Month: November 2008

Several times over the past few weeks I’ve had friends and blog readers question my decision to go back to a traditional ASP.NET or PHP Web programming job.  “You ought to be in marketing,” they’ve told me.  “I have no doubt you’re a good programmer, but your creativity, your communication, and your intuition are your strongest suits.”

Know what?  I kind of agree.  I’d love to get into marketing, where I could really apply my creativity.  It would be fun and I think it would be a great use of my talents, far more so than another programming job.  Not that there isn’t any creativity in programming, but “Find a way to import 10,000,000 records from a third party data provider while optimizing for speed and maintaining 99.99% accuracy” just isn’t a problem that excites me a lot.  However, I think my knowledge of what works on the Internet, from the lessons I’ve learned over the past 4 years as a successful blogger and the past year doing affiliate marketing websites, would be a huge plus in a marketing position.

The thing is, would anyone hire me?  I don’t have a business degree (I have an Master of Science in Computer Science), and in fact have never taken a business course in my life.  Honestly, I’m kind of proud of that fact, as I don’t believe a business degree is necessary for success in the business world.  However, those doing the hiring – those who have spent 4-6 years of their lives earning a business degree – may feel differently.

The other problem is, if I took a marketing position, I’d likely have to take a pay cut from the money I earned in my last two full-time positions as a senior developer.  I don’t mind a 20-30% pay cut if it’s more interesting work, and I’d still earn enough to maintain my lifestyle Downtown.  However, an entry-level position would likely be close to a 50% pay cut, and I couldn’t maintain the life I enjoy on that amount.  For that matter, I don’t think an entry-level position in marketing would be appropriate, anyway.  The lessons I’ve learned and the intuition I’ve gained over the past 15 years should vault me past entry-level, I believe.

Anyone out there got advice for me?  Hit me up at paul@paulryburn.com if you do.  I’ve announced that I’m on a hiatus from job hunting until December 1, but this is a field in which I’d be willing to come back prematurely.

Lots of stuff today.  Last night was Rapscallion Party IX, where we cashed in our trivia winnings at Jillian’s and the Flying Saucer.  On the walk down there, I noticed two parties worth posting about.  I also have some new beer and happy hour info for you today.

First of all, there will be a party with the Dos Equis Girls next Friday, November 21 at Rio Loco.  You’ll be able to mix and match buckets of Mexican beer.  Sounds like fun.  Rio Loco has Dos Equis Amber and my favorite, Dos Equis Lager, on tap.

Then there’s a party scheduled for Wednesday, November 26, or Thanksgiving Eve, at Big Foot Lodge.  There will be drink and food specials, although they haven’t posted specifics yet.  If you’re not going over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving, just come to Big Foot and get drunk.  You can learn more about the Coors Light Super Cold Draft they serve at parties here.

Calhoun’s now has Blue Moon’s seasonal Full Moon Winter Ale on tap.  I’d attempt to describe its taste, but something prevented me from trying the Winter Ale yesterday (could be the $1.50 PBR).

BB King’s and Itta Bena just sent me some new specials.  Here’s the list:

Happy hour – Itta Bena and B.B. King’s
Mon-Fri 3pm to 7pm
$2.50 Domestic Bottles
$2 PBR
$4 Wells
$4 House Wine
$4 Sweet Tea Vodka Ice Picks and Sweet Tea Mojitos
The Dirty-Dirty – 4 PBR’s, 12 Hot Wings, and Fried Pickles $20  7 days a week

B.B. King’s Sunday specials – 12pm to 6pm
$4 Appletinis
$4 Mimosas
$4 Bloody Marys
$4 House Wine
$4 Well Drinks
$4 Sweet Tea Vodka Ice Picks and Sweet Tea Mojitos
$8 Buckets of Beer- Domestic
$2 PBR

Itta Bena specials
Sunday Night 1/2 off Steaks
Monday 1/2 Price Bottles of Wine
Wednesday Chefs Choice 1 glass of wine, 1 Entree,  and choice of Appetizer or Dessert for $25

All right… that should be enough info to hold you for a while.  I’ll post pics of Rapscallion Party IX soon.  Got some good ones of the Nuh-Uh Girl eating.  Right now, though, I have to get ready for Terry’s 50th birthday brunch at the Majestic Grille.

