Nick's Book Blog

I've moved...

2008-12-03T14:56:00.001-05:00

To nicksenzee.com... Join me there for some info that's maybe sort of a little fresher.

The Concepts of Lean Thinking

2007-01-31T10:47:00.000-05:00

Doing a little research and found an article that pointed these out:

Sort: Eliminate what is not needed.
Set in order. Organize what remains.
Shine. Clean work area.
Standardize. Schedule cleaning and maintenance.
Sustain. Make lean thinking a way of life.

This is from the book Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth by Womack and Jones.

Hi there -

2007-01-24T15:01:00.000-05:00

If you're coming to visit from Lifehack, welcome and have a look around. I have to say I haven't been keeping up very well here because I've gotten very busy with work and family. However, I'm planning on remodeling and moving to a new site because I've outgrown the book theme.

Nick's Book Blog is simply a collection of notes from my reading over the past year or two. My reading typically is through the prism of association management, which is what I do for a living, although I am very much interested in social networks and web 2.0 trends. I think these things are so interesting because they are related to community, which is what associations have been doing for along time.

Anyhow, stay tuned, and thanks for stopping by...

Conference Website + Musings

2006-11-13T17:02:00.000-05:00

Hey all, I found this website on TechCrunch that association peeps need to know about. It's called ConFabb, a site that claims it's the biggest database EVAR of conferences.

Anyhoo, I'm beginning to think about a new direction for NBB that would bring me more into a true association blog space. I started this blog focusing on my business reading. It has been a great learning opportunity, but now that I'm back headlong in association management, I need to refocus my energies. For my faithful readers (all like, four of you or something), throw your feedback out to me. Thanks.

We've Always Done it That Way: 101 Things About Associations We Must Change

2006-10-22T22:58:00.000-04:00

From what I can tell, the impetus for this book was that the folks who wrote it, Jeff De Cagna, David Gammel, Jamie Notter, Mickie Rops and Amy Smith, were “concerned by the instinctively conservative approach to organizational stewardship that far too many association executives and volunteers continue to pursue in the early years of the 21^st century.”

I took notes throughout the book, and now I realize they are far too extensive to make a very good book review. And I am definitely the choir that this book is preaching to. However, I really, really liked the problems these folks addressed and they pretty much slaughtered and butchered several sacred cows.

This book is not extensive narrative or heavily footnoted, but it is based on the collective experience of 5 people who together have worked with many different organizations, and the collective themes will be familiar to anyone in the field.

On a meta level, this book takes observations of what’s happening in the larger world and does the translation necessary to make it appropriate for association leaders.

So, we must change some things about associations. They are organized around these themes:

Changing the way we think

Upshot: We aren’t protected from societal shifts just because we have such a traditional model. We have to lose some of that tradition and start thinking entrepreneurially—because sooner or later we won’t have any choice.

I really liked Mickie Rop’s piece on not letting uniqueness stifle growth. We’re different, so all the research and best practices and bold thinking don’t apply doesn’t cut it; I agree wholeheartedly. Also, the rousing questions asked by De Cagna at the beginning form a good, broad sketch of the climate we currently face in associations.

Changing the way we lead

Upshot: Renovating governance models and structures. Strategy vs. Strategic Planning. The necessity of outcomes and evaluation. Providing staff leadership and not throwing up your hands when the next volunteer leader comes along. Ensuring diversity among the membership and leadership of organizations.

I especially liked the piece “Outcomes Orientation for Everyone,” by David Gammel. It’s that whole “what do I want to happen here” step that sometimes gets overlooked in the face of little emergencies, but in reality, is the only reason the little emergencies exist.

Changing the way we manage

Upshot: Don’t be incompetent!

Seriously, this section was my favorite. I think every single point I’ve wanted to scream over at some point or other. I liked Amy Smith’s “End the Wild Goose Chase,” where you don’t get bogged down in these vertigo-inducing intrigues between board, committees and staff; I also liked her piece “Organizational Dashboard,” where she talks about keeping track of the metrics that really matter. JNott’s advice on handling silos is imminently sensible, and his piece on building teams is as well. Jeff De Cagna’s piece on “What if there were no dues,” borders on the heretical, YET if people don’t think that way they’re going to have some surprises coming. Mickie Rops’s “Stop Rewarding ‘Hard Work,’” had me nodding in agreement so hard I need to visit the chiropractor. If I recapped all the tidbits in this section, I’d just have to type the whole thing in here and that just wouldn’t be right. Besides, you can go see it on the blog.

