Pardon the Interruption

My wife and I are celebrating 3 years of wedded bliss this month and I was looking through our photos tonight. Here are some highlight photos of just the two of us. Any guesses as to which photo was taken first?

Stats Gone Wild

Some days I wish I was paying for an upgraded stat log with StatCounter… clearly someone got a hold of my business workhorse site URL (http://www.jessepetersen.com)and spread it around on September 23rd. 296 visitors and only 7 returning visitors viewed over 400 pages. A good day “at the office” and I didn’t even know it.

Don’t Be Knockin’ Education

Yesterday (October 1st, 2009) our local free newspaper in Tampa (tbt* – http://tampabay.com/tbt/) published a verbatim letter to the editors that they received from an 11th grade student in the area who disagreed with Obama’s push for education reform that includes longer school years/weeks in a long-winded, error-laden piece of mess. Read the original letter to the editors here: “A student’s letter to tbt*”

I’ll be the first to tell you there are a lot of stupid people out there. Students, teachers, parents, workers, bosses… all walks of life. By definition, 50% of the population has a less than average intelligence – something to think about while driving. Despite those terrible statistics that Jay Leno exposes on a regular basis, don’t knock the rest of academia and those who love to learn and keep on learning after it’s not required.

That said, that article is a piece of work… I mean, a piece of art. I’ve spent a good many years proofreading papers and always spot typographic errors in publications. I was an editor for 3 years and know what things look like when a stupid person writes something. To even consider that letter to the editor as a contribution to society is laughable. Even numbskulls know about capitalizing sentences – what they don’t know is how to use parenthetical statements (which that person did twice). There is also a sign of significant intelligence in the actual ideas of the letter, though I’m not sure which provoked the tbt* editors more: the atrocious spelling or the position on the topic that the student took. The very existence of the letter should set off some alarms to the validity of the piece as written by an idiot.

Two more points for kickers: 1) would tbt* have published the piece if it was written with perfect prose – would it have made its way out of a pile of letters they receive every day? 2) if it was written by a dolt, they would have not known how poor the grammar was and would have omitted the request for anonymity.

Here is the first page of the replies to the editor that tbt* received in response to the student letter: Replies to the editor

I am calling for a full-scale investigation of the author to have tbt* report back that said author is actually an honor roll student with plans to attend the USF Honor’s College next fall, but is fearful of any action the university may take against their application if this was attributed to them.

The 6 Tools I Couldn’t Do Without

Even with all of the right personal tools for business that get and grow your work, some tools are essential for one’s sanity or to just “get it all done.” With the exception of the latest addition to this list, my clients and my income would be seriously hampered by the elimination of just one of these tools and services. Some have analogues close enough in function that I would adjust, but a world without anything like it would be terrible for business at this point.

FreshBooks

What in the world did people do before invoicing was made so simple? I used PayPal for over a year with pretty good regularity and quickly tired of the steps it takes to create a new invoice and do any more than just one or two changes to it for repeat work. Then someone led me to FreshBooks in January, right before launching my company.

Transmit

Undoubtedly the best FTP client available for Mac, in my eyes at least. If you don’t know what FTP is yet, best be Googling that to manage your site better than those crappy host file managers. I’ve written articles on how to use FTP before, but they are other peoples’ property now, so I’d better write a new one, hadn’t I?

Transmit has so many great features:

• Multiple tabs for being in several clients’ sites at once without taking up extra screen real-estate
• Upload/Download progress icon in the Dock so I can be doing other things without watching it
• Drag and drop logins into various folders (I use “quick jobs,” “clients,” and “archives”) to keep it clean

Skype

I hate to use the phone for business, I really do. You wouldn’t suspect it once you get to know me (until you get to know me really well), but being on voice unnerves me because I always like to have time to respond to questions and situations, especially with a new client/situation. Here is where Skype comes into play.

I pay something like $30/yr to have a local phone number and unlimited calling in and out (free for US and Canada and all Internet-based calls using Skype IDs) for these advantages:

• My home and cell phone numbers stay private (e-mails come at 2am, you’d better believe calls would, too)
• I can literally “unplug” from work at any time by closing the lid on my laptop or closing the Skype client
• I can call using my iPhone Skype app so long as I’m in a wi-fi area – I can call from campus without giving out my cell number via caller ID
• If the number gets out to solicitors or whatnot, it’s totally painless to get a new number
• Free voicemail and caller history logs

Twitter/Tweetie

My business wouldn’t be where it is today without the existence or use of Twitter. One of my biggest clients and all of his referrals are due to Twitter: a simple tweet about using WordPress for business. My best friends are on Twitter conversing with me and we refer work to each other and it shows those listening in what I’m all about.

Tweetie is my favorite Twitter client for the Mac and iPhone (not paying the full-version price for the Mac just to get rid of the ads), but I use Tweetdeck for Windows when I’m on my desktop for whatever reason. Tweetie keeps my IDs in a column on the left side with dots to announce whether I have replies or DMs without having to watch them all stream. It also has the typical URL shortening, photo uploader, and follower management.

Photoshop

I love to design! I’m no Michelangelo, but I can hold my own and need some brushes and paint, man. I’ve been using Photoshop for years, and despite some friends moving on to some new programs, I use it for 90% of my graphics work, only departing to use Illustrator for my vector art for logos.

MailChimp

Something I just signed up for this week and would not give up this service easily. I’m still using the free version (500 subscribers, 3,000 e-mails per month) for a while longer, but for $10/mo they remove their badge at the bottom of your e-mails and also the monthly message limit for the same 500 subscriber limit.

I created a list from my clients, designed an e-mail campaign layout, wrote my e-mail with styles and social network links, and sent it off in under an hour. Now I’m able to track open rates, clickthroughs, unsubscribes, and even what links in the e-mail were clicked – visually, too. I replicated this e-mail to begin my next newsletter even more efficiently. By the way, you can sign up to receive my news, entertainment, and education by signing up here.