Wanna Pet a Zebra? How About a Monkey?

There's a hidden gem in the desert, 60 miles north of Las Vegas along Interstate 15, and well worth the time. The drive in can be a little deceiving, because it looks like a dusty residential area, with parking on a dirt lot. But inside the gate is a whole different story. The first thing that caught my eye while standing in line was a large black animal with the head of a large cat and a thick black tail, short legs, long thick hair, on a leash, with a crowd of people gathering around not just taking pictures, but also petting the creature. Later, I found out this is called a bear cat.

Bear Cats smell like Fritos Corn Chips. This guy is very docile, almost the same tempermant as a dog.

So it turns out this is an exotic animal petting zoo, Roos-N-More. The zoo is only open on specific days, so you will need to plan your trip ahead of time and admission is just $10, plus there are optional kangaroos and otter tours for an additional price. They also provide small food bags for a minimal cost so you can entice the animals.

Camel kiss

This odd looking animal is a bushbaby, plus it's a baby, so it's a baby bushbaby :-)

Baby monkey 2 months old, not ready to be held yet.

The kangaroos are surprisingly docile and the small ones will nibble (not bite) your finger.

Toucan's have a long thin tongue that doesn't look like a tongue at all. This bird's about to take her hat and glasses

The anteater liked to dig for ants, but not eat them. Anybody know what anteaters say? I have no idea, but as the official mascot of my college, they were always depicted saying "ZOT!"

This guy starred in this Rascal Flatts video. The handler in white shirt talks to the monkey as if he understands English, which, evidently he does.

Otters here. You can pet the otters on a private otter tour, just don't bring ANY food into the habitat. The handler will tell you these guys are master thieves and have been know to take iPhones and keys, then immediately run into the water. One guest immediately lost a bracelet upon sitting in the grass next to a friendly one.

I was a little intimidated to walk up and pet this guy. I mean, just look at the glove this handler is wearing. Owls might look friendly in the movies, but they have a talons and a sharp beak and can do some serious damage. Just like all the animals here, this one seemed to thrive on the attention.

Me and the coatimundi. On a previous trip, I got to see this guy climb on people's backs as they formed a line and hunched over. They have thick fur and almost human hands.

The same coatimundi eating a carrot

A baby Lemur. Poor guy was tired, fell asleep while being held.

Zebras LOVE carrots, but the zoo doesn't sell carrots so be sure to bring your own. And watch out for the camel, 'cause that camel pushes his weight around to get to the carrots.

 

This zoo is one of the most interesting places I've been to near Las Vegas. I highly recommend taking a day trip to this out-of-the-way destination. The zoo is called Roos-N-More and you can find out more information at their website www.RoosNMore.com. The zoo is only open certain days and certain hours, so be sure to check the website for the days you can visit. On my previous visit, I saw a baby porcupine and (2) 2-toed sloths, so you never know what animals they're going to have on display. Plus there are some less exotic animals to see, like an emu, llama, pigs, rabbits, guinea pigs and great danes.

Funny Text Message from Stranger

I receive text messages from people I don't know from time to time. Here's a short exchange that took several days to complete. For some reason, he thinks my name is dougy.

Promoting a Band using ClientTouch.com

Fan Base is More Important Than How Good Your Show Is
Don't get me wrong, being able to put on a good performance is essential, but what might not be obvious is that building and communicating with the fan base is more critical than how good the show is. That might sound a little counter-intuitive, so here's some background. When it's time to negotiate the pricing, being able to pack the house is what's important to everybody, the promoter, the venue and ultimately the band. More bodies means more opportunity for dollars to flow and thus gives the band more leverage. For example, if you are in a band where you know that you can bring in 200 to 400 people to see the show every Friday night, that gives you flexibility when it's time to negotiate prices and ticket sales. If you know that you can bring in more people, then that's even better. So one of the most important aspects to becoming a successful band is building and communicating with your fan base.

