WTF Wicko!

My previous post was about a new cd release from Coldplay, one of my favorite bands. At this particular point in my life, I think it is safe to say that my top dawg band of all time is Radiohead. Let me digress back to when I first became aware of this new and upcoming band called Radiohead.

Way back in 1993 I had moved up to a college town where people called University of North Texas, “school”. I guess people learned stuff there, but I learned everything a person shouldn’t have learned in college. Anyhow, I’ll save this for another post. During my time of blowing financial aid, I was really getting into local music from Denton, TX. Bands like The Nixons, The Toadies, Radish (Ben Kweller’s old band) to name a few, then other national acts coming through Dallas like Our Lady Peace, Nirvana and Pearl Jam kept my music wiener on high alert. Then one day I heard a song called “Creep” from a band I had not heard of called Radiohead. The song kind of tailed on the grunge sound, but the singer had this harmony to his voice unlike the others. Ripcord was another favorite on their release called ‘Pablo Honey’.

Then the album that thrust them into the great band status hit in 1995, “The Bends”. Wow, where do I start with this one? How about I just list all the tracks:

1. Planet Telex
2. The Bends
3. High and Dry
4. Fake Plastic Trees
5. Bones
6. Nice Dream
7. Just
8. My Iron Lung
9. Bulletproof… I Wish I Was
10. Black Star
11. Sulk
12. Street Spirit (fade out)

All of these songs have their greatness.  But most importantly, this album started the change in Radioheads direction of music.  While other bands were headed in a similar path, Radiohead became experimental and went off into a world of their own with the releases of “OK Computer”, “KID A”, “Amnesiac” and “Hail to the Thief”.   All of these were very far off the beaten path, but heading right down the path that is “Radiohead”.

Towards the end of 2007, Radiohead announced they were releasing their new album called “In Rainbows” to the public for a ‘you name the price’ type of thing.  Most people I know paid less than 5 cents for it.  I paid zero for it.  Who would have thought a year later I want to spend more money on Radiohead to make up for my free copy of ‘In Rainbows’.  I’ve gone to their concert and brought 11 great friends with probably the best seats I’ve ever had for a cool concert. I’ve paid crazy money for some weak ass t-shirts for sale at the show and I’ve also paid for new bonus tracks released to iTunes users. Either way, I’ve put pleny of money back in their pockets for such a superb album.

One of the newest Radiohead purchases is called ‘In Rainbows - From the Basement‘.  I downloaded it from iTunes tonight.  It features 10 video tracks of Radiohead performing the In Rainbows album From The Basement. It is just like being at the concert, except it’s just you and them.

The music on this album is some of the best Radiohead has ever put out and I’m just glad I gave them another try after the previous oddity albums. It’s been almost a year since I first downloaded the music and I still get very excited to hear the tracks again and again.

If you are good with iTunes protected files and want to check out In Rainbows From the Basement, then take a peak over here and download. No password will be given, so you can find the way to convert .mp4 to .avi on your own.

Well, I have to state my allegiance to one of the coolest bands to ever grace the known music industry. You might have your Radiohead, whom is one of my all time top favorite bands, or you might have The Muse, who is also one of my all time top favorite bands. But right in the middle of these is a band I hold true and dear to my musical heart. Why? I’m not sure. I’m really big on bands or music that inflicts musical moody trauma on my heart. I know, I know, throwing the word “heart” in my description probably puts me in the ‘gay world’ for some of you douche bags, but the fact of the matter is, Coldplay is one of the most heartfelt bands out today.

At one time it was U2. Next it was Radiohead. Then it was U2 again. Then Radiohead again. Next Coldplay jumped into the mix. Then Radiohead. Then Coldplay. And Coldplay continued on their amazing trail of expectations for their new album, Viva la Vida.

For the new album, Coldplay moved everyone into a house in London where the band mates were able to re-kindle the flames between one another. The producer, can’t remember who he’s produced, but he said “you guys need to get close to one another” and they did. The new Viva la Vida album is a really unique album compared to the rest of what they’ve put out. While it is a little out there compared to most of their work, you can tell the band is a single unit and they are as tight as they’ve ever been. Maybe it’s due to Chris seeing Johnny’s draws on a daily basis.

One song called “Yes” is a high energy song that is very familiar to the 80’s - 90’s Dinosaur Jr. sound I completely dug back in the day. There’s really nothing to complain about this song as it sets me back many years to a happy, well, extremely happy time in my life.

