Vanessa Fox. Nude.

As some of you may know, I’m working with Ignition Partners, a venture capital firm here in Seattle, as an entrepreneur in residence. I have been having a fantastic time looking into the online marketing space, talking to people about their challenges and about what excites them most in learning about their customers. I love working with online marketing, looking at things from new angles, and solving problems. And I have lots of ideas about where things could go next.

I’m forming a company around these ideas (although I’m not ready to talk about the details just yet) and am looking for just the right people to join me. If you like getting in on the ground floor of cool new stuff, have a developer background or online marketing background (beyond SEO), and want to talk more, let me know!

And if you’re working for a company that would like to get a new perspective on online marketing strategy, or simply talk through your issues and needs, ping me on that too.

You can reach me at vanessafox at gmail dot com.

Fit neither of those camps but just want to know what the heck we’re up to? Watch this space.

I completely understand that consumers should read their warranties and that businesses are not charities and that sometimes Wired magazine makes mistakes. And I have been involved with technology long enough to know that it’s all shiny and sparkly to distract us from the fact that it doesn’t work, often breaks, and to brainwash us into thinking that “I guess I have to reboot” is a functional method of operation.

So when my new Vista-esque Sony laptop with the fantastic screen and the DVD-only mode turned out to be a string of salesperson-uttered broken promises, deathly blue screens, and unexpected shut downs, I considered it to be a normal, operational computer. When the shift and control keys stopped working, I didn’t bat an eyelash and simply remapped them to function keys. So I had to train my fingers to move up rather than sideways for capital letters and copy and paste. This is the way of Windows. But when the k key and the 0 key and the l key randomly stopped working… well, that started to get in the way of my productivity. Then 10 minutes it took to get out of sleep mode didn’t help either. Nor did the USB ports that only worked when they decided the air was exactly the same temperature.

I broke down and called Sony. After the requisite half hour hold, I talked to someone who said they’d be happy to have me send the laptop back so they could check it out. And if they decided the problem was under warranty, they would fix it and send it back. How long would that take? About 14 days.

Let me interrupt my sad, sad story to revisit what I said before. I know this is how their warranty works and Sony is delivering exactly the service is promised. And it’s easy to say that consumers are dumb not to read these things and know what they are getting into. But I don’t know that consumers are stupid.

Instead, I think that consumers enter into a kind of contract with a company during a purchase. I pay money in exchange for a reasonable expectation that the thing I’m buying will actually work. We don’t put a great deal of emphasis on the “what if something goes wrong” part of the deal because if we expected the item not to work, we likely wouldn’t buy it in the first place.

But my laptop didn’t work and it’s my only working computer right now. How do you think I would do without a computer for 14 days? Right, I may as well go without coffee. Or the air.

I asked the nice Sony rep if any options were available that would enable me to exchange the non-functioning laptop for a functioning one. He said I could call customer care and they would help me with that. Great! I called the number. And listened to lots of ads for Sony products.

Tip #1 for phone support: don’t try to sell things to people who have problems with your product and are patiently waiting on hold for help. This happens to me all the time and I cannot imagine a scenario in which the person finally reaches a real person and says “well, I was originally calling because this thing you sold me doesn’t work, but forget all that. Now I’d like to buy more stuff from you!”

I finally got through to a person who said I had called the online sales number and she could only help me with purchases directly from them. Well, I bought the laptop at Fry’s. I had to return it to them, then. I had tried that and they said they had a 15 day return policy; after that, I had to call Sony. She helpfully gave me the first Sony number I had called. I explained that I had already talked to them, so perhaps there was another number I could call? Nope, that was the number.

Tip #2: Educate the employees who answer the phone. A customer with a problem isn’t likely to be made super happy by waiting on hold a half hour, only to be caught up in Dante’s seventh circle of phone scavenger hunt hell.

She eventually transferred me back to the original tech support line. I talked to an amazingly unhelpful person who explained about the warranty and how the whole send back for 14 days thing is in writing. I completely understand it’s in writing. I get that they are doing exactly as they promised. But they sold me a laptop that clearly doesn’t work and some amount of working with me might have caused me to write a blog post about how Sony confidently backs up its products and supports its customers and goes beyond what they have to in customer service rather than writing, well, this blog post and quoting forum posts like this one that I perhaps will link to with anchor text from the title of the thread: don’t buy a Sony Viao–

They will not even lend me a replacement because it did not fail within 2 weeks. 2 weeks? Is that all that they can comfortably commit too?
This has made me rethink my policy of buying Sony for its reliabilty and quality. I accept that things can go wrong but the first rule that I instill with my team is that the complaint must be dealt with promptly and resolved a quickly as possible.
Clearly Sony do not subscribe to this principle.

