"12 months. That's a really fun age."

Lately, I've been having this conversation a lot.

Parent with older child: Your daughter is really cute. How old?

Me: Oh, she's a little over a year.

Parent with older child: 12 months. That's a really fun age. Enjoy this time, while you can...

But with their eyes, they say: She may be snuggly now, but it's all down hill from here. One day soon you'll wake up and meet a screaming, tantrum-throwing monster trapped in the body of your daughter. It's not too late, though. No one gave me this warning. You can still run away! Before it's too late. Before your hair turns grey and your walls are covered in crayon!

It's a little disconcerting, frankly. Could the coming 'terrible twos' really be that bad? Does the change happen overnight or are there any warning signs?

I am starting to notice that Sydney likes to say "No no no." Not "No." But three times the "no". Could the nightmare already be starting?

Parents with older children nod in the background

It's a bit like in those zombie movies. The survivors are all trapped in a house. And the survivors know, that if one of the millions of zombies hovering outside can manage to get in and bite one of them, that the victim will turn into a zombie too. And then, inevitably, one of the survivors gets bitten, but is afraid of telling the others, and so he hides it.

But the audience knows. The audience knows that all too soon, this one will be turned into a destructive automaton.

"Maybe", thinks the soon-to-be-zombie, "I'll be different."

Somehow, I think I'll have a say in whether my daughter turns into a monster. "Our daughter will be different," I think to myself. "She's incredibly snuggly and loving now. And, she's had a great upbringing, lots of love, good genetics, etc."

Which I'm sure, is what all of the other parents thought, when they heard about the coming terrible twos.

Denial. It's such a fantastic tool for getting us to move into what's ahead.

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BabyFight.com

Recently, we had a get together with some other couples that had babies, and with my sister and her 9 month old. Every visit was video taped.

And during a recent screening of some edited highlights, I was surprised to see how much baby-fight footage was captured. I've got footage of Sydney (age 1 yr) taking on my niece, Bailey (age 9 months) over a photo album, and getting alternately stared down and ridden like a bronco by her younger and more agile cousin.

I've got footage of Sydney chasing the cat around the house, with the inevitable result. I've got footage of an unfortunate long haired baby (Tal), being harassed alternately by Sydney (near bald) and grabbed by the hair and kicked in the head by Orion (bald).

All of the exchanges were punctuated by my yelling, "be careful!" or "no no no... we don't slam the other baby's face into the thing". Collectively, all of the bouts are probably 1 minute of footage out of 20+ hours.

But with some creative editing, I could start a website selling the 'baby's greatest HITS' video. It's the natural evolution from COPS and When Animals Attack. You wouldn't be able to take your eyes off the screen. And yet, something is stopping me. A little warning light that says that there might be some parents out there who would try to stage fights with their babies, just to get them featured on the website. Mixing babies with rattlesnakes, for example.

And so, restraint has prevailed. To watch the 1 minute of baby fights, you'll just have to wade through the other 20 hours of babies smiling and clapping their hands, crawling and being lovable. Contact me if you want a 20 hour marathon screening. I would be happy to oblige.

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Is it Brian or Scott?

I get one question very frequently. Do I prefer to go by Brian or Scott? In an effort to clear up the confusion...

I was born Brian Scott Barnett. But because my father's name was also Brian, I was always called 'Scott' by family in my early years. This greatly reduced confusion, so that when telemarketers called for Brian Barnett, as they invariably did, I was no longer handed the phone by my dad (not a true story, by the way... back when I was young in the 1970's, we didn't have phones. we used tin cans tied together with string [also not a true story... see? I never promised that I'd be honest in my weblog].)

Anyway, sometime in later life, I had a not-so-brilliant idea that I would begin to go by my first name, Brian. Up until that point, when I went to a new school or job, things would go like this:

New Teacher: "Class, I have a new student here. Could you all welcome looks at paperwork that I had brought into the class 'Brian Barnett'?

Class (in unison): "Hi Brian."

