Mon 06 October 2008; 279
On my way back from the Midwest two weeks I flew on Midwest Airlines. In their in flight magazine MyMidwest.
One of their articles was a feature of Chip Conley and the founder boutique hotel operator in California, Joie de Vivre.
“There have been many studies that show that if you treat employees really well, it pays off enormously in productivity, profitability and customer retention,” Conley says. So why doesn’t every company implement such smart management? “They get stunted by short-term thinking and focusing too much on the easily measured basic needs,” Conley explains. “To do it right is much, much harder.”
[...]
“Other hotels sell sleep; we sell dreams,” Conley says. The intended result is that after a guest stays at a JdV hotel, he or she feels an “identity refreshment.” Guests are so pleased that they tell their friends, making word-of-mouth the company’s strongest advertising technique.
– The Boutique Mystique MyMidwest Sep/Oct 2008
When people refer to studies I want to know what they are. If the studies can show the pay off, it must be measurable — even if it is more difficult.
Last May I attended the CHL awards at the Centre in the Square in Kitchener to cover Justin Azevedo of the Rangers winning player of the year for the league. I intended to post these photos back then, but never did, so here they are now.
It was interesting to see the commotion fans and the kids out to get autographs and then the production of the awards inside the centre.
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Sat 04 October 2008; 277
Wenn Wein und Biere sich bekriegen, Wer wird siegen, wer wird unterliegen?
If wine and beer fought a war, who would be victorious, who would be vanquished?
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I met up with most of my soccer team at an uptown pub on Wednesday. It is good to spend some time with people you only normally see on the soccer pitch. I didn’t stay long, but before I left I got my medal from our division win.
The medal depicts a footless soccer boot and severl stop action instances of a ball careening into the distant goal. This disembodied shoe is truly bending it like Beckham.
Thu 02 October 2008; 275
Any rescue bailout from congress has yet to be decided for the bankrupting banks. So it is still being tlaked about.
In several places I have seen this commentary from a Chicago professor suggesting a better less taxing plan and referring to comparable points in history. I have summarized it into the four sentences below. Follow the link to read the numerous other interesting and informative sentences.
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Wed 01 October 2008; 274
The student centre at University of Wisconsin Madison is called Memorial Union and it is amazing. The best part about it — at least during warmer weather — it the huge patio or the Terrace as it is called.
Just outside the building’s Bavarian style pub the Rathskeller and the addition the Stiftskeller is a patio that extend out onto Lake Mendota, the largest of Madison’s five lakes.
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I started preparing to take the Graduate Management Admissions Test two weeks ago. I had bought a study guide and I worked on the diagnostic test problems. My study guide, the one I chose while looking at a shelf full of different test prep books, was the one published by the actual creators of the test.
I expected that I could get additional books later and thought this one with any other would help give me the range of perspectives I wanted.
It is a problem that the maker of a test that serves partly as a gatekeeper for business school also tries to sell you some kind of edge. Really this guide, like the others, prepares you to take the test, describing the process and structure and giving you practice questions.
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So, loads of people got on the national do not call list yesterday, but loads more had trouble accessing the registration page. I checked it now and was able to access it.
By 1:30 p.m. ET, more than 223,000 people had registered using the phone and internet, according to CRTC spokesperson Denis Carmel. Although the website went live at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, it crashed eight or nine hours later.
“It’s way beyond anything we’d expected,” Carmel said.
“On the telephone side, more than one million people tried to access the system. It’s clearly over any estimation we had done.”
[...]
Bell Canada, which is responsible for operating the list, worked to get the website back up, but offered projection as to when that would be.
– Website, phones jammed on Day 1 of do-not-call list registration CBC 30 Sep 2008
Tue 30 September 2008; 273
I was looking for a listing of Canadian universities ranked by size, but couldn’t find it. I was at the library and typed out the numbers from the 2007 Maclean’s Guide to Canadian Universities.
Here is the list from Toronto to Mount Allison ordered by full time enrolment:
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Today is the first day that Canadians can sign up to the do not call list and the webpage is unavailable.
You are supposed to be able to sign up at www.LNNTE-DNCL.gc.ca, but it just gives this message:
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