I told my wife I was going to root for contestant Todd on the new season The Apprentice, namesake and all.

That was short-lived. He was voted off tonight.

I guess I will start over next week.

I am again drawing from a college alumni magazine for a post. I graduated from Marquette University here in Milwaukee in 2002 with my MBA. You might know MU for its basketball program under Al McGuire and more recently and currently Tom Creen.

Here are the things you probably don’t know:

• The campus has the 16th century Joan of Arc Chapel – “The Chapel is, to our knowledge, the only medieval structure in the entire Western Hemisphere dedicated to its original purpose: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.”
• The Raynor Memorial Libraries Special Collections and University Archives is home to the original manuscripts of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
• Matt Lesko is a 1965 graduate of the School of Business Administration. Lesko is the guy you always see on wearing the question mark suits and selling manuals on how the government will give you grants to start companies and buy real estate. He has published 70 books, two of them New York Times bestsellers.

It is a little odd here right now.

Today is January 12th and my house is shaking from the thunder booming outside. There is some nice lightning strikes to boot.

Looks like the rain will have the snow melted by morning…

The Green Bay Packers put a call out for volunteers to help shove show at Lambeau Field.

300 people showed up the next morning.

The Packers have the best fans in the world.

The drugs are kicking in and I am feeling the best I have in three weeks. The only trouble I have now is that my cheek is swollen and it makes me look like I got in a barfight. The trouble is that I haven’t felt well enough to even go to a bar.

Thanks to everyone who has sent along well wishes.

I found some wifi here in Breckenridge at the Gourmet Cabby Internet Cafe.

I am still sick and haven’t done any skiiing yet. I finally broke down and when to the doctor yesterday. I now have some antibiotics to treat what has now turned into a sinus infection. I hope to be better in a couple of days.

Enjoy the holiday week!

Merry Christmas

It is most likely going to be quiet here over the next week. We are meeting my wife’s family in Colorado for the holiday week. There is a rumor of wifi, but not in our condo. So, we’ll see…

It has been a wonderful year. Thanks to all of you who have been reading. Thanks to everyone who made the Business Blog Book Tour a success.

There will be new stuff in the new year.

Also, if you haven’t already, spend some time, put togther your Top 24, and send a link to me.

See you next year!

The Onion talks about Bush’s new blog.

[via Blog Herald]

I have had this sitting in my ‘to-post’ bin.

Virginia Beach teacher Leslie Law had her students photograph the alphabet as they saw it in their surroundings. I love the combination of learning and creativity.

Pixar is the cover story in Wired Magazine this month. Like many of you, I have seen all of the films. The article does a great job of giving a look at the people behind the movies.

I was not familiar with the exact financial success of the digital animation house. The article states Pixar’s five movies (Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., and Finding Nemo) have grossed $2.5 billion dollars. Those numbers make Pixar the most successful movie house of all time.

This section explains why Pixar and Disney had a falling out:

Since Toy Story, the fate of Disney and Pixar have been intertwined. Pixar makes the movies, and Disney distributes them; they cofinance the films and split the profits. But this January, when Pixar met with Disney to discuss their contract, an emboldened Steve Jobs decided to change the deal. He’s angling for terms like those George Lucas brokered with 20th Century Fox for the Star Wars prequels: Pixar would finance its own films (with budgets around $80 million), take 100 percent of the profits, and pay Disney a distribution fee. Not surprisingly, Disney resisted. Each Pixar movie nets Disney an estimated $200 million, and under Jobs’ proposed arrangement, the company would make less than half of that.

Go check out the new trailer for The Incredibles. They are going to have another hit.

My referral log shows a lot of people coming over from the Marketing Sherpa Best Marketing Blog contest.

Just wanted to say hi to all the new visitors.

Hope you’ll take a look around and enjoy what I have to offer. Maybe, you could subscribe to the RSS feed and we can continue this conversation.

Any which way, I am glad you had a chance to stop by.

We were out of town for a week and a half visiting family in San Diego (the Wild Animal Park is a must) and Phoenix. I came back and need to get the BBBT going. I also have the other gig which is keeping me busy.

I will get back to posting here. I want to share stories from the trip and I am catching up on some reading, so there might be some things there.

Loic Le Meur talks about digital media and a copyright free future. I can see and feel the change. I just can’t figure out what it is going to be like on the other side. I want to know where I should be.

I thought this was fun one to join in on.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

The government, so overwhelmed by the scale of the movement, decided to let Christiania stand as a social experiement – Lonely Planet, Denmark

More on Christiania…

[via Crossroads Dispatches]