This is funny. I loved George Carlin. Saw him do standup a couple of times.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Truck & SUV Sales Are Back Up
In a remarkable turn of American stupidity it appears that sales of SUVs and trucks are back up again, based on this article from CNN. I guess people don't learn from the past.
I am starting to think that the conspiracy talk I have heard about how the oil companies and OPEC manipulate gas prices might be true. The theory says that gas prices go up, people start buying and making fuel efficient cars, then OPEC reduces gas prices to drive the fuel efficient cars out of business, and then prices go back up.
This happened in the 70s, with the oil crisis then. After having to wait on line to get their gas rations people started buying smaller, more efficient cars. Then gas prices came down and everyone started buying big SUVs and trucks, and then rinse and repeat.
I find it remarkably stupid that people are going to fall for this again. You must be incredibly short sighted to think that gas prices are going to stay down. I guess Americans are blinded by the "great deals" the automakers are offering. Apparently these incentives are enough to make people forgot about the imminent bankruptcy.
I am reminded of someone I once knew who would buy anything if it seemed she was getting a good deal. She would go to Walmart for a tube of toothpaste and come out with $200 worth of junk, but all of the junk was "on sale," so she thought that by not buying it she would be "losing money." (I say "on sale" because for all I know the stores are just making up "full prices" and putting them next to things to make it seem like the sticker price is a discount.) It's kind of a twisted way to look at things, but it's perfectly in line with being a good little consumer and credit card user, as we are instructed to be by corporate america.
I am starting to think that the conspiracy talk I have heard about how the oil companies and OPEC manipulate gas prices might be true. The theory says that gas prices go up, people start buying and making fuel efficient cars, then OPEC reduces gas prices to drive the fuel efficient cars out of business, and then prices go back up.
This happened in the 70s, with the oil crisis then. After having to wait on line to get their gas rations people started buying smaller, more efficient cars. Then gas prices came down and everyone started buying big SUVs and trucks, and then rinse and repeat.
I find it remarkably stupid that people are going to fall for this again. You must be incredibly short sighted to think that gas prices are going to stay down. I guess Americans are blinded by the "great deals" the automakers are offering. Apparently these incentives are enough to make people forgot about the imminent bankruptcy.
I am reminded of someone I once knew who would buy anything if it seemed she was getting a good deal. She would go to Walmart for a tube of toothpaste and come out with $200 worth of junk, but all of the junk was "on sale," so she thought that by not buying it she would be "losing money." (I say "on sale" because for all I know the stores are just making up "full prices" and putting them next to things to make it seem like the sticker price is a discount.) It's kind of a twisted way to look at things, but it's perfectly in line with being a good little consumer and credit card user, as we are instructed to be by corporate america.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Flight of the Conchords
My favorite new HBO series is back soon. HBO released the premiere on FunnyOrDie, which I find a bit odd. I can see them streaming it on their site, but on a different site?
Anyway I am very excited. I missed this show when it first came out, but then last winter I was sick and stuck in bed. I watched one episode On Demand and loved it and had watched all of the episodes by the time I was better.
Anyway I am very excited. I missed this show when it first came out, but then last winter I was sick and stuck in bed. I watched one episode On Demand and loved it and had watched all of the episodes by the time I was better.
Credit Crunch Jokes
List of 20 Hilarious Credit Crunch Jokes, published in October. Some of my favorites:
Q: What’s the difference between an investment banker and a large pizza?
A: A large pizza can feed a family of four.
“This is worse than a divorce. I’ve lost half my net worth and I still have a wife.”
Why have real estate agents stopped looking out of the window in the morning? Because otherwise they’d have nothing to do in the afternoon.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Jon Hamm Interview
Mad Men is one of my top 3 favorite shows after I watched the season 1 marathon before Season 2 started. I haven't watched Season 2 at all yet but I have it on my DVR. This interview is hilarious:
Friday, December 12, 2008
Monday, December 08, 2008
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Trippy Christmas Lights
A great, trippy Christmas lights display. I don't know if this is real or if someone sped up or faked the video or something.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
American Airlines now charging non-passengers
From the Onion.
FORT WORTH, TX—Cash-strapped American Airlines announced a new series of fees this week that will apply to all customers not currently flying, scheduled to fly, or even thinking about flying aboard the commercial carrier.
The fees, the latest introduced by American Airlines in a continuing effort to combat its financial woes, will take effect on Monday. According to company officials, these charges will include a $25 tax on citizens traveling with any other airline, as well as a mandatory $30 surcharge for passengers who decide to just stay home for the holidays instead.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Foreclosures and Job Losses
There's an article on CNN today about home owners who will lose their houses because they have lost their jobs and how they need to be bailed out. I have mixed feelings about this.
On one hand I feel bad for people who have lost their jobs and can't pay their mortgages. That could very easily be me. I don't have enough savings to live for more than a month or two without a job. And to make it that month or two I might have to cut some very basic things, like food.
On the other hand I feel that people who took on mortgages they couldn't afford deserve to lose their houses and by bailing them out we are just reinforcing that people can and should spend more than they can afford. I would include myself in this category, I do have a fairly large mortgage and if I had wanted to I could have bought a smaller house and had a smaller mortgage payment.
Some may think its hypocritical of me to support bailing out financial firms but not individuals. I guess it sort of is. But honestly some firms are critical to the economy while no individual is.
I have mixed feelings about bailing people out, although I could use a bailout myself. I feel that it is my fault I am in debt (it is) and I should have to pay the consequences of that. However some people may lose their jobs and it's not their fault.
This is a difficult issue, though I assume not for politicians. Who is going to oppose helping people who just lost their jobs other than economics people like me and big corporations?
On one hand I feel bad for people who have lost their jobs and can't pay their mortgages. That could very easily be me. I don't have enough savings to live for more than a month or two without a job. And to make it that month or two I might have to cut some very basic things, like food.
On the other hand I feel that people who took on mortgages they couldn't afford deserve to lose their houses and by bailing them out we are just reinforcing that people can and should spend more than they can afford. I would include myself in this category, I do have a fairly large mortgage and if I had wanted to I could have bought a smaller house and had a smaller mortgage payment.
Some may think its hypocritical of me to support bailing out financial firms but not individuals. I guess it sort of is. But honestly some firms are critical to the economy while no individual is.
I have mixed feelings about bailing people out, although I could use a bailout myself. I feel that it is my fault I am in debt (it is) and I should have to pay the consequences of that. However some people may lose their jobs and it's not their fault.
This is a difficult issue, though I assume not for politicians. Who is going to oppose helping people who just lost their jobs other than economics people like me and big corporations?
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Another 80s song with new lyrics
This is so awesome... It makes fun of the whole concept of music videos and is just great:
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Friday, November 07, 2008
Obama and Protectionism
Tuesday night was the first time I've felt proud to be American since the 2000 election travesty. I am so thrilled that we have Obama as president and that the American people agreed so overwhelmingly that he would take the country in a new direction. I was even able to get to sleep at a decent hour on Tuesday since once New Mexico was called I was comfortable that there was no chance McCain could win.
There is something I am concerned about. A traditional democratic issue is protectionism and opposition to free trade. This is very troublesome to me because globalization is here to stay, free trade makes the world economy more efficient, and I will be very upset if we trade that off to save a few American jobs.
This is based on an economic principle called "comparative advantage." What this means is that some countries can do things better than other countries can. Take two fictional countries, A and B. Country A can make cars efficiently, country B can make coffee efficiently. The most efficient way to allocate the resources is to have A make all the cars and B make all the coffee. If we have some resources in A making coffee we are sacrificing the cars they could be making more efficiently.
The key to this concept is opportunity cost. Even if we can make coffee in A cheaper than we can in B the opportunity cost of making coffee in A is the ability to make more cars. Wikipedia describes this better than I can.
Anyway free trade makes this possible. If we restrict free trade we are artificially raising prices and reducing efficiencies for foreign countries. Let's take a real world example. Data entry and call centers are cheap in India. If we force companies to not use India and instead hire Americans to do that job, they spend extra money on that. That money could be used to hire Americans to do what Americans are good at which is the creative part of the process. So India suffers because they are losing out on the money that they could be making, and the American company suffers because it has to pay higher prices for the same quality, and this makes the consumer suffer because the high prices get passed on to them, and the people suffer because they can't get high-paying jobs for things that we do better here than foreigners can do.
I am very worried about the Democrats restricting free trade. For some strange reason that has been a plank in their platform for quite a while. Its probably because of the support of the labor unions who don't care about comparative advantage or opportunity cost, they just want their people to have jobs and make as much money as possible. I find it ridiculous that a so-called "liberal" party would take such a conservative approach to foreign relations and restrict free trade.
Here's another example. In the US there are high import tariffs on sugar. So the countries that produce sugar cheaply can't sell it cheaply in the US, thanks to a Reagan policy. This makes it cheaper for US companies to buy high fructose corn syrup than real sugar. This provides the farmers and incentive to grow corn instead of other crops. (Also because they get paid by the government to grow corn even if no one wants it.) If we just allowed sugar to be imported the farmers would be free to grow crops that are more useful (and won't be bought by the government and thrown out) and I wouldn't be finding that every single thing I eat all day has high fructose corn syrup as the first or second ingredient. That's not really related to this topic but I hate that everything has high fructose corn syrup in it.
