Author Archives: Maria Langer

An Eclectic Mind

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The site gets a new name, too.

After months of thinking about a new name for my personal blog and book support site, I finally took the plunge. The new name is An Eclectic Mind.

Why Eclectic?

The name comes, in part, from a regular visitor here, Thomas Fucili. He read my post “What’s in a Name?” and responded using the Contact form with a suggestion: Eclectic Pronouncements. I liked eclectic, but didn’t like pronouncements. He came up with a replacement word and I thought deeply about it but made no decision.

ec•lec•tic |iˈklektik|
adjective
1 deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources : her musical tastes are eclectic.
2 (Eclectic) Philosophy of, denoting, or belonging to a class of ancient philosophers who did not belong to or found any recognized school of thought but selected such doctrines as they wished from various schools.

I liked the word eclectic because it seemed to suit the site’s content. As anyone who visits the site regularly knows, I write about widely varied topics. In the world of “pro blogging,” that’s a big no-no. But I’m not blogging to make money, so I don’t really care if the site’s not focused enough to build a high volume of regular visitors and feed subscribers. I write about what interests me, while providing support for the folks who buy and read my books.

The second definition seemed to suit me, too. I don’t think inside the box and can’t be easily labeled. I listen to a lot of theories and opinions and choose the ones that make sense to me — even if they don’t usually co-exist in other people’s belief systems. I’m not a philosopher (although sometimes I do feel ancient) but I’m a strong believer in independent thought.

Eclectic seemed a perfect fit.

The Domain Name Challenge

One of the challenges I faced was coming up with a name that was somewhat (at least) original and still had the domain name available. Although I don’t expect to formally change the domain name for the site, I did want new visitors to be able to find the site by clicking in the domain name with a dot-com at the end. I came up with a few twists on the word eclectic but couldn’t secure the domain names for any of them.

And then, one day, I just came up with An Eclectic Mind. The domain name was available and I bought it. Without really realizing it, I’d settled on a new name.

That was a few weeks ago.

A Day of Changes

I wanted to tie in the site name change to a complete site redesign. So I spent some time looking for the right theme. I found Cutline, which I’ll probably discuss in some detail in future blog posts. I also wanted to [finally] upgrade to the current version of WordPress (2.2.2 as I write this). I knew from experience that the upgrade would break some of my plugins and my current theme. So it made a lot of sense to take a whole day and just do the name change, upgrade, and new theme.

That day was today.

The site’s not done yet — I’m still adding in a few features that my old site used to have — but I expect to be finishing it up over the next few weeks. I’d love to hear your comments about it; use the Comments link or form at the bottom of this post to share your thoughts.

But for now, I just want to thank Thomas for his suggestion. I couldn’t have come up with the new name without his help.

Under Reconstruction

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Today’s the big day.

Today is the day I’ve decided to upgrade this blog to WordPress 2.2 (finally). I figured that while I was at it, I’d change the blog’s theme — I’m rather bored with this one — and change it’s name.

So throughout today, this blog will be looking and acting weird. I hope it doesn’t get too weird for me to fix in one day. If all goes well, the blog will be at least 95% fully functional by day’s end, with some features gone and others added little by little over the coming weeks. I’m also hoping to add some new features.

The theme I’ve chosen, a version of Cutline by Chris Pearson, features two sidebars and a wider fixed-width page. This will fill the width of most folks screens and make it possible for me to have more before the “fold.” The second sidebar column will make it possible to display offsite links and advertising separate from internal navigation features. The look is clean and polished, the font is larger, and the theme is more far advanced than what I’m accustomed to, so I’ll have plenty of room to grow and learn.

I’ll tell you more about the blog’s new name and plans for the future when I get the hard stuff done. Stay tuned.

And please have patience if you tune in and see a big mess — or, worse yet — some PHP errors here.

Networking – Part II: How LinkedIn Fits In

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I’m not convinced that it does.

HandshakeIn the first part of this series, I summarized my views on good, old-fashioned networking and why I’m such a strong believer in it.

In this article, I’ll explain how I see LinkedIn, a professional social networking service, fit into my idea of networking.

LinkedIn

One of the biggest social networks for professionals is LinkedIn. The idea is that you set up an account and provide resume-like profile information. You then “connect” with other LinkedIn members, who become part of your direct network. Through them, you are indirectly connected to other people and can, supposedly, ask for introductions to make any of those people part of your direct network.

View Maria Langer's profile on LinkedInI’ve been a member for about two years now. As of this morning, I have 63 direct connections, 3200+ “two-degree” connections and a whopping 271,000+ “third degree” connections. Yet in the two years I’ve been a member with all these relationships, I have yet to get any leads — solid or otherwise — for work.

I’m not the only one. This is evidently a major complaint among members. Yet they all stick to it, trying to work the system.

