When your protest uses violence, you will prosper the very tyranny you claim to fight.
What we see in Ferguson, Missouri shows this exact point. People are angry and riot. This is not the first time this has happened in the US. Local police forces see this and worry it will happen in their towns, so they collect more and more military style equipment and tactics. This concerns many citizens and the loop becomes a vicious cycle. Love and Peace should be our first recourse, not violence. The former can overthrow tyrants, the latter will be used by tyrants to increase their grip. True and lasting change is created one person at a time and spread through Love.
Instead of turning to hate, live with Love. Seek the path of Forgiveness in all things. Despise not your Enemies. Love them and stand on Principles. Hearts are Converted with Love, not hate.
In the summer of 1979, the Army moved us from Seymour, Tennessee to Fort Belvoir, Virginia. After all, my father had made the Majors list and was in a Captain’s position. He was also in the Army Corp of Engineers and Fort Belvoir was their headquarters location at the time. This was my father’s third tour at Belvoir.
Most of the summer was spent trying to sell our house on Eldorado Circle in Seymour. The school year was starting to approach quickly and my mom, my brother and I still lived in Tennessee, while dad was getting settled into his new assignment. After having listed the house with a real estate agent, my parent’s decided to sell my owner. My grandfather made a sign and we put it in the front yard. Yes, the summer was interesting. Eventually, the Simpsons bought the house (No, not Homer and Marge).
The move to Fort Belvoir was like moving into a place both familiar and foreign. I have lived there in the early 70’s, though my memory of such was no longer in my head. After two weeks in visiting officers housing, we finally had a house on 21st Street. Today a search for T-436 21st Street will not reveal a house. Seems the house built in 1913 has been replaced at taxpayer expense. Oh well.
I was going into the 6th grade in 1979. My brother and I would for one year attend the same school: Markham Elementary. This would be the first year I would play the viola and the first time I would meet Edwina Marquand.
Along with horses, Edwina Marquand had a bit of a thing for me. Though I liked girls, I became too enamored with Keleigh Linn to fully notice. Edwina and Aileen were one of two sets of twins in my 6th grade class. On a side note, I believe Keleigh Linn Sylvester on FaceBook is the “other woman”.
Anyway, in 7th grade, though both Edwina and I went to Hayfield Intermediate School in Alexandria, Virginia, we did have any classes together. From time to time, I’d see her in the hallway and say hi. Yes, I liked her too by then, but time was not on my side.
One day in the summer of 1981, my father came home to inform us we were moving to Fort Ritchie, Maryland. My parents had been looking at possibly buying a house outside the DC area, but now that was off. The Army had a pressing need for my dad’s expertise as the Facilities Engineer in the mountains of Maryland. One weekend we drove up for a visit and a few weeks later we had moved.
All contact with Edwina Marquand were now broken. When I get nestalgic for finding former classmates, I do Google searches for her. Via Intelius, I have found an Edwina Marquand with past addresses at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. She is the right age, could it be her? I’ve no idea.
So Edwina, I’m putting the search out to the Universe. After all, I finally connected back with Leo, I mean Alex Fleig on Facebook. I found Glenneth’s blog site and even came across Tracy Janner via MySpace and then Facebook. I know it is possible to reconnect, go through the “what have you been doing all these years stage” and the, most likely, go about our merry lives.
English: Roasted coffee beans photographed using a macro technique. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Over the years, I’ve tried all manner of business. I’ve been in Amway. I did the iMall when it first started. I’ve tried Russ Dalbey’s real estate notes business. So naturally I had to try Coffee Shop Millionaire.
Like many people who have fallen so this scam, I came across a video narrated by Anthony Trister. Here he claims to show ClickBank accounts that he “hasn’t touched in 3-4 months” and are on “autopilot”. The numbers look impressive. A few thousands dollars in sales everyday can really add up. Wow. Tell me more.
Anthony goes how to say how this video will not be on the Internet for long and that it could be taken down at anytime. This is, of course, total bunk and is there to make you turn your purchase into an impulse buy. This is the take away maneuver.
The Coffee Shop Millionaire video continues to show sales by “ordinary people” who are using the system. The next phases being how much the program is worth. Anthony claims it is worth thousands. The truth? Simple searches using Google will show you all the Coffee Shop Millionaire program will teach you for free. Want to know about Google adwords? Search for it. Want to know how to use YouTube or FaceBook to generate leads? Search for it. The Internet has all this information for free. Why buy the Coffee Shop Millionaire to get free information?
