Sometimes living in a small town is incredibly annoying, but much of the time, it has surprising perks. One of these is my bank. Up until recently I banked with one of the big box banks, but their exorbitant fees cost me thousands of dollars, so I switched. Their crappy customer service didn’t help either.
Now I bank with a small, local credit union. I love it! Personal and friendly, and always willing to go the extra mile, it’s worth the inconvenience of having only a few branches. Plus, as long as the check is under $2500, you can scan it in with your scanner and deposit it without ever leaving your house. I think that’s pretty cool, though I wish they’d up the limit to accommodate someone like me with clients who like to pay all at once.
Back to the point of my story. I recently bought a MacBook Pro 15″. This is replacing the MacBook 1,1 13″ I’d been using. There is nothing wrong with the 13″ older model, and I’ll be selling it to a friends – I just flat-out outgrew it. I needed something with more room and more RAM for work. Enter the new MacBooks. Expect a review on AppleGrrl of the new model, too – I love it. Hello, 7 hour battery life.
My bank calls me this morning to make sure I meant to write the check. Normally I am a frugal spender, and they noticed the amount as being out of character for me. They wanted to check before they cleared it. Now how nice is that!? I assured her that yes, for once in my life, I actually did spend a large amount of money on myself (my last MacBook was bought refurbished at a huge price break), and she sent me on my way. But the fact that they go out of their way on that and other things makes me happy. They also keep an eye on gas stations that gouge customers with that silly $150 hold on charge cards used at the pump and send out a list every few weeks of stations to avoid because of it – if you follow my Utterli posts here, you will know that makes me smile for a reason.
So, I’m glad I made the jump from a big box bank to a small town credit union. Are you happy with where you bank? If not, I’d suggest looking into your local credit union as well.
Fun networking event in Boston, with a great panel. See if you can spot me playing drums in Rockband in the video Thanks go out to Radian 6 (David Alston and crew) and Chris Brogan for putting the night together.
For a variety of reasons, my weekend feels put on hold. It was supposed to be super-productive. Yesterday was fully lost in personal issues. Today has been fully lost in various technology “fail” issues. Kind of wanting a do-over from Friday to now.
Yesterday (and Friday, actually) was important, but it consumed my thoughts for 24+ hours as I struggled to make an important decision. Did I make the right one? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, yesterday’s work piled on to today.
The workload was still doable, provided everything worked like it usually does. Between web hosts (not mine, the host of a client who does not want to switch) with technological problems causing two hours on the phone with tech support (and possibly more tomorrow), cell phone issues and other things not working as they usually do, I have managed to eek out maybe two hours of work. All day. Since getting up at 7AM to “get a jump on the day”.
So. Grrrumbly me will continue to plug away this evening, wishing the universe did do-overs…
Well, ok, not an “unboxing” a la Endgadget. More like a geeky picture of me geeking out about receiving my review copy of the book I wrote with Laura Fitton and Michael Gruen. A true labor of love, I am reedonkulously happy to see the actual book in print. And reedonkulously is TOO a word.
Want a copy? You can go in to your local bookstore after July 6th, or you can just click here.
I’m excited that the group project I worked on all winter, Twitter for Dummies, hits stores warehouses next week and stores first week in July (correction from Wiley). I can hardly believe it is finally wrapped, after months of working with awesome co-authors Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting and OneForty and Michael Gruen of We Are Nom to bring this major project to your doors.
I didn’t talk much about the book while we were writing it, on purpose. Having three authors plus feedback from Wiley on a project was a fun, sprawling process. Toss in a few “minor” Twitter changes over the course of writing it and you have some added challenging components to the mix.
I am very excited to have the book in stores, finally. We will each be (and in fact, have been) doing some promotion for the book individually and together when possible (we are spread out over three states). If you want to order the book, please feel free to click the link in the side bar, this link here or visit your local book store. If you want to talk to one or all of us about doing events or promotion around the book, you can contact us individually. Find the spearhead for the project, Laura Fitton, @pistachio on Twitter. Find Leslie Poston (me), co-author, @geechee_girl on Twitter, and find Michael Gruen, co-author @gruen on Twitter. You can also drop me an email for promotional activities.
What have we done to promote the book so far? Laura is speaking at Jeff Pulver’s #140conf today, and has several promotional and speaking events planned around the country. Michael has spoken at the NYC Book Expo recently. I’ve just been filmed for a new TV show in Maine which will air July 1 or thereabouts (most likely on WPXT, but stay tuned), and will also be on another station here in NH soon (project not wrapped yet, will announce here once I can). You can also hear me speak at the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce on June 18th. I also have some blog and print interviews lined up that I will link here as they happen.
Also, many, many thanks to Laura Fitton for wanting me on her co-author team with Michael Gruen. It was a blast to write a whole book about my favorite tool and favorite toy. It was even more fun merging our very different uses into one book to help YOU, the reader. If you look at our Twitter accounts, you can see that you are getting the blended best out of three ways you can use Twitter for yourself and your business – I think that ended up making the book a richer, more comprehensive guide (and proved a point I make often about Twitter use being a la carte).
I just had an a-ha! moment. I’ve long wondered why the evil PayPal continues to reign supreme in the online payment field, even though they are evil. I finally think I figured it out.
Google Checkout is run by a (somewhat less) evil company, but you don’t get your money in any way immediately or in any timely fashion. PayPal is immediate, and if you have the PayPal debit card – you can go grab it right after the buyer sends it. With Google Checkout you don’t see the money unless it is a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, and THEN you still have to wait five days on your bank’s end.
REALLY GOOGLE? What the hell. Make the access to money more immediate, like PayPal, please. Make deposits to banks on Nights and Weekends too. Heck, even my BANK has Sunday hours now – get with it.
I didn’t realize my griping mold post was the top post still. All week. Sorry about that extended nugget of negativity! Let me distract you by sending you over to Uptown Uncorked for today’s new post while I ponder what to write…
Also, have you joined the Friend Connect community for this blog? No? Have a Gmail account? You can use the ribbon at the bottom to do so. You can also do the same on Uptown Uncorked, by the way.
Thanks go out to Radian 6 (David Alston and crew) and Chris Brogan for putting the night together.