I was just now thinking about one of the other questions from Wednesday’s PR roundtable… “Do you make money from your blog?  Do you accept advertising?”  I’ll provide a detailed answer later, but the short answer is, right now, I don’t make money from advertising.  In the past I tried Google ads and non-targeted affiliate links, and found them to be a waste of time and web space.  Right now the only links on my blog that make money are to my targeted affiliate stores and websites.

However, there’s the question of what to do with the space on the right sidebar currently occupied by the Obama banner.  It’s time for that to come down… Barack has won.  I wouldn’t have a problem putting an ad there, as long as it was for a product or service relevant to Downtown Memphis, so that it added value to this blog rather than subtracted from it.

After doing a little thinking, it occurred to me that the best ad I could put there would likely be one for a real estate agent who sells condos and houses Downtown (and possibly in other parts of Memphis as well).  But how would I price it?  I can post details of my non-RSS traffic (those who use RSS feed readers wouldn’t see the ad), but I’m not sure how to convert those pageviews into a dollar amount that makes sense.  I’d also have to deal with the fact that I have several friends in that industry who might expect preferential treatment, treatment I can’t afford to give them since my goal is to maximize revenue from that space.

So here’s what I’m thinking… what if I were to let the market set its own price?  I could run an eBay auction for that ad space for the month of December.  I’d throw in an hour of my time designing an attractive ad, if needed (the winning real estate agent would have to supply their own website to link to).  I’d post my non-RSS pageview numbers for the past 20 days and let people figure out for themselves how much it’s worth to be the only real estate agent on my blog, with their name and contact info in a prominent place on a blog that averages better than 1,000 non-RSS pageviews on weekdays.

Not sure if I’ll do it yet, but am seriously considering the idea… if you have thoughts, shoot me an e-mail at paul@paulryburn.com.

Another question asked at the PR luncheon I attended last Wednesday was, “Do you allow people to post anonymous comments on your blog?” I didn’t get to answer that one in the interests of time, so I thought I’d answer it here.

I keep the comments feature on my blog turned off.  I’m in the minority of the bloggers who do this, although I’m by no means alone.  For example, Seth Godin, who writes what is possibly the most widely-read blog on the Web, keeps comments turned off too.  Here are the reasons I don’t enable the comments feature:

1) To protect the people I know. By continuing to write a blog that has gotten so popular, I’m consciously making the choice to put myself out there, to open myself up to public scrutiny.  However, even though this blog has kind of become an unofficial Downtown Memphis blog, it’s still my personal journal as well, and I write about people I know.  I feel it’s kind of my duty to protect them as I write about them.  Whether I write about good friends like Mikey the Camera Nazi or the Nuh-Uh Girl, or people I don’t always see eye to eye with like MegHanZilla from Big Foot or bartender Brittney from the Saucer, I don’t want to provide a public forum where people can post details of their lives that they’d prefer to remain private.  When I write about people, I know how far is too far and am careful not to cross that line, but I can’t be sure anonymous commenters will do the same.

2) Because I hate racism. Read the comments on Commercial Appeal stories or Thaddeus Matthews’ blog, and you’ll get an idea why I’m not fond of comments on my own blog.  In this polarized city, discussion of any controversial news story – be it crime or politics or whatever – inevitably turns to race.  People have the right under the First Amendment to express racism and prejudice, I suppose, but I’m under no obligation to provide space on the Web for them to do it.

Surely the discussion on panhandling would have drawn a lot of racist comments, if I had allowed them on my blog.  However, it became clear that discussion on that issue was needed, so a friend and I started a forum, separate from my blog, where discussion was carefully controlled in order to keep it constructive.  A lot has been done about the panhandling problem as a result.