If the government cracks down on free trade the US is going to fall behind the rest of the world. Most of the rest of the world has embraced free trade and they will thrive because of the ability to maximize their efficiencies. The US will stagnate as we force companies to spend money on things that would be cheaper to offshore and less money on things that will drive the economy going into the future.
There is something I am concerned about. A traditional democratic issue is protectionism and opposition to free trade. This is very troublesome to me because globalization is here to stay, free trade makes the world economy more efficient, and I will be very upset if we trade that off to save a few American jobs.
This is based on an economic principle called "comparative advantage." What this means is that some countries can do things better than other countries can. Take two fictional countries, A and B. Country A can make cars efficiently, country B can make coffee efficiently. The most efficient way to allocate the resources is to have A make all the cars and B make all the coffee. If we have some resources in A making coffee we are sacrificing the cars they could be making more efficiently.
The key to this concept is opportunity cost. Even if we can make coffee in A cheaper than we can in B the opportunity cost of making coffee in A is the ability to make more cars. Wikipedia describes this better than I can.
Anyway free trade makes this possible. If we restrict free trade we are artificially raising prices and reducing efficiencies for foreign countries. Let's take a real world example. Data entry and call centers are cheap in India. If we force companies to not use India and instead hire Americans to do that job, they spend extra money on that. That money could be used to hire Americans to do what Americans are good at which is the creative part of the process. So India suffers because they are losing out on the money that they could be making, and the American company suffers because it has to pay higher prices for the same quality, and this makes the consumer suffer because the high prices get passed on to them, and the people suffer because they can't get high-paying jobs for things that we do better here than foreigners can do.
I am very worried about the Democrats restricting free trade. For some strange reason that has been a plank in their platform for quite a while. Its probably because of the support of the labor unions who don't care about comparative advantage or opportunity cost, they just want their people to have jobs and make as much money as possible. I find it ridiculous that a so-called "liberal" party would take such a conservative approach to foreign relations and restrict free trade.
Here's another example. In the US there are high import tariffs on sugar. So the countries that produce sugar cheaply can't sell it cheaply in the US, thanks to a Reagan policy. This makes it cheaper for US companies to buy high fructose corn syrup than real sugar. This provides the farmers and incentive to grow corn instead of other crops. (Also because they get paid by the government to grow corn even if no one wants it.) If we just allowed sugar to be imported the farmers would be free to grow crops that are more useful (and won't be bought by the government and thrown out) and I wouldn't be finding that every single thing I eat all day has high fructose corn syrup as the first or second ingredient. That's not really related to this topic but I hate that everything has high fructose corn syrup in it.
If the government cracks down on free trade the US is going to fall behind the rest of the world. Most of the rest of the world has embraced free trade and they will thrive because of the ability to maximize their efficiencies. The US will stagnate as we force companies to spend money on things that would be cheaper to offshore and less money on things that will drive the economy going into the future.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
There Can Be Only One
For some reason from Roger Ebert's blog a treatise on the evolution of candy.
From R. Crutch:
Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them breaks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.
I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.
Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.
When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes."
This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this "grant money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.
There can be only one.
Joe Six Pack
First in today's series of campaign-related videos
See more Thomas Haden Church videos at Funny or Die
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Election Websites
Don't Take My Vote Away - contains links to other sites and a summary of an article about how vote tampering might effect the election.
Please check to make sure you are actually registered to vote before the election!
Please check to make sure you are actually registered to vote before the election!
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Zack and Miri
As Smith said, there is a big ruckus over the advertising. The original poster apparently was very tame but had a little hint of oral sex. That was flat out rejected by the MPAA, which apparently has control over marketing. In an extreme move they redesigned the posters with stick figures and added text that all they can show is these drawings. Apparently the word "Porno" is enough to upset a lot of people though.
This is exactly as I predicted after I saw the movie about a month ago. I said it was a great commercial movie and the biggest stumbling block to commercial success would be that word. Take out that word (and one penis, one disgusting shot, and a few ball sacks) and the movie turns into a relatively tame romantic comedy. "Tame" might be a bit of an exaggeration, but this movie is really a sweet romantic comedy at its heart. With the porn plot comes some risque ground, but that might not be so bad if the marketing was reformulated.
I am a big Kevin Smith fan and I've seen every movie of his since Jersey Girl came out at a screening where he was doing Q&A afterwards. This is his most commercial movie yet (that doesn't totally suck, sorry Jersey Girl). There's not much here that hasn't been seen in other commercially successful comedies, and this movie follows along the lines of the Apatow style comedies. It's a shame that it's not going to be a big hit because of that word and the stuff that goes along with it.
This is exactly as I predicted after I saw the movie about a month ago. I said it was a great commercial movie and the biggest stumbling block to commercial success would be that word. Take out that word (and one penis, one disgusting shot, and a few ball sacks) and the movie turns into a relatively tame romantic comedy. "Tame" might be a bit of an exaggeration, but this movie is really a sweet romantic comedy at its heart. With the porn plot comes some risque ground, but that might not be so bad if the marketing was reformulated.
I am a big Kevin Smith fan and I've seen every movie of his since Jersey Girl came out at a screening where he was doing Q&A afterwards. This is his most commercial movie yet (that doesn't totally suck, sorry Jersey Girl). There's not much here that hasn't been seen in other commercially successful comedies, and this movie follows along the lines of the Apatow style comedies. It's a shame that it's not going to be a big hit because of that word and the stuff that goes along with it.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Gmail Goggles
As much as I try to hate Google they keep doing things like this that make me love them. Mail goggles, designed to stop drunken emailing. Awesome.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Mavericks
I told my friends we should have done a drinking game for the VP debate, but if we had used Maverick we would all be dead or in comas.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Tired Today
Tired from shouting from 1.5 hours last night at my TV "shut up b*tch!"
A friend suggested we should have made a drinking game out of every time Palin referred to McCain as "the maverick" or didn't answer the question at all. We would both be either dead or in ICU from alcohol poisoning if we had done that.
I think, and hope, that Palin has lost the election for McCain. At first I wasn't sure about Obama, I found his promises for "change" a bit empty and devoid of actual policy. I was not a fan of McCain, but I would have voted for him in 2000 so... Now there is no question in my mind. If this idiot ever becomes President (Palin, that is) I am not only moving out of the country, I am moving into a bomb shelter in the Swiss alps (there are entire mountains hollowed out for that purpose).
A friend suggested we should have made a drinking game out of every time Palin referred to McCain as "the maverick" or didn't answer the question at all. We would both be either dead or in ICU from alcohol poisoning if we had done that.
I think, and hope, that Palin has lost the election for McCain. At first I wasn't sure about Obama, I found his promises for "change" a bit empty and devoid of actual policy. I was not a fan of McCain, but I would have voted for him in 2000 so... Now there is no question in my mind. If this idiot ever becomes President (Palin, that is) I am not only moving out of the country, I am moving into a bomb shelter in the Swiss alps (there are entire mountains hollowed out for that purpose).
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Twisted Sister Changes Their Minds
From the Onion:
NEW YORK—In a stunning reversal of their long-stated reluctance to take it, members of heavy-metal band Twisted Sister announced Monday that, after 24 years of fervent refusal, they are now willing to take it. "I acknowledge that we promised not to take it anymore, but things change. The world is a different place today, and with that in mind, we would like to go on record as saying that, starting right now, we are going to take it," read a statement released by the band's lead singer, Dee Snider. "To clarify, we would still prefer not to take it, but as of now, taking it is an option that we would be open to. That is all." Bassist Mark "the Animal" Mendoza also stated that, in regards to what he wants to do with his life, he no longer solely wants to rock, but would instead prefer doing other things, such as raising a family and working as a claims adjuster in Rye, NY.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
Bail Out Bill and Credit Crisis
I've gotten a lot of petitions in my email and complaints from people about Congress writing a "blank check to Wall Street." This just pisses me off because it is so, so wrong. Most of the people sending this are liberals, which is odd because the Democrats are supporting it, it's the Republicans who are giving trouble.
Anyway this is not a check at all, it is the government buying distressed assets from companies that are having liquidity issues. The government may take an equity stake as well. They took 80% of AIG in exchange for a loan at 11.5% interest. If I had the $75 billion to loan them I would have done the same thing. That is a smart move.
The main complaint from these people seems to be that the bill is writing a check to Wall Street and ignoring "Main Street." This pisses me off even more. Who is going to suffer more from not being able to borrow any money - a rich Wall Street executive or the average people who need to buy stuff and run their businesses? If the firm fails, then the executive doesn't have a job, but he likely has the millions of dollars he has saved up. The average person is going to have their deposits insured by the FDIC, but people like me need to borrow money. I had $4,000 just in appliance and car repairs this month alone. If I didn't have a usable credit card with a semi-reasonable interest rate I would still have no car, no heat and no refrigerator.
Another complaint is about how the government is bailing out the lenders and not the borrowers who can't pay their mortgages. I have several problems with this statement. First off is what good is it going to do to help the borrowers if their banks fail? The second is a practical concern, which is that no bank is going to want to foreclose on a property and have the expense of maintaining a property which no one wants to buy? Even if people could get mortgages no one is buying real estate right now. The bank is going to have to pay taxes and maintenance on a home and they are going to lose cash flow.
