Tim ‘Gonzo’ Gordon

I’ve been hanging out on Twitter for a couple of months now, finally getting a feel for how it works. And it’s not immediately apparent what to make of the hundreds of snippets of conversations that show up each day on your site.

Imagine a river. It’s a big, wide, rushing river that seems to keep pushing at its banks with more and more water every minute. It flows in all directions, meandering slowly here, quickly here. Plop yourself down in the middle of that river in a tiny boat with a minuscule anchor and that’s what it’s like to jump into the ebb and flow of Twitter.

Currently I ‘follow’ a couple of hundred people and about the same amount follow me @timgonzogordon. When I jump in the Twitter stream I get dozens of ‘tweets’ per hour. I can watch them go by. I can jump in and offer my own pith conversations. In fact I think Twitter was invented to demonstrate the actual meaning of ‘pithy’. Look it up.

If so desired I can reply to a tweet with a comment of my own. That reply can be published so that anyone can see it. Or it can be a direct message to the originator of the message and only he/she can see it.

The type of tweets simply amaze me. Here’s a sample from the last day or two that have come across my TweetDeck:

>>>

In Tokyo’s Narita airport…on my way to home to Hong Kong

Just went to Facebook for the first time in months. I have 4660 pending friend requests. Holy kaw!

I’m not feeling well all of a sudden…. Maybe call it a day. Tomorrow…. Who knows what tomorrow will bring…

Walking downtown. Gonna get me a new MacBook

Great essay on the dangers of feminist slut-shaming. http://tinyurl.com/6upd8e

Korean BBQ at midnight = extremely tasty.

My Twitemperature is a scorching HOT 139°F (59°C)! “Everyone wants you, but no one can have you.” Check yours at http://twitemperature.com

Hey, @ABartelby, wanna join me for a cigarette?

Xmas posting: What unique and meaningful value & connections have you gotten out of Twitter? Here is our five! http://blog.mrtweet.net/?p=69

>>>

Yeah, just like eavesdropping on a conversation. But if you’ll notice, the tweets show a person’s unique personality. There’s desire, excitement, passion, information; comments about food, cigarettes (?), feminism, popularity, computers, etc.

Now imagine that times a hundred. A thousand, ten thousand, a million.

That’s what Twitter is like every day.

Think of what it’s like for someone like @GuyKawasaki with almost 40,000 followers - and he’s following even more than that. Or Robert Scoble @Scobleizer who has 45,000 followers and he’s following over 20,000 people.

Here I have a tough enough time even catching the snippets of the conversation going on with a few hundred people.

But with tens of thousands it must be a very fast-moving river of conversation, indeed.

You can almost tell a ‘newbie’ to Twitter by the type of postings they make. Typically tentative, or perhaps tossing anything into the river to see what floats to the top.

Marketers in particular I notice try to promote themselves and their products more than the average Tweeter. Now there’s nothing wrong with promoting yourself on Twitter; it’s a great platform to let people know about you and what you do. But it can be overdone. I’ve ‘un-followed’ people after one too many promotional postings. I’ve also kept following some marketers after several self-interested promo messages just to see if they would ‘get it’ and evolve, if even slightly.

To me, even if you have an account at Twitter that you started as a way or letting people know about your business, you still have to let people know who YOU are.

After all, your clients want to do business with you because of WHO you are, not necessarily WHAT you do. Of course WHAT you do is important, but if you really want to attract folks that might do business with you someday on Twitter, let them see who you are.

Lisa Braithwaite @lisabraithwaite is a good example. She doesn’t make a secret of her business as a public speaking coach, but when you follow her tweets you learn who SHE is. You know she’s got a cat with health issues. She comments on how Twitter works, how she finds people to follow, and get a distinct feel for her personality.

Others are similar: they wear their heart on their sleeve and let you see who they really are.

It’s like Perry Belcher @perrybelcher said in one of his videos. Being in social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) is like being at a party. You’re there to have fun, not to sell. The selling part comes when they find they like you, check you out, go to your blog or website and then ask for more information, such as joining your list, downloading a white paper, viewing a video or listening to a podcast. Twitter is the ‘cool conversation’ that shows people who you are.

