By: dcline on December 9, 2007 - 9:43pm - Add new comment
I started thinking about my Rolodex the other day.*
Blame The Wall Street Journal, which recently published a story on how the venerable Rolodex – the large rotary-wheel models in particular – are still used by many executives in this age of the BlackBerry.
The story rhapsodized that “the hulking, 6,000-card wheels that once signaled a huge network of contacts” are no longer manufactured, which I suppose means the Rolodex is now officially in the Pantheon of Banished but Beloved Products, probably between a box of Lawn Darts and a 3-gallon toilet.
By: dcline on December 2, 2007 - 8:55pm - Add new comment
In business, it’s not easy being the new kid on the block.
You have to fight a little harder, work a little smarter and move a little faster than your entrenched competitors to win the hearts and minds of potential consumers.
That’s the situation that Columbia -based First Citizens Bank and Trust Co. is preparing for as it enters the Augusta market.
By: dcline on November 25, 2007 - 7:15pm - Add new comment
“It’s sad. It’s like losing a part of the family.”
– Diane Chamineak, lunch counter manager, F.W. Woolworth & Co. Broad Street store, June 20, 1991
The former F.W. Woolworth & Co. store at Eighth and Broad streets has gone through a few owners since the lights went out for good in 1992.
Other than a brief period when it was used to warehouse gambling equipment, the old five-and-dime has spent most of those 15 years as just another vacant relic of a bygone era of downtown commerce.
By: dcline on November 18, 2007 - 8:20pm - Add new comment
A PR guy I know dropped by the other day to sell me on a story idea.
During my talk with this PR guy - we’ll call him "Neil Gordon" - our conversation drifted onto the topic of his former employer, eAuction Depot.
The company, which helps you sell your stuff on eBay, is no longer a corporate franchising entity.
It is, in fact, bankrupt.*
By: dcline on November 11, 2007 - 8:39pm - Add new comment
met·ro·sex·u·al (met roh SEK shoo ul) n., adj., – a usually urban heterosexual male given to enhancing his appearance by fastidious grooming, beauty treatments and fashionable clothes
Most types of “personal service” make me somewhat nervous.
By: dcline on November 4, 2007 - 8:39pm - Add new comment
I like to think of downtown Augusta’s past century as falling into two distinct time periods.
I call the first period PM, which stands for Pre-Mall.* This was a time when downtown was the city’s center of commerce. Whatever you needed, be it car tires, the latest fashions or a ball-peen hammer, you could find it on Broad Street.
By: dcline on October 28, 2007 - 7:27pm - Add new comment
Whine and ye shall receive.
Just a couple of weeks ago I was lamenting how there is nobody in the area doing comprehensive market research on the local economy and how that lack of research prevents business leaders, local policy makers – and lowly business journalists – from gauging the true state of economic affairs.
A few days later, my phone rang. It was Marc Miller, the dean of Augusta State University’s Hull College of Business, telling me that my lament (on economic research, anyway) would soon be a thing of the past.
By: dcline on October 22, 2007 - 8:21am - Add new comment
Networking is becoming increasingly crucial to having a successful career these days.
That’s largely because:
A: The media are always doing stories on how networking is “increasingly crucial” to your career.
B: Consultants, self-help book authors and career consultants (if they are to be believed) are more up- front about saying what most of us have suspected all along: Success in many industries largely hinges on your likability and who you know.*
By: dcline on October 14, 2007 - 5:39pm - Add new comment
Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable.
– Bobby Bragan
As a homeowner, parent and taxpayer who’s in pursuit of a good “quality of life,” I enjoy the fact that the Augusta-Aiken area is a midsize city.*
As a business journalist in pursuit of facts, figures and statistics and other telltale economic clues, that same fact is often frustrating.
By: dcline on October 7, 2007 - 5:50pm - Add new comment
There are several things I grapple with on a fairly regular basis:
Can I get another two years out of my 1997 Taurus?
Is all the homework my kids do actually making them more intelligent?
Am I too young to wear a tweed jacket?
Should I own a Lynyrd Skynyrd album?*
Is Augusta's economy good or bad?
I've been giving more thought to that last one since the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis came out with its list of market-specific gross domestic product data two weeks ago.
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