Brian Mark - Guitaraholic

Michael Gray sent me a couple books this holiday season (again, thanks Michael), and I'm finding it to be quite motivational. Today, I came across a bit of brilliance contained within. (Sorry about the lack of formatting due to my mobile blogging.) "Many organizations make sure they've dotted all their i's -- they have customer service, a receptionist, a convenient location, and on and on -- and all of it is mediocre. More often than not, prospects choose someone else -- their competition. Those competitors can't perform in some areas, but they're exceptional in the ones that matter." It is so true that excelling in some areas can make up for lacking in others. So now we all just need to go excel at those things that matter. Easier said than done, but very profitable when you get it right.

My dad got me a shiny new Porsche for Christmas. Actually, it was a 500GB L.A. Porsche designed hard drive from Lacie that he bought through Amazon. Faster for data access, but not so fast at getting me to work. Still, this is pretty sleek and shiny, and that's what matters when picking out your Porsche, right? I guess I'll have to wait for the real Porsche for a while yet. In the meantime, I'll just enjoy my 500 gigs of external storage. Maybe next year... hint, hint.

For those of you that don't particularly care for wikipedia (as many in the seo crowd don't), and are clever enough to come up with play-on-word type posts, I'd invite you to head over and check out Falsipedia.com . This site is based on the same software, but has such educational materials as Cranberry uses , the definition of " Tough Cookie ", and Grape Nehi . Seriously, how can the wiki compete with articles like those?

Thinking back on 2007, there are lots of things I got done that I never really intended at the start of the year. For example, creating www.honestbargain.com for my dad wasn't really on my list as the year began. Having a show on WebmasterRadio.fm wasn't, either. In fact, I didn't really see the point of audio content on the web then. Now, I've got several podcasts and my son (5 years old) started one as well. Probably the biggest surprise to me, however, is my sense of wanting to help out with local organizations whereever I can. I volunteered just last week to build a site for the local tennis association. Last year, I was just happy to get back to playing. I have also been told that I've grown quite a bit professionally this year. I intend to keep that trend going and really look forward to what 2008 and beyond has in store for me.

Since most of my ideas pop up when I'm AFK, I am going to try blogging from my cell phone. This is mostly a test post, but also an explanation of why my future posts may be shorter and more to the pont when compared to some of my prior ones.