Well, this is one of many, but it is my baby.

(Image is from Anderson Guitars website)

It is a very refined, extremely playable bolt on neck strat style guitar.  The electronics are squeaky clean. The action is perfect, and it has the Buzz Feiten tuning system.

A true joy.

On the way in this morning, I saw a new Camaro, RS, that doesn’t even have its permanent plates yet.

The driver was driving aggressively, reving it high, and driving it hard.  Sadly, it was smoking like it had 200K hard miles on it.

Folks, the breakin period for a car is important.  It allows the rings, valves, and bearings to seat and wear in, and providing a long life.

What I saw, was a car that would probably need a complete rebuild by 20K miles.

Sad really.

It struck again last night.

Planning for the planning and strategy meetings,

About 4 blog postings I NEED to write

Quarterly business review meetings next week to prepare for

And a touch of seasonal allergies (it has been windy, bringing pollen into the air)

Whatever the specifig reason, I slept little last night.  Looks like a coffee achiever’s day for me!

For the record – I come from a very heavy marketing background.  I made it my business to know the nitty gritty details on my products, my markets, and the overall business.

In my current gig, I am just a product manager, and we supposedly have a marketing group that handles the product marketing aspect (think the upper left quadrant of the Pragmatic framework).

However, they behave like a service (think: Kinko’s Copies).  They are constantly coming to me for all the product marketing input that they need.

If my role formally had that responsibility, I would not grumble, but I am told that responsibility lies in Marketing (and bizarrely enough Business Development – picture my head explodign here), and that I am to not waste my time on it.

So, everytime I get a “request” to do the “product marketing” job, my blood pressure mounts. But, that is not the real problem. 

Not only that, but what they ask for comes in a message that doesn’t tell me what the audience is, what level of detail is needed, how the material will be used/distributed, and what theme or message that they believe is needed.  This is what really grinds my gears.  If you need me to fill in your gaps, out of my extremely busy schedule, please, for the love of god, give me the whole context.  If I have to turn a simple task into an afternoon of negotiating via email the true output, that is a big pail of fail.

Today, as I turned the corner at my street, 2112 from Rush rolled up on my playlist.  Hadn’t heard it in a long time, so I cranked it.  

I got to the office parking lot before the final movement.  Awesome.  This is why I live where I do, and work where I do.

This week there is a huge effort to define our company’s way forward, with several sessions that I will have to lead on product and market strategy for the bext 3 – 5 years.

I SHOULD have spent much of the weekend preparing, but alas, I goofed off. (well, not really.  I read, washed the dogs, house sat for the neighbors who are out of town, and did music maintenance on my Mac).  

Today and tomorrow are going to be long days, followed by late nights to make up in my preparations.

I live in a nice neighborhood, and I am tired of the inconsiderate owners of dogs who do not pick up their pet waste.

Today I was jogging up the main road in my area, and the number of piles of dog poop was ridiculous.  Please, people, Pick up after your pets.  It is not hard, and it is the law

Well, I sure hope nobody wastes their time reading this blog.  I intend to use it to be a business diary, since I can’t articulate why I am so busy, and how come what I do doesn’t translate to instant success.

You will be bored by the mundane.  You have been warned.