One day at the end of April I had a breakthrough, thanks to my MBA Entrepreneurship class. Not that the breakthrough had much bearing directly to the class, but it was definitely induced by the ideas I had been introduced to during the course.
One night on my way to GWSB I got a brilliant business idea. I don’t really understand the exact train of thought how I arrived at it. But I was thinking about this blog and I realized that in spite of the fact that it was the end of April, and the last snow storm we had was more than two months before, I was still getting traffic from Google based on the searches related to that remarkable snow storm we had in February 2010. It is really surprizing, but to this day I get at least 3-4, sometimes more visitors a day who come to my site from the search engine because of a few posts that I placed on my blog about those memorable Blizzard 2010 days:
So my idea was to produce some apparel, mainly t-shirts, sweat-shirts, hoodies and caps with snow storm related imprints. Something with insignia along the line: ‘Snow Storm 2010 Survivor‘. I was thinking that in addition to selling them online, I could also contract some street vendors in downtown DC, and souvenir shops around town to sell on consignment basis. Now that the tourist season is approaching, I thought those items could be in demand by tourists visiting Washington, DC. I was really excited about such a brilliant idea
Just to test the waters I went online that same night after class to see what, if anything, was available around this theme. I should not have been, but I still was completely smashed by my findings . Not only those t-shirts were already available, but I was really amazed by a true entrepreneurial zeal of those who did it. Some of the snowmageddon t-shirts were already available and marketed on February 8, 2010!!! Here is another article about Pensyllvania snow storm shirts offerings. This means they were offering it right in the middle or immediately in the wake of the double snow storm charge. That was really amazing how fast people can come up with ideas. D-a-a-a -h! ;-)
Anyways, just wanted to share about my entrepreneurial idea fiasco. I often come up with some ideas, but some of them, like the one I shared here, are very time-sensitive. And I still seem to be ‘a bit’ slow. Need to sharpen my entrepreneurial instincts
Today I found yet another derivative of apocalypse in relation to the double snow storm that hit Washington, DC area earlier in February. I already expressed my opinion about the use of strong epithets in regards to these storms. However in this case it felt more like an irony than alarmism, so I let it slip. The new term is ’snowparkalypse‘. The article and the ensuing comments are worth looking at. I did not have time to go through all the comments, but a few I read gave an invaluable insight on some aspects of DC living that we, suburbanites, are not very familiar with most of the time.
More pictures on snow storms of winter season 2009-2010 in Washington, DC area:
I have to agree that partially unplowed streets and unaccessible parking spots have been quite an nuisance after the snow storm. Having had to drive to downtown DC a few times in the last week I concur on the issue. I also have been taking a few pictures of the snow mounds in the suburbs where I live. Granted, there is a little bit more space in the suburbs, so the issue is not so acute as in downtown Washington, DC. Take a look. Pictures, as most of the time, were taken with my Nokia E71x Phone, (AT&T) .
Snow storm aftermath. Snow mounds along Rockville Pike.
Snow storm aftermath. Snow mounds along Rockville Pike.
Snow storm aftermath. Snow mound on parking lot off Rockville Pike
Snow storm aftermath. Snow mound on parking lot off Rockville Pike
I don’t intend to downplay the serious implications, hazards, and consequences of the double snowstorm that hit the Washington, DC area and the East Cost of the country in these last few days in February. I admit that the massive snowfalls are not very common to this area, and people, as well as local authorities, may feel inadequate and ill-prepared for this kind of nature showdown. But I do think that the public and the media has blown it way out of proportion when they nicknamed this Blizzard 2010 snowpacalypseand snowmageddon.
My suspicion is that these names were coined and put to wide circulation by persons who had not had real hardships in their life. Probably the biggest “calamity” they had ever personally endured was running low on toilet paper, chips and salsa. Make a note: they have not actually run out of those “life bare necessities”. They just got intimidated by the very thought of running low on those “essentials of life”.
