Getting acclimated into the next stage of my career could have been an excuse. A great NCAA Mens’ Basketball Tournament could be a factor. Laziness, plugging back in to the New Media matrix, remembering the blues, getting the area social events…sure. All of it could have played a part.

But in the end, the biggest reason why I haven’t been writing on my Blues Book (Hopefully) site is that my site is uglier than sh**.

The older I get, the more I realize I’m affected by ambiance:  styles, color, food, the weather. I’m dehydrated most days because I choose to drink pop when I should be drinking water. I’m comfort eating while I adjust to the decreased levels of stress. I spent quite a bit of my last paycheck to make sure I get the most out of the music I hear because for the first time in 4 years, the music stirs me.

And now, I can choose to write again.

And I want people to enjoy the experience.

Much like how the feel of a book and its pages attribute to the experience of reading a book, the look and feel of a website helps contribute to how often people visit a website and whether or not they return.

It’s called User Experience. It’s commonplace in user interaction. Google SEO Webspam team leader Matt Cutts often answers that the best thing one can do to improve their SEO is to write engaging content people will want to link to. Reading Julius Caesar on a classic booklet bound and publish in 1906 is much more appealing than reading it on a sh*ty airport paperback. Even down to the musty smell. And despite oppressing state laws, the smokey, sweating haze of a blues club sets the mood and makes even weak blues playing sound that much better.

By the way, I’d let you borrow one of my classic hardbound Shakespeare booklets if you’d want – for a price.

How else does night club music work? You really think it’s the depth of artistry?

What website style makes for great user experience?

Yeah, it’s a case of “Beauty’s in the Eye of the Beholder.” It depends on interest. We’ve been having the discussion at work. Usually, a simple clean site that doesn’t upstage the content will work. If the styling, fonts, and imagery interrupt the users ability to receive the website owner’s message, than you fail yourself as much as anything.

Examples of good website user experience

• Hulu.com (content and style)
• You Tube (content over style)
• Wolfgangs Vault (navigation a little fuzzy, but the content is awesome)
• Smashing Magazine (it’s so pretty I don’t even mind the ads)

Examples of bad website user experience

• Post Tribune (here’s a hint:  cross-browser test! You can contact me for the other many, numerous hints)
• Chicago Tribune sports (Why is newspaper website design is behind???)
• Google

Google? The #1 search engine in the world? Bad Website user Navigation?

Yeah, i said it. For all the tools you can find from your Google account, you’d sh** if you’d learn how many more applications and tools you can’t find via standard navigation. And it’s worse if you don’t sign in.

Not that they’re suffering.

What I am doing about the Book of Blues (Hopefully) Website User Experience

It’s good to know the head of graphics at Golden Technologies. He’s designed my current custom Twitter background and, when things hit the summer slowdown, will translate the art onto this site.

What do you think of the background? Do you think it’ll make for a prettier site?

And once the site does its part, I’ll have to do the rest.

(photo credit:  Maki Ontwerp via Flickr)

Another one of the many great advantages of entrenching one’s self in New Media is that you get to meet colleagues along the way with exclusive access to shared passions.

In this case, I refer to my renewed childhood love of Doctor Who. The post David Tennant-era began tonight in the UK. With help from Angolotopia.net-founder Jonathan Thomas, I got a peak into the first episode in the Matt Smith Doctor Who era.

The first Matt Smith Doctor Who episode is titled, “The Eleventh Hour.” And if you’re wondering, “yes,” the magic is still there.

The music, the charisma, the creativity, Matt Smith brought it all. And Karen Gillian’s debut as traveling companion Amy Pond, well, even if she sucked, she would have been perfect.

Leggy Scotish redheads are often like that.

Here’s the intro to Doctor Who, “The Eleventh Hour.” It’ll be broadcast in the states on the 17th on BBC America. It’ll give you a glimpse into why Doctor Who has, once again, become my favorite show running.

