Archive for September, 2007
September 30, 2007
Above image is from AllPosters.com.
The kids and I just got back from visiting my best friend and her family in a town 2 ½ hours drive Southeast (I think) of Austin. Those who know me probably know that I’m directionally challenged. 
For the first time in the history of driving to her house, my 5 year old son did not take even the briefest of naps. He is a non-stop talker. If you’ve ever seen that car commercial where the girl is talking when her dad puts her in his seat and is still talking after he closes the door and opens his door and starts putting on his seatbelt…that’s our son.
However, on this trip he did spend some time observing the landscape and listening to songs on my new iPod nano (via the car stereo) that I got because Erin recently purchased a new Mac and it came with it. Consequently, I only heard the phrases “Are we there yet?” and “When will we get there?” and “Man, that’s a long time!” oh maybe a dozen or so times. My younger daughter slept through most of the trip. I eventually told him if he asked me one more time that I wouldn’t let him do XXX. I can’t even remember what it was that I told him that he couldn’t do. That helped him bite his tongue for the last say 30 minutes of the ride. Overall, however, I enjoyed the relative pleasantness of the drive.
It got me to wondering why we are all so impatient about getting to where it is we are going. As adults we don’t usually freak out about how long it will take to get to a physical destination because we have a better sense of time than a 5 year old does. But often we say things like:
- When will my company be profitable?
- When will my daughter be potty trained?
- When will I close my first big sale?
- When will I be able to hire someone to help me with this task?
- When will I get an uninterrupted night of sleep? (a.k.a., when will my son sleep through the night without waking up and/or stay in his own bed?)
- Are we there (at goal x, y, or z) yet? Why aren’t we there yet?
The big difference I’ve seen between kids and adults is that when kids do get there they are genuinely excited to have gotten there. When we arrived at my friend’s house my kids jumped out of the car and immediately wanted to play, swim, swing, etc. with my friend’s son. Many adults and business people I’ve seen (including myself) get to where they were going, don’t spend enough time excited about getting there, and then start the list of questions over and this time they might be:
- When will my company be more profitable than Company X?
- When will my daughter quit talking back to me?
- When will I close a multi-million dollar sale?
- When can I fire this person who really can’t help me with any tasks?
- When will I get an uninterrupted night of sleep? (a.k.a., when will my son return from that party so I can quit worrying that he’s lying dead in some ditch somewhere?)
- Are we going to make it to retirement? Why aren’t we able to retire yet? Should we retire yet?
Then I think about National Geographic documentaries that show native, aboriginal tribes in certain places around the world. I always feel that those people seem truly content and if I look into their eyes through the TV glass, I’m 100% sure they don’t have similar questions going through their minds. Of course they might wonder where they will find their next meal, but they just don’t look stressed about it. Funny, isn’t it? 
p.s. My son was so worn out with all the fun he had that he ended up sleeping about 3/4 of the way on the drive back home!
September 29, 2007
Wendy Piersall at eMoms at Home is at it again. She just created a Home Business & Entreprenuer Feedburner Ad Network and invited little ‘ole me and my entrepreMusings blog to join! It looks like it will be really cool. So now people who subscribe to my RSS feed will see links to relevant information about home business and entrepreneurship at the bottom of some of my posts and hopefully I’ll make a little extra cash to help fund R&D for Babble Soft along the way. Wendy is just so innovative and most importantly inclusive.
Thanks Wendy for letting me ride on your coattails.
September 27, 2007
We are in the midst of potty training our almost 2 ½ year old girl. Just last week, I sent her to pre-school wearing a Huggies Pull-Up (yes she likes the Cars ones) and 3 pairs of Happy Feet underwear that I got at Target. She came back wearing underwear and had no accidents that day. I was impressed. Unlike our son, who mastered the poo poo part first, she seems to be going for the pee pee part first, which makes for not-fun underwear clean-up. 
Erin was stressed that we missed her sweet spot for training a while back because we tried a few weeks ago and she didn’t seem phased at all about soiling her underwear so we went quickly back to diapers for a little while, but I wasn’t worried. I knew she’d eventually get it…definitely before she was 13!
