The Buzz Over Kerry's Remark

Okay, I think the guy got a raw deal in the last election over his military service. How you can spin a man's willingness to go into harm's way at the direction of the military leadership into a character flaw is simply beyond me and I never went out on that limb. But, to equate military service in Iraq with lack of education is equally stupid. I'm not certain what he was trying to say, but I can tell you that after reading his remarks the message certainly comes across the way the Republicans are communicating it and he can't blame the White House for his comments. They didn't make them. He did and what he said is absolutely unacceptable to the entire country. Blame Bush for our troubles in Iraq if you will.........blame Cheney and the DoD as well, but don't deny the brave men and women serving in Iraq the same respect that those of us who served in Vietnam deserved.

Nice Chat

Just under 10 minutes left and the Cowboys are down by 1 point. Tony Romo is doing an okay job for his first NFL start........can you imagine the pressure on that kid? I don't care if they are making 3 million or 33 million, it is still a tough way to make a living. Profitable, but emotionally draining

I went into the office today after Mass and our traditional family brunch at the Landmark Diner. Ellie had chicken fingers once again, and once again we boxed them and took them home for her late afternoon snack.

I heard a phone ringing in the sales department and walked over to pick it up.......a very nice gentlemen who absolutely did not have a technology gene in his body, but needed some help......Flash: Cowboys up after they recover a kickoff fumble and take it in on the first play from scrimmage and then go for the two point conversion and make it.....oh, my Lord, there is hope for anything if the Cowboys can do that this season.......okay, where was I? Oh yea, so I answered the phone and had this delightful chat with a gentlemen in Texas about Microsoft Windows 2000. He had been given a computer and a package of goodies, but the software disk was not included and while he had a product key he did not have the disk to load it. I could not help him beyond offering some advice, but he was a nice chap and we had a good chat. Sometimes, you just got to be nice to people and believe me when I say it never hurts!

Busy Saturday

Joe started the journey to "purple" this morning. He had his private lesson at 09:30 sharp and the interesting thing about it was that he actually yelled at me from the front door at 09:00 to say that he would be waiting in the car. Two months ago I used to drag him out of the house and make him attend his Saturday sparring session......but then six weeks ago we started the private lessons and his confidence factor just went off the scale. If only Dad had figured that out a year ago, we could have avoided so much conflict. Now he's a Green Belt sitting in the car waiting for Dad to "hurry up and get him to class".

So the burning question this evening is, "how can I get our customers in the car waiting for me to hurry up and do something for them?" More importantly, how can I get our customers to communicate? I send them emails and about a quarter bounce because of bad addresses, a quarter delete with opening. Have we gotten so pathetic that they just don't want to know anymore? Sorry if that sounds paranoid, but we have the big boys coming in from London tomorrow and Monday and Tuesday don't look promising. Lots of questions ahead and I just don't have all the answers......okay, probably too much truth on a Saturday evening, but what the hell, a little truth never really hurt, did it?

Seth says to be remarkable. Yea, really simple. Just create this huge Purple Cow, do permission marketing, astound everyone and get to bed by nine! I need a glass of wine!

Proud New Green Belt

Mom has the best pictures on her camera, but this is one I managed to snap. He is posing with one of the black belt instructors at the school. He worked so hard for this promotion and we are really proud of him. Of course the journey continues because we now start the slow march towards his purple belt, which is the lowest rung on the ladder of the advanced belts and not easily won. His target is to do it in less than a year and with the right amount of practice and focus he can probably accomplish that goal. His big brother called last night to congratulate him. Patrick has been studying Brazilian Karate for a couple of years now and competes in tournaments on a regular basis and he has both of my grandchildren taking lessons as well. At least I know I will be well defended in my old age!

Yes! Green Belt...Pics Tomorrow

Hey Everyone,

Joe tested for his Green Belt this evening and he passed. Yep, that's right, I'm the Dad of a Green Belt! I'll post some pictures tomorrow, but wanted to let everyone know that he got through what we always knew would be a tough exam. I'm so proud of that boy that I could shout. He is an amazing kid and when I watched him doing those incredibly complicated Kata's, I was absolutely stunned. When and where did he learn to do all of those moves? Now, if only we get through long division by Christmas life would be so easy.