3) I don’t have time to deal with comments. I haven’t checked my tracker in about a week, but the last time I did, I saw that a week ago Tuesday was an all-time high, with 1,795 views in one day, counting RSS readers.  I worry that if I turned comments on, it would take an hour of my day or more to moderate them, to get rid of the inevitable comment spam, and to respond to those that needed a response.  It’s just not the best use of my time, time that I could otherwise spend building websites or going out and finding new information to blog about.

4) I want to keep control over what events get mentioned. In the roundtable Wednesday I described the blog as a “clearinghouse for information about Downtown,” but I don’t want to mention everything.  I don’t want people getting on here and cluttering the blog with events in Cordova that aren’t relevant to Downtowners.  I don’t want people getting on here and promoting causes I don’t support (such as Young Republicans, or far worse, that awful white supremacist conference that was in town last weekend).  I don’t want businesses that are known for lousy customer service to get on here and promote themselves.  I put my e-mail address on the blog, and if people want events mentioned, they can get in touch with me and I’ll make the call whether or not to post them.

It’s true that many people (including my co-panelists Wednesday) see a blog as a conversation between the blogger and the readers.  To some extent, I lose that aspect of the blog by keeping comments turned off.  However, I don’t think I lose it entirely – many of my readers e-mail me, and I e-mail back, and have become good friends with many readers over the years.  They’ve provided a lot of useful information that has added value to the blog – it’s just that, as I stated above, I want to maintain control over what information actually goes on there.

In summary, it’s a personal decision.  It just feels right.  There are lots of local bloggers who do enable the comments feature, and even allow anonymous comments, and I have great respect for them for doing so.  It’s just my own personal decision that this blog will run more smoothly with the comments off.

More answers questions from the PR roundtable to come.

Still sitting here at the Second Street branch office, trying to sort out a consulting job I’m doing.  Word of advice for anyone looking to start a website:  Do not use Network Solutions as your webhost.  Good Lord, they are a pain in the butt compared to GoDaddy.

But anyway, let’s get to the point of this post:  They just installed Schlafly APA on tap here.  Here’s a description of the beer from Schlafly’s website:

An American Pale Ale with a hearty dose of hop bitterness, flavor and aroma. We add hops directly into the finished beer to boost the fresh, fruity flavor and aroma of American hops.

ABV:5.9%
IBU: 50

Schlafly is a St.Louis brewery.  Haven’t tried the APA yet, and won’t today, considering that my favorite beer is on Fire Sale.

I’ve been reading this article on the chances dwindling for a bailout of the U.S. auto industry before Obama and the new Congress take office in January.  Republicans are blocking efforts for financial assistance.  Without aid before January, it’s possible that one or more of the Big Three automakers (particularly, GM) may fail.

I think the Republicans are right.  Let them fail.

“The financial straits that the Big Three find themselves in is not the product of our current economic downturn, but instead is the legacy of the uncompetitive structure of its manufacturing and labor force,” Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby said in a statement. “The financial situation facing the Big Three is not a national problem but their problem.”

Exactly.  They created this mess.  While Toyota was busy designing the Prius, GM was putting all its efforts behind big, gas-guzzling SUVs like the Chevy Avalanche and the Yukon XL.  Vehicles that now, nobody wants.  Too bad.  GM made a decision and it turned out to be the wrong one.  Make bad decisions, suffer the consequences.  They don’t deserve to be bailed out.

My suggestion is, instead of giving $25 billion to the car companies, spend $25 billion to create a WPA-style program that will employ the people who are affected by GM’s failure.  Put people to work building infrastructure, working on initiatives to improve the environment’s health, educating our children.  There’s a lot that needs to be fixed in this country other than the auto industry.  Here’s a chance to fix a lot of it, and at the same time provide for those who will lose their jobs.

The Fire Sale at the Flying Saucer, meaning the beer that is put on a discount price of $2.75 per draft pint, was scheduled to be Abita Turbo Dog today.  For those of you unfamiliar with Turbo Dog’s taste, go to the Memphis Zoo and ask for a sample of rhinoceros urine, and you’ll have a pretty close approximation.  It’s been on Fire Sale twice in the past two weeks already.

