Easter candies, ranked

In preparation for the imminent arrival of everyone's favorite Bunny, your entirely unscientific, incomplete, and 100% accurate ranking of Easter basket candies:

398 - Spiced jelly beans

397 - 11 - <big list of forgettable candies>

10. Solid chocolate bunny

9. Lindt Chocolate Carrots

8. Peeps

7. Milk Chocolate Peeps

6. Mini Robin Eggs

5. Reese's Peanut Butter Egg

4. Hollow Milk Chocolate Bunny (the best part is the hard candy bunny eyeball)

3. Cadbury Creme Egg

2. Russell Stover Marshmallow Egg

1. Jelly Belly Jelly Beans

Have a great, long weekend!

Rob Lowes, Ranked

Your definitive ranking of DirectTV commercial Rob Lowes.

10. Far less attractive Rob Lowe

9. Scrawny arms Rob Lowe

8. Super creepy Rob Lowe

7. Rob Lowe (the normal one)

6. Peaked in high school Rob Lowe

5. St. Elmo's Fire Rob Lowe (I know that one has not been in the DirectTV spots, but he should be)

4. Painfully awkward Rob Lowe

3. Crazy hairy Rob Lowe

2. Overly paranoid Rob Lowe

1. Meathead Rob Lowe

Months, ranked

The often imitated but never surpassed 'Ranked' series resumes - this time with your semi-researched, highly subjective, and obviously definitive ranking of the months of the year.

You may disagree with these rankings, but of course you would be wrong.

Here we go:

12. February - there is a reason the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition always appears in February. This is a terrible month, mercifully cut short, but still miserable.

11. January - Cold, wet, long - did I mention cold yet?

10. April - The cruelest month

9. August - very overrated since it is a summer month. Long, hot, sticky, and if you are stuck working you will get almost nothing done since no one else is around.

8. March - Winter's over - or so you think. No, it's not over. March dares to give you a tease of the upcoming Spring, but just wait until you head out for that St. Patrick's Day parade in the freezing rain.

7. June - Such a non-descript month. Only redeeming quality is the NBA finals, but even I admit that appeals only to a fairly limited group. What else worthwhile happens in June?

6. November - now we are in to the top half of months, so let's spin this positive. Thanksgiving, Black Friday, lots of great pro sports in season, gearing up for Christmas make November the best month since June.

5. May - A solid, if unspectacular month. Good weather, finally shaken off the last bits of Winter, and Memorial Day weekend kicking off the summer. Hard not to like May.

4. December - Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's Eve, snow, hot cocoa, mistletoe..... You get the idea. December is pretty cool

3. September - Some people might argue with the 'end of summer vacation' month ranking so high on the list. These people are not parents of school aged children.

2. July - Quintessential summer month. Has everything you need - solid national holiday, great weather, and still only is the mid-point of summer. You can waste July by working all the time and still have August to look forward to. But July is better.

1. October - Fall foliage, Halloween, pumpkin flavored everything, fresh apples, and for the first time in ages that strange excitement that comes with the first really cool, crisp day of the season. It should be October for 11 months a year. Except when it is July.

Leave your thoughts in the comments, but remember, you are probably wrong.

Ways in which to contact me, ranked

This story is literally ALL OVER my Twitter feed this morning:

Coca-Cola Disconnects Voice Mail at Headquarters

The headline is pretty self-explanatory, but if you needed more context, here is an excerpt from the piece on Bloomberg:

Forget about leaving a voice mail at Coca-Cola Co.’s (KO) Atlanta headquarters. Send a text instead.

Office voice mail at the world’s largest soft-drink maker was shut down “to simplify the way we work and increase productivity,” according to an internal memo from Chief Information Officer Ed Steinike. The change went into effect this month, and a standard outgoing message now throws up an electronic stiff arm, telling callers to try later or use “an alternative method” to contact the person.

Coca-Cola is one of the biggest companies yet to ditch its old-style voice mail, which requires users to push buttons to scroll through messages and listen to them one at a time. Landline voice mail is increasingly redundant now that smartphones are ubiquitous and texting is as routine as talking.

Nice work, Coke - and welcome to the club. SMB Enterprises, (me), has had a Voice Mail ban in effect for about two years now (and reports that the ban has been 'extremely successful').

Voice mail is terrible, obviously. 

But reading the Coca-Cola article made me think about how I like to actually be contacted for business/work related matters. And since there are more ways than ever before in which the average person can actually be contacted, creating this little list was tougher than I figured it would be. 

But let's give it a shot, maybe some PR person out there will read this and it will save me at least one random phone call.

Ways SMB prefers to be contacted from least preferred to most preferred:

11. Voice mail (sort of doesn't even belong on the list, as you usually can't really leave me a voice mail)

10. Phone call

9. Any form of communication (message, tag, poke) possible on Facebook

8. Twitter direct message (never look at them, and they are way, way too easy to accidentally make public)

7. Twitter 'mention'

6. LinkedIn message (this is just another Inbox that I have to check, and it is also a horrible messaging platform)

5. Email

4. Postcard or letter (You never write anymore!)

3. Cyber Dust

2. SMS Message

1. Fax

That's it, what about you? Are calls and voice mails dead to you as well?

OFF TOPIC: Basketball Shots, Ranked

There are many ways and methods by which one can direct the basketball into the basket.

Here is the ranking of many of these methods, from least interesting/appealing up to most awesome.

The Finger Roll

20. Basic layup

19. Reverse layup

18. Standard jumper

17. Corner three

16. Willis Reed's two buckets in Game 7 of the 1969-70 NBA Finals

15. Heave from 30+ feet to beat the buzzer

14. Basic dunk

13. Put-back slam dunk

12. Two-handed set shot (see Schayes, Dolph)

11. Underhand free throw (see Barry, Rick)

10. Catch-and-shoot 3-pointer (see Miller, Reggie)

9. Jump Hook (see McHale, Kevin)

8. Reverse pivot step-back jumper (see Sikma, Jack)

7. Alley Oop jam (see Griffin, Blake, (among many))

6. Fall back, baby (see Barnett, Dick)

5. Running two-hand dunk (see King, Bernard)

4. Teardrop (see Jackson, Mark)

3. Sky Hook (see Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem)

2. Mid-range bank shot (see Duncan, Tim)

1. The Finger Roll (see Gervin, George)

Note: The blog is taking the rest of the week off. Have a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend and if you are not in the USA, well, pretend you are in the USA and take a few days off.