Monetize This Piece!~

running and injury again

2011-11-01T16:21:00.001-05:00

October 2011 was a milestone month for me. I ran farther, more often, and faster than ever before and I did it without pain or injury. In the past I advocated less shoe and more ice, but I was only half right. In late April of this year I hurt myself again. I overtrained and I fractured my fibula. It was unpleasant.

I've been back to running since August and I've avoided pain and injury completely. I have not iced nor have I started taking yoga. Static stretching has been banished from my routine. My unscientific advice for running happier follows:

Go barefoot. It is nearly impossible to overtrain without shoes. You'll probably get blisters before you get tired. Slowly ramp up and your feet will get stronger. Mix barefoot runs and shod runs together.
Lift more weight. Instead of avoiding leg days at the gym I've embraced them. Do heavy dead lifts and squats. Do heel lifts until your calves burn. Lift more and lift more often.
Warm up more. Don't race out the door. Take time to do some walking lunges or jog a few blocks before you sprint.
Know yourself. Pay attention to yourself. I can't explain it, but eventually you'll know when to take a short easy run and when to try some intervals.

I'm sorry this reads like an eHow article. There isn't a trick to running happily. I know now that icing pain and running through discomfort is not right. It's a shame it took two years of trial and error to get here.

steve jobs (cont.)

2011-10-05T22:05:00.000-05:00

image from http://williamwilkinson.com/

steve jobs

2011-10-05T21:45:00.001-05:00

What and why is our superficial grief? Who knew the man? ...who went to soccer practice? ...who changed lightbulbs?
If someone so strong and swift and smart can be broken

I sobbed when Columbia exploded across the sky.
When an explorer is lost
A martyr. A sacrifice to progress. Someone great is gone.
But, we can only grasp products and presentations in our domain. We grieve within YouTube and hashtags.
This is our superficial grief.
No. This. This is my superficial grief.

There is ultimately entropy.
So we should remember
"... avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

working

2011-09-29T13:14:00.000-05:00

Hold on a sec. Just one second here.

Men make a living calculating mathematics on electronic devices. These devices are adding machines powered by electricity. They cycle thousands of times each second. A living can be earned by tapping buttons on these machines. Characters are printed on electronic paper made up of liquid and crystals. These characters, punctuation and code words, are then changed into different codes that instruct the adding machine to carry out tasks autonomously. Pictures and text are instantly generated and destroyed based on these mechanical code words. And people pay money for these special codes and the imaginary pictures and text?

What a world it must be.

customer service and email

2011-09-20T15:53:00.001-05:00

1) Ben Brooks writes about a wallet. He doesn't like the wallet.
2) He writes about the wallet maker's return policy. He doesn't like the return policy.
3) I take issue with his email to the wallet maker. I tweet at Ben.
4) He says it's a joke. So I ask again.
5) Here we are.

When you write an email you're writing words to a person. A human being is going to read your email and feel things. When you write to customer service you're asking a human to help you. Generally, it's a good idea to be polite. It's definitely a bad idea to be rude to someone as you ask them for a favor.

touch and feel the new Jetta

2011-09-19T08:34:00.000-05:00

I drive a 2004 Volkswagen Golf TDI. It is efficient and fun to drive. Its fuel pump had to be replaced last week. Out of pity or generosity the service manager lent me a 2011 Jetta SE for two days. The car wasn't particularly fun to drive and the interior looked cheap, but it felt fantastic.

The new Jetta is the least expensive Jetta ever sold in America (I think). Certain sacrifices were made to bring the car's cost down. Off the top of my head: the dash is no longer soft-touch plastic, the plastic pieces of the interior have hard edges, the pneumatic hood lift is gone, the trunk's high-tech linkage was replaced by traditional goose-neck hinges, etc. Car and Driver covers the changes in excruciating detail. Enthusiasts (myself included) worried VW sold out for mass market appeal.

After a day in the car I noticed Volkswagen spent money where the driver would notice. The steering wheel is fantastic. It's smooth leather and ergonomic molding. The e-brake handle and gearshift are the same leather with chrome accents. The knobs on the radio are squishy and warm. Even the heating/cooling control buttons give a satisfying push/pop/click movement. Coming from a Civic or Corolla I wouldn't notice the plastic dash and the chintzy trunk. I'd notice the cockpit's controls are a joy to handle. Well played, VW.

ring tone

2011-06-08T20:21:00.004-05:00

After 5 years I've changed my ringtone.
One can only hear the Perfect Strangers theme song so many times.
I made my own in GarageBand. Its called BeepBeepHonk and I think you'll like it very much. Feel free to take it.

Remember Grad School?

2011-05-06T15:18:00.007-05:00

There's only a month left in the trudge to my Master of Science degree. I did alright for myself. I'm not sure, but I think the strength of my GPA entitles me to free DQ Blizzards for life. For my own benefit I'd like to quickly collect some memories from grad school. There were highs and there were lows, but overall I remember so very little.

Data Structures and Algorithms
I very distinctly remember thinking what the fuck is a linked list? I eventually got the hang of it.
Distributed Systems
This class was ridiculous. The exams were each 40 matching questions. That is, there were 40 definitions and 40 words and you had to match them. It was the most expensive practical joke I've ever been a part of.
Secure Electronic Commerce
Wireshark. All I remember is Wireshark.
Symbolic Programming
There was a beautiful arch to this class. First: LISP is awesome! Everything is everything, I can see God, etc. Then: Wait. What am I doing? How the fuck did that work? Finally: Oh. Ok. and it leveled out. I made a web-based address book and calendar entirely in LISP. It was pretty cool.

The rest was a blur. At some point I learned ASP.NET and deployed a crappy site. I used a lot of Java, did some socket programming and a lot of sorting algorithms. So much SQL and PL/SQL. I really enjoyed PL/SQL. In the future I'll tell you if grad school was worth it. For the time being we'll just have to hope so.

experimentation

2011-01-08T18:10:00.003-06:00

I've decided against writing a bunch of small updates about the stupid (god, so stupid) things I've done recently. Over the last two months I've dived headfirst into the faddiest fads, so you don't have to. Here we go...

Standing Desk
Mid-November I decided it was time to move to a new cubicle and ratchet up a standing desk. A coworker and I lifted the desk a few feet and it was done. The results are here. The first week was painful. My quads were fatigued and my lower back hurt like hell. It sucked. But, since then, I've found my lower back is stronger than it's ever been and my legs aren't as tight as they used to be. It's almost fun to stand on one foot, then the other. Overall I'd say moving to a standing desk was net positive, though it took getting used to. I'd recommend getting a backup stool, just in case you want to take a break.

Coworkers have asked why?, but I don't have a good answer. This jag compiled enough research to say sitting might be killing you, but I'm just standing because it's something to do.

No Antiperspirant
Thank god no one reads my blog, because this next bit is a little embarrassing. Since high school I have struggled with unsure-ness. My arm pits have been like geysers. I've tried every brand of antiperspirant, but not one could cease my voluminous armpit sweat. This isn't to say I stunk. Moisture was my problem.

As you can guess from the boldface subtitle above I stopped wearing antiperspirant. Guess what! I sweat less without the chemicals. PUT THAT IN YOUR PIPE, Revlon Consumer Products Corp. Also, my clothes are no longer stained by aluminum chloride and white stuff. Worried about your musky odor? I use this "natural" deodorant.

