That's kind of been what my day has been like today.
Went to bed at 11:30 last night, had to keep hitting the Whack-A-Mole that my inbox had become.
Got up at around 2:00 AM, cause I just HAD to check the numbers. Numbers checked, I went back to bed.
Got up at 3:00, just to check the numbers ooooonce more. Went back to bed.
Got up at 3:30, cause obviously I'm not going to sleep when I could be watching the number not change (really, Kijiji? You realize what you're doing to me here?), so I spend it trying to sort through the email, facebook and do a little reddit.
Turns out that there are approximately 35,000 people sharing the link in facebook, and that makes me think
O_o
35,000 people. I don't know 35,000 people, at least not in such a deep and personal way that they would all agree to share a link to my ad.
By 7:00, I was more than giddy. I go from 187,907 views to 190,202.
7:10 and I do a phone interview (which I have come to understand is called a "phoner") with 101.5 The Hawk in Port Hawkesbury, NS. Scottie and Greg are super nice. Turns out that Greg knows YouSuckAtKijiji, so they heard the audio from my interview with him the night before. Scottie says he's super happy I'm not a twelve year old that can't string together two whatchamacallit...thingies...word bunches. (I may be exaggerating a little, but only because I remember it was really funny but I can't remember what it was, so I'm making up my own.)
Before we go live, Scottie asks me not to use bad words. We joke about it, and we come back from the song with Scottie introducing me before Greg calls out that there are late school buses to announce. This turns into an excellent segue into introducing me (they're late because of road conditions that could have been helped with a snowblower!).
We chat for about 5 minutes. It might be less, it might be more. All I know is that about 25% of my brain is being used to talk semi-coherently about the ad, 25% is trying to keep alert in my surroundings to prevent any other noises (one of the cats does NOT like it when I talk on the phone), and the final 50% is going through every swear I know and making up a few that don't.
Chockface, as an example. That should be a swear.
Before I know it, the piece is over. They go to commercial, thank me again, and we talk for another 30 seconds before they have to go. I promise to keep them updated on the status of the snowblower.
Have to go to work to face real life, but I have a wonderful, caring and understanding boss who lets me leave for lunch a little early so I can get home for my interviews with CTV and CBC TV. I get the snowblower out of the garage and my neighbour's son is cleaning snow off their patio stones in their backyard. We chat and I let him know that I'm being interviewed. He hasn't read the ad, but he says he'll check it out.
I remember that I wrote something in my ad about a neighbour with a snowblower that I wanted to murder, and I want to assure him that it's completely made up, but he's already gone inside and it would be just too sit-com for me to tell him now, so I just let it go and hope it'll turn into an HBO comedy instead.
I've broken 200,000.
Jonathan MacInnis arrives from CTV, and we set up outside. At no fault of Jonathan's, I am incredibly uncomfortable and awkward, or at least I feel that way. We shoot some stuff outside with the snowblower, then we go inside and chat some more. I think I do better inside than out. We have some laughs and chat about how crazy this is, and then it's over just as the CBC truck pulls up.
I get my shoes on and go out to great them, thinking that perhaps I'm going to have to play referee in a real life version of an Anchorman Local News Action Team street fight, but it turns out that Jonathan and Jennifer Choi, but it turns out that they are able to keep their natural instincts in check and are even remarkably friendly. I don't buy it, but I let them believe I do.
Jennifer's interview is waaaaaay longer than Jonathan's, and involves shooting stuff from multiple angles. She has trouble with mixing up the word snowblower with snowmobile, but I promise I won't tell anyone (shh! don't tell her I told you!). I think because I had just gone through the same story with Jonathan in front of a camera that I'm more comfortable with Jennifer, and they get some good reaction shots of me trying to describe some of the emails I've received and how I've been dealing with them.
The coolest part of the interview happens at the very end when we run out of space on the disc. They explain it's one of their new HD cameras that uses BluRay discs. I say "Wait, these are BluRay?" The say yes. I pump my fists in the air and say "f*ck yeah! I'm on BluRay!"
Damn you Scottie-O and Greg.
There is much laughter, we check that the shot was captured before the disc was full and it's back to work for me.
Work in the afternoon is broken up when I get word that the Huffington Post Canada is looking for me. I quickly check my email and eventually find Brodie Fenion's message. It was buried somewhere in the second or third page of email as I recall. I shoot him a quick response, and we are eventually able to chat on the phone.
