Betterness by Kawika Holbrook

Birthday Notes

Things to do on your birthday.

1. Buy pizza and beer for college students on your birthday. Especially if you’ve turned 35 during a poker game and you’re losing money. The look on their faces when you give them a present on your birthday is worth it.
2. Get your hair cut by the barber shop closest to your apartment. Even if the stylist speaks fractured English. That way, you’ll learn that “Passion of Christ is good movie. You should see. It is a true story.”
3. Take a walk with your fiance around the neighborhood in the early evening. The weather is nice, and you might come upon a house you’d like to buy. All this might make you realize that life doesn’t have to move faster than you do, as long as you’re paying attention.

Or something like that.

On Managing

Bad managers confuse popularity with respect. The two are not related. Bad managers dither, blather, blame, or bully. Good managers are fair. They lead by example. Earn trust. Set goals. Build teams. Coach employees. Remove barriers. And reward success. Just a reminder to myself in case I lose sight of the obvious.

Meanwhile, three blogs on better businesses:

• Worthwhile: Work with purpose, passion, profit.
• bBlog: The sales, marketing and business weblog.
• FC Now: The Fast Company weblog.

iType Redesign

Gave myself a few hours this evening to redesign my freelance portfolio, iType. Fewer graphics. Simplified links. And more content to come. I will not give up writing for pleasure and profit.

Miss Communication

Someone other than me will be my employer's "Senior Project Manager for Retail Communications." The job description read like my resumé, and I can feel my heart sighing at the loss. I wish the new hire well, though, and hope she does all of us proud. If only management had known the new hire is, in fact, a crack-addicted puppy kicker. Then they would have begged me to come aboard. Begged.

The Laundry Room Conversation I Never Had

Two of five washing machines in our laundry facility are in use. They have about 15 minutes left on their cycle. I’m filling the other three with my clothes. As I pour in degergent, a man walks in. He stops, surveys the machines, and asks me, “Are all the machines taken?” Responses that came to mind:

1. No, they’re still available. The machines I’m not loading are simply showing a video of what clothes look like when they’re being washed.
2. Yes, but thanks for checking with me first. I hate it when people rip clothes out of my hand, knock me down with a lead pipe, drag me away from the washing machines, pull out my clothes, and put in theirs.
3. How did you get down the steps without a cane?
4. Washing machines? I thought this was video poker.

For all I know, he’s still standing there.

To Allie and Brianna

I've had a difficult time writing this letter to you. The right words kept hiding from me. I think I found them now. They're simple, but true:

I miss your mom. I miss her all the time. When I see a mommy with her kids, I think of her with the two of you. When I see a woman helping someone else, I think of her helping me. Your mom helped me be a better person. I'm sad she's gone, but I am lucky to have known her. And I'm so very lucky to know that part of her is in each of you.

Your mom touched so many people in so many ways. I'm thankful she's in my heart and my hopes. Keep her inside you, and your lives can overflow with kindness and niceness, sweetness and love.

Hug each other for me. Say your prayers. And be good to your dad and family because I know they'll be good to you. They have all been good to me.

Love,
Kawika

Simplifizationated

I spend way, way, way too much time cutting and pasting HTML code in this weblog. I wanted pretty little pictures to attend each entry, mostly to spice things up. TypePad, which powers Betterness, makes it simple for tweakers like me to edit the site's style until I run out of free time. To obviate that, I've redesigned the most plain style possible. One image for the logo, two columns for text, black for text, grey for links, and white for the background. It's so plain Quakers would be proud, if that were allowed. And it only took me three hours to accomplish! (Sigh.)

A Sty in My Eye, Oh My

A big, red sty is growing near my left tear duct. It hurts enough to make me squint and wince with each blink, but not enough that I can do any more than heed WebMD's advice: apply warm compresses to my eye 10 to 15 minutes four times daily for several days. Annoying. Like a cold or allergy that reminds you every few minutes that it's there, but not so severely to prevent you from trudging through the day. "Do not squeeze the sty; let it burst on it's own." How weak. I want action, man.

Subservient Chicken

In an extreme makeover of Burger King's "Have It Your Way" campaigns, Miami's Crispin Porter + Bogusky -- advertising's ""agency of the moment" -- brings us Subservient Chicken, an enslaved a chicken ready to do your bidding over the web. Type "flap your wings" in a text box and the chicken flaps his wings as instructed. Type "build a fort" and he builds a fort with couch cushions. Type "masturbate" or "grab your crotch like Michael Jackson" and he ... well, he does it. Never mind the chicken is a human dressed in a rooster costume or the site isn't live (it's Flash vignettes activated by keywords), "have it your way" was never so naughty ... or so viral. Webloggers sent the site to number 19 on DayPop's Top 40 while Wiredwriter Xeni Jardin has collected the URLs for a few dozen other tricks. Our office was abuzz as employees fell over themselves to show it to coworkers. Hot agencies flame up and out, but CPB keeps the heat on riviting customers' attention with guerrilla tactics, unconventional uses of media, and holistic marketing strategies that tie together everything from product design to packaging to event marketing to stuff that can't even be categorized. "Anything and everything is an ad," says CPB's 40-year-old creative director, Alex Bogusky. TV commercials are 50 years old. I can't even imagine what this will be like in five.

What's "Frequency," Kenneth?

Frequency 2.0 is an updated desktop application for updating weblogs that supports Blogger, Radio Userland, Movable Type, and other systems. The new version adds the ability to manage multiple weblogs simultaneously, plus built-in FTP transfers. Frequency is $19 for Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP.