The Body is Willing, But the Mind is Weak
No, I didn’t get the saying wrong. That’s how I feel today. I’ve got a ton of energy physically speaking… got a great night’s sleep last night. But after even a short week of overloading my brain with end of month reporting, more reporting, affiliate network shopping, and more late nights at the office, my brain has decided to stage a sit in.
Actually, before about 11:30am this morning the brain was active too. However after sitting in various conference calls from then until about 2:15pm, my brain revolted from overload. First we heard all about LinkShare and their merchant platform. Then all about Widemile’s optimization services. Then talked to a couple cats at Clickbooth since we haven’t ventured into CPA marketing here at PsPrint yet.
Is it a bad thing that during our conference call I surfed over to MarketingTerms.com and had to look up CPA? I was pretty embarrassed with Anne sitting behind me… although I guess she actually didn’t notice until I mentioned it after the meeting. Oh well.
The last week I’ve been making sure our mailing services don’t break, which is nice for a change. At the end of August the mailing went crazy… it seemed like while I was on vacation everyone and their mother decided to place a mailing order. Which is great… but left me a lot of work to catch up on. We’ve been really focused on the affiliate program and it’s future. Which is great too. We’re looking at new features, better affiliate acquisition, possibly a new network, new creative, new campaigns… heck new everything. It’s an exciting time for me, especially since Anne confirmed that we’ll be attending Affiliate Summit 2008 West in Las Vegas in February. That means between my personal vacation, the National Association of Realtors show in November, and AS West I’ll be heading to Sin City three times in 6 months. Not too shabby for this California girl.
I’m also semi-addicted to del.icio.us now. Last night I imported all my bookmarks from home into it so now I can access them anywhere… and that’s half the point, right? It’s really actually pretty interesting to see how many other people have some of my favorite places bookmarked. I’m also surprised in some cases how few people have some websites bookmarked. For example, the View Askew Productions Message Board has over 10,000 registered members. But only 2 other people on del.icio.us have it bookmarked…one of which I even recognize (and promptly added to my network).
Time for my Friday ritual of trying to see the wood grain of my desk. Wish me luck.
Read MoreTurning Gray at 26?
While brushing my hair this morning I found not one but three gray hairs. It’s hard to tell the color of a single hair, it almost looked blond… but considering that my hair is naturally a dark brown, I sorta doubt they were blond.
Has the stress gotten to me already? My coworkers have joked that I’m no longer allowed to take Vacations because the rely on my being here so much (although this is something they joke about every time I take some time off for any reason…) And since returning from Sin City, the work load on my desk has been seemingly endless. I’ve been here two and a half extra hours each night trying to catch up before Labor Day, and with it also being the end of the month I have EOM reporting coming up to worry about as well.
What happened to the days when I just came in, did my job, and went home? I guess in the days of mailing services, marketing, advertising, sales, social media, the affiliate program, and email marketing there’s no sleep for the weary. It took me half a day just to catch up on Twitter posts and all the blogs I subscribe to through Google Reader. I’ve perhaps spent more time here at PsPrint than home in the last few days.
In case you’re wondering, I did enjoy my vacation. Some of the highlights included a helicopter tour over the strip at night, seeing Penn & Teller live and getting photos with them and their autographs, seeing lots of animals, going very high up at the top of the Stratosphere tower and the Paris Las Vegas Eiffel Tower, and traipsing all over Las Vegas Blvd. My travel friend and I basically saw everything we went to Vegas wanting to see, except we missed out on the Tournament of Kings dinner show at Excalibur. I think when I go back to Vegas in November to attend the National Association of Realtors’ conference, I might take an evening to head over there. I wasn’t quite ready to re-join reality!
Going to Vegas. BRB
So in less than 48 hours, this is where I will be… chilling with (hopefully) a fruity drink in my hand rearing to go and enjoy beautiful Las Vegas. I’ve needed a vacation for awhile now, and it’s good to go on a real vacation.
Of course, trying to get a bunch of projects done in time to go without worrying about work is almost impossible. It’s like the fates align to send every new project possible right into your inbox the day before you’re set to leave. Today was my last day in the office until next Tuesday, so of course new affiliate projects came across my desk, problems with mailing services customers happened, a new email marketing campaign launched, and I was IMed about a thousand times.
If only my vacation started tomorrow! While I won’t be in the office, I’ll instead be down in San Jose attending the Search Engine Strategies Expo at the Convention Center. They have a Social Media track of educational sessions that should be very informative and give me some good ideas for that task here at PsPrint in the coming months. I’ll be there in classes until about 2, then I’m going to walk around the expo and check it out a bit.
Afterward, that’s when my vacation starts! First I’ll be meeting up with a friend from out of town in San Jose to go to the Winchester Mystery House. It’s amazing how terrible of a tourist one can be in their own area… I’ve never been there, despite being fascinated by it’s history since 3rd grade. So going there, then Friday morning flying to Las Vegas. I can’t wait.