So what’s a girl to do. I sadly have two other laptops — one with a broken screen and one that randomly shuts off every few minutes. Apparently, I’m a poor steward of technology. I figured I’d better get yet another laptop, and I’d better do it fast. I could get a cheap PC, but those don’t seem to have a great track record with me and besides, I’ll send the Sony off for its 14 day tour and get it back fixed, so I don’t really need yet another Windows laptop.

I know. I can barely bring myself to type it. Me, the champion against all that is unholy and wrong about Apple holding the world prisoner with its shiny, shiny lure of nonfunctionality. That same me walked into an Apple store and exchanged large piles of money for a Macbook Pro.

In my defense: not only is the Macbook Pro very very pretty, but all I had to do was take it out of the box and turn it on and I was online in about 15 seconds, as I admitted recently when I was a guest on SEO Rockstars.

I’ve now had the Mac for a couple of weeks and while it’s not the perfect utopian paradise, with frolicking, scantily clad fairies, unlimited lattes, and showering gold that one is led to believe — it does occasionally freeze or not understand that a full signal wireless connection means I should be able to get on the internet — it’s BILLIONS of times better than my Sony laptop of doom. One forgets how much easier it is to get things done when one isn’t restarting from the blue screen of shattered dreams and unsaved documents every ten minutes.

The biggest drawback of the Mac is that I know absolutely nothing about it. Give me a PC and I’ll fine-tune your registry settings, reinstall your drivers, and work from the command line. Give me a Mac and I’ll… well, I’ve almost figured out how to launch applications. I’m going to use bootcamp to install XP on a partition (although someone on Twitter suggested vmware fusion or virtualbox instead), but I’m going to keep the Mac OS too and see if I can figure out how to do more than just gaze at it longingly.

Will I become one of those crazy, hippie Apple-loving fanatics who likes Apple just a little too much and who smugly tells everyone I “think different” with no ironic nod to that phrase’s grammatical incorrectness? Will I trade in my bursting-with-function Smartphone for the shiny iPhone of uselessless?

In the unlikely event of such distruption in the natural order of the universe, I give you all license to remind me of my English degree and smack me in the head with one of my many nonfunctioning iPods.

Barry asked me what I wish I were more serious about. Or more devoted to. Or scheduled in more. Or possibly was more perfect about.

I thought about this for a long time.

I pondered.

I weighed the possibilities.

The pros and cons.

The potential outcomes of increased seriousness in the various facets of my life.

And after careful consideration, I ultimately concluded: what do I wish I were more serious about?

Absolutely nothing.

OK, maybe I should try more varieties of donuts. I only ever get the chocolate kind with the custard inside. Perhaps I should branch out into the cake donuts with the multicolored sprinkles. Those look pretty good.

Frank, my torturous evil trainer, has found the blog. I went in for my session the other day, and he was woefully offended. I made him sound so mean! I explained to him that I did not make him sound mean. That I only write the truth and I was just reporting things as they are. As he was trying to convince me of his niceness, he handed me two ten pound weights, pointed at the other side of the room and told me to start doing lunges. And said that if I needed to throw up, I should wait until I got to the end of the room where the trash can was. Later, he made me do pushups. Seriously. Pushups.

So, as you can see, I was completely wrong and Frank is sweetness and light and cookies and kittens.

He did make a good point, which was that the pain and yelling is actually helping. Which is weird, because it’s not like I didn’t work out before Frank. I’ve always worked out. In fact (and this will make me sound like a crazy person), back in college, I couldn’t wait to work out. I was so busy all the time with work and school that I felt way too guilty to take any breaks. But hey, working out is good for me! That can’t make me feel guilty. So, I could not wait for the gym, when I could be free from work and papers and studying and bosses and teachers. The gym. My peaceful oasis of calm. (Crazy person. Check.)

Well, OK, after college, I did slack off a little. I mean, I still worked out. But I had the metabolism of a twenty year old! (Probably because I was twenty.) So, I ate a lot of McDonald’s and didn’t give much thought to my later years, when I would face my own mortality and impending old age and death and curse my younger self for not considering that one day being healthy might actually matter, you know for living a long time and all that.

Maybe the universe plans for us to be vain in our younger years, because with our foolish, carefree, live forever attitude, we’re not giving much thought to our health. The motivation of looking good is all that keeps us working out and branching out our eating habits beyond french fries. When we’re older, we realize that looks aren’t the only thing, and maybe french fries are worth it sometimes (when are french fries not worth it? unless they’re crappy french fries), but we can start to see the benefits of a slightly more healthful lifestyle.

