There are two things that are a big deal about this race – the first is selfish, the finish line will be home plate in Fenway Park, and I’ve always wanted to run on the field. The second is more altruistic:

Funds raised for the Home Base Program will provide care and community outreach to the many veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with combat stress disorders and/or traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and their families.

If you are a runner, there are still open slots, but the field is limited to 3,500. You are also required to raise $1,000 (runners who can’t or don’t want to pay the balance if they don’t hit the mark).

To learn more about this event (and donate if you are looking for a chance to pitch in), check out John’s Run to Home Base page.

In the event that I hit the $1,000 goal and you’d still like to donate, I’m sure Adam would appreciate your help on his page. As usual, for anyone that donates, the next round of drinks are on me.

C.C. Chapman posted his 7 can chili recipe and I checked it out. It’s pretty far over on the 1970’s Mom scale, it reminds me of the shtick in “Undercover Brother” where everyone in the family has their own jar of mayo. Of course this is the trade off for complete convenience, it doesn’t get much easier than that recipe. Fortunately C.C. completely redeems himself with his 7th step – tweaking the mix with BBQ sauce, Beer and Tequila (actually in the chili, not doing shooters). Tweaking a chili recipe with liquor or other bizarre ingredients is a key attribute of chili aficionados. Pick up your latest issue of Chili Aficionado for more info.

And so you may be asking, “John, who gave you a chili pro sombrero and the right to critique anyone, let alone C.C. Chapman?”, or maybe you weren’t, but you sure are now. My Dad was on the Ski Patrol at the local ski area and every year for probably 15 years or so we would have a chili cookoff at our house to celebrate the end of the ski season.

While the adults all thought most of the chilis were great because they were so damn drunk, I was too young to enjoy a Natty Lite to wash it down so I actually tasted most of them. There were three key lessons I took away from those years:

1. It needs to be beefy. Exotic meats such as venison or buffalo are fine but if there’s no meat, it’s not for real.
2. Lots of chili that comes in a can like Dinty Moore (often used on hot dogs to create a “Coney Island”) actually taste fantastic but do all kinds of damage to your system that will remain unspoken.
3. Never have your dog around at a chili party because everyone will feed them little bits and nothing empties out a room faster than a gallon of dog puke filled with chili.

Years later I came upon two other important observations:

1. I used to think that it gave me indigestion until I went on a high protein diet and found out it was the bread/pasta/rice that it was served with that gives you the heartburn.
2. Tarantula Jack’s Chili Stand in downtown Seattle (long closed) had the greatest Chili on earth.

Jack’s won some kind of Million Dollar cookoff (ok, it was “only” $25,000) with the recipe and it’s been published, but I think he held something back. I’ve made it many times and it was great but just not as good as what he served at the store.

And so, to answer the question – Chili is important because it tastes so damn good here in the land of ice an snow. As my gift to you – Tarantula Jack’s Chili recipe:

This recipe is still up at the International Chili Society website where I first got it years ago, reprinted for you here (but go to the site for other killer recipes).

Tarantula Jacks Thundering Herd Buffalo Tail Chili

Ingredients:
3 lbs cubed beef
2 medium Walla Walla Sweet Onions (chopped fine)
3 large cloves garlic (finely minced)
2 10-oz cans of chicken broth
2 12-oz cans Hunts Tomato Sauce
7 tablespoons Gebhardt Chili Powder
2 tablespoons ground cumin
¼ teaspoon Tabasco Pepper Sauce
Instructions:
Saute beef in skillet. Put beef into your favorite chili pot and simmer with onions and garlic broth for one and a half hours. Keep your hands off and leave the lid on!

Add the Hunts Tomato Sauce, Gebhardt Chili Powder and the ground cumin. Stir.

Fifteen minutes before eatin time, take off the lid and enjoy the aroma of the greatest chili ever to slide into a melmac bowl! Add the Tabasco. Put the lid back on and simmer for another 15 minutes. Add salt to taste.

Its now ready top serve. Give out the Pepto Bismol samples to all small children and women who wish to eat your chili. Give your empty chili pot to the chili groupies and suggest they use new Dawn Detergent to clean it up. (Its the Official Grease Cutter of the International Chili Society) Comb your hair, straighten your hat and practice being modest before you receive applause OR the Championship Trophy if you are competing in a sanctioned ICS Cookoff. Serve with a cold Budweiser. This will serve 6-8 hungry Varmints.

At work we had a major product launch, that’s been eating up a ton of time, and just for fun let’s throw in the company kickoff and a bunch of powerpoint decks.

Marketing Over Coffee also had two big projects – for the past month I’ve been sitting on the secret of the next big interview – on Monday I finally dropped a half hour conversation with Seth Godin on his new book Linchpin.

A big chunk of Q4 last year was finishing an eBook an email marketing strategies. Right now the sponsor has exclusive rights to it but if you go over to Seth’s Squidoo page and vote up the Marketing Over Coffee interview and then tell me, I will see what I can do about getting you a copy.

Thanks for your help!

Chrome OS – Google’s OS, the fact that you would log into any computer and if it was connected to the web it would be “your” machine. This makes you think differently, one thing I love is that it would choke out viruses quickly.

Chrome Extensions - The one thing that kept me on Firefox was that Chrome didn’t have extensions (specifically my delicious tags). But now I’m thinking that if I install all the crap I have in firefox that suddenly chrome wouldn’t seem as blazingly fast anymore…

Sprint Premier – One of the most popular posts on this blog is Screw Your Customers where I bitched about strangers off the street getting better deals than loyal customers. Sprint Premier is great, if you are a heavy customer you get the new customer deals. You’d think everyone would do this, but they are the first people I’ve seen going the extra mile. Nice Job!

