Got a Keyboard? Use it.

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A blog post should be more than just screenshots of what other people Tweeted.

This morning, as I sat drinking my coffee, I began my usual ritual of checking out some of the links tweeted overnight by the people I follow. One of them was about the iPad. Interested in the iPad as my future ebook reader, I followed the link.

I wound up on a blog post that consisted primarily of screenshots of Twitter. The blogger had posted a question on Twitter about the iPad and then sat back and captured screenshots of the responses as they were tweeted.

I call that lazy blogging.

It was also extremely tedious to read. So tedious, in fact, that I stopped reading after the first scroll down. I did continue scrolling to see if there was some content added by the blogger, but there was so little of it that I wound up simply closing the browser window and getting on with my day.

And then I realized how much it bugged me that there was someone out there passing off screenshots of Twitter responses as a blog “post.”

There is so much crap on the Internet today. Huge quantities of it. I don’t “surf” the net. My Web activity is limited to looking up things I need to know about and following what appears to be interesting links that I receive from friends and business associates verbally, via e-mail, and via Twitter. I don’t want to spend my day wading through the crap online. I want the good stuff.

A blogger should not simply regurgitate what’s readily available on the Web. If I wanted to know what Twitter users thought of the iPad, I’d use Twitter’s built-in search feature — which is also part of Nambu, my preferred Twitter client — and set up a search. I’d then read the results myself. I don’t need to go to a blog to read the same stuff. As screenshots, for Pete’s sake! Hell, if I were at home with my miserably slow Internet connection, the damn page would have taken five minutes to load!

A blogger’s job is to both inform and provide analysis. A summary sentence at the top of 20 screenshots that simply says, “Many people think lack of multi-tasking is a deal breaker,” doesn’t do much for me. And I certainly don’t need to see those 20 screenshots. I get it. You’re not making this up. All these Twitter users said it. I guess it must be true.

And it’s immensely ironic that this post was retweeted. As if it had value. WTF?

My point: if you call yourself a blogger and want to add something of value to the Web, dust off your keyboard and use it.

On Becoming a "Power Blogger"

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I define a new [to me] phrase.

Yesterday, I was one of four guest panelists on the WordCast podcast. The topic was blog productivity — tips and tricks for blogging more efficiently — and a phrase I’d never heard before came up in the discussion: power blogger.

Let me take a few steps back before I move forward. Although I’ve written extensively about blogging from the blogger point of view and I’ve also co-authored and authored various WordPress training materials (books and videos), I’m not someone who keeps up-to-date with the world of blogging. I don’t know the buzzwords or phrases, I don’t follow the hot trends. I just obtain the tools, use them the way they work for me, and try to publish new blog posts regularly. Along the way, I provide a sprinkling of advice for bloggers in my own blog posts.

So the phrase power blogger was brand new to me.

And meaningless.

When the question, “What advice can you give to people who want to become power bloggers?” came up, I felt a tingling of stage fright. Surely I’d sound like an idiot if I admitted I had no idea what the phrase meant.

Fortunately, another panelist spoke up. I listened carefully to glean meaning from his response. And what I learned was that he — and the others — considered the quantity of blog posts a major component of power blogging. By their definition — at least one post a day — I was a power blogger!

I sure don’t feel like one.

When it was my turn to speak, I proposed my own definition of power blogger. I don’t remember the exact words, but it went something like this:

The number of blog posts a blogger publishes should have nothing to do with whether he’s a power blogger. Instead, it should be the influence the blogger has over his readership and beyond. What’s important is whether a blog post makes a difference in the reader’s life. Does it teach? Make the reader think? Influence his decisions? If a blogger can consistently do any of that, he’s a power blogger.

I recall comparing Twitter — which is, after all, “microblogging” — to blogging. Someone can tweet dozens of times a day, but if there isn’t any value in what he’s tweeting, what good is it? There are plenty of bloggers out there simply rehashing the same material, over and over, without adding anything new to the mix. They might post five or ten times a day. But if it isn’t worth reading, how can you consider them power bloggers?

And I guess that’s the advice I want to share in this post: If you’re serious about blogging, don’t go for quantity. Go for quality.

Make a difference with what you post.

Stop Being Too Cheap to Pick Up the Damn Phone

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It’s 2010, not 1957.

