A flower has to go through a lot of dirt before it can bloom. ~Unknown
From Sara… my constant source of GREAT quotes!

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I use Green Mountain Energy. I do this because I have children and I would like for them to have a planet to live on when I am gone. Well, let me rephrase, I don’t think there is anything we can do to make Mother Earth not be here… I do think we are in the process of making it so that we (humans) won’t exist on Mother Earth in the future… but I digress, this is not the point of this post. The point is to offer a few tips to Reliant Energy and others who would like for me to give them my money.

Let me lay out the scene from which this post occurs:

Its 700PM. I am in yucky work-out cloths from squeezing a work-out into my already jammed packed schedule. I have managed to feed my family and finally myself some dinner. My boys and I have walked to the Movie Store (as my kids say, its really Blockbuster – and yes, walked. Its a block and half away and even in the light drizzle, we decided not to take the car and to use our legs.) So, my husband is out for the evening and we are on the couch for our Wednesday Mommy Movie Night, watching an amazing rendition of The Three Musketeers starring Micky, Donald, and Goofy. The dogs go bananas. I have 2 big dogs… and there are incredibly protective and loud when my husband is not home… I try to wave the 2 men in bright yellow Reliant shirts away from the door. This is the 3rd time since we moved into the house a year and half ago they have made a house call. They are not taking the hint. Usually the dogs barking ferociously in the window and my "no thank you" wave are enough to send people packing. I wrestle the dogs back, purposely letting them be badly behaved as an excuse not to talk too long… I am missing a really great movie here! All along I am preparing my "I use Green Mountain for Spiritual reasons and you are not going to convince me to switch" speech. And I open the door… the guy ask are you Mrs.Laa-sen(mumble)-burg? Yes. I am Ms. Lassberg. He points to my name on a list and says we used to be one of there best customers. I say no… the people who lived here before us were Reliant customers. I jump into my well prepared speech… and then it happened. The defining moment in my continued commitment to NOT use Reliant. The Not-Talking-Guy makes a confused and disgusted look at me mentioning Spiritual reasons for using Green Mountain. It was like a little comic bubble was floating above his head saying, "What the heck is the crazy lady talking about?" And I get it… I mean I am grungy looking with 2 crazy dogs rattling on about a Spiritual commitment to using renewable energy…  but don’t make a bad face at someone you are trying to garner business from. And then it gets even better. Talking-Guy pounces at the chance to argumentatively point out that Reliant now has a green solution. I am truly intrigued and if he had taken a different tone… you know, like… nice, or conversational, or oh-did-you-know… I might have listened to what he had to say (except for the dogs, and the kids and the movie and all that…) But, he didn’t. He chose a condescending, in-your-face tone of voice and I really didn’t feel like standing on my porch and missing Micky and snuggle time with my boys to hear anything else. So, I said well thank you – I will look it up on the Internet. He said, (in the same tone) "you do that and I will be Back TOMORROW, cause Green Mountain doesn’t deliver a 100% green solution and it says so in your contract." I smiled and closed the door in his face. So here are my tips:

1. Don’t come by my house and knock on my door at 700PM. Hello? I don’t care what you are selling. I am not inviting you to my house for a cup of coffee so we can talk about it, and you are not convincing me while I stand on my front porch. As a matter of fact, I think even less of your company cause you sent someone by to knock on my door at 7 o’clock at night.
2. Don’t make a face at me. Don’t make a bad face at anyone you are trying to sell to. Isn’t that like Sales 101?
3. Don’t condescend me.
4. Don’t and I repeat, don’t threaten to COME BACK TOMORROW. It makes me want to tell you to F*ck Off.
5. Don’t bad mouth the competition, isn’t that also in Sales 101?

I did look up Reliant’s Green Solution (after the movie was over.) And they do indeed have one. They have 2 actually… impressive. And it is only .1 cent more expensive than their cheapest package. So, my question is… why don’t they just use this renewable energy for everything?

That’s what I like about Green Mountain. I did look that up too… and here is where Reliant’s Sales Strategy is going to totally backfire – I am going blog my approval of the competition. And riding on the high of my blog training at Schipul today… I have been led to believe that it might actually have some impact! So, here are the 2 things about Green Mountain I am going to share.

1. Our Mission: Green Mountain was founded on the mission to change the way power is made. Our mission is critical because the traditional production of electricity is the largest source of industrial air pollution in the U.S.
2. Our Commitment: Green Mountain is 100% carbon neutral and mitigates the impact of its greenhouse gas emissions through participation in the Environmental Protection Agency
   Read More...

I joined what I would officially call a crowd at the Houston NetSquared meeting last night. Ed Schipul (Schipul) has just returned from a week long crash course for the new iPhone (so new I had to add to MS Office dictionary). I would say he was just showing off except he was so damn excited about the whole thing I can only conclude he was genuinely happy to be sharing all his discoveries, frustrations, and optimism about this latest gadget. There was a brief (very brief) and nasty rumor that someone was going to win an iPhone, but I think this may have been the wine and appetizers talking.