Some of the techniques we used on our son didn’t work for her. Apparently we really lucked out with our son. I heard horror stories about how hard it was to train boys. Thankfully, our non-sleeping son (he’s 5 and he still wakes up at night) made the potty training part of his life fairly easy for us. He started going poo poo in the potty a few months after his 2nd birthday…which I’ve been told is unusual. I’ve heard that most kids get the pee pee part down before the poo poo part.
When he was 2 ½, I was about 8 months pregnant. He was going to pre-school so the teachers had a system of lining up all the kids against the wall and having them take turns going potty. The teachers then said “He’s ready. Send about 5 pairs of underwear and we’ll work with him.” I was thinking to myself “Well OK, I don’t know. I want to wait until after our daughter arrives to start training him because there’s no way I can make a mad dash to the bathroom while carrying him being 9 months pregnant!”
So I reluctantly agreed and took him to school in a diaper (because I didn’t want to be cleaning a car seat mess) and gave them some Spiderman underwear. He had a few accidents and then within days they even took off the Pull-Up during nap. I would pick him up and put a diaper on him for the 25-30 minute ride home because there was no-way I was going to clean up a car seat! Erin dropped him off one day and the teacher asked him if we were putting our son in a diaper when we got home and he said “Well my wife is 9 months pregnant and she can’t…” and the teacher, who has helped train hundreds of kids, interrupted him and looked at him with a no BS look on her face and said “If you don’t go all the way right now, you will live to regret it.” You have to know the teacher…if she says something, you do it no questions asked, and I’m so glad we did.
It was a bit inconvenient at first but we muddled through it and he was trained before our daughter was born. Phew. It made life much easier for us. I think he had day-time one accident after she was born which was understandable given all the changes going on.
Important: When someone says their kid is potty-trained they usually mean during the day hours when they are awake. Before starting the process I kept thinking “Wow that kid is only 2 and she’s potty trained…even when she naps and sleeps?” In 90% (unscientific generalization on my part) they still wear a diaper or Pull-Up at night and/or nap. Our son was not night potty trained until just after he turned 4. We put him in underwear the night of his 4th birthday. A couple of accidents later, he was done and we haven’t looked back!
So our daughter looks like she might figure out the whole pee pee thing in a few weeks but we’re still working on the poo poo part. She just won’t tell us when it’s happening. You have to be right there and see the look on her face and rush her to the potty just in time. She’ll go when she’s there but she won’t tell us before hand. If she’s quiet for too long, I ran frantically around the house to find her to see if she’s in progress.
Also, she will just sit on the toilet to sit there, laugh, and pull the toilet paper out. Our son would sit there (and pull the toilet paper out) but 95% of the time something came out! I actually purchased one potty book when we were training him and found the techniques the author presented to be very useful. In particular, we picked a book he liked to be his potty book (which happened to be Who Lives in the Pond – baby einstein book), and we read it when he sat on the toilet. However, she wasn’t too into that book or others. Although we bought one of those small potties, we barely used it because it’s not pleasant cleaning it up. See link to the toilet training book below:
I hope our luck holds out with our daughter with regards to potty training. The process further goes to show that every child is different. If you have any ideas to share, please feel free to leave a comment.
September 25, 2007
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet
But the same doesn’t go for blog names! (Sorry Shakespeare) My new blog design is finally ready to announce to the world. It was tough picking a new name and design. I wanted to capture who I am (a South Asian, high-tech woman entrepreneur) and what I’m trying to do (i.e., shift the definition of entrepreneurship to one that I outline on my About page) while at the same time including the biggest parts of my life as mother, wife, daughter, sister, cousin, neice, aunt, and friend. So I set out to come up with a name and design that I thought would allow me write about all of these things.
Last week I attended a meeting where Gail Evans, former VP at CNN and author of Play Like A Man, Win Like A Woman, spoke (more about that later), and she said she can’t understand why people always talk about work/life balance. She said we have one life and our work and our personal stuff are all part of that life so why make it sound as if work and life are opposing factors? My work is part of my life and my family/kids/friends are part of my life. So when the name entrepreMusings was quietly said during a discussion on the topic by our brilliant volunteer, college student Marketing Intern who we pay with the un-spendable but highly leveragable currency of experience, it just seemed to fit.
Prior to that eureka moment, we threw around:
- entrepreMuse – which I refer to myself on this blog, but we didn’t feel it was the right name for the blog
- entrepreMusing – didn’t sound quite right until the s was added to the end.
