Bryan Strawser

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Archives for May 2005

Scoble @ Target

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Robert Scoble wrote about his meeting with Target earlier this month:

Target report. Yesterday was an incredible day for me personally. There are so many fantastic people at Target I couldn’t name them all. Having dinner with Paul Singer last night, senior vice president and CIO, was one of the highlights of my life. He’s worked at Target for 21 years. We talked about a range of things from the Tablet PC I was carrying to his “Adopt” pin that he was wearing (he highly recommends adoption and is an evangelist for helping out kids who don’t have parents).

The headquarters at Target just gets my creative juices going. It’s a beautiful building and quite a few separate employees spoke in glowing terms about the art work and culture that’s prevelent there. Yesterday they had cultural dances and hundreds of employees were enthusiastically watching that.

I don’t want to share too much what was discussed in the meeting because that’s a competitive advantage that Target will have and I don’t want to mess that up.

If you think you (people who left comments on the treads, or wrote about Target yesterday) didn’t have an impact, you did. They are looking at this new world and trying to learn from it, and watching their process as they do that makes me understand why Target has such a strong brand. When I say “they” by the way, I mean many of the most important leaders inside Target are reading the blogs this morning.

[…]

One observation. Employees at Target dress to the nines! If Microsoft and Target employees ever got together for a party you’d be able to separate them out instantly. No jeans and t-shirts were seen at Target.

Another observation: far more diversity, both in gender and ethnicity, than I see in the tech industry. We have a LOT to learn from Target on that score.

Thanks for recognizing that Target is a cool place. It will be interesting to see how we proceed in the blogging arena.

Dooce Poop

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You should read it too. Why? Because it’s Dooce.

She sounded like she was being ripped apart. I immediately transferred her to the changing table where I took off her diaper, and there we found an almost apple-sized piece of coal hanging from her butt. It wasn’t budging, and because Jon had once picked up my poop I did what any decent human would do and I pried it out of her. Leta, when you’re 16-years-old and you’re reading this and you start to think, ohmigod, I can’t believe my mother just wrote that, you should know that I pulled out that piece of poop BECAUSE I LOVE YOU. THAT’S WHAT MOTHERS DO.

Hi, my name is Heather and I used to have a career and make lots of money. Now I poop while my daughter sits at my feet and plays with Tampax, and that’s what I consider a successful morning.

Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?

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Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow:

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep — while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

– Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within a Dream

VDH: On Being Disliked

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As usual, Victor Davis Hanson speaks the truth:

America should not gratuitously welcome such dislike; but we should not apologize for it either. Sometimes the caliber of a nation is found not in why it is liked, but rather in why it is not. By January 1, 1941, I suppose a majority on the planet — the Soviet Union, all of Eastern Europe, France, Italy, Spain, and even many elsewhere in occupied Europe, most of Latin America, Japan and its Asian empire, the entire Arab world, many in India — would have professed a marked preference for Hitler’s Germany over Churchill’s England.

Think about it. When Europe orders all American troops out; when Japan claims our textbooks whitewash the Japanese forced internment or Hiroshima; when China cites unfair trade with the United States; when South Korea says get the hell off our DMZ; when India complains that we are dumping outsourced jobs on them; when Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians refuse cash aid; when Canada complains that we are not carrying our weight in collective North American defense; when the United Nations moves to Damascus; when the Arab Street seethes that we are pushing theocrats and autocrats down its throat; when Mexico builds a fence to keep us out; when Latin America proclaims a boycott of the culturally imperialistic Major Leagues; and when the world ignores American books, films, and popular culture, then perhaps we should be worried. But something tells me none of that is going to happen in this lifetime.

At dinner last night, the sidekick and I were discussing a discussion about gun control over at another blog where we had both commented. After awhile, some Europeans came over and started commenting about America’s fascination with guns and how unsafe our country was, and so on, and so forth.

While I have nothing against Europe as a whole, it’s this holier-than-thou enlightened attitude that some Europeans have that frustrates me. In alot of ways, I’ve lost my desire to debate some of those topics.

The UN? Corrupt, but salvageable.

Iraq, we did the right thing.

Afghanistan, we did the right thing.

Re-electing George W. Bush, we did the right thing.

Gun Control? A firm grip, no more.

Our taxes? Too high.

As our esteemed Secretary of State said recently while in France:

“There cannot be an absence of moral content in American foreign policy. Europeans giggle at this, but we are not European, we are American, and we have different principles.”

I’m quite happy being an American, thanks.