The big "3"

Trip turned 3 today. Happy Birthday Buddy!
Here is the first photo of the day...Ripper is opening the Pirate Ship that Gram & Grandpap got him. More photos to come...

Chris Daugherty

I'm listening to the new Chris Daugherty CD right now...it's pretty darn good. As my friend Kyle says, "He certainly should've won Idol, but probably has a better CD because he didn't win."
Might have to shell out the $10.00 for this one.

The Squirrel

On Monday afternoon when I was driving home from work I saw a dead squirrel in the road (it wasn't smashed into the road, so I'm not sure how it died...perhaps it fell out of the tree that was towering above). It didn't really have much of an impact on me until...

Tuesday morning on my way to work, I saw another squirrel standing beside the dead one...looking over it as if it were grieving. Now, I don't know if squirrels have emotions or what the one squirrel was thinking of the other (perhaps the dead one had a nut nearby and the alive one was simply stopping to pick up on its good fortune), but it did cause me to pause. In fact, I've not really been able to stop thinking about it since.

A few observations:
[1] We never know when our time is going to be up. We should probably live every day as if it were our last.
[2] When we are gone, will there be a fellow squirrel whose life we've impacted? I hope that there is at least one person who will stop in the middle of the road and mourn my passing because of the positive impact I've had on them.
[3] If a squirrel dies and there does happen to be a nut nearby, the squirrel can't take the nut with him...and another squirrel is probably going to end up with it. Why not give the nut away before you die so that you get the enjoyment & pleasure of giving it away?

Maybe I'm nuts for dwelling on the squirrel...

Pretty Much The Best Online Project Management Tool

I just wanted to let anyone out there who might need a project management tool know about one that I've been using for 6 months...

www.TeamWorkLive.com is an online Project Management System that was created as an alternative to basecamp. It is much less expensive (especially if you are a small firm with only a few users) option and has a lot of great features (time tracking, milestones, task management, calendar management, etc.). They have a free option with a few options missing, and multiple payment tiers based on your needs. Heck, I'd pay the top tier monthly fee just for the great customer service.

This is truly a jewel in the rough...I highly recommend it.

Seth Godin

I love to read a blog by a guy named Seth Godin. He's a marketing guru who has some really cool things to say. For example, he asserts that everyone is so busy these days that "traditional marketing" doesn't work anymore. Ten years ago, a company could create an average product, buy up a remarkably large amount of TV advertisement, and have a decent chance at creating buzz for the product. These days, you'd better create a remarkable product that is capable of creating it's own buzz so that "traditional marketing" is only a supplement. He calls this remarkable product a "purple cow."

Think about it this way, if you're driving down the road and you begin seeing cows in a field, you might notice them for a minute or two...but it probably wouldn't have an impact on you. If you keep seeing cows, you begin to ignore them. But then, you come up on a purple cow. That would be remarkable. You'd remember it. It would have an impact on you.

The iPod is an example of a Purple Cow. A new brand of asprin would be an example of the opposite of a purple cow. There are 1,000's of brands of asprin out there. Another one in the mix would just get lost. We're too busy to even notice it...even if they buy millions of dollars in advertising.

Anyways, if you're in to this type of thing, Seth's blog is at: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Squeet

Here's a service that I use a good bit that I thought some of you might like.

Squeet.com is a service that you can subscribe to (for free) that will email you when there's a new post on a Blog or anything that has an RSS feed. So, for example, for this Blog, you'd create an account, then enter this Blog's RSS feed (http://chuckthink.blogspot.com/rss.xml) and whenever I post a new post, it'll email you.

For Amy's Blog, you'd enter: http://scogginssaga.blogspot.com/rss.xml
For my other Blog, you'd enter: http://chuckscoggins.blogspot.com/rss.xml

Some Photos From Quinn's One-Year Birthday Party