The point is that I continued to work out, but apparently in a lackadaisical manner one might associate with a wandering child at an Easter egg hunt. I’ll just go over here, then maybe over there. Oh, but now I’m distracted by this bright shiny thing. Look, flowers!

Several years ago, I decided to Get Serious. Clearly, I had no idea what I was doing, healthwise. I bought this book, Ultimate Fitness: The Quest for Truth About Exercise and Health, thinking surely it would scientifically lay it all out for me and give me all the answers. It was a good book, but I was still missing something. Mostly that something was figuring out what worked for me. Which I think is mostly different for everyone, which makes it difficult to learn from a book.

A trainer isn’t for everyone, but I tend to do the same old things every time I go to the gym and I don’t really push myself and sometimes I get kind of tired and leave early. I know! I’m so lazy! But having a trainer keeps me challenged, keeps me doing new things, doing stuff that on my own I would think, right, not doing that; that looks hard and painful. (And I do still say that to myself sometimes when I’m working out, but at least a couple of times a week, Frank’s around to yell at me. Also, sometimes when I’m working out by myself, Frank sees me and comes over and kicks me, just for fun. Or maybe that’s for motivation.)

Since I’ve been going to a trainer, I’ve seen a big difference from just going by myself. So, I suppose I shouldn’t be so mean to Frank. But hey, at least I don’t call him satan. Surely that’s niceness enough.

Li Evans has asked me about my magazine subscriptions. Andy Beal says that knowing this can tell you lots about a person. I can only deduce from this that I am an empty shell, devoid of meaning and thought, a two-dimensional paper cutout. I’d be hollow, except for the whole two-dimensional thing, so instead I’m more line-like. (Speaking of cardboard cutouts, don’t you think I should have Buffy for my office? Or maybe Spike.) The point is that I read absolutely no magazines. At all.

It’s not that I’ve never read magazines. I used to subscribe to many of them. I subscribed to Newsweek for years, mostly my very young high school and college years, back when I thought I would be a world-changing investigative reporter or perhaps a (also world-changing) politician. For a brief period in my late twenties, I subscribed to Maxim, FOR THE ARTICLES, PEOPLE. Sheesh. And I got Cooking Light for a really long time until I realized that I mostly found all my recipes online.

I have also, at various times, held subscriptions to Business Week, Forbes (mostly to get the quarterly FYI, edited by one of my most favorite writers, Christopher Buckley), Jane, a snowboarding magazine that came with my season pass, and many more I can’t recall. For some reason, I keep getting Fortune Small Business in the mail, although I have no idea why.

The trouble with magazines is the clutter. You feel like you need to keep them. What if you want to refer to them later? Your mind can’t possibly absorb all of the knowledge, so best to have them around for reference. Or maybe this is some odd habit I have about keeping things I read since it’s an absolute given that I keep all my books. Everyone keeps all of their books, right? You never know when you might need a book.

Which leads me to the other reason I don’t read magazines. I barely have time to read at all, so in the time I do have, I’m going for the books. Give me a choice between books and well, just about anything, I’ll pick books every time.

And really, the types of things I would generally read about in magazines, I get online these days. All the news, the tech stuff, the food stuff, even the gossip, it’s all in blogs and forums and web sites. And it’s more up to date! God bless the internet.

Li mentioned comics, which aren’t exactly magazines, but I do read those. In fact, I just picked up some comics last weekend. I got Buffy season eight and Phonogram, drawn by a friend of mine. (Perhaps I should mention to my friend that his site’s home page has no title or indexable content and is described in the search results as “unique visitors counter” due to his noscript tag, but I digress.)

And I do sometimes pick up magazines at the airport to read on planes. I bought Wired a few weeks ago, you know since it had the whole naked blogging thing on the cover and I figured they were stealing the idea from my clever blog name so I should check it out. Except that I suppose it’s possible they went to print before I started blogging. But still, odd coincidence, don’t you think? Perhaps they somehow tapped into my brain! OK, probably not, but the magazine is called Wired. They probably have an inside line on the brain tapping technology.

But for the most part, I have transformed from being a magazine reader to a blog reader. I would have never thought I’d see the day. I’m a fan of the old school paper-based reading, of having something to carry around and keep. And I still don’t think you’ll ever find me with one of those new-fangled online book readers those young whippersnappers keep promising, no matter how tightly I hold on to my blackberry and thank for for coming back to me, my dear sweet blackberry, never leave me again. Ahem. But I’m definitely keeping my books.

I’m supposed to tag five more bloggers but I’m much too sleepy, so I charge the first five people who read this with writing about their magazines, then posting a link in the comments.

