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I'm still experiencing a bit of a holdup on releasing my new book, "Corporate Ties," for a number of reasons. The biggest, though, is that I want the book to be super awesome and not cause too many issues, which of course, is causing a delay. In the meantime, I've picked up a bit with the marketing side. I've enlisted two graphic designers to assist me with artwork for the book.
As a writer of workplace novels, I try to stay up on the latest and greatest new business books that are out there. There is generally a clear distinction between self-help and narratives, but I do not think it always has to be like that.
I received an email recently about a new movie and a contest for a trip to New York. The new movie, "Fix" starring Olivia Wilde, seems like it could be pretty decent. It's based on a true story, centering around the director trying to bail his brother out of jail in a single day.
I'm sitting in my cube right now, wearing shorts, a T-shirt and tennis shoes. On the other side of the sensibility coin, analyst firm Gartner is predicting that avatars will have business dress codes by 2013. How do people come up with this stuff?
The Library of Congress is up to its old tricks again. Chronicling America has a number of scanned newspapers from 1880 to 1922 from various American states. The site, which is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, allows users to search based on topics and zoom in to read papers from the more than 100 years ago.
Spam has arrived, so much so that it is now more widely ignored than ever before. People in general, according to a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life project, receive more spam but don't seem to care too much about it.
A recent PC World article shows that the main reasons people don't see spam as a threat is because the volume of messages has decreased, along with the fact that people are becoming more knowledgeable regarding spam.
I decided to write a little bit here about my hobby of collecting trading cards. Maybe this will turn into something of interest to the Internet, or at least my kids will have some background info on me when I move along.
The first time I remember receiving cards as a gift was the Christmas of 1983. We were at a neighbor’s house - the boy who lived there was in my brother’s class - and Santa was giving out 1983 Donruss rack packs. The most interesting thing about this is that Santa was either related to or was Vinegar Bend Mizell, a former major leaguer.
Just in case, you might want to start stashing a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in your freezer. For now, the U.S. courts denied Smuckers a patent on its PB&J pastries, but you never know what will happen the next time out.
I currently have a stack of books at home that I should be reading. Unfortunately, there's only so much time in the day, so it's difficult to rationalize buying even more books. Still, I manage to do so, with the hopes of eventually reading them, maybe if it snows 7 feet and I cannot leave for a month.
For people who want to read the book but cannot get to a bookstore, a viable option is checking it out from your local library. "The Developers" is available for checkout at the following libraries:
More than two years ago, I wrote a column about how people think I look like other people. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you see this), I'm not the only person who experiences this look-a-like problem. Here are some comments: