Matt Mauldin

I’m starting a new section called Random News.  Basically it will be a collection of news stories that catch my interest in some way.  I want to start off with a bang, so here’s the first one.

This story is hilarious.  I read the store titled Rotten office fridge cleanup sends 7 to hospital on the AP Press earlier today and had to share it with you.

Rotten office fridge cleanup sends 7 to hospital

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — An office worker cleaning a fridge full of rotten food created a smell so noxious that it sent seven co-workers to the hospital and made many others ill.

Firefighters had to evacuate the AT&T building in downtown San Jose on Tuesday after the fumes led someone to call 911. A hazmat team was called in.

What crews found was an unplugged refrigerator crammed with moldy food.

Authorities say an enterprising office worker had decided to clean it out, placing the food in a conference room while using two cleaning chemicals to scrub down the mess.

The mixture of old lunches and disinfectant caused 28 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea.

Authorities say the worker who cleaned the fridge didn’t need treatment — she can’t smell because of allergies.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

I’m still laughing at this.  In college my roommates and I left a cooler with some beer and meat outside for a little too long, and after a week it made us gag.  What did we do? Yep, we dumped more stuff in there.  Old milk, cheese, sausage, a dead squirril we found in the backyard… whatever.  And for an entire summer it sat in the back cooking in the 100 degree heat of West Texas.  Early during the fall semester, we brought the cooler to one o the big classrooms and opened it up.  It was like a wave of nausea, and you could see it slowly roll up the room, row by row, until every person was out.

Too bad it wasn’t spring semester, when allergy season hits, because some of the kids in that room could have stayed.

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(not a joke… seriously)

You’ve probably bought weird things in the past, but I am now budgeting to buy Fox Urine on a regular basis.

The story isn’t near as interesting as the post title, but it’s been on my mind a lot lately.

My house is close to the edge of town and backs up to a yet undeveloped city park, and over the winter I had a rabbit infestation.  There were times that I would flip on my backyard light and see over a dozen of these little critters jumping around my grass.  It’s caused a lot of problems.

Last summer, I had a perfect backyard.  My dog and I would play ball and roll around in the grass.  I could walk barefoot around the entire yard with no problem.

But all of these rabbits have been running around in the wild getting all sorts of week seeds in their coat.  They also eat all sorts of plants, seeds included.  But the seeds don’t digest very well.  So every time they take a little bunny hop, seeds fall out of their fur.  Every time they crap (and the crap a LOT), they leave seeds behind covered in their own fertilizer coating.

This summer, I haven’t walked outside barefoot because I have no desire to step on weeds – some of them are a little prickly – not to mention the rabbit pellets they have left for me.  My dog doesn’t want to play ball, and instead runs around the fence with her nose to the ground.  She’d love to catch a yummy rabbit.  It’s unfortunate that we are enjoying the yard much less so far this season.

Basically, if I was six inches tall, my backyard would be a scary jungle rainforest.  It would be a horror version of Honey I Shrunk the Kids.

After talking with a few people, I learned that I could sprinkle my yard with fox urine the natural instincts of the rabbits would take over and fear of being fox lunch would keep them away.  So a month ago I made a trip to the feed store and picked up a bottle.

The stuff stinks.  It is worse than six hours after eating asparagus.  But I got through it and sprinkled it in the half-dozen places where I have seen rabbits coming under my fence.

It worked immediately.

I haven’t seen a single rabbit since my fox urination. So I’ve added fox urine to my periodic shopping list for yard care.  You can find it here for $25.99 per bottle.  I’m planning on putting it down about once per month because rain and sprinklers will eventually wash it away, and based on my first use I expect to need a new bottle after every three uses or so.

So that’s about $100 a year for fox urine.  But that’s cheaper than re-weeding each year to the extent that I am doing now.

