1. Aside from some podcast editing I was able to get by with only my iPad for the entire trip. It does everything I needed, and it was great to spend the half hour in a line of cars trying to get through customs watching Ricky Gervais in Extras.
2. The iPad is fantastic for managing photos. I was able to plug in 3 different digital cameras, review photos and delete the ones I didn’t want. What was normally at least an hour going through photos after a trip was eliminated, and everybody got to see photos real time.
3. I was issued a new Dell at work today, it was sort of stuck between off and on, the keyboard and power button were lit, but I couldn’t get it to wake up without doing a 10-second hold of the power button. It’s disappointing when the first experience with a tool is “Geez, is something wrong with this thing?”
4. While getting to the podcast backlog this morning during my commute, I picked an episode of Manager Tools randomly out of the pile, and was surprised to be mentioned in the show. That was very cool, I’ve never heard these guys give out a plug and they have an blue chip brand that is doing very well.
5. Bill Green mentions Update: I had this all wrong, the term ”Auto-Downloading” for podcasts was created by Bob Knorpp, host of the BeanCast. This is the most profound thing ever said about podcasting in its history. The fact that it took 5 years for someone to connect the dots and come up with this shows why marketing is so difficult, and by extension, why Bill Bob could be the best marketing guy on the planet.
   Addendum: So I wasn’t clear on this – It’s nothing big, but hugely profound. Bob has shown his ability as a gold standard copy writer when he coined “Auto-Download”. For five years podcasters have been saying “Subscribe to Podcasts” which has no intuitive meaning. “Sign up for Auto-Download” is intuitive (Zyman refers to this as “Cup of Soup” Marketing, a triumph of usability where the name tells you everything you need to know).
6. Travelling with a baby is not really a vacation.

Ok, I still have a lot of stuff to clean up, I hope you’ve had a shot at a summer vacation this year. I’m going to be running the Falmouth Road Race this weekend, please DM me if you are doing the race.

1. My first memory is Look Park in Northampton. Not much of a lesson, but it was the day I was “switched on”.
2. Read – My parents got me into reading. At the local library, the Berkshire Athenaeum, I had a game card that would be stamped once for each book I read. Two important lessons – reading is an efficient way to acquire knowledge, learning from other’s successes and failures, and people will do just about anything in return for worthless crap like stamps if you set up the rewards system properly.
3. You will have to live with contradictions – Spending money on the tools of war will generate a peace dividend. My Dad’s work for the military paid for my college education. You can like the Yankees and the Red Sox.
4. 4^th of July is the best holiday – you don’t have to buy people crap they don’t need, the weather and barbecues are usually good, and if you are daring you can blow shit up.
5. Go UMass – If you put a bunch of working class people together they will drink a lot, have fun, and maybe learn some stuff.
6. Read things that inspire you. I still read Superman to remind me that heroes never give a second thought to helping others or standing up for what’s right.
7. Debt is risk taking and is ok. I learned that from selling drugs (on a computer game).
8. It’s all about how you choose to respond and how you communicate. Read The 7 Habits – you have the power to choose.
9. Photography – Take pictures, get closer than you think, take hundreds and only show your best work, use the rule of thirds
10. Hobbies are a stupid waste of time and money, except for mine and yours. I don’t care if my car is crappy but god forbid my Hard Drive isn’t an SSD. This is where tribes come from.
11. I care a lot about computers, they are my craftsman’s tools (back to the 7 habits – keep your saw sharp). Tiny increases in productivity make a huge difference over time.
12. Karma does earn interest – doing good may not pay off right away, but it pays back big over time.
13. If heaven doesn’t look like Tanglewood I’ll ask to be sent somewhere else.
14. Golf with my family has brought me many memories. My Uncle gave me my first clubs two weeks before he died. My Mom used to joke that on the course was the first time she heard me say “Fuck!” and really mean it. Before she passed away we had a great laugh when my brother drove  his cart over his bag.
15. Going to see James Taylor at Tanglewood is to understand the Berkshires in one night.
16. Remember that everyone dies and your time here is limited. Don’t waste even a day.
17. Laugh once every day, humor is everywhere, take advantage of it.
18. You can predict the future if you work to create it.
19. Normal people aren’t very interesting.
20. People hire the people they want to work with, not the ones that are best for the job.
21. You have to balance saving for tomorrow versus having a good time today.
22. Audio is my favorite medium, music is a gift in my life.
23. Worry has no value at all.
24. Character is only revealed when things get really bad.
25. Nothing is worth more to the sick than compassion.
26. “If you are going through Hell, keep going” – Winston Churchill
27. Jazz is music for musicians
28. The Boston Marathon is the only World Championship open to the common man, but the Falmouth Road Race is more fun.
29. No one will ever love you more than your Mom, No one will do a better job of teaching you responsibility or duty than your Dad
30. No one can make me laugh as easily as my brother.
31. Spend all the time you can with your Grandparents
32. Our annual family celebration is important because, contrary to what Aunt Bonnie may say, I am the best Scrabble player in the family, I just don’t brag about it because it’s at her house on Torch Lake.
33. Faith – If I try to be a good member of my community and leave the world better than I found it, everything else will takes care of itself.
34. Getting married was the best decision of my life. Having a big wedding? Let’s just say I’m taking “’til death do us part” seriously because I don’t want to go through another wedding.
35. Sometimes men have to go back to their cave, they don’t talk things over.
36. Women just want to talk things over, they don’t want you to go fix them.
37. Read “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”, it explains a lot.
38. I waited my whole life for Carin.
39. Like most things, having children is hard work, and that’s why it’s so satisfying.
40. Look out for each other and never give up – W.S.

