2008: The Year of the Gnome

As the holiday season approached, I was asked what I wanted for the holidays (and subsequently my birthday) . Outside of a job (which I have since been able to get) I really didn't have anything that was on my wish list. However, during our travels I gained a semi-healthy obsession with garden gnomes. After finding our first one in Brugge, we saw them throughout the trip and whenever I had the chance, I took a picture. Evidently Becca, when asked about potential presents for me, mentioned gnomes as an option.

Fast forward to Christmas Day. My Dad had me in the family gift exchange and in addition to a gift certificate for Beer Disneyland, I got a good ol' fashioned Garden Gnome. The jolly little fellow was a welcome xmas present and I was excited about adding him to the office until I could figure out an appropriate outdoor home. A nice surprise present.

Of course, it was nowhere near done. Between Christmas and my birthday, I received two mini-gnomes and a gnome book from my mother in law, a garden "om" (a Buddha gnome) from my brother in law and his wife and the t-shirt pictured above from my lovely wife. So in two weeks I went from gnomeless to gnomelicious.

After receiving all these gifts I, much like the Chinese, elected to give 2008 a proper designation. For the Chinese, 2008 is the Year of the Rat. For me, 2008 is the Year of the Gnome!

Brian

I'm Back

The first day of work is in the book. No, I didn't just get home (in fact I'm currently in class) but I did have a busy, information filled day. I've already gotten my first client and am off to the races.

Thankfully there are a lot of blog posts backed up in our queue and just begging to be posted. So while I get my feet firmly on the ground, you the reader still get fresh blog posts for the reading.

Brian

Best and Worst Commericals

As a sports fan, it always drives me nuts that there is more talk about the commercials than the game. However, after yesterday's thriller for once this might not be the case. That being said I did find myself at least having an opinion about a few of the commercials. So without further ado, in one man's opinion the best and worst of "The Big Game*" commercials.

Best:



Somehow watching a person in a really blatant mouse costume (note the space between the head and body of the costume) lay the smack down on the creepy looking guy was really, really fun. Maybe the PBR had more of an effect that I thought. It does go to show you though that in some cases the amateur ads end up being as good as those done by the ad agencies.

Worst (tie):



and



The group I was with was shocked when these ads came up. While I could go off about the racist nature of the ads, I'm equally as disturbed about the business sense of Sales Genie. Sales Genie has been quoted as saying that their goal was to make the worst commercials of 2008. While the "any publicity is good publicity" school of thought is usually appropriate, I can't imagine that getting branded as a trashy, racist organization by a large part of the general populace is where you want to be headed from a branding perspective. The other question to be asked is wouldn't the $4.8 million they spent on securing the ad space be better spent on something with a more discernible return on investment? Do they really think that people who need sales leads are going to call up Sales Genie after that? It will be very interesting to see what the fallout for this is for Sales Genie in the days and weeks ahead.

I'm already serving as an enabler by linking to the ads. So enjoy the Doritos commercial and get back to work!

Brian

* I will stick with The Big Game for fear of having the NFL copyright police knock down our door and force me to watch a 24 hour running loop of NFL pundits talking loud and saying nothing.

Giants Win! Giants Win!

I just wanted to take a brief moment and congratulate my former grad school roommate Kevin Abrams. He's been with the NY Giants organization for a number of years now and as Assistant General Manager he has certainly had a large hand in helping build the team that prevented the Patriots perfect season. Not bad for a kid from Canada...

Hope everyone had a good time watching a great football game and are home and in one piece. More tomorrow.

BD

How Quickly We Forget...

So the Northwest has had an active meteorological week, with snow, sleet, rain, wind, hail and more and lots of schools and roads being closed. The damp chill pervades everywhere and leaves us longing for open fireplaces, warm blankets, and steaming mugs of hot chocolate -- or, at the very least, has us lunging for the thermostat.

However whenever the whining gets too much or we start to feel too sorry for ourselves we stop and remind ourselves of where we just moved from. That's right: the frozen tundra of Minnesota. From this week's Star Tribune:

The bitter cold and dangerously low windchills between minus 35 and minus 50 degrees this morning caused scores of schools across Minnesota to call off school or start late. Windchill readings will remain in the teens and 20s below zero this afternoon across the Twin Cities. Even with the improvement in the windchill, exposed skin in today's conditions can still freeze in five to 10 minutes, the National Weather Service said.