Someone called me today to suggest that I might want to tone down the political side of my comments and focus more on business. Well, I've given it some thought and I really appreciate the call, but I think that this country was built upon political dialogue and I plan to say what I think when I think it and hopefully my remarks will spark some political debate. I'm a Conservative, but not necessarily a Republican as the Party is defined today. However, I would never assume that I'm anywhere close to being converted to the dark side.......being a critic of the Party does not make me a turncoat. Change has to happen inside of the Party and we need to start with a new Leader.......nominations please.

Worth Remembering

"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" President Ronald Regan, Inaugural Address, 1981

Worth remembering folks and from one of the greatest conservative leaders of my generation.

What we "know"!

I'm reading an interesting book entitled "The Wealth of Networks", How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, by Yochai Benkler, a professor of law at Yale Law School. It's a bit of a hard read, which is understandable given this guy teaches law at Yale, but it also quite interesting and very relevant to what I do for a living. I'd like to share a quote from the book with you....."Overcoming what we intuitively 'know' requires disciplined analysis". What an absolutely remarkable thing to say and what a remarkable thing to think about.......Intuition is the power or faculty of knowing things without conscious reasoning; and to know is, to have understanding or direct cognition of, to be aware of the truth of, to have a practical understanding of. How many of the things that we "intuitively know" are we willing to question? How many of those things should we willing to question?

"The Conservative Soul" caused me to question a number of things that I thought I knew, but I'm not certain I knew them intuitively (well, maybe except for the fact that George Jr. is two beers light of a six pack.....I think I intuitively knew that awhile ago).

Most of us are taught some form of religious belief and at some point we either believe or we don't and often intuition plays a big role in the assumption of belief because it's hard to prove one way or the other. I think faith is somewhat intuitive after a certain point although it takes conscious reasoning to reach that point. My intuition also tells me that the folks living at the hard right edges of their faith are wrong and that destruction and death don't assure us happiness in heaven, or in whatever afterlife exists according to the faith.

I suspect the same level of thinking can and should be applied to our business intuitions. The pace of change that is created by a networked economy means that much of what we learned in the beginning of our careers no longer applies. You have to open yourself up to new possibilities and discard the old way of doing things. You have to question what you intuitively 'know" because intuition is now longer a basis for managing a business or a career.

Deep thinking on a Wednesday evening. By the way another reminder of Newport, New Hampshire. You should all go there and spend a weekend at the Backside Inn!

What Does It Mean To Be A Conservative?

Ever since I landed in Atlanta after working overseas for nearly twenty years I have been struggling to find my place in American politics. I've always been a conservative, which is both a bit odd and quite natural I think. Odd because my Dad was a Democrat and mostly liberal. Quite natural because I attended a Catholic school through the first eight years and the Franciscan Nuns who taught me were mostly conservative by my definition of conservatism. Still, when I got to Atlanta I started supporting the Republican Party and attended some fundraisers, contributed some cash and talked up the Party. But there has always been a sense of discomfort with the Party and it wasn't until just recently that I got a grip on that discomfort, which is essentially the religious element sometimes defined as the fundamentalists element. Part of my discovery came from a book I recently read called "The Conservative Soul" by Andrew Sullivan. Andrew is said to be a bit controversial, but that has been said about a lot of Brit's and quite frankly I didn't find anything radically revealing from a personal perspective. It just helped me focus my thinking about my politics and I realized that I am indeed a conservative and I'm uncomfortable with the Republican Party because it or they no longer represent the soul of the conservative movement. I'd highly recommend the book and then you can go visit Andrew's blog at www.andrewsullivan.com. I can tell you though that it hasn't moved me to the left.........it has just made me recognize that I need to do more as a conservative to influence the thinking of the Party and to get more involved in order to achieve that goal.

Atlanta Traffic

Do you know how to tell if a driver is from Atlanta? Well, the first thing to look for is a mobile phone in one hand up against the ear and the second is they don't indicate before they make turns....and oh yea, they drive like a bat out of hell even on the quiet residential streets. We live on one of those quiet residential streets and it is so dangerous that I have to walk Ellie across the street whenever she wants to ride her bike to her friends house. It's a small street, but there is a densely populated community at the top of the street and they come down the hill without any regard for kids, dogs, or runners. Yesterday we were driving back from Church and a middle-aged man in a Porsche with a relatively younger women sitting in the passenger seat decided that although I was doing the speed limit of 30 miles per hour, it was far too slow for him. So he crossed over the double yellow lines and proceeded to pass me, narrowly missing an oncoming car in the process. Now we all know the difference between a Porsche and a porcupine......right? Okay, enough said! My point is that perhaps we all need to slow down and not just on the highways. We work inordinate hours each day and arrive home too tired to communicate with our children. We find ourselves so tired on the weekends that all we want to do is sleep, but can't because we have so many commitments that rest is put aside for another time. Where does it all end?

