Category: Digital Life

Working Past Exhaustion: A Recipe For Mistakes

Carl Setzer

Oh, the frustrations of long, long days!

I generally work normal work hours. Sure, at times I’m on my computer on weekends or after hours. But I’d be doing that anyways.

However, I’m taking an evening class right now. The class meets one night a week, so that demand isn’t that much. But after an 8+ hour day, a 3 hour class can get wearying. And the class is mostly sitting in front of a screen, which is what I tend to spend all day doing.

Tonight, by 8:45, I was pretty much toast. I hadn’t noticed it until I saw several dumb mistakes. And those mistakes caused me the aggravation of redoing about a 1/2 hour’s worth of work. Fortunately, it took less time to re-do than to do originally. But that means extra work, needless extra work.

I was clever enough, though, to see that and, after fixing the mistakes I’d made (at least I’m pretty sure I fixed them), I opted to stop.

At times, when effectiveness hits the floor…and punches right on through, any effort at all will be counter-productive. That’s a hard lesson to learn, internalize, and keep in mind regularly. I, too, suffer from the mindset that “if I only worked harder/more/whatever…”.

I know that sometimes the only way to be effective is to stop and rest, get my head back together and then restart.

It’s just living it that’s the challenge.

Fitbit Fun

Carl Setzer

Last night my Fitbit Blaze‘s charge dropped super low. This has rarely been a problem, but sometimes it makes things quirky when I first turn it on after the recharge. So, when I pulled it out of the charger this morning and the time was off by 3 some odd hours I didn’t think about it. Once I got in the car, I opened the app, pulled down to sync, and then proceeded to forget about it. Well, that didn’t work and the thing just didn’t sync.

Later, amongst other things I tried:

  • Restarted the Fitbit
  • Restart Bluetooth on my S7
  • Disconnect and attempt to re-pair the fitbit with the mobile app

Nothing worked. Then I had the idea I should’ve had far, far earlier: reboot the phone. And that’s what solved the problem.

Lesson: sometimes having deep understanding of systems can get in the way. Don’t overlook the easy answers early on. It’s far too easy to get hung up on the complex, deeper down solutions that you forget the simple/basic solves.

Duh!

Have you ever over-complexified a solution? What did you learn?

The Future of Work: Cashiers

Carl Setzer

This morning I read Cashiers’ Last Stand, which covers some thoughts I’ve had about AI recently.

I tend towards the futurist’s view: that these changes will happen (machines will take on more of the rote work of the cashier) and that those displacements will happen relatively soon.

I also think that the service role of cashiers has a long-term place, culturally.

Lastly, I need to invest some time into studying Amazon Go. There’s disruption coming to the retail world.

Here’s their intro video:

What do you think?

Wow, the most annoying email marketing fail I’ve received…and I’ve seen a few

Carl Setzer

With 7 years working in Real Estate, I’m on tons of email lists. I don’t mind this much, as I get to see what’s going on out in the market. Today, though, got one that violates all my marketing skills, understanding and wisdom.

  1. It was a jpg dropped into an email. I’m not a fan (mea culpa: I’ve done that in the past, mainly out of time, or, sadly, that’s all I had to work with).
  2. In the jpg were several urls. Note: I don’t say “links”. The links were NOT CLICKABLE! Simply text in the jpg.
  3. As I was interested in the property in question, I manually typed the links into a browser. Nope! No worky. Not even the bit.ly one. Not a single link worked.
  4. I saw the project name in the email addresses in the “contact us” section. That was the right URL.
  5. The creme de la creme, the piece de resistance (insert cliche of your choice here): there was no address. No city. Not even a state, region…nothing. When I finally made a url work, I could see that it was on the Washington Coast. Please note: this was for a new real estate development. “Location, Location, Location”?

It seemed like the creator of this campaign worked really hard to ensure I not only didn’t connect, but actually ended up annoyed with them. Amazing how well it violated every tenet I have for effective email communication.

So, do:

  1. Location. Events: have a date, location (address, venue…at least a city), and times. Drives me nuts to get an email for a property that looks interesting, or an event that looks really cool and, well, sorry, it’s it Atlanta. And it’s not until I’m in the registration section that I find that out? Geez!
  2. If you can at all help it, don’t just email jpgs. FYI, spam filters hate them.
  3. Links. Oh. My. Gawd! Making me TYPE your link…from an email?
  4. Links, part ii: Links MUST WORK. Test them! Most people won’t do anywhere near what I did. I was curious at that point and choose to dig. They may have got a click, but they didn’t get a sale.
  5. Segment your market and sell accordingly. I’m not working the Washington Coast market. It’s hours of driving away!
  6. Your main call to action cannot fail. If clicking on the link takes you to a Google page saying “sorry, sparky, no frickin idea what website you’re trying to find”, every erg of energy expended was wasted. Your goal is sales, right? Customers gotta get to your page. Gotta!

Keep your eyes on the prize, folks. Sales pitches to the right people, in the right way, is a splendid thing. Spam? Yeah, no.

Go forth and do great things!

PDF Editors And Business Operations

Carl Setzer

At this point, I can’t imagine how anyone operates a 21st century business without a pdf editor.

Not being able to fill out forms, edit docs, transform them to Word or Excel…all rather critical for business today.

Adobe Acrobat is not the only option. Which is good since it’s ridiculously expensive.

I’ve been using FoxIt’s PDF Editor/Creator for some time. A reasonable price ($109).

Here’s a list of low cost options, including 1 or 2 free ones. One of the ones they list, Nitro, is another one I’ve used. It’s pretty good as well. I don’t know they other ones, but it’s PC World, so it should be a good source.