- Entrepreneuse (a female entrepreneur)– I almost went with that one but several friends said it sounded like entrepre ‘noose’ to which I replied well being an entrepreneur does sometimes feel like you have a noose around your neck! Plus there were some others around using the term (e.g., Entrepreneuse Live)
- A bunch of others that were in jest and not appropriate to note on the blog. Name creation is a crazy, unscientific process…at least in this house.
As I mentioned in my How to Create a New Website post, I found Swank Web Style and Karen (who blogs at Vodkarella) from a link on Mocha Momma’s site. I picked the image at iStockphoto of the woman babbling on the phone, and Karen modified it to something that I liked. The woman had some blush on that made her look like she had a skin disease and some other features that I requested to be changed. After some back and forth (and my design fits, last second changes, and design seizures), late nights and both of us having to deal with sick kids and her having to deal not only with sick kids but also a sick dog, a broken toe, and moving houses it was finished and it was COOL!
She then turned the original design over to Vicki (who did our new corporate site) and Vicki did everything in her power to make it work! After this new theme design process, I have a huge amount of appreciation and respect for those designers who create free WordPress themes. (Check out Randa’s cool new Pink for October Free WordPress Theme.) The browser compatibility issues, the widget alignment issues, the blog stats integration issues all surfaced when you least expected them, but Vicki patiently, meticulously, and kindly addressed them all!
Now I can (hopefully) blog all of the post ideas that have been swimming around in my head, and oh yeah actually get some other work done such as selling, marketing, public relations, calling people, setting up partnerships, etc.
I hope all of you all like the new direction. Please help me change the world view of entrepreneurship and parenthood by entrepreMusing with me one blog post and one comment at a time!
September 24, 2007
We just updated to WordPress 2.3. So far so good. We’ve only noticed some image storage issues but for the most part the images are displaying correctly on the blog. I’ve updated Feedburner, Technorati, and MyBlogLog. Now we are off to watch the season premiere of Heroes! Thank goodness for DVR technology!!!
Posted by Aruni
9:03 pm •
blogging •
September 23, 2007
Bloggers everywhere seem to be writing about the much anticipated WordPress 2.3. We will be upgrading as soon as possible as well as making several other blog related changes such as: migrating our URL from www.babblesoft.com/blog to www.entrepremusings.com, finalizing the new blog theme (it’s pretty much ready), updating all of our feed information on FeedBurner, Technorati, MyBlogLog, etc., etc.
Based on the following nice note from Technorati, my blog will unfortunately lose its ranking and authority when we change the URL, but I figured it was better to bite the bullet now rather than later…mostly because I don’t like bullets.
Hello Aruni,
Please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We’ve been experiencing a backlog in support and are working hard to address everyone. I’m afraid that since the URL of your blog is changing, we currently are unable to combine or transfer links or authority from one to another. This is because authority and links in our system are URL based. Once the URL does change, it is suggested to contact bloggers who have linked to you and inform them of the URL change. If they update the URL in their blogrolls these changes should be picked up and applied to your new URL as new links. Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any other questions. Thank you for using Technorati!
Best Regards,
Janice Myint
Customer Support Specialist
Technorati
As of 9:00 p.m. on September 23, 2007, our ranking is 210,401 with an Authority of 30. Soon we will be kissing those stats good-bye and starting over from scratch, which I guess would put me at a bazillion (not a Brazilian) or something. If you link to our site, I’d really appreciate it if you could update your link when you have a chance to www.entrepremusings.com. Thank you in advance.
If you are looking for some great info on WordPress 2.3, check out these posts:
Preparing for 2.3 by WordPress
Heads Up News on WordPress 2.3 by Lorelle on WordPress
WordPress 2.3 – What You Need to Know… by Problogger which refers to 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.3 by Technosailer.
Posted by Aruni
8:43 pm •
blogging •
September 21, 2007
We just went live with our new corporate website and since we did it in an unusual way, I thought the bootstrapping entrepreneurs would be interested in how we went about it. In my previous tech start-up when the task of creating a new website surfaced, we usually started with a blank slate which meant lots of discussion and meetings around color schemes, second guessing, back and forth arguments, feature/requirement changes and lots of time and money.
