Chicken is a Four Letter Word!

Ok, so I am finally ready to reveal ‘what happened in Vegas’ last week.  My buddy Chad and I decided to go out for dinner one night after attending the MIX conference all day.  But first we had to have some drinks. 3 hours and innumerable cocktails later we are famished and basically plastered. We walk outside,  trying to swim through the mental fog,  and think of a restaurant to go to when a real nice guy on the strip hands us a flyer.

Never pick a restaurant based on the street dudes on the strip that hand out those flyers. We did. The guy gives me the flyer and says “You gonna like dis joint- it a upper-comer”. Great I think- a hot tip on a little known Vegas restaurant with fantastic food- a hole in the wall that no one else knows about- lets go! So we hop a cab and give the address.  Cabbie says ‘Ya mon- I take you to the Chicken Ranch’.  Oh boy- even the local cabby knows about this place- must be good- I can’t wait to get some of that juicy, home-cooked style chicken. I would be salivating but the alcohol has drained my body of all water and my mouth is like sandpaper and my head is starting to pound a tad.

Just as the cab is about to go, the cabbie decided he first has to stop and chat with some friends hanging out on the corner- ‘A minute mon- got to get directions’. It appears the cabbie pays his friends for the ‘directions’ as he hands over money and they slip him something wrapped in tin foil.  Odd- but I think nothing of it as I’m starving and drunk and really want to dive into that chicken.

Just as the cabbie returns and opens the door, police lights appear out of nowhere and we’re suddenly surrounded by cops. Maybe it’s time we left, I think, and head over to McDonalds. Cabbie says ‘take your money back mon since we didn’t go no where’ and hands me some cash. So I stumble out of the cab into the glaring lights and am immediately tackled by Vegas PD, handcuffed, and placed face down on the pavement. Mmmmm, chicken, I think as my face is squashed into something on the pavement that resembles rancid beef fat. ‘Whats this?’ the officer asks as he takes the money the cabbie gave me which upon closer inspection appeared to also contain the tin foil the cabbies friends gave him. It turns out the tin foil didn’t contain directions.

So now I’m starving, dehydrated, head pounding, handcuffed, face-down on the pavement in rancid beef fat, and getting busted for drugs. How much worse could it possibly get? Then they do the alcohol test on me- ahhh- public intoxication- that will look good on my record. The paper in my hand the guy on the street gave me as a restaurant recommendation- the police seem interested in that as well.

Turns out the Chicken Ranch doesn’t really serve chicken. Soliciting prostitution- wow- I am really, really loving Vegas. Starving, dehydrated, head pounding, handcuffed, face-down on the pavement in rancid beef fat, busted for drugs and public intoxication and soliciting prostitution.  Jackpot! Seven-Seven-Seven!! Can’t wait to tell my Mom about the Vegas trip.

By the way, I don’t eat chicken anymore.

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What if OneNote was in The Lord of The Rings, The Two Towers?

What if OneNote Starred in the Lord of the Rings Two Towers? The script might look something like this…And now, a scene from the OneNote version of the Two Towers…

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“OneNote to rule them all,
OneNote to find them,
OneNote keeps your notes and ideas,
and with software binds them”

<Éowyn laughs  and looks back at Aragorn with the sun behind her and the wind in her hair. At that particular moment, Aragorn seems enchanted by Éowyn’s light-hearted image. That night. Aragorn could not sleep and smokes his pipe as he thinks of Arwen.>

Arwen: The light of OneNote does not wax and wane… It is mine to share with whom I will… Like my heart…And my ideas…And my research… Go to sleep…

<Flashback: Aragorn is lying on a chaise in Rivendell. He opens his eyes and sees Arwen before him, smiling down at him.>

Aragorn <checking OneNote>: According to my personal OneNote notebook, I am asleep. This is a dream. And I’m recording this audio in OneNote so I can review it in the morning…

Arwen: <Bends down to kiss him> Then it is a good dream. Sleep…but don’t forget to save your notebook…wait…OneNote automatically saves your document so you could actually use it in your sleep if necessary…never mind

<She kisses him lightly on the lips and then steps away to look out upon Rivendell. Aragorn closes his eyes but for a while. He looks over at Arwen.>

Aragorn (In elvish): You told me once that this day would come. I created a new section in OneNote to capture my notes when you told me that

Arwen (Also in elvish): <Turns to look at Aragorn> This is not the end… it is the beginning. The enlightenment of OneNote will be with you always. Begin a new notebook as you will, when you will. In fact, since you must go with Frodo because that is your path, it might be a good idea to document the itinerary and maps in OneNote so you don’t get lost

Aragorn (Still speaking elvish though his tongue is getting tired from the twisty elvish words, so he slightly slurs his speech): <Walks over to Arwen> My path is hidden from me.

Arwen (yes- she is still speaking elvish as well- stop asking): It is already laid before your feet. On the computer on the floor in front of you. In the OneNote notebook I created for you on our anniversary. How could you forget you beast…Men! But I digress…You cannot falter now. You must rely on the power of OneNote to illuminate your path…if you can’t find your path use the search capabilities in OneNote- they’re awesome.

