My tweets of the last week:
Personal
Crushing On: WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin
If CK frequently seems like bursts of organized, topical posts followed by droughts of randomness and silence … well, that’s because it is.
Not that it’s meant to be that. As CK has transitioned from a personal blog to a blog about my music, Philly, and other specific topics, I finally settled on the perfect mix of posts for the current incarnation. I even made myself an Editorial Calendar – basically, a forward-looking schedule of what content is in which stage of readiness for the weeks ahead. EdCal’s are traditionally a tool of newspapers and magazines, but in recent years they’ve become an important resource for bloggers.
The WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin is a drag-and-drop calendar that lives in your "Posts" screen. It's also my communications-nerd dream come true.
Then I hit a barrier: how would I keep the editorial calendar updated?
It was a barrier I couldn’t overcome with blogging as a part-time exercise, fighting for time against my three musical incarnations and dealing with the new house. Paper EdCals were a chore and got lost. A Google Spreadsheet was great for planning, but I just kept planning and never wrote. Penciling drafts into WordPress was meaningless without some structure, and I wound up with endless lingering drafts since I couldn’t see an overview the lineup of an entire week or month.
I thought, maybe WordPress has an EdCal plugin! It seemed like the sort of plugin motivated bloggers would create. Alas, I searched and searched, to no avail.
I keep re-drafting my own EdCals, but they never lasted more than a few weeks as they were interrupted by actual work and my musicianship. Despite a myriad of ideas for CK, I just didn’t have the spare time to wrangle them, write them, schedule them, and post them.
Then, in an actual work meeting about WordPress during actual work hours, Mel & I were glibly showing off our personal blog plugins to the social team at the office. I showed some of my favorites (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin being primary among them), and the she whipped out WordPress Editorial Calendar.
Screenshot of the quick-draft screen in action, from the WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin page.
WHAT IN THE WHAT NOW!?
(I may have actually screamed that in the middle of the meeting with our Director. Luckily, he is already well aware of my insanity.)
Yes, about 13 months ago someone came up with a fully-functioning EdCal plugin for WP. Set up a schedule of posts, start a draft right on the calendar, and drag and drop them to your heart’s content. When a post is ready, just move it over to “Publish” status via a dropdown – or, edit it the way you’d normally edit.
Ta-Da – instant blog organization.
Needless to say, the next time I logged into CK I immediately installed the plugin. I’ve been working with it all weekend, and for the first time ever I have a month of planned posts. That doesn’t mean I wrote them all today – it just means I finally have a living schedule of what I hope to talk about and when I hope to say it.
I’m positively aglow about it. I hope you dig my first week of EdCal content, starting tomorrow morning!
I’ve got a beautiful feelin’ nothing is goin’ my way.
I think Mel should tweet the punchlines to all of my posts before I write them.
I’m not sure I can make this story any funnier than that tweet, other than to point out that there is clearly some sort of voodoo curse on our car.
Here goes…
Early in my process of learning to drive I decided it might be a good idea to save our local service center’s number to my phone. You know, in case I got stuck in a situation where knowing the price of, say, a new car door would impact my decision-making.
Being a denizen of the mobile age, I punched “Ardmore Toyota” into my phone’s Google search, added the number to my contacts, and went on with my life. Thankfully, I didn’t have any occasions to call them while I had my learner’s permit, aside from inquiring about getting an iPod dock installed.
A few weeks ago I called to get the price of my replacement car keys. Oddly, all of the hold messages were spoken in a southern drawl. Why would a dealership in Philly advertise with a southern accent, I wondered. It seemed a little counter-intuitive, given the well-to-do, perfectly-coifed mainline clientele they serve.
My question was answered this week when I ordered my keys. Everyone I spoke with had a southern accent! Clearly our local Toyota dealership was a family-owned business, and the family was transplanted from The South. Why not have hold messages with accents – their accent is part of their brand! They assured me that getting a Saturday appointment would be no problem, even if I called on Friday.
