Trip to Montreal

Over the last 5+ years our company Mantis is fortunate to have developed an outstanding partnership with SAP both in the U.S. and Canada. We use their technology in a lot of the project work we do and we rely on it extensively in the cloud-based subscription services we provide. Our offering is a Social Media Analytics solution that measures the volume and sentiment of social media conversations for companies and their brands.

A month or so ago we were invited by SAP Canada to participate in an event they were having in their Montreal office. They were planning to bring a couple dozen large Canadian customers to their office and have a half day session focused on Social Media. In addition to a detailed session on our solution, they arranged for a key note speaker from Deloitte Consulting. Of course we agreed to participate and prepared some great material with sample customer scenarios for several of the companies they invited to the session.

In order to get to the event I started my day early in the morning, driving from Kirkland, WA to Vancouver, BC to catch a flight to Montreal, with a brief stop over in Toronto. Why the round about travel itinerary you ask? Well as I investigated flight options from Seattle to Montreal, I discovered a bit of a price disparity. Basically, flights from Seattle to Montreal run $1,500 to $3,000 and flights from Vancouver to Montreal run $500 to $1,000. So it was an easy decision to drive the 2 hours to Vancouver, park and hop a flight to Montreal. I'm sure my colleagues at Mantis are not surprised that I would take this fiscally conservative approach.

What's interesting is that I lived near Toronto and worked in the city for years before moving the the U.S. I've been in the Pearson International Airport literally hundreds of times, yet when I walked off the plane into the terminal that day, I had no idea where I was. I recognized nothing about the surroundings. I didn't know what terminal I was in, I didn't know what direction I was facing. I felt like I could have be in any airport in the world at that point. The flight to Montreal was easy and I arrived at Montreal-Trudeau Airport without incident, then caught a cab to the W Hotel.

The next morning I walked over to the SAP Montreal office and sat down to prepare for the afternoon session. Thanks again to our friends and colleagues at SAP for arranging the day. The entire event was put on with professionalism, the speakers were entertaining and the audience was appropriate and engaged. After a long afternoon, I said thank you to the folks at SAP in Montreal, got a recommendation for a restaurant for dinner and headed back to my hotel. The restaurant was Holder and was outstanding. I ate at the bar with a couple glasses of wine from the Rhone region in France and thoroughly enjoyed the meal.

I was lucky enough to catch an early flight from Montreal to Vancouver (non-stop this time) in the morning and got back home several hours earlier than I had planned.

All-in-all a great trip, well worth the time out of the office and the drive to Vancouver.

Best Sports Nicknames

I have to admit I am a bit of a sports junkie. My family will tell you I spend some amount of spare time in front of SportsCenter, my co-workers will tell you that my car radio is tuned to sports radio and I'm sure our network administrator could tell me how much time I spend on sports web sites.

So I was driving in to the office one morning last week listening to NFL game results from the weekend and they were talking about the Detroit Lions game against the Dallas Cowboys and how much of an impact Calvin Johnson had on the game. They referred to Johnson by his nickname "Megatron". I smiled and thought "now that is a good nickname". Which got me thinking, what are the best sports nicknames of all time?

After some research, I concluded there are a lot more notable nicknames that I realized. I quickly figured that I needed to qualify my list a bit. For example should I just list the best nicknames regardless of where they came from, how famous the person was, how the nickname was earned or any other qualifying criteria? So I came up with different categories - including, Top 10 Nicknames That You May Have Thought Was His Real Name, Top 10 Nicknames Based on Physical Attributes, Top 10 Nicknames Based on a Play on Words and of course Top 10 Best Sports Nicknames (Overall). Here's what I came up with:

Top 10 Best Sports Nicknames (Overall):
10. Chocolate Thunder - Darryl Dawkins, NBA - truly one of the most descriptive and visually imaginative nicknames ever
9.  God - Gary Ablett Sr, Aussie Rules Football - I have to give credit for having the nerve to call yourself "god"
8.  Mean Joe Greene, NFL - it just rolls off your tongue and sounds right + it immediately gets the point across
7.  Michael Air Jordan, NBA - one of the most prolific nicknames in history given that it has spawned an entire brand group at Nike
6.  Pistol Pete Maravich, NBA - points for being descriptive, meaningful to the sport, highlighting the defining characteristic of the athlete and bonus for the use of alliteration
5.  Yogi Bera - Lawrence Bera, MLB - one of the best of all time
4.  Boom Boom Geoffrion - Bernie Geoffrion, NHL - a hockey player named "Boom Boom", do I need to say any more?
3.  Dr. J - Julius Erving, NBA - the name says it all and evokes the memory of the first time I saw a man fly through the air
2.  The Sultan of Swat - Babe Ruth, MLB - one of the most elegant nicknames of all time, perfectly describes what he did better than anyone else in the history of the game
1.  The Wizard of Oz - Ozzie Smith, Short Stop, MLB - have you ever watched Ozzie Smith play the game?