It's Tough Being 10

Joe's day started with me urging him to get ready for his early morning Karate lesson while his Mom was urging his sister to get ready to leave for her ballet class. We stopped at Starbucks for a coffee and a kid's drink and hit the dojo for 30 minutes of private instruction. Afterwards, we did breakfast at our favorite diner (that's the Landmark Diner in Buckhead), where we are loved and well cared for because we have breakfast there just about every Saturday morning. We then rushed to HairCutters and barely got back to the dojo in time for his 12:15 sparring class.....that's right, full contact and toe to toe. About 35 minutes into the class the instructor changes up the order and suddenly he is facing a purple belt (Joe is two belts behind) and she has hands like Ali! They're about 2 minutes into a 3 minute bout when she gets inside and unleashes a flurry of punches to his face, which clearly hurt and backs him off. She continues to exploit the advantage and the next 30 seconds are pretty hard on Joe. He sits down after the match and I can tell he is hurt and needs to get out of there, but I stay back and wait to see how he manages the situation. To his credit, he waits until he is ready to go again, but realizing that he still can't see for the tears, he excuses himself and retreats to the locker room where we start the ice compress. For the first time in two years he chose not to return to the class and we left to meet Mom and Ellie at Barnes & Noble. Another coffee, some books and then back to the house where we started working on his October book report, which has some elements due on Monday morning. Joe is nearly a straight A student, but it takes a lot of encouragement, direction and support. Anyway, I think about about being ten years old and I think about Joe's life at ten and because I think that I had more fun and less stress it makes me wonder if we are really giving our kids the opportunity to be kids? When I was ten we spent hours in the woods playing Army, Cowboys and Indians, etc. and our kids spend hours rushing to various outside programs, playing on their computers, the XBox, listening to music on their ipods and talking to their friends on their cell phones. Sometimes it is difficult to remember that at the end of the day, they are just kids. Have we reached the point where we want so much for our kids that we have forgotten how to let them be kids? Or am I just another parent watching his kids grow up in an era that he cannot truly recognize and wishing for something that doesn't make sense; i.e.: the simpler life that I enjoyed in 1960? I believe we all need to take a step back and pause......kids dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, nuclear tests in Korea, China building a huge equity in America by financing our debt......maybe it isn't so far from 1960 after all!

Priorities

So how do you establish your priorities? Do you plan a quarter in advance and then adjust accordingly, or do you allow the day to drive your focus? It is often hard to separate the urgent from the important and even more difficult to focus on what's important because urgent usually equates to crisis, which means that you did not pay attention to the important and got yourself into a jam. Every business consultant in the world talks about focus, and in a business where there are over 15,000 players in the United States alone, which is where I find myself, you have to be focused. But it is really hard because those urgent matters divert your focus and suddenly the day is lost, which is what seems to have happened to me everyday this week! Oh well. By the way, just finished reading Jeffrey Gitomer's "Little Black Book of Connections". Once again Jeffrey has created a practical guide to a very complicated subject; i.e.: networking........what it is and more importantly what it isn't......I do lots of networking and I try everyday to add to my relationship equity by being focused on giving value before I receive it. How about you? Okay, a complicated question that needs some thought before answering........but while you are thinking about it, ask yourself if you really think about accomplishing specific objectives before you attend a networking function. Do you preview the list of attendees? A night of exchanging business cards is not networking.....an evening of fierce conversations is not networking.......figuring out how to provide value to another person is networking.........serving your community is networking.........helping out at school is networking.......my Mom, who is 88 years old always told me that good things come back to you. It's advice you can take to the bank!