TelephoneYeah, I know. In the old days, calling a phone number outside your area code would likely cost you a few bucks for a few minutes. “Long distance” phone calls were pricey, often 25¢ or more per minute. Cost conscious folks had no interest in following up on a vendor or service by calling in. Thus, toll-free (originally “800” numbers in the U.S.) were born. By the 1990s, they’d run out of area code 800 phone numbers and added 866 and 877.

Sometime before that, however, e-mail began its rise to popularity. Why call someone on the phone when you could e-mail them for free? The result: spammers and people who seem content to cast their queries to the Internet winds, hoping an intended recipient receives them and responds sometime before the end of the week.

As phone companies began competing for our business, phone rates dropped. When I ran my BBS back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was thrilled to find a calling plan with unlimited long distance for only 10¢ a minute. Then 6¢. Then 5¢. This meant I could pick up my FidoNET message groups nightly for only a few dollars a month. The added benefit: I could call my mother or sister, in the next state, and talk to them for 20 minutes for only a buck.

Time marched on. Cell phones began their rise. Cell phone service providers started competing for our business, offering better and better rate plans. I pay a flat fee every month. I get free calls on weekends and non-peak times. I get free calls to any other cell number with the same carrier as mine. I get free calls to the five phone numbers I specify that aren’t with my cellular provider. I get 900 peak minutes a month. Yes, I realize that other providers have other plans that are equally good, if not better. The point is, if you have a cell phone with any decent calling plan, there’s no such thing as “long distance” anymore — at least not within the U.S.

So why the hell do people whine and complain when they can’t contact a person or organization via e-mail? Why don’t they just pick up the damn phone and dial the number that’s provided?

Here are three examples of where I’m seeing old-fashioned thinking about making a “long distance” phone call:

  • I recently designed a brochure for Flying M Air’s Moonlight Dinner Tour, which takes people to the excellent Anzio Landing restaurant at Falcon field. The brochures were designed to be distributed at Anzio to their existing customers. Fortunately, I sent a sample of the brochure to the owner/manager before having them printed. I included my company’s phone number, which is in the 928 (northern Arizona) area code. The manager asked, “Don’t you have a local number for people to call?” I had to grab a number in the 602 (Phoenix) area code from Google Voice, set it up to forward to my phone, and add it the brochure.
  • At least once a week, I get an e-mail message from a helicopter pilot looking for a job. They visit Flying M Air’s Web site and home in on the Contact Us page. The page includes the company phone number — seriously, how else would you make a reservation? — but they opt for the contact form, which sends me an e-mail message. So rather than taking 15 to 30 seconds of their time calling to ask if there are any jobs available, they waste 5 to 10 minutes of their time composing an e-mail message that’s supposed to impress me just to ask me to call them and request more information or an interview. Guess what? I’m not impressed. (I’ve since added a note right above that form telling them we’re not hiring. It’ll be interesting to see how many job seekers ignore that.)
  • A recent comment on wickenburg-az.com, a Web site I manage, complained that an organization seeking support and new members had not provided an e-mail address. It had, however, provided a phone number. I pointed this out in a reply to the comment, hoping he’d stop whining and contact the organization using the method they preferred.

Come on, folks! It’s 2010! Telephone communication is cheaper than ever. It also remains the fastest way to conduct a two-way conversation with someone else.

Need information? Stop wasting time with e-mail and pick up the damn phone!

Solar Power Woes

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Why I won’t be buying a solar energy setup for my new RV.

My old RV — which we drove away from this afternoon without a backward glance — had a solar panel on the roof. The panel charged the RVs two batteries, which, in turn could power the lights, stereo, and any devices we had plugged in to the unit’s two DC power ports. This was handy when we camped off-the-grid, as we did numerous times on our way from Washington state to Arizona last summer.

The system didn’t have an inverter, though. That meant that it could not power the AC power outlets or anything plugged into them, including handy devices like the microwave. We learned to do without.

Our New RigMy new RV is quite a step up from the old one. It actually has rooms. And a desk I can sit and work at. And lots of space.

Of course, I wanted it to have a solar setup, too. But a full-blown setup that would include an inverter and be able to power any of the outlets and devices on board. Okay, well maybe not the air conditioning, but everything else.

My husband, Mike, is a solar guy. He knows how to design solar power systems. He designed the one on our old RV and designed and built the significantly more complex one on our off-the-grid vacation “cabin.” So he sat down with a pen and paper and, using the Internet, researched a solution. I’d use the panel off my old RV, match it with a second panel, add two batteries, an inverter, and a bunch of other stuff, and have a 2KW solar setup. The cost: roughly $3K.