Anyway, there’s no good reason to not have SOMETHING. So, make it work.

 

AutoCAD | zero to 60 in 1 over infinity seconds

Carl Setzer

One of the great things about a new job: learnings. This one is no different. I love learning new software. Well, AutoCAD really isn’t “new”. But the last time I did any real work in the product was, well, a version for DOS. Yeah, it was on a computer running Windows 95, but still….

Anyway, with another staff change, my need to KNOW AutoCAD shot up immensely. Got to love added stress!

It’s fun, but crazy. No panic…not yet, at least. And I have a strategy, so there.

Wish me luck.

Paper vs Digital Notes and Vanishing Information

Carl Setzer

Today I was thinking today about the past. I worked on at project, in the mid-nineties, for Amazon. They were located in a single building in downtown Seattle, very close to Pike Place Market. Nothing to dramatic, just installed terminals in a new call center. I had fun. My main memory: a guy brought his Corgi to work every day. About once an hour, a ball would be thrown down the hall and the dog would tear after it. For me, that exemplified the kind of place I wanted to work.

Anyway, I was wondering what I could pull together from that. Who did I work with? For? Was I there for a week? A month?

All that info? Gone. Yeah, that was quite some time ago. But I’m a rather meticulous note-taker, so am a bit bothered by the information being simply gone.

Now, that was pre-digital anything, really. Ok, the world wide web was a thing (duh, Amazon), but I didn’t own a cellphone yet. There wasn’t a smartphone of any stripe (it would be several years before Handspring would launch the Treo). So, yeah…gone.

Much is made about the fragility of digital record keeping. But there’s fragility to paper, too. Sure, these notes may still exist in some box in my garage. But, most likely, they were tossed out, left somewhere, or… There’s no such thing as backing up paper “stuff”.

When I think about using tools like Evernote, Gmail and all the grand life in the Cloud, I’m struck by a key thing: syncing. My digital information is available cross-platform, cross-device, cross-everything. It’s easy to share (and, yeah, subpoena). Which, to me, sells digital over paper.

Now, I do have paper notes, and journals and notes and…I just need to remember to scan them in, just for a backup. Because, who knows, in twenty years, I might really be interested in where I was today.

Fan Engagement: Zoe Keating

Carl Setzer

I’ve been a fan of Zoe Keating for years. Besides enjoying her music greatly, I’ve also been very interested in the way she interacts with her fans. She’s used today’s social media landscape exceptionally well to build her brand, and a career as a musician within a very unique niche.

Her main tools for engagement are:

What’s a bit more surprising to me are the tools she doesn’t use. Her YouTube channel is pretty spare, and not recently updated. Considering how much I’ve heard about video being “the” thing, looks like she’s experimented with it and has moved along. Now, if you search for her music there, you’ll find tons of videos, but that’s mostly uploads from fans, interviews and such. Also, her music has been uploaded to Vimeo, but, again, not by her. So, she’s present in the world of video, but not deeply so.

I’m also surprised she doesn’t have any campaigns on Patreon nor on Kickstarter. Now, her music is available on iTunes, Spotify, and many other online services. So she might not feel the need to have these income streams. Other musicians and artists in similar styles and viewpoints use them quite heavily, like Amanda Palmer.

Considering all that, it’s important to look at which of these avenues is the most profitable to her. As the chart below shows (created by the folks at Business Insider), most of her income comes from iTunes, Bandcamp and Amazon.

Graph of Zoe Keating's income sources
A look at Zoe Keating’s income sources

 

* Some thoughts on Fanbridge: I imagine it’s a great tool, and it is competitively priced. But it’s important to point out that Mailchimp is quite a bit cheaper, at least at the start. I also wonder if it interacts with any specialized CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools. That would certainly bump up the value of Fanbridge. Mailchimp plays well with several CRM tools. Also, some of the serious competitors, like Constant Contact or Salesforce have those tools fully baked in. With that, I’m unaware of Zoe using any CRM tools. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t, just don’t see anything.

Lastly, Ms. Keating speaks some to these point in the video below. Worth your while.

 

If you’ve liked what you read, please take a moment to let me know in the comments. And give it a share!

Visio & Office Versions – Troubleshooting Fun

Carl Setzer

For some time I’ve been using Visio 2007. It’s worked fine, but it won’t let me import .dwg files (CAD files, if you didn’t know) that have been made recently. So, finally, we buckled down the budget and upgraded to Visio 2016. And, well, things got screwy.

I ended up with this error as I tried to install Vision:

I’ve never dealt with Error Code 30029-39 before. Turns out it was something simple, overlooking a basic issue.

Our version of Office was 2013. Now, I’ve been using Visio 2007 with Office 2013 just fine, no problems. But Office 2016 doesn’t play well with other versions of Office. I should’ve checked Office version compatibility.

So, now I was left with a choice:

  1. Upgrade the rest of Office to 2016 – or –
  2. Find some other way

In the spirit of cheapness, I spent time looking at ways to force Windows 10 to let me have 2 versions of Office. And, well, nope. I did find some ways to use a VM client, like Windows built in Hyper-V, but it started to get to a high butt-pain threshold and I went with option 1).

There are times that being able to get back to work is worth quite a bit.

Web Design Fail Of The Day

Carl Setzer

While researching an error code today, I found a site that documented the issue and posted a solution. However, the site kept popping up a “talk to an agent” nag screen about every 10 seconds. “No” I muttered, “let me read your f****ing website”. After a minute of so of this, I finally closed the site and started looking elsewhere.

Point: don’t make it impossible to interact with your content. Jeez!