Bringing Home the Bacon: April 2009

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Dayton Media on Twitter

Monday, April 27, 2009

Couldn't They Have Called it the Mexican Flu

This blog is all about my worlds colliding. So, here we are at swine meets PR meets health care.

Let me start by wearing my agri-PR hat and saying:

There is no evidence at this time that the virus is in U.S. swine. (USDA)
Swine influenza viruses are not transmitted by food so you cannot get swine influenza from eating pork or pork products. (USDA)
This virus is different, very different from that found in pigs. (NPPC)

And now for my health care PR spiel, courtesy of the CDC.

Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.
Try to avoid close contact with sick people. Influenza is thought to spread mainly person-to-person through coughing or sneezing of infected people.

Lastly, a note about branding. Anyone who thinks that naming and branding aren't important should talk to the people at Smithfield who saw their stock pummeled today. An emphasis on geography rather than an old-fashioned name for certain symptoms, and people would be afraid of Taco Bell--not pork chops.

UPDATE: Looks like H1N1 virus is the new flu name being slowly adopted. The New York Times has an interesting article about the naming of the flu and theories that it actually started in Asia. Also, want to point out that I am sleeping with the hottest "get" in southwest Ohio. Husband has declined two media interviews.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Pork and PR

We get a lot of publications at our house that feature many, many pictures of pig balls. Get your mind out of the gutter! These are serious publications that include ads from boar studs (a boar stud is exactly what you think it is) that are showing the males they have for sale.

We also get a number of earnest publications put together by the Pork Producers Council and the Farm Bureau featuring swine manure management strategies or perhaps stories about farmers and how they plant the exact grasses in their pasture to maximize the digestive process of their goats (an actual story that I read).

The point I'm getting to is that in looking over the farm literature that comes into the house daily I'm starting to see a trend. Farmers, at least when talking to each other, are tired of lying back and letting others shape their image.

I participated in my first #agchat on Twitter tonight. For two hours, I watched over 130 tweets roll in from people all over the world who are concerned about the image of agriculture and the way certain groups have gotten ahead of us in framing a conversation based on emotion rather than the science most farmers are more comfortable with.

I helped Husband tweet about the Ohio Pork Tour, a print, Web, YouTube campaign to show that Ohio's pig farmers are real people who care about the environment, taking good care of their hogs, and supporting their families. As a PR person and a hog farmer, I find this to be an interesting campaign at an opportune time. I encourage you to check it out.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Cool Mothers' Day Card

Scrapblog has a great deal. $1 printing AND shipping for a cool Mothers' Day card that can be fully customized.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Case Closed

A Geek Squad double agent was dispatched to our farm today. And I love him. Although, now that I think about it, a double agent works at cross purposes to the agency he appears to support--so as a true double agent, he should have been trying to put MORE viruses on my PC.

He arrived ON TIME in his cute little Geek-mobile. According to the Mission Details that he left behind in his Field Agent Communique, he removed 12 infections and had to run a few extra programs to get rid of a pesky trojan. Those trojans CAN be difficult, and unreliable.

While he couldn't pinpoint the exact source of all the bugs on my computer, he did have some tips on system performance and online safety. Chiefly, he told me to ditch McAfee as soon as possible and get Norton 360 or Webroot Spysweeper with Anti-virus. It ticks me off to learn that McAfee can only cure the computer equivalent of an ice cream headache, especially since Dell suckered me into a multi-year deal with them.

His other great piece of advice was don't have a million icons on your desktop. It slows down performance since it has to repaint each one every time you minimize a program. This makes sense and I have already done it. Why did I have the photo of the guy from the testicle festival on my desktop as an icon anyway?

So the saga of Holly's virus-infested computer is over--Case Closed. I'm sure you're all tired of hearing about it. Here's a final question: How did a woman with a broken computer get online to complain about it so much? Maybe I am the double agent.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Danger, Danger Will Robinson!

UPDATE 4/16:
I made a last-ditch effort to resolve this myself and contacted Ree at Pioneer Woman directly. To her credit, she was very kind and apologetic. I didn't really see this from visiting her site (hence my frustrated comments there), but she really has done her homework to help people get through this with free tools and instructions.

Now I have a dilemma. Should I slog through two pages of technical instructions to save myself paying $300 to Geek Squad? Or should I save myself the endless frustration of probably not being able to get it anyway, and just let a professional do this? I have created the first-ever Bringing Home the Bacon poll at right. Vote early, vote often.

UPDATE 4/13: According to the very nice lady from Geek Squad I have a cocktail of horrible viruses floating around on my PC--no doubt obtained at the PW blog and elsewhere. They are dispatching a "double agent" to my house on Saturday. I probably should have Husband take our first-born farming with him because I may offer him to the Geek Squad agent if he fixes my computer.

UPDATE 4/8: I have a Rootkit that I picked up hanging around at the popular Pioneer Woman blog (link not included by design). I know it wasn't intentional, but I can't help but be angry. PW has been posting links to malware and spyware sites but they're not much help if the system is locked up.

It's such a PAIN not to be able to blog about how I was in charge of the farm last weekend or for Husband to check hog market prices.

Original post:
Something is horribly, terribly wrong with my home computer. It may be a virus. All I know is that it keeps freezing, then warnings come up and then it shuts down. When it lets me, I am running virus scans. We'll see what happens. Stay tuned.

Bringing Home the Bacon