A few days ago we sent 20 of our craftier friends a Christmas card in the form of a challenge. The cards were made from circa 1970s Betty Crocker recipe cards and this letter was included inside the card:

We know that when our Christmas card comes in the mail you have grown to expect a scintillating mix of Christmas tunes. This year, however, you're in for a different kind of treat! Steve said that the song selection is growing thin, so he's taking the year off. Instead, you're being invited to participate in the Bischof Family 2010 Super Seventies Christmas Bake-Off. Yes, you. While some of our friends and loved ones will receive perfectly lovely letterpress cards from a small island in Maine, we think you are up to the challenge of something more...interactive. And we hope you'll accept!

You'll see that your card is comprised of a super seventies Betty Crocker recipe card, replete with some seriously amazing food staging backgrounds. This set, circa 1971, was saved from eminent destruction when my parents downsized and I claimed the big yellow plastic box of recipe cards for my own. This year, I culled 20 choice Christmas-y recipes from the collection and decided to pass them on to you. Some recipes have a decidedly holiday flair [like the variety of fruitcakes and steamed puddings] while others were chosen for their Christmas-y color palate [like grasshopper pie, or cherry vanilla fudge]. Your card has been chosen especially for you.

The challenge:

1) Sometime before December 25th, follow the recipe on the inside of your Christmas card, or one of its several variations, and make the item described.
2) Before you enjoy your Christmas treat, take a few moments to stage your food. Feel free to add props, create backgrounds, etc. The more 1970s, the better.
3) Take a picture of your final product. [We've scanned the originals].
4) Send Libby the picture via email: libby.bischof@gmail.com
5) All the images and comments will be posted on the blog we've created for the occasion: http://super70sxmasbakeoff.blogspot.com/

Best staging receives a prize! Check in for blog updates as the season progresses.

Greatest Christmas card idea ever! I'm cloning it for 2011...

Campfire needs to have dial-tone level reliability to be trustworthy. For the past five years, up until this week, we believe we've had a pretty good track record of that. But given the severity of this outage, we know it'll take us a long time to rebuild this trust. Many thanks to those of you who are giving us that second chance.

Rachel and I depend on Campfire to keep conversations flowing on TheCR Network. We've come to really appreciate how easy-to-use and reliable the service is.

Over the last week or so they had some bad days. Some really bad days. While it didn't impact us as much as it might have impacted them and some of their other clients, we did notice.

Without going into all the details (you can click through and read it all for yourself), I LOVE their response & resolution. And not just because I'll feel it in my pocketbook (a free month is nice when you're a bootstrapped start up). IMHO, they completely nailed the response and resolution of this crisis. I don't know if all of their clients feel the same way, but I'll bet most do. They're standing by what they believe in and putting their money where their mouth is.

Now to the reason for this post. I'm starting to feel like our ISP's need to realize that an internet connection needs to have "dial-tone reliability." That needs to be the standard and they need to stand behind it (with $$ if necessary).

A few weeks back Comcast had a major outage up and down the East Coast. A LOT of customers lost their internet connectivity. There was a bit of a response on Twitter, but in general I'd give them a D on response.

But what we're really highlighting here isn't response, it's resolution. On that score Comcast gets an F (I'd give them an H, but I'd lose a bunch of you). As far as I've seen they haven't said "boo" to their customers since the outage. They may have apologized on Twitter, but I didn't get a phone call to apologize. No letter in the mail with a coupon for a free bowl of soup. Nothing. I did receive my bill for the month with no recognition for the outage (or break on my monthly charges).

Am I the only one that thinks this is wrong? I'd love to see the "big guys" like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc. start to act like Campfire. Treat us like people, not account numbers, and you might start to build some trust.