Much To Learn

I was reading an article by Jim Rapoza in eWeekLabs yesterday (Vol 23 published 9 October) entitled "How to Spot Fake Blogs". Boy, do I have a lot to learn! Integrated feeds based on RSS and Atom, trackbacks, a ping feature that is different from the standard TCP/IP type of ping, which enables a blog to notify aggregators and other web sites whenever new content is added, blogroll features and administration, security, and anti-spam features...........good thing I know some very talented e-marketing folks here in Atlanta because there is no way I'm going to figure out all of these things on my own. So how does the average Joe (or Patrick) go about creating a blog that has all of these items recommended by Jim. Is there a blog provider that automatically downloads these items when you sign on to their service? I wonder. Guess I'll just have to do some investigation and get back to you with my findings later. Meanwhile, it's a rainy day in Georgia, but the Hawks beat Miami over the weekend and I was at the game with Joe. Every Dad should take his son to a basketball game. You get to eat incredibly expensive hot dogs, yell your head off and have a barrel of fun.

Kate's Morning

I normally enjoy an early start on Monday's as it gives me an opportunity to have some quiet time to think about the week and what I'd like to accomplish. Kate always adds a few reminders as she exits before me to head to the gym. I only wish I could be as organized as Kate. She gets up before all of us, has her shower and is dressed and preparing breakfast before either Joe or Ellie make an appearance. She gets them through breakfast, ensures they have all of their school books, homework, etc., packed and ready to go, gets the dog and then walks them to school. She then returns home, has a chat with me about the day ensuring she reminds me of any family commitments I've forgotten and then heads to the gym for 90 minutes of keeping fit. Meanwhile, I drag myself out of bed, do the shower and shave thing, have a cup of coffee and head out the door. My days are often long as I usually hit the office around 8 a.m. and leave between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. I try to grab a sandwich at lunch, which I eat at my desk and almost never get home in time for dinner. So what is it about women that allows them to manage sixteen different things simultaneously while we poor guys have difficulty managing two things at the same time? I know some folks believe in that Venus and Mars theory, but I'm not buying it. There is something else going on that we (meaning us guys) haven't figured out. Maybe it is an extra gene that no one has discovered as yet! Whatever it is I want some of it because as I sit here this morning and think about all the things that need to get done this week I know in my heart that it is going to be a stretch. Balancing work and family seems to be a struggle for me and yet Kate teaches at the Atlanta Ballet and for a private studio, helps out at school a few times a week, and manages our household with almost always a smile on her face and a bounce in her step. What would we do without the women who love us?

Focus

Yesterday I attended the TechLinks "Let's Do Business" reception at the Ashford Club and had an opportunity to hear a few words from Rob Webb, the CIO of Equifax. A very interesting chap who hails from Canada and has lived around the world including Hong Kong, Japan and the UK. I then rushed back to Buckhead to join a small dinner that had been arranged for Matthew Szulik, the Chairman of Red Hat. A busy night and an early start this morning with the Excalibur Awards, an annual event of the Technology Association of Georgia and one that our firm sponsored. Matthew was the keynote speaker and I very much enjoyed his remarks. I was especially taken by a quote that he attributed to Tom Friedman (The World Is Flat)........"If it can be done, it will be done. The question is, will you do it or will it be done to you?" I'm a big fan of Tom's having read everything that he has ever written including many of the articles and blogs his views have generated. Of course Tom lived in Lebanon during some fairly tough years and has never been shy about expressing his opinions, which is one of many reasons I admire him. I had forgotten this quote and have to admit it really got me thinking.

Anyway, back to Matthew: super speaker and true entrepreneur. His comments were well received by the audience; and he only slammed Microsoft once, although it was done to perfection. Open Source fan or not, you have to admit that it has been one of the most disruptive technologies in the past decade. Without you would be paying Microsoft significantly more for software, emerging growth companies might never have taken off, and global collaboration would not be anywhere near today's levels. We all owe Matthew a big thank-you for making change so positive for all of us.

Patience Once Again

I read a lot about the Health Care Industry in this country and I view it much the same as I do the Airlines; i.e.: they both need a good deal of improvement. I went to see an orthopedic surgeon this afternoon to discuss my torn rotators cuff and figure out what my options are for repairing it. Unfortunately, I never got to see the guy because I walked out of his office after waiting 45 minutes and realizing that there were folks ahead of me who had been waiting well over an hour. The front desk seem truly shocked when I told them that my time is as important as the Doctor's time and I simply was not going to wait while he caught up with the backlog of patients in his office. So I took back my $20 co-pay, which they had collected in advance quite efficiently, and one of his cards and said I'd call for another appointment. But I won't because I went back to my family Doctor and told him to find me another surgeon. Maybe it's just me, but I think the front desk says a lot about the medical practice. When they are efficient in getting your health insurance details and your co-pay and ignore you afterwards it suggests to me that the physicians are leading by example and I just don't want folks like that treating me.

