Oy Vey

I’ll admit that I don’t know any Hebrew (outside of a few characters used in mathematics) but I do get a kick out of a lot of the Yiddish terms I hear used. There’s a bunch of them here.

It's a really rich language and some words describe the situation better than any English counterpart I can come up with.

And I haven’t yet seen a Microsoft Zune. I’ve been happy with my Creative MuVo mp3 player that I've had forever.

What’s the connection?

Some Hebrew linguists (they are divided on this issue) say that the word “zune” is pretty darn close to the Hebrew vulgarity for the “f” word.

Microsoft says they are aware of the similarity in pronunciation
to the Hebrew zi-yun.

I think it’s bobbyemseh that Microsoft did this on purpose. Probably some alter cocker came up with this. Some people will kvetch about anything. Be a mensch, not a schmendrick.

Zie Ga Zink. ;-)

Bang a Gong

Yikes! The Bell of Free Speech has been Silenced as the Historic City Club of Cleveland Gong goes Missing.

Missy Toms just sent out this message.

City Club employees believe that the gong and gavel, which are valued at $4,000, were taken sometime between 6 p.m. on Friday, October 13, 2006, and 11 p.m. on Saturday, October 14, 2006. City Club officials are reviewing building security tapes in hopes that they will be able to determine what happened.

The gong was donated to The City Club by Dr. Louis Siegelstein, a City Club member. His family obtained the gong from what was then Shanghai, China in the 1930s. Since then, the gong has signaled the beginning and the closing of all City Club Forums and programs. It is heard every Friday on the live radio broadcasts of City Club Forums on WCLV-FM and on The City Club’s radio network, which includes more than 200 stations across the country. In addition, viewers see it every week on the WVIZ television broadcast of Friday Forums.

The City Club will not seek prosecution if the person returns the gong. Anyone with information about the gong is asked to call The City Club at 216.621.0082.

”The City Club gong is an immensely important artifact for The City Club and the city of Cleveland. It has become a symbol of free speech, ringing in historically significant speakers for many years, including several U.S. presidents and Cleveland mayors, Babe Ruth, and Rosa Parks,” says City Club executive director James Foster. “We hope that the person who took the gong will realize its value to our region and the nation. We welcome its return with no questions asked.”

Let' get that gong back!

Guns and Websites

We’ve all been to way too many business and/or tech presentations in some stuffy conference room. Yawn.

But the folks at Aztek Technology know how to do it up right.

They hosted a new technology presentation on Thursday September 28th that covered a lot of new and interesting technology. But what set this demonstration apart from others was the location and the after-meeting activities.

Aztek’s Kevin Latchford is a long-time member of the Beaver Creek Club in Amherst so the event was held in the clubhouse on their 500+ acre spread. After the presentation the attendees were taken out to use the extensive shooting facilities at the club. (That's Aztek's Stacie Baske in the photo)

Check it out

Larry Ellison in Cleveland?

Hard to imagine isn't it? Gary Baney, Founder and CEO of Boundless Flight thinks so. Gary is a kindred spirit to the Oracle founder. He works very hard and plays very hard and sees Cleveland as too often accepting comfort and mediocrity.

What do you think?

I did an audio interview with him and it’s the current show at GreatLakesGeek.com. It’s 16 minutes but worth the listen. I’m really interested in feedback from both the native Clevelanders and some of you transplants. Comment here or via the e-mail link on the Baney interview page.

Guy Kawasaki

I posted some details and pics from the Guy Kawasaki keynote address last night on
the Great Lakes Geek site

Chairs were set up on the stage of the State Theater so now I (and a bunch of other folks) can claim to have appeared on stage at the State.

Ah, End Users

I know it’s almost a cliché to talk about the “ignorant” end user. You know, the person searching for the “any key” or using the CD tray as a cup holder.

But this one was new (to me) and funny.

A help desk guy got an end user on the line and started walking through steps to try and troubleshoot. He asked her to go to My Computer and in a few moments, there she was with phone in hand. She did what she was told and went to “My Computer”

Sudoku, Podcast... De-crapifier?

Look out Sudoku and Podcast. You may have been the most popular words for 2005 but there is a new kid in town.

A guy who was tired of uninstalling all the, uh, stuff on new Dell PCs created a script that would automatically remove it all.

He called it the Dell De-Crapifier and after hearing from Dell he has since renamed it the PC De-Crapifier.

Let's all conjugate together:
I de-crap
You de-crap
He/She/It de-craps

and so on. More details and a link.

Mike Douglas

Mike Douglas passed away this AM on his 81st birthday. He was a cool guy and way ahead of his time as a TV host. In the turbulent 60's this rather unhip guy was bringing people like John Lennon and Yoko Ono on his show.

We did an interview with him a few years ago. Check it out - some pictures too.

Health Care Shockers

I listened to Kaiser Permanente’s Patricia Kennedy Scott speak at the SmartBusinessLive luncheon on August 10th. “Our health care system, in my view, is fundamentally broken.”