Why LinkedIn Isn’t Working For Me

I have three theories on why LinkedIn is not working — at least not for me:

  • Linked in, being an Internet-based network, appeals primarily to technology people. So the user base is deeply skewed toward technology-related fields. I’m a writer who writes about using computers, so I’m on the fringe of this network. I think that people more heavily involved in technology may find LinkedIn more valuable. But I’m extremely disappointed with the number of aviation-related professionals on LinkedIn. Of the three that I’m directly connected to, I brought all of them into the system and two of them only have one direct connection: me.
  • Members have either the “what’s in it for me” or lack of confidence problem I discussed above. As a result, they’re not very likely to highly recommend contacts. To be fair, however, I have had no requests for recommendations in the past two years. In other words, no one has come to me and asked for information about any of my contacts, which include freelancers that do layout, indexing, writing, and all kinds of publishing-related work.
  • Members simply aren’t working the system.

You Gotta Work the System

A few months ago, when a LinkedIn contact asked me whether I’d ever gotten any work because of my LinkedIn membership, after admitting that I hadn’t and discovering that he hadn’t, I offered to ask a friend of mine who I consider a professional networking expert. She’s also a member of LinkedIn and she’s the one who’d pulled me on board. When I asked her the question, she admitted that she hadn’t gotten any work either.

“But I’m not trying very hard,” she added.

I knew immediately what she meant. You can’t simply put your name in a hat and wait for someone to call you with work. You need to work your connections. You need to make sure everyone remembers you and thinks about you when they have a need. You need recommendations. You need to build new connections through the ones you already have.

In other words, you need to network the old fashioned way.

And that’s where LinkedIn falls short of people’s expectations. Yes, you can use it to track down contact information for former classmates and colleagues and clients. But unless you actively keep in touch with these people, you may as well keep an address book in your desk drawer. LinkedIn only puts out what you put into it.

Full Circle

Which brings me back to my original example. Suppose I add Adam to my list of LinkedIn contacts. (The big challenge, of course, is getting him to sign up if he isn’t already a member — non-tech people are extremely cautious about signing up for any online service, even if it’s free.) And suppose Pete (remember him?) is also a member of LinkedIn and gets John to join. Pete refers John to me via LinkedIn. John sees my resume and is impressed. He asks Pete for an introduction. Pete uses LinkedIn to introduce me to John. John becomes part of my network and I introduce him to Adam.

Seems like a long, roundabout way to get things done, but if all of us were already members of LinkedIn before any of this started, it would go smoothly, like clockwork. And, theoretically, a lot of it would be do-it-yourself stuff, with John finding me through Pete’s contact list. A few clicks and introductions are made. E-mail is exchanged, then phone calls. And relationships are solidified by business transactions.

That’s the idea behind LinkedIn.

Sadly, that’s not what’s happening. Not yet. But I’ll continue to try to build my LinkedIn network and try to make some use of it.

Are You LinkedIn?

If you’re a linked in member, use the comments link or form for this post to share your LinkedIn user ID with the rest of us.

If you’re not, check it out. You might benefit from it.

Either way, I’d love to hear experiences of LinkedIn users. Use the comments link or form for this post to share them.

How to Destroy a Perfectly Good Margarita

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It’s the salt.

Last night, Mike and I went out for dinner in Wickenburg. It’s summer here and our choices are limited. More limited than we thought. We’d been planning to eat at House Berlin, the German restaurant. House Berlin makes an excellent walleye and is the only restaurant in town where you can get veal. But a hand-printed sign on the window said “Closed August for Vacation.”

We left the car parked where it was and walked to my second choice that evening. I won’t say which of Wickenburg’s amazing dining choices it was because I need to be critical (again) and I know how sensitive my fellow Wickenburgers can be.

A Short History of the Best Margarita in Wickenburg

The restaurant we went to used to make the second best margarita in town. The first best was at the Santa Fe Cantina, which was also one of the town’s top five restaurants. Santa Fe made the best ribs, too. And the best artichoke dip, which I was fortunate enough to get the recipe for.

But the Santa Fe sold to new owners — who, to their credit, still made those excellent margaritas.

But then they handed it off to their foster son — or at least that’s what I heard — and he decided to change the menu. (Hey, that’s an idea! Take a formula that works in a restaurant that has great following and change it!) He soon drove the place out of business.

So now we had to settle for second best, which, without a real best, becomes the best.

In My Mind: A Nice Cadillac Margarita

I like Cadillac margaritas. That’s a margarita with a shot of Grand Mariner in it. A good Cadillac margarita is the best margarita. Okay, so that’s my opinion, but next time you’re in a place that makes good margaritas, try one and see for yourself.