Changing the way we execute

Upshot: It takes us too long to do the things we do, and we have to get better at being relevant to our members—especially on the educational side of things.

I especially liked the first piece, by David Gammel, talking about the six-month meeting planning lag. This is kind of emblematic of the sea changes that we’re seeing all over the place.

Changing the way we work together

Upshot: People sometimes are difficult and cause problems that need to be solved. That doesn’t mean you should give up. Issues of cultural and generational diversity.

This is the difficult section, which dredges up all those pesky people problems. Why oh why can’t we all just get along? This section will make you think in healthy ways about what to do when you see dysfunction in the association workplace. These are critical problems when you think about it because we mostly work in relatively small organizations. Bad blood can really cause problems and you can’t just ignore it. People problems need to be addressed, so take a look at this section.

Changing the way we involve others

Upshot: This is the R&D advice for associations. How to read your members’ minds and make them happy.

My fave from this one is Amy Smith’s “Your members are subject matter experts.” In organizations I’ve worked for in the past, I’ve wanted to shout this from the rooftops. They know a lot about what’s happening in the field and so any professional association would be wise to tap into that knowledge by selectively picking people’s brains and crafting cool program components.

I know this review is pretty long, but I wanted to write down my takeaways so I can reread them. The book is very much worth reading, and I wish there were more writing so tailored to the kinds of problems associations face. You can buy the book here.

Never Eat Alone

2006-10-22T22:02:00.000-04:00

Okay, I've reached the height of laziness. I'll explain later.

My excuse is that I'm on the road. I came back to BYU for a homecoming reunion since I'm the treasurer of an alumni chapter (very easy job, since we have no money). And of course we trashed UNLV at the game! Also, I've wrapped a bunch of work into the trip out west so I'm doing Utah, Idaho, Arizona and possibly Nevada if I get time.

Here is a picture of campus. The Y is on the mountain, and they light it up at special occasions such as homecoming. The reason why there is only a Y is that they started to put BYU up there and they ran out of money or something. So now it's just the Y and that's what we call the school for shorthand.

Okay, so now to the lazy part. I brought a jillion books with me and I'm trying to plow through them and send them back media mail. I read the book Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi. The book treats the topic of networking, and does it really very well--and realistically. But I am not going to review it but rather link to reviews. Here is one that gets the really good stuff. Here is another from Harvard Business School.

I had lunch with JNott before leaving, and we had some fascinating conversation, thanks for that! I am working on digesting We've Always Done it That Way, that will be forthcoming. In a nutshell, it was great.

Get Out of Your Own Way

2006-10-06T09:27:00.000-04:00

This book, by Robert K. Cooper, was on the library's newly arrived shelf. It's pretty good, although if you read biz books a lot, there's a lot you'll want to skim. Still, the principles he talks about are good to think on.

The subtitle of the book is "the five keys to surpassing everyone's expectations." These keys are:

1. Direction, not motion

2. Focus, not time

3. Capacity, not conformity

4. Energy, not effort

5. Impact, not intentions

Each key has three or four supporting chapters that talk about subprinciples. Some things that I identified with from key one is that a) "good and great are the enemies of possible," a quote Cooper attributes to his grandfather. It's pretty self-explanatory though. The other thing
is he talks about "what's automatic, accelerates." Basically, if you can put effort into something until it becomes automatic, you've won the battle. So focus resources on issues and behaviors that will eventually run themselves, and thus produce payouts. He makes this point very well, so I would suggest if you're curious about that to get the book.

Under key two, I really liked the idea of "emphasizing the right moments, not the clock." Although I love my current position and I have a great deal of freedom, those around me are not always as fortunate. They seem to have employers who don't get this point at all. People have pent-up frustration about not being able to apply this principle in their paid employment. The visionary in me says watch out for this issue, because we will see problems with it in the future.