Now $3,000 is a lot of money, especially after pouring a bunch of money into a new RV. But I like the idea of renewable energy. And I love the idea of silent energy. So I was willing to spend another $3K. I saw it as an investment in the future.

We were in Quartzsite, AZ when I picked up the RV. There are lots of RV service centers there, including two that specialize in solar power systems. So we drove over to one to get a quote.

And that’s when things started getting funky.

One guy priced up a system for us what was just a bit over Mike’s estimate. That didn’t include installation labor, though. (I insisted on a professional installation.) He quoted us labor at $55/hour for maybe four hours. I took a deep breath and nodded. So the sales guy handed us off to the order writer. She priced everything out. But suddenly labor was $85/hour and we were looking at 10 hours or more. She refused to be pinned down, but I was seeing a minimum of $4400. My “ripoff radar” — developed after years living in the New York area — perked up and started sending me signals. I told the woman I’d sleep on it and we left.

We went to the other solar outfitter. We’d bought all our solar panels for the vacation cabin and some other equipment from them in the past. They priced out our system and came up with a solid number: $4168. Ouch.

Mike and I talked about it at some length. He’d already suggested a much cheaper alternative for the times we were off the grid: a 2000-watt Honda generator that could be used parallel with an identical model to give a total of 4000 watts. If you needed a little power, you’d fire up one. If you needed more, you’d connect the second one and fire it up, too. With 4000 watts, we could power everything in the camper, including the air conditioning.

At first, I’d resisted the suggestion. I wanted quiet power. The Honda generators were known for their quietness, but nothing would be as quiet as solar.

But the kicker: I could get the Hondas for less than $1,000 each. Just one would provide as much power as the solar setup we’d envisioned. No need for an inverter or charge controller or holes drilled in the RV roof.

Yamaha EF2000iS GeneratorLater that day, we walked around the RV show in Quartzsite, where vendors were selling all kinds of things for RVers. One of them had Yamaha generators. The Yamaha EF2000iS did the same thing the Honda I was considering did, but it was 2 decibels quieter and 2 pounds lighter. And a tiny bit cheaper to buy, too.

It was even cheaper on Amazon.com.

So I didn’t go with the solar setup. I just can’t justify the added expense — after all, to get 2,000 watts with solar power, we’d be spending four times as much as the generator would cost us.

And I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels this way.

It’s unfortunate. There are many people out there who want to do the “right thing” and use renewable energy. But it’s difficult to justify the added expense. When a friend pointed out that I’d have to buy fuel for the generator, I replied that $3000 worth of fuel could go a long way at 5 hours per gallon. The solar setup would never pay for itself.

I’m hoping that changes sometime soon.

Adventures as a Tour Pilot: The Screaming 8-Year-Old

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Makes me glad I never had kids.

The title of this post says most of what I want to report, so I won’t stretch this one out longer than it needs to be.

About two weeks ago, I booked a Phoenix Tour with a woman. The flight, which lasts 50 to 60 minutes, circles the Phoenix area and includes incredible views of north Phoenix, Peoria, Lake Pleasant, Glendale, downtown Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Deer Valley. The tour was for her grandson, who was celebrating his eighth birthday. I wasn’t available on the day she wanted to book, so she booked for the following Saturday, a week after the boy’s birthday. Cost of the flight: $495 plus tax for up to 3 people.

I met the family at 11 AM sharp yesterday. It was Grandma (who booked and paid for the flight), Grandpa, Mom, and The Kid. Everyone looked happy and excited. Mom reported that The Kid was so excited that he’d run into the car, still carrying the TV remote.

I walked them all out to the ramp where the helicopter was waiting. I’d just repositioned it there from its hangar. Three small airplanes were parked nearby. They were surrounded by kids. Apparently, some lucky Boy Scouts were getting airplane rides.

We reached the helicopter but The Kid stopped eight feet short. “I don’t think I want to go,” he said softly.

Over the next ten minutes, that small statement ballooned into yelling and screaming tantrum that even included knee shaking (think cartoons, possibly Sponge Bob). I struggled to complete a safety briefing, wondering why I was bothering. Surely this wasn’t going to happen. But Mom and Grandpa climbed in, leaving Grandma to reason with The Kid. A Sheriff Department helicopter landed on the pad next to ours and I hustled them to the other side of my helicopter for added safety. The other helicopter hot-fueled while Mom climbed out and managed to convince The Kid to board.

