March Madness 2016 Tournament Challenge Starts Tonight!

This is the best time of the year if you are a sports fan! Baseball is well underway for spring training with opening day just a few weeks away, March Madness is in full effect, and for the golf fans, golf is each weekend. There is always something to watch whether through the week or on the weekend. This week is my favorite week of all. Today, the brackets are announced at 5 pm this evening for Selection Sunday. On Thursday, the real madness begins with games starting mid-morning and going until late in the night.

Each year, there are millions and millions of people filling out their brackets. That is after all part of the fun of the madness trying to pick the team that will win it all. Each year, I have put out a bracket and it is open to anyone. The bracket is on the ESPN web site and the winner gets bragging rights for being lucky and picking the most right.

If you are looking for a group to join, I invite you to join the ESPN Tournament Challenge with the steps below...

1. Visit the link to ESPN which will take you directly to the March Madness Hopefuls.
2. If you are already signed into the ESPN web site, you can immediately create your bracket. If not signed into the site, you will need to sign in first.
3. Join the group and use the password: haverty
4. After the Selection Show tonight, you will be able to make your picks.
5. Repeat the above process to create additional brackets. In the March Madness Hopefuls bracket, you can have three entries.

Any problems or questions joining the group, please post in the comments or drop me a message.  Share this information with your family, friends, co-workers, etc. The more entries the more fun it is for everyone.

Good luck with your picks and good luck to your team!

Spring Break Already... Enjoying Piano Class and Practicing During the Break

At the mid-point for piano class with break in classes next week. I remember years ago when I was a student it seemed like Spring Break took forever to arrive. It would never get here and then it was over before I knew it. Being older, the semester seems to have flown to this point. That's right! We are on Spring Break next week. No class! No, that does not mean that I should not touch the piano at all. Exactly the opposite, I should use the week to focus on what we have learned. 

When we get back to class on Monday, March 21, we will review for our mid-term which we will have on March 28. We will also begin selecting a piece which we will play for our final. For the final, we can take in our own piece that we want to play and the instructor will read through them to see if it would work for us to play. Or, she will provide suggestions in the class which we can play. The final in the class will be playing the piece that we practice and work on from this point to the end of the semester.

Tonight in class, we just started the chapter on starting to play cords. Yes, we just started it and it all seems Greek so far after the first night of discussion. We will focus more on cords and how to read those on the staff after we return from the break. Here I am still struggling with reading the treble clef and we are going to add in playing cords with the left hand. Things are about to get interesting!

Although I still feel lost for some of the discussions such as sharps and flats, I do feel like I am learning how to read notes. Some of it makes sense, but so much still seems fussy and like I will never figure it out.

Last night I practiced the piano playing songs that we had to play in class for tonight. Carrie told me that it sounded good when I was playing. I will make a goal to record some of my playing of the final piece to post for you to hear. That is obviously a few weeks out before that will be posted though.

Do you have a piece you would suggest I play for my final? If so, please post in the comments to share your suggestions.

Continuing to Use Safari App on iPhone for FaceBook Access and Still Working Great!

It has now been three weeks since the change from no longer having a FaceBook app installed on my phone (see previous post: Switching from FaceBook App to Web Site Only). After three weeks, I am still loving the change. Now, I have not noticed a huge change in battery levels for the phone where it lasts all day or even an extra 15-20% of the day, but it has improved how I use the phone for FaceBook activity. The change has allowed the ability to be more connected with FaceBook contacts and not feel as tethered to my phone each time the alert went off with a notification.

Notifications

The first thing I did a few days after going to no app on the phone was to enable email notifications for various events on FaceBook. I still wanted to know when an event happened, but not necessarily receive it on the phone as a notification. Instead, I wanted to change it so that those notices would come through via email instead. Making this change to a no-app phone allowed me to control which notifications (via email) I see and how I interact with those notifications.

The other improvement by making this change has been notifications through the web site via the phone. When a lot of notifications would be received on the app, the FaceBook app would display all notifications including those that had already been viewed. It would take a while to scroll through the list and look at each notification. With the web access, this is no longer a problem. It only displays those events which have not been viewed.  Thus, if there are ten notifications, only those ten are displayed making it very easy to see each notice. I have had has many as twenty-five notifications since changing to this method and even with as many as 25 notifications, it was very easy to get through the entire list.

This is an improvement if you ask me as it is event difficult to see which notifications have been checked access FaceBook on a computer. Any notification is displayed and scrolling has to be done to get through the list sometimes and difficult to see which ones have been read or not. Possibly a setting that can be changed, but nothing I ever found to make notifications work better in the app and only display those that had not been viewed.

Future Use

For now, I plan on continuing to use this method to access FaceBook. It is easy and not always reaching for my phone each time the alert goes off for FaceBook. Looking at notifications, I do see much higher notifications since going go this approach. It could be argued that is where the 15-20% battery increase comes in that now instead of reaching for the phone each time the alert goes off, I am now only reaching for the phone when there are many alerts. Or, by knowing what the alert is by reading it in email so I do not have to check each one as I would with the regular alerts.

What Has Been Your Experience 

Have you done this switch? What have you experienced since making the change and removing the app? Share your experience in the comments or why you switched back to the app.

Test Two is Done in Beginning Piano and Still Feeling Test Anxiety... Have a good feeling though

Going into the test tonight, I did not feel good about how I was going to do. For once, though, coming out of a test, I feel like I did really good. Not sure if that is good or bad. We get the results back on Wednesday night.

