Let me give an example ... a few months ago my mom applied to work at a phone bank for Geico. According to Geico, a woman who has sacrificed much of her adult life (two jobs, long hours ...) to provide for my well being while earning insultingly less than her male counterparts for the same work isn't qualified to work at their prestigious phone bank.

That really sucks because, well, phone banks hire anyone. Drug problems? You're hired. Trouble with English? You're hired. 2nd grade dropout? You're hired. Mental instability? You're hired. Felonies ... well as long as you didn't hurt anyone, you're hired. You get the point.

All my mom wanted to do was take daily abuse over the phone in exchange for a few bucks more than minimum wage but apparently Geico thinks she wouldn't do well (umm ... she raised me by herself, that deserves a medal).

As you can tell, my mom isn't happy with Geico. She's worked hard her entire life, never asking anyone for anything and she can't even get a job with a phone bank. Yes, my mom is nearly 60 but she's smarter and more dependable than her younger counterparts. People like my mom get shit done because unlike me they don't have Twitter, Facebook or other random shit to check throughout the day. Plus since she isn't in the party-hard phase of her life, showing up at 9am isn't a challenge.

You'd think Geico would have a computer program to audit their mailing list and say "Okay we declined to hire this person for a job they are completely overqualified for ... let's not add insult to injury by sending a bunch of junk mail asking them to buy our insurance." Nope. Every week the little green gecko shows up in her mail asking her to switch her car insurance. It makes my mom angry and understandably so ... she's constantly ignored / rejected for everything she applies for (due to age) and has a lot to worry about. The last thing she needs is a reminder of how invisible the 55+ crowd really is in our current economy.

Geico, I hope you understand that your weekly postcards aren't ads, they're corporate America's little way of saying fuck you to the unsung and unemployed heroes whose corporate service has been forgotten as they're lumped into the old age pool.

I decided to wear it downtown on Saturday because it was a little bit cold and it yielded some interesting results.

Late into the night, I got a text from a friend asking me to meet up with him at a bar. I walked in and couldn't immediately find my friend, however in the back there was a girl that I know and I went over to say hi. She happens to be very good looking and there were two guys talking to her, each was maybe an inch or two shorter than me (I'm 5'9) and when I walked up she recognized me and asked how I was doing.

Almost immediately the guys who had been talking to her started apologizing to me. One guy said he didn't know we were together and thought he recognized her from an RTF class. I tried to explain to him that we weren't together and that I wasn't trying to do anything (I have a beard right now, guys with beards don't fight people) but he kept apologizing and then both of them walked away.

That's the power of wearing an Affliction shirt.

The problem ... the company has been working full days since then trying to 'fix' the problem and I think that given the amount of time they have spent, they are ripping off my landlord and even worse, making money at the expense of me having to go to a local coffee shop just to check email.

In the month since the internet died, they have managed to:
- Switch ISPs
- Install new antennas
- Install new hardware
- and still are at step 1 when it comes to the problem

In fact the hardware worked perfectly fine, I can connect to the router, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the solution was something really simple. However this company has decided that ripping people off and forcing residents to deal with the inconvenience is the proper way to deal with the issue. The company won't even give me a progress report to at least explain what the hell they're doing.

I'd love to name the company in this blog post so that any property manager in the Austin area can be sure to avoid them but I think they were a past client of a company I am associated with and I don't want that to be an issue. If you are an Austin area property manager, email me will.gallahue [at] gmail.com and I will let you know the company name.

The LoC already stores 167 Terabytes of web site information and works to preserve and collect significant digital content (not to be confused with Archive.org which is completely separate). Since 1800 the Library has collected 32 million book along millions of maps, recordings and films. Somehow archiving anything ever said by @willgallahue or the hundreds of thousands of ghost repeater / bot accounts seems a bit much but I guess Twitter is an important cultural institution.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams noted that DMs will not be archived but those "@mom stop nagging" messages will be visible to scholars working on dissertations years from now.

- Went to Dallas last week and attempted to sell some web services but instead ended up eating a lot of good Mexican food.

- My friend Brittney now has a blog, According to Lady A

- I still have yet to get my Toyota fixed but the more I read about the sudden acceleration stories, the more I question how many people experienced legitimate product failures and how many people just can't drive. Toyota's "black box" has been able to refute some of these accounts and the guy in California ... something about that whole story doesn't seem right.

- My wrist is still healing.

- I still don't use Akismet when I really should. You'd be surprised ... for every 1 legitimate comment, I get 100 spam comments. The fun is digging through the haystack to find the needle.

Over the last year however our industry has come under fire as tort reform and bloggers have launched some rather vitriolic assaults on lawyers and subsequently their marketers. The criticism takes away from our collective professional identity and I think its time for someone to at least stand up and give a response. I think the fact that this is the only serious entry on my personal blog should give an idea of how upset I am.

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Recently an article was published about a deceptive marketing practice used by some of our competitors. The article, written by Roger Parloff, exposed a network of sites that were modeled in such a way that they could confuse visitors into believing they had reach an official VA medical site and not a site aimed at generating leads / cases.

Parloff previously published an article a few years ago about industry practices that had similar tones but the issues raised in that piece were rather mundane compared to this article. When I got a Google Alert mentioning the article I was interested to find out what prompted him to write a second article.