So when the waitress came, we ordered two Cadillac margaritas. Then we opened the menu to start browsing selections. That’s when I discovered that we were going to pay $8.25 for each drink.

Now I’m accustomed to spending that kind of money for alcohol at resorts and fancy Scottsdale restaurants. In fact, it’s even common for us to blow $10 to $16 a piece on top shelf martinis. But I’ve never spent that kind of money in Wickenburg for any drink — even at the town’s nicest restaurant at its best guest ranch. And the price didn’t include Wickenburg’s exorbitant sales/BB&B tax, which is somewhere around 14% these days — second highest in the state (and proud of it)! The high tax is why quite a few people in WIckenburg are dining out in town a lot less often these days.

But this was a night out after a long week sitting in front of a computer, working on a book. It would be worth the money for a good margarita, no matter where I bought it. At least that’s what I thought.

Reality Strikes — Again

Margarita GlassThen she brought the margaritas. They were in small cocktail glasses, the kind you’d get a scotch on the rocks in. (Most restaurants in Arizona have special margarita glasses. Some of them even have saguaro-shaped stems.) The color was right for the drink, but not for the salt. It was green.

Let me back up a bit. Margaritas are normally served two ways: frozen (as in blended with ice) and on the rocks. Either way, you can have salt around the rim of the glass. They usually use Kosher salt or something similar to it. You can even buy special salt around here in a glass dipping container (shaped like a sombrero — how cute!) to make it easy to salt the rim of your margarita glasses at home. The point is, it’s salt. Plain salt. It isn’t flavored and it certainly isn’t colored.

The salt on our $8.25 margaritas was green.

It was the kind of green you might use on St. Patrick’s day: a bright Kelly green. Not lime colored like you might think reasonable for a margarita.

But I try to have an open mind. (I swear I do.) So I brought the glass up to my lips and sipped my margarita.

At first the taste of something moldy and salty hit my tongue. Then the taste of cheap margarita mix. The tequila may have been in there somewhere, but it couldn’t overpower the moldy salt. And the Grand Mariner was hiding under the ice cubes or somewhere where my tongue couldn’t get it.

I immediately began wiping the salt off my glass. My napkin and fingertips turned bright green. Some of the salt fell into the glass, leaving green streaks as it sank to the bottom. I stopped wiping.

Later, I tried to use the cocktail straw to sip some margarita that hadn’t been tainted by the salt. All I got was a mouth full of warm margarita mix. I guess the bartender didn’t have a shaker. Or maybe he/she was too busy dying salt to mix the drink properly in the first place.

I think — but I’m not sure — that the salt was leftover from St. Patrick’s Day five months before. I also think that the moisture of five months of dipped wet bar glasses got a little mold growing in the container. (Can mold grow on salt?) And I think this mold — or its essence — has become an integral part of the margarita making process at this particular restaurant.

I have to stop writing about this because I’m grossing myself out.

The Rest of the Meal

Mike’s ceviche was spoiled. We sent that back. It should have tipped us off that it wasn’t a particularly popular item when we saw it spelled “saveche” on the menu.

My mole was good. But then again, it tasted just like the mole I can make with a jar of the concentrate from the supermarket. (Because of our Mexican population, the local supermarkets have an excellent selection of Mexican foods.) That means that either the jarred mole is very much like this restaurant’s recipe or they use the same stuff. It didn’t matter much to me. It tasted good.

Mike’s quesadilla looked okay to me, but disappointed him. I think he was expecting a lot of stuff on top, like one of the other local restaurants — the one he wanted to go to last night, I should mention — makes it.

The chips were good, but Mike said the salsa tasted bad. It tasted okay to me and it was nice and chunky, the way I like it. But he got me worried that I was missing something bad, so I didn’t eat much of it.

The Search for the Best Margarita in Wickenburg Begins Again

Anyway, at this point it’s safe to say that if this is now the best margarita in Wickenburg, we’re in a sad state. It’s time to start looking for a new best. I hope I find it — at any price.

And I think Mike will remind me of this meal the next time I suggest dining in that particular restaurant again.

Maria Speaks Episode 37: KBSZ Interview

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Maria Speaks Episode 37: KBSZ Interview.

I was interviewed yet again by local radio station KBSZ 1250-AM. Pete’s a great interviewer and always makes his guests feel comfortable. We talked for about 40 minutes, mostly about the Internet and flying. You’ll hear my layman’s explanation of my recent experience getting seriously Dugg. Keep in mind that the station’s audience isn’t exactly computer savvy, so I do a lot of explaining and simplifying when discussing some computer topics.

This podcast starts in the middle of a commercial; the interview starts about a minute in.

February 17, 2010 Update: KBSZ went under back in 2009. The Web site was taken down and all podcasts removed. As a result, the podcast of this episode is no longer available. Sorry!