Best Sports Nicknames That You May Have Thought Was His Real Name:
Meadowlark Lemon, Basketball Player - Real Name: Meadow Lemon
Pele, Soccer Player - Real Name: Edison Arantes do Nascimento
Deacon Jones, NFL - Real Name: David Jones
Catfish Hunter, MLB - Real Name: Jim Hunter
Chi Chi Rodruguez, PGA - Real Name: Juan Rodriguez
Tree Rollins, NBA - Real Name: Wayne Rollins
Yogi Bera, MLB - Real Name: Lawrence Bera
Ickey Woods, NFL - Real Name: Elbert Woods
Magic Johnson, NBA - Real Name: Earvin Johnson
Tiger Woods, PGA - Real Name: Eldrick Woods


Best Sports Nicknames based on Physical Attributes:
Pocket Hercules - Naim Suleymanoglu, Bulgaria, Olympic Weightlifter
Three Finger Brown - Mordecai Brown, MLB
Pee Wee Reese - Harold Reese, MLB
Butterbean - Eric Esch, Boxer
Hands of Stone - Roberto Duran, Boxer
Sleepy Floyd - Eric Floyd, NBA
The Big Unit - Randy Johnson, MLB
The Big Hurt - Frank Thomas, MLB
The Big Tuna - Bill Parcels, NFL Coach
Ed Too Tall Jones - Ed Jone, NFL
Lefty - Phil Mickelson, PGA
Pudge - Carlton Fisk, Ivan Rodriguez, MLB

Best Sports Nicknames Based on a Play on Words:
The Wizard of Oz - Ozzie Smith, Short Stop, MLB
Cujo - Curtis Joseph, NHL
Cementhead - Dave Semenko, NHL
The Grim Reaper - Stu Grimson, NHL
Lester The Molester - Lester Hayes, NFL
The Pearl - Earl Monroe, NBA
Stan The Man - Stan Musial, MLB
The Great One - Wayne Gretzky, NHL
Meadowlark - Meadow Lemon, Basketball Player

And a special award that I was reminded of while researching this post. The funniest mis-pronunciation of an athlete's name (or in this case nickname) in a public setting, goes to the character Les Nessman from WKRP in Cincinnati whose pronunciation of Chi Chi Rodriguez, goes down as one of the funniest moments of the show. He referred to him as - "Chy Chy Rod-ri-gweeze". If you've never seen the episode, look it up. True sports fans will laugh.

Here is the best of the rest. They are good, but did not make one of my lists:

Megatron - Calvin Johnson, NFL
Prime Time - Deion Sanders, NFL
The Minister of Defense - Reggie White, NFL
The Human Highlight Reel - Dominique Wilkins, NBA
The Splendid Splinter - Ted Williams, MLB
The Iron Horse - Lou Gehrig, MLB
The Refrigerator - William Perry, NFL
Sweetness - Walter Payton, NFL
The Glove - Gary Payton, NBA
Broadway - Joe Namath, NFL
The Golden Bear - Jack Nicklaus, PGA
Crazy Legs - Elroy Hirsch, NFL
Skywalker - David Thompson, NBA
Bear - Paul Bryant, College Football Coach
Charlie Hustle - Pete Rose, MLB
Iron Mike - Mike Tyson, Professional Boxer
Shoeless - Joe Jackson, MLB
The Assassin - Jack Tatum, NFL
The Mailman - Carl Malone, NBA
The Galloping Ghost - Red Grange, NFL
Mr. October - Reggie Jackson, MLB
The Rocket - Maurice Richard, NHL
The Say Hey Kid - Willie Mays, MLB
The Yankee Clipper, Joe DiMaggio, MLB
The Flying Tomato - Sean White, Snowboarder
Marvelous - Marvin Hagler, Boxer
The Bus - Jerome Bettis, NFL
The Golden Jet - Bobbie Hull, NHL
Sugar Ray - Ray Robinson, Ray Leonard, Boxers
The Wizard of Westwood - John Wooden, College Basketball
Papa Bear - George Halas, NFL
Bonecrusher - James Smith, NFL
The Iceman - George Gervin, NBA
The Raging Bull - Jake LaMotta, Boxer

Domain Registration Chicanery

So, like many people (I'm sure) I own a small handful of web domains. Some of them are for business purposes and some of them are personal. I registered them over the years with a domain registration company of my choosing. Everything I do, I do through one domain registration company so I can keep it centralized. I'm about as happy as one can be with a domain registration company - the prices are reasonable (and keep dropping), they allow me to either auto-renew or manually renew them on a case by case basis. Everything is good.