The obvious tracks I tried to leave out because most of us have already heard the greatness of Coldplay. I have to admit, I’m very skeptical of this new album, but I will give it a fair shake. I think the people that are on the fence with Coldplay..ie, music snobs, music critics and so on, will probably give this album a huge thumbs down. I like it because I like the band, but it’s definitely not one of my favorites. At least not yet.

Go Coldplay and Go Fishing!

****UPDATE****
After reading through this, I promise I’m not as much of a douche as I sound like. HA! I had a drink or two.
**************

If you are like me, remembering things is getting to be quite the task and when I do think of things, it’s usually while in my car or away from the computer.  What I usually do have with me is my mobile phone.  The problem is, typing messages on my phone is usually a beating, so if I do take the time to send myself an email reminder, I’ve as brief as possible.

What I have always looked for is some sort of voice to text software that allowed me to talk to my phone and it translates my voice into text and sends it wherever I need it to send it.  My search has been so empty for so long, I’ve often kicked the idea around to just find the right people and have it done myself.

I think my search is over.  I was reading an affiliate magazine about useful applications and one caught my attention called Jott. Jott is a web based application where you begin by creating a free account with them. You enter your mobile phone number, email addresses and then begin adding contacts and even lists if you want. Once the account is setup with contacts, using Jott is as simple as this:

1. You: Call 866-JOTT-123
2. Jott: Who do you want to Jott?
3. You: Myself
4. Jott: Beep!
5. You: Type up the meeting minutes and send them to Sean.
6. Jott: Got it.
7. You: Hang up.

Then your message is translated to text and sent to your email on your file. If you were going to send it to someone added to your contact list, you would voice their name, confirm, then it’s sent to either their email or phone listed in your account.

Things improved even better when I found they have “Jott for Blackberry”. What is worse than reading your emails on your phone and needing to respond, but not wanting to peck out the letters to give a decent response? With Jott for Blackberry, you open the email, then click the Blackberry button and select “Reply with Jott”. It walks you through talking your reply and Jott does the rest.

Do yourself a favor and at least try it out. There are no strings attached to it. Matter of fact I’m still trying to figure out where they are going to make their money. A company can’t survive on their good looks! Jott - Voice to Text is a wonderful application.

GIVE ME MY OUTLOOK BACK!

Are you running Outlook 2007, maybe with Vista, but something happened and the only way you can boot Outlook back to a working condition is by running it in safe mode? Well I might have just the bit of information you’ve been searching for!

First, let me highlight some search queries that might help others find this post, because I’ve been running in safe mode for almost ONE YEAR and I just figured it out. I’ve taken the year of periodic searching, reading, testing, uninstalling / reinstalling, cussing, complaining and frustration due to this Microsoft Outlook 2007 issue, and decided to put it all to use in helping others going through the same thing.

If any of these peak your interest, read below:
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> Outlook will only start in safe mode

> My Microsoft Outlook 2007 freezes at spash screen and will not start

> I have to end outlook task and restart in safe mode to get it to start

> I can’t open my Microsoft Outlook 2007 run on Vista

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There are probably a ton other search queries, so if you find this post useful, please comment below and leave the search query you used to find this page. That way others can get the same help. Why do I want to help? Well, like I said above, it’s going on almost 1 full year that I have been looking for a page that helps me figure out this damn bug. I have yet to find one, but I got lucky today knowing what I’ve read before and then stumbling on something by chance.

This is what I’ve been doing for the last year (this isn’t the fix, but if the fix doesn’t work, this is how I’ve gotten around it):

1. Start my computer, or simply login if it’s already on
2. I click my Outlook icon to start my mail and it opens the splash screen, sometimes the program window will appear behind it, but not always.
3. At this stage, everything just comes to a screeching halt. Something just prevents it from loading about halfway through.
4. I then press CTRL + ALT + DEL and get to my task manager window, then click the tab at the top that says “Processes”, which will show all of the current running processes.
5. Find the Outlook.exe process, or processes (mine always shows two outlook) and highlight each one, right click, press “End Task”. Click Ok to confirm ending the process. (Don’t close the taskbar window, just in case you need to do it again)
6. Once you see no more Outlook processes running, go back to your Outlook icon and open your mail again. You should get a window appear that states Outlook did not shut down properly, or something to this effect and ask if you would like to start it in “SAFE MODE”. On this screen click “YES” to start in safe mode.
7. This will open Outlook in its basic form without any plugins or any of your previous saved settings, which really sucks if you do it on a daily basis. Once it is loaded up, you have your mail and can work almost as normal as before.

