Heather Foeh

For the past month I’ve been getting tantalizing emails from Verizon about the new Blackberry Storm with a touchscreen. I’ve been salivating over the videos and online tours of its functions, so on Friday when it was released I stopped by the Verizon store to check one out. Sadly, I found a fatal flaw with it. The on-screen keyboard is very cool but it won’t work my fingernails. You have to touch the ‘buttons’ with skin, but when you have long nails, it’s impossible to touch the right one! I tried to type several sentences and it was painful - I was only able to get a few letters right.

So, I’ll be keeping my Blackberry 8830 for now, which has served me well and works with my nails.

I’ve been reading a few articles here and there about Knols - the new item from Google on their quest for world domination. (By the way, I say that without any malice. I like things to be orderly and easy to find, so if Google can make the whole world that way, I’ll roll over and let them rule us all. Sorry.) What the heck is a knol, you ask? According to the site: “A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic.”

I checked out the Knol site tonight and read through a few of these authoritative articles and I was underwhelmed. There seems to be an overabundance of health-related articles. They are written by doctors, so I guess that’s a good thing, and if I ever need more information about Ganglion Cysts, I know right where to go. One thing I don’t like is that there’s not really a browsing method. You can search just fine (hello, it’s Google), but one of the things I love (and HATE) about Wikipedia is that I can keep clicking related links for three days straight if I want to. The Knol site doesn’t have that interconnectedness (a.k.a., quagmire of non-productivity) and I think it needs it. The search box is scary - I don’t know what I want to search for. I want to browse, dammit.

I haven’t really figured out the allure of the Knol yet, nor am I sure what Google will get out of it…other than the fact that there are 2 ads on the right hand side of each topic. But really? Are those two little ads per page enough to make them want to create the Land of Knol?

Anyone else have an opinion??

I’m not sure if we should file this idea under “very unique marketing” or “Oh My God”.

Today I received an email from my web hosting company, 1&1. The subject line was: “Looking for a unique way to show Mom you love her?” The headline: “Give Mom a Customized Website.” I’m not lying - here’s a screen capture to prove it. Besides, I couldn’t possibly make this up. I mean, yes, I’m in marketing, but my creativity does not extend this far.

And here’s a tip for all of you geeky men out there who are flocking to read my blog… do NOT get your Mom a website for Mother’s Day. She Does Not Want It. Trust me on this. I’m pretty darn geeky and even I do not want a website for Mother’s Day. Ever.

So, if you read the Smart Bitches blog (or if you keep up with world events better than I do) then you probably already know about the latest writing scandal: Margaret B. Jones published a “memoir” about her gang and drug-infested childhood called Love and Consequences. Unfortunately, it turns out that Ms. Jones is really Ms. Seltzer and none of it is true. What on earth are people thinking?? It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. Hello…remember “A Million Little Pieces”, the Oprah pick? Oops. So what makes someone believe they’ll get away with it.

Here’s my favorite part of the New York Times article:

“Ms. Seltzer’s story started unraveling last Thursday after she was profiled in the House & Home section of The New York Times. The article appeared alongside a photograph of Ms. Seltzer and her 8-year-old daughter, Rya. Ms. Seltzer’s older sister, Cyndi Hoffman, saw the article and called Riverhead to tell editors that Ms. Seltzer’s story was untrue.”

My first thought is that the sister was rather jerky, but then I thought about what I’d do if my own sister was getting famous off of falsehoods — I’d have to speak up (hopefully first to my sister before the publisher…). My second thought was, Ms. Seltzer is even more idiotic than I originally thought! She has a whole family who could at any minute unmask her. Did she not take that into consideration? Did she not think, “Hey, maybe I should give them a heads-up”? Apparently not.

I’ve done some dumb things in my life, but sometimes it’s nice to read about other people’s complete idiocy — it makes my stupidity just a little less stupid.

This last week I was in Toronto for my work. It’s a lovely city, but I had to get there — and that meant stepping on to an airplane. Unfortunately, it was one of those little “regional” airplanes that have 13 rows, and yes, I was in row 13. I’m not superstitious, but my experiences on this trip could turn me that way.

First of all, a gentleman four rows away would NOT stop talking to his seatmate. He shared his entire life story, and not just with the poor schmuck next to him, but basically with all of us because he was a Loud Talker.

Then the real fun began as we descended into Toronto. Apparently, many planes had been delayed that morning because the winds were around 100 miles per hour that morning. For some reason, we were not delayed and boy do I wish we would have been. The final 20 minutes of the descent were the bumpiest I’ve ever been on. It wasn’t just the up and down bumpiness of turbulence. Think of a leaf floating down from a tree and tilting left and right, dropping down, floating back up a bit, tilting again, all the way until it reaches the ground. We were that leaf. I gave myself mental pep talks (after verifying that I did indeed have an airsick bag in the seat pocket in front of me) and consoled myself with the fact that I could visit the “washroom” (as the Canadians call it) as soon as I de-planed. But it was not to be.