The most important thing I take away from last night (insert tongue in cheek) is my introduction to Charlie the Unicorn. Ed asked, as he wrapped up last night, that we take what we learned from the meeting and pass it on. And so, I do this for you. Be prepared, Charlie is not useful, he will not better your life. You will not be in anyway inspired nor will you gain anything with this knowledge other than to avoid looking like a deer in the headlights when someone makes reference to Charlie. So, maybe you will in fact gain a few cool points… a very few. And if you happen to know that Charlie actually made his appearance in 2005 on Newgounds, then you can stick your nose up a little at those folks who are new to Charlie and have seen the edited YouTube version. The folks at Newgrounds certainly are…

Newgrounds Staff Comment:
"To answer all the clueless folk: TypeQueen (the creator of Charlie the Unicorn) had a habit of submitting an annual unicorn movie to Newgrounds and this was his 2005 offering. It was later stolen and put on YouTube in a cropped video format, at which point the masses latched on to it. This is the ORIGINAL creation, by the REAL author. If you saw it first on YouTube, you were late to the game – it was already a big hit on Newgrounds in 2005."

My brain was so full with all the information from last night when I got home I was still trying to sort it all out… figure out how the iPhone will effect me, more importantly how will effect the web and my clients. I didn’t even notice that I was brushing my teeth with my kids’ toothpaste, some how the bubble gum flavor seemed to fall right in line with… that’s right… Charlie!

Ok, seriously… what do I take away about the iPhone?

1. Look Ed, I am using an ordered list…
2. TLR is a Website and Creative Design Studio… we focus on full marketing campaigns… and I get to do what I love to do, which is make things look nice. I am not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination, and I am left wondering… how much of an impact will the iPhone actually make on how we do things online. I heard last night that Apple will be excited if they win 1% of the market. And that’s the mobile market – not browser market. I get that there may be real business opportunities out there for folks who are creating custom apps – I also think the idea of using the iPhone as a mobile (and inexpensive when compared to using laptops) way to do business within a specific organization – say a Doctor using it in the office to show a patient a video relevant to what’s to going on with them – is pretty dang cool! I just can’t imagine, just yet, my clients wanting to spend the extra money on a site that will also display well on an iPhone… not until there are some real numbers behind it. I mean, I can hardly convince the small Mom & Pops its worth it to optimize their sites for Search Engines.
3. And that leads me to another thing I was pondering as I walked out to my car last night… WOW! has the internet become competitive. I feel like we need to start breaking companies out into leagues like we do high school sports. I mean if you are a small school – they don’t throw you on the field with the team from the massive school.
4. Conspiracies (what would a NetSquared meeting be without them)… there are many ideas floating around out there as to why Apple took the approach they did with the iPhone… no Flash, no downloads, no windows, no copy/paste, no large files,etc… I think I see these as an opportunity to make money… as these features become available, you will be able to have them… for an additional service on your package with ATT. But, that’s just based on a conversation I had with the guy sitting next to me… what do we know?

So here are the 3 major things I am mulling over after the meeting last night:

1. I am taking a wait and see attitude about the iPhone. I do believe this is the beginning of the change in the way we interact with devices… and I think this is the first one of its kind and it will be a bit buggy, but I think this is the way things are going. And I think more and more, we are moving away from complex and clunky sites and online applications that look great and work for now… to using the fundamentals of designing for the web in a clean and simple approach. So, even though Ed assured me it was a legitimate business expense, I am going to hold off buying one… someone did ask last night if you could actually make a phone call with the thing??!!!
2. I am curious to see how the iPhone makes its way into conversation I have with clients. Will it make a big splash? Will I start hearing about immediately? Or, will I be the one educating them in the long run… that this something they really need to pay attention to? I’ll let you know.
3. Ok, back to Charlie for a minute… I think it is a truly intriguing subject. It has all the makings for some kind of case study in technology, information sharing, information accessibility, society and culture. How does something float to the top of the World Wide Web? How does something become popular 2 years after its initial splash? How does something so useless find its way to me? And here I am writing about it – just fuel for the fire. I would love to see the statistics behind this thing… but that’s just the kind of geeky girl I am!

A girlfriend of mine sent me the link to Elora Media a while back. Its a pretty cool little site for the pretty cool little people in your life.

Incredible You by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, is a great book for… well just about anyone I think. We can all use a little positive affirmation, no matter how old we are.

I am always on the look out for positive sites, especially ones that serve as a resource for parents. I included a bit of their story below – check out the site, there is some amazing stuff on it. Matter fact, that’s what I am gonna do right now… wait, gotta find my wallet first…

~ JJ

Life is an awesome journey, and 2004 was the beginning of new adventures for me. In 2004 I gave birth to two babies. In February, What the BLEEP Do We Know!?, a film I co-created, opened in a west coast movie theater and began its three year national and international release. In April, I gave birth to my most precious gift