Especially when they don't know the terminology in their own legislation. Some days I am really happy I don't work in DC anymore.

In the middle of moving to a new place this week so posting will be virtually nonexistant, but those fine folks on my blogroll are writing interesting stuff.

Jen talks about a WashPost story and she's completely right, go read it, amazing stuff. DC life is so fast most folks wouldn't notice a great artist at work. When I was in DC I always tried to at least give a dollar if a decent musician was playing by a subway entrance. They were not asking for money but providing atmosphere and I always respected them more than someone asking for a handout.

Served the Highlands Heather ale for First Friday ArtWalk this month. I might make it again to work on the recipe again as a good Summer mild but I am not sure it's my style of beer.

It was great talking to people about the beer and it was fairly popular, I brought less than a 10% of it home. We did have to contend with a last minute problem of a valve that would not lock down. Thanks to a coworker who showed up with a spare keg and he preformed an onsite operation and replaced the damaged equipment. The rest of the night went very smoothly.

For an experiment of a beer that I was working with no experience base, nor recipe it worked out well. I wanted kindof a Scottish version of a mild beer with heather as an influence and it's what I got. The heather was used for the most part in place of hops, changing the character of the beer completely. The consensus was that next time to increase the amount of the heather flower tips to increase their character in the beer, but with an unknown ingredient it's always easier to start low then build in future versions of the beer then over use the ingredient and make it unpalatable. That said I may add a specialty malt like Carapils to add to the body of the beer.

All and all the night and the beer was a success, but I can and will make it better.

Listening to this go around between the city and GFEC the last few years it seems the city is more interested in playing games than achieving results.

Today's newspaper story says that GFEC draft workforce report tells the reality about affordable housing issue and that 'displeased' some city council members, but the truth hurts. While the city council puts it's head in the sand on affordable housing is nothing new and that they want to ignore the problem is all the more deplorable.

The GFEC Board sent a letter that they were shocked about the pulling of the contract, but the mayor says he spoke with Cynthia McKinney. Sorry Joe but you are on the board, did you tell the other board members? Are you active on the board? Because if you were then you had to know the GFEC letter was coming, it doesn't seem to track.

As for the Telsa Motors deal first the city keeps GFEC out of negotiation, but then wants to pull the resources to the city when they couldn't win the contract? That is not GFEC's fault and further more it shows a lack of accomplishing the job so now the city council wants to give the city staff greater authority?

As for the Air-Zona land issue GFEC says in the article the contract issue was city fault not theirs, based on past events I am inclined to agree. Let's look back a year ago Fall, the new 4th Street overpass was ahead of schedule and could have been completed before the end of 2005. So why was it finished in mid 2006? Because the city hadn't done due diligence about the land purchases and made sure all the property was in fact bought.

Improvements to air service hasn't been pushed hard enough by the city and frankly the land swap for that land nearly did not happen. How long would it have taken the city to get it done had the deal failed?

Westcor has been working on mall expansion for over 10 years, I remember the issue coming up before I even left for DC in late 1996. It was only when Dilliards revealed if it didn't get expansion it would close their location and as result the whole mall was in danger that the city got serious about making long overdue expansion plans.

Next the Downtown Conference Center in a nutshell was a bad location and wasted over half a million dollars for something that never came about. Now I can appreciate wanting to experiment and float new and different ideas in public policy, a point Anonymous Mike made to me as it came to monkeying around a while back. But anyone who has lived in Flagstaff any length of time knows that in the summer time or on most Fridays that last thing downtown needs is more traffic, the main arteries were simply not made to deal with as much as it gets now. So it was a bad idea from the outset.

Lastly if a city official didn't have the ability to win the Tesla contract and doesn't have the support of the business community as the article indicates why would anyone give him more responsibility?

The city acts slow at best and is usually years behind what the local economy needs, while GFEC may not be perfect it's track record has a far more positive than the city's. Failure is a poor business model to give greater responsibility.

