The Mini Me (my 1 year old) is airplane-crazy.  And because of which, we are desperately awaiting this summer's Milwaukee Lakefront Air Expo.  Of course, that is, if it's still on.  We don't know.  The Thunderbirds say it's on. But there's no other reference to it, anywhere.  Wikipedia says it's off, due to lack of sponsor.

So I decided to call the old sponsor, TCF Bank, and ask them WTF?  Well, that was a mistake.

They're based in Minneapolis.  But there's no local business office number, except for a customer service line.  The customer service line is IMPOSSIBLE to get through without being a customer because you have to have an account number.  How do they get new customers, I wonder?

I finally got through only by incorrectly entering an account number that I don't have. The customer support rep. had no clue and was (surprisingly) instantly annoyed that I didn't have a problem for her.  She seemed relieved, actually and enjoyed telling me that she couldn't help me. When I asked her what I could do, she told me that I could hang up.  It's against policy to give out any kind of corporate information that would allow me to call the main folks in Minnesota (which I quickly found on their website).

The last thing I did was try to explain that banks make money by bringing in new customers, and since I wasn't a customer, I was an active candidate. "I don't deal with people who aren't customers" she explained.

At the very least I know not to bother setting up an account with TCF for any business stuff. 

Yes, we all will miss Tim Russert.  He was a giant. He will be missed this fall, surely.

But my goodness...  he wasn't President.  NBC get over yourself.

And meanwhile, Katrina part deux is taking out the Midwest.  People out here are losing everything.  Des Moines looks like New Orleans.

But back to Tim's legacy and how you can prevent heart disease.

Update:  Slate agrees!! 

So you want to move your blog outta typepad/blogger?

Congrats, you can't: the URLs are stuck in Google.  

(Fred Wilson has the best description of this problem.) 

There are two options, here:

1. Borrow the Typepad URL for a few months.

2. Call Google and have them update their PageRank for you.

Obviously, neither of these are viable. What do you do?  I don't know, but I'm searching for a solution. 

I'm offering a bounty: If you've got the answer, I'll pay you $1000.  You don't have to do the work - just tell me how it can be done.

email me at rick at feed dot us or comment.

I'm kind of addicted to Twitterbots.  I love the idea of crowd publishing for recreational endeavors like food, wine, books, music.  Anything where there's a huge supply and there's a need for recommendations.  Mkefood and NYCfood are now live and working.  Twit your food and restaurant recommendations for those cities, please.

Meanwhile, last week, I created WineTweets for Fred Wilson.  There are now almost 300 people following WineTweets and almost 100 wine suggestions.

The next one is BookTweets.  What are you reading? 

Also, keep track of twitter bots via TwitterBotting. 

I am still spending a lot of time thinking about Twitter related projects. The @mkefood twitter bot project that I built with @raster has only made me more thirsty for other Twitter projects (it's also made me thirsty to get it finished!).  I want to do more food twitter bots, a wine recommendation twitter bot, and a travel-related bot.  I'd also really like to make some sort of mobile data retrieval service that I think could be really interesting.  

Obviously others are thinking about twitter bots on the mind.  Howard Lindzon described a service that he's helping devise with Soren Macbeth called Stocktweets.

It's a great idea.  Here's what I'd do if I had thought of it...

1. Reply to @stocktweets with your stock picks.   The idea of putting a $ in front of the ticker is brilliant. @stocktweets will then bounce your picks out to all folks following @stocktweets.  If people don't want em on their cell phones, then they have that choice.

(If stocktweets gets too successful, you could always break it into different segments @stocktweettech etc.)

(Update, looks like Soren is discussing this option.) 

2. Stocktweets needs a site.  Looks like someone bought www.Stocktweets.com. domain bastards. Well whatever the site is, it has to compile data and then mix in a API from some financial service.

I'd love to see the bounced messages from @stocktweets include a link to one page that has a chart and news for that domain.  Looks like these guys have found a way to pull data from  FinViz. Very cool.  I've included a screenshot of what that page should look like along the right side.  If there are more than one symbol, well then it just lists multiple charts and news.

3. Start saving everyone's picks/trades. The homepage of stocktweets should try to make sense of all the messages.  You could see what stocks are being bought and sold and attach a price and a chart  to each one.   I'd love to be able to track the current past trades of other @stocktweets followers.  So stocktweets.com should build a page for everyone who @replies.  One page for all the replies. 

4. Finally the last thing I'd like to see is the ability to tell @stocktweets if you're selling or buying.  Maybe send something like b$GOOG or s$GOOG.  

With this addition, Stocktweets could start showing the reputation of followers.  For example, you could see how much money I always lose on APPL and then do the opposite whenever I make a new trade. 

Stocktweets could then combine and rank stock twitterers - almost like MorningStar used to do with fund managers (I date myself here, I'm sure there are better services now).

5. I'm leaving this line open because I'm sure I'll have some other thoughts in the future.  

Good luck on building this and if you want any other suggestions or help, please contact me. 

Random thoughts about twitter bots...

As I've stated before, I love sms because everyone has it, unlike probably any other technology out there (mac/pc, AIM/MSN, etc).  It's a unversal messaging platform, even if it's somewhat limited. 

Building something like this on twitter is a little scary.  It's nice that they've solved the complexities of a text messaging service, which is actually REALLY nice.  But they've got some technology issues (no pagination all week?).  And when they probably figure out their technology issues, they'll probably turn to making services like this one and screwing the entrepreneurs.  It's inevitable, I think.

Final stats on our Santa Fe Century:

> 103 miles

> 4000 ft of climbing.  Elevations changes from 5900 feet to 7300 feet

> 4 PB&Js, 3 cliff bars. 12 bottles of water.

> 6:04 of riding with 30 minutes of stops.

> Bad sunburn on the arms

Check out the photos and video on Flickr. 

I'm adding photos and videos (via the Flip) to this flickr set. Check it out.

On Sunday, I'm riding the Santa Fe Century in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  It includes the 15-20% grade, 1/4 mile "heart break hill".

Below is the embed code from MapMyRun.com, a very cool google mapping service.  I'm going to download the map to my bike's gps as well.

Btw, when you wake up on Sunday morning, think of us as you're having that second donut (Ollie!).

I regularly get the "This disc is unreadable" error on the old xbox.  It happens pretty often.  It's pretty annoying.  

Since I got GTA4 (which is AWESOME!! LOVE IT!), it's been happening more often.

It's not a disc problem. It happened withing 5 minutes of putting the new DVD in the xbox.   It's a problem with the harddrive.

But not according to Microsoft!! Read here... Only causes that MS admits to are disc related.  That's bulls*%t.

It only happens with more intense game, like GTA4.  It only happens when the game is loading.  My theory is that the xbox HD heats up and can't hack it and then gives the error.

(I still love my xbox btw.) 

Every time I talk about Chipotle, someone goes, ‘Oh, Chipotle is delicious. Can you believe they were started by McDonald’s?’

Hello?!  McDonald’s is delicious, so yes... I can believe that. 

It’s not like Ben and Jerry’s opened up a lingerie shop. The world’s greatest restaurant chain taking a stab at another kind of food and hitting it out of the park.

- Todd Barry 

I'm addicted to Twitter.

I like short, simple, small, writing.  I have 4 kinds of posts:
> "here's what I'm doing even if you don't care"
> "I know some piece of news that you probably heard 3 hours ago"
> "I'm so funny and so very smart"
> Also the "look who I'm @ replying, I'm so important!"

All kidding aside, I try really hard to avoid posting things that are useless.  And I try very hard to be humorous.  And I am going to try to post some smart shit, too.  

I've also met some interesting people via Twitter. I am connected to other folks in MKE with web/software/media interests and actually made it to an event last week - all because of Twitter.

The main thing I like?  Twitter has opened up my eyes to the beauty of SMS.

Everyone can SMS.  Everyone has a phone.  It's short/simple and everyone has it.  So it's GIGANTIC.

I have begun to think about the services that can be built on SMS.  The first step is to build a couple Twitter services.  I'm trying to find someone to help me play with the Twitter API for this.

We're going to have a SMS adaption for Feed.Us.  An editor could approve content or a writer could make a breaking news story from a phone.  We'll probably use Twitter for some part of this.

But I've also begun to think of an SMS service that I want to build or would love if someone built.  Basically I want to use SMS to send and recall information to a central storage area. When my thoughts are more flushed out, I'm going to write a longer post.  But basically I'd want to be able to use SMS to send myself information and then be able to recall it later.  Example: I can never remember my car's license plate number.  I want to be able to text "recall car plate" and get it back via an SMS within seconds.  

I think the above service could be built on Twitter.  But maybe it should be on its own?