Blahgorrhea

the site is secure we promise. i don’t know why the little padlock doesn’t come up (i’m assuming thats what you are referring to) you are more than welcome to call and place an order if you would like. 212-414-4533. ask for Joe or Steve. you can just give them your credit card info and then email your order to this email with mailing addy, etc.
thanks for your support of frenchkiss.

That was the response I received from French Kiss Records when I sent them a somewhat angry email about trying to sell records on the Internet without a secure server (read about Insecure Purchases). [Continue reading…]

It sounds like a great promise, to have all Internet shopping occur over secure channels. I was fairly certain that it all was (not because of any grand experiment that checked out every point of purchase on the web, but through a vast assumption). I was all primed and ready to buy both of The Hold Steady’s albums direct from their record company when I noticed that I was about to submit my credit card number over an insecure form. In all likelihood, no one would happen to be capturing packets as I placed my order, thus stealing my credit card number, but I am sufficiently paranoid in this regard that I decided to instead send them a somewhat angry email, after finding no way to contact them by phone. Too bad. I really would like to support them directly.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins introduces the Hedgehog Concept as a key insight into taking a good company to greatness. The idea is to develop your strategy along three key dimensions and then to crystallize that into one concept that guides all efforts. The analogy to the hedgehog comes from an parable about a fox and a hedgehog in which the fox tries many different methods to catch the hedgehog. Each time the hedgehog just rolls himself into a tight ball of spikes, thwarting all the fox’s efforts. The hedgehog understands its one big thing and consistently applies it, achieving “greatness,” at least in the ongoing battle with the fox. What is interesting about this business concept is that it closely parallels individuals’ pursuits of their true calling, and thus their personal greatness. [Continue reading…]

It occurred to me last night that I am working with a master negotiator when I realized the subtlety of his tactics at hand. I have been offered an offer for a job, but I have not yet been given the offer. What this means is that over the few weeks I was given to decide whether or not I want the offer, I will have to decide and convince myself that either the job is the right one and I want it or that it is not and I do not want it. If I decide that I do not want the job, then we each just go about our merry ways. On the other hand, in deciding that the job is the right one, I will have invested myself emotionally in the job before even getting to the point of real negotiations. [Continue reading…]

I don’t need the money. It’s not my thing. Don’t get me wrong - I do like money. But I don’t know that it’s ecologically appropriate to hoard millions and millions of dollars. We don’t need to have so much wealth concentrated in so few hands. Our culture needs to recognize that having $20 million in the bank is not an absolute requirement for being happy. We have got to be more attuned to the idea that the life experience has its own value.

Bill Strickland explaining his philosophy on salary.

This philosophy is amazing, because it truly addresses a problem in our culture and gives a solution as well. Bill Strickland is an incredibly successful social entrepreneur who could make a ton more money, but he takes a salary that gives him a comfortable life and leaves the rest of the money in his business doing good.

I have a 4-year-old cell phone. It still works (my theory on why it still works is that it does not have non-cell-phone features that get in the way of the quality of the phone itself, but that is a post for another time), but it is loosing steam, having more and more problems keeping a signal. So I figured I would look into getting a new phone. [Continue reading…]

CitiBank has a great ad campaign going right now. They have billboards posted all over San Francisco with pithy sayings about how money isn’t the most important thing in life. While I enjoy reading the billboards, and while they do make me reflect (for oh so brief of a moment as I fight my way through stupid drivers and even more stupid pedestrians) on how life really shouldn’t be about money, I can’t help but wonder whether the company at the top of Forbes magazine’s Global 2000 list, a company with $1.4 trillion in assets, can really believe that money isn’t everything. Money is their entire business.