Nick Cole, the author of The Old Man and the Wasteland, asked me to write this review. Well … let me rephrase that comment as he did not ask me personally. Mr. Cole understands the value of personal marketing, and at the end of his novel, he asked all readers to submit a review on his web site. As an incentive, the first hundred reviewers will be offered a free copy of his new book due out next Summer.

Although I could just have posted a short paragraph on Mr. Cole's web site, I decided that a more through review was required for the pleasure he provided me while reading his Kindle version while at 35,000 feet between Minneapolis and Newark this past week. I'm glad I made the purchase. Here is my review:

• The Old Man and the Wasteland is true science fiction. Mr. Cole takes an idea, a scientific fact, and expands upon it to create a future society. In his novel you are presented with how one old man, at the end of his life interacts with this new society in the post atomic holocaust era. The challenge for the "old man" is civilization as we know it has disappeared along with its accompanying knowledge and laws. The old man sets out on a journey across the "wasteland" with the goal of one final salvage to prove himself to his small "tribe". Humanity is living off the land, but salvage of past technology can provide phenomenal wealth. You accompany "the old man" as he fights both nature and the elements of the new world and humanity. The book was a thoroughly enjoyable read, but had a touch more violence than I might personal like. However, the violence fits the circumstances and helps build the story.

I complement Mr. Cole on his use of social media in conjunction with electronic books (i.e. Kindle version) to create his own focused marketing plan. I hope he succeeds at this effort, and becomes a successfully science fiction writer.

Earlier this morning I drove over to the Plymouth, Minnesota Target store. I wanted to return a wine opener I had purchased about six months ago. I knew that I could not expect a refund or in-store credit, but I felt Target would want to know about a defective product. You see, this wine opener does a very poor job of opening bottles. The screw part does not grab the cork very well. Here is how my visit went:

1. I walked up to Customer Service, and placed the wine opener on the counter. I explained that I did not expect a refund as I had owned the opener for about six months. However, I felt Target might like my name and contact information which would give the corporation feedback about a poor quaility product.
2. At this point, another employee walked over and explained: "I understand you don't want credit or a refund, but you can't leave the wine opener here. It's not Target property." She repeated this point a number of time, in a lecturing / firm kind of tone to me.
3. I then asked incredulously, don't you want to know what product, and my contact information? 
4. I'm paraphasing, but the answer was "no" and I was once again quoted store policy about not being able to take the product back.

It was obvious that it did not make sense to continue the conversation. When I walked into Target, I felt I was doing them a favor by returning a defective product; instead I received a lecture. I had stated up front that I had no expectation of receiving any credit. During the conversation I never raised my voice or became argumentative. I will admit that my final action was to say: "I understand your store policy. I'm leaving the wine opener on the counter". I then walked away.

In summation, let's examine the situation. I have been a satisfied Target customer for years. Some of my earliest and fondest childhood memories in the 1960's are watching the automatic doughnut machine at work at the Duluth, Minnesota store (my Dad would always buy me a doughnut). I have no doubt that Target does have the store policy that was quoted to me, but I would also hope that customer service employees have some flexibility on how they deal with the public. This wine opener was in perfect condition (just didn't work very well). Smart customer service would have been to accept the product, take my contact information (even if they threw out the paper moments later), and I would hope … contact their corporate buyer.

Instead, Target made a customer mad, and they still had to throw out the wine opener. When I arrived home my neighbors were talking outside. Of course, I ended up telling them about my Saturday morning experience at Target. Guess what, both of them had recent poor Target customer service experiences which we discussed. 

The end result … poor word of mouth advertsing for Target and this blog post. Seems like a dumb corporate policy. I would also not purchase this kind of kitchen / entertaining utensils from Target. I would normally buy the more basic wine opener, but I liked the brushed metal look of this opener. I thought it would look nicer when entertaining guests. Shame on me!

Having grown up in the land of Bob Dylan (northern Minnesota), I hope the singer would agree that his album title is an appropriate name for this post. Before the interstate highway system broke up highway 61, it streched from Minnesota to the Louisiana bayous. Next week, a busload of geeks will travel part of this route on their way to South by Southwest (SXSW). Most of these individuals will have never met each other before, and as the miles roll by … in a bus equipped with more laptops and web access points than a highway patrolman has ever seen, by the time they reach Austin fatigued from lack of sleep, the goal will be to create and code some of the ideas that lead to new software startups.

Minnesota will not be alone in sending a StartUpBus to SXSW. Buses will be leaving from both Coasts and points in between, all converging on Austin, Texas. Thus, Highway 61 will be revisited with innovation.

I work for a large corporation, and we often wonder how to encourage and promote innovation. Coming up with the right recipe to foster innovation is extremely difficult, but these folks have done it. Use Twitter, bookmarks, and RSS feeds to follow StartUpBus. You may learn something!

• StartUpBus: Blog | Twitter Account | Hashtag Search
• History of StartUpBus Minnesota

Spot the Bassamation decided to protest her master's attempt to sell the family homestead. Fearing the couple coming this past Wednesday for a viewing might be serious, she used her famous dog powers to try and stop the potential sale! You see, when her master arrived home to prepare the house for the viewing, he discovered Spot had been happily chewing up the Northstar Nerd's sweat socks. Unfortunately, yours truly could only find one sock. Where could our family dog have placed the other sock in an attempt to gross out the potential buyers? The sock could not be found; had it been eaten?

Well … the house did sell. Thus we end our foray into the world of real estate. It took four months. If you expand the Edina Realty stats given below, you'll understand a bit of the process. I still wish that Edina could have given us some benchmarks to compare our stats against. In this slow real estate market, it seems like we did well, but we don't really know. Activity (i.e. viewings) was always pretty good, and we even had people look at our home during one of the worst snow storms in years; and we also had activity over both Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks which totally surprised me.

It would have helped us (i.e. the sellers) if we could have known if our activity level was good, bad or ugly. I like data, but in the end we had nothing to compare our stats against (i.e. averages of similar priced homes in the western suburbs).

Here is a recap. Our home was on the market for four months. We received two offers, but turned down the first offer which came only weeks into the process. The price offered was too low. In the end the final offer we accepted was fair. Our original asking price was $249,900, and in the end after two price drops ($10k early on, $5k after New Years) we came to terms ($230k plus our help with some of the buyers closing costs).

Now time to find a new place to live! (i.e. our permanent home is now Duluth, but we want a small place down here in the Twin Cities).

And the promised photos … first the famous sock, and Spot discussing how to stop the sale with my grandson … followed by our stats. (the missing sock was eventually found … equally chewed)

Click upon any image to view expanded!

Our stats …