A Cure for the ‘Mondays’
OK, you go into your office and suffer from a bad case of the “Mondays.” You know the feeling. Worse yet, it’s Thursday!
How do you cure it?
The answer just might be a big bouquet of flowers, according to an e-mail that landed in my mailbox this week. The e-mail’s author cited a Harvard University study that allegedly confirmed that people reported being happier and more energetic after looking at flowers first thing in the morning.
“The morning blahs, it turns out, is a real phenomenon, with positive moods – happiness, friendliness and warmth, for example – manifesting much later in the day,” says lead researcher Nancy Etcoff. “Interestingly, when we placed a small bouquet of flowers into their morning routines, people perked up.”
OK, I guess that works for some people.
For my dad back in the day, it was always that first cigarette and cup of coffee that did the trick.
For me, it’s that first episode of SpongeBob that airs on the cable channel at 7 a.m.
Nowhere in this floral mood-brightening e-mail does it say that the study was sponsored by a big national flower association, but I have my suspicions.
Anyway, maybe the photograph above, provided by the About Flowers Web site – www.aboutflowers.com — will brighten your day and chase away the “Mondays.”
Jim Stafford
Business Writer
A Pre-Dawn Shopping Frenzy on Black Friday
I had a game plan.
Sure it was rural Western Oklahoma on Black Friday, but that’s no reason not to exercise my right as an American. On this day, that meant rushing out to the Elk City Wal-Mart before dawn with a handful of credit cards and no willpower.
So, I drove into Elk from my mother in-law’s farm near Hammon and arrived at the Wal-Mart store at 4:50 a.m. The store opened in 10 minutes, and I discovered about 300 of my closest friends were already waiting in the parking lot.
I took my place at the back of the line and waited. Conversation revolved around the size of the crowd and the surprise that some folks had at seeing that many people standing in 27-degree weather in the parking lot of Wally World.
“I didn’t know there were this many crazy people in Elk City,” a man said to his wife as we waited.
Just as the doors to the store opened, the woman behind me enthusiastically told her two teen-age children, “remember, the only thing illegal today is murder!”
With that we surged through the doors. I wanted desperately to get back to the electronics aisle.
Apparently, so did about 80 percent of the crowd and total gridlock ensued.
I waded into the traffic jam searching for the bargain printer I had seen advertised in a newspaper insert. When I didn’t spot it, I feared the worst: super early bird shoppers had grabbed them up already.
But then I spotted a printer in the shopping cart of a woman who was trying to work her way against the traffic flow.
Where did you get that, I asked.
She pointed to the opposite end of the electronics section. I rushed out of the electronics aisle, detoured through the much-less-crowded men’s clothing department and arrived on the back side of electronics; it’s an old flanking maneuver I learned in previous Black Fridays.
There were the printers! I reached over the shopping cart of a woman stuck in traffic and grabbed one.
With most of the crowd still stalled in gridlock, I sailed through the checkout process and was back in my car in less than five minutes.
Mission accomplished.
I checked “Wal-Mart” off my list and drove directly to the Atwoods store across town where a bargain lounge chair had my name written all over it.
Jim Stafford
Business Writer
Cruising the river … with a New York detour
Yes, commuter boats really will soon be cruising the Oklahoma River. A delegation led by Devon Energy CEO Larry Nichols and former Mayor Ron Norick will be traveling Tuesday to Albany, New York as Scarano Boats begins trial runs of the 49-passenger Oklahoma River Cruiser dubbed the Devon Discovery. The boat is 65 feet long and will be among three to be delivered to Oklahoma City over the next 18 months. The Discovery will arrive later this month.
A decade ago, the Oklahoma River was hardly a river at all, and was widely derided as having to be mowed three times a year. That all changed with a $54 million waterway restoration funded through the city’s Metropolitan Area Projects program.
I’ll be accompanying the delegation to Albany, and will report back on the trial run, the boats’ construction, and how the boats are expected to promote development along the Oklahoma River.
- Steve Lackmeyer, Business Writer
Phony phones
Phones have been making headlines a lot recently. My cell phone made my personal headlines last week for “Most ridiculous bill ever,” but that’s beside the point.
Last week, a New Jersey teen, George Hotz, hacked Apple’s iPhone to prove that it can be interfaced with other wireless networks. As a bribe — I mean, reward — for his ingenious hack, is trading him a car for his phone. Not that he won’t be able to hack another iPhone. I’m sure Apple will be sure to put tracking devices on any iPhone anyone he has ever met purchases.
The same wireless network Hotz hacked into using the iPhone, T-Mobile, has been rewarded the honor of most dropped calls in a recent JD Power report. Sad news for AT&T, though: They have yanked their “fewest dropped calls” campaign since the company is falling near the bottom of a “Best cell service” report by Consumer Reports.
I guess I’ll pay that T-Mobile cell phone bill gladly, knowing that teen boys can hack my network using their iPhones while having fewer dropped calls than other networks.