Aragorn: Arwen…my love…my One…Note

<Arwen hushes him, resting her fingers on his lips. As her hands moves down to rest on the OneNote pendant around Aragorn’s neck, he clasps her hand in his and they gaze into each other’s eyes, dreaming of shared notebooks on SharePoint servers.>

Arwen (elvish, shmelvish): If you trust nothing else… trust this. Trust OneNote.

<They kiss. The kiss is automatically video recorded in a new section of their shared IHeartOneNote notebook, and a time stamp is placed on the page>

OK, so it it has been a slow work at week and I couldn’t help myself. That’s all I have to say.

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OneNote in 10 words or less

So, by now you all know that I spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about OneNote and how we collectively can spread the word. You may also know that I work at a marketing agency which for the most part has an extremently high pain-in-the-butt factor. Anyhoo, the other day, I attended a client meeting in which one of the Account Directors actually had something useful to offer. She was trying to get the client to describe in one sentence what the product is. Surprisingly, this was freakin hard to do.

So, this led me down the road of thinking about the one sentence description for OneNote. Or better still, the ‘no-more-than 10-word’ description. Something you could put on a T-shirt. Or the banner graphic of a community site dedicated to that product kind of thing.

I thought I’d start out by seeing how those marketing geniuses over Microsoft describe OneNote. This is what they have:

Office OneNote 2007 is a digital notebook that provides people one place to gather their notes and information, powerful search to find what they are looking for quickly, and easy-to-use shared notebooks so that they can manage information overload and work together more effectively.

What a yawn fest!

My goal is to create a Top 10 List of less than 10 word descriptions of OneNote that are t-shirt or site banner-worthy and I need your help because many many brains are much better and more creative than one – however big it is!

For inspiration, take a look at the Best blog Taglines around the internet. I think my favorite is a toss up between The Superficial: Because you’re ugly and Newshounds: We watch FOX so you don’t have to.

Here’s some really, really bad ones I came up with (there was no alcohol involved which is why they are bad).

OneNote: Turning your brain into a digital 4-ringed binder

OneNote: Your ideas in one place, organized, dearchable.

OneNote: A super slurper for ideas.

Yikes. Can you see why I need your help?

Add your ideas to the comments area below and I’ll compile them into the top ten list.

Thanks in advance.

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PS I received some via Twitter:

From Cathy: OneNote: a safe place for ideas so they can bloom

From Dan:  An intuitive, multi-purpose electronic canvas integrated with MS Office.

From Greg: OneNote, the most understated yet powerful software out there!

From Marc: OneNote:  the application where you can type everywhere

From Joe: Ten words or less, that good sir is quite impossible

These were provided by members:

In corporate conflict, whoever has the best notes wins.

The organized part of my mind

A multi-tabbed, multi-use, multi-tasking digital livesaver!

The fastest way to an empty Inbox!

Your life Database.
or

Your place to store stuff and know you can find it again. (OK, too long.)

How about –

Where to go to find out where you’ve been?

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I’d rather bleed out my eyeballs than go through that again!

How many of you actually take the bus to work? Given the economy these days I thought “What the heck, maybe I can be a little green, give back to Mother Earth and also save a few bucks in gas– I’ll take the bus to work”.  Yeah- that was a good idea.

First- if you hadn’t heard, it rains in Seattle a lot. And it’s cold. So I had to stand out in the cold rain waiting for the stupid bus to get there,  which it did about 20 minutes late. So now I’m wet, cold, and late for work. I get on the bus, and it’s packed–no available seats- so I have to stand there, dripping,  with my cold leg muscles knotting up like a son-of-a-bitch. And stinky in there- gawd- did someone leave a dead skunk under a seat? There’s a woman jabbering at me in some language that sounds like Klingon- ‘Me no speaky Klingon,  lady’

I attempted to say, but just as the words were about to leave my  mouth some drunk guy barfs all over the floor spattering my shoes and pants with vomit–what with the shock of that,  all that came out of my mouth was ‘grrrglbickyfrackysprk’  and I immediately closed my mouth in fear of projectile vomit entering my vocal cavity. So being cold, wet, knotted, jabbered at, vomit abused, and late for work, I figured it couldn’t get any worse. But no- I was as wrong about that as I was in deciding to take the bus in the first place. The bus blew a tire out. That only took about 1.5 hours to get fixed before we were on our merry way again.

By then I was almost speaking fluent Klingon and could fairly well understand the jabbering lady- essentially she was telling me that my fly was open and that in her culture that would be considered a marriage proposal, but I wasn’t her type. Finally made it to work, get to the security door where I need to pull out my electronic card that opens the door which I keep in my wallet- but wait- my wallet is no longer in my back pocket. And I thought the guy behind me kept touching my hiney because he was being friendly.

I’m taking my car to work from now on.

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Using OneNote for managing your Fantasy Football Life!