If you are having problems paying your mortgage for god's sake please contact your bank. The government doesn't need to restructure your loans for you - the banks will do that. They would be stupid not to. Banks lose money every time they foreclose. They keep cash flow and liquid assets if they restructure a loan or provide some sort of relief to the borrower. Is that a difficult choice at all?
The government is not doing this to "bail out Wall Street." They are doing it to grease the wheels of the frozen credit markets to coax people into lending again. Lending is the cornerstone of the entire world economy. Without lending no one has capital to start businesses other than people who are already rich and things fall apart very quickly. Financially speaking, lending is how money is created and is the major financial tool for doing everything.
If the markets continue to stay frozen the banks are going to continue dropping off like flies, collapsing under the weight of their illiquid assets and their bad loans. Forget another Great Depression, this would be a complete collapse of the entire global economy.
The Federal Banks have already loosened the money supply and injected as much capital as they can and its not enough. Things are just that bad. The government needs to step in and do something or we are going back to a barter economy pretty soon. Anyway, the government is going to hold on to the assets they buy and eventually resell, likely at a profit. That's a smart move for anyone.
Anyway this is not a check at all, it is the government buying distressed assets from companies that are having liquidity issues. The government may take an equity stake as well. They took 80% of AIG in exchange for a loan at 11.5% interest. If I had the $75 billion to loan them I would have done the same thing. That is a smart move.
The main complaint from these people seems to be that the bill is writing a check to Wall Street and ignoring "Main Street." This pisses me off even more. Who is going to suffer more from not being able to borrow any money - a rich Wall Street executive or the average people who need to buy stuff and run their businesses? If the firm fails, then the executive doesn't have a job, but he likely has the millions of dollars he has saved up. The average person is going to have their deposits insured by the FDIC, but people like me need to borrow money. I had $4,000 just in appliance and car repairs this month alone. If I didn't have a usable credit card with a semi-reasonable interest rate I would still have no car, no heat and no refrigerator.
Another complaint is about how the government is bailing out the lenders and not the borrowers who can't pay their mortgages. I have several problems with this statement. First off is what good is it going to do to help the borrowers if their banks fail? The second is a practical concern, which is that no bank is going to want to foreclose on a property and have the expense of maintaining a property which no one wants to buy? Even if people could get mortgages no one is buying real estate right now. The bank is going to have to pay taxes and maintenance on a home and they are going to lose cash flow.
If you are having problems paying your mortgage for god's sake please contact your bank. The government doesn't need to restructure your loans for you - the banks will do that. They would be stupid not to. Banks lose money every time they foreclose. They keep cash flow and liquid assets if they restructure a loan or provide some sort of relief to the borrower. Is that a difficult choice at all?
The government is not doing this to "bail out Wall Street." They are doing it to grease the wheels of the frozen credit markets to coax people into lending again. Lending is the cornerstone of the entire world economy. Without lending no one has capital to start businesses other than people who are already rich and things fall apart very quickly. Financially speaking, lending is how money is created and is the major financial tool for doing everything.
If the markets continue to stay frozen the banks are going to continue dropping off like flies, collapsing under the weight of their illiquid assets and their bad loans. Forget another Great Depression, this would be a complete collapse of the entire global economy.
The Federal Banks have already loosened the money supply and injected as much capital as they can and its not enough. Things are just that bad. The government needs to step in and do something or we are going back to a barter economy pretty soon. Anyway, the government is going to hold on to the assets they buy and eventually resell, likely at a profit. That's a smart move for anyone.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Ben & Jerry's with Breast Milk
PETA, a pet cause of mine, has sent a letter to Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream suggesting that they switch from cow milk to people milk. Apparently the idea was come up with by a Swiss guy, which makes sense because the Swiss consume a LOT of dairy and they are also extraordinarily smart and forward thinking.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
No More I-Banks?
I woke up this morning to an one sentence email saying that the Fed had converted Goldman and Morgan Stanley to bank holding companies. I get in to work and read the artcle. Holy crap. I'm still a bit groggy after a long and tiring weekend, so am I reading the correctly? Are there no more i-banks?
Glass-Steagall was dismantled or repealed by Clinton, is this a small reinstation of that or a complete destruction? I'm a bit confused but this seems like huge, huge news. And the markets don't seem to be all that happy about it.
Glass-Steagall was dismantled or repealed by Clinton, is this a small reinstation of that or a complete destruction? I'm a bit confused but this seems like huge, huge news. And the markets don't seem to be all that happy about it.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Sarah Palin - Juneau
This was done by the son of a woman I know. Pretty funny stuff. I wasn't expecting it to be this good.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Saw this movie last night, followed by a Q&A with Kevin. This was a cute movie, that combined some of Kevin's typical stuff with some more "popular" Apatow-style romantic comedy elements.
The Apatow Connection is blatantly obvious with Seth Rogen as the star, although Smith says he started writing the movie for him before he was a "movie star." The other Apatow-ish element is the underlying sweet love story, which is very much like Knocked Up and those other slacker romantic comedies. I can see where Kevin learned something from Jersey Girl and put it to good use.
First off I have to mention I was super stoked to hear a song by MC Chris (aka MC Pee Pants) off of his album "Life is a bitch and I am her pimp." The song was "Fett's Vette". The YouTube video for this song is below Great tune, great album.
The humor, the characters, the casting and, of course, the potty humor were pure Kevin. This was an odd hybrid of a popular Apatow-style romantic comedy and a typical filthy Smith movie. But it worked. And I think it could have been a big hit like Knocked Up if it wasn't for the whole porn thing in the title which I expect will turn off a lot of people who would otherwise have loved the movie.
I was impressed by the movie, Kevin is always an awesome speaker, and I will probably see it again in its regular run in theaters, if only to contribute my money to the goal of coming close to The Dark Knight's gross.
Oh, and Darryl from the Office, Craig Robinson, gave an awesome performance. Very dry and subtle and completely hilarious. I can't wait to see him in more stuff.
Smith and Mas:
Fett's Vette:
The Apatow Connection is blatantly obvious with Seth Rogen as the star, although Smith says he started writing the movie for him before he was a "movie star." The other Apatow-ish element is the underlying sweet love story, which is very much like Knocked Up and those other slacker romantic comedies. I can see where Kevin learned something from Jersey Girl and put it to good use.
First off I have to mention I was super stoked to hear a song by MC Chris (aka MC Pee Pants) off of his album "Life is a bitch and I am her pimp." The song was "Fett's Vette". The YouTube video for this song is below Great tune, great album.
The humor, the characters, the casting and, of course, the potty humor were pure Kevin. This was an odd hybrid of a popular Apatow-style romantic comedy and a typical filthy Smith movie. But it worked. And I think it could have been a big hit like Knocked Up if it wasn't for the whole porn thing in the title which I expect will turn off a lot of people who would otherwise have loved the movie.
I was impressed by the movie, Kevin is always an awesome speaker, and I will probably see it again in its regular run in theaters, if only to contribute my money to the goal of coming close to The Dark Knight's gross.
Oh, and Darryl from the Office, Craig Robinson, gave an awesome performance. Very dry and subtle and completely hilarious. I can't wait to see him in more stuff.
Smith and Mas:
Fett's Vette:
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Create Digging
This is incredibly funny to a vinyl junky such as myself. Crate digging will lead to your demise. Don't do it.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
mRing for Treo
Looking for a way to do MP3 ringtones on my Treo I found this app, mRing. I downloaded and installed it and it works great for assigning MP3 ringtones, but I'm about to delete it for other reasons. I hate the way it changes the incoming call screen.
Gone is the little picture with two big, clearly marked buttons for answer and ignore. This is replaced with a giant picture with two little tiny buttons, and it's not really clear which one is selected at any given time. Tapping the screen ignores with text.
My other complaint about this is that every time I try to adjust the volume on my phone it ends up turning the stupid thing back on. The volume button was reassigned to be the profile adjustment for mRing. Today I will delete it completely.
If you want a completely new contact manager and to have to go into a different application to get more flexibility for assigned your contacts ringtones and pictures it is great. If you just want MP3 ringtones I would suggest playing them out of speakers and recording them using the Treo's sound application.
Gone is the little picture with two big, clearly marked buttons for answer and ignore. This is replaced with a giant picture with two little tiny buttons, and it's not really clear which one is selected at any given time. Tapping the screen ignores with text.
My other complaint about this is that every time I try to adjust the volume on my phone it ends up turning the stupid thing back on. The volume button was reassigned to be the profile adjustment for mRing. Today I will delete it completely.
If you want a completely new contact manager and to have to go into a different application to get more flexibility for assigned your contacts ringtones and pictures it is great. If you just want MP3 ringtones I would suggest playing them out of speakers and recording them using the Treo's sound application.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Blackberry vs Treo
Lately I've been thinking about trading in my Treo for a Blackberry. I've been trying to do some research on the two of them and stumbled across this article today, which isn't about Treos but about iPhone vs Blackberry.
The feedback I've gotten from people who have used both phones is that the Blackberry user interface is nicer, but it has some drawbacks - namely the lack of a touch screen and the lack of threaded SMS.
I haven't been able to find much about the threaded SMS online. I get the impression that Blackberry user's don't know how the Treo handles SMS because the reply is usually, "it does do it." But while they have come up with a way to sort of do it, it defeats the whole purpose of keeping things clean and simple. I am shocked that someone has not written a Blackberry app to do that.