While the sites in the newest article were decidedly about mesothelioma, the screenshots show that the creators referred to the site as the VA Medical Center for a particular area. Many sites in our industry use titles like "information center" or "cancer center" but we know the boundaries and that you can't cross the line and start implying that your site is a legitimate treatment facility much less a VA medical center.

The author contacted the site's sponsors and thankfully someone did get back to him. Christopher Seeger of Steeger Weiss responded to the accusations about the sites by saying he wasn't aware of the problem and that "I don't want my name on a Website that purports to be a government site." Seeger's response is legitimate, often legal marketers and their companies aren't in sync with their clients and that leads to these kinds of situations.

While the sites were later removed I was disappointed that the other firms involved (Flood, Hellbock, SEF) and EJustice, the creator of the sites, did not feel compelled to at least talk to the author and offer their side of the story. It certainly doesn't help our collective professional identity when something like this happens and save for one person, the result is deafening silence.

The asbestos litigation industry is constantly mentioned as the reason we need tort reform in this country and terms like asbestos litigation and asbestos lawyer can have decidedly negative connotations. To make matters worse, over the last year our industry has been harassed by an on again / off again blogger named 'sleazeothelioma' who blogged about what they felt were other deceptive practices.

Mesothelioma, the cancer caused by asbestos exposure, is a horrible and painful disease that I would not wish upon anyone. As a marketer I like to imagine that if I helped someone reach a settlement ... perhaps the little comfort it provides will validate my purpose and the reason why I work for this industry.

But all of that is lost when I see this kind of conduct. It hurts on a personal and professional level because it takes away from my work. Maybe I need a change of scenery?

Seriously do the math. If a page offers the first 5,000 fans a $1,000 gift card, that's a $5 million investment. Think about it ... if a company can choose between spending $5 million on PPC/Display/TV/Print ads and reach millions of people or $5 million on trying to get a few thousand fans ... what would they choose?

If it sounds to good to be true, then guess what? It is.

Look, I brag, we all do. The only difference is that when I meet other people who work in my same industry, I don't try to play the "I know more than you because I work with a big client and have a somewhat popular blog," type game.

I realize that everyone has their own special gift in the SEO world and I try to look at other people in my industry as learning opportunities.

So why am I wasting my time writing about someone who doesn't have a real job? Well its symptomatic of everything wrong with the Tech 2.0 world ... egotistical, arrogant people shoving business cards and I-take-all-the-credit success stories down your throat.

"I'm a social media coach for musicians. This band I work with got signed by Atlantic Records."

That was the introduction I received when meeting this so called social media coach. I had been talking to her friend about a startup she was involved with that connects volunteers with volunteer opportunities and contrasting it with a site I have helped out in the past.

Then she introduces me her to friend who gives me the line above and things continue to go downhill.

W: "Oh cool. I work somewhat on the social media presence for the band that's playing. What do you do as a social media coach?"

SMC: "I encourage bands to use social media" (aka I don't have a real job)

W: "Okay so do you help them optimize their online presence and manage their Myspace ..."

SMC: "MYSPACE IS DEAD. NO ONE USES IT."

W: "Well for music it tends to work well. Myspace tends to get indexed better than Facebook fan pages."

SMC: "YEAH WELL MYSPACE IS DEAD."

W: "You think that even with their new management team? I think they might turn it around."

SMC: "THEY WON'T I DON'T KNOW WHY BANDS STILL USE IT"

W: "Well I think its better for fan acquisition because its easier to use."

(SMC then walked away)

At that point I wanted to laugh and tell her the truth ... the band she supposedly works with got signed because their music is good, not because some self-important person told them to get a Twitter account.

I wish I could say this was an anomaly but I had similar conversations this weekend with someone who edits video and a guy who runs an outsourcing firm. Don't get me wrong, there are some really friendly people in the Tech 2.0 world. I've had some great conversations with people simply because neither of us try to shove business cards and self-congratulatory elevator speeches down each other's throats. But sadly, things tend to be trending more towards the social media coaches than people interested in developing friendships over common occupations.

If you want further proof of just how bad the tech world has gotten, check out http://rsvp-sbysw.eventbrite.com where you can pay $38.92 to have someone overseas rsvp for 75 parties for you. Let me run that by you again, if you're too busy blowing startup funding on pinball machines and tweeting @ replies to people about how airports suck then you can hire someone foreign to put your name on party lists.

Seriously techies ... get over yourselves.

Let's see, it took you 20 seconds to realize we had a green light at Bee Cave and N. Mopac ... then you crawled along at 20 mph to the onramp before you proceeded to drive 40 mph on a 65 mph road.

I would have passed you but everyone else was passing us because they realized how bad you were driving. You drive a brand new 5-series which isn't exactly a cheap car and I'm surprised it has managed to stay in one piece.

I hope you made it home tonight but if you didn't you have no one to blame but yourself.

For those of you who don't know, I injured my arm playing soccer and broke both bones in my forearm in multiple places. My arm is going to be in a cast for a long time and my arm will now set off airport security checkpoints. I get my current cast replaced next week with a supercast (still waiting on the bill).

Things I have learned to do with one arm
- Typing but with no more wasted keystrokes (example ummm, j/k, dude)
- Opening child-proof pill bottles
- Opening ketchup packets
- Teaching other people SEO
- Driving (although my arm keeps hitting the brights when I hit the left turn signal)

Also with only one working arm no one asks you for money on the street and you get an aura of street credibility.