44 Year Habit Broken
When I read this CBS News story about 84 year old Joseph Macko continuing his 53 year habit of buying or leasing a new Cadillac every year since 1955, I felt like a real lightweight.
I tell the complete story in Success Made Easy, but the short version is that I made a deal with Marvin K. Brown in 1964 that if he would not reposess my 1962 Cadillac, and deliver me a new 1965, that I would get a new Cadillac every two years for the rest of my life. 
Well I have lived up to that promise until now. This year I wrote a check for my new STS “black beauty” and plan to keep it from now on. We’ll see!

Aloha Thursday 

“It is only through your conscious mind that you can reach the subconscious. Your conscious mind is the porter at the door, the watchman at the gate. It is to the conscious mind that the subconscious looks for all its impressions.”  
-Robert Collier

SCROLL DOWN - You can also find Catagories and Search Box to your left, under the photos.

It’s Called Opportunism
Cnet News reported that an Alabama woman has filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming the iPhone 3G’s network is slower than advertised.The basis of the suit is misleading advertising where Apple claimed that the new iPhone was going to be “twice as fast at half the price” and it has not lived up to that claim.
Unless some sensible judge tosses this out soon, it will most likely become a major class action suit with thousands of otherwise happy customers jumping on the bandwagon and claiming problems with their 3G iPhone.

Here They Go Again
A few months ago I complained about a photo on the front page of Pacific Business News showing an empty Honolulu Airport along with the shocking quote; “It’s worse than after 911.” The photo was obviously taken when the airport was closed.
Well, the front page of this week’s PBN shows an empty Waikiki Beach. The long shadows of the palm trees are a dead giveaway as to how early in the morning this photo was taken. It motivated me to go to that same spot this afternoon and shoot the one below:

A Different Spin
In this issue PBN reports that we have a 13% drop in visitors. What if the headline were to read:

87% Still Coming To Hawaii
And the subsequent article was to say something like;
“In spite of the doom and gloom projections about the mainland economy we are still enjoying a tourism count equal to 87% of last years record number of visitors to Hawaii. Even more exciting is the fact that these are people who are not concerned about the price of gasoline, hotel rooms or airline tikets. We are seeing the cream of the crop, and yes they are spending money.”
I say, “Knock off the negative sensationalism.” That’s how to make things better.

Even More People
There was no let up in shopping as the Made In Hawaii Festival went into its second day. People came early and stayed late. It was a chore to work your way up or down any of the aisles in either of the two Blaisdale buildings.

Is Traffic All You Need?
If traffic was all that’s needed to insure success, no one could fail in this environment. However,  traffic isn’t enough all by itself. The behavior of the person seen by those making up the traffic is an even bigger factor.

“It’s So Slow”
When asked how the show was, I assure you that some will say, “It was so slow.” This “salesperson” sitting and reading something while in the midst of this heavy traffic may as well have been out in the desert all alone. People will not stop and interupt someone that is engrossed in something else. To get busy, get busy.

Day One of Three
The opening day of this year’s Made in Hawaii Festival attracted huge numbers of people there for one reason, and one reason alone; to buy stuff!

Pictures Worth 1,000 Words
It was elbow to elbow today at both Blaisdale buildings today.

Honolulu Star Bulletin Headline
The front page of the business section of today’s Honolulu Star Bulletin quoted Macy’s Inc. as saying that their second-quarter earnings show a slight decline from a year ago as they face a challenging economic environment.
The photo used said more than that to me. This shopper in New York leaving a Macy’s store highlights the fact that they haven’t got the message yet about plastic bags and what they do to our environment and wild life. I couldn’t help but think, “KARMA” as I saw the photo and read the headline.
Nordstrom and other planet friendly department stores have moved to paper, and while it is not as “green” as cloth, it’s a lot better than plastic. Yes, plastic kills and Karma is real!

Best Buy Jumps in on iPhone Business
AT&T has had a sweet deal since the inception of the iPhone, being the only retailer authorized to sell it outside of Apple itself. 
The free ride has ended, and as CBS News reported, Best Buy now has the availability to sell the iPhone from its 970 full-size stores and 16 smaller stores. They claim to have upgraded their computer systems to handle cell-phone activation and spent 250,000 hours training its employees, but from personal experience I would be slow to buy it there.
It is suspected that Radio Shack will be the next retailer to get in on the iPhone frenzy. They already sell AT&T phones, but not the iPhone. AT&T continues to be the authorized provider, but time will tell on that as well. What looks like a big windfall, could become a disaster if they don’t stay on top of the service side. 

27 Years Ago
That’s when IBM introduced its first personal computer.

Then came:
Bill Gates
The Internet
The Mac
Steve Jobs
Floppy Discs
Hard Drives
Windows
The iPod
CD ROMs
E-mail
E-commerce
Instant messaging
The dotcom boom
The dotcom bust
Mobile phones
PDAs
Notebook Computers
Digital Cameras
Computer viruses
GPS
Google
My Space
iPhone
Cloud computing
YouTube
IBM drops out of the PC business

Time Flies!
Are you keeping up?

It’s Creeping Back In

On November 16, 2006, The Department of Health made Hawai’i the 14th state to go smoke-free and enacted a comprehensive law that protects workers throughout the state from exposure to secondhand smoke.
The very next day the air and shopping experience at Ala Moana Shopping Center became much better.
Now, just a year and a half later the security people at the mall do nothing to stop violators of the law, and the mall has even begun returning the ash cans just outside the doorways of many stores; this one at Long’s.
At the time of its announcement The Department of Health said, “This law will result not only in better work environments and public places throughout the state, but it will reduce tobacco–related illnesses and save lives.”
While there’s no doubt that things are better than before the law, I must say that a walk through Ala Moana Shopping Center without smelling smoke is becoming highly unlikely.