If you haven’t heard, we have had some rain here in the US Midwest. As well as some flooding, downed power lines and everything that goes with it. And as wet as the last few weeks have been, there is more to come.

Woven into just about news account of the storms are interviews with people who are almost always surprised at the high water levels and damage, many saying they have never seen anything like it in their life. Fortunately these people and everybody else has lived through this as the loss of life has been minimal to none. Going forward, hopefully these experiences will help us prepare for similar future events.

In addition to reviewing my disaster recovery plan, a couple of new thoughts came to mind as a result of the storm that I hadn’t considered before:

Infrastructure – Part of I-94 north of Chicago (known locally as the Edens Expressway) was closed due to flooding caused by a power outage at a pumping station alongside the highway. Outdoor highways have pumping stations?

Transportation – Commuter trains were stopped due to debris and power lines on the train tracks. Other trains had to go extremely slow due to crossing gates being blown off by high winds. Whenever storms come, I have always thought trains were the safest and most reliable way to go.

Communications – Last night I was to attend the monthly meeting of Chicago networking group Circle of Progress. I did not go due to the weather, and I was going to help the organizer as he was dealing with weather issues at home. Ideally canceling the meeting would be the way to go, but the meeting is managed using Meetup.com, and nowhere in a Meetup user’s account is a field to store a phone number or emergency/last minute contact method.

Much of the things in our lives are defined as a reaction to something, whether they are laws or designs. Now I have a few more things to think about and plan for.

Business • Diversions • (1) Comments • Permalink

You can’t take it with you. Growing up Italian-American, I heard that phrase a lot because Italians always talk about death. You can start talking about pasta or baseball, but it would ultimately lead to the topic of death. And when receiving an unexpected gift from a relative, their response to your questioning the gift is they can’t take it with them, so they want you to have it so they can see you enjoy it before their, well, you know.

You may not be able to take money with you to the grave, but can you effect what happens to your money after you die? Especially if you realized near the end of your life you didn’t do such a good job with doling it out when alive? This is the core of The Ultimate Gift.

Though the book is fiction, it tells a true tale of the value of money and life and can resonate with anyone. The book was published almost a decade ago, but a recent mention in Forbes magazine and an upcoming movie based on the book have refocused attention on it. It is the story Howard “Red” Stevens, a successful entrepreneur who dies at the beginning of the story. At the reading of his will, his drooling relatives get their inheritances, with the exception of one, his great-nephew Jason. Red’s attorney, Ted Hamilton, is charged in Red’s will with leading Jason on a year-long journey, and at the end if he completes all 12 one-month steps, he gets to inherit “The Ultimate Gift” which is not revealed unless he completes all steps. Needless to say Jason is irked but agrees to go through the process, and the book tells of the learning odyssey by all parties involved.

I read this book right after The 4-Hour Workweek, and it turned out to be a good order to read them. It continued my thinking of how to evaluate how we spend our time and what is truly important in life. As Red Stevens learned this in life, he reassured my thinking of how we can only affect what happens going forward, and cannot change the past. This is important from an entrepreneur’s standpoint for if we fail or don’t do as planned, we can always try again!

It is a short book and a quick read. Each month of the journey is interesting, and I was compelled to want to finish the book to find out if Jason gets The Ultimate Gift and what it is. If you’re looking for a light-hearted read this is a good book you can read on a single flight. And I would not be complete if I didn’t point out there is a reference in the book to my beloved New England Patriots, as the attorney is based in Boston.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Book Take-Aways • Diversions • (0) Comments • Permalink

Congratulations to my friends at The UPS Store at 230 S. Clark Street in Chicago’s Loop on their first anniversary of business today. Where many may think a first anniversary for a business isn’t something to celebrate, I believe every year of a business should be recognized.

The UPS Store franchises provide many services, namely mailbox and shipping services, as well as printing and copying. I started working with them in the fall of last year shortly after they opened, after my frustrations with the lack of service from the US Postal Service, including blatant damage to my mail – I guess “do not bend or fold” doesn’t mean what it used to, but I digress.

Shortly afterwards I moved the mailing address of Dunkirk Systems to The UPS Store where it is today. The staff has gone out of their way to help me, from calling me when certain mail and packages arrive to advice on shipping to actual shipping services. I feel they are looking out for my best interest, and there’s nothing more an entrepreneur can ask for!

If you are in downtown Chicago today, stop by to wish them well and tell them I sent you.

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To visit the Web sites of the 4 major sports teams in Boston, one would enter the following into their browser’s address bar – redsox.com, patriots.com, celtics.com and bruins.com. If you click on those links, you will see that 3 of them will get you to where you want to go, and one goes to a domain name parking page.

Boston’s hockey team is not the only one that doesn’t own the basic name of their team. This story details the domain names teams in the 4 major sports leagues – baseball, football, hockey and basketball and who owns what. The Bruins are in good company with the other teams in the NHL in not owning the team name.

When you look at the name of teams, it is not surprising that someone else owns such generic terms as lions, rams, penguins and blues. Granted many of these pages are domain name parking pages with ads. And providing they are not attempting to violate the trademark of a sports team, why should their current owners not own them?

A recent case highlighted this with regards to the ownership of angels.com, held by someone in South Korea. I had reported on it previously but it is worth mentioning again here, and you can read the full text of the case here. Even though the owner offered to sell the domain name to MLB and the Los Angeles Angels for US$300,000.00, the case came down to the fact that the owner was not squatting on the name, leveraging the brand of the baseball team. If you look at the site at angels.com, it is a mere postcard with text in Korean (if anyone out there reads Korean, please let me know what it says).

Those teams that do not own just the name as their domain name own names with the city/state and the team name. If someone else bought chicagobears.com, the Monsters of the Midway certainly would have a claim to it. The Bears and the other teams have a recognizable domain name that will lead someone to their Web site from the address bar entry of the team name, and most certainly from a Web search. And not owning bears.com was not the reason they did not win the Super Bowl.

As a Boston sports fan, it is not surprising that the Bruins don’t own bruins.com, an online reflection of their performance over the last quarter century, but I digress.

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I got tagged by David Dalka on a topic that has been going around the blog world – to post 8 random things about myself. So here goes:

1. I used to collect business cards. I passed along most of them to other collectors, but I still have cards from Bill Gates and Steve Case.

2. I was once in the studio watching a live broadcast of NFL Sunday Countdown at the ESPN Studios in Bristol, CT.

3. I was the general manager of my college radio station, WNEK-FM, which is why I still have records.

4. I used to own a Penny-Farthing bicycle – I won it in a raffle. As I could never ride the thing, I sold it to a bike shop that had the old-style English cycle as its logo.

5. I am 100% Italian-American.

6. I have been a New England Patriots season ticket holder since 1993.

7. I still own the TRS-80 Model 4 computer I owned in high school.

8. I have been to 12 countries.

Now to return the favor, I am tagging the following 8 people:

Mark Ashley
Mike Carruth
Justin Chen
Jason Jacobsohn
Clay Parker Jones
Matt Maldre
Drew Myler
Wendy Piersall

Of course there is no obligation to post, but it's more for fun and to share a little about ourselves. And so it continues.

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