Of course there’s a whole corporate side to Twitter (@starbucks, @comcastcares, etc.) that takes aim at followers in a completely different way. But when you decide to follow a corporate entity, or at least a person behind a corporate mask, you’re opting in to the corporate messages that flow out from that. No one is beating you over the head with unwanted messages; you chose to follow. You can choose to unfollow with a single click.

That’s the beauty of Twitter. It’s an ‘opt-in ongoing personal/business conversation’ that introduces you to as many people as you can stand. Literally. Whether it’s 500, 5,000 or 50,000 you can mix with those people on a casual or intense basis. It’s your choice.

I’ve heard it said that Twitter is not ‘micro-blogging’ as it has been called; it has evolved into an extremely dynamic social media force that will overpower the staid and conservative formats of MySpace and Facebook.

If it hasn’t already. I mean, where do you get more action?

It seems to me that I put a lot of pages in my book-reading log in ‘08. Here are just the best of the best of the fiction or non-business books I read last year:

Kurt Vonnegut - Armageddon in Retrospective
Published posthumously, it’s been somewhat chided for being too personal or perhaps not so pointed. As a Vonnegut fan, I zipped through it and loved every bit. Acerbic as ever to the end.

Armageddon in Retrospect

Nam Le - The Boat
Take a deep breath before you jump into this collection of short fiction pieces. Nam Le is a young man; born in Vietnam and raised in Australia. The vision and power of his writing will stick with you long after you pass the book on to another reader, which you surely will.

The Boat

Martin Cruz Smith books
Gorky Park (1981)
Polar Star (1989)
Red Square (1992)
Havana Bay (1999)
Wolves Eat Dogs (2004)
Stalin’s Ghost (2007)

Having been a fan of the two original Arkady Renko novels, “Gorky Park” and “Polar Star”, I was surprised to learn early in ‘08 that there were not 1, or 2, or 3, but FOUR novels featuring the same ruffled, dogged Russian detective that I hadn’t heard about. Strange, I know. How I missed them I don’t know, but they’re all page-turners, extraordinarily plotted and written.

Hard to pick a favorite, but both Havana Bay and Wolves Eat Dogs stand out in my mind. In Havana Bay, Renko is in Cuba to identify the body of an old friend Pribula and recovering from the accidental death of his wife. In Wolves Eat Dogs Arkady is trolling the ‘dead zone’ of the Chernoblyl disaster, investigating the apparent suicide of one of the most powerful men in Russia. I kept waiting for my fingers to start glowing.

Red Square: A Novel (Mortalis.)

Wolves Eat Dogs (Arkady Renko Novels)

Stalin’s Ghost: An Arkady Renko Novel

Havana Bay: A Novel (Mortalis.)

Rose

Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore
This breathless, spacey and ultimately satisfying novel was introduced to me by Roger Steffens. It follows 15-year old runaway Kafka as he searches for his missing sister and mother, and is filled with mysticism, magic, surreal experiences and a back-and-forth narrative that ultimately meet up on a mostly metaphysical plane. Yeah, I know, thought what the hell, too? But it’s beautiful, eerie and in some ways transcendent.

Kafka on the Shore

Jon Krakauer - Into the Wild
The book that inspired the Sean Penn directed movie, which follows Christopher McCandless on his adventures after leaving college and heading cross-country. He ended up in Alaska where he ultimately died at the age of 24. Vividly reported, the book is an expansion on a 9,000 word article Krakauer wrote for Outside magazine in 1993.

This is freakin’ hilarious. Talk about prankin’ someone:

Yup, we got out in the snow this afternoon. Snowball fights, riding bikes, playing snowball and — in the case of Cardiff — walking, er uh, crawling on hands and knees — walking like a dog around the block. Yeah, I know, crazy.

