (not out) in 2nd ODI against South Africa, in the Micromax Cup 2010, which is the highest score in an ODI

Thank You

While I write for my own amusement (and to save money on psychiatrists), I want to thank you, the reader. I really appreciate the comments, retweets, mentions, Facebook likes, Diggs, and other references.

200: The State of My Site is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. The Big Lebowski and the State of Book Publishing
2. Getting to Know You
3. Five Sites I Can’t Live Without

Sometimes, it just amazes me that so many companies are old school, and not in the good Will Ferrell movie sort of way. I’m talking about the “we don’t care about our customers because they have no place to go” kind of way. I’m talking about the companies that:

• don’t do what you pay them to do
• don’t acknowledge when they’ve made a mistake or caused you an inconvenience
• make you call interminable 1-800 numbers and explain the situation again and again
• don’t fix the problem after you wait for them to come by to do just that
• don’t apologize for the inconvenience
• don’t offer to do the right thing by way of a credit or some other accommodation

Background

A few months ago, I railed against Comcast for what incredibly poor performance for Internet and VOIP service. After many phone calls and tweets, at least Comcast finally responded. While the problems have persisted to some extent over the last few months, at least the company has tried to do the right things. I received a number of credits to my account (equivalent to a few free months), multiple apologies, and calls from supervisors.

Well, at the risk of sounding like Dennis Miller, Verizon makes Comcast look like Zappos. (So the reference isn’t completely lost on you, Zappos is a company renowned for its customer service.)

I’ll spare you as many of the irritating details of this exchange as possible. For the last few months, I’ve had problems with my land line. Verizon ostensibly fixed the problem last week but, as I’ve told their reps on the phone multiple times (not that they can hear me), the problem remains. A supervisor offered me a credit of $4 for my trouble. That’s $4 American.

No, I’m not making this up.

I’ve been assured from the not-so-soothing recorded messages that a Verizon robot leaves in my voice mail that “they’re aware of the problem and are working on it.” Needless to say, after listening to these messages, I have to call a 1-800 number to talk to someone and get on a queue. Evidently, a call from a human being is out of the question. Again, old school.

After having no success with them on the phone (can someone say “irony”?), I took my plight to the web, as I am prone to do. I finally received a response on Twitter. My favorite tweet is listed below, along with my response:

@VerizonSupport – @philsimon2 ok, what number can I reach you?

Me: @VerizonSupport – I can’t direct message you because you are not following me and I won’t advertise my number to the world.

Note that I didn’t use my main Twitter handle (@philsimon) because I doubt that anyone cares about my phone issues.

The problem remains and I’m already looking into dropping these wizards. There’s a reason that Verizon Sucks and VerizaRape exist.

Feedback

Forget Verizon. Forget my relatively insignificant phone issue. In the whole scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter to anyone but me. But I want to know how companies can continue to operate in this manner? There are so many alternatives for phones these days. In fact, I’m a bit of a dinosaur by even having a land line; many of my friends only use cell phones. With the exception of my energy company, I can’t think of a single vendor that I absolutely have to use.

My message to anyone who cares at Verizon: Get with the program. The consumer is king now. Your halcyon days are over. I am in the processing of switching back to Comcast for VOIP as I am write this. As bad as Comcast is, you’re worse. Much, much worse.

What do you think?

Old School: Companies That Still Just Don’t Get It is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Pink Floyd, Seinfeld, and Extremes in Customer Service
2. My Social Media Experiment
3. Trust Agents

The web is a really big place. If you’re like me, then the following are true.

• You spend way too much time in front of a computer.
• You like to spend more time outside when possible.
• You’re constantly looking for new sites.
• You constantly make obscure music and movie references hoping that others will get them.

So, without further ado, here are five sites I can’t live without:

1. Down for everyone or just me – This site is just what you’d expect: it tells you if the problem is on your end or with the site. Trust me. With Comcast as my ISP, this site is freaking essential.
2. Meet in between – This site tells you a nice midway point and type of establishment. Very self-explanatory and useful.
3. HootSuite – Managing a Twitter stream is not easy, even with lists. HootSuite lets you add a method to your Twitter madness.
4. Google Reader – I used to go to 20 different sites to read 20 different blogs. Not anymore. This site has made me a much more efficient reader and essentially obviated the need for me to use RSS feeds and email notification of new posts on my favorite sites.
5. Grooveshark – The selection of music on this site is crazy. You can’t download anything but you can easily listen to, share, and recommend music to people through social networks. You can also create widgets with songs of your choosing. Check out the sound track to one of my favorite films, The Boondock Saints.

Feedback

What sites can’t you live without?

Image from Naoh.

Five Sites I Can’t Live Without is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. 90s Sites and Stickiness
2. Web Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
3. Three Ways to Get a Rush from Your Writing

I’ve always been many things, most of which are way, way outside the scope of my blog and site. (Trust me. There aren’t too many skeletons in my closet. There are no trysts with Hooters’ waitresses or big scandals.) As my regular readers know, I tend to write about consulting, project management, software and technology trends, and topics related to writing and publishing, many of which are peppered with Rush references.