Me: "Actually, I prefer to go by my middle name, 'Scott'."

New Teacher: "Ok, Scott. Whatever."

Class (in unison): "Whatever."

But somewhere along the way, I decided that this was too time consuming. So when the teacher/new boss/whatever said 'Brian', I never corrected them. Henceforth, confusion reigned.

My family and longtime friends all call me 'Scott'. My co-workers, some later acquired friends, and telemarketers from Credit Card companies all call me 'Brian'. When the two groups meet, they each call me their preferred name, then look confused and irritated when someone calls me something else.

Upon getting married, I have tried to reverse this mistake, by getting everyone to call me Scott, but people who'd been calling me Brian, refused to believe that I prefered Scott, and continued to call me Brian. My current employer codified this in my Email address. I even gave up, to a degree, and registered BrianBarnett.com as my domain name. But secretly, deep down, I still long to be called Scott by everyone (except Telemarketers, who I'd prefer not call at all).

Does that help? Are you still with me? God. I've bored them off the site already. After only 3 entries.

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The Weblog Campaign Blitz Begins

As any marketing weenie can tell you, just building a website is not enough. Life doesn't actually work like 'Field of Dreams', not that I ever saw that movie... but I did read the back of the video box before rejecting it. In Field of Dreams (according to the back of the box) some guy, played by Kevin Costner, goes insane and builds a big baseball stadium in an empty cornfield behind his house in Nebraska, and people show up and start playing ball. Which just goes to show how little there is to do in Nebraska.

On the internet, where I've got plenty of competition, my marketing experience tells me that I have to spam people mercilessly, until they come to my website, and join my user community.

Spam piece #1 (sent about an hour ago, to a bunch of friends & family.) Note, I have removed several misspellings, in an effort to make myself seem more perfect than I actually am:

----- Original Message -----
From: B. Scott Barnett
Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2003 2:00 AM
Subject: Announcing new feature at brianbarnett.com - a weblog


In my never-ending search to make my life easier, I have created a weblog. For those who don't know what a weblog (or 'blog' for short) is, it is a sort of online bulletin board or diary. I can post thoughts there, for all the world to see. A bit like graffiti, but more legible.

And people who sign up as online 'members' can post their reaction.

I plan to use it to post updates on my life. So now, you've got more choices if you want to know what is going on with me:

Option 1) Pick up the phone and call my number. Wait until my voicemail picks up. Leave a pleading message about why I should drop whatever I am doing, so that I can call you and give you a status report on my life.

Option 2) Visit my website.

If you wish, you can even join my member community. This entitles you to all kinds of benefits, but because I am fairly new to this weblog software, I have no idea what those benefits might be. Perhaps they are the same kind of benefits that you get if you follow the instructions in a chain letter. You know, avoidance of a hideous curse that creates warts on your back (or worse, on your partner's back!)

Anyway, you can see it here, in its infancy:

http://www.brianbarnett.com/weblog.php

Scott

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Scotty B's first weblog

If you were a dishwasher at work, would you want to go home to a sink full of dirty dishes? I think not. Which is why after roughly 10 hours a day, basking in the warm glow of my 21" computer monitor at work while taking care of other people's websites, I have been a little reluctant to create a personal website to do anything more than post an occasional baby picture for my family, and to have a domain for personal email.

Perhaps this weblog will change all that.

You see, this weblog is extremely easy to post updates to. I would highly recommend PMachine (go to pmachine.com) if you aren't deathly afraid of Unix and PHP, and are interested in doing your own weblog.

The key is, I can update this site now from anywhere I like, when I like. Which makes it something that I might actually update on occasion.

So tune in. See what happens. Join my community and post brilliantly worded critiques of me. I've not had a chance to try out the 'delete' or 'bar user' functions, and I'm itching to.

For, this is my domain, and like anyone who is given just a little bit of power, I can't wait to abuse it.

And now, to satisfy my family (as a general rule, you must always strive to satisfy your core audience), here's a baby picture:

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