Twittervision is probably the biggest time suck I have seen online in a long time. After watching for 5 minutes you can't help but think "this is the biggest waste of time I have ever seen" and almost at the same time "this site is so fracking cool". Eavesdropping on the tech literate in the 21st Century and they are waiting to tell you their thoughts. The slice of life all around the globe mashup is very cool and probably addictive. If Evo hadn't warned me to have time to waste when I looked at it, I'd be plotting his demise right now, but since he warned me I'll forgive him. Have a half hour to waste check it out, if you don't don't bother.

and it's just getting started. Although considering the wind out in Doney Park I doubt I would start a controlled burn without alerting the local Fire Department, it's just to tricky.

I predict the forest will be closed in the next 2 weeks, with only 45% of normal moisture this Winter it won't be pretty.

I have been pondering of late about if there is enough of a market for being an online customer service geek, so here is the idea for the job. You get paid to read and participate in online communities by a firm(s).

To start as an example from my homebrewing hobby, Company X makes a brand new homebrewing widget. I get paid by the visit MoreBeer, Brewing Network and other beer related boards looking for comments daily. If there is a customer service issue, I login into the company’s network to get the background information on the sale. Call the appropriate person who worked on the issue and try to find a point of compromising and lend a human voice to the issue. There would be travel and training by the company to know their products, locations, and day to day operations, but afterwards perhaps only a regular reports and the occasional meeting.

Now obviously you would have to have a very structured billing arrangement. At minimum you might make just a retainer for keeping your eyes open, but then during a
busy time you might be at near full-time working to resolve issues or help answer questions. An online help desk if you will.

There would be times when someone would be slow and just do the necessary work but then no other billable hours. Yes I can see that you would have to keep track of your hours fairly regularly so that you can properly bill, heck Evo mentioned something like this internal monitoring with Twitter, you might just twitter your daily visits on a special account for work purposes.

So what would the busy times be like for one if one of my companies were a homebrew wine or cider related early fall would get very busy during picking season and likewise the holidays and month or two afterwards would probably get rather busy.

I could see someone like this participating of being on retainer for upwards of 4 to 5 small to medium size business clients but that beyond that one person would be stretched too thin. If the client was large enough I could see the person hired could be doing this full-time, but I suspect anyone with that large of business would be unlikely to be so web savy unless they have been through a case of Dell Hell.

Speaking of which none of this is really that much of
an original concept if you have read Cluetrain, Gaping
void, Gonzo Marketing, or Jeff Jarvis’ blog the last few years. It’s more about putting these discussions into practice.

When I say participate, I don’t me a corporate shill promoting the new latest and greatest product. Might you occasional post on something new and interesting a
community may like sure, but no press releases or anything so frankly boring. In a homebrewers example talk about what your brewing, help people with problems, laugh and joke with friends. But join the ongoing conversation and get to be known as some of a stand up reputation who can help with a problem about the company or product is needed.

Last and certainly not least I think it has to be a topic you love and have interest in. If I were paid by a car company to do this I doubt I’d last 3 months. I just wouldn’t care, but products related to homebrewing beer as example is something I think I would really enjoy.

Are such jobs coming one day soon I wouldn't doubt it, but not today. If any companies think today is that day and are willing to give serious talk about customer service web geek send me an email, let’s talk.

Back at the most recent blogorama Vox I think had the question what candidates light your fire? Granted it is very early in the election cycle, frankly I don't even think they should be campaigning for another year, but that is a seperate issue. At the time none of us could name anyone we could get excited about.

That said the more I hear about Fred Thompson the more I like. I doubt I would agree with him about everything, but I doubt I would with any politician. But things like this make me think he's got the right mindset for our country.

But like I said it is still very early only time will tell.

Coyote Blog, go ahead I'll wait for you.

Have I mentioned lately how much Jen rocks! No, too bad because she does.

CATO brings an interesting perspective to an issue. A perspective I won't see in the main stream media, but then that is why I read their site.

PS - Best wishes for recovery to the Edwards' family.