No Soap, No Shampoo
I've been thinking about this one for a while. Last week Boing Boing picked up a story about some jerk's year without soap and shampoo. So I says to myself: Self, you already gave up the antiperspirant, you might as well try this. It's been a week and I've retired everything in my shower. No more St. Ives Naturally Clear Green Tea Scrub, Suave Men's Shampoo and Conditioner, Irish Spring Antibacterial Soap, nor Neutrogena Oil Free Acne Wash. My morning shower is just hot water and me (and sometimes a toothbrush because I like to brush my teeth in the shower). So far, so good. Dandruff and dry skin is gone and blackheads/pimples have decreased dramatically.

fuck shoes

2010-08-18T10:26:00.004-05:00

Over the course of three large studies, the most recent of which was published last month in The American Journal of Sports Medicine, the researchers found almost no correlation at all between wearing the proper running shoes and avoiding injury. Injury rates were high among all the runners, but they were highest among the soldiers who had received shoes designed specifically for their foot types. If anything, wearing the “right” shoes for their particular foot shape had increased trainees’ chances of being hurt.

-The New York Times' Phys Ed. Blog

I have had ZERO injuries since switching to barefoot-esque running in my Vibrams. Good luck to you if you can run in fancy shoes, but if you're always in pain you might want to learn how to run right. You might even try running barefoot.

I quit Facebook

2010-05-14T12:18:00.002-05:00

I've blocked Facebook's domains and I've deleted the iPhone App. Why? [spoiler alert] It didn't do anything for me.

Passive socializing is THE killer app for the "social web." The ability to follow the activities and musings of someone with virtually no cost is a revolutionary thing. In the past maintaining acquaintances required activity: investing emotion and effort in a phone call or an email. The act of reaching out, rather than receiving, carries an emotional cost. Your email might go unanswered or your phone call might reach them at a bad time. You could be rejected! But Facebook, et al. requires no investment and you have nothing to lose when you follow your friends' updates/links/farms/photos. So we sit and we wait for social flotsam to come down our stream and you set your status updates adrift, hoping that someone might comment or like.

Your relationships with technology, the web, and your friends will color your opinion of passive socializing. I've seen people try to tie Facebook activity to a generational gap, but that doesn't hold up. A quick Google search will show you (here and here) that Facebook's users are diverse and the over-35 group is growing fastest. Anecdotally, I know people of all ages that love or hate Facebook. Getting caught in arguments about "those darn kids today" will just distract you from the sea change coming.

All this came to a head as Facebook made their most recent privacy modifications. Outside of the INTERNET RAGE seen on every news aggregator, I found personal reasons to be upset: so called "applications" from third party websites installed themselves into my profile and I was suddenly unable to list interests without being linked to everyone else with the same interest. I don't want to connect with every other user who lists Mandy Patinkin and hamburgers as interests. Others might, but I would've preferred to turn that functionality off. So I deleted all my personal information and set my privacy settings to maximum.

What was I left with? Facebook became a more private Twitter/Flikr. And thus, it dawned on me so suddenly! If I wanted to share private photos with friends I could send an email. If I wanted to make stupid comments that were too risqué for public consumption, well I could do that with email too. My use cases were better addressed by Flikr, Twitter, and email. So I left.

What I've learned from running badly

2010-05-11T09:56:00.002-05:00

It's been about a year since I decided to be a runner (hold your applause please). Technically, it's only been 9 months of running: I've injured myself three times and taken a month off each time.

Thusly, we arrive at my point: what have I learned? I've improved my form and exchanged my Nikes for Vibram FiveFingers, but injury has been a learning experience. How do I avoid hurting myself again?

The most important lesson was the hardest to accept: patience. Fuck patience. I want (wanted) to run a 2:30 marathon and there's no reason I can't do it right now. Or, well, I suppose there is a reason: my legs will fail and I will die. This notion hit me like ton of bricks, finally, a few months ago. Patience. Assuming all goes well I could run for another 60 years. That's 60 years to work on speed and distance. Chill out.

Along the same lines, there's no rush to hammer out 8 mile runs. Slowly building base miles is essential. The theory, as I've read (and imagined), is that world class runners spent their formative years running relatively short distances over and over. Muscles, bones, and tendons are well served by years of running 5k and 10k at a time. Runners World isn't kidding when they beg you to limit yourself to 10% more distance every week. It's the best way to increase your mileage.

Last, but not least, literally chill out after a run. If you have an injury ice it immediately after a run. Then rest until the thing stops hurting. Ice your injured thing a few times a day for 20 minutes at a time. Use a block of solid ice for maximum freezing power. ICE ICE. ICE ICE ICE ICE ICE. ICE!

It's not that hard. Horses can run and they're the dumbest animals on earth. Just take your time, slooooowly build your distance, and ice the shit out of your legs when they hurt.

fighting a tint ticket in Chicago and winning

2010-04-26T17:58:00.002-05:00

On Halloween (31 Oct 2009) my car was ticketed for tinted windows. Two weeks ago, right as I left for vacation, I received a letter from The City of Chicago. An Administrative Law Judge found that the violation did "not contain all the required information as set forth in the ordinance." Consequently, I am not responsible for the fine.

The exact text of the letter I wrote to contest the ticket is available in my original post here. I consider myself lucky to have this violation dismissed. Anecdotally, judges have been inconsistent in their interpretations of state and local laws. The HB3325 Facebook group is still the best place to go for advice.

robbing my future self

2010-03-21T00:07:00.007-05:00

Future Me:	Where did these 5 pounds come from?
Present Me:	Whoops. My bad. I felt like drinking a six pack and eating a burrito. Every day. For a week. And a half.
Future Me:	We were working so hard! Weren't we?
Present Me:	I was sad. I couldn't run because my tibial tendons were broken, or something. You know what I mean.
Past Me:	I thought running through the pain was a good idea! Why didn't anyone tell me?
Future Me:	Now we're all screwed. Where am I gonna find the time? I have to double-up classes this quarter.
Present Me:	That sucks. I thought you'd be done with grad school.
Past Me:	Sorry, guys. I thought it'd be better to avoid student loans and just take one class at a time.
Present Me:	For 6 years?
Future Me:	6 years!
Present Me:	Relax. Let Future Future Me deal with the capstone course.
Future Me:	Haven't we learned anything?
Present Me:	Doubtful. See ya'll later. I've got breakfast to eat. FUCK! Who ate all the dried cherries out of my granola mix?
Past Me:	Whoops!

Update regarding car window tint in Chicago

2010-02-14T18:48:00.004-06:00

Though I contested my ticket by mail more than 3 months ago the status is still listed as "Hearing Scheduled." There is no new information about my ticket.

There is, unfortunately, news about window tinting statewide and enforcement in Chicago. The HB3325 Facebook group is my only source of information in this matter. I've learned that the Citizen Advocacy Center believes Chicago has the right to override the Illinois Vehicle Code. The admins of the Facebook group are understandably upset and a few commenters have now chimed in with their own experiences fighting Chicago tint tickets. One James McCracken shared his courtroom experience with the group. So said his judge: "Chicago has a special exemption, it is illegal in Chicago."

Worse still Rep. Suzanne Bassi is sponsoring HB4769. This bill would effectively reverse the bill that was passed last year. It will make rear-window tint illegal on vehicles that have front-window tint. In a word, HB4769 screws everyone who has tinted their windows over the last 5 months.

The only way to fight these setbacks is to write to your aldermen and your state representative.
A list of Illinois state representatives is available at http://www.ilga.gov/house/
A list of Chicago wards and the respective aldermen is available here.