Spending so much of my time writing and reading about these things is not without its own rewards. However, I’d be lying if I claimed to never get a bit tired of covering all of those areas. I enjoy the occasional silly movie and book completely unrelated to the business of being me. One of my recent escapes was Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding.

Before continuing, you may be wondering why I decided to read a book about meth. (No, book sales aren’t that bad and I’m not considering a career change.)

Hands down, my favorite TV show right now is Breaking Bad on AMC. It’s about a 49 year-old high school chemistry teacher with cancer, a pregnant wife, and a kid with cerebral palsy. Intent on providing for his family, he begins to manufacture meth or become a “cook”, as they are called. It’s just an amazing show and I wanted to learn more about the problem.

Review

An accomplished journalist, Reding explores the methamphetamine epidemic in the United States through the lens of Oelwein, IA, a rural community about 300 miles from Chicago. Oelwein is vintage Small Town, USA, sporting a population of just over 6,000.

Reding did his research for the book–something to the tune of five years. While this is no scientific journal about the physiological effects of meth or “crank”, there’s enough of that information to, quite frankly, scare the hell out of you. Particularly disturbing were the stories of the children of meth addicts born with simply horrible problems. It’s just scary.

Methland is anything but a “drugs are bad” or “just say no” kind of book. Rather, Reding explores the economic, political, and sociological factors that contributed to the rise of crank in this country. While not exclusively to blame, for example, pharmaceutical companies’ lobbying against certain legislation contributed to the rise of meth addiction. Long story short: the industry fought “stop-buy” language that would have prevented individuals from buying massive amounts of Sudafed and other medicines typically bought en masse to produce meth.

Reding also touches on touchy subjects such as the legality of drugs and America’s relationship with immigration–legal and otherwise. These are all important in understanding why “the world’s most dangerous” drug reached epidemic proportions in this country.

The Downside of Globalization

Having studied the effects of globalization in college and attending school in Pittsburgh (a city no stranger to the erosion of its industrial base), the book certainly resonated with me. What do people do when wages go from $18/hr to less than one-third of that? Many try to work more and meth evidently enables that. On a different level, at one point (and I’m paraphrasing here), an unemployed and depressed Oelwein addict makes the argument for meth, saying, “What else makes me feel good here?” It’s a hard question to answer for Reding or anyone else.

This is a powerful book and one that had me mesmerized and cringing at the same time. This isn’t light reading but, if you need the occasional escape from your daily grind, it should be right up your alley.

Feedback

What books have you read that allow you to escape?

Methland by Nick Reding is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Free by Chris Anderson
2. Change, Vested Interests, and Creative Destruction
3. Planet Google by Randall Stross

My friends Jim Harris and Rob Paller have a regular Wordless Wednesday feature on their blogs. This was in my mind as I recently visited The Comms Corner site the other day. I came across a pretty neat tool from Wordle. In a nutshell, you can enter your site’s or blog’s URL and Wordle will present an image of the commonly used keywords.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

I wish that I could remove words like “Share” because that seems to be misplaced. On the other hand, maybe I’m just the most generous guy ever.

Musings

I can only assume that size matters here. I would guess that bigger words appear more frequently than smaller ones. It’s kind of neat to see the topics about which I write displayed like this. I’d love to know why prepositions such as “through” appear yet “people” (a topic about which I am usually ranting) is minimized.

So, what does a picture of your site look like?

Visualize Your Blog is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Blog Bout I: Risk or Monopoly – Which is the Better IT Project Metaphor?
2. Web Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
3. Five Sites I Can’t Live Without

My first book peaked at #91 on Amazon’s best seller list and I had nowhere to go but down. Talk about

In many ways, I’m in the opposite situation now. My next book currently sits way, way, way behind Tori Spelling’s Mommywood. Now that’s a book that I won’t be reading anytime soon. No offense, Tori.  You have a kick ass bulldog.

My friend John Henley alerted me about Putt’s Law via his periodic newsletter:

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

One could write a book about that statement.

Random Thoughts: Week of 10/04/09 is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Random Thoughts: Week of 8/9/09
2. Random Thoughts – Week of 8/2/09
3. Recommended Reading: Week of 9/27/09

Researching content for my second book, I came across Billion Dollar Lessons last week and can’t recommend it strongly enough. I have just about finished it and find the authors’ research to be simply fascinating. Rather than just cite dry statistics about how companies squander ridiculous sums of money, Chunka Mui and Paul Carrol provide a wide range of examples from many different industries. Some of my favorites include the Ford Pinto (“the barbeque that seats four”), Helig-Myers, and Motorola’s Iridium.

I also really enjoyed the authors’ references to many interesting books and studies that show the limitations of human thinking, even from alleged experts with very impressive pedigrees. Like most of my favorite books, Billion Dollar Lessons makes me want to many of the books that it references. I hope that my second book can do the same.

On a totally different note, this may be taking technology a bit too far.

Random Thoughts: Week of 8/9/09 is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Random Thoughts: Week of 10/04/09
2. Random Thoughts – Week of 8/2/09
3. Recommended Reading: Week of 9/27/09

Random Thoughts – Week of 8/2/09 is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Random Thoughts: Week of 8/9/09
2. Random Thoughts: Week of 10/04/09
3. 200: The State of My Site