Coming Soon to Marilyn's Nut Butters

Over the past two years, many of you have enjoyed our spreadable nut butters.  Now we're putting back the crunch, offering many of the same flavors, but in portable snack sized packages of whole nuts.

Marilyn's Nut Butters is proud to announce two new personal sized packages of organic, roasted seasoned nuts and fruit.  Keep a package in your backpack or purse for a snack to go to the movies, camping or just to help you make it through your day.  Or, give a package as a hostess gift that will be remembered even better than that bottle of wine or bouquet of flowers.  

Our goal is to source the best quality ingredients as locally as possible, so in our first new products you'll find delicious local organic dried cherries and apples from Jerzy Boyz Farm in Chelan WA. 

Coming soon:

Pistachios, Hazelnuts and Dried Cherries, seasoned with Cumin and Black Pepper

A seductive blend of savory and sweet, with just a hint of pepper heat!  Nuts give the crunch and Jerzy Boyz dried cherries keep the fun going with a  bit of pillowy chewiness.  Wonderful eaten as a snack or chopped up and sprinkled over brown rice or into a green salad.

Pistachios, Fennel and Dried Apples  

Buttery pistachios are given added depth with the savory goodness of fennel and the crisp sweetness of dried apple.  Take these anywhere as a snack or serve up a bowl as an appetizer with your favorite beverage.

Throw Out the Manual (Processes) - Microsoft Opalis Integration Server Is Here!

Organizations utilizing ITIL and Microsoft Operations Framework share a common challenge.  As data centers have gotten more complex and individual IT processes have increased in their abilities to solve business problems, individual IT processes have gotten increasingly siloed.  Inside of Microsoft System Center, Operations Manager does a great job of automatically collecting statistics about the components inside the system.  Virtual Machine Manager can use those statistics to automatically place work loads.  But transferring the information between the two tools to date has had to be a manual process. 

With the introduction of Microsoft Opalis Integration Server, a new workflow engine makes it possible to automate previously manual tasks in a way that aligns with the ITIL and MOF best practices initiatives.

Opalis Integration Server serves as the link that automates the process of communication between the tools.  Utilizing simple object oriented workflow design, Opalis can create ways to transfer the results of one task to the knowledge base and automatically start up another task inside of another tool.  Automating tasks between products allows for lower latency and increased speed without the use of cumbersome scripting or coding. 

Additionally, the functionality of Opalis isn’t restricted to use with Microsoft System Center components.  Opalis allows for integration between Microsoft System Center products and other system management products offered by BMC, CA, HP and VM Ware

Celebrity Publicity - Greg Louganis and the Northwest Marine Trade Association

Shortly after his astounding Olympic gold medal sweep in 1988, Greg agreed to be the featured guest at the Seattle Boat Show, signing autographs and talking to local children about how to face adversity. 

We didn't know at the time just how much adversity Greg was facing.  His own later biography chronicled that he suffered a signficant amount of emotional and physical abuse from his father and later from his partner.  At the time, Greg was in the process of coming to terms with his past and healing for his future.  He was a pleasure to work with and to place on local TV news and talk shows.  I wrote and sent out this biography.

Headline - Greg Louganis - Biography

Body - He's been called the "Fred Astaire of diving", and there are more "firsts", "bests" and "onlys" associated with his name than any diver in history.

Greg Louganis is a two-time Olympic gold medalist (1984 and 1988); a silver medalist (1976); the only man in history to earn over seven hundred points in a single Olympic diving event; the winner of forty seven national titles, six world championships, six Pan American Games gold medals and twelve Olympic Festival gold medals.  He's also the only person ever to score seven perfect tens for one dive in national and world competition.

Born and raised in San Diego CA, Louganis began diving at the age of eight, and won a place on the U.S. Olympic team at sixteen.  The pursuit of diving didn't hamper his pursuit of an education.  He graduated from the University of California in 1983 with a major in drama, a minor in dance and a 3.25 GPA.

Louganis seemed to approach competition without fear or indecision.  In 1983, he was poised to perform at the World University Games in Edmonton, Alberta, when he watched a Soviet competitor dive to his death, executing a reverse three and one half turn.  One year later, Louganis performed the same dive as his tenth and final dive at the 1984 Olympic Games.  The dive won him the gold medal, and contributed to a record final score of 710.91 points.

The spirit of this Olympic hero was nurtured through adversity.  Louganis has triumphed over a difficult childhood, subjected to racial prejudice against his Samoan heritage and hampered by speech and learning difficulties.  He has gone on to prove that those who choose to change their own lives can go on to change the world.

Crisis Management - New Zealand Kiwifruit Commission

It's rare - and highly satisfying - when a writer is given the opportunity to mess with a client's brand.  The New Zealand Kiwifruit Commission was in a pickle and had the guts to let me write something to help them out of it.  Fruit that had been shipped to arrive on the desks of national food writers at the peak of ripeness were held too long on a hot customs dock.  Thus was born "Lending New Meaning To The Term "Fruit Cocktail" and "New Zealand Kiwifruit.  They're much better as food."  45 minutes and a little clip art later, the piece was being stuffed into new boxes full of product.

Headline:  LENDING NEW MEANING TO THE TERM "FRUIT COCKTAIL"

Body:  We recently sent you a nice juicy sample of ripe New Zealand kiwifruit.

BOY, WAS IT JUICY!

It has been brought to our attention that, in some cases, when the kiwi arrived, you could have poured it over ice and had it for Happy Hour.  While our New Zealand kiwis do make excellent dacquiris, this is not what we had in mind when we sent them to you.

The kiwifruit that we had carefully ripened to a perfect shipping stage and sent post-haste to you wound up sitting somewhere in a less than controlled atmosphere for a little too long.  And it ripened.  And, it ripened some more.  And then, some more. 

We didn't do it intentionally - we promise.  But, it does illustrate that kiwifruit should be monitored for proper ripening, to come of age more slowly.

So, please accept our apologies. 

Tag line:  NEW ZEALAND KIWIFRUIT.  THEY'RE MUCH BETTER AS FOOD.