If you don't know your ward or district please visit http://chicagoelections.com/voterinfo.php

Feet, Legs, Nike Free, and me

2009-12-13T14:05:00.006-06:00

My father was a runner/jogger until his knees stopped working correctly, in that they caused him near constant pain. Though his knee pain may have started in high school football we can all agree running almost every day for 10 (15? 20?) years wasn't helping. In a similar vein I can rattle off at least 10 acquaintances who run, or used to run, and suffer from chronic knee or foot pain.

Nonetheless, there are many athletes that run pain free their whole life. Right, Wikipedia? I read about Dean Karnazes in Wired a few years ago. He's been running ultramarathons for a few years and, at least according to his book, he suffers from no chronic pain nor have his knees been compromised. Humans have been running for millions of years. What gives?

This Spring I decided to run more often. In the past I would jog on a treadmill occasionally or go out for a few miles and hobble home. This time was different. I made a concerted effort to run every other day. That lasted about a month. My knees and my right shin were killing me. My knee almost always felt like a cement mixer. Again, what gives?

BUT THEN! Wired magazine blows my mind. The modern American runner lands on their heel and rolls on their foot to propel themselves forward. Every stride in a traditional shoe is a jolt to your knee from the worst possible angle. I never thought one could run without support, cushioning, and stability. The next day I ran a mile in my bare feet. Through the streets and sidewalks of my neighborhood, leaping broken glass and dog nuisance, I ran. It was awesome. I felt no pain.

I can't remember why I didn't continue running unshod. Perhaps I was afraid of the Chicago refuse, like landmines along the sidewalk. Maybe I thought Nike knew better. It was July and there was no reason for me not to run barefoot, but I bought a pair of Nike Free 5.0 shoes anyway. It seemed like a great idea at the time. At first they were great and I was running 5 days a week, but my right shin was slowly getting worse and worse. Now I know I should've dropped the shoes and gone barefoot, but at the time I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought the 5.0's were practically barefeet anyway.

My right shin was in constant pain. So I stopped running for a month. Then I started again, but less often and for shorter distances, and my shin still hurt as I ran. For reasons I can't even explain to myself I threw more money at Nike and got myself a pair of Nike Free 3.0's. The 3.0 is supposed to be less shoe than the 5.0 and it certainly is. If you look at the picture I took of the 3.0 you'll see 1) the forefoot is much more flexible, 2) there is less arch support, and 3) the heel is significantly smaller. All this brings me to my simple point: if you have to wear shoes get the Free 3.0 because the 5.0 might as well be a traditional running shoe.

I've been running in the 3.0 for a week now with no pain. Maybe next year I'll upgrade (downgrade?) to a pair of Vibram FiveFingers SPRINT. Or maybe the 3.0's are good enough. Hopefully this helps you if you're considering either of the Nike Frees. Every review I could find was written by a militant barefoot runner ("any shoe is too much shoe") or someone that was content to run in traditional shoes anyway. Let me make it as clear as I can: I am physically incapable of running in traditional shoes, the 3.0 are the only shoes I have found that allow me to run pain-free.

fighting a tint ticket in Chicago

2009-12-09T10:34:00.006-06:00

[The ticket was dismissed. Details here]
[my previous update is here]

Window tint up to 35% is now LEGAL in Illinois and has been since 30 Oct 2009. Despite this fact Chicago ticketed my car on 31 Oct. I contested the ticket last week, but have yet to receive a response from the city. The status of the ticket is currently "hearing scheduled" and has been since Monday. I'll update as soon as I receive any response. In the meantime, a few people have asked for a copy of the letter I sent to contest my ticket. The following letter is based on the advice available at the HB3325 Facebook Page.

I am writing to contest ticket number ##########. Effective 30 October Illinois House Bill 3325 ammended Public Act 096-0815 to allow “nonreflective tinted film that does not allow less than 50% light transmittance” on the front windows of vehicles.
Chicago cannot enforce violations coded 09-76-220(b) as it pertains to equipment, of which Chicago does not have Home Rule jurisdiction. IL Motor Vehicle Code allows certain combinations of tint including front tint and cannot be overridden by Home Rule in accordance to the IL Municipal Code (65 ILCS 5/1‑2.1‑2).
You will find enclosed: 1) a photograph of my vehicle demonstrating compliance with HB3325, 2) a copy of HB 3325 with the relevant changes highlighted, 3) a copy of the Illinois General Assembly’s Bill Status website showing the effective date of HB 3325.
Thank you for your time.

Remember: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

not this time, Chicago!

2009-11-23T11:31:00.002-06:00

This $250 ticket will not stand.
I CONTEST and as God as my witness I shall prevail!

Please be aware that IL Public Act 096-0815 allows tint on the front windows of cars in IL Effective 10/30/2009. People are still getting tickets in Chicago for front window tint even though the IL Motor Vehicle Code allows certain combinations of tint including front tint and cannot be overridden by Home Rule in accordance to the IL Municipal Code (65 ILCS 5/1‑2.1‑2). More info on Public Act 096-0815 at:
http://www.facebook.com/ILHB3325/
Public Act 096-0815
Illinois Municipal Code (65 ILCS 5/1‑2.1‑2)

Sloan

2009-11-18T20:25:00.005-06:00

Man, oh man. Sloan is one great band. Never Hear the End of It was the first I heard of them and I only heard of it 8 months ago. If my copy was made of atoms instead of bits it would be worn out. It's among the best pop albums of all time, hands down, unarguably, and categorically. Seriously. Try this on for size: Fading Into Obscurity
POP PARADISE, no? Neither of us came here to argue. Let's just agree for now.

There are a lot of bands that coalesce once in a career to create a complete album. Their other albums might be competent, I'm sure you'll find good songs on these lesser albums. The difference comes in the completeness of the one true album. ~~Some~~ Most artists are lucky to ever write a good song, much less an album full of good songs. When you listen to a best-album you know you've found the purest essence of whatever it is the band can put into the world.

Until this afternoon I was sure Never Hear the End of It was Sloan's one true album, but I was wrong. Twice Removed (released in 1994!) proves Sloan is a two-album wonder. Hell, Canada loved it so much Chart! magazine's readers voted it the best Canadian album of all time.

[Two exceptional tracks from Twice Removed: Snowsuit Sound and Coax Me]

Edelweiss. I don't get it.

2009-11-14T13:18:00.003-06:00

Last week I watched about a third of Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show [hulu link]. There was a bit about Seth singing Edelweiss while Alex protested. She interferes because she's Jewish and Edelweiss is... Austrian? But, it isn't. Edelweiss was written for The Sound of Music. It was written by Rodgers and Hammerstein and sung by a character who was staunchly anti-Nazi. So what's the joke? I don't get it. Why was the audience laughing? Do they...

believe Edelweiss is an Austrian folk song and all things Austrian offend her?

reflexively laugh at the mention of "Jew" and anything vaguely related to Nazi Germany?

enjoy it when heavyset women interrupt performances?

like tv?

Obviously the skit's been bothering me. This is illustrative of the principle failing of Family Guy: showing the audience a thing is not intrinsically funny. You don't get laughs by saying a thing (exempli gratia Thundercats) then showing that thing. It's not funny. It doesn't work that way.

no longer content to be a passive viewer of youtube I dive into the churning waters of participatory media

2009-10-30T10:22:00.002-05:00

I MADE DIS.

via everycup.com and Tim Horton's 2008 annual report

2009-10-08T09:45:00.009-05:00

"Warm Hands, Warm Heart!