Doctor Who The Eleventh Hour Review and Discussion on Anglotopia.net

Fine. Don’t take my word for it. Check out the discussion at Anglotopia.net. Yeah, it’ll sound a little bias – many anglophiles raving about an anglo show, but read why they love it.

The upside of BBC shows is that they are more crafted than their US counterparts.

Can You like Sci-Fi and still like the Blues?

F*** yeah you can. Jimi loved sci-fi. Ever hear The Hobbit references in Led Zeppelin songs (not that Zep is blues, but roll w/ me on it)?

Did you watch Doctor Who – The Eleventh Hour?

What did you think? How was the Matt Smith debut? And I’m not even asking about Karen Gilian because there’s no discussion about here. She’s this hot.

(photo credit:  1) Ji Ji Bean via Flickr. 2)gdbjr on flickr – as well as many, many other places)

It ain’t hard to tell I’m on my own clock:  I just lost an hour of my life – and delayed my roadtrip to Indy for an hour – because I had to find out what the Hell the “Zoot Suit” song was being used for the 2010 start of Burn Notice Season 3.

Come to find out they weren’t singing “Get your Zoot Suit on…” but were singing “Get your Silk Suit on.” The Burn Notice 2010 commercial song is “Silk Suit,” by KRAM.

Lyrics are written in a classic blues style. Simple blues riff. Fun to listen to:

Get your Silk Suit on / Get your Silk Suit on
Ain’t nobody else that’s got it goin’ on

The song also insists you get your “black dress” and “sneakers” on as well. Guys, if you must, you must, but I’m gonna support the ladies’ need to do this…

Now, I can drive down to Indy in peace and enjoy my weekend of Colts Football, Indiana ReBar pre and post parties, and learning more insider information about Blog Indiana’s 2010 events.

So long as I have my Silk Suit on, have my Silk Suit on.

Ain’t nobody else that’s got it goin’ on.

Did y’all have as much trouble as I did finding this Burn Notice song?

(photo credit:  ch5224 via flickr)

NOTE:  If you’re looking for the Indiana Career Connect Site, click this link. If you’re the state and wondering how my post is ranked as high as it is for your domain, you should contact this Indiana company.

According to the Indiana State Workforce Development Self Service Claimant Unemployment Website, all you have to do – once you’re approved for unemployment benefits – is the following:

• Register, post your resume and have your resume available on line for employers to view in our job matching service (IC 22-4-14) at https://www.IndianaCareerConnect.com within four (4) weeks of filing your claim.
• To fulfill work search requirements, submit one application per week (first line of on-line weekly voucher) and conduct two additional work searches per week (second and third line of on-line weekly voucher) in order to remain eligible for benefits. You may apply for work in person, by mail, or online, and be able to document your job application information to DWD upon request. Mailing or submitting a resume for an open position qualifies as applying.

Failure to complete these requirements will cause benefits to be denied until these requirements have been met.

(source url: https://solutions.dwd.in.gov/uplink/uplink-information.htm#benefitRequirements)

I have fulfilled the obligation, as noted below:

As you can read, my Resume is online and searchable by employers.

Yet when I go to fill out my voucher, the state unemployment site tells me the following:

Confused? Me too.

Since I figured it was just a disconnect between:

• https://uplink.in.gov/CSS/CSSLogon.htm (Indiana state online employment claimant site)
• https://www.indianacareerconnect.com/ (Indiana state job boar)

I didn’t think too much about it.

But then today I went to go catch up on my claims and I couldn’t go past the week of 12/12 claim because of the “STOP! Provide information on all links below!”

Midnight hit, and I was allowed to reactive my claim. REASON:  I didn’t “provide all information” within 30 days according to the state claim site, even though I had it done within a couple days of filing my claim.

And today is Sunday so I can’t call. So I went to the only place I can ask questions about my claim online:

https://askworkone.in.gov/

I asked the following question:

I have been approved for unemployment. I have uploaded a resume to the indiana career connect site. I have done all that is required yet when i go to my claimant homepage, it still tells me: SMARTLINKS – STOP! You must provide information on all links listed below. Go to Job Match What more do I have to do?