However, the day manager came in, saw Turbo Dog on the schedule, and said, “Oh, hell, no,” realizing that the Saucer would be the featured topic in my blog this afternoon, and not in a good way.  He changed the Fire Sale to something else.

The new Fire Sale?  Dos Equis Special Lager.

Revised plans for this afternoon:  I have to do a WordPress installation for a consulting client, but I’ll now be doing it from the Saucer while I sip Dos Equis Lager.  About 5, I’ll take the laptop home (earlier if it looks like rain), and come back up to the Saucer to enjoy some more Dos Equis Lager with the happy hour crowd.  Later this evening, I’ll see how much Dos Equis Lager it takes to tolerate the douchebags who show up on Friday nights.  I’ll likely stay at the Saucer drinking Dos Equis Lager no later than 2 AM, because they close at 2 AM.  If I’m still standing at that point, maybe I’ll top off the night with a PBR at Bardog.

If you want to thank me for influencing the Saucer to choose a Fire Sale that doesn’t taste like sewage, you can always click on my www.Buy-Paul-a-Beer.net website and leave a PayPal donation.  I think I’ve earned it today.

One of my readers sent this in yesterday.  I asked permission to post it because it contains lots of good info for sweet tea vodka fans:

I am a regular reader of your blog, and I moved out to Charleston from Memphis six months ago.  Sweet tea vodka is huge out there.  It’s now the number one selling flavored vodka in South Carolina and a huge favorite in summertime.  Here’s the proper way to mix it: equal parts sweet tea vodka and water, a generous wedge of lemon, and a sprig of mint.  The Charlestonians have even altered the Arnold Palmer (half lemonade, half sweet tea) into a John Daly version (obviously substituting the sweet tea for the vodka version).  It’s a great “roadie” drink.  Charleston recently started enforcing its public drinking laws, so whenever I’m walking downtown I mix a sweet tea vodka and water in a solo cup.  No cop can tell the difference.  Enjoy.

If you e-mailed me yesterday or this morning, I apologize if it takes me a little while to get back to you… I have 74 unread messages in my Inbox plus another 6 or 7 starred for follow-up.  The good news is, many of the e-mails are automatic notification that someone bought something from one of my websites.  Yay!  Just now someone bought some cubicle action figures.

Restaurant.com has a new promotion good through Monday, November 17.  Enter coupon code DESSERT at checkout to get 70% off.  That means $25 face-value certificates, which normally sell for $10, are $3 with the coupon code.  The discount is also good on their Dinner of the Month Club, which would make a good Christmas present if you know someone who dines out a lot.

The fire at the Holiday Inn Select was brought under control quickly, although fire trucks were still pulling up 40 minutes later (I can see the hotel out my window, although I never saw smoke or fire).  I’ve heard conflicting reports that it was a fire on the second floor of the parking garage, and that it was an electrical fire in a fourth-floor laundry room.

A new coffee shop, Harbor Town Coffee, opens today on Mud Island.  They’ll have a grand opening from 5 to 10:30 PM with free coffee, eats, and live music.  Free food… wonder if the Nuh-Uh Girl will show up?  They sell fair-trade coffee and eco-friendly products.

Also, Lansky 126 in the Peabody is having a party from 5 to 9 tonight to celebrate their expansion.  Free wine, music by DJ Tree.

The finals of the 2008 Amateur Salsa Competition are tonight at 8 PM at the Rumba Room.  You can watch finalists compete for $1000 in cash.

Looks like Pam and Terry have found a new home at the Tap Room… they’ll be playing there tomorrow evening from 7 to 11.

All right… got a ton to do, so I’m outta here for now.  Look for some more new website announcements soon.  I also got a great e-mail about sweet tea vodka, and will do a post about it as soon as I get permission from the person who sent it.

There’s a 2-alarm fire at the Holiday Inn Select on Union, across from the Peabody, that firefighters are fighting right now.