      Standing on the shore of the lake, we watched the windsurfers capture the chilly gusts. It had been a difficult year for us, with my wife nearly dying and our lives being overturned. However, health had been restored and we had taken a weekend holiday to celebrate the return of normalcy.
      As we walked up the wharf, we saw the cheery Tim Hortons colours, and my wife grinned at me. Yes, a cup of coffee and a chocolate danish would be perfect. Nodding at passersby, we walked up to our favourite coffee place.
      Taking our order to a window to watch the people passing by on the street, we warmed our hands around our delicious hot coffees.
      I looked at my wife and squeezed her hand. Seeing her smile, I realized that warm hands also warm the heart. Timmies was again in our lives and we were together again hopefully for a very long time."

Tim Hortons started everycup.com to gather stories about their coffee. You can find the original story here, the annual report here [pdf].

At best, this is fiction written as an exercise in condensed storytelling. At worst, this was contrived by Tim Hortons' marketing communications department. Either way I'm fucking insane for choking-up every time I read it. I sure do love coffee and people that don't die.

scenes from a bus

2009-08-02T19:31:00.003-05:00

I'm giving this idea away to the internet at large because I don't ride the bus often enough. This is high-concept stuff. Hold on to your hats. First, witness some ridiculous scene on public transportation. Second, transcribe the dialogue. Finally, read the transcript. You can read it deadpan or dramatically, doesn't matter to me. It's your project now.

You're welcome!

what I think about when I think about death

2009-08-01T21:14:00.003-05:00

Today was the worst day I have ever spent at a fairground.

In the past, fairground misfortune tapered off around sunburns and stomach aches. It would've been a great day if I had eaten too many fried Oreos. It would've been a great day if rain had poured down all afternoon and the rodeo had been cancelled and we had wasted $10 on tickets to a flooded fair. It did not rain all day. It rained for an hour. The rodeo was not canceled. We had a great view of the 6:00pm Lake County Fair PRCA Rodeo.

We waited through the America and God and Jesus bullshit. The rodeo started in earnest with bucking broncos: almost everyone stayed on. Then a drill team bored us all in unison. Then the roping riders didn't rope any calves. Then a a dancing horse danced. Then there were more bucking broncos. Then a horse died.

The rider dismounted after running out the clock, but the horse kept bouncing around the ring. Bouncing and rocking and swaying and slipping and falling and tripping and breaking. Cherokee II fell on its neck in front of 300 gaping idiots. A woman to my left said "oh my god I can't watch this" and then watched this while the announcer ran out of words and the support staff ran to the horse. We were assured that the horse was being fixed up for the "finest veterinarian" but the horse twitched and then stopped twitching.

My party returned to the midway while the horse-loving spectators absorbed the scene.

Death is coming. You might see it coming or you might not, but it'll be here on its own time. It's not the death of the horse, or the introduction to UP, or that post office commercial from October 2001 that upsets me. Being reminded of my death upsets me and, in that, I suppose I'm selfish. Please, Lake County Fair Association and Barnes PRCA Rodeo, please don't kill anything next year. For me.

how to manage sales people

2009-05-20T21:03:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: I don't have an MBA, but I sat across from a Mexican while he was getting his MBA.

Sales people are complicated, but in a very simple way. There's just one thing to remember when managing a sales person: commission. As a sales manager you should ignore the following: feelings, upward mobility, schedules, dress codes, attitude, people-skillz, teamwork, and training. These are all extraneous, out-dated wastes of your time. Allow me to simplify it for you.

I've developed a three step methodology for running a sales force:
1) Check if the sales person is meeting their quota
2) Ask if the sales person needs help meeting their quota
3) Fire any salesperson that can't meet quota and doesn't want help

Repeat that at the end of every reporting period. The only thing you need to bring to my air-tight management paradigm is a respect for federal law and some sort of sales reporting tool (a spreadsheet works just as well as Salesforce.com).

I just saved you about six million euros. You're welcome.

the rise of the internet middle class

2009-03-29T11:05:00.002-05:00

The democratization of information has been coming for a long time. A very long time. Hell, the democratization of everything has been on its way for a while. Despite all the hoopla over the death of print media and the exponential growth of social media we have yet to see the takeoff of truly NEW media. Even as readers abandon newspapers and magazines, they gravitate to established players.

We trade a Time for Gizmodo. Time Warner for Gawker Media. News editors for news aggregators.
To what end? What have we gained?

Choice? I choose to avoid anything that doesn't fit my world view. I choose to read the same gadget news over and over again. I choose to read productivity blogs about being more productive in producing productivity blogs.

Diversity? I can watch 18 different youTube videos spoofing the Watchmen movie's ending. I subscribe to 6 different podcasts about making podcasts.

Community? I can send obscenities to Barry's twitter account almost as fast as I can type. I can read 49 throwaway comments lauding your "great" and "insightful" blog post about Aretha's hat. My "friends" can tell me "lol" 152 times a week.

New Media is a feudal territory. There are landowners, content producers, and their are serfs - so many serfs, toiling in the soil of our lords and ladies. When an independent merchant comes about, they do so eking out a margin within an ever smaller slice of their niche within a niche. Things get interesting when every serf has their own plot of land to cultivate and improve. When every person is monetized you'll see NEW new media.

I don't know what it will look like, but I don't care. As long as I can find something, anything, to pass the time.

on advertising

2009-03-16T10:01:00.002-05:00

If you've ever been here before (and you don't have adBlocker) you'll notice I changed the iTunes ads on the right. These ads are hand-picked for you and only you. I'd like to take a moment to explain the ad selection process so I might help you might make internet money advertising on your blog about advertising to advertisers.

First, Milk, staring Sean Penn. I haven't seen the movie, but it's about a gay superman in San Francisco. I've got at least four demos covered in one ad: homosexuals, post-hippies, NPR listeners, and social media entrepreneurs. They'll be clicking in no time. Clicking hard.

Second, Transporter 3. Transporter 1 was a movie. I didn't see 2 or 3. This ad covers the 13 to 25 male demo and, for reasons unknown, the 45 to 60 lesbian demo. The 13 to 25 male demo is full of disposable income. Get some mindshare and monetize the shit out of them.

Finally, Bruce Springsteen. This ad is only here because Bruce looks like a raging douchebag. Soak it in. Stare into his aviator sunglasses and his half smirk. He's broken through a brick wall. He's coming for you. He wants to give you one of his necklaces.

how to lose weight and influence people

2009-03-13T07:09:00.005-05:00

Before and after.
For only $47 I will share my 10 steps to miracle weight loss with you!
If the photo above isn't enough to send you fumbling to pull your wallet out of your 55-inch Levi's 501s then you're stupider than you look. I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to make money. On you and your broken self-esteem. Here's a taste of the NONSTOP, NEVERENDING, MIRACLE WEIGHT LOSS SUPER SECRET:
1) Travel back in time to March 2008.
2) Get a huge tax return.
3) Set a goal. Try not being a fat retard baby anymore.
4) Use your huge tax return to hire a personal trainer.
5) Stop eating chicken, beef, and pork products.
6) Work out every day.
7) Eat less than you used to eat.

THAT, there, is just a fucking sneak peak at the super secret miracle weight loss super secret. For only FORTY SEVEN AMERICAN DOLLARS you'll get all TEN steps, a notebook, some stuff, and some other stuff. Send me $47 right now!

on Watchmen

2009-03-08T08:49:00.004-05:00

Allow me to be the four millionth guy-with-a-blog to write about Watchmen.

Someone duped Warner Brothers into releasing a 120 million dollar art-house film about superheroes. This is a movie for fans of the original comics. Casual viewers will be disappointed. This is not a superhero movie. This is a movie about humanity's vice, a movie that happens to have superheroes in it.

Jackie Earle Haley performance, as Rorschach, was phenomenal.
This is just the best possible movie that could've been made with the source material.