The site told emailed me with an autoreply:

We have received your message and will respond to you within 7 days.

You may review your message below. Thank you for asking WorkOne!

7 DAYS? U’mmm, no.

I bitched on Twitter, got a couple of nice replies from Noah Coffey & Douglas Karr. DK said something that triggered a thought:

Who the Hell did design the sites?

So I did a little poking around to discover that at the bottom of https://www.indianacareerconnect.com/ is a note:

Well, who the Hell is Geographic Solutions, Inc?

Come to find out that Geographic Solutions, Inc. is a employer software solution based in the Indiana town of Palm Harbor, Florida. Here’s the Geographic Solutions Press Release about their development of Indiana Career Connect. Now I know there’s the joke that Florida can also be called “South Indiana,” but I don’t think that counts as My Man Mitch keeping the work in-house.

So, my guess:

Indiana state’s archaic unemployment claim site isn’t syncing with the Florida company’s Indiana job board site and people like me who need the site are suffering for it.

PROVISO:

I am still not certain that it’s a sync issue. I could have done something wrong with my claim. If that’s the case, then the state’s sites do not properly tell me what more I need to do to correct the problem. Either way there is a disconnect.

I can’t wait to find out and pass that information along.

Check back tomorrow as I give tips in an open letter to the state on how to make the sites suck less.

UPDATE 5/01/2010

Hi, I switched the commenting system on this post and my old comments no longer appear. I apologize.

To let you know, later on that week (first week in January, 2010) I finally got a hold of someone at the state and what they told me was that I had to login to the Indiana state unemployment site once a week or the paused the account. The policy changed in summer 2009 whereas before so long as you were eligible you could go back and do a couple / three weeks worth of the claim at the same time.

The thing that is still unbelievable is that they leave that…

“Stop! You must provide information on all links below!”

With a link to that 20th century Indiana Career Connect site even if you have filled all the information out because, as the guy on the phone told me (I wish I could remember exactly but it’s been 4 months)…

“We leave that link up there anyway so people can go to the Indiana Career Connect site”

That is textbook horrific user experience.

It’s almost hard to believe that big companies believe Indiana is technological behind.

Hey, My Man Mitch, I’m sure you’ve seen this post because I’m outranking the Indiana Career Connect site, I work for a great company – in INDIANA – that could make that Indiana Careeer Site into a valuable asset. Leave me a note.

(I’m working towards this scene, but forgetting to rest as I go)

I woke up, got prepared for a meeting in New Buffalo, MI, and called to confirm. They answered, said it would be better if I backed it up a day, and I was none more thankful. Now I’m backing up my trip to Indy.

Heaven bless the nature of the business.

See the night before I went out with my old boss and a few co-workers. My old boss claimed it was my birthday and people flocked out. Imagine my surprise. Not only that, it was my third birthday this year. And a, “thank you,” goes out to all who came.

Sometimes you have to blow off steam. I forget that.

I don’t do it enough. I try to pretend I’m a machine. I think about how I’ve got 16 days before I go to Ft. Myers, Margaritaville for three weeks and then think I can work straight on till I board the plane.

I’m not a machine.

So when I went back to bed and didn’t wake up until 3pm, refreshed, invigorated, and mostly free from Gumballhead hangover, my body was trying to remind me to balance myself.

In sports, they would call my last few weeks, “playing to the level of the competition.” Some teams can give the best in their sport a run for their money on any given night and then turn around and falter to the league doormats.

If I can’t perform at my best every day, then I’ll never get to where I want to go. Right now, I have no real pressure or deadlines except ones I imply on myself. The best realize the only real pressure to worry about is the pressure to be the best “you” you can be. Everything is temporal and fades away with time.

I’m getting too old not to remember that.

And someday, I’ll be a craftsman.

Are you doing your best every day?

(Photo Credit: Pat Kono via Flickr)

When developing a social media while working on a writing career, one should be faithfully mindful of a simple concept: opportunity cost.