Obviously I try to leave my computer on as long as possible since it’s a good thing to practice anyway, rather than restarting it daily, but it also allowed me to not have to go through all those steps above. Makes me want to throw my computer out the window…especially if you’re in the middle of getting an important email out and something happens that shuts Outlook down. Ugggh! Enough ranting, but I hope you understand I’m actually happy right now. Now to how I fixed this horrible bug that Microsoft seemed to never be able to figure out what was causing it.

The problem seemed to be due to “Add-Ins” for Outlook. Something was preventing the Add-Ins to load. I was able to get to the Add-Ins and disable what I could disable, but some things wouldn’t disable. I tried going into the registry to disable there, but I’m not too confident, so I didn’t want to screw things up. I read on one site where Vista has added search indexing to the mix and once it is enabled, all kinds of things can go wrong. I concluded this was my problem to prevent Outlook, but all of my attempts to disable it fell short. I’ll go through two things here. I recommend doing the first one first, give it a shot loading in normal mode, if it still doesn’t work, then go through the second step.

STEP 1 - Disable Outlook 2007 Add-Ins

1. Open Outlook into safe-mode as mentioned above.
2. Go to your toolbar menu and click >>TOOLS >>TRUST CENTER
   
3. The Trust Center window will open, look for and click the option “ADD-INS”
4. In the Add-Ins screen verify that you see “Windows Search Email Indexer” under the Active Application Add-Ins
   
5. At the bottom of the Add-Ins screen look for the MANAGE: drop down menu and select: COM Add-Ins and click GO
6. A smaller window will appear labeled “COM Add-Ins”. You’ll see all of the add-ins in a list with checkboxes next to them
   
7. Scroll to the “Windows Search Email Indexer” and try to uncheck the checkbox.
8. If it unchecks, click “OK”, then shut Outlook down and try to restart Outlook in normal mode to see if it is successful. If you get into Outlook with normal mode, then you are good to go.
9. If you cannot uncheck due to an error saying “The connected state of Office Add-Ins registered in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE cannot be changed.” or if you unchecked but still couldn’t start in normal mode, then you’ll need to follow my STEP 2 list below.

If the Add-Ins STEP 1 didn’t do the job, this definitely should get it resolved.

STEP 2 - DISABLE THE WINDOWS SEARCH SERVICE

1. Press the Windows START button in bottom left of window
2. Open the CONTROL PANEL
3. Open the ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS
4. Open the SERVICES
5. Once the SERVICES window opens, scroll down and find the service named “WINDOWS SEARCH”, double click to open
   
6. Once the Windows Search Properties open, make sure you are on the GENERAL tab at the top of the window
7. Look for “Startup Type:” and click the drop down and select “DISABLED”
8. Look for “Service status:” and click the “STOP” button and wait for the service to stop
9. After the service status says “Stopped”, click APPLY, then click OK.
10. Verify in the Services window that the Windows Search service has no status listed and the startup type is “disabled”.
    
11. Now try and open Outlook in normal mode. If Outlook is open, close it and restart it in normal mode. You should see Outlook open and get past the splash screen quickly.

When getting in through normal mode, you will see a message saying your windows search has been disabled. Just click the checkbox stating you don’t want to see that message any longer, then OK. You’re back in Outlook and running with everything as before…well, except for the windows search.

If you have a lot of emails, like me, I would recommend the Google Desktop Search application. It’s free and it indexes your entire computer, including emails, for easy searching. The search results are returned in a fraction of what Windows Search returns. That and it doesn’t cause your Outlook to not load.

Hope this helps someone! Please leave a comment and let me know.

Kind of off topic here, or do I really even have topics?  I’m so pumped for this upcoming NFL season, most importantly the chances of my favorite team, Dallas Cowboys.  They’re making so much noise right now and we’re not even in pre-season.  I’ll go ahead and throw this out, I think the Cowboys are going to be one of the elite teams this year and be the favorites to win the Super Bowl.

Another cool thing is I’ve been going to a Chiropractor for a few weeks who also works on quite a few Cowboy players.  Just yesterday I walked out of my electric shock treatment and there’s Greg Ellis standing in front of me.  Pretty cool.  It’s tough to act cool since I’m a huge fan.  But I’ll respect my chiropractor’s scene and not act the dork.

