Postcards From Myself

What motivates the traffic to a site? A friend of mine just wrote a blog post and some twitter entries that seemed, on the surface of things, to have increased his traffic suddenly. Does it work that way? Can the simple mention of the bible, pornography, and a porn star in the same article really bump traffic that noticeably? Especially when those subjects are not the normal thrust of your blog?

Jason Bradford, also known as ToneBox, wrote a post about a new movie called “Undersold“. Chrissy Moran stars in the film. She is a former porn star… and a famous and attractive one to boot. Jason says of his friend, “Chrissy’s story has some parallels to the original Bible story and she lives the part daily. That is where Grace comes in. Thankfully Grace is available to all of us no matter the road we’ve been down or are heading.”

So, this article serves a two fold purpose. The first is to get the word out about this movie and one of the great people in it. I think Chrissy Moran’s tale of moving from pornography to religious media is an interesting and compelling one. The second purpose is to try and prove or disprove Jason’s theory that his traffic spiked just because he mentioned the Bible and porno in the same post.

What do you think? Was that the reason his traffic jumped? Or was it a coincidence?

Have you ever been meeting in someone’s office and had the phone ring? Do they turn away from their meeting with you to answer it? How about sitting around at the dinner table with the family. When the phone rings do you leave the family to answer the phone? In both of these situations, what do you think that says about priorities? Are you setting your priorities, or are the phone and the people calling?

All too often when I am at one of my kid’s events I see parents spending the entire time on their cell phones. Now I am not talking about emergencies. We have all had those. I can vividly remember one of my son’s soccer games where I spent the entire game way off to the side talking to various technicians about problems with the network at my office. No, I am talking about the parents who spend the entire game talking about just junk and not watching their children play. And don’t think for a second that the kids don’t notice. They make a play, turn to the stands, and see that mom or dad is talking on the phone.

At work there are tons of distractions. But, when you schedule time with a colleague that is a reserved time that should only be interrupted for the most important of emergencies. By agreeing to the meeting you both have set aside that time to deal with whatever the agenda is. To have a member of that meeting turn away to answer either an unknown or trivial phone call is not only rude, it shows where on the rank of importance your meeting falls. It also implies that your time is of no value, because it can be wasted for whatever purpose.

I firmly believe that I schedule my priorities and that I should not let anyone else, by whatever means, rearrange those for me. If I am in a meeting with you, I do not answer the phone. In fact most of the time I will silence the ringer. Same goes for my son’s soccer game – I do not answer the phone while he is playing.

People often say to me, “I called you but you didn’t answer.” My response is, “I was busy right then, did you leave a message?” What kills me is when they say, “no, it wasn’t that important.” Well then why did you call?! And why would you expect me to interrupt something important that I was doing and that I had scheduled for something that, in your own words, “wasn’t that important”?

Remember, we all have control of our lives. We must, on a daily and hourly basis, exert that control or it will be taken away. Time is the only resource that we all, from richest to poorest, have in equal amounts. What you chose to do with that time is up to you. You control when you answer the phone and you control how interruptions affect your life.

Right? Wrong? Crazy? Am I so far off base here that I am in a different ballpark? Please let me know how you interact not only with your phone but with other people and their phones.

As more people follow your blog, twitter stream, Facebook page, or forum posts do you change the message or the way you talk? Understandably we all have to use different voices depending on the audience. We don’t, or at least shouldn’t, address our grandparents in the same way that we talk to our young friends. And we certainly shouldn’t be talking to the people at work in the same way that we talk to our children – trust me, I have tried it and it isn’t pretty.

The question remains though, do you significantly change your message? If all of a sudden I become aware that some relatively important people are now reading my twits on Twitter, is it appropriate or even wise to change the way I use that medium or what I am saying on it?

On one hand, they must have followed me for a reason. So, if I change to make myself more serious or less controversial then perhaps I am changing away from what they were looking for. On the other hand, maybe they didn’t know what they were getting themselves in to. Maybe I need to clean up my act so that I am more “acceptable” to these people and can hopefully keep them around as followers so that I can get my message out. But then, is it my message if I have changed for them?

Again, you are going to dress up for a job interview, you are going to be quiet in a library, and you are not going to curse around a minister. But, you went into those situations knowing that you would moderate your behavior. If someone enters your environment, of their own will and knowing what lies there, do you change to suit them, or to what you think suits them?

What are your thoughts? I really need to hear you on this one. And thanks for following along!

I have to admit it; I am ready for this election to be over. As I sat down this evening to write this new blog entry, I was trying to think of what to write about. Some ideas came to mind, but they all revolved around the candidates, the issues, trust, mistrust, lies, being two-faced, and fear. I am sorry, but I am just getting tired of it all.

I am tired of the fear and the distrust from both sides. I am tired of the lies being told and the falsehoods being circulated. I am tired of the racist jokes and the sexist images. But most of all I am tired of the way I find myself getting carried away on this blog, in email, on twitter, and in person. I know I have turned some people off – not by my views or who I support, but by how vehemently I have pushed those views on others.

This extends beyond me too. Things are becoming very, very split around the nation. People who are normally friendly towards one another are turning away. The American people, who are normally a pretty good lot, are saying some awfully nasty things at rallies. Even just driving down the road people are getting honked at and flipped off because of the bumper stickers on their cars. Why should you display open aggression to someone you don’t know just because they display of support for their chosen candidates – be they McCain and Palin, Obama and Biden, or even Hillary Clinton or John Edwards?

And finally I am tired of the uncertainty. I do not think that the markets and other financial indicators will settle down until this race is over. Hopefully all it will take is the election, but it may take until the actual inauguration before some stability takes over. Now I know that everything won’t just suddenly turn around and the markets become a happy place full of clover and butterflies, but at least they should even out. When the election is over we will all have an idea of what direction the next four years are going to take, and that will help a lot.

So what do you think? Is this election making things better or worse? I know we will hopefully be better off with a new President, but is the election itself causing separation, class or race warfare, or other damage to our democracy?

I am hopeless, I admit it. I am glued to my iPhone and my laptop. So when I head out to eat, especially for lunch during the work week, I often judge where I am going by the availability of free wi-fi. I know fast food places like Chic-Fil-A, McDonald’s and Moe’s have free wireless. There are also some middle of the road places around that offer it too. But sometimes I just can’t figure out which ones do or don’t. And when I am on the road I have an even harder time and those are the times when it may be even more important to me.

In the same way that you used to be able to look up on many review sites whether there was smoking or not, I wish that review sites would show whether or not a place has wireless. I love UrbanSpoon on both the web and my iPhone. It is a great reference to have and I hope they spread to more cities. But I also want them to include a denotation of wireless. Since they have some a great iPhone app you would expect Internet connectivity to be important to them.

And it should also work in reverse. It would be great when you are planning a date or romantic evening with the spouse to know you can go somewhere without the threat of typing. Even would work for when you just have a headache. And even better, what about no-cell phone establishments? There have been many times that I would have chosen one restaurant over the one next to it if I had known I would have been safe from loud-mouthed people with bluetooth headsets.

So what do you think? Do you make you lunch plans based on food, price, or Internet connectivity?