intro
Again with the offers.
"Alors les Francophones, vous attendez apres quoi exactement? L'offre est encore bonne. Joignez vous a MSBPodcast.com et creez un podcast en Francais"
"Dann die Deutschen warten Sie, nach denen genau? Das Angebot ist noch gut. Verbinden Sie hat Ihnen MSBPodcast.com und Verursachen Sie ein podcast auf Deutsch."
(Translation courtesy of Babel Fish [ http://world.altavista.com/ ]) speech courtesy of AT&T research [http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php ]
---- "Ein dickes Paar im Pool" by: "Automat" http://www.derautomat.de/
Feedback comes first, so...
I got an email and a phone call from the "Vice Consul, Economic & Commercial Affairs" in the Greek embassy here in New York.
A very nice man who was definitely trying to be helpful, and trying to set me straight on the policies of the Greek government, and most, if not all, governments, in the world.
Trying to, but not succeeding.
"Stupid is as stupid does" as Forrest Gump's mom intoned, and this policy is just plain stupid.
I am not a commercial affair and homer is definitely not either. We are trying to get information about living with MS and strictly about living with MS out to other MSers. (Basically, if you don't have MS, have a nice life. Ours probably won't be as nice as yours, but we're damn well going to try.)
They are depriving a citizen of their country from receiving a gift from a citizen of another country, just ...because...
There is no sensible reason for this and they can't ever make me think that there is.
Basically, he confirmed my thoughts ... my observations.
I'm better off sending a check.
Sending the equipment myself, as one individual to another, is one approach out that is right out of the window.
From now on I will send money to reimburse the MSers who participate in my MSBPodcast.com scheme to equip MSers of each linguistic group with the tools they need to gain a voice through the medium of podcasting.
Sorry but that's just the way it is.
Basically, I'm saying "fuck you right back" to all governments.
---- "How To Find A Decent Sushi Bar" by: "Brainpool" http://brainpool.nu/
Feed forward comes next, so...
I just got an email from Annie Hamel of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, (of America I guess [in a few paragraphs I'll get back to what I see as the limitations of national organizations meddling in what are pan-national problems, such as heath,]) promoting Microsoft's initiative for IM, a.k.a. instant messaging; what Microsoft attempts to call a cutesy "I'm".
(Microsoft is [in]famous for attempting to change the names of things, getting patents on their implementation, and then claiming to have invented the original underlying concept. [Advertisers are notorious for mucking with the language until they can legally claim that the word "best" actually means the phrase "as good as". Just remember what Mr Bumble said { http://www.bartleby.com/73/1002.html } in Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist": "The law is a ass..."])
To quote her email: "I'm writing to you because you have a very popular blog and podcast that discusses life with MS." (Like that's important or sumtin'. They sent an almost identical schpiel to "Miss Chris." Be that as it may, or it may not, I don't see them lining up to give me any press or any support, or to nudge any MS specific advertisers my way with a choice word in somebody's ear. [Well, its a good thing that that's "not" why I'm doing this anyway. :-] )
Microsoft is engaging in revenue sharing of their take from advertising on their IM service and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society is one of the nine organizations that they are sharing the revenue with.
If you need to use instant messages, and you wouldn't mind an ad interruption in the flow of your messages, and you use Microsoft, then by all means use Microsoft's IM.
Go to im.live.com [ http://im.live.com/ ] and download the latest version of Windows Live Messenger.
Sorry, but I use Skype, a Linux box and several of Apple's Macintosh products (including some iSight cameras and associated video conferencing products) so it doesn't apply to me or mine. (Nobody has ever been able to accuse me of anything at work and I have made sure of that by using Apple products and programming in Smalltalk, both of which are definitely "beyond the fringe" in business. I'm extremely useful to them. They're basically useless to me, apart from their cash. That sets the tone for trust in consulting and commerce.)
But if you do take them up on it, please tell me about what the experience was like. (But only from an MSer perspective. [I really don't care about IM otherwise. I now type too slowly and I hit the backspace way too often for it to provide me with any kind of use. It requires entirely too much coordination. {It's like getting spam for dancing lessons. I'm really not likely to chomp at that bit, now am I.}])
(Its now a few paragraphs later. No I didn't forget. :-P)
The asymmetrical concept of nations having anything to do with managing disease is really starting to stick in my craw.