For key three (capacity, not conformity) I want to underline the point that "constructive discontent drives growth." In the literature, the need to accept change is a yawn-making bore at this point. However, the concept of "constructive discontent" is a, if not the, causal force behind this change. So, to quote scripture, we can "act or be acted upon."

Keys four and five are pretty self-explanatory.

I did enjoy the book, which helped me to articulate some of my personal philosophy and things I've observed to work.

In the mail: We've Always Done it That Way: 101 Things about Associations We Must Change

Membership Developments Article

2006-10-04T12:26:00.000-04:00

I thought this was pretty good, so I thought I'd put it here, until they send me a cease-and-desist :)

One of the seven traits of remarkable associations has to do with internal culture in the organization. Remarkable associations feature a close-knit, consistent culture where all employees receive the same information and also see the potential to contribute to a blockbuster production. Everyone, whether in lead or supporting roles, equally shares the responsibility to contribute and add value to the association.

Of course, having a healthy organizational culture is something that we often see in theoretical literature, but it can get short shrift or written off in practice. And, it matters to membership professionals what kind of culture is present in the organization. This is demonstrated time and time again in case studies of troubled organizations: what’s happening inside an organization seems to effortlessly telegraph itself to customers, members or other stakeholders, who then become guarded and disengaged.

How can we as membership professionals contribute to this “close-knit, consistent” culture? As warm and fuzzy as it may seem, a lot of this boils down to the simple concept of trust: we have to be able to trust our members and coworkers.

Now, trust may be a simple concept, but it takes work and dedication to achieve. It involves a never-ending series of negotiations and renegotiations with those around us—and it will be in some cases impossible to obtain. Nevertheless, it’s worth working on.

Here are some keys to maintaining trust with coworkers and with members:

Be open to learning. It has become a cliché that we need to be lifelong learners. But there is a simple reason for this: change, which always was a constant, continues to accelerate before our very eyes. Being open to learning means not only keeping up with technology (which it does) but also being open to learning about people, cultivating a curiosity about what drives people and makes them tick, and of course, always improving skills, among which are interpersonal skills.

This also means you need to ask questions. Somewhere in junior high school—or perhaps graduate school—we mainly learn that it’s easier to keep quiet and not ask questions. You don’t put yourself out on a limb, and no one assumes you’re dumb (at least not right away). And hello, we all know that saying about there not being dumb questions is okay for kiddies, but not for us. Seriously, questions are essential to learning. Most people won’t stop and say, “hello, Steve, today I’m going to tell you my philosophy on business and life. And by the way, here’s what to avoid in your presentation to the board.” But they might just do that if you pull it out of them one question at a time.

Make sure you’re confident in yourself. In order to “contribute and add value” to the organization, we have to feel we’re able to do this. I know! This is in the realm of MENTAL HEALTH. Ahh! But it’s 2006. Our society has therapy, EAPs and drugs, so these are not insurmountable problems. But maybe some time with a self-help book will suffice as well.

Be honest. We hopefully learned that it’s easier, long-term, to tell the truth than to fib. I will tell you: it is sometimes hard to be perfectly honest, it’s easier to tell a lie. And it’s certainly the case that we need to pick our battles. But when you’re having a conversation with someone and you have the choice to tell a white lie, be assured that things will work out better if you figure out a kind and diplomatic way to tell the truth.

Make time for people. It is easy to get slammed with work and to focus on crossing things off our lists. But make time to build trust with people. Go to lunch with your assistant, talk about work if you want, or not. But let people know you care about them. (If you don’t care about them, omit this step.)

I was watching a program on employment issues the other night. The person on the program said that when you get a job, you master it and become independent. The next step though, is the path to true employment Zen: you reach a point where you help others achieve their best as well. Trust is key to reaching this level, and it’s an important part of having a remarkable culture.

Some Thoughts...

2006-09-27T11:05:00.000-04:00

Here's a couple of things I wanted to write down.

1. This is interesting: a blogger who intends on liveblogging a conference, asks his readers which session he should go to. I don't have time to pre-digest what you could do with this concept, but it's interesting.

2. Really cool 2.0 app, GroupLoop, that is highly relevant to associations. I see that the peeps over at Acronym have noticed this already.