So, I bid this blog adieu until the 28th when I get back. I leave you with a question: what did you do on YOUR summer vacation? 😛
Read MoreHats, Hats, Everywhere!
Have you ever noticed that right before you’re supposed to go on vacation, everything piles up out of nowhere? Things that weren’t even on your radar before are suddenly paramount priority. Last week my lovely manager Anne mentioned that I’ll be taking over e-mail marketing for PsPrint. I assumed this would be happening within the next month. I get into the office today to see an email from her with details for an email to be sent out Wednesday. Good thing I was prepared!
So I’ve been working mostly on that today, ironing out some kinks and playing that good old Waiting Game for the copy and other information. I’ve been chipping away at this ever increasing task list (thank the stars for the Tasks feature in Outlook) and most of the things on the list are due in the next three days before my vacation.
About a week ago, we were invited to post in a blog called PrintSalesPros as a sort of guest author. I wrote a blog post for them about our 100% Recycled Matte paper stock in response to a request for articles about green printing they posted on Twitter. Feel free to check it out HERE. Another contributor also posted an article about green printing entitled Green printing can make a great impression, and it’s a good one too.
So I’ve added another hat to my closet, so to speak. Mailing Services, the Affiliate Program, E-Mail Marketing, Social Media Marketing, trade show assisting, some really general assistance in advertising and promotional deals… I finally feel like I’m in marketing!
Read MoreGas in California for $2.70/gallon!?
A few months ago, in the renaissance that seems to be engulfing Alameda businesses, the Bridgeside Center opened with just a few stores. Most of the spaces are taken now, and the centerpiece of the center, Nob Hill Foods, is alive and well.
I usually did my grocery shopping at Albertson’s, living pretty central to the center of the island and passing Marina Village on my way through the Tube home from work. But curiosity and a great marketing ploy have wooed my cart over to Nob Hill.
I mean, how can you pass off 25 cents off per gallon of gas?
The deal is that when you spend at least $50 on groceries (some items, like lottery tickers, don’t count towards the total) you get a bar code on your receipt. The Nob Hill also came with an Aisle 1 gas station, which despite the discount has the lowest priced gas in Alameda anyway. When you scan this bar code at the pump, the price per gallon is reduced by 25 cents. So I filled up at $2.70 per gallon. The added bonus of using the Aisle 1 station, besides it being brand new and everything in nice, working condition, is that they have a brush-less car wash. And it’s only $5.
It’s all about the Hamiltons, baby. $5 even for the super duper premium wash? I’m there. Especially since it doesn’t use those nasty rubber sponge things that could damage the precious new paint on my precious new car.
There was only one downside to this situation… the 45 minute wait to get into the car wash. By the time I’d decided that it wasn’t worth waiting anymore, I noticed that I’d pulled just far enough into the curbed off area and it was impossible for me to back up or get out.
So 45 minutes spent waiting for the car wash, but at least it go my car clean. And the moral of the story? Their marketing ploy worked.
Read MoreFever… in the morning… fever all through the night.
According to my handy dandy Weatherbug extension for Firefox, it’s a toasty 71.8° outside. And you have no idea how proud of myself I am that I remembered the HTML code for the degree sign without having to look it up online.
It’s that kind of afternoon here at the office… it’s quiet, a little too quiet. There’s some kind of big meeting going on in the conference room, which no doubt will somehow trickle into more work for us underlings. Because our conference room has the worst circulation of any conference room, they’ve borrowed my fan to help make it more bearable in there. No, I wasn’t using it, but I could use it about now. But that’s how it always goes, isn’t it?
Most of the projects I’ve been working on are either done or on hold pending someone else’s end of their bargain. In some ways it’s a nice place to be… I’ve done most of my share and the hard work. In other ways, it’s the worst… because I’d rather get this all taken care of and over with than be waiting on someone else’s contribution.
But then again, I never did like group projects in school… I was the kid that always got stuck with 90% of the work. I realized in college that most of the time I’d taken over a project, it wasn’t necessarily because everyone else in my group were slackers, it was sometimes because I just thought I could do a better job than them. So once, I sat back… I knew the best thing I could do for the project was write the paper that was turned in after the presentation. Instead, I let someone else do that and I took the easiest job there was… keeping the notes from our meetings that had to be turned into the professor too.
Every group in the class got an A. Our group got a C (which I’m tragically still plotting ways how to appeal 4 years later). The reason was that the person who wrote the paper was not a very adept writer, so almost all of the points we had deducted came from the paper part. Go figure… I learned my lesson that day.
I digress. Most of what I’ve been working on is standard management of the mailing services program here at PsPrint and making sure the affiliate program doesn’t implode upon itself. So far, so good! We launched new sales today… $100 off Brochures and 25% off Premium Business Cards. Launching sales doesn’t really have much to do with me though, beyond updating affiliates and giving them new creative to use, which again is one of those things I have to wait on someone else for.
Since it’s past time for me to leave, it looks like the waiting game shall continue until tomorrow…
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