Wow, I thought, our dealer is awesome. They made their regional heritage part of their brand identity, they had plenty of Saturday appointments available, and they were all so darn friendly even though I speak about four times as fast as they do.
On Friday I dutifully called to make my Saturday appointment. At the time my cell was buried under a pile of proofreading, so I Googled the number and used my desk phone to call.
Ardmore the county seat of Carter County, Oklahoma, United States, and is generally considered the hub of the 10-county region known as Arbuckle Country or Lake and Trail Country. It is located 90 miles equidistant from Oklahoma City and Dallas/Fort Worth. Ardmore was named after the affluent Philadelphia suburb and historic Pennsylvania Main Line stop Ardmore, PA.
Weirdly, the dealer had no record of my order. And, even stranger, no one I spoke with had a southern accent.
While on hold while they looked up my order confirmation again I glanced back at my computer screen and saw that there are two Ardmore Toyotas. One in the Philly suburbs, and one IN ARDMORE, OKLAHOMA.
I gingerly hung up the receiver and called over the wall to Mel.
Me: You know how I ordered those car keys on Tuesday?
Mel: To replace the ones you lost in the middle of a field in broad daylight, possibly stolen by some sort of highly intelligent vole?
Me: Yes, those. I think I may have ordered them from Oklahoma.
Mel: You mean, they had them in stock in Oklahoma and are shipping them to you?
Me: No. Like, now I have to drive to Oklahoma to pick them up.
Thus the above tweet.
To Ardmore of Oklahoma’s eternal credit, they do outstanding PPC mobile search targeting, and they were very good-natured about shipping my keys to Philadelphia.
rock band sweaters
Tonight we had a sweaty Filmstar rehearsal.
Sweat is one of those unglamorous parts of rock star life that I feel is not sufficiently advertised by bands to aspiring musicians and parlor-bound Rock Band addicts, along with writing lead sheets and receiving constant electric shocks to the face from your microphone if your instrument isn’t properly grounded.
(Seriously, do you want full, pouty, Jagger lips? Just play a shoddily grounded bass and sing right up on the mic.)
No matter what sort of sweater you are under typical life conditions, when you are flinging a sixteen pound bass around while also doing some form of the frug and singing backup vocals, you are going to develop more than a healthy sheen.
Add to that the heat generated by your equipment or a low-hanging stage light focused on your neck and rocking out for an hour is roughly equivalent to spending the same amount of time in a sauna. Which makes 2.5hr rehearsals a marathon of perspiration.
I think I was experiencing all four aspects of band sweat at this gig. What you can't see in this photo is the stage light positioned about eight inches from my face.
We’ve all seen bands sweat, right? So what am I bitching about? Here are some aspects of band-sweat you might not have previously considered:
Sweaty vision. Sweat can sting in your eyes to begin with, but if you are a perfectly coifed rocker you are gradually sweating all of your chic hair product into your eyes, causing a stinging temporary blindness.
This usually takes three or four songs to get underway, which means you’ll be struck blind just as your set is heating up, typically during the most intense and difficult-to-play section of a song.
Which leads us to…
Sweaty hands. Either your hands sweat, or you get sweat (and dissolved hair product) on them trying to restore your vision. Shockingly, neither holding on to a plastic pick nor plucking bass strings in a regular rhythm is made easier.
Which means…
Sweat accessories. You need them, and I don’t mean Olivia Newton John style headbands. When planning your killer stage outfit, some part of it has to double as a hand-towel – and, let me tell you, leather pants do not fit the bill. Now I understand why so many singers wrap boas and scarves around their microphone stands.
Of course, then there’s the problem of…
Sweaty clothes. Once your set is over you want to reap the rewards of being a rock star – namely, adoring fans, and possibly a cold beer. Except, you are soaked through to the skin as if you had been standing under a fire hydrant, and with the rush of performance and the baking stage lights behind you your body is suddenly cold and clammy.
(My father has for years pointed this out to me about strippers; I did not realize he was telling me a parable that would assist in my rock star life. Sorry, dad.)
