You’re not alone.

I’m typing this in bed, on the new laptop my IttyBiz readers bought me. (By the way? Thanks for that.) To my right, on the floor, on Jamie’s side of the bed, sit two Macintosh computers. They belong to my mother. For those of you who are new, I’ll take this opportunity to mention that my mother moved to Europe in 2005. I have yet to get off my ass to put them in storage. To my left is a floor full of books. They used to live in my busted chipboard bookshelf, but Jack likes to play with them, taking them down and putting them back in an order he feels is more appropriate. The last time he played this game was about 10 days ago. The books are still on the floor. Neither of us can get into bed from the sides, so we come up from the foot. Read More

Did you like that title? Isn’t it search engine optimized? (It’s definitely optimized, but I’m not sure for what.) That is because I am an excellent and well-respected marketing professional. In other news, thank you for all of your emails asking if I’m dead. I’m not.

If you have a home business marketing consultant, they will often advise or supervise a split campaign — often called an A/B split.

This sounds scary. It’s not.

When I first heard this, I freely admit I freaked out. I will always associate A and B with algebra (X and Y I associate with chromosomes) and I don’t dig algebra. I am not saying this for comedic effect — I was borderline hysterical. Granted, I become borderline hysterical when I can’t calculate the tip at my friendly local tavern, but this was worse than usual. Anyway, moving on. Read More

Before we get into today’s lesson, I present you with Spam Of The Day:

Subject: Reach out and BONE someone

According to Wikipedia — which, as we are all aware, knows everything — spam as we know it today comes from the Monty Python sketch of the same name.

For your interest, Wikipedia also defines spam as:

A song by “Weird Al” Yankovic. It is a parody of R.E.M.’s song Stand. It is mostly an ode to the canned lunch meat SPAM.

The abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages.

For the sake of argument, we’ll go with the latter.

There are two types of spam in the world. Spammy spam and not-so-spammy spam.

Spammy spam is, as the definition suggests, indiscriminate, unsolicited, and sent in bulk.

Not-so-spammy spam is more discriminate but less bulk. It is also mostly unsolicited. Read More

You know when people say “Stop the world, I want to get off”?

Note to self: Take own advice.

* My grandfather used to read this section of the Bible — Matthew 13:42 — look up very seriously, and add “…and for those who have no teeth, teeth shall be provided.” And they ask me why I turned out the way I did.

***

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[This is a guest post by James Chartrand of JCME. You too can tramp yourself out on my site by contacting me. Send the whole post -- if you're the next Dan Brown, I want to know immediately without having to mess around with email for weeks.]

Would you love to never worry about losing your job?

I thought of that freedom last night while standing on my porch, taking a break to freeze my ass off and look up at the stars. (Actually, I was racking my brains for a topic for a blog post, but hey. I like the stars concept better.)

Where I live, the economy is poor. Jobs are rare, and they don’t pay well. The area depends on the tourist industry. Winters can be cold, long, hard, and cold… and they feel even harder when a summer job gets cut short by frigid snow. Read More