And with that I am back to paying bills and trying to get my tax stuff together… Have a good weekend!

Overall a pretty good year, 80% of goal in raw numbers, although they aren’t really relevant here. I don’t show all the details to maintain my own privacy, but here’s a deeper look:

Family: Our family has grown by one and I did get to spend time with my relatives in both Michigan and California, and that’s everything I really wanted to do. There’s always more I could do here, but there’s only so much vacation time to go around.

Financial Goals: In spite of the recession, it was a pretty good year. The goals of aggressive savings, and better management of the portfolio and insurance were met, hitting 100%

Professional: My 5th year at work was a big one, and M Show productions continues to run at break even, meaning that I’m paying for my gadgets and getting to go to a few conferences. Another goal where 75% completed of what I planned at the start of the year is a huge win given the state of the economy.

Personal: This was where I fell short, although I’m happy with 50%. I was hoping to shoot more video, I did have some 4th quarter heroics getting a chance to really play with iMovie this month, and GH hooked me up huge with the new HD Flip cam, so that’s pretty cool. I was hoping to have the house painted, but other maintenance took precedence. This is one of those things where it pays to adjust your goals if possible – I got a zero percent for house painting but if I had updated it at mid-year to “maintenance projects” I could take 100%. I’m in the same shape I was at the start of 2009, I finished Falmouth, but one of my worst times. Give my home situation I’m happy just to be getting enough sleep to function and not being sick. I will again shoot at Falmouth, but 2010 Goals will be coming soon!

I hope your 2009 goals were met and wish you the best in 2010.

Important Stuff

With some time to read I dug into a few things over the holidays:

Thinking with Type: An interesting book about design and fonts. I picked up a lot of interesting little things (such as the fact that the upper case letters were stored in the top case near the printing press, the “smaller” letters in the case below that – the lower case), but I didn’t walk away from it thinking that I would do a better job of laying out type. The book would be perfect if you were taking a course but like most design books I’ve read, they don’t make you a pro.

The Accidental Millionaire: If you know who Gary Fong is, then you should read this book. He’s had an interesting life and tells a good story, many of them funny. There are some weird grammatical things in it but I got the feeling that they were there to keep a conversational tone. If you are not into photography or the owner of a “Fong Dong” you should probably move along. I’ve been impressed with the great job he does teaching people about his products on his website, and you actually don’t feel ripped off buying a $2 piece of plastic from him for $50 because he tells a great story and the product does completely kick ass.

I also fired up the Apple TV to watch:

The Prisoner: A remake of a classic late 60’s early 70’s TV show. Amazing visuals, but like the Torchwood miniseries I recently watched, having to sit through 5 or 6 hours for a 20 minute payoff is not worth it. I would recommend watching the original and taking a pass on this one.

As a gift I got Spiderman: Web of Shadows for Xbox 360 – It’s pretty good but the graphics aren’t the best that the Xbox can do. I haven’t found a Marvel game that beats the Hulk game for the original Xbox, and Batman: Arkham Asylum is, hands down, the best I’ve played.

I’ve also started The Design of Everyday Things, and will report back on that.

Results so far for 2009 Goals:

3Q 2009 Results

Family keeps me grounded and so it rates first. It’s been a good year, the only problem is not being able to get out to California to see my nephew. Unfortunately there’s not enough vacation time to go around between my family in Michigan and the West Coast. On the plus side was Carin’s birthday trip to swim with the dolphins in Orlando.

Financial Goals will be hit this year thanks to aggressive saving all year long. I’ve also reviewed all investments and insurance. The only thing remaining is to hit the Charity Goal, and all that requires is checking how much we’ve given in December and writing checks to hit the goal. No real effort to hit that one.

My Personal goals were kind of lame this year. I’ve lost about 1/3 of the weight I wanted to so that one will not get hit this year, even though I did run Falmouth. I wanted to shoot more video, and I did a little bit, but I ended up getting wrapped up more with photography.

Professionally it’s been another great year at AccuRev, in a year where everyone in software fears the unemployment line, we’ve been hitting bonus targets. Marketing Over Coffee is having another strong year too.

Time to start thinking about what to work on in 2010…

I’m going to do Reverse NaBloPoMo and take the rest of the month off. If you’re looking for something to read while I’m gone, Clarence pointed me to Machine Man months ago and it is the coolest thing I have read in a long time. If the idea of augmenting human performance through machinery fascinates you, you have to check it out.

See you in December…

The most important news is that the day job has been on fire, bonus with a baby coming is a wonderful thing.

I got down to the Inbound Marketing Summit for part of a day, and 2 nights. I pulled a Forrest Gump and fell out of the sky on Wednesday to get dinner with the show team which was cool. I also got to hang out with Tim Street and that will show up on Marketing Over Coffee as soon as I can get to it.

A good week working with Matthew Ebel too. After a few months of work the major plumbing on his email system is up and we surveyed over 200 of his fans for feedback on his live shows. Some interesting there that will include testing some SMS stuff, very excited about that.

I’m also completing final edits on an eBook about email tactics, that should also end up on the best marketing podcast fairly soon.

Until then, I found this great video – Seth Godin talking about the behind the scenes strategy of his books. Buried in the last 5 minutes is why he doesn’t do email and sticks to blogging.

Right now I have the time honored New England tradition of moving the air conditioner to the basement. Have a good weekend!