Case and point: this evening.

After 12 hours of work I warmed up some rigitoni as a part of my dinner. Instead of getting off the bed after inhaling dinner I laid there watching the Dolphins / Jets game while flipping back to see Crank.

And I lost three hours.

In those lost three hours when I could have been blogging a post on my laptop instead of this iPhone or reading Brogan / Smith’s “Trust Agents,” I did the following:

1) I watched my Fantasy League team’s comeback fall short by a half-point because Ricky Williams limped off the field during the Dolphins game-winning drive.

2) I contemplated how Statham’s character survived the 6,000 ft. drop onto a sedan at the end of “Crank” in order to make “Crank 2.” Rumor has it the sequel is nowhere near the quality of the original…

3) I pondered the deep philosophical inspirations that inspired the “Crank” movie franchise.

4) Cleaned up what was left of the moth that I smooshed on ceiling with my copy of “Trust Agents.”

5) Realized the night slipped by, again.

And if I would have accomplished my goals this evening then the cat probably, probably wouldn’t have pissed in my doorway.

It’s not like I rested. I was awake enough not to benefit from laying down.

And now I’m getting inspired by the midnight showing of Remember the Titans.

Oh, if it would have started at 9pm. It’s what people do in those three hours that separates the leaders from the participators.

Can’t wait to read this tomorrow at work. Hope it reminds not to have this evening again.

I’ve still got three things to do before I can actually write a chapter in Book of Blues Prequel. But once those things are done, then its just me and those Book of Blues.

A watching the final season of Royal Pains should do the trick.

For me, writer’s block seems to be a forced condition. My subconscious seems to keep me a safe distance from my fears. Overbearing really.

Luckily there’s only a half-hour of it to go.

Now, will my writer’s block let me get to working out?

A friday night in Duneland. The place: Valparaiso, IN.

Much like how the card game Euchre grasped our area forefathers’ attention, “Bags” has Pied Pipered the state of Indiana.

Also known as “Cornhole” or “Bean Bags,” Bags has worked its way from the college towns into the fabric of every mill town, state road intersection township, and watering hole found between Illinois and Ohio. From the Chicago border town of Munster to the Cincinnati surburb of West Franklin, IN, Bags had become a statewide obsession that might be someday compared to our once-love of basketball or our state goverment’s once-stupid idea of using steel mill slag as the main material in our highway roads.

It’s this type of statewide kindship that seperates us from our border states. Whereas our neighbors focus their attention around the influence of their major cities, here in Indiana our cities survive via their networking with the state capitol Indianapolis, and vice versa. This networking breeds competition and rivalry, which explains why half the state will still shutdown on a cold, snowy winter night to cram into fieldhouses and watch high school basketball. Release. Not even the IHSAA can mess that up – PS: give us back our state tournament back.

Indiana: the all-American state.

It’s how fascinations like Bags can spread so quickly.

Even up here in the Region, where we know what’s going on with the Chicago Aldermans moreso than our state legislature – usually because the Indiana state will cut our funding first despite the steel, state park, and gaming revenue we generate, Bags is why we pray for the end of the work day. Most bars with even a sliver of outdoor space will hosts Bags nights to compete with the neighborhoods who’d just as well run to the liquor store n grab what they need along with a bag of ice in order to play the game that was recently leaked from Pandora’s Box.

Like the Valparaiso neighborhood I’m in tonight.

As I try to throw, I start drifting off into the books of blues as well as the textbook. Pure signs of man who won’t be getting laid anytime soon.

But as I start getting whooped by Lac Luster n Max Power – two guys who play this religiously like they’re in high school basketball again, I have to leave those worlds and enter a theraputic world basslined by the rhythmic, cul-du-sac echoing thuds of the bags slammimg down on the boards on several driveways in this neighborhod.

“Singing ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ all Summer Long.” Yep, sometimes it doesn’t matter whether your North or South of 30. How the Hell is that song everywhere?