This was a test in my beginning music class over chapter two. Starting to get deep into reading notes and then also needing to be able to know where the notes are on the staff. The test tonight was a combination of needing to be able to recognize whole, half, and quarter notes. But it was also again doing a test with the instructor and having to know where the note on the second line of bass clef is located on the keyboard.

The weekend was spent trying to memorize and prepare for test two. However, it was really spent procrastinating by working on updating the web site, watching basketball, and basically doing anything but trying to study. Thus, I went into the test tonight not thinking I was going to do very well. That "good feeling" was not there and did not have high hopes for doing well in the test.

Instead, I came out of the test feeling good and looking forward to Wednesday when we get the results. Now, it could be a different story once I get the score back on Wednesday and find out how I did. Wondering what I forgot or did not notate correctly on the staff. Oh, so many things that could have gone wrong, but I feel so good about the test.

After I finished the test and headed to the parking lot to meet Carrie, I realized I was sweating like a pig. My shirt was actually damp from where I had been sweating... for a test in piano. Memories of how anxious I would get when taking tests all comes back each time we do a test in the class.

Still having a lot of fun in the class and looking forward to see the results Wednesday.

Have a great week!

Updated Web Site for The Dog House with new Design for Blog

Following discussions last week in the weekly #blogchat via Twitter, change have been made to the look and feel of The Dog House. Still working with different ideas, but so far the changes seem to make the site easier to read and navigate.

The site still uses Blogger, however, it is no longer using my custom template. Instead, the site is using a template provided by Blogger that I can change at anytime. Google Analytics has also been updated and tweaked to get a better sense of the traffic visiting the web site as visitors per day continues to increase.

Let me know your thoughts by posting to the comments or send me a tweet.

Connected to Companies via Social Media and Those That Never Respond

So many examples of companies being connected on social media. A few that show up in my timeline are mentioned here. These are only recent replies as there are many other companies that have responded to various tweets throughout the years.

Social Media Examples of Interactions with Companies

@havertyj Nice! Thanks for stopping by!

— Taco Bueno (@tacobueno) February 24, 2016

It is always fun when a company responds to a posted tweet about their business... good or bad! It helps to make connections. This post was tweeted on February 24 on my way back from Tulsa, Oklahoma when I stopped in Bartlesville, Oklahoma at Taco Bueno. Using Swarm to track locations I visit, usually when traveling, this has happened in the past too with a company companies responding or commenting thanking me for stopping by their establishment.

It is almost so common these days with companies watching FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. traffic, that it is almost shocking if a post is directed at a company and they do not respond. I have gotten to the point where if I am unhappy with a company, I will often times go to Twitter to send them a tweet about my problem. The majority of the time, I get a response from them within a matter of minutes apologizing, asking more information, or thanking me for the comment/visit. Again, if I do not get a response, that is almost never happens. Even with small store fronts, it seems like even they have some type of social media presence.

Many companies have employees hired just to watch for social media comments. Some use automated responses to thank people for their comments. The great sites have real people following and tracking comments and responding to those comments. Both have been experienced and obviously the real person on the other end with answers to questions or comments works best!

Other well connected companies include Dish and Cox Communications both of which are extremely fast at not only responding, but often times resolving issues directly through a tweet or a direct message if needed.

@havertyj Please follow and DM us with your account/phone # and your 4 digit PIN. *AE

— DISH Answers (@dish_answers) August 6, 2015

Company is Not Connected

Having a company that is not connected can be frustrating for a customer. Especially if they give the impression of being connected. Send them a message (FaceBook, tweet, etc.) and get no response back at all. Check their history and see that no one has responded to anything that has been sent to them. Very frustrating! Luckily, this has not been a problem I have encountered too often. Or, when it has happened, it has been a local establishment that has a Twitter presence, but has stopped updating/responding to tweets. Might as well delete the account and not entice posts to the account.

Options of course then fall to calling or sending a letter. Yeah, who sends letters any more? So, basically if the company does not have a web presence of some kind and linked to social media, there will likely be no follow up with that company again. If it was something that was perplexing enough to cause me to want to contact them, then maybe their not having a presence will be enough to not want to visit their establishment or use their service again.

The Trend for Social

The pulse for what is the hot item for social connections is constantly discussed on various blogs and articles. There is information that younger adults have moved away from FaceBook and Twitter going to other social mediums that is connected directly with others their age such as SnapChat. It is obvious that for the past few years, companies have focused their social communication to FaceBook or Twitter. Just about every major company has some type of social media presence and usually it is either FaceBook or Twitter. With the younger generation not focusing, or using, these services as much, it will be interesting to see where companies go to get and receive that connection with their customers in the future.

Comments

Share your comments about companies you enjoy communicating with or connecting with on-line. Share frustrations that you have had when trying to connect with a company and what did you do to get your frustration heard by that company? Feel free to send me a tweet with your question or comment too.

Brief Update on Royals World Series Trophy Tour at Washburn University #Royals #ForeverRoyal

The Kansas City Royals had their World Series Tour and Washburn University was one of the stops, so we had to show up to get pictures. It looked like a good turnout as the line was fairly long when I got there at 5. Took us about an hour to get through to see the trophy and when we left, there was still a long line of people waiting to get into see the hardware.

No mascot or players, but the trophy there allowing fans to take pictures with it and of it. It was fun and glad I attended.  Unfortunately, Carrie has been sick since Sunday and she was unable to attend. I am sure she will see it this year at one of our visits to Kauffman Stadium as it will be displayed in the Hall of Fame.

Congrats to the Royals and thank you for sharing the hardware from the World Series Championship!

Flickr album of all my Royals pictures is below... Spans a couple different seasons.  Looking forward to another fun season!