Currently I’m putting down weed-n-feed to begin nursing my yard back to health.  Maybe by mid-summer my dog and I can begin enjoying the back yard again.  Here are a few pics of the dog from last summer.  See how nice the grass was:

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Last night I finished The Great Hunt, book 2 of The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.

The first few read-throughs of this book didn’t leave much of an impression on me, but I thoroughly enjoyed it this time.  I feel that this book deeply explores with a couple of main characters – Rand and Perrin – and rounded out their personalities that, honestly, were somewhat superficial in The Eye of the World.

(Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of character development in the first book for Perrin and Rand, but I have the advantage of knowing the entire story for the full eleven books at this point, and the depth of these characters was NOT explored in tEotW.)

It is the internal struggle that specifically stood out.  Jordan does an excellent job of getting inside their heads while both caracters deal with the new changes they are going through.

Rand already knows he can channel – a talent that has been a death sentence for every other male for the past three thousand years.  In addition, he learns at the beginning of the book that he is the Dragon Reborn.  The Amarylin, an Aes Sedai who cannot lie, tells this to Rand without mincing words.  Rand spends the rest of the book trying accept this about himself, deciding if he believes it or not, fighting with the alluring call of True Source, and vowing not to be used by the White Tower.

Perrin is a Wolfbrother and is forced into a position where he can ignore it no longer.  His eyes are turned yellow, he sees in the dark, can track as well as Hurin, and can smell feelings in other people.  And in order to track Padan Fain and Rand, he is forced to use his new talent and talk to the wolves while he leads a group of Sheinarans.  But even with all of these new abilities, Perrin is ashamed of himself.  Jordan sets the tone that Perrin feels through the rest of the series.

The only main character we don’t know much about yet is Mat.  We know he’s a trouble maker, a gambler, and shows disdain for authority.  But that is about it.  Mat has consistently been one of my favorite characters, so I’m looking forward to reading more about him.  If I remember correctly, his character won’t really start developing until he goes through a certain doorway in a couple more books (no spoiler here, sorry).

I also liked these points:

• the Damane and Sul’dam and the capture of Egwene – she will be important later in the series and I imagine that much of her strength comes from surviving her capture.
• the scenes with High Lord Turak – we get a lot of foreshadowing about the Seanchan, although you wouldn’t know it if you are reading WoT for the first time.

On to The Dragon Reborn.

Check ya later.

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I went to the Fort Worth Gun Show on Saturday with my brother in laws.  They went to get some ammunition, but I was there to research what handgun I wanted to buy when I get my conceal and carry license in the near future.  I bought my wife a Bersa .380 a few years ago, but I wanted a larger round.

I’ve done a lot of reading about a CCW gun, and based on suggestions from a number of well written reviews, my top brand I was seeking was a Kahr handgun – specifically the 9mm and .40 models.  I’ve shot a number of different handguns, including several 9mm and .40s in the past, but I’ve never shot a Kahr of any caliber.  So that was my goal: find a Kahr and see how it fit my hand.

Gun Show Fun

I love gun shows.  There are so many people walking around with rifles, pistols, and even automatic weapons.  Even while we were going in, there were even some guys with double barrel shotguns walking up and down the sidewalk.  Isn’t Texas great?

There were more people here than I expected.  I’ve never seen this many people at a gun show before.  It was not uncommon to move just a couple of feet before having a dozen people pass by before you could go any further.

We started off at a couple of ammunition tables.  My brother in laws bought rounds for a .45, 9mm and 30-6.  I was looking at the knife tables because I lost my good Kershaw knife a year ago and I’m still looking for a suitable replacement.

We saw this poster and had a good laugh:

Kahr Evaluation

It took me a while to find some vendors with any Kahrs at all.  Out of dozens of vendors selling handguns, I only saw four tables that had a Kahr, and only one of those had the CW9.

