Laura and I are proud to announce the birth of Jackson Edward on April 18, 2006. Jack was born at 9:15 weighing in at 8 pounds, 12 ounces with a length of 20 1/2 inches. Mother and baby are doing well. Ben has been an exceptional older brother, which has been a tremendous help to Mommy and Daddy. Aunt Megan is here in town taking care of Ben and we can’t say enough good things about her either. Pictures are here.
These two lines sum it up for me.
The Angels celebrated their success last season by raising their 2005 West division championship flag before the game.The Yankees, of course, will have no such recognition of their American League East title on Tuesday in the Bronx.
The goal is a World Series championship. Anything less is failure.
This is a fascinating article about the challenges faced by Dunkin’ Donuts. The basic gist of it is that they are trying to become more upscale to increase profitability but have to walk the line to not alienate their core base of consumers.
Dunkin’ Donuts last year paid dozens of faithful customers in Phoenix, Chicago and Charlotte, N.C., $100 a week to buy coffee at Starbucks instead. At the same time, the no-frills coffee chain paid Starbucks customers to make the opposite switch.
When it later debriefed the two groups, Dunkin’ says it found them so polarized that company researchers dubbed them “tribes” — each of whom loathed the very things that made the other tribe loyal to their coffee shop. Dunkin’ fans viewed Starbucks as pretentious and trendy, while Starbucks loyalists saw Dunkin’ as austere and unoriginal.
“I don’t get it,” one Dunkin’ regular told researchers after visiting Starbucks. “If I want to sit on a couch, I stay at home.”
It’s a really interesting dilemma. People probably fall into one camp or another. Changing their stores is going to be challenging. I mean how do you take their “signature pink and orange scheme” and make it upscale?
A WSJ article about the namesake of George Mason University includes this money quote:
Sharing the limelight with Mr. Mason is Don McAndrews, a resident of Manassas, Va. He’s arguably the nation’s top George Mason impersonator, playing the part of the Founding Father at various historical events and lectures around Washington.
I can’t see there being a huge market for George Mason impersonators, but this guy is “arguably the nation’s top” one. Kind of hard to argue with that, huh? 