The most amazing stat to me was that 90% of the healthcare dollars are spent on 10% of the population! Wow!

Read more and see some pics of the event at GreatLakesGeek.com

Botanical Gardens 7-21-06

As I often say, if you can't find something fun to do in this city you really aren't trying. Even the weather cooperated last Friday night for the Young Professionals in the City event at the beautiful Cleveland Botanical Gardens.

Mayor Frank Jackson was very accessible and held an extended Q&A session with the several hundred in attendance.

I shot a few pics and so did Thomas Mulready.

Cleveland Cooks

You know those special recipes that have been your family's favorites for years? Maybe they were brought over from the "Old Country" by a relative. Maybe there's a unique or funny way that you always serve it. Or maybe it's just a tried and true recipe that always gets raves.

We've gathered these best recipes and assembled them all in one cookbook to show that Cleveland Cooks!

There are over 350 recipes from your neighbors and friends as well as local celebrities such as Dick Goddard, Wilma Smith, Romona Robinson, Lee Jordan, Al Roker, Stacey Bell, Sister Mary Assumpta, Mary Ann the Ghost Whisperer, Les Roberts, Food TV's Jack Hourigan, Hoolihan, SuperHost, Miss Barbara, George Nemeth, Thomas Mulready and many more.

Look for delicious recipes celebrating the diverse ethnic makeup of Cleveland - Hungarian, Jewish, Italian, Armenian and many more.

The cookbooks are available at many local summer fests and shows or you can order online.

Part of the proceeds from the book will benefit Computers Assisting People (CAP).

Get details at ClevelandCooks.com

Best Cut?

A lot of us in the tech world complain about the commodization of our products and services. It’s hard to attract and retain customers when price is the only differentiator.

Imagine a service such as haircuts - there doesn’t seem to be a way to differentiate and attract loyal customers and make decent margins. After all, a haircut is a haircut. But John DiJulius, has managed to do just that.

John is the president of John Robert's Salon and Spa, which has been selected one of the top 20 salons in America. I saw him speak at the SBL Live luncheon at the Forum yesterday.

Check out the details.

Irish Summerfest tickets

The Irish Summerfest is going to be at Classic Park in Eastlake this June. Not sure how they will handle the logistics - I always liked it at Euclid Park.

ClevelandWomen.Com and ClevelandSeniors.com are sponsors of the event so we are holding a raffle for some 4-packs of free tickets.

Check it out - good luck.

Jim Beam, Jack Daniels and...

Wild Turkey?

My favorite bourbon is a brand called Rebel Yell and you can’t find it above the Mason Dixon line. My friends and I first tried it because we saw Keith Richards holding a bottle of it in a photo in the Rolling Stones Exile on Mainstreet album.

If it was good enough for Keef, we had to try it.

But I digress. Yesterday when heading down Forest Hills Blvd. I saw a – wild turkey! – near Forest Hills Park. Not a buzzard, not a goose but a real wild turkey. Then today coming home along Monticello, traffic was forced to stop as this (I assume there’s only one but who knows) wild turkey crossed the street at a leisurely pace.

Enough to drive a man to drink. ;-)

CAAO Auction

If you don’t know about the Consortium of African American Organizations (CAAO), you should. You can hear a podcast interview with their Executive Director Connie Atkins on the Great Lakes Geek site.

One of their most interesting events is their annual executive auction which is going on now till Thursday May 11th at 11PM.

You bid on time donated by bigwigs from the Clinic, UH, Key Bank and other institutions that you probably would never get to schmooze with otherwise. Or go for a fun bid like watching a Cavs game with Dan Gilbert in his loge or shooting hoops with Eric Snow or getting a tour of the Rock Hall from Terry Stewart.

Connie told me that winning bidders have generated over $5 million (much more but many are private about giving out numbers) in new business from the relationships they made after winning a bid.

So if you don’t golf with Henry Meyer or belong to the same clubs as Dan Gilbert, here’s your chance to sit down with them.

Blame AC (not Austin Carr)

On the way to hear Dick Pogue speak at a Neosa event last night I saw a bumper sticker on a car on 24th and Payne that said “Who is John Galt?”

Of course, that’s the expression used in Ayn Rand’s classic “Atlas Shrugged.” Great to see something like that on a car instead of the usual “If you’re rich, I’m single” tripe.

Mr. Pogue gave kind of a history lesson starting before his arrival in town in 1957. One thing he said I had never considered before. We all know that in 1950 Cleveland was the 6th largest city with a million people. What I didn’t realize was that the proliferation and economy of air conditioning made it possible for a lot of our manufacturing jobs to move to the South and West. Before AC those climates were just too hot for a lot of the work that we did up here.

Of course there are numerous other reasons we started to slide but that’s one component that was new to me.

Wrong side of the tracks?

I just finished Crossing the Road to Entrepreneurship, the autobiography of Bart Wolstein who passed away just before it was published.

Wolstein made millions in real estate developlment - starting on the then undeveloped suburb of Twinsburg. He developed many similar outlying suburbs, got into big box stores likes Kmart and eventually shopping malls, hotels and country clubs.