Just because you've got a border doesn't mean bugger all to whatever causes MS or to disease in the large.
Viral, biotic and genetic agents don't care about those, and neither should we.
That's why I'm reaching out to everybody and anybody with MS.
If they have a different language than the ones I speak, I'm even offering them a microphone and the use of MSBPodcast.com to distribute their content for free.
If they sell any ads, I'm offering them MSBPodcast.com as their statistics, reporting and billing services and sending all money collected right back at them.
There is only one thing about the stats that bothers me. It is reporting some visitors from, say, Luxemburg but it fails to tell me if its, say, two unique visitors or if its the same one twice. (Perhaps NeoWorks.com could make their "Total Visitors By Country" entries into a
---- "
Feed Me! come third, so...
Do you have a therapy, product, good or service that is of interest to MSers?
Consider advertising on this podcast.
Reminders on this segment only cost $0.03 per reminder per download of an episode. (A $30CPM targeted at MSers.)
It can/should lead to a full ad, in text, audio or video, which costs $3.00 per download.
That sounds expensive until you do the math and realize that if nobody downloads it it costs you nothing, unlike print, where you often can't even get an ad in to the specialized journals, or radio or TV where you'd just be wasting your money with the 0.0833% MSers rate of return. (That's about six times "below" the level of "statistical noise".)
But MSBPodcast is 100% in your market, and you only pay per download of your material.
No play, no pay.
Reach the MSers who would buy your therapy, product, good or service, with-out having to waste your advertising money on anyone who is "not" interested...
Send me an email at: charles (at) MSBPodcast.com
---- "
Main Topic: What A (Lost) Weekend.
I went, was brilliant, tried not to talk out of turn and kept my nose clean.
I also recorded the entire session with my little Edirol R-09 24bit Wav/MP3 portable recorder.
It is quite sobering to think that, as the recording equipment became all digital, it also became far more confusing to use.
Gone forever are the days of "stick in a cassette, press record, repeat as required."
But the R-09 doesn't come with one of those infernal dongles that chews up 3 spaces on a power bar. Its got an actual real plug at the end of an actual real cable.
---- "
Main topic, part "deux":
I went to the Canadian embassy in New York and found out that because of the infernal requirement that all foreigners, even landed immigrants, must have passports, (as"Claude Léveillée" sang: "J'pourrais tu avoir vos papiers, si'ous plais?") George Bush's little incursion into places he didn't belong in is making travel much more difficult and it has doubled the amount of time it takes for me to get my passport.
Man borders are a pain in the butt.
I can go where ever I want, but without that paper booklet, I can't get back in the 'States, even with a Green Card.
I feel sick. Maybe its from drinking the "aguamala".
----
outro
Posts
4 comments:
I don't know why "the powers that be" have to make everything so damned difficult. I'm sick to death of bureaucratic BS. Good for you for your tenacity ... eff them right back!
Personally, I'm so fed up with prescription woes I'm surprised I've not lost what little mind I have left.
Making things difficult, well that's their job, or its an immediate consequence of their doing their job...
Most social/corporate/corporeal structures are protectionist in nature, not inclusionist.
They need to defend against the other.
Any political decision is based on doing just that.
But disease, specially one as far ranging as MS (which is actually a syndrome exhibited by several classes of diseases,) requires something we have never seen, (except in a few instances where the eradication of a disease was an imperative,) multi-national open collaboration.
Nations don't trust. (They know better. They can only trust each other to covet each other's property, be it real or perceived.)
No, nations don't trust. But people do.
The sooner we get rid of the barrier mentality, the better off we can all become.
I was thinking the same thing that "Friday" said in the comment above. Don't we have enough going on without everything involving this disease making life more difficult!?
No fight goes for nothing...
:)
No lost weekends for those who fight!
Hi Charles.
I'm happy you used the "F" word.
I hope you're feeling better.
Watch this, it's perfect:
http://www.mercola.com/townofallopath/index.htm
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