Regarding the ending: the movie ending is academically, literally, definitively better. It's tighter and it ties all the themes of the story together. The threat of Dr. Manhattan watching forces humanity to work together. Not by virtue, but by fear (of God, Minutement, Watchmen, and then Doctor Manhattan) is humanity saved. Better still: the atomic age killed God, but the post-atomic age resurrected him. There is no arguing. The movie ending is better.

There are questions, held over from the comics. Why didn't Dr. Manhattan use his power to remove the cancer from his friends? Does free will exist if Dr. Manhattan cannot change his mind? Or does he change his mind on Mars? Or perhaps in all possible worlds he makes all possible choices?

I could go on, but this will start to bore both of us. Go see the movie.

fairness doctrine? more like unfairness dork-trine!

2009-02-26T19:29:00.003-06:00

Senate adds amendment to District of Columbia voting-rights bill to prevent FCC from reinstating the fairness doctrine

Heritage Foundation argues a last minute change by Dick Durbin¹ takes away the amendment's bite

While everyone's confused about what Durbin actually meant by encouraging the FCC to promote "diversity" in media ownership we'll all miss the bigger point: the FCC should not control content. Their time as a media nanny is long gone. America has more than enough content to shove in it's eye-and-ear-holes: 400 cable channels, an infinite number of blogs, internet radio, etc. If you want some fair and balanced news, change the channel a few times.

We'd all be better served if the FCC limited itself to handling paperwork and selling broadcast licenses. You're good to go with an auction price and a limit on frequency congestion. The mini-hoopla over the Fairness Doctrine distracts people from the bigger problems: internet content regulation, broadcast content regulation, and the lack of internet access in rural areas.

¹I accidentally wrote "Turbin" as I drafted this. har har

make upwards of ten dollars with NEW MEDIA

2009-02-26T14:16:00.006-06:00

When I began bloggin', before it was called bloggin'¹, it was me and an AOL Homepage against the world. I wrote stuff on the internet because it gave me an excuse to figure out Javascript and HTML (this was a loooong time ago). My tirade against the status quo of Tequesta Trace Middle School was just filler, mandatory if I wanted to make cool mouse-over javascript crap.² After a while I lost interest in maintaining any sort of homepage, as they called websites then, and I moved my animated gifs to Livejournal. My time at livejournal was not at all about webdev. Livejournal is more about self-congratulations and bidding for the approval of your limited peer group.

This brings us to the present. When I started Monetize This Piece my goal was to create an homage the innumerable getrichquickgooglesecret sites that littered our beautiful information superhighway. However I quickly realized that snark bores everyone after a while - the writer and the reader. Even worse, nobody got my joke about the 13 AdSense boxes blocking every post.

So I cleaned up this horrible, horrible place to make it look a little less like a splog (spam blog? yeah.) and more like a relog (regular blog? no). Since making the site a little more readable I've made 10 internet dollars in advertising revenue. Got that? I only need 15 more internet dollars before the internet will send me a check for 25 real dollars. Roll that around in your noggin for a few minutes. I'm a social media expert, and (soon) I'll have the check to prove it.

The lesson: you can have too many ads. Try to limit yourself. If you don't get clicks post ads featuring attractive women.

¹no one ever called this bloggin'
²when you rolled over the navigation menu the pictures would change!

this is why you're fat

2009-02-25T16:12:00.003-06:00

Thanks to Cracked I stumbled upon the greatest blog ever. Truly this is what the internet is for: sharing disgusting food-pornography. thisiswhyyourefat.com
For example:

The Meat Ship
As the images scroll by I oscillate between horror and arousal. Some of these monstrosities look pretty good. I wouldn't turn down The Brick Of Cheese. Maybe I need a self-service gravy dispenser...

I can't stop laughing at the gravy dispenser. My god... START YOUR DAY RIGHT

wise werds

2009-02-21T19:54:00.000-06:00

I suddenly realized that the Hulk is really just an anthropomorphic boner.
-Chris Hardwick

in defense of Libertarianism

2009-02-21T19:08:00.007-06:00

Libertarians tend to be (TEND TO BE!) real assholes. How could anyone hate poor people so much?

Let me tell you, it's actually remarkably easy to hate poor people. They don't eat well, so they're not very fast, and they have slow internet, so they rarely read what you say about them. This is besides the point, I just used that first line to draw you in. Let's get to it...

Some of us believe in "free markets." I really believe in free markets. Libertarians, as a rule, believe free markets can/will fix most everything. Imagine a world where the police charge you a use fee every time you called 911. Imagine a world where every road was a toll way, and a driver license was $2000 a year. Pretty awesome, huh?

The idea is: quality of service is best assured by consumer choice. If tollway A was poorly maintained, you'd drive on tollway B. If police force A let the bad guy get away, you'd call police force B in the future. Your money, your choice, makes service providers more efficient. On a grander scale, assume a certain airline crashes more often than other airlines. No regulations are needed - the consumers would know to avoid that airline and it would go out of business or stop crashing. Even more, an airline assurance company might develop to collect fees from airlines in order to certify the safety of their airplanes. This is not to say that government isn't necessary. We need constitutional courts and a standing army. Certain inalienable rights must be assured by a higher power. Everything else? Let private companies do it.

The fly in the ointment is that Libertarian utopia relies on perfect markets. That is: markets with a perfect distribution of perfect information, zero transaction costs, and a limitless numbers of buyers and sellers. Take as an example, the hypothetical airline above that crashes more often than others. Without a perfect distribution of information thousands of people could die before word spread that the airline was flying death traps. Without perfect information government intervention is a far a better option.

So I propose to you, friendly reader, that now is the time for some Libertarianism. Instead of swinging hard left, begging sweet Barry to take care of us all, let us enter the future. We are at the precipice of perfect markets. Think for a moment about your twitter followers and followees, your RSS feeds, the 6000000000000 blogs surrounding your head, and the cell phone you carry. Perfect information is upon us. Now, more than ever, is the time to shrink the government. You and I can reach millions of people in just a few minutes. Plane crash, monkey attack, salmonella outbreak? There is no need for government regulations. We are the regulators.

I don't really believe that we (America) nor we (the world) could ever really reach true liberty, but we can try.

wise words from david silverman

2009-02-19T15:37:00.001-06:00

Now that I've lost so much on the stock market, it pains me that I didn't spend money friviously instead.

how to program your TI-83 for fun and profit

2009-02-18T23:12:00.003-06:00

Dear internet:

Are you concerned with the rising tide of mediocrity? Are you surrounded by idiots? Well I've learned a few things in my 2 months (rounding up) as a full-time freelance iPhone developer that might apply to bigger issues. Let's take a look at them now:

there are a ton of idiots out thereI tend to be pretty critical of myself. Sure I've got some straight A's in graduate Java classes, but that doesn't mean anything. My dog, Atilla, could pass Data Structures and Algorithms at DePaul. It ain't no thing to throw together a linked list, or so I thought! As it turns out, there are a ton of idiots out there. Reading dev forums is akin to banging your skull against the curb. Every 50th question holds merit. Every other question is: "how does I make my phone do math?" or "why no phone play sound when I tell it to play sound?" Read the damn manual random internet psuedodeveloper!! Which leads me to...