The idea is that 365 authors do a short diary entry about their day. If you want to read about my day yesterday, or get a look at some of the 150 or so others, check out the 3six5′s posterous: June 24, 2010 John Wall.

If you’ve come here from The3six5, welcome aboard! You can see links to the popular stuff on the left column, and please check out Marketing Over Coffee if you are interested in audio programs at all.

Also, thanks to everyone that supported my fund-raising efforts for the Run to Home Base. You can check out photos from Fenway here.

For a huge change of pace I am not hitting you up for money. Thanks to the listeners of Marketing Over Coffee (and my family – thanks John and Helen), I’ve hit the goal so that I don’t have to pay any more than the entry fee out of my own pocket. But as a valued reader of this blog, you can still help out, and help someone you know.

During the race volunteers will be making care packages for service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are saying they will have far more care packages than recipient names. They’ll probably all be sent regardless, but, if you know anyone serving there send me their information and they will be sent one of these care packages. It would be best if I get the info before Tuesday, you can email me at john at them$how dot c0m ($=s), or friend me up on twitter @johnjwall and DM me.

I’ll also have to post some pics of the official Marketing Over Coffee race shirt…

Click here to view the embedded video.

For some reason it’s always the product marketing guys that get me into new audio equipment. This time Bruce was showing me his iPod set up. For less than $30 you can get a converter that plugs into your iPod port that will give you something closer to a true Line Out. Hardcore audio people that use big expensive headphones are often disappointed at their portable player’s ability to really drive the headphones. By using a line out there are two benefits – being able to use a better quality amplifier than the one in the iPod (a “cleaner” sound, usually more bass that is tight, clearer highs and you can go louder overall), and some believe that bypassing the internal amplifier reduces some noise and gives you better battery life. I cannot attest to those, but I can say that while testing Bruce’s rig the sound is better.

So, for less than $50 you get the line out dock (or LOD as they call it on the audiophile boards), and a portable amp that  is only slightly larger than the iPod Nano that had the round control on the front. It should be noted that headphone.com makes a killer portable amp which can be a huge upgrade if you are running a PC laptop, but it is a lot larger than the FiiO and takes 4 batteries. I went for the cheaper, more portable amp.

I’ll post some pictures when the full geek gear shows up.

I also picked up some bluetooth headphones and a BT adapter so I can use it on any audio device, but the weather has been great so I probably won’t get around to those until the bad weather comes back and I’m in the gym.

I had to wait before entering the driveway at the Microsoft NERD center because a guy in a black cop car was going the wrong way out the entrance. As I pulled in around some other cars I noticed the Governor entering the building. Of course I don’t have my good camera, and am just barely dressed well enough just to show up. The good news is that after I’ve finished the book I’ll be setting up a time to talk with Jeffery Bussgang for a Marketing Over Coffee session.