This is why the price for the program drops the longer you watch the video. The value is given in thousands of dollars, yet the price starts in a few hundred. Then it drops to $97. Then $37. Some links will give you $10 off the price and therefore the worthless program can be had for $27. If this program was really worth thousands of dollars, do you really think it would be sold for $27? Image if this was a house and the bank claimed it was worth hundreds of thousands, but they stated it could be purchased for only $3,000. Would you wonder what is wrong with it?
Oh wait, there’s a users’ forum. Oh goody. Here people who have no idea what they are doing can exchange worthless ideas with one another. Yeah, no thanks.
In all, the Coffee Shop Millionaire is a worthless program. Want to do affiliate marketing? Spend some time searching the web for information, blend it together and find your path. Want to know SEO? Search on adwords and SEO, do it in your blogs and test the results. You surely don’t need some worthless Coffee Shop Millionaire program.
Customers are Ignoring You (Photo credit: ronploof)
Last week I attended the AAA Marketing/IT conference. It is an annual conference to cover ideas and trends going on in the world of marketing and information technology. This year, the conference was held outside of Phoenix near Chandler. The Wild Horse Resort held host.
The last conference was held 18 months ago in Boca Raton, Florida. The main message then was social, social, social. Twitter and Facebook were becoming good and powerful tools by which to push marketing messages. They are new ways to reach current customers and a new audience. For technologists, the social sites can be a headache with their increase in network traffic. Nearly every workshop was related to using social, leveraging social, accessing social and using social.
Time frames on the Internet move quickly. The short 18 months between conferences have lead to the latest trend: mobile. The discussion of mobile in all its facets was the main idea of the conference, repeated over and over. Experts from Google spoke on using mobile to reach the younger customers and the importance of knowing what kind of device is being used to access your website and what time of day it is. Adaptive design is a must on your website. If customers have a bad mobile experience on your site, it is very difficult to get them back.
The use of a mobile application is another way to access the customer. It must allow the user to be flexible and use it in ways intuitive to them. Make the customer work too much on using your mobile application and they will remove it. It too needs to take location and time of day into account. It must adapt. It must keep their attention.
The age of mobile is here. Smartphone sales have outpaced desktop computers for the last few years. This year, the number of smartphones on the Internet will be greater than number of desktop computers. More and more of your customers will access your web site from mobile devices of various types: phones, tablets and phonelets. They come in different sizes and every user on them expects to use your site within the proper context of their device.
Back in my Pro U days, Gregg Davison was very keen of stating we needed to find our niche. This was more than finding an opening in a market. Your niche is defined by who you are and how you will express your voice. You must fit well into your niche as you need to own it fully. Choose a niche that doesn’t fit you and your customers will notice.
The idea of a niche was also repeated in training by Michael Force and Andrew Cass. It was a shared and correct idea. It again came to the foreground in workshops lead by Justin Woolf and Aaron Rashkin. Find your niche. Find your niche. Find your niche. Ok, I get it.
Recently I decided to return to trading. I had success before and the market seemed to have at least some direction. It was time to do homework and paper trade to understand trends and cycles. I had mostly failure, but this was the beginning. Time to get some guidance.
The other day I called Michael Parness to seek his knowledge. Previously I had been a member of the Orange belt options service and I was one of the first to sign up for the website www.parnesseducation.com. We talked for about half an hour and near the end I heard a familiar phrase, “You need to find your niche.” Again?
One may wonder why one would need a niche for trading stocks. It is quite simple. Your niche is your methods: the way you trade, why you trade, how you do plays and when you get out. It is about what you do in your trades. It is about you.
Your niche. What is it? Learn to find it. It is your voice. It is who you are. It is the way to your future.
It is time for something different. It is time to push the boundaries of our experiences. It is time to get out of our comfort zones. It is time for a video challenge. It is time for the June 2012, Video Challenge!
There have been other challenges on YouTube. Some were to make a video a day. Others to shoot twice a week. Some were on a give topic: photography, marketing, introductions, etc. Others had none. This challenge needs to be something different. Something not yet seen. Something real.
Today I did shoot the video announcing the challenge and it will get created and posted. Here is the announcing blog post. What better place than a blog about the future? What are the rules, you ask? They are quite simple.
Rules for the challenge
Have fun – above anything, before everything, have fun making your videos.
Do anything – make a video about cheese, make one showing the wind, it doesn’t matter. Make what ever you want. Capture motion, computer generated, PowerPoint screen capture, it doesn’t matter.
Get out of your box – do something you’ve never done before, go somewhere you’ve never been. Usually make videos inside? Go out? Like the outdoors, do one in the city. Use new techniques and ideas. Explore. Expand.
Runs to the end of June, 2012
That’s it, other than the YouTube guidelines, of course. Post one a day or six. Post as much and as little as you like. It doesn’t matter. The whole point of the challenge is to get out there and go stuff.