Anyway I will be sticking with my Treo for now. Hopefully soon Blackberry will add this feature. I could live without the touch screen, although I love my Palm touch screen, but the threaded SMS I can not do.
The feedback I've gotten from people who have used both phones is that the Blackberry user interface is nicer, but it has some drawbacks - namely the lack of a touch screen and the lack of threaded SMS.
I haven't been able to find much about the threaded SMS online. I get the impression that Blackberry user's don't know how the Treo handles SMS because the reply is usually, "it does do it." But while they have come up with a way to sort of do it, it defeats the whole purpose of keeping things clean and simple. I am shocked that someone has not written a Blackberry app to do that.
Anyway I will be sticking with my Treo for now. Hopefully soon Blackberry will add this feature. I could live without the touch screen, although I love my Palm touch screen, but the threaded SMS I can not do.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Vinyl Making a Comeback?
Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years.
NY Times Article on the topic. I never abandoned vinyl other than for a few dark years in the early 90s.
NY Times Article on the topic. I never abandoned vinyl other than for a few dark years in the early 90s.
Friday, August 29, 2008
MasterCard Sucks
I like Citibank, where I have been a customer pretty much my whole life, but they only provide Mastercard credit cards, which just became a problem for me today.
A few months ago I ordered something from a telemarketer. They charged my credit card $300 and I received an unmarked bag from India with some pieces of paper and cloth in it. The bag had no return address, there was no receipt in it or anything with writing, and absolutely no way to contact the merchant.
The 800 number they had given me and which showed up on my bill was out of service. So I filed a dispute with my bank. Somehow the bank was able to contact the merchant because the merchant disputed my dispute and said that they had proof I had signed for the package (I had signed for it). The bank was not able to give me any method of contacting these people, other than the 800 number which was out of service.
So then a few days ago $250 of the $300 is recharged to my card. I called the bank and they told me that Mastercard's policy is that since the merchant has a "return policy" that says that no opened items may be returned I had to pay for it since I had opened it.
This is so ridiculous for quite a few reasons:
I am going to put in a complaint to Mastercard, however.
A few months ago I ordered something from a telemarketer. They charged my credit card $300 and I received an unmarked bag from India with some pieces of paper and cloth in it. The bag had no return address, there was no receipt in it or anything with writing, and absolutely no way to contact the merchant.
The 800 number they had given me and which showed up on my bill was out of service. So I filed a dispute with my bank. Somehow the bank was able to contact the merchant because the merchant disputed my dispute and said that they had proof I had signed for the package (I had signed for it). The bank was not able to give me any method of contacting these people, other than the 800 number which was out of service.
So then a few days ago $250 of the $300 is recharged to my card. I called the bank and they told me that Mastercard's policy is that since the merchant has a "return policy" that says that no opened items may be returned I had to pay for it since I had opened it.
This is so ridiculous for quite a few reasons:
- I got a package with no return address - how do I know where to return it? How do I even know what it is without opening it?
- The merchant never told me anything about a return policy.
- I had no means of contacting the merchant.
I am going to put in a complaint to Mastercard, however.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Hadoop and Twitter
The Register has an article on Hadoop and compares it favorably to Twitter. This is actually some very funny stuff, and they really blast Twitter. I have never really understood Twitter. It just seems stupid to me. Apparently some people really like it, but I just don't get the point.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Paris Hilton Campaign Ad
I haven't seen the John McCain ad referenced but this is still pretty funny:
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Palm Treos
I have a Treo 700p. I've been using Treos since the 600 came out. I am thinking about upgrading to a 755p, but am not sure if I want to do this if there is going to be a new Treo out soon, and the new Blackberry looks kind of nice as well.
Does anyone have any advice or reviews of the 755 vs the 700?
Does anyone have any advice or reviews of the 755 vs the 700?
Monday, July 14, 2008
Subprime Mess
This guy made like $4 billion shorting the subprime mortgages. Makes me kick myself... I saw exactly what was going to happen years ago, and it happened exactly as I predicted, but I didn't make a dime off of it.
If I'd known how to short subprime I might have been able to. That was a big roadblock. I still don't know how you short a market like that. You can't sell a mortgage short. Or maybe you can. I don't know.
I guess even if I had the money to have invested in this I probably still wouldn't have made a dime as I still don't know how you go about doing that, but I did have the idea. And seeing that other people made billions of dollars by thinking the same thing I did while I made $0 is just annoying.
If I'd known how to short subprime I might have been able to. That was a big roadblock. I still don't know how you short a market like that. You can't sell a mortgage short. Or maybe you can. I don't know.
I guess even if I had the money to have invested in this I probably still wouldn't have made a dime as I still don't know how you go about doing that, but I did have the idea. And seeing that other people made billions of dollars by thinking the same thing I did while I made $0 is just annoying.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Been a long time
Been a long time since I've posted. I wish I had more time, but with work and personal stuff I have negative free time. It's actually been over a week. I don't have much to say. The boss is out today so I have a bit of free time but not really all that much.
So consider this a bridge post until I have enough time to have something to say. There's a word I've seen used for things like this but I can't remember it. If I remember I will update.
So consider this a bridge post until I have enough time to have something to say. There's a word I've seen used for things like this but I can't remember it. If I remember I will update.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
New Study
Psychedelic drugs can have positive effects on people. As my friend who sent me this study said, "science is always the last to know."
SPAM Project
McAfee recently did an experiment where they provided 50 people with email addresses and had them reply to or click on every spam they got. Here is one woman's story of her experience.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Science of Rhythm
Another article I don't have time to read. On the neuro-science of dancing and rhythm. I really wish I had time to read this one...
Friday, June 20, 2008
Flying Spaghetti Monster
An old one but a great one. A letter about how a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe and demands that this be taught in schools, along with how pirates are causing global warming. Hilarious.
Read it here.
Read it here.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
About friggin time
The bottled water backlash has apparently begun, at least in Canada. I've been saying all of this stuff for years. What bothered me was that people think they had to pay $2 for a bottle of something that is everywhere because it is "better quality" or they "like the taste better."
I never bought bottled water. I would buy a plastic bottle, drink the water in it and then reuse the bottle for months or until I lost it. Recently after becoming aware of the problems with reusing plastic bottles I switched to Nalgene BPA free bottles and just fill those from my tap.
Penn & Teller did a great show on this a few years back. Here is part of it for your viewing pleasure:
I never bought bottled water. I would buy a plastic bottle, drink the water in it and then reuse the bottle for months or until I lost it. Recently after becoming aware of the problems with reusing plastic bottles I switched to Nalgene BPA free bottles and just fill those from my tap.
Penn & Teller did a great show on this a few years back. Here is part of it for your viewing pleasure:
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Linked In Valuation
LinkedIn valued at $1 billion. Not even close to Facebook but that is likely a reasonable valuation. If I had money I probably wouldn't invest at that valuation but maybe at $500 mm or even $750 mm. I don't know how they are making revenue but I think LinkedIn has a good product, which is geared towards professionals, not college kids and 30-somethings who still act like college kids (aka my friends).
Monday, June 16, 2008
Update on CashMyPhone
The BBB got back to me... They said they were unable to contact CashMyPhone by any means so they are dropping the case, although it will go on their record. My guess is that these people picked up and left, or maybe they are still running this scam as their web site is still up and running.
Regardless, they screwed me out of a phone and I have heard from several other people who have lost their phones as well. I would recommend a service like SecondRotation, which actually replies to emails and I believe is actually a legitimate company.
Regardless, they screwed me out of a phone and I have heard from several other people who have lost their phones as well. I would recommend a service like SecondRotation, which actually replies to emails and I believe is actually a legitimate company.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Monday, June 09, 2008
Random Junk for Monday
Henry Nicholas (former CEO of Broadcom) is apparently very similar to how I was in college. Except I was a young college kid and he was a highly paid CEO of a major company. Other than that I totally would have hung out with him like 15 years ago.
10 Things some guy hates about Web 2.0. Very funny.
Big Religion Chart. Supposed to list a bunch of various world religions throughout history. Missing a few, but still interesting.
10 Things some guy hates about Web 2.0. Very funny.
Big Religion Chart. Supposed to list a bunch of various world religions throughout history. Missing a few, but still interesting.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Andy Rooney
This is awesome. Andy Rooney game, via Gawker. I remember watching Andy every weekend when my parents watched 60 minutes back when it was a respectable news program and not just another "news magazine."
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Marketing, Shreddies and Diamond Shreddies
Seth Godin discusses marketing of Lucky Charms cereal in a blog post. If I could leave comments on his blog I would mention the Diamond Shreddies campaign in Canada.
Shreddies are a Canadian breakfast cereal. They are little squares. To market them they rotated them 45 degrees and called them Diamond Shreddies. From Wikipedia:
I saw some of the commercials on YouTube and apparently people thought they could tell the regular and the Diamond apart - some by taste, some by sight. It either shows the power of branding, or the stupidity of people, including this one girl who posted a video to YouTube ranting about how pissed off she was to discover that Diamond Shreddies were just normal Shreddies rotated. I guess she didn't get the "meta-joke."
