One of the various books that’s gotten some attention from me lately is by a guy named Seth Godin. He’s written a book called Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Becoming Remarkable. Its basic premise is that consumers no longer pay attention to marketing, so marketing no longer is an effective mechanism for selling products and services. Consumers sell themselves and other consumers on “remarkable” products. If a product doesn’t have that remarkable edge about it that causes consumers to 1) recognize that product as “the” solution to their problem or itch, and 2) then tell other consumers about this great product, then the product will not do well in today’s marketplace. (To give appropriate background info, I ran across this book via Fast Company, and accepted Mr. Godin’s offer of a free book (free + $5.00 S&H)).

Questions: 1) Do I agree with his basic premises and theory? (Note that I haven’t finished reading the book yet.) 2) Is Mr. Godin’s book itself a remarkable product?

Answers: 1) So far, my gut agrees on the ignoring the mass media part, anyway. Looking around me, seeing the number of times my husband channel-surfs through a commercial, the buzz that used to surround the Tivo, the fact that web browser companies give away their product for free but sell the version of their product that doesn’t include commercials. . . I’d have to say that the American consumer doesn’t give too much attention to commercials. The one exception is the Super Bowl, where we pay way too much attention to the commercials, and little attention the product being hawked. I can remember plenty of Bud Bowl game commercials, but can’t say as I have any more respect for their product because of them. Do I, however, base my purchasing decisions on whether a product is remarkable? In general, I’d say, no, I don’t. Mine is a calculation of value, usually – my Handspring being the obvious exception. (OK, so I thought that was remarkable and bought it.) As we start thinking about mini-vans, I don’t consider whether it has a neato cool feature that makes it stand out from the rest – I’m interested in its service history, its MPG, its safety record, etc. In fact, I’m very likely to turn down a remarkable new offering just because it’s new and I don’t trust it to yet have the kinks worked out.

But reconsider: what if I found a vehicle that met my MPG dreams, my safety wishes, and was from a dealer that I thought I could trust? Would I be willing to pay a price premium for that “remarkable” product? And thus free the selling company from competing solely on my usual value critieria? The light dawns. . . (BTW, I have high hopes for the Saturn VUE – word is that it’ll be offered as a gas-electric hybrid in 2004.)

The challenge, then, for me in applying this to what I do (or determining that I need to do something else). . . determine either the wow feature of J2EE software systems or determine a way to break outside some set of constraints that were previously perceived to be bounding J2EE software systems development (ala my service, MPG, and safety wishes for my mini-van). That’s the puzzle that’s been niggling for a few days in my spare moments. Moo.

[Note that this post, had it been extended to fully encompass the thoughts that drove it, would have been too long, and deprived me of too much sleep, for either of our comfort. Forgive me my disjoints in thought processes and communications. Trust me that it all works out somehow in the wash, at least in the brain pinging around inside my skull.]

Tomorrow is Cora’s birthday. She’ll be one year old, which is a pretty momentous event. We had great plans for celebration: Saturday was supposed to be the big family party, with aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and great-grandparents in attendance. But it was supposed to snow Friday night into Saturday, and we were concerned that folks wouldn’t feel safe driving, so we moved the party to Monday. Unfortunately, we misjudged, and the title of this newspaper article tells the tale: Snowstorm Pummels Washington Area. So, instead of hoopla from Friday delayed to Monday, everyone is snowed in in their own little houses, and Cora’s birthday will be spent playing with just Mom and Dad.

Now the question is how much of a hoopla do we throw for our one year old? We’ve had the balloons up since Thursday, and Cora and our cat Joe have happily been pulling on the strings. But do we decorate with streamers? Do we put out the other decorations? And, the one I’m personally grappling with, do I decorate the 3-d duck cake that’ll take me probably 2+ hours to decorate? We have cupcakes – Cora actually had one this evening. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to just decorate the cupcakes then go through the headache of decorating this large fowl? (The cake’s already baked, but baking the cake is the smallest part of the effort.)

The rational side of me says that Cora won’t know the difference, and that 2+ hours is a whole lot of time to spend on something. But if I was willing to do that when there were people coming over, what does that say about my motivations? Admittedly, Cora has never really seen a cake before, so the fact that this one is shaped like a duck won’t have much impact on her. When she’s older, that Mom makes cool cakes for her birthday might seem neat. Now, though, is it worth it to Mom to spend that much time? And the sad answer is, no. Apparently, I was willing to make the cake when I’d get the glory from the other folks attending, but I’m not willing to do it when it’s just my daughter and my husband, particularly when there are perfectly acceptable, newly-minted toddler-sized cupcakes on hand.

Love’s when he spends hours holding our little girl so that she can fall asleep peacefully. Love’s when he brings me a cup of tea while I’m getting ready for work. Love’s when he respects my career aspirations as highly as his own. Love’s when he prays for our family at the dinner table.

Love’s when I recognize his acts of love, work to not take them for granted, and enjoy scheming and executing similar small things that add up, between us, to a something much bigger.

Happy almost Valentine’s Day, my love!