There were two main types of Kahr handguns out for display: the PM and the CW series.  I determined immediately that I am not a fan of the PM series.  It’s just too small for my taste.  First of all, the bottom of my palm stuck out below the grip.  And even with a conceal and carry weapon, I want to put as much of my hand on it as I can for stability and control.  If I were to carry one of these in my pocket, then the PM may be a very good choice.  But I plan to wear either a belt holster or a SOB holster.  (That stands for small of back, not the other SOB.)

On the other hand, the CW series felt great.  The grip is just long enough to be comfortable, and if I get the mag with clip extension, I’ll have more than enough room.  Both the 9mm and .40 felt about the same so it really comes down to a decision.  Do I want the 9mm or the .40?

The Big Decision

I’m convinced and will definitely buy a either a CW9 or CW40 Kahr sometime in the near future.  Since Sunday I’ve considered the pros and cons to make a decision.  Here’s my breakdown:

• Cost of Gun – I saw both guns for about the same price. No points awarded
• Ammunition Cost – I’ll need to do a good amount of practice shooting with a brand new gun to get used to it and to break it in properly.  That means I will be buying a lot of ammo (maybe even a couple hundred rounds before the gun is fully broken in).  So the lower priced 9mm ammo is a definite advantage here.  Score 1 9mm
• Kickback – this gun is a little smaller than most handguns, so I am thinking that a little less kickback will probably help with comfort and control.  Score 2 9mm
• # of Rounds – the .40 holds 6 in the clip, and 9mm holds 7.  I can add one more if I get the extended mag, but that still leaves 1 more for the CW9.  Score 3 9mm
• Stopping Power – There’s no argument that the .40 will have more stopping power.  BUT… I’ve read that if I use the right rounds, there’s not going to be a noticeable difference.  And when it comes down to it, it’s more about shot placement than stopping power.  If anyone is coming at me and I have to use this gun in defense, I plan on emptying the clip.  If eight 9mm rounds doesn’t stop someone, than I doubt seven .40 rounds would either.  No points awarded

So the choice is the 9mm.  I hope to buy this in a few weeks, and I’ll post my initial impressions after I have a chance to shoot it a time or two.

Check ya later.

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Here’s another example of one of the big guys getting new marketing trends wrong.

This went down at the at the  when a Papa John’s exec, started griping about their iPhone application and how they were really disappointed in the results.  It’s interesting that Jim pointed out that smartphones account for nearly all their traffic, and the iPhone alone about half.

Wait a minute, did you say “smartphones” were half the traffic from your iPhone app?  Yes. He did.

This guy is Jim McDonnell, the marketing manager, emerging channels, for Papa John’s, didn’t even recognize the difference between his mobile-ready site (mobile.papajohns.com) and an iPhone application!  And he said all of this at a OMMA Mobile conference!

Even better, he was quickly shown up by one of the other conference attendees who specializes in developing mobile apps. Lilly Gold, founder of New York-based Intuwin, quickly listed potential enhancements to their mobile marketing, such as delivering coupons, information on specials, payment systems and options for ordering “favorites.”

Papa John’s has also reported their “iPhone app” (a.k.a. their mobile site) has generated 1 million in sales. That ain’t no soggy dough!

Two lessons to learn here:

1. When you see some returns on a new marketing channel, especially one in a growing market like mobile, and with only ah half-assed effort like this one, then you should dig deeper.  You’ll probably find that you are sitting on a great opportunity.  Papa Johns could really take mobile pizza ordering to the next level, and I think it would be a real hit, but they would have to take a few risks to get there.  Hey Jim, read this post about learning to take risks.  Hopefully I can place an order soon on my Blackberry.
2. Don’t start griping until you have exhausted your options.  Seriously, they put out a mobile site, ran a few mobile banners, and the say it’s a dud.  I doubt that they put much effort into any of it. Guys, always test!  Test new strategy, new technology, new traffic channels, new ways to communicate with your customers.  Lilly Gold probably made this company many more millions with just her few suggestions noted above – if Papa John’s takes her advice. (Oh, and your options don’t run out that fast, so don’t get impatient)

Check ya later.

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