But now, a few hours later, the snow turned to freezing rain, there is a crust of 1/2″ of ice on top of the snow. Wonder what it’ll be like in the morning? Well, we had fun tonight, that’s for sure!

See the Facebook photo album here.

I just upgraded to WordPress 7.0 and the dashboard certainly looks different and cool. The website looks the same, although I suppose it should. This means I did it without botching the database. Yes, I did back it up before starting.

Almost a year ago I tried to update WordPress but for some reason it did not take, even though I went through the process twice. Every time I logged in there was a reminder that I was ‘out of date’ and needed to upgrade WordPress. Well, I finally have.

I’ll have to see how the thing does over the next few days. I am thinking of changing the look of the site with a new template. Got any suggestions?

I’ve never paid anything to Classmates.com. I have an account there, but it’s the freebie one, where you can see a little bit here and there. I’m not really interested in hooking up and paying a monthly or quarterly or yearly fee for something I probably would use just now and then. Maybe a time or two a year. Not worth it to me.

But the bastards have me on a trickle email list. So now and they they’ll send me an email informing me that someone from my old high school (in this case, Bend High School in central Oregon) is now a member. Or they’ve signed a guest book or something.

The last time this happened, about a month ago, I got an email telling me I should scoot on over to their website and see if I wanted to connect! So I clicked the link, saw who it was, and decided it wasn’t really worth paying for it. I have a reunion book of addresses and in fact I could probably find the guy online or in the phone book for freakin’ sake if I really want to see him.

But it’s an old high school dude. Not on my priority list.

So today I get another email from Classmates.com with the same message. Only this time when I click through to see who has signed the guestbook signature, they’ve upped the ante:

When I try to click through I’m not allowed to see who it is. Instead it’s a come on to sign up. Now admittedly it’s probably not a lot of money (actually I didn’t even look because I expected to see who it was first). This time they didn’t let me see. Just a pitch:

Why the change? Why did they allow me to see the name of the former classmate a few weeks back but now make it necessary to sign up to even see who it is?

No thanks, I am annoyed now and it’s worth blogging about.

That’s a great way to get good publicity, don’t you think?

This one rocked:

I hereby admit that I like to print up cool quotes and thumbtack them to my wall. I started doing this a few years ago and it seems that I will just about cover my entire wall by the end of 2009.

The quotes are there for inspiration, motivation, a little humor, a little humility and perhaps even a bit of ‘reaching for the stars’ as Casey Kasem used to say. No, I don’t have a Casey Kasem quote on my wall!

So what quotes have I got? Let’s take a look.

Some are attributed. Others either I came up with or I don’t know where they originated. So let’s start with one of those.

“Start Now. Begin Anywhere.”

“There’s always a way.” - Tony Little

“To he who has much, much will be given. To he who has little, much will be taken from.” - Jesus

“You don’t have to get it PERFECT. You just have to GET IT GOING!” - Mike Littman

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” - Edwin Schlossberg

“I am always going that which I cannon do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” - Picasso

“To learn things most people will never know, you must:
1. Summon Courage
2. See Clearly
3. Swallow Your Pride
4. Speak the Truth”
- Roy Williams

“Do something everyday that scares you.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

“Only put off until tomorrow that which you are willing to die having left undone.” - Picasso

“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” - Picasso

“The eight things that lead to success:
1. Passion
2. Work
3. Focus
4. Persist
5. Ideas
6. Good
7. Push
8. Serve”
- Richard St. Johns

“Take time to think; it is the source of power.
Take time to play; it is the secret of perpetual youth.
Take time to read; it is the fountain of wisdom.
Take time to laugh; it is the music of the soul.
Take time to work; it is the price of success.
Take time to give; it is too short a day to be selfish.
Take time to pray; it is the greatest power on earth.”
- unknown

“Any word that you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.” - Stephen King

“Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying.” - Christian Furchtegott Gellert

“The only thing you have in life that you control 100% of is your effort and your word.” - Neil Carlson

“Writing Causes Thinking.” - me?