Except... I am constantly bombarded with email and real-mail from people and companies that would lead me to believe that I need to do something about one or more of my web domains, or else something bad will happen. There are two techniques that continue to fill my mailboxes. The first is the ever popular "Chinese Domain Name Scam". Under this scenario you receive an email that looks very official from a Chinese Domain Registrar wherein the sender appears to want to help protect you from what they suspect are unscrupulous people trying to abscond with the Chinese version of your domain name. See more about this scam here. Suffice to say, they just want some of your money.

The second technique is one I just ran across in the last few months. While I would not necessarily refer to it as a scam, I would definitely put it under the category of "chicanery". In this scenario you get either an email or a real-mail from a legitimate domain registrar. They are informing you that one or more of your current domains are about to expire and you should renew them. The trick is that the company you receive the email from is not the one who you have the domain registered through. Unbeknownst to you, they are trying to get you to switch from your current registrar to them, so they can charge you higher rates. In all the cases I've seen, the wording in the mail is deceptive and designed to "trick" people into thinking that they should do what they say.  For example, "your domain is about to expire and failure to respond may result in the loss of your online identity", "enclosed please find an invoice in response to your request to renew your domain", and others. Unfortunately, if you respond and send payment, you will end up inadvertently switching domain registrars and, more importantly, paying much higher fees than you need to for domain registration and renewal. Even though this technique is perpetrated by legitimate domain registrars, it is little more than a trick or scam.

While these scams bother me in and of themselves, they are really nothing more than examples of a grander more insidious problem. Every day we get hit by scam after scam, spam after spam, unsolicited call after unsolicited call, over and over again. I did a quick statistical analysis and my work email address receives a junk-email every minute of every day. We read and listen to pitch after pitch and story after story. While I am no psychologist I can tell you that the non-stop and constant wave of less than scrupulous communication must be having an effect on us. I know its having an effect on me. It is making me less trusting, less interested in talking to people who try to contact me and less likely to believe the people who  I do talk to. Rather than trusting people until they give me a reason to distrust them, I start out in reverse. I have turned into a non-believer and I don't like it. I don't think it is good for society that everyone is a skeptic. When my phone rings I want to answer it, when my email beeps I want to read it and when I open an envelope from the mail, I want to believe... I just can't quite bring myself to contact that guy in Nigeria, no matter how many millions of dollars he says he wants to give me.

Welcome

This is my inaugural post on my first and only blog – Doug’s List. Thanks for taking the time to read it.

Why Doug’s List?

When it came time (after a long period of indecision) to write a blog, I had to think about an appropriate name. Of course there were all kinds of options, but in the end I thought about what a blog should be and what it was that I wanted to talk about. And soon the answer became obvious. Friends and colleagues will tell you that, for years, I have maintained a “list” that is often referred to as Doug’s List. For the most part Doug’s List is NOT something you want to be associated with. It is for all intents and purposes a list of things that drive me crazy. In order to earn a spot on the list, it has to be something pretty bad. I think of myself as a pretty patient person in many regards (no laughter from the cheap seats please). But there are those  things so ridiculous that they earn a spot on Doug’s List. So, this will be an opportunity for me to express opinions and write about stuff that happens in my world. Before you jump to the conclusion that all I’m going to write about is the “bad” stuff, I will say that Doug’s List is simply the name of the blog. I plan to write about lots of things, hopefully some of them will be interesting, informative, entertaining and amusing. And yes, some of them will be about the “bad” stuff that happens in my world.

Who am I?

I am Doug Turner. I am a husband, father, coach, ceo, colleague and probably a whole bunch of other words (according to people who might not like me so much) that I shouldn’t use in a forum as public as a blog. I am the CEO of Mantis Technology Group , a small software company based in Kirkland, WA. More here later…

Again, thanks for reading.