Shreddies are a Canadian breakfast cereal. They are little squares. To market them they rotated them 45 degrees and called them Diamond Shreddies. From Wikipedia:
In January 2008, the company started a new ad campaign for "Diamond Shreddies" which is just a square Shreddie turned 45 degrees. Since the cereal hasn't changed in any way, the campaign could be described as a meta-joke playing off the frequent improvements and brand extensions of other cereals and similar foods. Regardless of the intentions, consumer reaction to the campaign has translated into a statistically significant sales increase, according to at least one media report on the campaign's success. The campaign won the 2008 Diamond Clio Award for Integrated (i.e. multiple media) Campaign, one of the highest awards in the advertising world.
I saw some of the commercials on YouTube and apparently people thought they could tell the regular and the Diamond apart - some by taste, some by sight. It either shows the power of branding, or the stupidity of people, including this one girl who posted a video to YouTube ranting about how pissed off she was to discover that Diamond Shreddies were just normal Shreddies rotated. I guess she didn't get the "meta-joke."
Friday, May 23, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Alleged plus sized model
An alleged plus size model won some reality show. She sure doesn't look plus size to me. She's supposedly a size 14. Unless she is 8 feet tall I doubt that she could have that body at that size.
I hate how women have this warped image of what they should look like. Most men I know don't like the stick-figure anorexic look that most women seem to feel is attractive. Yet for some reason women seem to continue to find that look and weight attractive.
I hate how women have this warped image of what they should look like. Most men I know don't like the stick-figure anorexic look that most women seem to feel is attractive. Yet for some reason women seem to continue to find that look and weight attractive.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
How wonderful meetings are:
Great little "ad" from Seth Godin's blog. As my wife can tell you I just LOVE meetings:
Friday, May 09, 2008
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
SpotRunner raises money
Spot Runner raises another $51 million, bringing their total raised to $110 million. Probably about a $500 million valuation. And their product isn't even all that great as far as I know.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Back from vacation
Google TV ads, in their own words. Why it's not going to work, from Valleywag.
What to do with IP from failed start-ups, from TechCrunch.
Soon I will hopefully be able to ad my comments on both of these subjects.
What to do with IP from failed start-ups, from TechCrunch.
Soon I will hopefully be able to ad my comments on both of these subjects.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
My beautiful mommy
Mommy needs plastic surgery explained to 5 year olds.
Gawker's take on it:
Gawker's take on it:
The author, who has four children of his own, explained that he sees kids of his patients come in with puzzled looks and ask if their mommy is dying. The book is meant to reassure children that the only party of mother that's dying is her soul.
A Park Avenue plastic surgeon recommends not telling younger children that their birth, and the correlated stretch marks, is what necessitated the tummy tuck. But we say go for it! In these godless times, kids need some sense of original sin.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
Why I am good at getting things done but not good as a programmer
When confronted with a problem that needs to be solved my approach is to solve it quickly, not necessarily elegantly. If I find a problem in an application I will try something to fix it... Doesn't work? Try something else? Solves the problem but creates a new one, if the new one seems smaller fix it, if it seems bigger try something else.
This approach is excellent for getting things done and working quickly. But not so good for writing large amounts of elegant code. A real programmer would look at the problem, analyze the code, and figure out what is the best and most efficient way to rewrite the code to eliminate the problem. My approach is get rid of it as soon as possible.
While my approach is great for getting stuff up and running without taking a lot of time it usually results in some pretty jumbled code. Lots of band-aids, spaghetti code, ad hoc fixes, etc. It works but it usually ends up being pretty inefficient, lumbering and kludgey.
I think this is why I am better at being a manager than a programmer. As a manager I don't have to sit and think things through, I can let the people who are good at that do it and I can just worry about getting things working.
This approach is excellent for getting things done and working quickly. But not so good for writing large amounts of elegant code. A real programmer would look at the problem, analyze the code, and figure out what is the best and most efficient way to rewrite the code to eliminate the problem. My approach is get rid of it as soon as possible.
While my approach is great for getting stuff up and running without taking a lot of time it usually results in some pretty jumbled code. Lots of band-aids, spaghetti code, ad hoc fixes, etc. It works but it usually ends up being pretty inefficient, lumbering and kludgey.
I think this is why I am better at being a manager than a programmer. As a manager I don't have to sit and think things through, I can let the people who are good at that do it and I can just worry about getting things working.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Random things I am reading
Interesting article on how to gain muscle mass doing minimal exercise. Really not all that groundbreaking, but still interesting.
Yet another article on why geeks make good lovers.
Yet another article on why geeks make good lovers.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Mark Cuban's Rules for Startups
Mark Cuban's rules for start-ups, and how my company broke almost all of them.
- Don't start a company unless its an obsession and something you love. My company was started by some people obsessed and in love with the technology but my guess as to the primary motivation of the majority of the founders is that they say the dollar signs.
- If you have an exit strategy it's not an obsession. Our founders all had exit strategies built in to the initial round of funding. The exit strategy was actually put in by a very unscrupulous investor but I think he got the founders to agree to it by giving them an out as well. None of them got the chance to use it.
- Hire people you think will love working there. This we did in the tech department. Sales I can't really speak for.
- Sales cures all. This is where we failed big time. We started off with decent revenues, built the revenues up to close to $1 million a month, and then let it die. We assumed credit risk for payments and got shafted for a couple million. Then we changed the business model to get rid of that risk and no more sales happened, and thus no more revenue. As a public company it seems that the CEO thought that our money should come from the public markets, not from sales.
- Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. This we did, although some people tried to do more.
- An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine. We didn't buy an espresso machine but we did spend tons of money on worthless crap that was not needed. Money that could have been reinvested into the company.
- No offices. Open offices keeps everyone in tune with what is going on and keeps the energy up. We had offices. Big offices for some people. We had three suites in our building, two of them connected, the third, for C-level officers, was completely separate. The developers were in open cubicles. The developers were the only part of the company that functioned properly.
- As far as technology, go with what you know. We did this to the most part.
- Keep the organization flat. If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. This we did at first but as the company grew (spent more money) we started putting in hierarchies. Things were to the most part kept flat but in some departments there were long, complicated hierarchies.
- NEVER EVER EVER buy swag. We didn't do this other than spending fortunes attending trade shows which didn't get us a single customer. We didn't make branded swag though. Actually there were some golf balls, but that was it.
- NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm. We hired several PR firms and dumped them, hired our own PR guy, then hired more PR firms. This goes back to the C-level people focusing on the public markets rather than the core business.
James R Berry Predicts 200
Via Valleywag, some guy in the 60s gives a pretty good prediction of the year 2008.
David Paterson for President
How's this for honesty? NY Gov David Paterson calls a press conference to disclose that he and his wife both had affairs. Then he does an interview where he admits his drug use. But not just pot like Pataki - he tried cocaine.
As a little side note Pataki's mother was very shocked that her son had ever tried marijuana like everyone else who was alive in the 60s did.
This is honesty I could vote for.
As a little side note Pataki's mother was very shocked that her son had ever tried marijuana like everyone else who was alive in the 60s did.
This is honesty I could vote for.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Cash My Phone
I sent an old cell phone of mine in to CashMyPhone.com. I considered using SecondRotation but they didn't have that particular phone model listed on the web site so rather than send it and wait to see what they decided it was worth I just used CashMyPhone.
I got an email a few days after I sent the phone saying that they had received it. Then a couple of months later I got an email saying it had been "disqualified" and I had to pay $8 to get it back. So I replied saying please send it back to me, and no reply and no phone. A few more weeks pass and I get a "final" email warning me that if I don't request the phone back they will keep it.
I have sent it at least 4 emails to these people and have received no reply. The phone had no physical damage to it when I sent it to them. I'm starting to wonder if this whole thing is a scam - they either get $8 to ship the phone back to me or they get the whole phone for free.
Anyone have any experience with these guys? If I don't hear back by the end of the week I will file a complaint with the better business bureau.
I got an email a few days after I sent the phone saying that they had received it. Then a couple of months later I got an email saying it had been "disqualified" and I had to pay $8 to get it back. So I replied saying please send it back to me, and no reply and no phone. A few more weeks pass and I get a "final" email warning me that if I don't request the phone back they will keep it.
I have sent it at least 4 emails to these people and have received no reply. The phone had no physical damage to it when I sent it to them. I'm starting to wonder if this whole thing is a scam - they either get $8 to ship the phone back to me or they get the whole phone for free.
Anyone have any experience with these guys? If I don't hear back by the end of the week I will file a complaint with the better business bureau.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Crayon Physics
Reblogged via Marc Andreesen, this looks really cool. I'd love to play with it and I'm sure my kid would too. Crayon Physics.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
The Wire
I watched last night's finale of the Wire. It was good, not as good as the rest of the show has been, with a few exceptions. Like what was Season 2 all about? Did they try to take them away from the streets and fail so they put them back? Or was the whole season setting up for the Greek connection this year? I can't imagine they'd spend a whole season setting up for a few episodes much later on so I have to assume it was the former option.
The episode tied things up a bit too nicely for my taste. Actually not nicely at all, but everything was wrapped up. I prefer loose ends, like the Sopranos did. If they did have to wrap everything up and put a bow on it at least they wrapped it with really crappy paper and put a used stick-on bow on. Carcetti not being able to look Rawls in the eye when appointing him superintendent, Daniels having to eat it and resign just as he was getting settled in, McNulty resigning without pension, none of it a perfect wrap-up.
Thinking about the episode last night I was thinking about how everyone's morals kept shifting over the season. Only a very few number of people had a real moral code and stuck to it. Those people being Chris Partlow, Wee-Bay and Omar.
As horrible as Partlow was made out to be, he certainly had a code and stuck to it. He took life without parole apparently without a peep out of loyalty to Marlow and his family. As many people as he killed, I have to give it to Chris for sticking to his principles. Same for Wee-Bay.
Omar apparently started off with his code as a child, if you watched one of the two minute long things On Demand. When he was like 7 his friends robbed some poor guy and he took the money from them at gunpoint and gave it back. Omar was possibly the only noble character on the show. He only killed in self-defense although he did shoot a lot of other people. He only stole drug money, he wasn't in it for the money, he was a good guy.
And Michael is the new Omar? Wow... That was a shock. I was expecting Michael to either be the new Bodey (dead) or the new Marlow. But the new Omar? Possibly the only shock in this episode. I was hoping for more of Michael but we only saw him for a few seconds in the ending montage. I also liked how Chris stuck by Michael to the end, when it seemed to Marlow that he was guilty beyond a doubt Chris stuck by him.
I will miss this show.
The episode tied things up a bit too nicely for my taste. Actually not nicely at all, but everything was wrapped up. I prefer loose ends, like the Sopranos did. If they did have to wrap everything up and put a bow on it at least they wrapped it with really crappy paper and put a used stick-on bow on. Carcetti not being able to look Rawls in the eye when appointing him superintendent, Daniels having to eat it and resign just as he was getting settled in, McNulty resigning without pension, none of it a perfect wrap-up.
Thinking about the episode last night I was thinking about how everyone's morals kept shifting over the season. Only a very few number of people had a real moral code and stuck to it. Those people being Chris Partlow, Wee-Bay and Omar.
As horrible as Partlow was made out to be, he certainly had a code and stuck to it. He took life without parole apparently without a peep out of loyalty to Marlow and his family. As many people as he killed, I have to give it to Chris for sticking to his principles. Same for Wee-Bay.
Omar apparently started off with his code as a child, if you watched one of the two minute long things On Demand. When he was like 7 his friends robbed some poor guy and he took the money from them at gunpoint and gave it back. Omar was possibly the only noble character on the show. He only killed in self-defense although he did shoot a lot of other people. He only stole drug money, he wasn't in it for the money, he was a good guy.
And Michael is the new Omar? Wow... That was a shock. I was expecting Michael to either be the new Bodey (dead) or the new Marlow. But the new Omar? Possibly the only shock in this episode. I was hoping for more of Michael but we only saw him for a few seconds in the ending montage. I also liked how Chris stuck by Michael to the end, when it seemed to Marlow that he was guilty beyond a doubt Chris stuck by him.
I will miss this show.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Clip from Colbert last night
Warren Buffet is the world's richest man again. Bill Gates fell to third place. Me, I am slowly pulling into 5,999,912,234 place with a rise of $1,000 since last year.
Alphas and Betas part 2
Polar Rose
Polar Rose is supposed to be face recongition software. Rather than trying to write algorithms to duplicate what the human mind does, they are doing something very popular these days - using the wisdom of crowds.
As far as I can tell, Polar Rose will scan any web page you load for images that contain what it thinks are faces. If it finds one it puts a little icon on the screen. You click the icon and it either gives you a form to enter who the person is, or if it thinks it knows, you can confirm or reject the name.
I am not sure what the end goal is - to be able to recognize faces in images on the web, or to come up with a complete facial recognition database - but whatever it is Polar Rose seems to be doing pretty well on getting there. I keep the Firefox plugin disabled most of the time as I load a lot of web pages with a lot of images and it slows the browser down noticeably. When I enable it it seems to recognize faces occassionally. Mostly I think it is someone else who tagged the same photo, but it seems to be a pretty solid approach.
How they plan to make money with this I have no idea.
Wuala
Wuala is actually still in alpha. From their site:
My own gripe is that the 1GB of disk space it gives you is about what I can fit on my USB thumb drive, making Wuala not terribly useful to me. And everytime I load it it tries to let me know about new wallpapers and screensavers and such.
It seems like a pretty good product and it is definitely a good idea as people move onto using the web as an application platform. I have not yet had the need to try out the file sharing portions, but maybe I'll play around with that a little bit when I have some free time.
Update - On further reading the description of Wuala it appears that you can trade local hard disk space for online space. I guess it stores things on users machines to achieve it's decentralized structure. That makes it a lot cooler than I previously thought it was.
I have a couple more I will post about either later today or tomorrow.
Polar Rose is supposed to be face recongition software. Rather than trying to write algorithms to duplicate what the human mind does, they are doing something very popular these days - using the wisdom of crowds.
As far as I can tell, Polar Rose will scan any web page you load for images that contain what it thinks are faces. If it finds one it puts a little icon on the screen. You click the icon and it either gives you a form to enter who the person is, or if it thinks it knows, you can confirm or reject the name.
I am not sure what the end goal is - to be able to recognize faces in images on the web, or to come up with a complete facial recognition database - but whatever it is Polar Rose seems to be doing pretty well on getting there. I keep the Firefox plugin disabled most of the time as I load a lot of web pages with a lot of images and it slows the browser down noticeably. When I enable it it seems to recognize faces occassionally. Mostly I think it is someone else who tagged the same photo, but it seems to be a pretty solid approach.
How they plan to make money with this I have no idea.
Wuala
Wuala is actually still in alpha. From their site:
Wuala is a new way of storing, sharing, and publishing files on the internet. It's a free desktop application for Windows, Mac, and Linux that brings you a convenient and secure online storage. Unlike traditional online storage systems, Wuala is decentralized and can harness idle resources of participating computers to build a large, secure, and reliable online storage. This new technology has a number of advantages and it allows us to provide you a better service for free.Wuala is basically an online storage system. It works pretty well, the app crashes every now and then. I have never used the file sharing sections, but I do use it to keep files I want from different locations available.
My own gripe is that the 1GB of disk space it gives you is about what I can fit on my USB thumb drive, making Wuala not terribly useful to me. And everytime I load it it tries to let me know about new wallpapers and screensavers and such.
It seems like a pretty good product and it is definitely a good idea as people move onto using the web as an application platform. I have not yet had the need to try out the file sharing portions, but maybe I'll play around with that a little bit when I have some free time.
Update - On further reading the description of Wuala it appears that you can trade local hard disk space for online space. I guess it stores things on users machines to achieve it's decentralized structure. That makes it a lot cooler than I previously thought it was.
I have a couple more I will post about either later today or tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Some Web Apps I am Beta Testing Pt 1
Lately I have made it a bit of a game to wrangle invites to private beta tests for web apps. I lost interest in the game a while back, but I got into some pretty interesting betas.
Twine
Twine was supposed to be this great new semantic breakthrough product. It was supposed to finally be able to gather information on the web, parse it, and make it useful and relevant. So says their PR and the article in the NY Times. My experience has been very different. As far as I can tell all it really is is an online bookmarking tool that automatically tags things you add to it. This would be great if it would go out and try to get more data on stuff it thinks you might be interested in, but all it does for me is give me links to other documents with the same tags.
I kept thinking that if I just kept adding stuff eventually it would start doing what I thought it was going to do. But I kept adding stuff and it kept not doing much of anything.
The semantic web is going to be huge when someone finally figures it out. The internet has way too much data and it needs a simple, intuitive way to organize all of it. While Twine seems to have the right idea they do not have it working yet, sadly.
Evernote
This is supposed to allow you to remember stuff. Like Twine the goal is a better way to organize information. The way the information is collected is a bit different than Twine, data can be clipped from a web site, emailed, or sent as an image. The latter is the most interesting part of the process to me. If you are on a web page and you want to save it you can either save the whole page, or highlight an amount of text and just clip that. You can email text to it, and you can take pictures and it will use OCR to try to decipher the text. All of your stuff is searchable by a number of methods.
I just started playing with this one recently, and my one critique is that it wasn't able to decipher the text in the pictures I sent from my phone. Other than that it works as described, which is pretty well.
This isn't an end-all to the problem of organizing data online but it is a good start. The concept is simple, the implementation is effective and it does what it says it does.
Later some others including Kango, Wuala, Polar Rose, and more.
Twine
Twine was supposed to be this great new semantic breakthrough product. It was supposed to finally be able to gather information on the web, parse it, and make it useful and relevant. So says their PR and the article in the NY Times. My experience has been very different. As far as I can tell all it really is is an online bookmarking tool that automatically tags things you add to it. This would be great if it would go out and try to get more data on stuff it thinks you might be interested in, but all it does for me is give me links to other documents with the same tags.
I kept thinking that if I just kept adding stuff eventually it would start doing what I thought it was going to do. But I kept adding stuff and it kept not doing much of anything.
The semantic web is going to be huge when someone finally figures it out. The internet has way too much data and it needs a simple, intuitive way to organize all of it. While Twine seems to have the right idea they do not have it working yet, sadly.