“The most difficult things in life can be the most rewarding. When you do the things that are the most difficult, you tend to get the biggest rewards. I feel that’s the balance that life gives you. The hardest work you can do tends to be the most fulfilling.” - Sean Lennon

“When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.” - Greg Anderson

“Never underestimate yourself.” - Bruce Jenner

“You will be the same person in five years but for two things: the books you read and the people you associate with.” - Charlie ‘Tremendous’ Jones

“Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.” - Edwin Land

“The most rewarding things in life are often the ones that look like they can’t be done.” - Arnold Palmer

“Faith is made even stronger when the struggle is more difficult. The victory is sweeter. The love is greater. Bonds are stronger. Loyalty is cemented.” - Kevin Hogan

“When people see you beginning to live you authentic lives, it drives them crazy because they know they’re not living their own.” - Lao Tzu (The Art of War)

“Having a true faith is the most difficult thing in the world. Many will try to take it from you.” - Steve Prefontaine

“If you have accomplished all that you planned for yourself, you have not planned enough.” Edward Everett Hale, Unitarian clergyman and writer (1822-1909)

“A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” - unknown

“Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you can learn to do it well.” - Zig Ziglar

“What did you WRITE today?” - Scott Ginsberg, the Nametag Guy

“Yes risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.” - Tim McMahon

“The whole area of creation plays all kinds of tricks on the writer. It can fool him into thinking it’s easier than it is; it can fool him into thinking it’s harder than it is; it can fool him into thinking it’s working when it’s not, or not working when it is.” - Mark Knopfler

“Perfectionism is the highest order of self-abuse.” - unknown

“The greatest thing about life is that tomorrow I will be better than today.” - Tiger Woods

“See the job. Do the job. Avoid the misery.” - David Mousley

“So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would way that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” - General George S. Patton

and finally…

Winners vs Losers

A winner is always part of the answer,
A loser is part of the problem.

A winner always has a plan,
A loser always has an excuse.

A winner says: “Let me do that for you.”
A loser says: “That is not my job.”

A winner sees an answer for any problem,
A loser sees a problem for any answer.

A winner sees a green near every sandtrap,
A loser sees two sandtraps near every green.

A winner says: “It may be difficult but it’s possible.”
A loser says: “It may be possible but it’s too difficult.”

A year or two ago one of the springs broke on my garage door. Second spring to break since I bought the house in ‘98 and the guy that fixed it said, “You probably won’t want to fix this a third time. You’ll probably want to get a new garage door at that point.” Subtle sales trickery, no doubt.

“How much?”

“About $1500.”

When a windstorm blew several limbs out of one tree in my yard the city stopped by (they own the trees; go figure) and cut three out of four down and left the wood in my yard. Most of it is still home for bugs and spiders and crap in my back yard. A few years later I was chatting with a guy in Hillsboro that works for a company that plants full-grown trees wherever you want them.

If the main tree that throws shade over my afternoon full-on picture window is removed by the city crews I will need a new tree. So I asked the guy how much a full grown tree would cost.

“Well, it goes by the diameter. But you can expect to pay about $1500.”

Hmm. Okay…

My neighbor across the street put in a new driveway a couple of years ago. I could use a new driveway because mine is split, cracked and growing tufts of grass and weeds. I asked him how much his new driveway cost. I mean, I wasn’t being nosy, I was curious, so I said - approximately - how much?

“About $1500.”

Last spring my water heater died. Turned out to be the heating elements, but I went without hot water and had to shower at my neighbor’s a few times, and boil water to wash dishes. While in the process of determing what was wrong and weighing all my options, a friend who works for a heating/air conditioning place said one thing they did were these new cool ‘tankless’ water heaters. I thought the idea was great. Not that I seriously considered it, though, because, as you might have guessed by now, it would have run me about…

…$1500.

I heard about this from Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.net (this post) and figured I would try it out. Did the quick little install, which seemed to go well. Set up the FTP log-in and other stuff and am now ready to post. How about a new video? I just did this last night on my YouTube Channel:

Let’s look at some old concert tickets, shall we?