Um. Yeah. Right....... what were we complaining about again??

Sorry to run, but I'm off to go for a walk in our envigorating cool wet weather and give thanks for living in Oregon again.

Becca

On the other hand, I'm not quite him:

With windchills well below zero, a Danish man who is known as only as Wimhof walked along the Universityof Minnesota campus on Wednesday while an ABC News crew shot film of him. The network brought the man, who says he’s impervious to cold, to the Twin Cities. (photo Elizabeth Flores)

Where's McGruff when you need him?

We always joke about living in the 'Hood' in Sellwood. Now granted, being south of Tacoma Street does make us ever-so-slightly on the wrong side of the tracks, but for those who don't know Sellwood is quaintsville: antique shops and boutiques, coffee shops and restaurants and nice old houses on streets lined with stately old trees. South Central it's not. But yesterday we got a reminder that sometimes, it doesn't matter.

In an effort to enjoy my last bit of freedom before rejoining the working world, we elected to get out into our neighborhood (the 'nice' part even) and grab some lunch out at Cha! Cha! Cha!. It was a late lunch; say 1:30 or so. As we were getting out of the car, Becca just froze, then calmly told me "Get that man's license plate. I think he just stole that truck"

Admittingly I was a bit confused; we were staring at the Post Office parking lot across the street. A guy was pulling away in a green pickup. So I went running towards the street he was on and saw he didn't have a license plate in the front. Assuming I'd get it in the back, I took a quick look, saw a very intense "don't mess with me" look, let the truck pass and then realized there was no license plate on the back either. He blew through the intersection and was gone.

What happened? A good ol' fashioned Smash and Grab. The guy (from the sound of the PO employees it wasn't the first time) pulled up to someone's car, opened his door, smashed their window, took her purse (she was in the post office at the time) and took off. My guess? Given the increasing prevalence of meth heads here in Portland, it wouldn't surprise me if that was the reasoning for the crime. Or it could just be an good old run of the mill crook. Either way it stunned us and reminded us that no matter how nice we think our neighborhood is, stuff like this happens all the time. We were just more impressed with the brazen nature of doing it in the middle of broad daylight with little regard to the environment around him. If we'd been there a little sooner or been a little quicker, we might have even made the local news :-)

Brian

From Becca's perspective:

As we got out of the car I heard glass smash in the parking lot. I looked over and saw someone jumping into a pickup truck parked on the other side of a nice SUV and peeled out. I ran toward him and yelled 'hey'. For some reason my brain jumped to the conclusion that someone must have left their keys in the car and this person broke in and drove off, hence my instructions to Brian. He wasn't kidding about the "don't mess with me look". As he glowered at us as Brian ran into the street I thought "dear god, don't get run over (or shot!)" and "what was I thinking heading toward him yelling 'hey'". What was I going to do?? "Say 'stop', or I'll hey again??"

Still convinced that it was the truck that was stolen, I ignored a well dressed lady leaving the post office on her cell phone and heading back towards the SUV. I had just finished querying everyone in the PO to see if they had a truck, when she came running back in saying someone had smashed her window and grabbed her purse. Right. That actually makes much more sense than smashing the window of an old pickup and either finding keys or hot wiring it in like 5 seconds. So much for those jumped-to conclusions.

There followed the classic eye witness issues. (We actually were eyewitnesses for a hit-and-run a few months ago and remembered enough to get the perpetrator tracked down - of course...he had a license plate! - but he looked like we had described). In this case it happened so fast:

"it was a dark blue pick up" says I, while Brian says "it was dark green". He was in his 30's I say as Brian assuredly says "his forties". We did agree on hair color though...

Guess we do need McGruff after all...

Back to Work!

After a job search that has been an adventure, I am proud to say that I'm formally back in the ranks of the fully employed. As of February 4th, I will be an account executive with Anvil Media, Inc. Anvil Media is a search engine marketing company that specializes in search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) management, social media marketing (SMM) and online reputation management (ORM) services. They are a small firm but one that packs a big punch in town.

In short, I'm excited; the opportunity is an excellent chance for me to put my analytical skills to work in a fast moving, constantly changing space. I've got a 90 day qualifying period but I am confident that my work ethic and ability to take on new things will wow them and win the day :-)

That's it. Just wanted to let everyone know I've found a home to land. Now if you'll excuse me I've got to go catch up with the cool kids and get myself on Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.

Brian