Found whilst seeking a recipe/instruction set to make a rubby ducky cake for my daughter for her birthday:
“Duck jailed for cake theft”

From the same site:
“The Beard Liberation Front, an informal network of beard wearers, says clean shaven men lead more stressful lives as they have to get out of bed earlier every day.”
So _that’s_ why I’ve never seen my dad without a beard. . .

And it just gets better. . .

A priest brewing beer in his washing machine. . .
“A priest without alcohol, that’s the wrong combination,” he argued.
“Jesus didn’t say, take this healthy camomile tea, he offered wine.”

The customer says: we need to be able to add data to the system.
The software engineer says: No problem. Add new rows to the database.
The customer says: But we’ll need new data fields – we need to be able to say that our data now has new attributes, and the GUI has to be able to handle that without coding changes.
The software engineer scratches her head for a while (a long while) and finally says: Eureka! I’ve got it! I am invincible! [Our software engineer is a fan of the GoldenEye James Bond movie . . . insert your own mental image of our heroine in the appropriate pose.] We’ll just write the code in this convoluted way – and your system will be flexible to the nth degree.
The customer says: But I need it flexible to the n+Zth degree! I want to also stretch it in this hitherto unknown way that nearly approaches the bounds of intelligence in computing. The system has to be flexible enough to allow me to add new concepts and entities to it, and relationships between entities that not even Solomon could comprehend, without coding changes.
Interjection of paying client, since the customer is the associate of the paying client, but isn’t actually paying for the work: Oh, and you need to do it based on this code base here – that knows about 1 entity and no relationships, so that we can retrofit this into this earlier system.
The software engineer says:(in a professional and wise tone with her fingers in her ears and her tongue out) Pfffffft.

[The previous blog entry is based upon a true story. The names have changed to protect the guilty-as-all-get-out parties. The software engineer regrets any opportunities missed to say ‘Pfffffft’ in real life. And waits for inspiration. And hopes it comes in the form of very good beer.]

Teen gets his head ripped off his body, dangling only by his spinal cord, and lives! That was weird enough, but in the newspaper account, it mentions him 1) hearing his friend screaming, and 2) summoning his pastor to the hospital before the surgery that saved him. How freaky to be conversing with a dangling head! And boy, you’d think that all of that would somehow be blocked out of your brain as some too-traumatic memory, or else just the trauma itself would send your body into such shock that you’d be knocked unconscious. Instead, the guy’s awake and interacting. Can you imagine the reaction of the medics who first got to the scene? That’d give me nightmares for the rest of my life!

I got glasses not too long ago: one pair for close-up work, one pair for driving, to help deal with a mild astigmatism. When I first started wearing the close-up glasses, I noticed that windows on my computer started looking like trapezoids, rather than rectangles – the left and right boundaries were parallel, but the top and bottom slanted out. After a bit of wearing the glasses, I stopped noticing the effect. Just took off my glasses, though, after a couple of hours on the computer, and now I’m seeing trapezoids without my glasses. Freaky. . .

Flowers: I love to have them around the house, and my cat loves to eat them. Ran across the following postcard out there in the digital ether of cyberspace – thought I’d share it.

Amazon has a Wish-list feature – Burpee’s ought to, too. . . Included on my wish-list would be the gardener who’d come along to keep me from either accidentally killing off whatever I try to plant outside or from planting something that in various places would be considered a weed that attempts to take over gardens (our mint plants and yarrow plants come to mind).

PDA – in this case, personal digital assistant, rather than public display of affection. Though, if I win my latest auction at UBid for a Handspring Treo 90 , I may have to kiss the delivery man when it arrives.

I had an early model Palm Pilot several years ago, and loved it. Being the frugal person that I am, I had bought it off a friend of mine who had to get the newest, greatest version of the Palm. Thus, I got a Palm at a great price, and he got a subsidization for his latest geek fix. Worked out well all around. But, then I dropped my Palm and busted its screen. And rather than buy a new Palm I decided to stick to a paper organizer format.

For better than a year, though, I’ve had this yearning to return to electronic. For 2001’s Christmas, I convinced myself that until I knew better that I wouldn’t drop a PDA, I’d better stick to a DayTimer system, so my hubby got me an organizer set for Christmas. And it worked well. Still works well. But I still keep thinking I could do so much better with an electronic system. I could keep my work schedule synchronized with my personal schedule better (since my work schedule’s kept on Outlook); I could better keep track of the countless email addresses and other contact info I may need at my disparate locations (two offices for work, plus home); I could more easily. .. The lists keeps getting bigger.

So, I’ve finally decided that the Treo’s the one for me. It’ll synchronize with the applications that I want it to, it has a reasonable amount of memory and a color screen, it has its own built-in keyboard, and it has the ability to expand it to do other schtuff as necessary through an expansion slot. Now I’m seeking it at a more reasonable price than its nearly $300 retail. (Remember, I dropped the last one. . .) Desperately crossing my fingers that the one I’m bidding on at UBid winds up with me. Tried this earlier this week and got bid out at the last minute. The auction’s over in 30 minutes, so here’s hoping that Cora continues to snooze for those thirty minutes so that I can have a shot at getting that Treo.