We're only about 60 seconds into our conversation before he says "I think your sister just tweeted us." Sure enough, my ever-loving, oh-so-tech savvy sister had seen they were looking for me and had sent them a tweet so they would have an avenue to find me. Brodie tweets back, we chat for a few more minutes about what's happening, and we're done.
Back at my desk, everyone is going crazy (okay, everyone is helping me go crazy) by calling out what other media outlets are reporting now. I really want to be playing with my newfound attention, but I finish the day.
Get home, try to reach CTV Edmonton, but aren't able to get through to the producer I was talking to earlier. I set the PVR to record the news and we head out to Costco, per plan. When we get back there's an extremely apologetic voicemail from the producer, asking me to call her back. I do, and she tells me that they're going to run with the piece that Jonathan did, but wanted to ask me a few more questions just to flesh it out. Takes five minutes and I hit the email.
Some time later, I have food (first meal I've eaten since breakfast - in the excitement of the interviews at lunch I forgot to eat lunch), and then we watch the two spots I've recorded. I'm not nearly as awful as I thought I was in the CTV spot, and the CBC spot appears to be missing 45 minutes of footage. Everyone has a good time. I go back to checking the email.
I find some actual potential offers in the mix, finally, and send out some emails. Then I decide I need to write something in this blog. And then I got distracted a bunch of times and had to do more email.
I am up to 281,771 views. The record is 550K and counting (according to Kijiji twitter feed), so I think I may have a chance to meet and exceed.
Now I'm going to bed.
Oops! One more thing - if I'm going to make anything out of all of this, I need to start archiving as much as possible. Anyone have any suggestions or know how to do that?
Went to bed at 11:30 last night, had to keep hitting the Whack-A-Mole that my inbox had become.
Got up at around 2:00 AM, cause I just HAD to check the numbers. Numbers checked, I went back to bed.
Got up at 3:00, just to check the numbers ooooonce more. Went back to bed.
Got up at 3:30, cause obviously I'm not going to sleep when I could be watching the number not change (really, Kijiji? You realize what you're doing to me here?), so I spend it trying to sort through the email, facebook and do a little reddit.
Turns out that there are approximately 35,000 people sharing the link in facebook, and that makes me think
O_o
35,000 people. I don't know 35,000 people, at least not in such a deep and personal way that they would all agree to share a link to my ad.
By 7:00, I was more than giddy. I go from 187,907 views to 190,202.
7:10 and I do a phone interview (which I have come to understand is called a "phoner") with 101.5 The Hawk in Port Hawkesbury, NS. Scottie and Greg are super nice. Turns out that Greg knows YouSuckAtKijiji, so they heard the audio from my interview with him the night before. Scottie says he's super happy I'm not a twelve year old that can't string together two whatchamacallit...thingies...word bunches. (I may be exaggerating a little, but only because I remember it was really funny but I can't remember what it was, so I'm making up my own.)
Before we go live, Scottie asks me not to use bad words. We joke about it, and we come back from the song with Scottie introducing me before Greg calls out that there are late school buses to announce. This turns into an excellent segue into introducing me (they're late because of road conditions that could have been helped with a snowblower!).
We chat for about 5 minutes. It might be less, it might be more. All I know is that about 25% of my brain is being used to talk semi-coherently about the ad, 25% is trying to keep alert in my surroundings to prevent any other noises (one of the cats does NOT like it when I talk on the phone), and the final 50% is going through every swear I know and making up a few that don't.
Chockface, as an example. That should be a swear.
Before I know it, the piece is over. They go to commercial, thank me again, and we talk for another 30 seconds before they have to go. I promise to keep them updated on the status of the snowblower.
Have to go to work to face real life, but I have a wonderful, caring and understanding boss who lets me leave for lunch a little early so I can get home for my interviews with CTV and CBC TV. I get the snowblower out of the garage and my neighbour's son is cleaning snow off their patio stones in their backyard. We chat and I let him know that I'm being interviewed. He hasn't read the ad, but he says he'll check it out.
I remember that I wrote something in my ad about a neighbour with a snowblower that I wanted to murder, and I want to assure him that it's completely made up, but he's already gone inside and it would be just too sit-com for me to tell him now, so I just let it go and hope it'll turn into an HBO comedy instead.
I've broken 200,000.
Jonathan MacInnis arrives from CTV, and we set up outside. At no fault of Jonathan's, I am incredibly uncomfortable and awkward, or at least I feel that way. We shoot some stuff outside with the snowblower, then we go inside and chat some more. I think I do better inside than out. We have some laughs and chat about how crazy this is, and then it's over just as the CBC truck pulls up.
