So I was working on a freelance project this evening (last evening, I guess, since it's now about 3:30am) and I was listening to some music. I put on Bob Mould, and was telling Adrienne's step-sister Erin about the Bob Mould concert that Adrienne and I went to see in DC last year.

This of course reminded me to check out www.bobmould.com and see what's going on.  I was pretty damn excited to find out that Bob was coming to the Cats Cradle on September 22, 2005 (a Thursday), and I immediately went to www.catscradle.com to see if tickets were available.  Within a few minutes I had purchased and printed out 4 tickets to the show.

I'll be taking that Friday off, I think!

For the uninitiated, Bob Mould is an indie rocker of legendary status.  He's been making music since the early 80s, fronted the band Husker Du in the 80s, and Sugar in the 90s, and has also released numerous solo records. If I get a chance, sometime when it's not 3:30 AM, I'll upload a couple of mp3 files for your listening pleasure.

Sometimes, good companies make bad decisions.

Back in the 80s, you probably remember "New Coke" - one of the worst marketing disasters in history, and something that is taught to every student in every business education program in the country.  "New Coke" was a case where the Coca Cola Company didn't understand the appeal of their own flagship product.  They reformulated it, did all the right marketing stuff - focus groups, taste tests, etc - and they launched it to the great dismay of Coke fans everywhere.

Sure, some people liked New Coke, and I can only assume that it was very successful in early taste tests.

But you can't change something like Coke.  They learned their lesson, re-introduced Coke as "Coca Cola Classic", and eventually phased out the miserable failure that was "New Coke".

Which brings me to my point.

It's not exactly the same story, but when I moved to the Triangle (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) in 1998, I discovered a wondeful donut shop called Krispy Kreme.  Their "flagship product" was a standard glazed donut.  They had a machine that pumped them out one after the other, and you'd go to the Krispy Kreme store and get them warm and fresh off the conveyor belt.  Krispy Kreme donuts were so much better than other standard donuts that they became a huge phenomenon.

Then, during the dot com heyday, Krispy Kreme went public.

And somewhere along the way, they decided they could go big time by selling donuts in grocery stores - either boxed or in a display case where people could pick and choose.  Not only grocery stores, but gas stations as well.

what they failed to realize was that much of the appeal of the Krispy Kreme Donut was getting them warm and fresh.  Sure you could nuke 'em for 10 seconds and they'd be warm, but it's just not the same.  Granted, I still think the Krispy Kreme glazed donut is the best donut out there, but it's not light years better when you get them in a box, as I did this morning.

Krispy Kreme was born right here in North Carolina - Winston-Salem, to be exact.

In the entire Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area, there is but one Krispy Kreme donut store.  In fact, there are only 10 in the entire state of North Carolina.  It is my opinion, that there should be at least 10 in the Triangle alone.  I'd open one myself in Apex, except that their web site says there are no franchise opportunities anywhere in the United States.

Their stock has dropped from the $40/share down to around $7 today - in large part because investors have probably realized that with their current strategy, Krispy Kreme is NOT going to take over the world.

About 2 months ago, I noticed a new Coke product at Target.  Coke Zero.  I looked at the label and saw that it had no calories, and I was willing to give it a try.

I hadn't seen any marketing or heard of it before seeing it on the shelf there at Target.  I bought it because I like Coke, and I don't like Diet Coke.

Upon further examination by ingestion, i discovered that Coke Zero tastes a lot like regular Coke, and I loved it.  In the afternoon and evening I drink a lot of Diet Sunkist and Diet A&W, but in the morning I need my caffeine, so I had been drinking Diet Mountain Dew.

Thanks to Coke Zero, I've basically abandoned Diet Mountain Dew.

My dad is also a Coke drinker and doesn't like Diet Coke, but he likes Coke Zero.

Check it out!  If you like regular Coke, you'll probably like Coke Zero.

It's not a low carb fashion drink, it's a bonafide diet drink with zero calories.

Two Cannibals are eating a clown.

One turns to the other and says "Does this taste funny?"

Sometimes I see something useful and I know I'll never remember it, so I'm gonna post it here on my blog.

If you want to force download a document instead of displaying it inline (for example, a jpg image, or a word document (which IE will display inline!)), use the following code in a CFM file:

Poof!  Instant download dialog!