Thinking aloud: Azure, AWS, DevOps, cars and opinion from Alex Neihaus

  • Email marketing results measured in basis points, and it’s all our fault

    This is post is for all my colleagues in the marketing biz. I want to tell you that we collectively destroyed email. What did we do that was truly stupid? Simple: we have so overdone email that now it’s useless for all of us. Have you noticed that no matter what you do — text…

  • Get a Grip on Miracle Wipe

    Do you crunch? Or fold? After over three years of blogging, I am officially nonplussed. Update 2019-04-29:  removed Shockwave link. I guess it’s time after almost 10 years not to be so upset. Plus, Shockwave is both dangerous on my website and deprecated.

  • Gymkhana, or I ain’t your target market

    OK, I don’t know what DC Shoes are…and whoever these people are, they certainly didn’t create this video to try to get me to buy their stuff. I am just not their target market. But I gotta say, this video has four minutes of the most spectacular drifting I have ever seen. “Oooo!,” you’ll say…

  • Puttin’ it all together on the ‘Net

    My good friend Chris Williams, CEO of Vuuch, emailed me the other day and said that I really had to talk with Josh Mings of solidsmack.com. I just got off the phone with Josh, and I can say is, “Thanks, Chris, for connecting us up.” See, Chris is a “true believer” in community — when he…

  • The two best choices for the worst company in America

    I just love The Consumerist blog. It’s snarky, fun and to-the-point. But it worried me no end when Consumer Reports bought it. You know, the people who have the temerity to “accept no advertising” but who continue to sell useless “car price information.” These are the people who hawk their magazine shamelessly while being among…

  • All right, so it’s been over a month …

    All right, so it’s been over a month since I last posted. I’ve been busy at work and, well, I must say nothing has pissed me off enough to blog. Still, I care about having a personal blog and keeping it active. The question then becomes: what to say when you are (temporarily) speechless. Writing…

  • American Express to customers: Forget do-not-call; we’ll call you anytime we like

    When you get a credit card statement, do you ever read all the legalese on the back of the pages with the I-owe-a-fortune-amounts? I’ll bet many people don’t, despite the imploring of many consumer advocates. Consumer Reports, in particular, practically harangues readers to be aware of the ability of credit card companies to change terms…

  • Are you feeling like you’ve been screwed, but can’t quite figure out how?

    Maybe it’s your health care insurer manipulating your out-of-network health care claim reimbursements to increase their profits. Remember last fall when you signed up for the significantly more expensive plan that lets you choose a doctor out-of-network? You thought you were being smart. Instead, it turns out you’re being screwed. Your extra premiums are finding…

  • A whale of a demagogue

    I was channel surfing recently (no mean feat on a Verizon FIOS system), and paused briefly on Animal Planet’s Whale Wars. I was instantly riveted…but not because of what the show is ostensibly about. Briefly, it’s a cinema verité recounting of the struggle between environmental radicals and the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean. The…

  • My daughter, the poet

    It is with great pleasure and pride that I turn over my blog, temporarily, to my daughter Rebecca so she can publish her humorous poem, The Germ Soldier. If you’ve ever seen a middle-schooler with a runny nose, you’ll relate to her art. The Germ Soldier By Becca Neihaus They spread like throwing sand, Since…

  • Quick bytes from turkey weekend

    Really quickly: I’m eatin’ turkey — a lot of turkey I’ve updated to WP 2.6.5 and still can’t get the blog to work with podPress 8.8 despite all the posts about how to do so and the “no revisions” plugin. Damn, this is tiresome. When will Automattic realize they are killing bloggers with these incompatibilities.…

  • Vieux Boulogne or Durian: Can a French Software Company Blog?

    This is one of those posts where I had so many metaphors going through my head as I wrote it that I’m gonna list ’em for you before I write the post because even I can’t keep ’em straight. And who wants to miss a good metaphor? Vieux Boulogne is the world’s stinkiest cheese Durian…