Social Media Feeds the Narcissistic Beast

In a recent high school hockey game in Minnesota, the goalie from Farmington, getting a rare start on Senior Night, displays his displeasure on how he was treated throughout the season by doing the following:

• Scoring on his own goal (thus tying the game, which Farmington lost in OT)
• Flipping off his coaches
• Skating off the ice and quitting

See video below for the event:

The goalie gave a heads up to some of his friends on his intentions so that it could be filmed and shared.

I get that kids are stupid and do stupid things.  But it seems that social media magnifies stupidity, and gives those that feel self-important more fuel to feed their narcissistic fire.  And that's because they're rewarded.

Be it the positive comments this goalie received in the comments section of YouTube, or an entire legion of people socially cheering on mass-murderer Christopher Dorner, social media justifies the bad behavior of the self important.  Regardless of how repugnant one's actions, there will always be some out there in social media land to cheer them on.

My prediction is that we've only seen just the very beginnings of what ultimately will have a very significant impact on our society.

The Trials of Travel

Travel can be restorative, broadening, and a blessing.  Unfortunately, the process itself can itself be so stressful as to make one wonder if the benefits outweigh the costs.  That certainly was the case for me yesterday.

The day actually started out as the night before, where I wanted to leave the office between 3 and 4 so that we could leisurely make our way to Milwaukee where we'd stay ahead of our 6:00 AM flight.  Unfortunately, my work day exploded, and I ended up arriving home at 7:00.  Regardless, we made it to Milwaukee by 9:30 and our accommodations were serviceable.

We awoke at 3:30 AM to make a 4:00 shuttle, but arrived five minutes late and missed it.  Stress.  After ten minutes of waiting for the shuttle to return, I made the decision to grab the car and drive ourselves to the airport.  Stress.  By the time I got back to the lobby, lo and behold, there was the shuttle.  Stress.  Back to the packing spot and a dash back to the shuttle.

We arrived at the airport about 4:30 and found the check in area swamped with people.  Stress.  Fortunately, we'd been upgraded to first class, and there was an empty priority line.  Finally, a break.

We flew into Atlanta for our transfer to Nassau, and it was a tight layover of 40 minutes.  Stress.  In all of the documents received from Delta, they warned that we'd be flying out of the International Terminal.  Here's a screen shot of an example:

The International Terminal is at the end of the train line - Gate F - and we arrived at Gate A; as far away as possible.  Stress.  Hence we hustled hard, and made it go where we thought we needed to go.  Immediately, though, it appeared obvious we were not where we needed to be.  After a quick question from a helpful attendant, we found we were not leaving from the International Terminal at all, and needed to be back at Gate B.  Stress.

We ran, but were able to board on time as boarding was late.  Ah, another break. 

We flew into Nassau through a pretty bad rainstorm, but arrived in good shape.  We got through customs without issue, and started our 5 hour layover.  Unfortunately, we landed in the international terminal, and there was a whole separate terminal for our domestic flight to Marsh Harbour.  Hey, wait.  Wasn't our return layover really tight in Nassau?  How could we make it in time, especially trying to juggle between two terminals.  We'd never make it.  Stress.

Fortunately we found a nice little bar with cold Kalik Light and uneven but serviceable internet and were able to confirm our return offered us plenty of time.  Between the tasty beer, our first meal of the day (a hamburger from Wendy's) and the reassurance of our verified travel plans, I finally started to relax.

The layover lasted forever, but I actually caught a small nap and the people watching was fantastic.  A vast majority of the people of the domestic flights were Bahamians travelling from island to island, and given the lay of the country, I thought it pretty unique to anyplace else in the world. 

We boarded our turboprop right on time and made it to Marsh Harbour without issue.  Unfortunately, our friends who were supposed to pick us up were nowhere to be found.  After 15 minutes, still no friends  Stress.  Leaving the travel planning to Mrs. YDP as I had no time for it myself with work, I asked where we were staying.  She wasn't sure.  How about where the car rental place was?  More unknowns.  Did our friends even make it to the island?  If they didn't, what then?  Here we were at a darkening and quickly becoming abandoned airport with no idea of where to go or what to do.  Stress.

At this point I made the internal decision that this would be our last trip to the Bahamas.  Getting here was just too hard.  Vacation is supposed to be fun.  We had been travelling for nearly 15 hours and were physically and mentally shot.  Frankly, this sucked.

But then a rental minivan appeared in the distance, and upon its arrival exploded to reveal friends sporting wide smiles and more cold Kalik Light.  Finally, everything would be OK.

We spent the evening at Snappa's, where we drank copious rounds of Mind Snappas and had a fantastic meal of fresh mahi-mahi.  We retired to our rental home where we closed the day on the deck with more cold beer and BS stories.

I feel into bed at 9 completely exhausted, and awoke at 7:30.  It was the most amount of consecutive hours of sleep I've had in I don't know how long.  After a leisurly breakfast of lobster omlette (yes, there is such a thing), the first Kalik Light of the day, and the following beauty, it's clear I was wrong.  Dead wrong.

Stressless.  Completely.  Finally.

We'll be back, Marsh Harbour.  Count on it.

Is Vacation Worth It?

Mrs. YDP and I are now in the Bahamas for a week-long vacation.  It is a beautiful spot, and I hope it rejuvenates and restores me, as getting to the point where I could be out of the office for a full week damn near killed me.

At work, we're in the middle of our biggest project since I joined the company.  And it's an incremental project, which means that no only do to the team and I need to get this massive project complete over the next six months, but we need to do so while doing our full jobs that we were doing previously.  Ten pounds of meat, meet a five pound bag.

Thus, for the last three weeks I've been moving at a dead sprint to try to get to a point where I could leave for a week in good conscience.  I haven't had a day off in that period, and have racked up 70 and 80 hour work weeks.  I've been a lousy husband and friend.  But I got a lot of work done, and I feel I can go on vacation.

Oh, I'll still need to work while I'm there, which will be made more difficult by the juggle of international communications.  But I shouldn't need to work the entire time.  

I want to go on vacation.  I want to spend time with my wife and my friends.  Frankly, I deserve it.  My wife certainly deserves to have her husband back.  So to the islands we go.

But I can't help but think at what cost all of this came.  Was it worth it?  

And the fact that I just typed that last question is very concerning to me.

My First Reverse Mentor

Through my career, I've had a number of people that I'd call mentors, even though the relationships we had were not necessarily defined strictly as such.  I have been fortunate to learn from some very smart, successful, and learned people, and it has definitely played a role in my development and my success.

I'm at the point in my career where I'm now mentoring junior people myself, and it is neat for me to see how things have gone full circle.  

Unfortunately, even at my level in my industry and my organization, I still have a lot to learn.  Especially with a career in Ecommerce.  While I'd like to think that I'm on top of things in my space, that's clearly not the case.  It moves too quick, and I get too mired in realms outside of my space to be as up to speed as I want to be.  Hence, for me to be the leader that I want to be and that our company needs, I need to work harder.  In this instance, I think one way to address it means seeking the help of a reverse mentor.

The whole concept of a reverse mentor is best explained in this recent Wall Street Journal. article.

I'm fortunate to know someone that will be a perfect reverse mentor.  He knows more about the frontiers of my space than I can keep up with while still doing my job.  He has a brilliant career ahead of him, and lucky to have him agree to take me on as a mentee.  

I look forward to kicking off this new relationship and getting back to actively learning from a mentor.  Even at this stage in my career.

Christopher Dorner Case: A Gun Confiscation Dress Rehearsal?

As the gun debate rages, there is still a small but loud minority calling for outright bans and/or confiscation as they believe it is the only way to make our society safe.  Regardless of what one thinks of this proposal, in light of the Second Amendment or otherwise, you'd think that recent events would underscore the folly of such a proposal.  Because, in the end, it's simple math.  

Consider the following (and I'm using conservative numbers here): 150 million gun owners in the US, of which 1% will never disarm without at fight.  That leaves 1,500,000 that will not obey the law.  Assume 1% of them as highly trained (e.g. former or active military, former or active police, etc.) and that leaves 15,000 Christopher Dorner types out there, gunning for the authorities.  

When you consider it took a sizable amount of southern California law enforcement to bring just one motivated man to justice, what would the scenario look like if that number increased by 14,999?  

Confiscation fantasies are just that -  fantasies.  If there is going to be a debate on guns in this country, let's keep the debate in the realms of reality.  For as Christopher Dorner just displayed, a motivated, well armed, and well trained man is going to wreak substantial mayhem before he's ultimately disarmed. 

B-52? No, KC-135

Around Green Bay it is very common to see a massive military jet circling the city every couple of weeks or so.  Given the size of the plane, I always operated under the assumption that it was a B-52.  It was big.  It was active military.  It had to be a B-52.

Hence, on a recent trip to the airport, I noticed the plane I had seen previously around town was now performing "touch and go" maneuvers at Green Bay's airport.  Ah, finally the reason why I had seen these things orbiting so often!

I got out of my vehicle and shot the following video:



But where did it come from?  There is no military group stationed at GRB.  I hit the web and found that this was part of the 128th Air Refueling Wing, stationed out of Milwaukee, and that what I thought was a B-52 was a KC-135.

I should have known better.  The number of engines should have been a dead give-away alone.

While the KC-135 is a massive plane, it is still dwarfed by the B-52.  See below:


Regardless, it was still fun to see such a big plane - one of America's finest - blasting off right over my head.

A 23 Year Game of Tag

A couple of weeks ago The Wall Street Journal. had an article about a group of high school friends that had kept up a simple game of tag into their adult lives.

For 23 years.

What an incredible way to stay connected.  

In our high tech, social marketing, electronic engagement world - a world where our connections are as shallow as they are superfluous - a common child's game becomes the conduit to maintain connection.

It makes me miss my own high school buddies.

I encourage you to read the article

How to Start a Career in Ecommerce: Part 3, Web Analytics

So, taking what you learned in the previous chapter you've developed your site - likely a blog - and have started leveraging SEO best practices to attempt to drive traffic to it.  But how will you know if you're successful?  That's where web analytics come in.

According to Wikipedia, "web analytics are the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage."  Or, put more simply, web analytics provide you deep insight on the people that come to your site.  With it, you can see:

• Where they live
• The type and details of the technology they used to view your site
• How they got to your site, and if they came via a search engine, the keyword string they used
• What they did on your site
• Where they exited the site

One would think that to obtain all of that detail would take a ton of work, but yet again the free tools of the web make things easy as pie.  Simply go to Google Analytics, follow the simple steps to add tracking to your site, and you're off and running.  

Beyond that, Google has an entire suite of training that can get you a level of expertise in web analytics to rival most already employed in Ecommerce in the business world.  

The tool, the training, and the knowledge and experienced gained are all free.  All it takes to be successful is the desire to learn and some elbow grease.  

Good luck - next step will be email marketing.