The Bee Hive

I love the internet. A minute ago I stumbled across a blog post on organization I wanted to keep, and I thought, “I bet I could write an Applescript so that I could mail something to myself at a particular address, set up a rule in Apple Mail to run that Applescript, and have it automatically copied into Yojimbo with the appropriate title and tags.” And then a second later I thought, “But before I do that, I should look to see if someone’s already done it.”

So I typed “applescript copy yojimbo” into Google, and lo and behold, it was the first result.

Or maybe this isn’t actually laziness. Maybe it’s being productive like a ninja. A ninja kitten. Yeah.

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Am I being short-sighted not to see the point in the new women’s travel center AA.com just launched? I realize there are safety implications for women traveling alone, and I realize there are planning considerations for families, yes, OK. And yes, many times the vacation planner in the family is the woman, but I bet it’s pretty often the man, too, so it would probably be better (from a marketing standpoint) to target that information and those resources and promotions to parents, not women specifically.

So beyond additional “smart solo traveler” safety concerns, what else distinguishes women’s travel needs from those of men?

Call me cynical, but this feels like way too heavy-handed an attempt to court the female dollar. Either that — or possibly in addition to that — and here’s where I hint at my e-commerce geekery — someone at AA.com just figured out how to segment their traffic and commerce data by gender, which revealed that women either spend too much or too little time or money on their site (I could speculate either way) and now they’re inventing excuses to draw more women to the site, draw us there more frequently, or draw us there and keep us engaged while we’re there long enough to buy a trip.

None of which are bad things — they’re just obvious. And the obviousness of it feels kind of, I don’t know, patronizing or something.

Or maybe it’s just me. Is it?

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I happened across this video clip from some guy’s radio talk show in which he was skewering the song “Ticks” by Brad Paisley. Now Brad Paisley isn’t my favorite artist or anything, but he’s talented and pretty clever, and his fans understand him. So what the host was suggesting in his bit seemed really off to me. I decided to let him know. Here’s what I wrote:

Hey, just a random commenter taking a moment to provide feedback on your “Dumbest country song ever” video pertaining to Brad Paisley’s song “Ticks.” I assume, based on your set of videos and your user name, that you are the host of the show, so I’ll direct my comments to you.

I know you were probably just mining for material, but your skewering of Brad Paisley’s song “Ticks” couldn’t be more off. I think you really missed the mark on this one. I mean, I get that it sounds incredibly stupid when you take it out of context and all that, and I also get that you need to do that kind of thing for comedy every once in a while. But how much of a sense of irony does it take to realize that the “wink wink” intimacy suggested by saying “I’d like to check you for ticks” is completely tongue-in-cheek?

It may be that you need the context of knowing that Brad Paisley is known for this type of offbeat humor in his songs. But still, I don’t think it’s missed by the average country listener that what Paisley is actually proposing has little to do with ticks and much more to do with closely exploring the naked body of the person being addressed by the lyrics.

So… what does it say about you that your sense of humor is not as sophisticated as that of the average country listener?

Ooh, sorry, that one may have been a little below the belt. Might want to have someone check you for bruises.

- Kate O’Neill
Songwriter & Queen Bee
Honey Bowtie Music, Nashville, TN

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I’ve finished up with the music technology gig. I was thinking about staying on in a full-time permanent job, but decided against it.

I now have a job lined up at an e-commerce company in Cool Springs (any local tech people reading this probably already know the company in question by that description, but I’m opting for search engine anonymity) and I start Monday. Some of my friends probably remember me talking about this company back in October when I was first approached for the job. It’s been a long road to making this decision, but now I’m psyched about getting back into e-commerce directly, and dealing with fun concepts again like navigation, conversion, web analytics, etc.

I’m not psyched about the long commute to shopping mall central. I plan for me and Karsten to test-drive a Prius and maybe some of 2007’s other hybrid models, and if we take the plunge on that, it’ll definitely be an extra expense we don’t really need, but I’d just feel much less bad about the environmental impact of the commute that way.

So now I’m spending the day with a big stack o’ library books refreshing my mind on e-commerce concepts and getting ready to hit the ground running on Monday.

Heck, I don’t even know yet what the zip code there is to use for my location tag. So much to do!

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It seems as if I’m the only person on my reading list who hasn’t said anything about the Netflix announcement regarding downloadable movies. There are two reasons for my silence: one is that I’m busier than a three-legged cat trying to cover shit on a marble floor when the only dirt is five miles away, and the second reason is that, to me, this is old news. Oh sure, the arrival of the technology is cool, but this has been in the works in one way or another for over 7 years. I’m happy to see all that work come to fruition, and I know it will be good, but I’m way past the point of being excited about it.