Two things really jump out at me from the book. First is how relative “humble beginnings” can be. He was raised in the 1940’s on Taylor Road in Cleveland Heights. Even today, that is not exactly the inner city or a depressed area. In the ‘40’s, living in Cleveland Heights would certainly not be considered a hardship by most. Yet in the book he constantly talks about (and the title refers to) crossing Taylor Road. Eventually he did – ending up in Beachwood and Pepper Pike – but Cleveland Heights was certainly not the 3rd World in the ‘40s.

The second thing is how this multi-millionaire with all his connections and acclaim (he owned the Cleveland Force soccer team) always felt like an outsider and/or that he was being betrayed. He cites disloyalty and dishonesty from his closest partners and workers, in many of his business deals and just about everyone he ever dealt with except his wife Iris.

He felt he never was accepted in Cleveland’s inner circle and uses his rejected plans for a downtown arena, buying the Indians, a convention center, the Rock Hall and many more as evidence. In particular he was stung by his treatment by the board of Cleveland’s Jewish Federation. He tells of being silenced at a meeting when he didn’t want to increase his contribution and says “I kept quiet with tears in my eyes. It still hurts when I think about that moment.” He speaks of being ostracized by part of the community after that and the thread running throughout the book is that he never felt accepted or that he fit in.

On the surface you would have thought this guy had it made - tons of money, sports team ownership and so on. But you never really know what's inside someone's head I guess.

XP on a Mac?

In Tracy Kidder’s book called The Soul of the New Machine you can read how IBM, in its heyday, didn’t recognize what the market wanted. They owned the Big Iron world and pretty much ignored the minicomputer. This allowed DEC and Data General and others to change computing.

But IBM learned from this lesson. When they introduced their PC in 1981 they went with an industry standard architecture. This allowed for clone makers such as Compaq to spring up and for component manufacturers to get a piece of the pie. But this move also greatly expanded the pie so that everyone benefited. By using standard components and software, a consumer could shop around and find a variety of add-ons all at competing prices.

Apple didn’t get this. They claimed to produce the “computer for the rest of us” but by rigidly controlling not only the hardware but also the software, they doomed themselves to the 3% or so of the market they now hold.

Plus, “The rest of us” could not always afford Apple’s products because there were not alternatives and/or third party vendors producing goods for their stuff and hence the prices were always way above IBM clone prices.

Now after 30 years they might be catching on. With an Intel CPU inside and the ability to natively boot Windows XP, the Mac will finally be able to run the plethora of Windows software that is out there. Years ago there were always a few good apps – usually graphics apps – that only ran on a Mac. But in recent years, anything you can find on the Mac you can find many more choices (and usually less expensive choices!) in the Windows or open source world.

Is it too little too late? So far the voters in the Great Lakes Geek survey don’t really care that the Mac will be able to boot to XP. What do you think?

Wi-Fight

I hate reading articles like in the April 2006 CIO magazine. (Only available in print for a month). This one’s called “Wi-Fight” and it’s about the struggles that cities that want to provide a public wi-fi network face from the telcom and cable providers.

What I really hate is that Cleveland, with our huge early progress in turning on dark fiber, is not even mentioned in the article. I hate it even more that both Dayton and Akron are mentioned and shown on the Wi-Fi America map that accompanies the article.

Now do you think if Akron were to get some great wi-fi technology and they decided to share it with surrounding cities, including Cleveland, do you think they would leave “Akron” out of the name and call it something generic like “Community?”

No way.

Aretha and Feelings

No, don't worry. Aretha Franklin isn't going to sing Feelings.

I attended an interesting presentation Thursday evening at the JCU Dolan Center. The Harvard Business School Club of Cleveland and the John Carroll University Entrepreneur Association brought in Dr. Richard E. Boyatzis for a keynote address. Though based at Weatherhead at case, Boyatzis was described as being better known in Barcelona and London than her in Cleveland - another hidden gem of the city.

The keynote was titled Resonant Leadership: Inspiring the Best in Us. Boyatzis launched into an MP3 of Aretha singing Respect. Then he started clapping and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap. He even jumped up on a front table and clapped along. I love the Queen of Soul but I started looking for the nearest escape route. I’m not into those touchy-feely interactive sessions.

But he soon got down to business. This guy really knows the brain. He said that when we stimulate the limbic system of the brain (like with music or smell) we retain better. Without a limbic stimulus, we have only 40% retention after 3 days. So hum along while you read this.

He spoke about leaders and what makes a great leader (they are not born). He got into the sacrifice of being a leader - the stress it causes - and what that does to our bodies.

One big eye opener for me was the role of feelings. He said that people get convinced of something by emotional arguments and only then does it get reinforced by rational arguments. It takes 8ms for the neurons to travel from the feeling center as compared to 40ms from the rational part of the brain. So feelings don’t just color our thoughts, they determine them.

History is full of examples of evil people using this to gain followers. Of course, good leaders use it too.