Getting Fans to Sign Up
So on to how to build a fan base. Make it easier to sign up by distributing sign-up cards and pens around the venue beforehand. Offer prizes each show for signing up. Some bands have a sign-up sheet on a clipboard on stage where fans can add their contact info, others let users sign up on a website. While clipboards and websites will help, that's more work for the fan and the less likely you'll get fans to sign up on the spot. The key is to make it easy for fans to sign up and encourage fans to sign up. Make it part of the show if possible and keep in mind that the power of the Mic. Fans tend to do what you tell them to if done on the Mic.

Communicating With Your Fans
So now you have a stack of names and contact info, now what? We all start out trying to manage our fan base with our personal email account, just typing out the list of emails from each card. That's fine for 25 fans or so, but what about when you have 500, 1,000 or 10,000 fans? At some point you're going to need help.

ClientTouch.com
We use a web-based product called ClientTouch.com for $30 a month. Here's how it works... We get between 50 and 100 contacts each show. Those contacts are entered into an Excel spreadsheet, then uploaded to ClientTouch.com. For each new show, we create an HTML based email template that will be sent to all of the fans on a specific day. The email template has images and links so the fans can find out more information if they choose, plus they can forward the email to friends. Now that we've been using the product for a few months, inputting the contact info takes about an hour per show and creating a new email template takes about the same.

The Bottom Line 
So you're probably wondering whether it's worth the time and trouble. In our case, we were able to double our customer base over a 4 month period and we've almost outgrown our venue. I would certainly say it's worth $120 and 10 hours worth of work to double the customer base.

HootSuite 500 Internal Server Error

The Problem
I see many frustrated users looking for a solution to the dreaded 500 Internal Server Error generated from HootSuite's Bulk Schedule feature. The solution is a little elusive because the error screen does not accurately describe the problem and HootSuite's forums do not consistently explain why the problem occurs nor how to resolve the issue.

The Cause
In the cases that I have seen the issue is caused when accented characters such as those used in foreign language are put into the CSV file, either in the tweet or the URL. For example, the following words will cause the error,

Mañana
Café

The details of why accented characters cause this problem is a little technical, but has to do with how English language characters are represented in ASCII versus non-English language characters. All English language characters can be represented with ASCII values less than 128 whereas non-English language characters are represented with ASCII values greater than 128. So any tweets or URLs with characters with ASCII values greater than 128 many times cause the 500 Internal Server Error.

The Solution
There's a few different ways to solve this issue
1) My personal favorite solution is to use an Excel template that defaults to UTF-8 encoding that can be download at http://www.HootSuiteBulkUpload.com. This is a little near and dear to my heart as I am the author :-) but it only runs in Windows Excel and you have to enable Excel Macros.
2) Option 2 is to remove or replace the accented characters with non-accented characters (not ideal)
3) HootSuite's recommended solution is to encode the file as UTF-8, which is easier said than done.

If you're using Windows Excel and some versions of Mac Excel, when you Save As CSV, there's an option next to the Save button called Tools.

If you select Tools | Web Options..., you'll see a tab called Encoding, where you can specify UTF-8 encoding.

If you're a Mac Excel 2008 user, you'll want to save your file as CSV within Excel, then open your file is a text editor like TextWrangler where you can specify the encoding.

Conclusion
Unfortunately HootSuite does a poor job of explaining why this error occurs and there's quite a few links in Google that you have to wade through to get to solution that works for you. If you're lucky enough to work with Windows Excel, then your best solution is to download the FREE spreadsheet template at http://www.HootSuiteBulkUpload.com. Otherwise Mac users have one extra step which is to load their CSV file in a text editor capable of saving with an encoding option.

Las Vegas McCarron Airport Terminal 3 Concourse E

The new terminal 3, at McCarron Airport is scheduled to open in June 2012. The new terminal is much like any other airport terminal although there's some big improvements into how to move passengers in and out of the terminal efficiently compared to terminal 1. If you want to get into the details of which airlines and whatnot, check out this PDF provided by McCarron.

Wifi is completely free throughout the terminal, BTW.

Here's a few pictures of the new terminal.

Passenger drop off area

Ticketing area

Self-check luggage terminal

Interesting architecture in the ticketing area

Inside concourse

Gate 7E

Chairs run in an arc and there's plenty of plug-ins for electronics

Welcome to Las Vegas sign inside Concourse E

Moving walkway

Welcome to the United States sign