Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) once said that squirrels are like rats, but with cuter clothes.  Of course she was right.  Sometimes squirrels are just downright adorable.  Except when they eat the birdseed you put out in the feeder for your favorite blue jays or robins.

(Image of Red Squirrel – Image courtesy of Haap Media, Inc., – All Rights Reserved)

Yes, squirrels will climb up bird feeders and pig out.  I’ve even seen the hanging up in the air and swinging to knock at the feeders so food would drop up.  Not only do they have cuter clothes, they know how to get the goods.

Squirrels will also gnaw their way into your attic, or even worse, your house.  They find a lot of ways in and once they get settled, your house becomes theirs.  Squirrels are loud. (more…)

Yes, it’s true I have spent the last 25 years consumed with all aspects of hair.

Although my original college studies were not in the hair, beauty or fashion worlds,  I’ve gone to two different wonderful cosmetology colleges here in Dallas, received a license to do hair and continued to take ongoing hair classes, both for certification and to continue advancing my hair and beauty education.

(Image of Conair hair clippers – HairBoutique.com – All Rights Reserved)

Someone recently commented that this blog was only about hair.  Actually that’s not true at all.  If you visit on a regular basis you already know that.

While the HairBoutique.com site has literally thousands of articles specifically about hair, hair loss, hair styling, hair trends, this blog is not specifically limited to hair.  (more…)

Well the title for this blog felt right, but certainly I am not an expert on Alexa. Even though I have owned and run a number of web sites since the mid 1990s I’m a babe in the woods when it comes to understanding the true mechanics of this amazing ranking system.

I guess my website ownership history makes me one of the old ladies of the web having been working on HairBoutique.com, my primary website, since 1997, on a daily basis.  I will confess I have been eating, sleeping and obsessing about HairBoutique.com since the very first day.

What I find about Alexa Rankings, which I personally value for a traffic analysis viewpoint, is that the more I think I know, the less I actually know.   Which tracks with my knowledge of SEO, Google words, Twitter traffic patterns and other mystical, magical things that as a web businessperson I need to know.

Yes, it’s true there are many Alexa, SEO, Twitter, Social Media gurus out there and I follow as many as I have time and eyeball energy to do.  I have two in-house web experts who have worked with HairBoutique.com since the very beginning of the site.  However, I have learned that the buck stops with me and if I don’t at least try to figure some of these things out, I am the one who loses.  (more…)

The LA Times reported today that two F-15 fighter jets escorted a commercial flight bound for Hawaii back to Portland International Airport after a passenger became disruptive.

A spokesman for North American Aerospace Defense Command says the fighter jets intercepted Hawaiian Airlines Flight 39 at about 1 p.m. Wednesday, shortly after the pilot decided to turn around.

Keoni Wagner, vice president of public affairs with Hawaiian Airlines, says the passenger failed to cooperate with crew. He did not elaborate, and additional details on the disruption were not immediately available.

The plane was carrying 231 passengers and a crew of 10.   Wagner says the plane landed safely in Portland and the passenger was removed. The plane was then refueled, and the flight departed again.

I for one was happy to read this LA Times Blog because a experienced an abusive passenger and her male companion on an American Airlines flight from Dallas, Fort Worth to Palm Springs, California in July of 2009.  I was traveling to the NAHA hair awards in Las Vegas by way of Palm Springs. (more…)

A former friend of mine who recently resigned as an editor of a major magazine was chatting with me today on the phone about her ongoing quest to find good free lance writing jobs which pay a fair price for original, high quality journalism.

I was commiserating with her about the constant Web write around “authors” who target long standing articles and “rework” them in order to publish them on the legions of pay-for-content sites all over the web.

It used to make me angry when I would see my own long published content “reworked”.

Now it just makes me sad the free lance industry has been basically destroyed by anyone who can find a good quality article on just about any topic and then “steal” it, rewriting it enough to avoid legal action in exchange for a quick payoff of a few bucks.   (more…)

In a recent statement to UsMagazine.com, TAG Heuer President and CEO Jean-Christoph Babin has said Tiger Woods will continue on as one of their brand ambassadors for their prestigious line of watches.