Allow me to enlighten you to the fact that fans are way less interested in fawning over you and hugging you when your entire ensemble is a massive sweat stain. And, despite what your Almost Famous dream fantasy looks like, until you are past local levels of fame most green rooms do not include fully appointed bathrooms with showers so you can make a quick change. I’ve played exactly one gig that has had one.
There you have it: my band sweat exposé. Maybe next I’ll address the practical issues of selecting attractive footwear that does not hinder your pedal-stomping.
For all my rocker friends: what other unexposed pitfalls of band life should the aspiring rocker be aware of before turning up to 11?
Lost, not found. (or: stupidity tax) (or: NEARLY headless)
Over the last thirty days I have racked up nearly $500 in lost stuff.
Let’s mull that over, shall we. Do you have something you want really, really badly that you could buy with an extra $500? I bet it’s a pretty major thing. A laptop? An amplifier? A new suit? A gas grill?
Do you know what I really, really want? THE STUFF I LOST. Five hundred dollars worth of it – $500 which I now have to re-spend on things I already owned a perfectly good copy of as a sort of tax on my own stupidity.
I wasn't sure what image to lead with for a "lost and found" theme, so E suggested the Awesome Cat. I know that he isn't lost, but this is possibly my favorite photo in the long and storied history of the internet. At least now when I look back on this stupidity I can smile about it ... not because I'm at peace or anything like that. No, just because of the awesome cat.
I’d also call it a tax on my carelessness, but it’s not quite that.
Allow me to explain. The highest value items were the spare key and alarm fob to our car. They’re going to cost over half of the $500 to replace. Now, you might say, “Peter, keys are easy to lose. We’ve all done it once or twice. You carry car keys everywhere. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
Great. Okay. Sure. Tell me this: how many times have you lost your keys while standing in the middle of a field doing nothing with nothing but grass as far as the eye can see in any given direction.
Yeah, I’m way better at losing things than you are.
Last month I was the first car to park in the field at Gina’s wedding. I turned off the ignition and shut the car door. I took five steps away from the car so I could take a photograph to commemorate the first time I had ever driven on grass other than when I pull out of my driveway sideways across the lawn.
I took three more steps away from the car, and realized I hadn’t locked it. I reached into my pocket for my keychain.
It was not there.
My car in a field, about five seconds after losing my keys and about thirty seconds before realizing my keys were lost. What are the odds of that? It's like solving a murder because it was caught on camera by Google Street View.
Then I proceeded to search both the car and the field on my hands and knees in 90 degree heat, tracing carefully plotted forensic grids across the ground to make sure I was covering every inch.
After a while I became paranoid that the keychain was stuck in my clothes somewhere, so I stripped down to my underwear, pawed through my clothing, and continued my search in the nearly-nude.
About an hour later we added two more people to the search party. They were fully clothed.
We found nothing.
In eight steps I had made the key – attached to a massive, shiny keychain the size of a healthy piece of pepperoni – completely disappear. Our working theory was that some sort of vole emerged from the ground, noticed my glimmering keychain, and absconded with it to their burrow to show the family.
More to the point: I lost my keys in clear sight in broad daylight.
It’s embarrassing, but I’ve resigned myself to it – not because I lose things all the time (I don’t) or because I’m good at letting go (god knows that’s not true). No – instead, it’s because I am relentlessly deliberate and routine, and losing stuff is something that I occasionally have to do when I’m moving on with my life.
One month into driving and I have no routine connected to the car. I don’t know where to put the things in my hands when I get in. I don’t have a habit of putting my keys in my pocket when I get out. I’m not used to having two sets of keys.
Thus, the lost car keys. And cell phone battery. And house keys. And bus pass. The list goes on, but every element connects back to the car in one way or another. The car that equals running errands, seeing friends, going to concerts on rainy nights, accepting more gigs, and a hundred other good things.
I just have to pay a stupidity tax to go along with all the rewards. At least when I think of it that way the $500 bothers me slightly less.
(Very slightly. Ever so slightly. Like, the picture of the picture of the cat will continue to be a bigger morale booster for many years to come.)