I have a bad eye for colors. I have a very hard time envisioning how things will look when they show up on the page (or on the walls of our house). I’m lucky if my or my kids’ clothes match. So this time we started with a template. Yes, a template. One we found at Template Monster. It was a flash template, but we decided not to use the flash piece because after the first two times you see it and hear it, it’s no longer very cool.
Erin and I attempted to transfer our previous corporate site information to the new site and modify the design and realized it was going to take much more time and skill than we had. So while I was looking for someone to design a new blog theme, I happened upon Swank Web Style by clicking on a link on Mocha Momma’s blog. I filled out their contact form, and was put in touch with Karen who designed our new blog theme (post about that to come). She introduced me to her partner, Vicki, for the corporate site work.
Vicki did an amazing job pulling our new corporate site together in a couple of weeks. It wasn’t as easy as any of us thought because of cascading style sheet (css) issues, alignment issues, tables vs. layers issues, etc. I didn’t know this but apparently most people design their websites now using WordPress so they can easily add/modify pages. Since we are used to the old-school way of designing web pages, neither Erin nor I were comfortable with using WordPress for this particular site…maybe the next one. I can only take on so much risk at one time.
Here’s the recipe:
- Find a template with the color scheme you like on a place like Template Monster
- Find a fabulous designer/coder/developer who will work until it’s done right (e.g., Vicki)
- Pick some of the most adorable pictures you can find on iStockphoto. iStockphoto is the greatest, most cost-effective site that I’ve come across for illustrations/pictures from anything from babies to lawnmowers. They now also do iStockvideo. The pictures are submitted by amateur and professional photographers and cost anywhere from $2 to $8 each. The pictures of babies and families were so cute/adorable that for about 2 seconds I thought about having another baby but then reality struck and I was reminded that all babies tend to look cute in pictures.
- Go back and forth a bit on layout and pictures.
- Experience a few late nights and Voila! You now have a great new website at a very reasonable cost in a reasonable amount of time!
September 20, 2007
So now that I’ve changed the name of the blog to entrepreMusings, how do I fit in baby tips? I have a lot of readers who search for baby tips and kid stuff so it will be interesting to see if that changes over time. I’m still shocked that my top viewed posts are on planning my son’s Transformer themed birthday party having close to 1,000 combined views already! There has been only one post that had more views in a single day than those two posts and that was the one I did on Oprah and Obama, but it was only the top post for one day. Go figure!
Since I am babbling about business, babies, and parenthood, those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship/business but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies. For those who have babies and are in business, these tips might be right up your alley. If you have babies and have no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know in business and encourage them to have a baby. As you know, it will change their lives!
We were blessed with two kids who were pretty good spitter uppers…our son more so than our daughter. If scary, eerie music had started playing in our house when they spit up, I would have been looking for a nearby exorcist.
Both of our kids also had ear infections and our daughter more so than our son (or maybe she just got them back-to-back…my memory is starting to fade on that particular torture). Of course our parents swore we never had ear infections growing up yet the doctor’s told us ear infections had a strong genetic tie. Anyhoo, I digress. I’ll do a tip on ear infections in the future. Here are some ideas that we tried that may help you bring down the amount of new baby spit-up a notch in your house:
- I’m sure you have all heard this before but try very hard to get baby to BURP after each feeding and even during a feeding. If you are breastfeeding, feed on one side then burp him, then feed on the other. If you are bottle feeding feed them a little, burp them, feed them some more, burp them, etc., etc. The biggest cause of spitting up is a gas bubble in your baby’s tummy.
- Feed your baby while he is sitting upright. Keep him upright for 20 or so minutes after feeding as well. This will help keep his stomach elongated and reduce the amount of potential gas bubbles.
- Sometimes baby just has a mild digestive issue (warning: consult your doctor please) and if so putting some acidophilus (the stuff that’s in yogurt) in her bottle or on the breast might ease a bit of her issues.
- You can try gas drops like Mylicon (generic brands at Target, Walgreen’s, etc. are significantly cheaper and have the exact same ingredients) but we found that we gave the drops to them more because the action of doing so made us feel useful, but honestly it didn’t seem to do much other than that. It just gave us another discussion item regarding ‘why just spent money on something that didn’t work but at the same time made us feel useful.‘
- Check out the information at Medline Plus (they have pictures) and kellymom for more detailed information and other ideas on how to address spitting up and reflux in a baby.