Maybe it the same in business. Are we efficient in collecting our invoices and ignoring our customers the rest of the month? I hope not, but I am certainly going to find out!

300 Million

What does 300 million residents mean for America? Well, for Newport, New Hampshire it probably doesn't mean a whole lot. This past weekend we walked around this lovely small town and talked with lots of folks.....you can't help but talk to folks there because they are so friendly and they want to know about you and what brings you to Newport.....they all knew about the wedding and most of them knew the bride and groom. Kate and I watched the homecoming parade and it took me back more years than I care to remember to a small town in North Carolina that also loved football and had homecoming parades every year. It is reassuring to know that in this country where we will soon have 300,000,000 residents that there is still a place where people matter more than technology and where a young woman from Texas found love and happiness. Congratulations to Fran and Brian. I hope that they never lose the values that their parents and the good folks in Newport have taught them and the remarkable love they have for God and His blessings.

The Weekend

Delta must have read my post on Friday because the later flight did not go wheels up until nearly two hours past the scheduled departure time, which means that we did not get out Boston Logan until nearly 8:00 p.m. with a two plus hour drive to Newport, NH facing us. I think they were especially testing to see just how patient I could be when they got my wife's name wrong on the ticket. Ever try to go through security with a ticket and an id that don't match? Not particularly an enjoyable situation and then we got to stand in a queue after security to get things sorted, which they eventually did after about 25 minutes. So, you might think that it was a tough evening overall. Well, you'd be wrong because it actually turned out to be a delightful evening. You want to know what really made the trip fun? It was Enterprise Car Rental and the absolutely cheerful, helpful, smiling folks that inhabited their offices just outside of Logan airport. The driver helped us with our bags and the staff immediately handed us bottles of cold water. They were warm and friendly folks and without much effort of all they managed to rent us a GPS and an upgrade to a Mercedes. That car made the trip to Newport effortless because it was such a joy to drive. They transformed our otherwise disappointing experience into a fun journey and all it took was just that little extra effort to make us feel like they valued our business. They weren't faking it either. In fact, if I didn't know better I'd say that they were coached by Seth Godin personally because they did everything that Seth recommends. In other words, they were authentic!

Patience

We were all up at the crack of dawn rushing about to get everything that we should have done earlier this week finished this morning so Katie and I could make a late morning flight to Boston. You all know the drill; finish packing, strip the beds and get the sheets into the washer, make sure the guest room is ready for our friend who is staying with the kids this weekend, get the kids up and ready for school, breakfast, take the kids to school, and get to the airport. Everything was about where I'd expect; i.e.: we were running late and worried about missing our plane. Suddenly the magic email arrives from Delta telling us our flight has been cancelled and we are now booked on a mid-afternoon flight. So I re-scheduled the rental car, dropped the kids off at school and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast with Katie at the local diner. We did all that and I was still in the office by 9 a.m. Now, would I have liked to arrive in Boston before the evening rush hour? Absolutely. But what's the point of getting upset? I've spent the better part of my adult life as a road warrior and after years of being impatient with the delays, the cancellations, the lost reservations, I've reached a point where I realize that none of it is important. It simply doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. I've adopted an attitude that says that while none of the hotels, airlines, rental cars, restaurants, etc wanted to fail at meeting my expectations, the simple truth is that stuff happens. It's very much the same for my firm. We don't start the day expecting a server to crash or to have a spammer launch a massive email campaign........we don't plan for network interruptions or for a power strip to burn up.......these things happen because it is in the nature of the business. Technology fails from time to time; e.g: your car stops working even though you never missed a tune-up. I think what's important is not that the event occurred, it's how the failing party responds to their failure. An airline doesn't plan to lose my bag, but when they do I want to know that they are doing everything they can to track it down and get it to me. When a server crashes, I want the customer to know that we have someone focused on getting it back on line as soon as humanly possible. I want honest communication and I want an apology and I'm mostly okay with those two simple things. What I don't want is excuses and attitude. When I first arrived at this firm I had to dismiss a customer care agent who actually yelled at customers. Two warnings and then one afternoon I'm standing just outside of customer care and I hear this person yelling at one of my customers.........we walked that person out the door 30 minutes later. I don't have any patience for that type of behavior nor should our customers. But I do have patience for the realities of life and I think we would all be a bit happier if we tried to follow that guideline. Have a nice weekend folks!