I get my shoes on and go out to great them, thinking that perhaps I'm going to have to play referee in a real life version of an Anchorman Local News Action Team street fight, but it turns out that Jonathan and Jennifer Choi, but it turns out that they are able to keep their natural instincts in check and are even remarkably friendly. I don't buy it, but I let them believe I do.
Jennifer's interview is waaaaaay longer than Jonathan's, and involves shooting stuff from multiple angles. She has trouble with mixing up the word snowblower with snowmobile, but I promise I won't tell anyone (shh! don't tell her I told you!). I think because I had just gone through the same story with Jonathan in front of a camera that I'm more comfortable with Jennifer, and they get some good reaction shots of me trying to describe some of the emails I've received and how I've been dealing with them.
The coolest part of the interview happens at the very end when we run out of space on the disc. They explain it's one of their new HD cameras that uses BluRay discs. I say "Wait, these are BluRay?" The say yes. I pump my fists in the air and say "f*ck yeah! I'm on BluRay!"
Damn you Scottie-O and Greg.
There is much laughter, we check that the shot was captured before the disc was full and it's back to work for me.
Work in the afternoon is broken up when I get word that the Huffington Post Canada is looking for me. I quickly check my email and eventually find Brodie Fenion's message. It was buried somewhere in the second or third page of email as I recall. I shoot him a quick response, and we are eventually able to chat on the phone.
We're only about 60 seconds into our conversation before he says "I think your sister just tweeted us." Sure enough, my ever-loving, oh-so-tech savvy sister had seen they were looking for me and had sent them a tweet so they would have an avenue to find me. Brodie tweets back, we chat for a few more minutes about what's happening, and we're done.
Back at my desk, everyone is going crazy (okay, everyone is helping me go crazy) by calling out what other media outlets are reporting now. I really want to be playing with my newfound attention, but I finish the day.
Get home, try to reach CTV Edmonton, but aren't able to get through to the producer I was talking to earlier. I set the PVR to record the news and we head out to Costco, per plan. When we get back there's an extremely apologetic voicemail from the producer, asking me to call her back. I do, and she tells me that they're going to run with the piece that Jonathan did, but wanted to ask me a few more questions just to flesh it out. Takes five minutes and I hit the email.
Some time later, I have food (first meal I've eaten since breakfast - in the excitement of the interviews at lunch I forgot to eat lunch), and then we watch the two spots I've recorded. I'm not nearly as awful as I thought I was in the CTV spot, and the CBC spot appears to be missing 45 minutes of footage. Everyone has a good time. I go back to checking the email.
I find some actual potential offers in the mix, finally, and send out some emails. Then I decide I need to write something in this blog. And then I got distracted a bunch of times and had to do more email.
I am up to 281,771 views. The record is 550K and counting (according to Kijiji twitter feed), so I think I may have a chance to meet and exceed.
Now I'm going to bed.
Oops! One more thing - if I'm going to make anything out of all of this, I need to start archiving as much as possible. Anyone have any suggestions or know how to do that?
Yegad! I tells you whut! I sure am glad I'm just a shovel-bearin' yokel and not a multi-continental celebrity! The worst I had it was the day I had to be the park spokesman two days after the tornado ripped through. Talk about a long interview! That was for the local stop-animation station! It took us four days to shoot the entire two minute segment. I think it's on the tube right now... Nope: weather.
ReplyDeleteDamnit! There's another white brawl on the way and I keep forgetting what my back is telling me. Will you take $400?
Hehe - I did tweet HuffPost during the interview! Thanks for all the updates - I hope it sells soon! :)
ReplyDeleteI would much rather deal with a snowbank than a tornado...
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for the offer, but $400 is a little low for the Internet Famous Snowblower. :)
too funny Wey-Ming...I'm hooked....hope this snow blower of yours gets sold.....I wonder that you should take a pic of yourself with it....then you could say.....this is what me inspired my five seconds of fame!!!!
ReplyDeleteI imagine in your circle of friends,however, you are famous for more reasons than that of writing an awesome Kijiji add!!!!
This is so fantastic. :) I live in Havre Boucher, and work in Port Hawkesbury, where 101.5 is broadcast from. Scottie O and Greg are awesome, are they not? :) So glad this has turned into such an experience for you! Talk about exciting - who know a snow blower could become the talk of the 'net?? ;)
ReplyDelete