Wikipedia needs authentication that I do, in fact, exist and am not, as I often wonder, a figment of someone else’s imagination, crazy dream, or psychedelic hallucination. The authentication they need is that I was born. Which is indeed a good indicator of existence. If you are never born, then you can only exist as a literary hero and/or villain, visiting angel (and/or devil), or I suppose you could be God. I am none of those things, as far as I know, and in fact, I do have a date of birth. September 1, 1972. I always liked being born on the 1st day of the month for some reason. I’m number one! As though I had any influence over the matter.

Sometimes my birthday would fall on Labor day and then I didn’t have to go to school and at some schools I went to, school didn’t even start until after Labor day, which meant I was assured a day of leisure. Being born near a holiday is cool when you’re a kid. When you’re an adult, being born near a holiday means that if you want to go away for the weekend on your birthday, you have to pay extra and hang out with holiday crowds. Not that I’ve become a cranky old lady or anything, so just stop thinking that right now.

I was born in Long Beach, CA, which as you may know is home to the Queen Mary, a very large ship that doesn’t actually sail anywhere. I didn’t live there long, but I’ve lived in lots of places all around Southern California, and most of my family and friends are scattered about the general area, so I make it back fairly often. I’ve also lived lots of other places, but I assume that at some point you have to stop reading this entry and go back to work or to your homes or make dinner or something, so I’ll save all of that for another day when you have a bit more time.

If you are good at math, you may have already worked out that as I was born in 1972, I will be 35 in only a few short months and even if you are mediocre in math, you probably realize that means that puts me firmly in my mid-thirties. Which sounds quite a bit closer to the grave than early thirties. I am even older than Todd, and I wouldn’t point out his edging towards mid-thirtydom except that he seemed a little too delighted to confirm that I was practically decrepit compared to him when I saw him the other night. You’re thinking that cranky old lady thing again, aren’t you? Yeah, I’m sort of thinking it too.

In any case, the point is that as I do have a date and location of birth, I’m likely not a literary character. Which is a bit unfortunate, because how cool would that be? Especially if it was a make your own adventure book. Unless it was someone else making the adventure. And I suppose that would be the case. So, maybe things have worked out for the best after all.

I have a deep dark secret buried in the depths of my soul. I’m normally not one for telling secrets, but the time has come for raw and brutal truth. I only hope that you can look me in the eye once you know.

My iPod includes the following:

• Britney Spears
• NSync (and also JC Chasez’s solo album, but none of Justin’s)
• Nick Carter (but not those whiny Backstreet Boys)

I can explain.

Sort of.

See, it’s like this. Profound and thoughtful music is great, but not so much when you’re on the elliptical at the gym, attempting to go somewhat faster than the pace of the slowest snail ever to creep its way under the slowest flower in the slowest garden. (I know, the slow garden thing makes no sense. Just go with me here. I’m abusing metaphors.) You need peppy music. And please God, not music that makes you think. Or makes you depressed, so that all you want to do is go cry in a corner. No crying in gymage! Or something.

Sometimes Britney is just the thing.

I haven’t been listening to Brit or the boys as much lately though, as my iPod has sadly, once again, stopped working. All I get is the folder with the excited exclamation point. Why is the folder so exclaimy? It’s not actually saying anything except “I don’t work! Woo! You get no music! None!” So, instead of speeding along as NSync wonders if you’d still love them if they weren’t, you know, rich and famous and all that (I guess they’ve learned the answer to that!), I have been using my blackberry to catch up on email while I climb endless flights of non-existent stairs. Because of my iPod’s stubborn refusal to give me music, I have crossed the geek line and have become someone who even the every-three-minute twitterers can mock.

On the plus side, I’m making a tiny dent in my email. Those who know me are aware of my massive failure to keep up on email. Friends have seen my inbox and have honestly gasped in horror and absolute astonishment. I suppose I should thank Apple for giving me a way to get a bit closer to catching up. (I feel I should mention that I used to read while on the elliptical. Actual books! Not just electronic devices! I wasn’t always this geeky!)

I don’t always do email at the gym. Sometimes, I’m being endlessly tortured by Frank. Frank is my personal trainer. I used to mock the idea of a personal trainer. I figured I could work out just as easily without paying someone lots of money to stand around and yell at me. But I was oh so very wrong. Apparently the standing around and yelling makes a really big difference. I can tell this because of the substantially increased amount of pain that I feel after working out with him compared to the days I work out by myself. Typical exchange:

Me: OK, that’s enough. I can’t do anymore. I’m going to die.
Frank: Ha ha. You’re not done. Keep going.
Me: No seriously. I’m going to throw up now.
Frank: I’ll go get you a bucket.

It’s a good time.

But back to my confession. It’s possible that every so often, I even listen to some of these songs outside of the gym. Like maybe the car. Possibly I’ve sung along. But I’m not confessing everything. Some secrets are just too dark to share.