Part love affair, part inexpensive entertainment as a result of our Economic situatuon, Bags has captured our state’s imagination and gives no hints as to letting it go.

Time to go get whooped some more.

Max Power’s words still hit home a day later. He’s right. I need to take my journey to publishdom with more of a professional attitude despite my personal entwining with the project. My goals ain’t going to accomplish themselves. There might be a little improvise and a little compromise, but it will still take uncompromising effort to get where I want to be – having people finding this blog because they have heard of my successes / offerings and begin to learn how I got to wherever “here” ends up being.

Take the Dave Matthews Band, the band in the video clip above. Say what you will about them. I have many friends who still have their backlash problems with the band. The band has had their peaks and valleys. From 2003-2007, I had trouble listening to them. They hadn’t had a good album since 1998 (except for live shows). They got bad marketing advice, listened to too many people to try and stay “popular,” and lost their way for awhile. It happens. Most Deadheads don’t speak of the early 1980′s. And what the hell with Zeppelin’s last couple years before Bonham’s death? John Lennon had an 18-month “lost weekend” with the nanny in his Yoko years. I’ve got two words for those who still worship the kingdom of John and Jackie Kennedy:  Marilyn Monroe. Even the legendary Odysseus spent 5 years in the arms of a goddess on 20 year trek to get back home. And don’t even get me started on the “distractions” of the Blues Gods I have become bound to as I build the Book of Blues world. When the storytellers have to use words like, “main girl,” and the like…hey, some nights they just we’re trying to have a roof over their head for another night.

But DMB kept on keepin’ on. Their vigor seemed to return in 2007 live shows. Then, painfully,  they lost LeRoi in 2008 and from their tragedy they became reinvigorated and now play with the energy and fury they possessed in the 1990s. Their 2009 album Big Whiskey and the Groo Grux King sounds like what the album after 1998′s Before These Crowded Streets should have been.

Life is seldom without peril. And it’s what I have to remember. So when my boss wants me to go to a free Black Crowes concert over near Chicago just off Lake Michigan, I’m here – even if nobody can find Max Power again. I got to get my work done, even if I’m not getting paid much for it.

As I tell my intern – “don’t get up; don’t get down,” as she tries to navigate the worst job market this side of World War II.

Max Power is also the one who tells me not to work to much, but I think he means during the 9 to 5. I’ll verify that with him if we can find him again.

By the way, if you happen to see a tall, shaggy irishmen who looks like he’s a step out of tune, tell him DB and Finn are lookin’ for him.

Social Media, SEO, Copywriting, Analytics, wanting a book published…I think of little else.

I keep tellin’ a buddy of mine that balance of work and recreation is needed in life. If you don’t do both you’ll have neither. My buddy calls my advice hypocritical. There’s a point in that logic.

I keep preachin’ it but I never end up doing it. Playin’ ’round and lookin’ up stuff for friends on Twitter, givin’ them samples of music I’ll listen to makes me realize why I’ve been listening to music lately: escapism. I’m not enjoying it.

I want to enjoy my days a little more. Moreso than that, I want to enjoy all aspects of my day. I want to have this kind of fun:

Mindless, entertaining fun. I hear this at work to keep my nerves peaceful and to keep office chatter from ears, but I haven’t been enjoying it. Insert jokes on musical taste all you want, but the point is they’re having fun. I’m not. It’s because I’m not balanced.

I was gonna exercise and visit friends. But then I was going to blow it off so I could do HTML training. But then I’ve been watchin’ bad TV because I’m procrasting. So, instead of doin’ all the good things in my day, I’m doing nothing.

To hell with that. I’m going on a walk. It’s up to 37 degrees. I see pavement n roads n signs of grass out there for the first time since December. It ain’t Ft. Myers, Margaritaville, but it’s the best I have to work with. I’ll be damned if I ain’t takin’ full advantage of it. Besides, I ain’t seen my friends since before Christmas.

I need to do it all.

Now where the hell are my guitars?