As part of the sales/marketing lifestyle we’ve talked about travel before, I had a road warrior tip bail me out this week. I always keep a $20 stashed somewhere in my gear. I’m lucky enough know that the battery bay in my Palm Centro is large enough that I can keep one in there (and a bonus, it keeps the door from creaking like it used to before I put the buck in there).

This Friday we were running out the door so that the lovely Carin could make it to the early train and I forgot my wallet. Thanks to the phone trick I didn’t have to go without my morning iced coffee or have to bum money off anyone for lunch.

The same goes with the tradeshow booth, I keep a small bag filled with some random tools, you never know what you might need, or how you might be a hero to your neighbor in the booth next door.

The latest Marketing Over Coffee is up:

And, if you are a data junkie (as if there were any Marketers who weren’t?) MarketingSherpa has their latest online advertising report out:

So I ordered two Cable Cards over a week ago so I can set up the HD Tivo which arrived today. Instead of two cable cards I got 2 cable set-top boxes. We’ll see how long this takes to fix….

Lots of boring work this week, nothing exciting to report. The Microsoft/Yahoo deal dying is of no interest to me. There is a new M Show though -

And you can check out an hour of me talking about things like direct marketing over on the BeanCast.

The HD DVD Player has been pulled from the Studio N Media Center. I would have kept it in there because there are some great deals on HD DVDs with their limited lifespan, but there’s something screwy with ours that’s connected to the Xbox 360. I can put the discs in and play them but the eject button doesn’t work so I have to use a paperclip in the manual override. That and the fact that I can download HD content makes this drive prime for the recycle bin.

If you are interested in a lot of 5 HD DVDs, click here.

The past two weeks have been much crazier than usual. The good news is that the weekend is not out of control, the bad news is that I’m not really up for writing about hardcore marketing stuff on the weekend. Here’s some interesting points from the last week.

TIVO is Returning to Studio N! I have thrown in the towel on the Verizon FIOS DVD, which cannot manage a season pass and has failed to record anything properly. For 4 years of discussion on why it sucks you check out this thead. For the lovely Carin’s birthday I took advantage of a Mother’s Day package of an HD Tivo, lifetime subscription and Wireless adapter, all for $700.

Netflix is leaving Studio N! Between Apple TV, XBox 360, and now Amazon Unbox when the Tivo shows up, we have enough on demand HD options that there’s no need for us to get regular DVDs in the mail. The last saving grace had been HD DVDs from netflix for the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive which will be out in the recycle bin this weekend after a funeral ceremony.

Banking Woes Continue! Buying the Tivo was tagged as a suspicious transaction by my credit card company who shall remain nameless. Let it suffice to say they are a big City Bank. Just like the Western Union frigtard festival last week, I got to play the “Who Wants Their Account Back Open” Game Show. At least for this one I think I had 3 tries to verify transactions and managed to peg enough of them. My personal favorite was “Identify the charge 2 weeks ago for $3.05 for computer software. The answer they wanted was MP3 downloads from Amazon. These douchebags are killing me. As I said to LM “Like a terrorist or identity thief really wants a wicker patio table that’s backordered on Target.com for 2 months”.

Red Sox start paying me not to go to Fenway. Normally I go to one game a year, for some crazy reason I’ve actually been to 3 already. The new Sox stat to watch is GWJIA - “Games with John in attendance”, which is 0-3.

Many readers have sent in comments in regards to the slowdown here and on The M Show for the new secret project. Thanks for all the kind words, the good news is that the project involves expanding the Marketing Over Coffee project beyond just the podcast and I know it will generate a lot of great content for everything else I do, so fear naught, much cool stuff ahead!

I forgot to add this week’s Marketing Over Coffee over here…

I’ve started a new project and as a result I can see that this blog will suffer. Hopefully you’ve been entertained thus far, and the good news is the next project has much more structure and won’t just be the ramblings off the top of my head.

As the quarter kicks off we’ve covered the new messaging and it’s time for me to execute. The same goes for Marketing Over Coffee, the program continues to accelerate, but the bad news is that means there’s more work to be done to lift it to the next level. Suffering through all of it is The M Show, it’s been more than 2 weeks since the last show, and there may be something else coming out this week, but the return on that investment is getting smaller all the time compared to the value that MOC is generating.

So, it’s time to put my head down and fade away for a while. Don’t worry, when I’m back there’ll be plenty of interesting stuff to talk about.

The WU alternative has been found and the Secret Project is back underway. Have a good weekend and enjoy the warmer weather. Next week is the Sales Kickoff, but this quarter it’s only one day and I’m not able to make the dinner out so it may actually be a quarter start without a lot of insanity!

I have been reminded to control my temper better while posting. I’m considering that suggestion and apologizing for nothing.

Western Union sucks.

I’m trying to send $150. Western Union needs more information than it took me to get a mortgage. Not only do I have to enter every peice of information that I needed to get my mortgage, I also had to take a multiple choice exam about the financing, make and model of some car I bought 12 years ago.

If your business relies on people like me remembering if a piece of shit Saab that I owned more than 10 years ago for less than a year is colored Champagne or Light Bronze you’ve earned the business you’re not getting. I’m just trying to get some stuff done here, thanks for not helping.