See, a lot of the articles I’ve seen about this announcement make snide comments about Netflix making this move to avoid “obsolescence,” but I don’t see that as much of an issue for Netflix. For one thing, downloadable movies are only going to account for a small percentage of their revenue for quite some time. Most people are still going to prefer the tangible DVD. But the main reason I don’t think obsolescence is an issue for Netflix is that they’re smart. Some of the sharpest people I’ve ever known have worked there, and many still do. The senior management is altogether the best I’ve ever encountered. They’re not going to let themselves become obsolete. They’ve built a strong brand, and they’ll continue to figure out how to use it.

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At long last, I’ve started on an update and redesign for biallmeans.org. I’m not done or anything (not by far!), but I thought I’d give you all a sneak peek.

If anyone wants to suggest any links to add while I’m updating, feel free.

Updated much later to add: I eventually did let that domain lapse. I just didn’t have feel like I had the time it would have taken to make it the resource it could be, so I’d rather let someone else have the domain.

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I’m posting from my boss’ boss’ house, where I’m housesitting and dogsitting, and she obviously has a “net nanny”-type filter set up on this computer. I’ve never used a computer that had that running before, at least not to my knowledge, but I know this one does because I can’t get to any of the links in the -related feeds. When I try to access biallmeans.org the word % - - - - - - - ” is invisible (had to put the hyphens in there so it doesn’t remove the word from my posting) as if it doesn’t even appear on the page. I tried to access - - - - -d-a-y.com and it redirected me to the National Wildlife Organization or whatever. (Interestingly, the filter leaves the word % ” but doesn’t like % - - - - “)

I’m so weirded out by this. I know it’s common, but I’ve never personally experienced it before.

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My relationship with money seems to be moving into a growth phase.

I billed 66.75 hours last week, and it looks like this week will be in excess of 60 hours as well. That’ll make a nice, plump overtime paycheck next month.

And the sale of kathleen.net went through this morning, so that’s some extra dough in my checking account. Actually, it’ll go right toward paying off the heaviest credit card.

Which, speaking of, I now believe will easily be paid off by the end of March ‘04.

And there’s little things, too, like a $25 credit on the phone bill just for renewing our contract. And $80 to housesit and dog-sit for my boss’ boss over Thanksgiving.

It’s all adding up, and I’m really starting to see the light at the end of this tunnel. I feel like I’m starting to be able to breathe more deeply. Is it possible I’ve been living with low-level anxiety for the past few years and have just gotten used to it? That’s what it feels like. Because even though things are still pretty rough in some ways (work is hard and I’m worried about my dad, for example), the money issue has been pretty overwhelming for a long time. And it’s really starting to look a whole lot better.

We’ve got to stick with the extremely frugal lifestyle, of course, and that’s not always easy, but knowing that we’re getting somewhere because of it certainly helps.

So, can I just? Well, here: *long, deep inhale* *hold it* *slow, satisfying exhale*

There. That feels much better.

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The prospective buyer got back to me and accepted my counteroffer so I think we’re on.

Anyone know anything about transferring a domain name? Anything I should be careful about?

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I got an offer to buy kathleen.net, and even though I hadn’t been thinking of selling it, I don’t mind the idea of making some money. Her offer was only $300, which is certainly more than I’ve paid for it, and more than covers the rest of the registration term, but doesn’t seem like quite enough to motivate me to go through the hassle.

Would it be unrealistic, do you think, to hold out for more?

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I spent a good chunk of time this morning updating honeybowtie.com, and specifically linked several demos to the Songs page. Since I mentioned to some folks I saw a few weeks ago that I would be sure to send a link to some MP3s of our Nashville demos, I thought I’d go ahead and post it here.I only got three songs added (one was already there), so here’s what’s up there right now:

• Get It Wrong, a pop-py tune we co-wrote with our friend Lair Morgan. The demo is sung by Dawn Martin.
• Traces of You, a slow- to mid-tempo ballad. Demo sung by the lovely and incredibly talented Wendy Jans, who is also a wonderful songwriter.
• You’ve Lost Me, a sorta raucous country-bluesy tune. Sung by Susan Clinton, who happens to manage Bayou Studio — where we recorded the demo.

And there’s also Mango Sun, which is a reggae tune we demo’ed in Chicago last year and pitched last August for a film placement. Nothing ever came of it, but some of our friends have told us stories of waiting more than 18 months to hear news on a pitch, being sure it was dead, and then getting a cut. So I guess ya never know.

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