Rinsefirst

I spend way to much time in the marketing industry. Afterall, the goal of most of the websites I build are designed to market a business of some sort.

Well today, for the first time in awhile, I had the radio on. Jack FM (104.1) to be exact.

What I was suprirsed at was how 3 or 4 commercials got my brain to pull away from the monitor. To be honest, most of the time, the commercials were just playing the background… I wasn’t even paying attention.

But there were at least 3 today that got me to go “Is that what they really said”. For example:

There was a McDonalds Commercial that said something like, “American’s built this nation on <something>. American’s gave <blah blah, I wasn’t listening close enough>. And Americans invented the McDonald’s Chicken Sandwitch.” it was one of those things where my brain was listening just enough to know that the last thing didn’t fit, and my attention got pulled.

There was another one where an ad said “it was included in the vip gift bags at the Sundance film festival”. Why did that pull my brain? Because I’m pretty sure (not 100%) that this was an ad for some sort of facial medicine… My brain thought, why would I care if the people at Sundance got this drug in their gift basket? It made no sense, and sure enough my brain turned to listen  (although in this case, I missed the brand, so it still didn’t do the trick).

It makes me want to run an Ad tomorrow that completely doesn’t make sense… Or at least contains things that dont make sense… Just to see how many heads it turns at the work place… Did he really say what I thought he said?

In any case, I have to admit, I like working the with radio on now.

I attended MSA’s graduation ceremony tonight. I have to admit, not to much has changed since my own (which was 5 years ago now for those of you counting). Time does fly.

Looking back now, it’s hard not to reminence about all the great times I had there as a student… MSA truly is a special place.. There are very few schools I believe that create as much community as that one… We’re an odd bunch, and we love each other more for it.

It’s rough though. This was what I believe may have been the last great class at MSA. Sure, eventually the other classes may live up to them… but I don’t know… There was something about the bunches of kids that attened the first, second, and third years of MSA that seemed special. The Bartz’s and Joe will be very very difficult to replace, and probably never will be…

But alas, I am not good with writing like this… so instead… I will post another pointless youtube video… This one I did… and is really just yet another test of something…

I almost forgot to post these… Here they are… The photos I took at Patrick Little’s (and Natalie Johnson’s) wedding.

One of the many things one must decide as a new home owner is just how much money is one willing to spend on various communication mediums. Namely, Phone, TV, and Internet. I recently had to make a decision on all of these things, and I thought I would provide you with some of my research and why I made the decision I did.

Part 1 - Phones

For me, this really wasn’t going to be an issue. It was Comcast Digital Voice vs. Qwest Vs. Using my existing cell phone Vs. Vonage (or another IP telephony service) and not having a land line. The cheapest of course was to go the all cell phone route, and with the 2000 minute plan I’m on now, that probably would have been the best option (especially if I plan to upgrade to unlimited in the near future). However, Amber and I both felt that having a land line is good for many reasons. Namely: Call quality and ease of use. Also, we would get unlimited long distance on our home phone, so it might be possible to reduce the cell phone minutes (and the cost) in exchange for using the land line when we are home (which for me is almost all the time, once I move in). The call quality issue sold me (I record a lot of webinars) so that eliminated the cell phone option. I eliminated Vonage and Ringcentral based on prior experience (let’s just say TCP/IP phones that have to travel over the internet have their own problems… regardless of bandwidth). So that left Qwest and Comcast.

Qwest has analog lines that are nice and reliable. They have all the same features of Comcast (for a price). That price (with features) would be $49.99 (unlimited long distance bundled with 10 feature phones)

Comcast on the other hand does it digitally over a dedicated channel in their cable network. This means there needs to be a battery backed up device on the consumers end to decode the signal. It also means it tends to be a little less reliable (although not by much). The price comes in (without 1 year specials) 39.95.. With 1 year special it’s 29.95.

That said, if I was just looking for fully a loaded phone service, I think I would probably go with Comcast Digital Voice… I don’t need the amazing reliability provided by qwest for the added 10 bucks a month. However, there is more to factor into this decision… but I’ll save that for part 2, 3, and 4.

I can’t wait until next week.

This week, I fear is going to be way to crazy.

Let’s sum up the weekend:

• Patrick Little’s Wedding was on Saturday - I had a great time. The wedding was beautiful. I really don’t think it could have gone much better. If you want to see the raw photos from my digital camera (meaning I didn’t remove the duplicates, or the blurry ones), you can check them out by going to:
  http://jjdb210.smugmug.com/gallery/5067991_em5K3/1/304967971_Fepax
• Amber and I spent all of Sunday along with Mike, Jill, Nikki, and my Mom. It made for a very long day, but Amber is there now… living… Just her and the cat

So what that does that mean? It means I wasn’t home AT ALL this weekend, other than to sleep, and write these posts. That roughly translates to me already being behind next week. And with Dan tied up with another project, and Joe tied up with Mayterm and the school play… I’m not sure when I’m going to have time to breathe.

In any case, I’m off to bed, for what is undoubtedly going to be… a long week.