Here’s a great one for all you fantasy football types (which here is Seattle let’s us keep our minds off how much the Seahawks are currently sucking!

You may want to get ready for next year’s Fantasy football by by implenting the system described below. It may give you some ideas about organizing other activities you are fantatical about 🙂

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You fantasy league players know the pains of carrying several draft cheat sheets and sorting though mounds of papers telling you that you should “Forget last season, this year [insert player name] will be the man for his team as well as the sleeper in the league.”

Riii-iii-ght…..I like my method with OneNote much better; especially when the League office has an open WiFi connection to check on player injuries and updates….

Instead of dropping some dough on Fantasy Football magazines, I found that there are plenty of free draft analysis sites available, so why not just use them? I could have used a dartboard and player rosters too; one of these years I might try it.

I set up a new Notebook in Microsoft OneNote 2007, since you can have multiple notebooks in this version. Armed with my “Football” notebook, I proceeded to create folder tabs for each position as shown. There’s an “Overall” tab because the site I used had an overall ranking of all players in the draft, regardless of position. The “My Team” tab is just a spot for me to ink my players names and positions. I could have done this by using a unique highlighter pen on my other tabs, but I wanted a consolidated listing of my team.

I opted not to use the built in “Send to OneNote” feature within IE 7, simply because some of the lists were too long, meaning I’d have to scroll during the draft. It would be easy enough to scroll around, but I wanted to minimize activity since the draft clock is always ticking. Instead, I used the Tablet PC Snipping Tool to grab the recommended picks and placed the clippings in the appropriate notebook section.

Armed with my strategy, I grabbed the 4th spot of 12 in the league and proceeded to run down my notebook by position. I changed my pen to a yellow highlighter in OneNote and as each player was chosen, I immediately “crossed them off”, both on the position page and the overall page. When it was my turn to pick, it was easy to scan down the lists and see the best players remaining at each position. Hmm…I already have the number one rated TE in Antonio Gates, but I see folks passed Chris Cooley up and I’ll need a TE for week 3 since Gates has a bye…..got ‘em!

Oh and let’s not forget the instant search capability of OneNote. Even though all of my data was essentially in images of screen clippings, I could easily search for any player and OneNote found every instance of them in my notebook. This was helpful to quickly see where a player was ranked on his position page as well as the overall page. Hmm…how is Warrick Dunn looking this year?

This approach with OneNote might not have got me the best team in the league, but I wasted no time in my picks; while others were flipping loose pages and scanning through their magazines, I had everything I needed in my hands and I don’t think any of my picks took more than 10 seconds to choose. Again, this approach isn’t rocket science, but the intention is to show unique uses for mobile technology in the hopes that you can apply your own mobile tech solutions.

For the record, here’s my team; they’re all on the bench until I pick my lineup…

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What if OneNote met the Master Chief?

My mind works in mysterious ways…I don’t understand why I think of this stuff but here it goes.  I was wondering what would happen if OneNote was in the video game Halo and met the Master Chief. I was thinking the interaction might go something like this:

OneNote (talking loudly): Chief! We’re being overrun by Covenant armor- we’re not going to make it!

Master Chief (calmly): We’ll make it

OneNote (panicked): How can you be so sure? There’s two of us in here now…

Master Chief (confidently): Well…at least I know I’ll make it with my mjolner armor…I’m sure of that. You might be Grunt bait though

OneNote (scared silly): Crap…I’m accessing my ‘Halo Map’ notebook I downloaded from xbox.com…searching…looks like there is a cave—-right there…it’s not a natural formation…so it must lead somewhere…

Master Chief (with disdain): duh

OneNote (with significant pain): I’m taking plasma rifle hits!! Fortunately they are a lot like video clips so I can absorb them into a new section I created in my ‘Oh Crap I’m Going to Die’ notebook

Master Chief (trying to distance himself): I’m not sure I can save you

OneNote (assuredly): Don’t worry, I can save my self-  I constantly save myself automatically if you didn’t know

Master Chief (getting fed up): You talk too much

OneNote (reaches for plasma grenade): Yeah- well I do have significant audio capabilities- you want to make something of it?

Master Chief (smirking): Are you sure you want to do that- it’s not like you have your big brother Office buddies here to help you. You can’t stand alone.

OneNote (proudly):  Hey- I’m kind of a big deal now. I’m all growed up.  I can pull my own weight.

Master Chief (meleeing a Grunt): fantastic…wunderbar…uh kind of busy right now- think you can help?

OneNote (pulling out mobile device): Hold on- I’m synching with my mobile now with my built-in synch capabilities…there it is..Cortana’s phone number (ohhh yeah- giggedy). Cortana- we need evac now!

(Pelican swoops in and picks them up)

OneNote (curious): by the way, you never take off that armor do you?  Not even the helmet?

Master Chief: nope

OneNote: it must smell pretty awful in there…I mean…not showering and stuff

Master Chief: I have no response to that-  it’s a non-point

OneNote (holding nose): Roger that Chief.  OneNote out.

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