When people use loosely and frivolously quite grave terms it makes the whole value paradigm shift. Take a lighter example with my cat. My cat comes to my bedroom almost every morning and starts meowing. She does it before my regular wake up time, not because she really cares about my not being late for work. She is just trying to get me out of bed to feed her. She also does this on weekends, when she knows very well that I have no work to go to on those days. It is quite irritating for me when I try to catch the last moments of sleep or just to sleep-in on weekends after doing readings for my MBA classes well into the morning hours. My reluctance to indulge her hunger feats is exacerbated by the fact, that she is already an obese cat, and I have been trying to control her food intake. Anyways, I used to call her a mean cat because of this. I thought I did not really mean that, I just called her mean half-jokingly.
Then recently my daughter told me that it was not really nice to call the cat mean. She said that she was at the most obnoxious, but not really mean by any measure. When I gave it a thought I realized that my daughter was right. I stopped calling the cat mean every time she woke me up too early in the morning. And soon I noticed that my general attitude to the cat changed. I started to treat her more like a family member, instead of just a pet in the house. Being obnoxious, I guess, is OK for cats sometimes. I am still less tolerant to obnoxious people though, as they do know better
Back to the snowpacalypse. We all know that there are much more serious and deadly nature-induced events: earthquake in Haiti, earthquake in China 2008, Hurricane Katrina, Asian tsunami of 2004, to mention just a few most recent that come to mind. So, for all those snowmageddon preachers here is an advice: save your epithets for better use, and keep enough toilet paper on hand at all times, not to be embarrassed at the next snowfall.
I came up with mypersonal unofficial snow wimps index. On the scale from 0-10, where zero means snow heroes, and ten means complete snow wimps. Of course, It should be taken only half-seriously
Snow heroes:
0 - hospital personnel, firefighters, police, and public utilities emergency response services (power, water, etc)
1 – snow plowers
Snow hustlers:
2 - TV crews and staff working to cover the storm and provide news
3 – staff at supermarkets, and othe stores and restaurants that kept working through all or most of the storm
4 – Bloomingdale’s. The local stores were announcing closing on storm days only at ten in the morning, as they were hoping to be able to open, even if late.
Snow wimps:
5 - federal government agencies. Announcements about closings were coming the night before. Cumulatively, federal agencies were closed since Friday afternoon last week till today.
8 - local county public schools. They announced already on Tuesday that will be closed through the end of the week. I will not be surprized if they stay closed part of the next week too. With this school closings my kids will have to go to school till the 4-th of July this summer. Good by summer vacations
9 - shoppers hording food at the stores
10 - honorary category in its own rite: toilet paper snatchers.
Again, this is my personal and unofficial index. Feel free to nominate others to expand the list
The snow storms battering the Washington, DC area in February are not really even news anymore. It has become sort of boring routine. I don’t even need to put up pictures of the snowfall, as it is just more of the same old. Nothing newsworthy. Anyways, today started the next round of snowfalls in the [...]
Judging by TV news reports the snowstorm of February 5-6, 2010 was officially christened Blizzard 2010. That was an impressive nature showdown. I actually enjoyed the snow days. Spent Friday afternoon and all day on Saturday at home, with the fireplace cozy chirping, sipping on porto, watching movies with the family, and just taking it easy. As [...]
Yesterday after a class I stopped by at the neighborhood supermarket to pick up a few items. The store was quite empty, so were the shelves in produce, dairy, meat, and bread departments. The sight of the empty shelves was quite shocking. Only then I remembered that we were going to have a big snowfall this weekend. The [...]
. Not only those t-shirts were already available, but I was really amazed by a true entrepreneurial zeal of those who did it. Some of the snowmageddon t-shirts were already available and marketed on February 8, 2010!!! Here is another article about Pensyllvania snow storm shirts offerings. This means they were offering it right in the middle or immediately in the wake of the double snow storm charge. That was really amazing how fast people can come up with ideas. D-a-a-a -h! ;-)
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