The Business of LeBron James
Here’s an article from Fortune Magazine about the development of the business side of LeBron James. He has changed the rules of superstar athlete endorsement deals. He owns the company with childhood friends and conducts market research to test the pulse of his brand. According to the article, following last season’s playoff performance, especially Game 5 against the Pistons, Nike restructured their basketball division to increase the number of Nike staffers working on LeBron’s brand from 4 to 150.
Peter is Running for Office
Peter is running for Student Council Vice President and above is part of one of his posters. I am not very concerned about his self-confidence. He told me that he is voting for himself for Vice President because he thinks he is the best candidate. “If I didn’t think I was the best choice, I wouldn’t run,” he said.
Today he gave his speech, and I asked him how it was. “Short,” was his brief response. He finds out the results on Monday.
The World is Changing
Last night my mom called me (on my Blackberry) and during the course of the conversation she told me that she knew I was busy because I hadn’t updated my blog. She saw the Twitter feed (on my blog) and knew I was doing stuff, but I just wasn’t blogging.
When we were visiting for Thanksgiving, I was blogging daily and putting up pictures of the day’s events. This always seem to take more time than expected, so while it is easy to do on vacation, it is not so easy to keep up with during a normal workday. And with my Twittering, I feel like I am still communicating with the world.
A Quick Trip to Nashville
This morning I went to Nashville. I got up at 4am (for the 2nd time in 3 days) and got to the airport about 5:15 for my 6:15 flight. It turns out this was still part of the Thanksgiving travel season and both security lines went back to their respective baggage claims. I really thought I was going to miss my plane. I made it to the gate as they were boarding the A group. I was in the B group.
I went to an 8:00 meeting, a 9:00 and an 11:00. I went to lunch at Jack’s BBQ and went to the airport to fly home. I needed to get home for a Scout meeting tonight.
Another Movie
I went to the movies tonight to see the new Coen Brothers’ film, No Country for Old Men with my independent movie group. The movie was good, but a little too spare, slow and brown.
One of the interesting things about this gathering was I met someone that I have been following on Twitter. I knew all about her new camera and the unusual circumstances in which she acquired it. I told her that it felt a little bit creepy to follow her, read her blog and then to meet her. She’s now following me on Twitter.
Return from Thanksgiving
We woke up this morning at 4 am to beat the holiday travel traffic. We had a 6:20 return flight from Florida, and I figured the kids could get up. Grace slept in her clothes to give her less to do in the morning. We got to the airport around 5 and checked our luggage, but security didn’t open until 5:30. That did not strike me as the best planning on one of the busiest travel days of the year.
We made it to Orlando for our 3 hour layout and killed time by eating, reading, and each of us partaking in appropriate electronics use (me: Blackberry, Peter: DS, Grace: iPod). We got home around lunch time and hung around the rest of the afternoon. The kids took long naps before dinner and now we need to get back into the swing of things for school tomorrow.
Template Editing Error
I just checked my Google stats (which peaked one day this month with 17 site visits), and realized that they were 0 the past couple of days. I posted a lot of pictures from our trip for Florida, and I know at least my family was looking at my blog. It occurred to me that I forgot to put the stats tracking code back into the template. Since this is all Google, there should be an easy, or automatic way for this to happen. They are part of the same account.
Now if I can only figure out how to get the addthis.com button back to every post.
Endgadget Gives Away Wii
The website Endgadget gives away a series of gadgets over the Thanksgiving weekend. They put up one at a time, and you must place a comment on the post to enter. This requires site registration. It’s a great way to generate traffic and to register members. The 19th, and final giveaway for the weekend is a Nintendo Wii gift package. Click here to go to the post. There are currently over 13,000 comments on the site (mine included). This contest runs through Sunday, November 25th, 11:59PM EDT.
Cole Bros. Circus
Today we went to the Cole Bros. Circus, which bills itself at the World’s Largest Circus under the Big Top. We had tickets in the front row, so the view was great. It was the first circus I have ever seen in a tent. I have only seen the circus at indoor arenas, so it was fun to be under the Big Top. This was definitely a full circus, featuring Chinese acrobats, motorcyclists, trapeze artists, clowns, horses, elephants, poodles, and The Human Cannonball.
Clown 1
Clown 2
Clown 3
Grace with cat face paint
Zarina, The Human Cannonball
D.B. Cooper Day
On this day in 1971 D.B. Cooper, airplane hijacker, parachuted from a plane with $200,000 ransom money, never to be found.