We climbed down the little airplane steps and headed for a bus which would take us to the main terminal. Unfortunately, we had to wait for another plane to land and all of those people to get on our bus too — so it was about 20 minutes of standing on the bus waiting. Thank goodness I’d mentally gotten my nausea under control by then. What would I have done?! Here’s how hard the wind was blowing at this point… the ground crew had taken the gate check bags and placed them on a 3-tier trolley so people could grab them as they came off the plane. The suitcases on the top two tiers were blowing off onto the ground!

As a final little bit of icing on the cake, my taxi driver from the airport to my hotel (about 25 minutes) apparently did not believe in bathing regularly. It was extra special.

Alrighty - it’s time for a rant. Recently in my Gmail one of the ads on the right side of my email said this:

Teething Bling
Stylish jewelry for Mom that’s also fun for baby. Free bangle offer!
www.smartmomjewelry.com

Wha? Please!! If you’re tired of your baby grabbing your jewelry, the solution should not be to buy baby-friendly jewelry and let them keep chewing on it. It’s been a heck of a long time since I’ve had babies at that grabbing stage, but I do remember it. Glasses, earrings, nothing was sacred. But my goal was to teach them not to do that. It was not to encourage them to grab it and then put it in their mouth.

Okay. I’m done.

I am helping put on a dance at our local Middle School and we’re sending out hand-addressed invitations. For the “addressing party” I’m in charge of bringing the 200 stamps we need, so I had the bright idea that I’d order them from usps.com so I could choose a nice design. Plus, I’d have the convenience of having the stamps arrive at my house without me having to wait in line at the post office. Brilliant! However, there is a small fly in the ointment…. the U.S. Postal Service.

I chose my stamps easily enough and added them to my cart. When I clicked “Checkout” I was told that I would be given my shipping charges after I entered my address information. Shipping charges? Doesn’t a postal worker conveniently make a delivery to my house six days a week? Hmmm… I decided to proceed just for grins. How bad could it be? I had to first create a username and 8 character password consisting of at least 1 number and 1 capital letter. Nice. Then I had to enter my address, a password hint, etc. Oy. THEN I had to agree to the terms and conditions of the site. THEN I had to view a confirmation screen with all of the information that I had just entered. By this point, I was starting to get a tad annoyed. Finally I was taken to a page where I was told that the stamps would be shipped to me via Priority Mail and standard Priority Mail rates applied, plus a $1 handling fee. So, we’re looking at something like at least $5 to have the mail carrier deliver stamps to my house.

No way.

I’ll go wait in the line at the post office, thankyouverymuch. It’s the principal of the thing. I do not want to pay for the post office to deliver something to my house when they’re already delivering something to my house almost-daily.

Am I crazy? Maybe. Overreacting? Probably. But I still can’t swallow the delivery fee.

We’re having quite a storm here in Central Texas today and on days like this I become a Doppler radar junkie. (I check it approximately every 11 minutes or so.) I like to use www.news8austin.com because they show radar by county and I can pinpoint exactly where the purple areas are in relation to my city. Perfect! However, whenever we have a bad storm day, the News 8 Austin site bogs down to a crawl. It can take as long as 3 minutes for a page to load.

Now here’s the kicker. News 8 Austin is a service of Time Warner Cable. Isn’t there something slightly ironic about that? Shouldn’t they have bandwidth to spare? Rather mind-boggling, isn’t it?

Earlier this week I was having lunch in a cute little restaurant in the Clarksville neighborhood called Galaxy Cafe (two thumbs up on the food, decor and service) and I saw something truly appalling. In fact, this scene was so appalling that I decided, “It’s time to start blogging!”

At the table next to mine sat two thirtysomething mothers. One mom had a small infant sleeping in its stroller. The other mother had an approximately 1 year old boy sitting in a high chair next to her, and in front of this boy was a PORTABLE DVD PLAYER!

There are so many things wrong with this that I’m not sure where to begin. Even if the concept of bringing a DVD player to a restaurant was okay (I’ll address that in a moment), it is absolutely NOT okay for a 12 month old. He clearly was paying no attention to it at all and spent his entire time throwing food on the floor (which the mother did not bother to glance at before she left the restaurant). Now, is this concept viable for any child? No, it’s not. The table is the place to interact, learn manners (both table and conversational), and generally be part of a social situation. If a child is incapable of having a 30- to 45-minute meal without some sort of electronic stimuli, something is clearly wrong. And in case you’re wondering, I feel the same way about Game Boy’s and iPods and even books at the table.

Believe me, I’m not heartless. I too once had very small children and I know how difficult it is to get together with your friends and have a reasonable conversation. You crave normalcy and adult speech patterns and you long for an uninterrupted meal. But friends, electronic babysitters are not the way to go. It’s a messy, slippery slope.