I did not want the child beside me. Normally, an eight-year-old is fine up front — hell, I had my first helicopter ride at age 8! — but this kid was a complete unknown. What if he grabbed the controls or opened his door? I wanted no part of that. So he sat in back beside his mother. Grandpa sat up front beside me.

I reached back and locked The Kid’s door.

The Sheriff Department helicopter lifted into a hover, then took off. The kid screamed. “DON’T TILT! I DON’T WANT TO TILT!”

I assured him I wouldn’t tilt, wondering how I was going to make turns without banking.

I started the engine. The Kid started yelling again. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to get out. I left Mom to reason with him. I listened to the ATIS and tower as I warmed up. I chatted with Grandpa, trying hard to ignore the monster sitting behind him.

The Kid refused to put on his headset. I was kind of glad about that. I wouldn’t have to hear him.

I called the tower and got a clearance. I picked up into a hover. The Kid started screaming that he wanted to go down.

“Is he okay?” I asked. I repeated that question four times. Mom and Grandpa ignored me. So I took off.

I wanted to depart to the north, across the runways. My instructions had been to depart to the south, turn to the left (The Kid’s side), and cross the runway midfield at 2000 feet. Normally, I’d make the 500 foot climb in a tight climbing turn. Because of The Kid’s tilt restriction, that was not an option. Instead, I swung way wide in a gradual climbing turn. The kid was still screaming, but I had managed to tune him out. I leveled out over the terminal and crossed the runway at exactly 2000 feet MSL, heading north.

We were a half mile north of the airport when The Kid’s tantrum switch apparently turned to the OFF position. Unfortunately, his screaming switch was apparently non-functioning, because he kept yelling at the top of his lungs. “LOOK! A TRUCK! LOOK! WATER!”

At least he wasn’t afraid anymore.

I headed out toward Lake Pleasant. New River and a bunch of streams were flowing. After a few minutes, The Kid put on his headset and I now had his screaming piped directly into my ears, courtesy of the voice-activated intercom. “LOOK! A COW! LOOK! A STREAM!”

I had two options. I could flick the pilot isolation switch and rudely ignore him and my other two passengers or I could turn down the intercom volume. I elected to turn down the volume. Sadly, I could still hear him.

We circled over the New Waddell Dam and headed south toward Glendale Stadium. I chatted with Grandpa. Somewhere along the way The Kid removed his headset again. Whew!

Things had pretty much settled down and it looked as if the tour would finish fine. I actually forgot about my troublesome passenger, who was still pointing out things he saw on the ground to Mom. But then I made a fatal error. I turned to the left.

My normal tour route takes me past Glendale’s University of Arizona Stadium (where the Cardinals play) along the Loop 101 and turns to the left at I-10 south of there. I normally bank at least 15 degrees to make the turn. Since I thought the kid was okay, I did the turn as I usually did.

And he started screaming again.

I changed my route. Instead of making another left turn to go up Central Avenue — normally the highlight of the trip — I told Phoenix Tower I would transition east along McDowell. That removed two 90° turns from the tour without significantly changing the total time in flight. The kid calmed down a bit along this 5-10 minute stretch. But when I turned left at the Loop 101 to head toward Scottsdale, he started screaming all over again.

Fuck this, I thought to myself.

Instead of overflying Scottsdale Airport (as I usually do), I punched Deer Valley’s identifier into my GPS. I adjusted my course, told Scottsdale Tower I’d transition through the southwest edge of their airspace, and cut about 5 minutes out of the tour time.

By this time, the kid was out of control. Any movement whatsoever was enough to get him screaming. We flew right past his house — Mom and Grandpa both saw it — but The Kid was more interested in screaming his brains out than looking.

I came in for a landing at the helipad where we’d started 45 minutes before. Even when we were on the ground cooling down, The Kid was acting up. He insisted we were moving backwards.

I shut down, got the blades stopped, and walked them back to the terminal building. Grandpa handed me some folded up paper money as he shook my hand. “Thanks for your patience,” he said.

While I appreciated the $20 tip, it would take a lot more money — and a gag — for me to take that kid flying ever again.