That’s all.  Back to work.

This is a good question. WTF do I think of our competition? Well, how you can best describe it is how Tony Romo might feel about Eli Manning. Competition drives you. Without it, you can become complacent and not really try to be better. Some people can compete against themselves and do well, but I think there is nothing better than a little competition.

I’m not mad at any of our competition. Sure, I’ll have my opinion about all of them, but I respect anyone that runs a business, not to mention if they compete against us. You have to be a fan of your competition or else you can easily be surprised. For example, I’m a big fan of Izea’s rockstartup.com. I just wish it was a little more current than 6 months behind. Of course, I think if they really want to sell it to network television, they need to make it a lot more edgy. The American audience prefers debauchery in a reality show and rockstartup is as straight laced as it comes. Throw in some drunk nights where people fight, hook up and derail, then maybe it gets picked up. Although I enjoy it, most TV audiences won’t be all that interested in an all positive story.

I think the biggest competition of any company is the company itself. The competition isn’t going to be the one that drives you into the ground. If you feel you’re getting passed by, it is your own responsibility to do what it takes to pull yourself back into the front, or at least close enough to make ends meet.

This is all getting a bit too ‘blah blah blah’ for me to continue. So remember kids, don’t jar.

Hey blog. It’s me, again. I wanted to talk a little about something I was reading a few minutes ago. Recently a marketing guy who specializes in linkbait, wrote a crazy hoax story about these teenagers going on a crazy bender with their pops credit card. The story was picked up by mainstream media and made it to major TV networks and all over the internet. The bait was set and everyone took it. Huge success, right? Well, not quite. The author of the story felt the need to celebrate the success of his work and announced he did it and it was a fake story. Now money.co.uk has to make a public apology to hopefully gain their readers trust back.

Now my point of this post really has nothing to do with this story, it has to do with some things I read where people were discussing it. The terms “White Hat” and “Black Hat” were used and it really made me want to vent about these terms, along with “Grey Hat”. I briefly told the story above because I want to use it as an example in my thoughts. Others who were criticizing the hoax were referring to the author as a “Black Hat”, then in the same breath, referring to themselves as “White Hat”. Pffft!

Just to make sure we’re on the same page with these terms, let me give you the definitions most people put behind the terms:

• White Hat - online marketers who make it known they will not go outside the rules of search engines to help their clients. It is more of protecting their own name rather than helping clients.
• Grey Hat - online marketers who are open to explore different tactics to help their clients, but usually stay within the ‘good practices’.
• Black Hat - online marketers that will do whatever tactic they can to reach the top spot and get the most traffic with no regard of what the consequences may be.

Now that we have the basic definitions explained, I can go into each a little deeper. These terms are as stupid as it comes, but hey, it is what it is. Let me just preface this with my definition of anyone that provides online marketing in any form, “one who markets clients online does so to help the client reach their goals in return for compensation.”

I would like to now give you my take on these stupid labels people put on themselves and others.

White Hat marketers can definitely be good people, that is definitely not in question. But usually these people are more about promoting their own name rather than promoting their customers. If Dell comes to you with a budget of $100k per month and they want you to buy links, build doorway pages, use cloaking and other tactics that are against search engine TOS, are you really going to turn them away and tell them you are against those things? Most good white hat labeled people would try to educate the client and get them aligned with how they view the world, but a customer like Dell will usually have their mind made up and want things to go their way. At that point, a ‘true’ white hat would bail on Dell and hold true to their beliefs. Of course, we all know this person doesn’t exist.

White hats are so worried about their name and reputation, it usually becomes more about themselves than the customers. Sure, you want to steer the customer to what you believe in, but it’s really not about you. These are also the same cats that will tattle on anyone that does better than them because white hat never finishes first. The only way they have a chance is to tattle on grey and black hats in hopes they are penalized by the engines. (example of this species: Doug Heil) Doug is the biggest of self proclaimed white hats there is. He’ll kill your mother and molest her dead body if it meant he was viewed as a white hat. Doug, i’m sure you’ll read this since you probably google alert your name, but you know it’s true. Why can’t you just do your work without making so much noise about people and shaking your finger at people who might do things you don’t approve of? It’s because you are a douche bag. No offense, just speaking my mind and asking WTF!

