I don't often talk about the companies I work for, but I just wanted to do a shout out for Harbour Light Strategic Marketing. It is the creative agency that I have worked with since 1997 and the other half of Savvy Software (the creator of Savvy Content Manager).

Over the years Harbour Light has delivered fantastic web design for clients all over the country. We are based in New Hampshire, and so do quite a bit of work for organizations in the region (NH, ME, MA). While Harbour Light is well known for its web work it has strengths well beyond just web design. The identity/brand creation, graphic design and trade show work is fantastic and their creative direct mail and 3D mailers always impress me.

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Kavka tagged me with the Seven Random Things meme, so here you go in no particular order.

1. I once performed music in front of an estimated 1,000,000 people.  Yes I can play music.  Or used to anyway. I played saxophone (alto mostly) most of my school life.  At times in High School I would be in 3 or more music classes.  One year we were asked to perform in the Hollywood Christmas Parade.  All I remember is that it was VERY cold (unusually so), none of us could feel out fingers and playing music was near impossible.  The drill team came with us in their skimpy outfits and as cold as I was, I was feeling quite bad for them.  It was a fun trip all around even if we sounded horrible.

2. Even though I live in New Hampshire, I grew up in Pocatello, Idaho. My friends refuse to acknowledge that Idaho is a real state with real people haven't never met anyone from Idaho. When I tell them I am from ID, they claim I am making it up.  I love Idaho and visit when I can.  Pocatello is a great town, but I fear for the sprawl growth going on with bargain basement big box retailers and chain restaurants taking over.  ISU has an amazing music program.

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Just a quick update on whats going on in NH with the Ice storm.

We are without power, and have been since about 10pm last night. Virtually the entire city is. PSNH is our power supplier in most of the state. The biggest storm they had on record resulted in 55,000 homes without power. That was the ice storm of 1998. Right now 380,000 homes are without power, most of the southern part of the state. They think that number will go up as the day goes on and the temp lowers tonight. Mass, VT, and ME are in similar situations. Basically this storm and its damage is without precedent.

Image from NH Public Radio flickr feed.

Jen and I are doing just fine. Since we have no power, we have no heat, internet, tv etc. Water for us works ok, though not so warm :-).

The one spot in Portsmouth that has power is part of downtown. So the couple coffee shops and restaurants are packed with people going to eat, stay warm and get wireless internet. We are at the club for now and its working out great. We have recharged the phones and are feeling pretty comfortable.

We are told it could be a couple days before power, though we feel pretty confident that the more urban areas like ours will get power sooner then the rural areas so hopefully that means sometime today.

We have a place or two (with friends) to stay tonight if we need, and all the cities have now set up emergency shelters. The only concern I have at this point is freezing pipes so I may need to find a creative solution to keep the basement at least a little warm should this last into tonight.

Anyway, cell phones still work, but email will be periodic for now.

Again, we are doing just fine so don't worry to much. Just a big adventure, and frankly we are hanging out at a fancy club all day so have it pretty darn good.

Merry Christmas!

A few weeks ago our marketing company was contacted by CNN / Money.com for an interview regarding small business websites.  I thought the interview went well.  Our creative director, Ned Savoie, and I had a number of suggestions and could have gone on for quite a while if allowed.

The idea of the article series is to help small business owners with advice about simple / low cost ideas to improve their website and overall online investment.  The article was just posted and I thought I would share the result with the world.  As always, I wish the article contained a few different items, but editors thought differently.  Still any press is good press and we have had a number of phone calls today from readers of the article. Woot!

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I think I will write a full blog post later on some security stuff, but really quickly I wanted to point out that everyone really should be reading Jason Dean's security posts.  It's always good to see that we are doing things the right way, and see where we are missing the boat security wise. Between his posts, and the comments its a great resource for people of all skill levels. 

Now, for the blast of contact links.  I have joined a plethora of new networking sites lately, so here is the myriad of ways to contact or follow me for those that like such things.

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If you use MS Instant Messenger (windows live messenger) at all be careful not to fall for a bad link which installs a virus.  You will be IM'd something like:

Hey, isn't this YOU??   http://mainmsn.com/images/viewimage.php?=[my email here]

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Jen and I were asked to write a description of our Yellowstone trip for The Wire.  The Wire is a local entertainment weekly and is staffed by some cool cats.  Anyway, we happily complied and wrote a story about some buffalo we saw on the trip.  It was published while we were away, so I didn't get a chance to blog about it until now.  Since many of you don't live in the area I thought I would reprint it below as well.

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Oh yea!  I forgot to mention I am back from vacation.  It was amazing.  A cruise from Spain to Italy, then France then back to Spain.  We docked each day to play and explore, then cruised at night to the next port.  Here are some photos I took.  Mostly from the excursions.  Who knew Pompeii is so big?  That Monaco was that small?  The Tuscan countryside is really that beautiful!

Yes, again!  This time I will be cruising the Mediterranean.  Spending most of my time in Italy it seems.  As always I will take lots of pictures and post them for those interested.

In unrelated news I can't get the Peanutbutter Jelly song out of my head.  What the heck man?  Of all the damn songs...