Aside from that it’s been a challenging week, my sister-in-law’s mother passed away yesterday, and my father-in-law was in the hospital yesterday also so there’s been a lot of running around. Hopefully it will be a restful weekend before The Last M Show on Monday.

Sorry for burdening you with my personal tales, to make it up to you here’s a good interview with author Daniel Pink from crack team at the Spark Podcast. Mr. Pink (so psyched I could squeeze that in) has a new book talking about how motivation works. You can watch the video here: Interview with Daniel Pink, or get the audio by subscribing to the John Wall Gigadial station.

Thousands of runners line up in Hopkinton and run 26.2 miles to Boston. I ran in 2002 as part of a team that raised funds for the Franciscan Hospital for Children. The hospital runs a school and daycare program for children that require more medical attention than most places can provide and I was able to tour the facility. The photo below from the tour made the Annual Report for the Hospital that year.

The race is an amazing experience, I was lucky just to have finished before the course closed. It took me five and a half hours, plus another 15 minutes to reach the starting line because of the crowd.

While I was in training a friend of mine said “I say the same thing about the Marathon that I do about the Pan Mass Challenge – running the marathon does not impress me, training for the marathon really impresses me.” The wisdom in this statement is profound. In many ways the marathon is a celebration, spectators line the entire course, and the only time I’ve every caused a roar in the crowd was picking up the pace at mile 24 where the throngs of partying college kids hang out. It’s a good day to run.

The challenge is waking up three months earlier at 5am to run through 10 miles of ice in the dark. Worrying about, or having to deal with pain or injuries that you’ve never faced at lower mileage. This was where running for the hospital team helped me. Putting in the miles was often painful, but when I thought about the kids facing physical challenges greater than any I have ever dealt with, just to get to school, there was nothing else to do but stop whining and lace up my shoes.

We just heard the fighter pilots do the fly by, it’s time to walk over to see the race!

btw – My fundraising for the Run to Home Base has almost hit the $1,000 minimum goal (thanks to those who have helped, check out the link for more info).

The supermarket is an interesting indicator of the economy, and a demonstration of how a market can evolve. When I was a kid we went to the grocery store. There was one of them and that was it. Worse yet, to make me sound like a frigging fossil, there actually used to be a lunch counter in the store where my mom would get me a grilled cheese and a chocolate shake.

Drive back to the future and suddenly there’s all kind of things going on with food purchasing. I go to the farmer’s market in the center of town on the weekend and shop at the Bacon Street Farm. It’s not as much the tree hugging “grown local”, it’s more of social/economic reality – I believe that if I can keep the local stores in business the odds of my house getting robbed by unemployed neighbors goes down.

I also make a trip to the expensive grocery chain with the organic stuff because I picked up an expensive addiction to fresh squeezed orange juice back when I lived in Florida (a place called The Greenhouse, which may be gone). I also buy mint water, which has allowed me to give up diet soda completely. I never buy protein there because the prices are insane (shout out to Tara, who mentioned the struggle of shopping on Paleo that got me thinking about my hunting and gathering).

We get a lot of the commodities at the local Stop & Shop just because it’s a short drive (and now next to the new 5 Guys burgers…). The crazy thing here is how they have gone over the top for productivity. I walk in with some reusable bags and scan my card at a machine that gives me a price gun. I then cruise around with the cart and scan the stuff myself and put it in the bags. If I have to go to the deli counter I enter my order via touch screen and the the price gun goes off when my order is ready (or they can text me if I don’t have the price gun).

After I have picked up everything on my list (the incredible J-Shopper for Palm), I go to the self-checkout, return the gun, scan my card and my whole order comes up. I check out as fast as I can swipe my credit card and sign, none of the goods already in the bags get touched. If it’s a busy night at 5 guys I can place my order, buy all my groceries and get back before my burgers and fries are up.

The only advice I can give is common sense that nobody follows – never go between 10am-5pm on the weekends. Another lesser known one – stay away from mid-day during the week because that’s when a lot of senior citizens go and they tend to both move slow and block the whole aisle. Please take my word for the fact that throwing an elbow at a cranky senior WILL get you kicked out of the Stop n’ Shop in Framingham.