Evernote
This is supposed to allow you to remember stuff. Like Twine the goal is a better way to organize information. The way the information is collected is a bit different than Twine, data can be clipped from a web site, emailed, or sent as an image. The latter is the most interesting part of the process to me. If you are on a web page and you want to save it you can either save the whole page, or highlight an amount of text and just clip that. You can email text to it, and you can take pictures and it will use OCR to try to decipher the text. All of your stuff is searchable by a number of methods.
I just started playing with this one recently, and my one critique is that it wasn't able to decipher the text in the pictures I sent from my phone. Other than that it works as described, which is pretty well.
This isn't an end-all to the problem of organizing data online but it is a good start. The concept is simple, the implementation is effective and it does what it says it does.
Later some others including Kango, Wuala, Polar Rose, and more.
Cody Diablo
Ellen Page makes fun of Cody Diablo's writing style on SNL. I don't watch SNL anymore but the incessant, ridiculous hipster patter in Juno was extremely annoying. Not as annoying as the Wed Anderson-rip off, overly precious and stylized direction, but I guess easier to make fun off.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Rich Googler Marissa Mayer gets a article about her obsessive cooking habits.
Small woman giving birth to a relatively large baby.
Why Google buys companies. Why didn't they buy us? Oh right, our CEO insulted them.
Small woman giving birth to a relatively large baby.
Why Google buys companies. Why didn't they buy us? Oh right, our CEO insulted them.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Google and Bob Newhart
Ad Age Article on how Google is trying to use AdSense for more stuff. Apparently they want to use it as a content distribution system for content other than ads. Good luck with that Google. You have the bank balance to do whatever you want, but your other forays into non-interactive advertising haven't been so successful (radio, tv, print).
A sketch from Mad TV with Bob Newhart dispensing wonderful psychiatric advice:
A sketch from Mad TV with Bob Newhart dispensing wonderful psychiatric advice:
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Random Junk
A video from the Soup on E.
A blog about Uggs. I thought they were a fad back in 2000 and I was proven wrong.
Garfield without Garfield.
Awesome parody of dumbass screenwriter Cody Diablo.
A blog about Uggs. I thought they were a fad back in 2000 and I was proven wrong.
Garfield without Garfield.
Awesome parody of dumbass screenwriter Cody Diablo.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Buy an Audi and Stick it to the Man
Awesome ad about how you can break out of the system and stick it to the man by buying an Audi!
All this by buying an Audi instead of a BMW! Take that The Man!
All this by buying an Audi instead of a BMW! Take that The Man!
Friday, February 22, 2008
Left overs from Friday
Britney Spears in 10 years or so.
VC backed, ad based internet ventures will fail unless you have the author working for you.
CGI allows Michael Bay to win an Oscar. Sometimes it's not so great, but sometimes the Onion is hilarious.
Interview with the Woz.
VC backed, ad based internet ventures will fail unless you have the author working for you.
CGI allows Michael Bay to win an Oscar. Sometimes it's not so great, but sometimes the Onion is hilarious.
Interview with the Woz.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Stanford Escort Marries Rich
I'm back.
Here is something about some expensive Silicon Valley escort. She's kind of hot but not really my type at all. Here is her no-longer-active website.
Here is something about some expensive Silicon Valley escort. She's kind of hot but not really my type at all. Here is her no-longer-active website.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Out of town for a week
I will be out of town for a week starting tomorrow morning. While I may have intermittent internet access I will not be checking my email nor will I be posting regularly.
Hopefully back to the regular grind when I get back.
Hopefully back to the regular grind when I get back.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Random links and the elections
Creepy Scientology videos talking about their plans to blow up psychiatry.
Bankers and traders responsible for credit crisis have a big party or something.
Superdelegates will be deciding which democrat will lose the next presidential election. I've said it before and I will say it again - this race was the Democrat's to lose and I am pretty confident that between McCain and either Hillary or Barack, McCain will win. McCain can get some of the moderate democrats to switch over. Neither Hillary nor Barack has any appeal to moderate Republicans. Hell, I might even vote for McCain over these two. Obama has no real experience and no platform - just a wishy washy message about change - oh and he quit smoking to run! Clinton would do a decent job, but I just don't like her personally. After the worst Republican presidency ever, it looks like the Dems will lose yet again.
A WSJ article on the Democratic candidates.
Bankers and traders responsible for credit crisis have a big party or something.
Superdelegates will be deciding which democrat will lose the next presidential election. I've said it before and I will say it again - this race was the Democrat's to lose and I am pretty confident that between McCain and either Hillary or Barack, McCain will win. McCain can get some of the moderate democrats to switch over. Neither Hillary nor Barack has any appeal to moderate Republicans. Hell, I might even vote for McCain over these two. Obama has no real experience and no platform - just a wishy washy message about change - oh and he quit smoking to run! Clinton would do a decent job, but I just don't like her personally. After the worst Republican presidency ever, it looks like the Dems will lose yet again.
A WSJ article on the Democratic candidates.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Democratic Candidates
As sick as the country is of George Bush and his miserably failed presidency you would think the Democrats would definitely be able to get someone into the White House next year. But with the candidates they are throwing up, I don't know that anyone can get elected.
Obama has a good message, but he doesn't really have any actual experience doing anything. There is no way he could get stuff run through Congress, or deal with foreign policy. Hillary could, but I just don't trust her.
And let's face it - middle America, the flyover states - are not going to elect either a woman or a black man. I know they have their projections so that they could win the states they need and take the election and just ignore the midwest and the south entirely. But I have a feeling that a lot of the "blue states" are going to have similar thoughts to mine. Which is "I don't really like either of these candidates, but John McCain I could live with."
If the Republicans are smart enough to make sure McCain gets the nod I have no doubt he will win. And who knows... He might be better than a Democrat would be. But it's still painful to see the Democratic party continuing to make the same mistakes over and over and over.
Obama has a good message, but he doesn't really have any actual experience doing anything. There is no way he could get stuff run through Congress, or deal with foreign policy. Hillary could, but I just don't trust her.
And let's face it - middle America, the flyover states - are not going to elect either a woman or a black man. I know they have their projections so that they could win the states they need and take the election and just ignore the midwest and the south entirely. But I have a feeling that a lot of the "blue states" are going to have similar thoughts to mine. Which is "I don't really like either of these candidates, but John McCain I could live with."
If the Republicans are smart enough to make sure McCain gets the nod I have no doubt he will win. And who knows... He might be better than a Democrat would be. But it's still painful to see the Democratic party continuing to make the same mistakes over and over and over.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Microsoft and Yahoo
Denise Richard voted worst bond girl ever. Ha!
And of course the huge news of the day, Microsoft finally makes a bid for Yahoo. Honestly I am surprised it took so long. Yahoo's overseas assets are worth a whole lot more than it's market cap. Rumors about someone buying it have been going around for a long time. It's really a no brainer. Once they got rid of Semel the coast is clear for potential buyers. Here is TechCrunch's take on it, and what they think Microsofthoo would look like. Ballmer's letter to Yahoo's board, from Valleywag. Is Microsoft's offer too low, from Valleywag? And some analysis and commentary from Valleywag.
And, Super Obama girl. I'm not a big fan of Obama's, but whatever:
And of course the huge news of the day, Microsoft finally makes a bid for Yahoo. Honestly I am surprised it took so long. Yahoo's overseas assets are worth a whole lot more than it's market cap. Rumors about someone buying it have been going around for a long time. It's really a no brainer. Once they got rid of Semel the coast is clear for potential buyers. Here is TechCrunch's take on it, and what they think Microsofthoo would look like. Ballmer's letter to Yahoo's board, from Valleywag. Is Microsoft's offer too low, from Valleywag? And some analysis and commentary from Valleywag.
And, Super Obama girl. I'm not a big fan of Obama's, but whatever:
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Random Links from Yesterday
The Mac ads apparently are correct in many ways about how Mac users differ from PC users. Engadget analyzes this article.
Article on the Funded, the new website.
Google TV sucks ass.
Britney Spears photoshopped magazine cover.
NY Times trying to offload About.com for a small profit.
EBay changing fee structures again. With the prices like they are I don't know why anyone would use eBay when you have Craigslist for free.
Article on the Funded, the new website.
Google TV sucks ass.
Britney Spears photoshopped magazine cover.
NY Times trying to offload About.com for a small profit.
EBay changing fee structures again. With the prices like they are I don't know why anyone would use eBay when you have Craigslist for free.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Random crap
British satire about i-bankers. Worth watching:
Finally, someone takes my feelings on Guitar Hero seriously. Why spent so much time learning to push buttons when you could easily learn to really play guitar in the same amount of time?
Why East Coast VCs are notably missing from the Midas list.
Who has money to throw around in the tech industry.
Finally, someone takes my feelings on Guitar Hero seriously. Why spent so much time learning to push buttons when you could easily learn to really play guitar in the same amount of time?
Why East Coast VCs are notably missing from the Midas list.
Who has money to throw around in the tech industry.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Cutting costs at my company
We are in discussions with a potential buyer of our company at the moment. Unfortunately the final decision is not in our hands as all of our notable assets are now owned by some hedge fund guy who probably finds the however-many millions he spent on us to be like pocket change. I honestly don't know why he is spending as much time and money as he is, given the fact that at best he can make a couple million. I would think he would be better off focusing on bigger and better deals. But I'm not going to look gift horses in the mouth.