-Lindsay Goodier, NewsOK.com Editor
Styling With My Bagphone
The folks at Sprint sent out a little item this week that alleges the style of your cellphone says a lot about your personality in much the same way that your automobile tells the world who you are.
It has even launched a Web site where you can take a personality quiz to figure our your “cell style.”
So, I took their little test that asked questions like “Which statement describes you best” with five lame choices for answers. The bottom line? Sprint’s test identified me as a, gulp, “Technosexual,” which is a word of which I am not familiar. Honest.
Anyway, here is how Sprint describes “Technosexual:”
“Although you would never say so yourself, you are the epitome of style and sophistication, and you’re just about as tech savvy as they come. The latest and greatest technology enhances your impeccable style, and your friends count on you to keep them updated on the hottest new gadgets and trends. You spend your free time at all the coolest places, and you’ve got a keen sense of fashion style.
“As a technosexual, you need a cell phone with both looks and smarts.”
Yada. Yada. Yada.
Boy, do they have it wrong. I’m the cellphone equivalent of the doddering old man puttering down the freeway for miles at 50 mph with his left blinker on.
My ideal cellphone comes in a bag and weighs six pounds.
What’s your cellphone style? Take the test and see how far off the Sprint inkblotters miss their mark.
Business News reporter
If you build it, they will come
We dropped in on the new POPS convenience store/restaurant/tourist trap in Arcadia about 6:30 p.m. Sunday and almost didn’t find a parking spot. The place was packed, and it took a couple circles around the lot before we found a space.
My wife and I were astounded by the size of the crowd, but perhaps we shouldn’t have been. The debut of POPS with its distinctive soda bottle out front and architecture has been long awaited by area residents.
It’s sort of an “if you build it they will come” scenario, with some Route 66 nostalgia thrown in for good measure.
We hoped to sample a burger at the POPS restaurant, but it turned out that the booths were full and the waiting line was long.
So, we decided instead to try a soda from POPS’ massive “soda ranch,” which promises 400-plus flavors of sugar water. I wanted a Grape Nehi, or whatever is the modern-day equivalent.
Turned out their whole cooler was empty, wiped out from massive crowds that flocked to the new mecca of the Mother Road over the weekend.
So, we wandered around the store for a few minutes, took a few snapshots and then hit the road for the (short) trip home. We look forward to giving it another try on a night when there won’t be such a crowd, like mid-week or something.
By the way, POPS has a Web site as unique as the store itself, and also has a big presence on the state tourism site, Oklatravelnet. Check out the interviews with POPS management and with architect Rand Elliot.
Jim Stafford
Business News reporter
Fake Steve Jobs Unmasked
For the past year, reading the blogger known as Fake Steve Jobs has been a not-so-secret obsession of mine.
Written in the voice of Apple Inc. co-founder and chief executive officer Steve Jobs, Fake Steve has entertained and educated readers while slaughtering more than a few sacred cows of the high-tech business world. He is funny, insightful and more than a little profane.
I call him my guilty pleasure. Fake Steve has become an everyday ritual for me.
The identity of Fake Steve has been debated almost as long as his blog has been in existence. Uneducated guesses have ranged from the real Steve Jobs to a Wired magazine editor to a technology writer from England. All missed the mark.
However, Fake Steve Jobs has been unmasked at last.
An enterprising reporter with the New York Times put bits and pieces of what was known about Fake Steve together and came up with Forbes magazine technology editor Daniel Lyons. When confronted with the evidence, Lyons ‘fessed up.
Fake Steve wrote in Sunday’s blog post: “Well it had to happen. Honestly I can’t believe it’s taken this long. But as you may have heard, I’ve been busted by a newspaper reporter. My cover has been blown. Guy named Brad Stone, who works for the New York Times. Have you heard of him? Well, tip of the hat to you, Brad Stone. You did the sleuthing. You put the pieces of the puzzle together. You went through my trash, hacked into my computer, and put listening devices in my home. Now you’ve ruined the mystery of Fake Steve, robbing thousands of people around the world of their sense of childlike wonder.”
A book deal that Fake Steve signed to write a novel (about himself, of course), led to his undoing. The good news, however, is that Fake Steve will continue to write the blog, which the New York Times reporter said was going to be moved to the Forbes Web site.
Fake Steve lives to write another day.
Business news reporter
Dubbing the Dow
It looks like Rupert Murdoch’s deal to acquire Dow Jones Inc., publisher of Wall Street Journal, will go through. Some journalists have expressed concern about perceptions that Murdoch meddles in the news coverage of some of his media properties such as Fox News and The New York Post.
But one aspect of the deal hasn’t received as much attention. The historic Dow Jones Industrial Index, which tracks stocks of 30 of the nation’s largest companies, is part of the sale. Mr. Murdoch now has the option of renaming the most important, most reported stock index. How do you like the sound of “Fox News Industrial Average” or “MySpace Industrial Average” or even “Rupert and Wendi’s Stock Index?”
It may sound strange, but we’ve learned how to adapt to new commercial monikers, such as AT&T Bricktown Ballpark, previously SBC Bricktown Ballpark and originally Bricktown Ballpark.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