Babin has said “the partnership with Tiger Woods will continue.”  Tiger signed on with TAG Heuer in 2002.

(Image of Tiger Woods – Image by Keith Allison – All Rights Reserved)

Originally there were reports that Tiger had been dropped due to all the recent adultery scandals.

CEO Jean-Christoph Babin has told the media Tiger will continue with some temporary modifications.  Babin has said “we will downscale the use of his image in certain markets for a period of time, depending on his decision about returning to professional golf.”  Tiger, 33, is currently on complete hiatus from his golf career. (more…)

Wishing you a safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

A dear friend of mine for over 25 years, Jean Colombo sent me the following little story this morning to wish me a Happy Thanksgiving.  I’m not sure where she found it but it was touching so I decided to share it in my Thanksgiving blog.

It’s always hard on the Holidays not to sound cheesy or goofy but Jean’s story on Perspective seems to fit the bill.

(Image courtesy of Monmart – December 13, 2005 – All Rights Reserved).

Perspective

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live.

They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, ‘How was the trip?’ (more…)

‘More men use mobile data services on handsets than women’

Aug 17, 2009 (DMEUROPE via COMTEX) — Research by German mobile network E-Plus and Handelsblatt on mobile data use shows significant differences between the genders. A total of 40 percent of men favour mobile internet, e-mail and navigation services on their phones.

By comparison, just 1 in 6 women are interested in using mobile data services on their phones. Women prefer to use practical handset functions such as cameras (82%) and MP3 players (43%). One in three men and one in three women believe that a robust shell and universal USB interface for connecting to a PC are important factors when buying a handset. A total of 1,040 people were surveyed online in the spring.

Distributed for DMeurope.com via M2 Communications (www.m2.com)

More Information

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Thank you for visiting us at The HairBoutique Blog and for leaving your comments. They are very much appreciated. We apologize in advance but must remove any direct advertisements or solicitations.

Let me first start by saying that HairBoutique.com is not perfect. As Founder/CEO I’m the first to admit that and I am constantly working 24/7 to improve our Internet presence and to make HB.com a warm and welcoming place for our visitors.

Our HairTalk Forum software (always accidentally or due to a software bug) will sometimes lock visitors out and throw them into a horrendous Catch22 of them trying to get a password reset and emailing them to tell them a new password is being sent but then no password reset screen link ever arrives. They keep trying until they send an SOS to HairBoutique.com Customer Care and it is manually reset for them.

Catch22 Password Reset

We also sometimes have the same Catch22 Password Reset issue for customers and visitors to the Hairboutique.com Marketplace, HairWizard, My HairBoutique.com, The Dressing Room and other parts of Hairboutique.com which since 1997 has grown to cover over 1 million pages of content, images and related “stuff”, as I call it.

I Am A Huge Twitter Fan

Anyone reading my blog knows that I am a major Twitter fan. I Tweet to the @HairBoutique Twitter account on a daily basis and have done live Tweeting there for the Academy Awards of Hair – NAHA 2009 – as well as Cosmoprof2009 and several awards including the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards. I Tweet about everything that is appropriate to hair, beauty, fashion and feature many of the Hairboutique followers on my HairBoutique Blog. (more…)

The Leadership Vacuum:  What We Lose With The Next Generation

The mass exodus of Baby Boomers from the workplace has already begun. According to the US Office of Personnel Management, between 2006 and 2010 Boomer retirement will have robbed American companies of nearly 290,000 full-time experienced employees.

(Image of workers – by Woodsy – All Rights Reserved).

While the financial crisis has forced some to postpone retirement for a couple extra years, we can’t count on the majority of them to be fully contributing members of the workforce much longer.

Silver hair, pension funds and personal memories of a Kennedy assassination are not the only things our struggling economic engine will lose when Boomers settle into the quiet life. (more…)