Anyway, this suitor wants to keep the development staff (what's left of it) but cut some costs. So I am thinking of what I would do if I was in their situation - picking up our assets and needing to cut costs. Of course I can't disclose any material information about the company for legal reasons, but here is a brief run through of our current costs:
First thing I would do is get rid of the huge 5.4 TB SAN data store. We should never have bought it in the first place. We probably spent a million just getting it installed and set up. We can easily set up servers big enough to meet our data needs, everything is segregated anyway. The only reason I can think of for spending that kind of money on a data store is if we were expecting lots of transactions and data to be recorded over a decade or so.
Second thing I would do is fix the lease. We actually had another 8,000 sq ft of space previously, which was gotten rid of last spring. The space was always way too big. I think that maybe management believed their own predictions of exponential employee growth. By this time according to their old investor deck we should have about 400 employees.
The problem with this is that we spent a LOT of money rebuilding the space to suit our needs, including a huge server room that can't really be used for anything else. It's an air conditioned fishbowl type thing and we could easily cut it to a third it's size (it was never even really close to being filled) but that would require knocking down walls and rewiring stuff. We could easily fit our entire current Stav, including the boss's huge office, into the server room and move the servers into a closet or something, but that is extremely impractical. The logical thing to do is divide the space even further to allow the landlord to rent other parts of it out to other people. But that requires expensive construction which we would have to pay for, and it would be difficult to work while that was going on.
One solution I've heard bandied about is moving all of our servers here to the colocated facility, including our development servers. That would allow us to abandon the space entirely and move to a normal-sized office. However that would force the developers to use painful slow VPN tunnels to access the code. A better solution is getting rid of the co-located facility and moving everything here. That still leaves us with the space issues. The only real solution to that is dividing the space, but it will be extremely difficult as we have all sorts of wiring and building to do. Our space includes a couple large rooms that are just used to hold junk. Closets and loading docks and such. That is totally wasted space. Let's count the savings from getting rid of the co-located facility and call the rest a wash, assuming that the costs of building and rewiring would offset the lower rent.
I have cut out $50k at this point, or 20% of our monthly burn. There is that unaccounted for $50k which I will say we can cut in half, though we really may not be able to. That brings our total savings to $75k, or 30%. We don't want to do anything with payroll or health insurance so that's pretty much all I can cut. We need our people and paycuts would send them scurrying for the jobs they already have lined up for contingencies.
We could sell some of our unused hardware assets to partially finance the buildout, I guess. The real problem is the space. Downsizing the space would save a lot of money but would cost a lot of money upfront as well. Even just to move everything to a new space would probably wipe out at least a couple month's worth of savings on the rent. Let's say we really need to cut some extra money. We abandon this space and move to a smaller space, cut the rent in half and spend however much on moving expenses. That saves an extra $20k per month, not counting outlays, bringing our total up to $95k, or 38%. That's about the best I can do without having a full budget in front of me.
These are all very hard decisions and I'm glad I don't have to make them. However if I had been in a position to make them before we would never have been in this situation. I would never spend money as quickly as the management team did. I would be unable to spend so much money so recklessly.
Anyway, this suitor wants to keep the development staff (what's left of it) but cut some costs. So I am thinking of what I would do if I was in their situation - picking up our assets and needing to cut costs. Of course I can't disclose any material information about the company for legal reasons, but here is a brief run through of our current costs:
- We have a large SAN data store that costs about $60k per month
- Our rent is about $40k per month for a huge 11k sq ft space, giving each employee approximately 1,000 sq ft of space.
- Payroll is probably about $80k per month
- Health insurance, etc. is probably around $10k per month.
- Our co-location facility is probably about $10k
First thing I would do is get rid of the huge 5.4 TB SAN data store. We should never have bought it in the first place. We probably spent a million just getting it installed and set up. We can easily set up servers big enough to meet our data needs, everything is segregated anyway. The only reason I can think of for spending that kind of money on a data store is if we were expecting lots of transactions and data to be recorded over a decade or so.
Second thing I would do is fix the lease. We actually had another 8,000 sq ft of space previously, which was gotten rid of last spring. The space was always way too big. I think that maybe management believed their own predictions of exponential employee growth. By this time according to their old investor deck we should have about 400 employees.
The problem with this is that we spent a LOT of money rebuilding the space to suit our needs, including a huge server room that can't really be used for anything else. It's an air conditioned fishbowl type thing and we could easily cut it to a third it's size (it was never even really close to being filled) but that would require knocking down walls and rewiring stuff. We could easily fit our entire current Stav, including the boss's huge office, into the server room and move the servers into a closet or something, but that is extremely impractical. The logical thing to do is divide the space even further to allow the landlord to rent other parts of it out to other people. But that requires expensive construction which we would have to pay for, and it would be difficult to work while that was going on.
One solution I've heard bandied about is moving all of our servers here to the colocated facility, including our development servers. That would allow us to abandon the space entirely and move to a normal-sized office. However that would force the developers to use painful slow VPN tunnels to access the code. A better solution is getting rid of the co-located facility and moving everything here. That still leaves us with the space issues. The only real solution to that is dividing the space, but it will be extremely difficult as we have all sorts of wiring and building to do. Our space includes a couple large rooms that are just used to hold junk. Closets and loading docks and such. That is totally wasted space. Let's count the savings from getting rid of the co-located facility and call the rest a wash, assuming that the costs of building and rewiring would offset the lower rent.
I have cut out $50k at this point, or 20% of our monthly burn. There is that unaccounted for $50k which I will say we can cut in half, though we really may not be able to. That brings our total savings to $75k, or 30%. We don't want to do anything with payroll or health insurance so that's pretty much all I can cut. We need our people and paycuts would send them scurrying for the jobs they already have lined up for contingencies.
We could sell some of our unused hardware assets to partially finance the buildout, I guess. The real problem is the space. Downsizing the space would save a lot of money but would cost a lot of money upfront as well. Even just to move everything to a new space would probably wipe out at least a couple month's worth of savings on the rent. Let's say we really need to cut some extra money. We abandon this space and move to a smaller space, cut the rent in half and spend however much on moving expenses. That saves an extra $20k per month, not counting outlays, bringing our total up to $95k, or 38%. That's about the best I can do without having a full budget in front of me.
These are all very hard decisions and I'm glad I don't have to make them. However if I had been in a position to make them before we would never have been in this situation. I would never spend money as quickly as the management team did. I would be unable to spend so much money so recklessly.
Random Stuff
Shut up, Diablo Cody or whatever the hell your fake name is. Having to watch your cliche, Wes Anderson-wannabe movie was bad enough, I don't want to hear more of your opinions.
Scoble's advice to those about to be laid off by the massive layoffs occurring everywhere.
Andy Kessler on the banking crisis. I've read his books and enjoyed them greatly and highly recommend his work.
Scoble's advice to those about to be laid off by the massive layoffs occurring everywhere.
Andy Kessler on the banking crisis. I've read his books and enjoyed them greatly and highly recommend his work.
Online tools
Lately I've been going through a lot of the tools available online to make life easier. Stuff like simulscribe for voicemails (it uses voice recognition to transcribe and email and/or SMS you the message); iwantsandy for scheduling; jott for I'm not sure what; twitter; tumblr; asksunday; it goes on and on.
All of these could be very useful tools for managing my life. However the learning curve required to use each is a bit prohibitive. I have dozens of phone numbers and email addresses to remember; multiple service fees to pay every month.
It gets a bit overwhelming. These tools are supposed to make life more manageable but they end up making it less. I'm trying to think of a way to roll these all together and make it actually useful. A common site would be nice but how do you get around the different protocols, formats, and learning curve for each? By the time I have Sandy transcribe an appointment, have ask sunday reschedule it for me, jott a note to myself and then get reminded it probably ends up being quicker to just write it on a piece of paper in my pocket and then look at it.
How do we make these digital tools more useful, and not overwhelming? At the moment I am very overwhelmed as I signed up for a few new services today: iwantsandy, jott, socialtext. I'm juggling dozens of emails from each and trying to figure out how to use them and if they will even be useful. Faxing is more efficient than using all of these things. Or a whiteboard (if geography wasn't a limiting factor).
How do we use these tools as tools, rather than having them consume more time than they save?
All of these could be very useful tools for managing my life. However the learning curve required to use each is a bit prohibitive. I have dozens of phone numbers and email addresses to remember; multiple service fees to pay every month.
It gets a bit overwhelming. These tools are supposed to make life more manageable but they end up making it less. I'm trying to think of a way to roll these all together and make it actually useful. A common site would be nice but how do you get around the different protocols, formats, and learning curve for each? By the time I have Sandy transcribe an appointment, have ask sunday reschedule it for me, jott a note to myself and then get reminded it probably ends up being quicker to just write it on a piece of paper in my pocket and then look at it.
How do we make these digital tools more useful, and not overwhelming? At the moment I am very overwhelmed as I signed up for a few new services today: iwantsandy, jott, socialtext. I'm juggling dozens of emails from each and trying to figure out how to use them and if they will even be useful. Faxing is more efficient than using all of these things. Or a whiteboard (if geography wasn't a limiting factor).
How do we use these tools as tools, rather than having them consume more time than they save?
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Tidbits
WalMart takes a bunch of magazines out of its stores.
Google video on the secret history of silicon valley:
Google video on the secret history of silicon valley:
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