3. Am listening to "Getting to Yes," the treatise on negotiations. While a lot of it is good information and bears paying attention to, I wish it drilled down in its examples more. It either uses simplistic, made-up scenarios, or it uses huge macro-level geopolitical examples. The subtitle of the book is something like "how to get what you want without giving in." Yet, as I go through the content, it seems like they are indeed advocating giving in a lot more than ideal.

The 7 Steps of Naming

2006-09-19T18:20:00.000-04:00

I found this sidebar in Baltimore SmartCEO while waiting in my doctor's office. They apparently reprinted this from Boscobel Marketing Communications. But this looks like a good tipsheet that people could use when these issues come up. However, I think if you're in a small organization, you would certainly want to free yourself from creating the kind of volume this suggests.

1. Discovery. Gather information about the organization and its competitors and analyze target audiences. Use sources such as the organization's executive team, existing collateral/marketing material, websites, media scans, and interviews with industry leaders to develop a clear picture of the marketplace and environment.

2. Criteria. Develop a set of criteria that the name must adhere to using research from the discovery phase. This "name roadmap" will allow the team to evaluate the name on its own merits, and help remove subjectivity from the final decision.

3. Preliminary Name Candidates. Hold a brainstorming session with your naming committee and create a list of all suggested names. The "long list" usually contains between 50 and 100 potential candidates.

4. Qualified Name Candidates. Evaluate each name on the long list against the set of established criteria and conduct information legal research using the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (www.uspto.gov). Eliminate names that do not meet the criteria or are already registered for use through the USPTO. The "short list" is deliverable to the client and typically contains four to six qualified candidates.

5. Validation Screen. Conduct comprehensive research to determine which names will pass through legal approval. Testing may be done in several ways, including focus groups or in-depth phone interviews. Screen potential names through search engines, foreign language dictionaries and phone directories to identify conflicts or issues.

6. Formal Legal Research. Submit the final name candidates to a patent and trademark attorney or the organization's legal department for approval.

7. Deliverable. Present the final name candidates, rationale and recommendations. Show the candidates in a plain typeface to give an accurate representation of how the name would appear.

How to use your 990 as a marketing tool

2006-08-29T17:40:00.000-04:00

I got a flyer in the mail for an upcoming seminar given by WhitefordTaylorPreston and the Reznick Group with the title "How to use your 990 as a marketing tool." Topics include:

"Do you know who is looking at your 990 and why?"
"How would your 990 look to a first-time reader?"
"Who prepares or reviews your 990?"

Day two focuses more intensely on issues of executive compensation, compensation of board members, payment to independent contractors, program expenses, lobying activity reporting, relationships with other organizations, and unrelated business income activity.

While I these issues generally apply more to charity-ish types of organizations than to professional or trade associations, it does bear thinking about. Your 990s are available to anyone who wants to look at them. What story do they tell?

In the mail...

2006-08-29T17:16:00.000-04:00

I got a catalog from Board Source. Their cover book is called "Taming the Troublesome Board Member." Looks worth a looksee.

Also in the mail is Cal Clemon's The Perfect Board, which he was nice enough to send me a few weeks ago. A quick skim through shows it to be a worthwhile read, and definitely a good training piece for incoming board members. I'll give it a fuller review later.

Six Thinking Hats

2006-08-24T14:12:00.000-04:00

This book, by Edward De Bono, is a really good framework for attacking issues. Of course, every one who writes a book wants it to be revolutionary, and to "change the way the world's most successful business leaders think." But today, I'm feeling cynical, and I think that changing the way people think doesn't happen very often.

However, this book is useful, and it could be easily tailored to the point of even becoming (wait for it) AN ASSOCIATION HACK.

Basically, the point is that you engage different kinds of thinking when you're deliberating. You can be interested in numbers, in feelings, in growth, in creativity, etc. So De Bono lists these attributes and gives them a hat of that color. The hat is symbolic (altho it could be concrete, I suppose), and basically, it allows you to communicate what's going in to the thought processes. It helps the user of the framework to be more explicit, and therefore there's less playing of "guess what I'm thinking". Here is a much more in-depth review of the book, with a free worksheet.

I would say, definitely get this book if you're frustrated in group decision making processes. Then, I would come up with a fact sheet based on it, strip it down and explain it to the group before the next meeting. Definitely worth a try if your meetings are in a nonproductive rut.

