Revnut

My brother Russ made a special delivery out to our house tonight. He dropped off some Pepper Dog Salsa and some chips.

We had read BJ’s review awhile back and we were pretty interested in checking it out. BJ had called it the “Dom Perignon of salsas”. I thought he must be exaggerating. After our family downed 1.5 jars tonight, I wouldn’t call his assessment an exaggeration at all. I also liked BJ’s idea of using it as a topping for hamburgers and other foods.

It is delicious. It’s definitely my favorite salsa. I love that it’s smooth and easy to get on chips. I love that it’s not full of onion chunks. And it had a nice gentle burn. It’s good stuff. We’ll definitely be buying more.

If you serve this salsa for friends, they will certainly ask about it because it’s unique and it’s delicious.

I agree with Bobby and Russ. It’s tough to complain about Netflix.

Their website does what you need it to do and they get movies delivered to your door fast. They’re focused on doing a few things quite well. Netflix is a remarkable business.

I found this book by Jim Collins to be quite interesting. He and his team of researchers spent about 5 years working on it. They found only 11 companies that met their strict definition of a great company. The company had to be publicly traded, had to have at least 15 years of average to sub-average performance followed by at least 15 years of outstanding performance. So the company had to blow the doors off their industry and the market in general during the latter 15 years (demonstrating returns at least 3 times greater than the market). Only 11 companies met this criteria.

Then they compared those 11 companies to other companies in their industries that didn’t do as well. They also found a ton of common attributes among the great companies. It was fascinating.

I was surprised that the CEO’s of the 11 companies aren’t rock stars. They’re not household names that everyone knows. In fact, they’re relatively unknown. The book had a number of other surprises as well.

I enjoyed this book.

This is a pretty good little strategy game that Russ gave us awhile back. It’s simple but there’s certainly a bunch of strategy involved. It’s small so you can take it with you. Two of our children (Madeline and Gavin) enjoy playing the game too. They’re currently 7 and 5. It’s been interesting to see them start to understand the strategy involved. They’re definitely starting to think a move or two ahead.

I greatly enjoyed this podcast show of Venture Voice. Derek Sivers created the website named CD Baby, the largest seller of independent CDs on the web.

Greg Galant does an excellent job interviewing Derek and helping entrepreneurs to learn a number of lessons from Derek’s experiences. I love hearing about how companies start and how they grow over time.

My favorite quote from the interview was in response to a question about advice for starting a business. Derek said, “Just give yourself a 10 day deadline, and just launch it with almost no features.” 10 days is not a lot of time!

CD Baby started out as a shopping cart on the website of Derek’s band.

This was an excellent interview.

I found this blog post by Scott Adams to be quite inspirational. He’s the creator of Dilbert.

I never realized he had accomplished so much. I never realized how often he fails. It’s a great post.

I think I need to fail more often.

A number of bloggers have been yapping about how great traditional wet shaving is. I don’t think I’ve been particularly good at shaving in the past. I seemed to avoid it because it took time and because it was kind of uncomfortable. There were parts of my face that I never shaved very well because going against the grain just hurt.

So I was curious to check out what people have been talking about. I was surprised to find that I had been shaving all wrong. There’s a lot more to shaving your face than I realized.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been able to shave much more closely than I’ve ever shaved before. And it doesn’t hurt. It did take me more time at first with these new techniques, but I’m getting faster at it each time.

Here are 3 videos that demonstrate the technique:

You can also See the videos on the YouTube site if you’d like.

If you’re interested in trying it out, you might want to take a look at Matt’s wet shave review and Matt’s safety razor review.

I love C.S. Lewis. I think he was an incredible author and a super genius. In this book, he presents an amazingly logical case for what Christianity is and why it matters.

If you’re a programmer or a lawyer or someone who enjoys logic, this book is for you. If you think that the Bible is bogus, this book is for you. If you have a nutty Christian friend you’d like to understand a bit better, this book is for you.

Here are some of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes:

• Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

• I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

This book is incredible. I highly recommend it.

These guys are multi-generational jewelry craftsmen located in Raleigh, North Carolina. Simply put, they’re honest experts. They were recommended to me by a friend who received independent verification that the diamonds that they sold him really were what they said they were. Since then, I have also verified that the diamonds that they sell are accurately classified.

The members of the Tart family are also experts at jewelry repair. I have been quite happy with the purchase I made from Tart Jewelers.

Here is the location on Google Maps.

This is the excellent marketing classic by Al Ries and Jack Trout. I think it’s a must read for entrepreneurs and business owners. The subtitle of the book is “How to be seen and heard in the overcrowded marketplace.”

I really enjoyed how they used real company examples to illustrate their points about which types of marketing work and which don’t. It was quite eye opening to read about the marketing mistakes that companies have been making for years and continue to make today, such as the “line – extension trap” detailed in chapter 12.

Reading this book will certainly improve your business.

My wife Kelly received this bag as a gift from her mom (Mimi). We’re currently using it as a diaper bag.

It’s a pretty bag really pink girly bag. I never realized how much I carry around our diaper bag. We’ve previously had standard black diaper bags and we’ve also used a blue backpack for awhile as well. This is our first try with crazy pink.

At first, I didn’t think it would be too big of a deal. Yes, it’s girly, and yes, it looks like a really pompous purse. However, my thought was that people would know that it was a diaper bag and who cares if it’s pink anyway.

The thing is, though, I’m having a hard time carrying the thing around. I must not be bold and confident enough. The straps are too long to just carry the thing like you would carry your wife’s purse if she forgot it somewhere. And you want the bag on your shoulder when you’re carrying one child and holding the hand of another.

So, I’m in this weird spot where I’m constantly carrying around this really big pink purse. I’m starting to think that Mimi bought the thing to torture me. She’s probably laughing right now.

It functions pretty well as a diaper bag but it’s tough to carry around if you’re not female. Kelly loves the bag.

UPDATE: Our family was at Dairy Queen and I was holding the bag. I felt weird holding this ginormous pink purse so I put it down on a chair while we were on line at the counter. Then we went outside to eat our ice cream and I forgot about the bag. Later on, a guy comes walking outside with the bag, looks at me in front of everyone and says, “Excuse me sir? Is this YOUR bag?” Kelly and her mom really got a kick out of that. Needless to say, I haven’t been carrying the bag around much anymore.