For those of you who don’t have babies or have not had kids yet, just be glad I did not include any pictures of babies spitting up…it’s not a pretty sight.
***
Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to babblesoft blogger for possible inclusion. Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!
September 19, 2007
Earlier today, I read a post on Wendy Piersall’s eMoms at Home blog about the Technorati A-List. As of September 19, 2007 Wendy has a Technorati rank of 2,115. Yes, her blog is in the top 5K at Technorati. Awesome Wendy! Interestingly, Technorati is not reflecting her last several posts yet so her rank is probably even better than that.
One of her goals is to make it into the top 100 blogs list. She ponders that goal and highlights some interesting facts in her post (see below)…
“Before I begin, here are some fast facts:
- Yet, more women than men are bloggers, with 20% of American women who have visited blogs having their own versus 14 % of men (Synovate.com).
Before you guys get your tightie whities in a knot, this isn’t an accusation. Here’s a few more stats for you:
According to ComScore, the most visited blog topics break down as follows:
- 43% of people visited a political or news blog
- 17% of people visited a “Hipster” blog
- 15% of people visited a tech blog
- 8% of people visited a women’s blog
- 8% of people visited a media blog
- 6% of people visited a personal blog
- 3% of people visited a business blog
And keeping in mind that blogs in general are in the tech industry, overall for every one woman employed in high-tech, there are 4 men alongside her.”
Her post was prompted by a post made by Pearl at Interesting Observations called Male-Female Ratios of 50 Influential Blogs and more. Fascinating information! I wonder how they determine the gender of their readers. I don’t know how many of my readers are men and how many are women. Is that a new Feedburner Flare that I’m unaware of?
BTW, I love Pearl’s avatar. I’m guessing it’s an elf but it also brings to mind a Vulcan. (I’m a sci-fi gal)!
I am not trying to get entrepreMusings in the top 100 because I know I don’t have the time to invest in making that happen right now, but I do want to support these women (and men whose blogs I read often) who do want to achieve that goal…just let me know how!
September 18, 2007
I have finally finished my posts on my experience attending the Working Mother Multicultural Conference (POWER: OWN IT. USE IT. SHARE IT.) Since the posts have been stretched out over the last couple of months, I thought it might be helpful to do a summary post for new readers.
I was given the great opportunity to receive a scholarship to attend the conference that was sponsored by JP Morgan Chase. Thank you! Thank You! THANK YOU! JP Morgan. Since we are bootstrapping Babble Soft, any money we can use to help our company grow is truly appreciated. It was one of the best (dare I say best!) conferences I have ever attended in my life, and I’ve been to many of them.
The picture (taken by Rohanna Mertens of Doug Goodman Photography) shows Carol Evans (in the fabulous pink suit), founder/CEO of Working Mother Media shaking hands with conference attendees and speakers. Thanks to Carol for envisioning and implementing such a great conference and helping create such a fabulous experience for all of us!
I recently got notice that Working Mother’s Media 3rd Annual Multicultural Women’s Town Hall meeting will be in Houston, Texas on October 18, 2007. Unfortunately, I can’t make it because that is the same week my husband, Erin, who is chair of the Austin Wireless Alliance, is coordinating the Texas Wireless Summit here in Austin and boy has he helped to get some amazing speakers for that event! The Who’s Who of Wireless is scheduled to be there.
Now for the good stuff. Here’s a summary of all the posts I wrote about my trip to New York and the conference experience:
Musings of a Texas Gal in NYC
Planes, Trains, and Subways
Working Mother Conference Opening – POWER
Dr. Bertice Berry, author of When Love Calls, You Better Answer and I’m On My Way, But Your Foot is On My Head
Instant Polling, sponsored by Ford Motor Company a downright fascinating summary of how the 700 attendees identified themselves and their thoughts about Power.
Exploring Power Dynamics in the Executive Suite, VP and C-level executives discuss their personal experiences on rising to the top
The Art of War for Women, written by Chin-Ning Chu
From the Mouths of Men, VP and C-level men discuss what it takes to put women in the corner office.