Toes in the water of 2.0

2006-08-23T18:02:00.000-04:00

So while all my association peeps were in Boston, we worked all weekend on our weekend project, RecipeThing.com, which is in beta (I think!). Lemme know what you think!

The Four Agreements + Companion Book

2006-08-14T13:35:00.000-04:00

I saw this book on Oprah's reading list and thought it would be worth a looksee. It's pretty fluffy, but underneath that fluff are some good principles. Though really, it's enough to just read the actual four agreements:

1. Be Impeccable with Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. User the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection or their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don't Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

So that's pretty much it. Now, the style of the book is cloying and new-agey. But it has some good points that are worth hearing.

Unconferences

2006-08-11T12:53:00.000-04:00

Here's a good article on the whole unconference thing. HT: Chris Brogan

Brain Dump

2006-08-10T10:11:00.000-04:00

Here's what I've been reading and working on these past days.

First, Break all the Rules, by Buckingham and Coffman
The book is written by these folks from Gallup who worked with a HUGE cohort of managers to find out what makes the best ones tick. It's interesting methodology and the conclusions are good. There is a list of things that they say every manager should be able to communicate to his/her employees and if their employees can be assured in those areas, everything will turn out fine and the employees will be happy--and turnover will be low. Here's where you can find that list.

A lot of the discussion centers around what a manager should do with an employee's talent (or lack thereof). The manager should be engaged in using what the employee has to offer and not trying to "put in what was left out." Sounds a lot like volunteer management!

Anyhoo, very much worth while. Again, here is a more in-depth review of the book that gives a detailed summary of points raised in the book.

Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Buckingham and Clifton
This book takes the ideas in the first book and has you apply them to yourself. Pretty interesting. You decide what you are good at and the idea is that you focus on those things and just worry about keeping your weaknesses from sabotaging you (as opposed to laboring over your weaknesses and not developing your strengths even more).

Buckingham is working on a "strengths-based" management moving you can learn about on his website.

Turnaround, by Mitt Romney
Now, I read quite a few non-fictiony business type books and this one was different. That's because it was really pretty technical, like a case study. For those who don't know, Mitt Romney is the venture capitalist governor of Massachussets. This book chronicles his handling of the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympics. I was living in Utah during a big chunk of the time period covered by this book, and, although I knew there was scandal surrounding the bid process, etc., I didn't realize the extent of the huge problems faced by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. It was a mess, and Mitt fixed it. The book tells you how he did that, and that's what makes it different. It's not an A-list book, but if you're interested in real life examples of how things get done, this is an interesting read, and a page turner. Romney may also run for president, check out this site for more on that.

In unrelated news...

A post from the Blog Business Summit will probably be interesting to some of the blogoclump, since it reports on some research detailing styles that can be used/are observed in corporate blogging today.

An association hack is definitely Google's new spreadsheet application. It's web-based, BUT IT'S FAST. Also, you can share it. It is an awesome solution for committee and taskforce work and the versioning problems that come with it. To paraphrase the Good Book, "train up a committee in the way it should go, and when it is old it will not depart from it." What I mean by that is that of course, you'll have to tell people how to use it. But they should easily see the benefits.

An idea for free, ASAE

2006-08-08T11:21:00.000-04:00

I've been a bad blogger lately. Sorry, I've been quite busy with projects that I shall unveil in due time. However, I wanted to say that ASAE should whitelabel something like this to sell to associations. Members could come back from their conferences with really comprehensive reports which they then could turn around and use to justify their memberships. I think it's a good idea.

Some links

2006-07-19T16:57:00.001-04:00

So I've got my RSS life back together and have been keeping up with my blog reading lately. So I wanted to pass along some interesting bits.

Boing boing highlights a Pew Center study of blogger demographics. Fairly interesting.

A new website that tells you which bike routes are good. HT: Treehugger

My guy Glenn Reynolds talks about the long tail. HT: PicoBusiness. Take a look at my review of an Army of Davids, which is mentioned in both places.

Bakardo talks about how social networks are killing email. As I read this, I thought how true it is and will become. I know I'm not as good at emailing consistently as I once was, and sometimes I have to make myself remember that people expect responses. I start treating email like an RSS reader. Which is weird.