Apple's documentation is awesomeSeriously. I thought Apple's dev docs for OS X were good (and they were), but the iPhone documentation is beautiful. And the sample code? Oh, it's like a free code buffet, open 24/7. I find retards in forums insufferable because Apple provides sample code and detailed docs FOR FREE. If you don't know how to animate a transition Apple has the sample code. If you need to make ANOTHER metronome Apple has the sample code. If you want your app to own a URL Apple has 10 pages of docs waiting for you. I was once told that the purpose of an undergraduate education is not to fill your head with facts, but to show you how to find facts. Suddenly it doesn't seem so far fetched.

every dev blog is full of sales pr0nEvery. Single. iPhone developer has a blog with sales data. At first, I appreciated the frank, open discussion of the ups and downs of App Store life. Recently I've grown tired of the endless sharing. We all know that guy that made a million dollars off iShoot. Good for him. We all know Trism sold $250,000 in the first 3 months of the App Store. On and on and on... The blogs and the sales stats are just another marketing gimmick. Anything to stand out among a crowd of 22,000 apps.

re-evaluating

2009-02-14T17:50:00.002-06:00

When I was laid off (january 09) I decided I'd take some time to:
-incorporate as a software development entity
-release a few iPhone apps
-build something with Ruby on Rails
-start a blog
-complete at least one programing reference book

So far:
-incorporated
-one iPhone app is waiting on Apple
-forgot about Ruby on Rails until right now
-got this and the Wilcox blog
-forgot about this goal

Three out of five isn't bad. It's better than 50%. Unfortunately it looks like my forced vacation might be coming to an end soon. I need money and I've stumbled into a few second interviews. Job offers may be coming soon. It's time for me to buckle down and knock off the rest of the to-do list.

[guest post from my dog]

2009-02-13T12:49:00.007-06:00

Atilla's Favorite Recipe!
Ingredients: string
Directions: eat the string

found on iTunes affiliate site

2009-02-12T21:23:00.003-06:00

What is wrong with this picture?
The "girl" in the "photograph" appears to be the idea of Miley Cyrus. Odd.

rule #1

2009-02-11T18:59:00.002-06:00

When you're on the infosuperhighway, and you're about to comment on something, take a second and think "If I don't comment will anybody miss my input?" Most likely the answer is NO. No one in the entire universe will care if you say "ZOMG reminds me of ST:TNG" or "ROFL" etc. If you're lucky, there exists an inter-dimensional being that garners sustenance from communication. In that case, and only then, someone outside our universe will care. [The aforementioned inter-dimensional being could also be God, if you're into him. God probably cares about everything you say all the time, but he also cares about unborn babies and specks of dust in the cosmos. He's not a good judge of value as it relates to modern communication.]

The next time you're flipping through flickr sets of skylines take a second before you tell the world what you think. Not even the photographer cares if you use his panorama pic as your desktop.

[this rule doesn't apply on twitter (because that place is a dumping ground for whatever) nor does the rule apply to facebook or comments directed at people you actually know]

the internet was built for this

2009-02-11T18:15:00.003-06:00

I want you to goto failblog and look at this picture.
http://failblog.org/2009/02/09/jihad-fail/

I, for one, support his cause. I don't like juice - never have, never will. Deal with it, America.

what's a hit

2009-02-11T16:37:00.003-06:00

There's a lot of self-help mumbo jumbo floating around the world and I subscribe to all of it: every last bit of self-help cliché crap! I'm goal oriented and process based. I affirm success and I pray and I do voodoo. Whatever helps to get me through the day and closer to doing something I enjoy.

What was I talking... about... erhmm....

I have an ongoing conversation with my wife. My outlook on working has been: get a job that pays a ton of money so I can enjoy myself 2 weeks a year and after I'm 55 years old. Not that I'm a martyr. I considered myself a realist. I used to ask myself what I wanted to do. What's my ideal vocation? I didn't have an answer. Now I've got an answer. All I want to do is write code. I'm through being an amateur. I want to write code so bad. I want to write it every damn day, all the time, until my eyes fall out of my head. You're reading this, and you're probably missing the weight of this announcement. I really had no idea what I wanted to do until two weeks ago. I spent the first 12 years of my life aspiring to be an astronaut. The last 13 years I spent assuming I'd end up selling Northwestern Mutual and crying myself to sleep every night.

What a terrible and uninteresting post.
Sorry, dear reader, but you'll have to allow me some latitude. It is my blog after all.

new computer

2009-02-10T18:30:00.003-06:00

It's coming up on that time again. The ole PowerBook's battery only lasts 15 minutes, its processor can't handle Vimeo video (damn you, Flash!), and the hard drive's got a case of the clicky clickies. As exciting as it is to get a new computer, I'm not really jazzed about Apple's current lineup and I'm definitely upset they don't offer a 12 inch laptop anymore. The 12 inch PowerBook G4 is/was the perfect size for a laptop. It rules. Also: I don't have any money right now because I'm still unemployed. So I guess it's not so much exciting, but rather terrifying when my hard drive clicks. I know it's just a matter of time before the big crash. I need an Intel Mac to develop for this damnable hell-phone anyway. Speaking of which...

As of tonight my first iPhone app, SQ8, is going FEATURE-COMPLETE GOLD MASTER. It works and it works well. This game is the best thing to happen to cell phones since snake wiggled its way onto your navy blue Nokia. I'm ~~excited~~ anxious about sending it out into the world. What if everyone hates it? What if I only sell 6 copies? I tell you what! A friend of mine gave me these words of wisdom I'm about to share with you.

It can be plastic!
Fuck negative thoughts

That's what! SQ8 is going to sell about half a million copies and I'm going to chill the fuck out and go hardcore development full time AND I'm going to finish my master's this year. SO HOW ABOUT THAT, INTERNET?! I'll take your unending silence as a triumph.

Internet: ZERO
Sean: ONE

App Crap (see? it rhymes!)

2009-02-10T08:17:00.003-06:00

I subscribe to an RSS feed of recent additions to the App Store. Most mornings it's depressing. Some mornings it's downright infuriating. Enter Multi-Shipment Tracker an iPhone app for tracking packages from the big 4 shippers. Joy! But wait, it's $49.99?? Fuck my wallet! This must have some kick-ass features. Let's take a look at the website...

This app is a piece of shit. They don't pull down tracking data and reformat it, they're just sending you to the UPS website. I COULD DO THAT ON MY OWN. Actually, I think I will do that. I'll make an app that does the same thing and I'll sell it for 99 cents. Fuck you, Memories Software, you glorious bastard.

go wildcats

2009-02-07T08:14:00.001-06:00

Seriously. Go.

Last night I saw High School Musical for the first time. Suddenly, I understood America. The cultural sea parted and I walked through it, gazing upon the whales and krake. It was like looking into the cold, unblinking eyes of God.

[note: this was originally written for another venue in March 2008]

che-poet-lay

2009-02-06T21:37:00.002-06:00

There was a time I can now scarcely remember, a time when burritos were just something to eat. It's been five years since Chipotle moved into Gainesville, Florida. It's been about five damnable years since burritos became my obsession.

I was so naive. What did I know? A burrito was boring, a burrito was 89 cents at Taco Bell, a burrito was static. I was such a fool.

That horrible day I became a monster. There will never be a burrito to satiate the horrible hunger inside me. No new combination of cheese, rice, beans, sour cream, guacamole, and salsa will ever complete my quest.

Don't be such a fool to think my fetish is Chipotle related! They were just an unwitting gatekeeper to the sick fucking underbelly of burrito-necessito, this horrible affliction. Chicago has nearly 4 billion burrito joints and each one of them offers a minor variation on the sweet stuffed tortilla. Toasted? Fried? Chihuahua Cheese? Fried fish?! AGH! It seems suicide is the only escape from the grip of burrito bonanza.

Shit, I just got a dominos coupon. I can get 14 pizzas for 6 bucks. See ya, suckers!