Black hats try so hard to get their clients where they want to be, but they really don’t think that far ahead of what might happen to the clients down the road. There are black hats that are great at what they do and some that are typical. They most definitely put the customer first and do whatever they can to reach the finish line, but they don’t always think things through. It’s not about their name or reputation, like a white hat, but it is the opposite extreme of what a white hat would do. Also, black hats aren’t really into the game of telling everyone how good they are, so they’re a bit of a mystery. I would label most people that are really good at online marketing, black hats. You can’t get someone where they want to be without applying techniques that the white hat world would frown upon.

The last thing is the Grey Hats. These are the guys who will do what it takes, yet not go too far. They’re the one’s who might throw out hoax stories to build linkbait (although they shouldn’t admit to it when it becomes a hit). They usually produce great results without any storyline to go with it. They seek great results and will go on uncommon grounds to produce the results. They are conscious of the clients well being, yet they are also conscious of what might happen if they made a wrong turn. They don’t promise results, but they are sure of their work. It’s the perfect of two worlds. They also are very good at keeping their mouth’s shut and not telling the world their secrets.

The point of this post is that there is not one hat that is right or wrong. We’re all online marketers and we all have one duty; help our customers. It shouldn’t be about your name or company, it should be about producing results for your customer. The guy who wrote the hoax story did an exceptional job, the only fault was admitting it was fake. Call him black hat, whatever, he sent more traffic to those guys site than anyone has in years.

Think of it like a tax man. Would you want a guy who is on the IRS side of things and makes you pay as much as possible? Or maybe a guy who pushes the lines and saves you as much as possible, without getting you in trouble, or a guy who saves you more than legally possible and 2 years down the line you’re hit with the law and you have to pay huge penalties?

A rat is a rat is a rat. What are you? I’m a rat.

I’m still here, but haven’t been “HERE”.  I think I might have a direction I want to go with this blog.  Make it more of my life experiences, day to day activities and whatever happens to be in my head at the time.

Something so simple is so hard.  You want to stay interesting, but then you think, “why?”, no one will read this blog.  Maybe the random surfers that might stumble upon my blog, but who knows.

We’ll see if I can hold to my word.

In case you haven’t heard the “twins marry” story, twins who were separated at birth, later came together and fell in love, then married.  It’s one of those really bizarre stories that is shocking and sad.  Imagine, you are not accepted by your parents and you have that to deal with all of your life.  Then you finally meet someone that you seem to have so much in common with and almost think everything the other thinks.  You think, “This is my soul mate!”  You marry this person whom you think is your soul mate, then after marriage, you’re told you just married not only a sibling, but your twin sibling.

The twins identities are being concealed and that’s a smart move.  Too bad the American press doesn’t have enough class to do something like that.  They’d have their pictures and names plastered all over the place.  Kudos to the British press and legal system.

Hope those two easily get over what happened and celebrate that they’ve found each other.

That’s a great question whoever asked me that.  I’ve been where I am and I am who you thought we were!  You ever see those NFL commercials where the Rams coach was answering questions and they edit some random dudes asking questions to the coach?  Kind of funny and goes along with what I just said.

No, I’ve just been lazy.  It’s coming up on a new year and I’m dedicating myself to getting back into a good work groove.  I think I’ve fallen off the habit of working hard lately and I want to get back where I was.  Whether that means I’ll be blogging here more, I have no idea, but I’ll sure try.

On to other sports, the Cowboys are going into the last game of the season with a 13-2 record.  They’ve secured the top seed in the NFC and the road to the bowl comes through BIG D, as they always say.  They should always preface that line with “If they win all their games”.  Because if they lose game 1, the road then goes through another city.  I’m pretty pumped.  I hope the Boys win big over the Skins this weekend to go into the playoffs on a positive note.  I also hope the Patriots win for the perfect regular season, then win all games to the Superbowl, where they meet the Cowboys.  Then I hope the Cowboys completely dismantle the Patriots in the Bowl.  What a great story that would be.

Christmas is over and I couldn’t be happier.  Call me Scrooge, call me whatever you want, but it’s a beating.  Families getting mad over when you come over and kids getting too much shit.  I’m going to start a collection bin in our garage where I strategically place 10 toys each week.  At the end of 6 months, or whenever I begin to overflow, I donate them to children who aren’t as lucky.  It kills me looking at my kids going from toy to toy and destroying our house when I know some poor family can’t afford to get their kids 1 thing.  I’ll be helping make other kids happy and emptying my house of clutter at the same time! 

Ok, I’m done for now.  Late.