The Time Has Come for the Woman’s Century, a book review on The Art of War for Women
The Asians Shine, summarizes how the Asian attendees use or don’t use their Power in the workplace
The Hub Factor: Charisma, sharing Julia Hubbel’s thoughts on networking
Phew! I want to thank all of the people I wrote about who helped me make these posts as accurate and informational as possible. Your insights will help other people with decisions they may be making right now in their lives!
September 17, 2007
Now for the final workshop post on the Working Mother Multicultural Conference (POWER: OWN IT. USE IT. SHARE IT.) I attended back in July. It has taken me quite a while to get to it. It’s a good thing I don’t have deadlines on blog posts because my other deadlines would get in the way.
THIS IS THE CENTURY OF THE NETWORK. ARE YOU READY?
The last workshop I attended was called The Hub Factor: Capture Your Charisma and Make Your Connections Count! It was led by none other than Julia Hubbel, President of The Hubbel Group, Inc. and creator of The Hub Factor. I met some amazing people at this workshop including the two thought leaders who helped her lead the workshop:
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June Archer, VP Global Business Development and Licensing for GODIVA Chocolatier (Mmmm. Chocolate. They provided the chocolate covered strawberries at one of the breaks)
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Patricia David, Managing Director and Global Head of Diversity and Talent for Citi Markets & Banking.
Julia was a wonderful and engaging speaker. She opened the workshop by asking those of us who enjoyed networking, meeting new people, mingling, etc. to raise our hands. In a room of say 50+ people about 7-10 of us raised our hands (I was one of them). She then said: “You are the crazy ones. You are the weirdoes. Most people are scared stiff of meeting new people and speaking in public! So for the rest of us normal folks, here’s what we’re going to do…”
She then had us do an exercise where we wrote down three things that people would never guess about us and instructed us to meet other people in the room and ask them questions about themselves. It was a very interesting exercise and I learned a lot of neat things about people in the room.
She emphasized the importance of creating a space where the people we are talking to feel valued and powerful. People don’t want to hear your 30 second sales/elevator pitch…you first have to earn the right to give them the 30 second pitch by creating the right space. Some people can do this easier than others but she felt anyone could do it if they are genuinely interested in getting to know the other person.
I have seen this work first hand. I know that if I’m in a rush and want to get results right away, I won’t get the results I need, but if I give it a reasonable amount of time and really listen to the person I’m communicating with, the chance for doing business together increases even though it might take longer for something to happen. If nothing happens, at least we both made a postive connection in the world. Sometimes I get impatient and don’t stop to think what might be going on in their lives and forget that “an emergency on my part doesn’t constitute an emergency on their part.” Live and learn. Live and learn.
Julia had run out of business cards and had to rush out to catch a plane, but she asked for my card and promised to get in touch. I knew I was going to do a post on her workshop so I figured I would find her contact information from her website, but before I could do that a beautifully handwritten note showed up in my mailbox with her business card inside. I was pleasantly surprised and emailed her right away. She must meet tons of people so I was flattered that she would take the time to write a personal note to me.
I have also since communicated with both Pat and June. When I met June and told her what I was doing she said she knew people and had worked in the baby marketing world in a prior life and that she would connect me to some people who might be able to help. When we make it big (thinking positively), I’ll definitely order some of their chocolate covered strawberries for one of our events…primarily because I met her!
Pat told everyone in the workshop that she regularly schedules time to talk to anyone who wanted to talk with her and get her advice. She gave me her card and I left her a voice message soon after I returned to Austin half thinking I’d probably never hear from her again. Shortly thereafter her assistant emailed me to set up a 30 minute phone meeting. Amazing! She has already passed information on Babble Soft to a few people in her company. I’m not sure how I can help Pat, but if not her hopefully I can help someone else who will pass it on…
Needless to say I was impressed with this level of follow through by Julia, Pat, and June. I try hard to keep my commitments and am often surprised when people say they will do one thing and then don’t do it or don’t let you know why they weren’t able to do it. I’ve seen that happen so often that when people do follow through, I instantly know how they got to where they are today.
If you are interested in the topic of networking, check out Julia’s site. I’m a bit biased (he’s a friend) but you should also check out the blog of one of our local Austin networking gurus, Thom Singer, at Some Assembly Required.