Typing gloves?

2009-02-06T07:07:00.004-06:00

My desk is adjacent to a floor-to-ceiling window and in the morning it can get pretty chilly. For the most part the chill doesn't bother me. I'll wear a sweater without a second thought. No prob.

The prob is my fingers get mighty cold. They're like little icicles tapping across the PowerBook's keyboard. But it's no winter wonderland, let me assure you it is much more difficult to code when you can't feel your fingers. I wish there were typing gloves. As I imagine: they would extend only to the last digit of each finger (excluding the thumb, it's not a finger!) and would be made out of high-tech 3M stuff. You could even plug them into a USB port for electric heating! Brilliant!

I must've seen these on Gizmodo. They're probably old-hat in Japan. Those jerks get all the cool stuff. What does America get? iPhones? Yeah. That's it.

Anyway, internet, get on it and send me some gloves!

[Update: yeah, they exist already and I found myself the best pair on Engadget. Cute, eh?]

internet done right

2009-02-05T18:22:00.003-06:00

http://twitter.com/the_real_shaq
This is what the internet is about: the ironic appreciation of a celebrity man-child's microblogging.

seriously?

2009-02-05T18:00:00.004-06:00

Do people fall for this bullshit? Does this malarky help build your brand? NO! If you're not hip, get the fuck off the internet!

Showing up on twitter and following a bunch of d-bags doesn't make you an internet millionaire. Fuck off following me and telling me about your shitty personal training spamblog. If you're gonna make a spam blog, do it right. Put naked ladies on it!

The internets gave us unlimited pirated music, movies, and porno, but these fools use it to "maximize social-network synergy and positive brand awareness." Is this what we've become? Oh, man, you used to be cool, internet.

I'll burn it down before I let them take over - self-important boobs, lacking even the most basic understanding of HTML.

If you want help building your brand send $14 to HappyDude Marketing Consulting via the donate button two posts ago.

quote of the day

2009-02-03T18:40:00.001-06:00

"I hope that when I die, people say about me, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money."
- Jack Handey

best of times, blurst of times

2009-02-03T18:15:00.005-06:00

Got the ole W2 today. FINALLY I can cram my return down Intuit's tax-hole vis-à-vis eFiling my tax return. Thanks to my super tax secrets (buy a house with a mortgage and go to graduate school) I'm soon to be the proud owner of a bunch of cash. If you want more super-secret tax secrets (donate stuff to charity) send $4.99 to my PayPal link below.

Three years ago a few of my colleagues at ERAC went to a creative tax advisor near US Cellular Field. This accountant (in retrospect, an amateur) claimed deductions on their behalves that you couldn't even dream of. Each and every one of them was a whaler with Harvard-sized student loans. One of my aforementioned colleagues freaked out and re-filed his taxes. The other two played it cool, assuaging their guilt with PILES OF FAT CASH. Worse still, to my knowledge they were never audited. The moral, dear friends, is that the IRS expects 3 years of tax records, should they request them. You need to hold onto investment, business, and housing documents for even longer. Be REALLY careful when you lie to the government.

Here's another tax secret, pro-bono: Whalers can deduct up to $10,000 in whaling expenses if they're in the Inuit Tribe.

disclaimer:
if you send money you will only get a PDF copy of the IRS' guide to charitable giving
don't send money

expectations are everything

2009-02-02T14:55:00.003-06:00

I've long believed that expectations dictate reality. Waaaaay before The Secret and just after The Dilbert Future. I came to believe that we get what we expect from life. You don't have to believe in Jebus or Secrets or television and, frankly, I'm not sure why it works, but it works. If you feel lucky - you're lucky. If you know you're smart - you're smart. Assume a virtue if you ain't got one.

Anyway: I just listened to last week's radiolab podcast. They spend about 15 minutes talking to some psychologists about expectations and performance. Lo and behold, the expectations of the test takers determine their performance. Give it a listen if you have a chance.

twittequette, pt. 2

2009-02-01T22:32:00.001-06:00

This is more accurate than I'd like to admit.

secrets to getting really rich really fast

2009-02-01T15:22:00.003-06:00

I figured it out! There are three secret ways to get really rich really fast!
1) Make something that a lot of people want, then sell it to them!!!
2) Win the lottery
3) Find out what people want then pretend to sell it to them!

I had no idea there was such a market for secret government grants and/or Obama grants. As a small business owner who is genuinely interested in researching grants I am appalled at the garbage littering the information superhighway. What you (I) are really looking for is grants.gov, but what you'll find is 6,000,000 sites promising SECRET grant opportunities for only $2.99. Does that work!? REALLY!? Why aren't I selling low margin, high-volume crap? Oh... yeah... I'm actually trying to do that as an iPhone developer, except my apps aren't crap. They're good. Really! Oh, well we'll see soon.

But, seriously, don't fall for the secret grants malarkey all over the internets. You just need to go to grants.gov or do a google search for the terms grants site:*.gov. It's all free and official there. Matthew Lesko told me so.

suuuunday, febRUary first

2009-02-01T09:58:00.003-06:00

Ahh, sundays. A day for rest. A day of discovery?
HOLY COW Dunkin Donuts now has waffle sandwiches. I got mine without bacon. Despite high hopes, it turns out the waffle sandwich is a poor-man's McGriddle. There's just not enough faux-maple flavor in the waffle and the texture alone is not enough to warrant a new sandwich. Stick with the egg & cheese croissant. Waffle Sandwich official buying advice: buy with trepidation, not a collector's item.

monster.com and the downfall of America

2009-01-30T09:16:00.003-06:00

Mint.com posted a hilarious take on the unemployment rate.
Barrak Obama SINGLEHANDEDLY passed IMPORTANT LEGISLATION
Republicans hate Barry! (huh?)

Bear with me, I have two points to make. First: regarding "post-partisanship." Republicans and Democrats disagree with each other because they fundamentally disagree. It's not like partisanship is strictly habitual. You might get the impression that Republicans voted against Barry just to spite him. It's not the case. Republicans voted against the magic bill because they disagree with the legislation. It's naive to think Barry's smooth invitations to post-partisanship would do anything. Saying something does not make it so.

Second: regarding unemployment. I'm unemployed as I write this. I'm a little worried about money. On the other hand, 6 recruiters have called me since I became unemployed. So what's the lesson? Don't worry about the economy, worry about your economy. The stock market only matters if you're losing money. Unemployment only matters if it's your job. The sooner you accept your inability to control the macro economy the faster you'll be back at work.

As Calvin said: "God, not man, determines who will be the recipients of the gift of salvation."

SEO

2009-01-27T21:08:00.002-06:00

Well, doodie balls. The unemployment roller coaster is fun fun fun.

iPhone apps chugging along, perhaps a future being self-employed? GOOD!
Recruiter called about job with epageCity: not gonna happen, want more outside sales exp. BAD!
Got an interview with Ricoh aftermarket sales. GOOD?

Whatevs. As long as Barry keeps those sweet unemployment checks coming in I'll be doing just fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine (but not really).

more books, less work

2009-01-27T15:14:00.003-06:00

I received Beginning iPhone Developent today. FINALLY. Don't think that I'm a beginner, oh no. I'm an expert with performance anxiety. This book is supposedly better put together than Erica Sadun's book, more big-picture stuff and fewer recipes. Who would've thought that to be the case with the title of Ms. Sadun's book being The iPhone Developers Cookbook? [emphasis added -ed.]