Getting Old Has Its Drawbacks

Just got back from the eye doctor where I discoverd that the problem I have been experiencing over the past two weeks with burred vision in my left eye stems from the fact that the jelly inside of my eye actually pulled away from the lining of the eye and managed to take a piece of my retina with it. So now, the jelly and piece of retina are floating inside of my eye and is causing the blurrring. Unfortunately, there isn't a bloody thing the Doctor can do to repair it. It will shrink over time, but never actally go completely away and he chalks it all up to advanced youth (I think he was trying a bit of humor on me). What's worse is that he thinks it will probably also happen to my right eye eventually. Of course, you have couple this with the fact that I somehow managed to tear my rotator cuff a few weeks ago and will probably need some surgical intervention. Just not the body I was hoping for at this age. Kind of reminds me of a book I read earlier this year called "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurwzeil. You really have to read to understand, but basically he is a futurist that talks about the merging of technology and biology to improve the quality of our lives by making our bodies stronger as we get older. For example, a person might have nanobots running around their bloodstream looking for diease and eliminating it before it can take hold. Bionic limbs would be available as well as memory implants to help us during the aging process. It is really very cool stuff.......do read the book or visit his site at kurzweilai.net.

Okay, I'm Really Confused Now

I am still trying to figure out why folks get directed to a advertising site when they type in www.elliesdad.blogpost.com. Someone suggested I ping the site, which I did and discovered that it is redirected to ad.funnel.revenuedirect.com.akadns.net. Now, I don't know if that is something that The Blogger did automatically or if my site has been kidnapped by these guys. I also don't know how to fix it. I sent an email to the support group this morning asking for some assistance and I guess I'll hear back from them at some point. As the guy in charge of a web hosting company I really understand the importance of having real support on line when there is a problem and therefore we operate a 7x24 tech support group that is mostly based here in Atlanta. We roll over to our parent from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m., but the calls are still be answered and the requests are managed on a real-time basis. It's been a strange day........We had a spammer that caused one of our Linux servers to be blacklisted by the spam cops. Pain in the but because outbound spam from a shared server is very difficult to pinpoint, especially since the spam cops won't tell you anything more than the IP address that has created the spam. That would be helpful if all the customers on that server didn't share the same IP address......Okay, you add filters, but then that creates a whole new set of problems because one mans spam is another mans permission based marketing campaign. Bugger, I hate these kind of issues because they eat up a lot of sysadmin time and create customer dissatisfaction and cost money to fix. Spam is such a pain the butt! On a nicer note I got to have lunch with a business development guy from Register.com today. A very nice chap and we had an excellent conversation about the web hosting industry and all the very neat things happening today in our space. It was enough to almost make me forget the spamming situation, at least for a few minutes. Lots of conference calls today......I'm get tired of talking and just want some time to think. I suppose that is why I'm such a night-owl.......I would stay up all night if things were a bit different. The house is quiet, my energy level is really high and my focus is probably at its strongest. Odd I know, but that is how I tick. Have a great evening folks.

When Not To Push That Button

I was playing around on Saturday evening and decided to explore the wonderful world of Google AdSense by hitting a button that said I wanted to use AdSense. Now, I thought that I was simply exploring the opportunity and that they would send me some information and I could then decide if it made sense (no pun intended) for my blog at this early stage. However, what actually happened is AdSense took over my blog and now you cannot type www.elliesdad.blogpost.com and get to the blog. What you get to is a blogging spam/advertising page with lots of very annoying popups. I've written the folks at AdSense and in the strongest possible terms have asked them to immediately stop, but of course there aren't any real people to talk to and so I'm just sending emails and hoping that eventually someone will read one of my missives and disengage. Horribly annoying and while I readily admit that I hit the button that said yes, I can't honestly say that they really provided a clear picture of what would transpire. It is a lesson well learned and I won't do it again. I just hope they give me back my blog sometime soon.