September 16, 2007
I have lived in Austin for quite some time now but have never made it to the Austin City Limits music festival. Today we found ourselves right next door without even thinking about it. The ACL music festival is held at Zilker park which is near the newly renamed Town Lake. It’s now called Lady Bird Lake in honor of Lady Bird Johnson who passed away earlier this year.
The kids woke up around 6:00 a.m. (bleh) so since they don’t make it easy for us to stay in bed and sleep we were all up we decided to go for a walk near Lady Bird Lake. Tons of people and their dogs were out walking, running, and biking on the trail. It was one of those gorgeous spring-like mornings: sunny skies, 77 degrees, and a slight breeze. We went to feed some ducks, swans, fish, and turtles and then headed over to the playscape area. We were literally the only people there! The kids had the whole place to themselves. We think it’s because they had blocked off direct parking access to the playscape area because of ACL. We had walked in through the back way. We heard some of the bands practicing and saw the media vans and set-up crew through the fences. As we were leaving the park around 10:00 a.m. we started seeing the attendees filter in.
Maybe when the kids are older we can take them to the music festival but for now I’d rather stay away from the ear-drum smashing loud noises, crowds, and hot weather (usually 90+ degrees here in the afternoon).
Posted by Aruni
11:36 am •
Just For Fun •
September 13, 2007
Wendy Piersall just announced her new site and new business model: eMomsatHome.com Internet Home Business Magazine. Congratulations Wendy! In my opinion, she is one of the best examples I’ve seen of an entrepreneur helping to shift our perceptions of what entrepreneurship means.
To follow up on my last post on time-saving tips for parents, she has an excellent post called 25 Parent Productivity Tools for busy Moms, Dads, and Kids that you should check out.
We are still finalizing the new blog design and corporate site for Babble Soft. It always seems to take to the very last minute to get projects done. According to the 4 Hour Work Week, there is something called Parkinson’s Law that defines this phenomena. “Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It is the magic of the imminent deadline.” I haven’t had time to finish this book, but will write about it when I do. Needless to say I think it’s taking me more than 4 hours just to get through the book! Well we have missed the first deadline (9/12) for the current projects for a variety of reasons, so even if I have to learn how to do website design/development (or beg my husband to help me) it will get done by the new deadline!
Oh, and did I mention our daughter has been home sick most of yesterday and today? She’s better today but I am keeping her home to let her rest. Being able to be with my kids when they need me and not being stressed about not going into work is a big reason why I like working from home and being an entrepreMuse.
September 12, 2007
Sylvester Becker (a.k.a. The German Cowboy), co-founder of Austin Business Babes sent me a link to a post called time-saving websites a while back. Well I’ve been so busy with kid stuff, blog re-design work, corporate website updating work, press release creation for Baby Say Cheese, that I have only now had time to post about it! I’m crossing my fingers that most of the current work projects will be done next week…which means it’s on to another set of projects.
Sure, the Web can be a big time-waster (gofugyourself.com, anyone?), but if used wisely, it can be a great time-saver. Check out these 12 sites every busy parent should know about. By Mark Frauenfelder. Click here to read the post. He has some neat ideas about how to save time with Travel, Activities, Shopping, etc. Check it out!
Posted by Aruni
8:02 pm •
FYI •
September 10, 2007
Oh man, I hope to meet Oprah one day. I admire her on so many levels. I don’t get to watch her show often (but most of the ones I’ve seen are great!) because I’m too busy working, hanging out with the kids, or trying to get some sleep.
Here’s the comment I left on the SVMs Blog:
Thanks for the great re-cap! I find it wonderful to be part of a very diverse crowd because diversity is our future. Plus, I personally find it more interesting than being in a sea of White.
Bush was a governor and I’m not sure that really helped America or him do the best job.
To me the questions to answer are: Are they smart AND intelligent? Are they trustworthy? Do they listen? Can they learn quickly? Are they willing to acknowledge mistakes, make course corrections, and move on? Are they a good family man or woman? Are they genuine? Etc.
I hope to get the opportunity to meet Oprah in my lifetime!
I don’t know enough politically to offer an educated opinion on all of the candidates, and I will refrain from doing so here on this blog because everyone has the right to their own opinion. I mainly wanted to bring up for discussion the subject of being experienced or not when it comes to being judged on whether someone is the ‘right’ person for a particular job, to start a company, to run for election, etc. What do you think?
