photo of PA State Capitol by Allies.Dad

State government can be an unwieldy thing, but if you’re in a pickle, chances are that there’s a state agency that can help you out.  You might as well use their resources – you’re paying for them, after all!  

Investing money? Check whether your broker has any prior complaints – or if they even have a license – with the Securites Commission.

You can report burning tires to the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection.

I once had an insurance broker “accidentally” cancel my policy and tell me that I had to pay them to reinstate it. I asked them nicely, I asked for their supervisor, and when they still insisted I owed them money for their mistake, I reported them to the PA Insurance Department. The result?  My policy FINALLY got reinstated correctly, without a dime on my own part.   

The Office of the PA Attorney General can help you with a whole slew of complaints – from do-not-call violations to consumer fraud, and you can log them online.

With the price of gas rising, everyone’s paying attention to the pumps.  Get shortchanged?  That’s the Ag Department’s beat. (Next time you’re gassing up, take a look at the stickers on the pump – they’re from Agriculture’s Weights and Measures Bureau.)

And once, a notary in Johnstown held my car title hostage. I wish I had known then that I could file a complaint against them with the State Department’s Bureau of Commissions, Elections and Legislation.  

There are a lot more PA bureaus and agencies regulating everything from baked goods to taxis – and if you know someone in Central PA, chances are we can point you in the right direction. Ask away – we’re used to it!

Anyone have a failure/success story to share?

 I haven’t been able to carve out any time for blogging. Travel, sickness, allergies, holidays and workload…plus a smidge of wedding planning…it all seems to be adding up to a big fat suck on my time.  My use of Twitter, on the other hand, has been pretty much nonstop…I will get everything back on track.

“When my ancestor, George, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, founded the House of Hanover in 1635 by establishing the first great Pretzelwerks of Old Europe, he could not have known what a great tradition he had birthed…. the Hanovers’ reputation for pretzel mastery grew….and, most importantly, established a pretzel- making dynasty that would dominate the snack-food landscape until the rule of Queen Victoria….And though the House of Hanover’s royal line met an untimely demise in 1918, there lived on something no power-hungry Jacobites or low-carbohydrate diet craze could destroy. Commitment, dear friends, is immortal.”

In case you didn’t know, Pennsylvania is the Snack Food Capital of the World.  It’s true – even the PA Dept. of Agriculture says so.  Mmm…all this pretzel talk makes me hungry for some Herlocher’s Dipping Mustard!

Is anyone else’s hometown famous for something unusual? 
 

I love XPN, and being a member DOES have its benefits.  My only complaint:  they announce the traffic with a Philly accent.  (They say Lam-PID-der, We say LAM-peter.) I love them anyway. 

The Patriot News reported that Mayor Reed publicly endorsed Clinton at the event, and lots of folks were turned away, (The Forum only holds 2100 people.) but the most interesting tidbit is in the comments on the Patriot’s story – they actually shut the Social Security office down for the event.

photo credit: Karns Quality Blog

And Roxbury News was there too, and have already posted video of a full minute of applause. What did Harrisburg city and state politics do before without them? Those guys are everywhere.

Clinton is plugging her Pennyslvania roots – she was baptized in Scranton and her dad is buried there – in her visits. In fact, she stopped in Scranton on Monday- with 3000 supporters in attendance. The Scranton Times-Tribune has great coverage and video. And she’s coming back on Saturday for the big St. Patrick’s Day parade. I’ve never been but I hear it’s huuuuuuuge in the land of The Office.

Some of the highlights:

Witnessing the audience revolt at one of the many metrics sessions I attended.  Check out Greg’s recap – it’s a great summary – and he is really cool. 

In a similar vein, really “getting” getting addicted to twitter. Learning that “tweet” is the verb and “twitter” is the site.

Attending Rohit Bhargava’s Core Conversation on “10 Ways to Piss Off Bloggers.”  A really nice, productive conversation of a session.  One of the 10 Ways is to not attribute where you’re getting the information you’re writing about – and on Sunday, Harrisburg blogger Jersey Mike covered the beef between a free weekly and the daily paper in Harrisburg:  The weekly is accusing the daily of stealing their ideas for stories – and in turn, Jersey Mike says, the daily is stealing their story ideas from local bloggers! 

 
photocredit: Seattle Times
Plus I got to meet Jackie Huba of the Church of the Customer Blog - we had a great conversation about our Steelers and how much we love Hines Ward.  I hope her fan club gets a home bar before next season! 

The “Scoop the Story on Your Blog” session, sponsored by Utterz.  I had heard of Utterz but had never used it before. Becky McCray interviewed me for her SmallBizSurvival blog about living in a small town. Which reminds me why I like blogging better than interviews:  I can EDIT.  Haha. 

The Gossip Session was way interesting.  I chose it because I thought there would be tons of estrogen in there and because it was moderated by Heather Gold, who is hilarious. The panel got one person bigger when Julia Allison jumped in on it.  I think “crashed” is too strong of a word – but I do think she used the panel as a way to air her personal grievances.  I had never heard of her OR her exes before this panel – but halfway through I was jumping on Valleywag to dig through the dirt.

Seeing Hugh McLeod furiously sketch cartoons while serving on the “Marketing of No Marketing”  panel. Seriously, everyone on that panel - Hugh, Chris Heuer, Tara Hunt,  Jeremiah Owyang, David Parmet and Deborah Schultz – had interesting, relevant things to say.  One of the best panels in terms of content, but the absolute best, I think, in terms of panelists.  If you were at SXSW, what were your favorite panels? 

Frank Warren’s keynote was absolutely amazing.  I have read PostSecret almost since the beginning so it was an event for me.  He really seems like a kind person who genuinely cares about what he does. 

I cried on and off the whole way through.  Anyone else out there blubber along with me?  And it was the only panel where I actually paid attention to all of the questions at the end -  from the proposal, to the guy who thought he was retarded, to the woman who is afraid for her sister (the site is www.debutaunt.com) -the keynote ran the gamut of emotions.  If you ever get the chance to see Frank talk, I’d highly recommend it. 

All in all, SXSW was a great time. I met so many authentic people from all walks of life – and it’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world.  Thanks, everyone, for helping make my first time at SXSW great. 

(H/T to Above Average Jane )

From the second i ponied up for the SuperShuttle, I met folks here for South By.  Joelle Reeder from The Moxie Girls (who’s just as bubbly as you’d expect a “Moxie Girl” to be!), Kevin McQuarn from The Advocate and Julie Porter. the Deputy Director of the Oklahoma Film & Music Department - we had a very interesting conversation about Okie Noodling, a doc about people fishing barehanded that i’ve gotta see. 

On to the party…Entertained myself by wondering about the male-to-female ratio.  5 to 1, easy, but still a lot more equitable than some of the other social media conferences i’ve been to.  Met some crazy people from b5 media and Jim Turner, a daddy-blogger-turned-people-connector and Baratunde Thurston, who has the coolest job in the world:  he’s the web editor of The Onion. Everytime he introduced himself, you could hear people saying, “The Onion! That’s so cool!”  Wish I got that kind of reaction from telling people I work at Bravo – I guess I have, in a few instances, but it’s a very narrow circle of people in Harrisburg.  Ha.

Had a great conversation about Barack Obama with Baratunde, Todd Norem, a copywriter from Minneapolis, and Trevor Holewinski - who shared his own experiences as an Austinite who was just in the middle of the political primary blitz.  Trevor’s a great guy with PA roots who started his own company doing website development and all kinds of other stuff that’s a bit above my head. 

Can’t wait to start the sessions.  FRANK WARREN is a keynote later on in the week…I am unbelievably excited for this one.