Also, Jeff De Cagna asked me to let you know about his new education programs for the association community

Blogoclump in Print

2006-07-12T21:50:00.000-04:00

Looks like a good month for the blogoclump in the newest issue of Associations Now. Jeff De Cagna has a big spread on what associations can learn from Google via his interview with John Battelle, author of Search: How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed our Culture (say that three times fast). I have to admit having seen the book at the airports and not having looked at it because it appears with some copycats and I haven't known which one of them to pick up. Batelle is a techno journalist who speaks quite cogently about issues of 2.0 and the like, and applies them to associations. I agree with the conclusion in the article that Google et al represent more of an opportunity than a threat. But interestingly 2.0 means "that associations need to have good answers for questions that might be asked of search engines." Good point, and not everyone is sensitive to these issues.

And Ben Martin has a page on how he hates the word orientation. He'll send you directions for speed networking if you send him an email.

How to keep your corporation from not being dissolved

2006-07-12T12:30:00.000-04:00

Doing a little research on state-by-state incorporation stuff, and I found these tips from Arizona's Corporation Commission. Their website is really hard to follow, so I've liberally adapted them here. Mind you, I'm not a lawyer, so don't get sued on my account or anything.

Keep your corporation from being dissolved

1. If you move, tell the corporation authority. You register an agent with the state. They keep that address on file forever. They won't know you've moved unless you tell them. They'll send all your notices to your old address and you may never know. And they can be unforwardable. This means missed filings and lots of bad stuff. It can also roll over to your communications with IRS which of course we want to avoid miscommunication with the IRS. So go online and fill out your state's form. Also, make sure that if you have a statutory agent that that info is kept updated as well.

2. Know the date your report is due, or if you have one. This is hard to boilerplate because every state is different. Some states require annual reports. If yours does, keep up with it. Some states require a biennial report. Know that too.

3. Don't never change the corporate name, due date, filing number or fee amount printed on the form and don't create your own form. This is bad.

4. Follow the directions. Always a good idea with these things don't you think?

5. Check the state authority's website freqently to see if they have changed anything you need to know about.

This stuff is kind of tedious, and I always fear that people aren't keeping up with it (or aren't even aware that they need to).

Cool website, again

2006-07-11T09:43:00.000-04:00

I got this tip from one of the listservs I'm on. It's called emurse and it's a 2.0 site that archives your resume, helps you keep it up to date, etc. All I've got to say is where were you when I needed you?

Everything old is new again

2006-07-11T09:07:00.000-04:00

Here's an article from the Sarasota (Florida) Herald Tribune that talks about a "new breed" of philanthropist. It sounds like an awesome program. He is training low-resource people to be medical assistants, which is great, especially given the local context where the job market for medical services is rather good.

A quote from the article

"These are people who have learned to solve problems, and they're now bringing their money and the critical thinking skills to bear in the nonprofit sector," said Leo Arnoult, a fundraising consultant and past chairman of the Giving USA Foundation, which publishes an annual report on giving trends.

Unlike donors of the past, who were content to write a check, knowing that their money was supporting a good cause, entrepreneurial donors take a more hands-on approach.

However, even if rich folks may have taken a hiatus on this style of giving for awhile, the foundations of philanthropy in this country are based on "entrepreneurial" giving, for example Carnegie who very much believed that he should use not only his own money, but also his skillset to tackle society's problems. See here and here for more of this kind of thing.

Note: I'm going to use more pictures on my blog, because a) I like pictures and b) I've been inspired of late by Ben Martin's use of the visual medium, and also I really like the illustrations in Creating Passionate Users. So imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that, now you know.

Cool website

2006-07-06T17:33:00.000-04:00

I just used this online faxing service, faxitnice.com. I bought some credit for $20, scanned in my sheet and sent off the fax for .18. And it archives your faxes for you, which really brings out my OCD. Finding a fax machine is a drag but many of the online services want you to pay monthlies. This is a good way to do it.

Happy 4th of July!

2006-07-04T18:11:00.000-04:00

Here is a lovely picture I found. Not that I can be bothered to go down to the mall mind you, but we hope to on Saturday.

The sign at the grocery store said 101 degrees today and then it started pouring down rain. That's pretty typical fourth weather I'd say.