So what are we gonna do? Get jobs or make iPhone apps that may or may not make us fantastically wealthy? GARG! Why do I keep asking rhetorical questions of the reader? I hate that stylistic tick and yet cannot escape it.

So now, I have a job interview or two and I've been avoiding Xcode. I'm supposed to be working on my iPhone projects, not blogging.

I forgot to mention to the internet that I grind my teeth. I grind my teeth somethin' fierce! The dentist claimed he had never seen someone so young with molars so flat. Welcome to the real world, denty! My molars are flat because I'm an omnivore. JEEz, where've you been? I live a relatively stressless life, but the molars never lie. Now I sleep with a biteplate under my incisors to keep my teeth apart.

Back to werk.

hilarious

2009-01-25T00:25:00.001-06:00

fucking hilarious

hannah and her sisters

2009-01-24T22:31:00.002-06:00

If you've ever seen the Woody Allen film Hannah and Her Sisters you might recognize the reference I'm about to make.

The reason they can never answer the question "How could it possibly happen?" is that it's the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is "Why doesn't it happen more often?"

This comment is made about the holocaust. THE HOLOCAUST. Seriously, why not? You might argue it happens every day. Perhaps we live in and around the systematic destruction of everyone and everything, but it's a piecemeal destruction so we never notice. Who knows. Perhaps you should worry about something more pressing? Money? Money for food? Trained assassins? Sierra Online's rise and fall?

Well. Fuck. Who knows what anything is anymore?

webcam meet tv

2009-01-24T20:46:00.003-06:00

I found an old webcam during my cleaning frenzy today. It's now plugged into the Mini under the TV (instead of using it as a mace-style weapon with which to scare the crap out of the dog and hurt myself). Using macam and a command line app called wacaw I can now snap a picture of my living room at any time. TAKE THAT, burglars and rapists! When I'm not home I can still connect via SSH and run a script and totally see what you're doing. I might even get cron to snap a pic every 30 minutes. HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT? I probably won't snap a pic every 30 minutes unless I'm on vaca and worried about Atilla. So there you go. Action:

management advice

2009-01-24T20:19:00.003-06:00

I may not have an MBA (or maybe I do), but I'm qualified to tell you the one true secret to management: be interested in the people you manage, ask their opinion and value their responses. This sweet nugget of truth has been repeated ad nauseam since How to Win Friends and Influence People. You know why this advice sounds like a cliché? BECAUSE IT IS AND IT WORKS. People with PhD's in managing people have been conducting lab experiments for decades to confirm the fact that engaging subordinates makes them feel better and work harder. All the research proves it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, fat cat!

An associate of mine, a Mexican gentleman who sat on the other side of a cubicle wall from me, purchased an MBA last year. His management coursework dealt with determining personality types, building synergy, and utilizing core competencies. This is fine stuff, but it doesn't help the rubber meet the road, as it were. You wanna fuck shit up? TALK TO PEOPLE AND VALUE WHAT THEY SAY!

There you go, dicknose. Some sweet-ass management advice. Go get that CEO job, you beautiful bastard.

apple blogging

2009-01-22T07:17:00.000-06:00

Blogging about Apple is like screaming into an echo chamber. All the usual suspects are posting the same news with the same insight. You're either a hater, an apologist, a pragmatic fanboy, or a I'm-better-than-this-but-I'm-actually-a-fanboy. AND NO ONE has anything insightful to say. Once you've got their m.o. down, you know what their going to talk about by reading the post heading.

Here's a secret, if there is a disclaimer somewhere on your page or post that says "using apple products since 19XX." Then you are the latter of the aforementioned archetypes. Case in point: Dan Lyons. He's faux-critical of Apple, but only so much as it takes to stir up a few page views. It's okay if he critiques our great leader, because he does it with love and he's one of us.

Fuck that. He's just an example. You'll see it over and over on bio pages. Joe Schmoe has been using Macs since 1988 and he luvs Steve Jobs and he named his son Amelio. Don't wrap yourself in an shroud of Appleness as you critique the company. Just say what you have to say and be done with it. If you can't stand to be the bad guy, don't do it. If you don't enjoy emails from fucking lunatics, don't do it.

thanks again internet, you jerk

2009-01-22T07:14:00.000-06:00

I MADE 20 CENTS OFF THIS BLOG.
Finally I'm getting some comeuppance. After 13 years of paying the internet, the internet's finally paying me. I didn't even have to resort to posting about sexy horse sex or nude pictures of Madeline Albright. I kept my dignity and made FAT BANK. Keep up the clickin'. Google says I could make $20 per thousand visitors.

I've had 9 so far... so everyone tell 112 of your friends and I'll be set.

thanks internet, now where's my money???

2009-01-21T22:21:00.000-06:00

Dear internet,
I am on my way to becoming a superstar blogger, please remit $4000 to my account so I might purchase a new floor and drape combo from Empire Today. What's taking so long? Can't you EFT it? ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER

Today was big busy. I submitted a sample news piece to a PRO BLOOOOG. Hopefully they like it and throw some money my way to keep typing. Who am I kidding? I just like typing for the fun of it. See? Tapataptapatapatapataptaptap

I have an interview next week with a full time job I really want.

I ordered another iPhone SDK reference book. I can't stop ordering them. They're sweet, sweet mana from Cupertino. This book has an orange on the front I think. I found this blirg: iphonesdkarticles.com. It's pretty coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool.

Tell everyone you know to start their own enterprise. This is the future: the internet. It's gonna be really big. Email me if you want to stop being roadkill on the information superhighway and start being a trucker with a shotgun who keeps on truckin'.

THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY EVER

2009-01-20T11:15:00.001-06:00

Today will be a day remembered for all eternity. Today I am shaving for the first time in as long as I can remember. God bless this great land of ours, where a man can shave when and how he wants! AMERICA, MY BEARD IS OF THEE!!!!!

For posterity's sake I'd also like to make a point about Barry's inauguration: I got a little choked up, I get a little choked up, but I get choked up by everything. I'll shed a tear or two watching a US Postal Service commercial. Heck, I dropped a few tears when G.W. Bush was inaugurated. America's great, no doubt, but everyone needs to calm down a little. I really, honestly, sincerely don't understand why everyone's crazy 'bout Barry. In my 25 years it's never been a shock to see a successful black man. Service to country and community has always been expected.

You know what I'm excited about? I'm excited about us - you and me - working hard and kicking ass. We never needed Barry, we never needed anyone. We're america and we can do whatever we want to do. You want change? Do it in your goddamn neighborhood. You want prosperity? Start a new enterprise.

Go get 'em, tiger.

twittequette

2009-01-19T23:58:00.000-06:00

See the title? It's a play on words. I recently joined twitter. 50 posts so far and going strong.

Here's the question of etiquette: why do new-media-vc-web-2.0-blog-seo-revenue-fucks keep following me? So I click on them and see what they're about? Should I follow them? AM I OBLIGED??? So many questions... Twitter's interesting. I suppose it's still small enough that Brent Spiner and Tina Fey can actually read things thrown at them. Maybe not Tina Fey, but definitely Brent Spiner. People drop @ all over and reply in kind.

But the barely literate business-guy-fucks? They can get lost. Listen up, internet, there are enough blogs about blogging your way to riches. Economically and emotionally - who buys this garbage?

this leads into my blog's creation story:
the ads all over are part of the message - it's a concept, duh
anyway: if you see the ads you're doing the internet wrong

are you even trying?

2009-01-19T23:49:00.000-06:00

http://iphone.keyvisuals.com/

come on! html ain't that hard

personal blog

2009-01-19T11:26:00.000-06:00

this is my personal blog
nothing to see here