Jeremy's Musings

Good People Day 2008

2008-04-03T22:34:00.001-06:00

I've been sick the last couple of days, so I didn't have much time to type this up. I actually have been sleeping for about 90% of the last 48 hours. I'm barely going to make this post on the right date, but it still counts, right?

If you have never heard of Gary Vaynerchuck, you should really check him out. He's a good guy, and produces some great stuff. I'm a big fan of his wine show over at Wine Library TV. That is his daily show where he tastes wines and gives good advice about wines in general. If you're even the least bit interested in wine, you should check it out. He also has another daily show at GaryVaynerchuck.com where he covers a whole variety of topics, including personal branding. On yesterday's show, Gary made a call to action that we declare April 3rd, 2008 as Good People Day. He wants everyone to spread the word about good people, and to talk about someone that is a good person. This seemed like a good thing to do, so I thought I'd join in and do my part.

I wasn't sure whom I should talk about as a good person, and since I left myself so little time I'm just going to have to wing it. I think I'm just going to talk about a group rather than one person. That group would be the Wal-Mart greeters. Those old people are always really friendly. They have to stand there and put up with so many lousy people, but they still smile at everyone. It doesn't matter how unfriendly you are, the Wal-Mart greeter will always be nice. I don't know if it's just because they're all old and have nothing better to do, or what, but I think that they're good people. So next time you head to your Wal-Mart, make sure to smile at the old guy at the door, and let him know he's a good person.

Takeaway From WordCamp Dallas Part 2

2008-04-02T19:37:00.001-06:00

Yesterday in Part 1 of my takeaway I covered some of the cool new tools and programs that I am starting to use as a result of going. I should probably give an honorable mention to Twitter in there too, since I did start using it just before WordCamp as a result of FriendFeed, but I'm using it a whole lot more since WC. Today I'll cover some of the good advice/tips that I picked up.

Some of these things I already knew, but just haven't been following. I'm really going to try to be better about that, though. One that got brought up over and over again was maintaining a large repository of posts. Always keep some posts written, or in the process of being written, so that you'll always have material at your reading in case you don't have time to write something else. I always tried to do this myself, but found that I could never keep more than one or maybe two posts done. The people at WC, though, had anywhere from ten to sixty posts in some stage of completion. I've already started to come up with some things that I can write about, and started on a couple of them. I always have a few ideas swimming in my head, but usually don't let myself start on them unless I know that I can finish it in the same sitting. I'm changing my mentality now. Another thing that I've always known I should do but don't is use more images. Most people say they try to have at least one image in every post they do. Scoble has even said that he's much more likely to look at something just because it has a picture. I rarely use any pictures on my posts, but I think I'll try to start doing that. It was also suggested that you make sure to keep them hosted on your server, and that you use descriptive names and appropriate alt text. For some reason, Live Writer likes to post my pictures to my Picasa online album rather than my own server. I think I'm going to try to change that, though. One thing that was suggested that I've never really thought about before is using the title attribute on all of your links. I also already knew, but failed to follow, this next thing which is to post consistently. It doesn't matter if you post five times a day, or just once a week, it is important to be consistent. If you are posting every day, and then take ten days off, you're likely to have some people get aggravated. It's also just good practice for people to know that every morning/afternoon/Monday/weekend they can do their reading and catch your post. I'm going to start aiming for a post a day, at least M-F, and see how that goes. If I stay on the ball with it, I should be ok. It probably means staying up a bit late sometimes, or taking my laptop to the bar with me.

A lot of the things I just covered can be found on John Pozadzides's site, One Man's Blog, in his post 45 Ways to Power up Your Blog, which he used as his talk. His was one that I really enjoyed. I also liked Aaron Brazell's WordPress FAQ which covered quite a bit, and was pretty informative. Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress, was the first to speak and announced the launch of WordPress 2.6, and hinted at what's to come from 2.6. You can watch a recording of Matt's talking about where they've been, and things coming WordPress 2.6 thanks to Michelle Greer. His was the first talk, and it definitely piqued my interest in using WordPress as my platform. The other discussion I really enjoyed, though it doesn't necessarily directly relate to me, was the panel on the business of blogging. The panel consisted of Mark Ghosh, Liz Strauss, Aaron Brazell, and Matt Mullenweg. The questions and answers were all really great, and John P did an awesome moderating. I probably would have enjoyed seeing it, but I missed the first session on day two which was a live recording of the WordPress Podcast with Charles Stricklin. Fortunately, though, since this is a podcast I can just download it and listen when I have a chance. There were a number of other speakers, but those were the ones I enjoyed the most.

That takes care of part two of my takeaway from WordCamp. I had a great time, and enjoyed meeting people and learning new things. I should also mention a thanks to Frisco, TX for letting us use the city hall there for the event. The facilities were very nice, and I know that we all appreciated them letting us be there. I hope to see more events like this here in the Dallas area in the future.

Takeaway From WordCamp Dallas Part 1

2008-04-01T19:00:00.001-06:00

I was fortunate enough to get to attend WordCamp Dallas, which was a great experience. Living in the Dallas area doesn't afford me a lot of opportunities to go to many web related events so this was really nice. I went with zero expectations of what I would get out of it. I just wanted to meet like minded people and see what WordPress is all about since I haven't used it before. It turned out to be a really enjoyable two days, and I'll cover some of what I took away from it. I originally planned to have this all as one post, but it seemed significantly longer than I normally like so I decided to split it into two parts. This one will cover things that I'm going to start using because of WordCamp, and in my next one I'll go over tips/advice I picked up, and which sessions I really enjoyed.

I've never used WordPress. When I first started my site, I did everything myself. All of the coding and whatnot I setup on my own. I even built a rudimentary comment system. To update I had a little form I made in PHP what would update my database. I was pretty proud of myself for doing everything on my own. The problem, though, is that it's a lot of work do maintain that way. I was doing a lot of things manually, and decided that I could either invest time in writing things to automate some stuff and make scaling easier, or I could use a blogging tool. I decided that lazy was the way to go, so I set out to find a tool. The choice wasn't really that hard, though, since Google owns Blogger, and if you know me you know that Google also owns me. I use all of their other services so I saw no reason to not also use their blogging platform. Eventually I started using Live Writer so I never even visit the Blogger page anymore. Despite my using it for about a year now, I've never been 100% sold on Blogger. I especially feel this way after seeing WordPress 2.5 in action. As such, I'm going to be migrating my site over the the WordPress platform. I already have it setup and am currently running it parallel to my Blogger so that I can make sure it's all working and can just be switched over. I'm working on getting a design that I like put together before I go live with WP. I'm hoping to do that this week, but my schedule may not allow for anything to happen before this weekend. Get excited, though, because it's coming.

WordPress wasn't the only thing that got talked up that I've decided to start using. Feedburner was also touted by a few people. I visit gobs of sites that use Feedburner, but I never really bothered to set it up. After hearing the praise given to it, though, I've decided to give it a go. I don't know how many people are actually subscribing to my feed as it is now, but I'm pretty sure it's not many. It's because I'm guessing that number is so low that I've not bothered using anything special. I'll give it a try, though, and see what it's like.

What may be the coolest thing out of WordCamp Dallas is the new stat tracking service Woopra. This tool is amazing. There is a desktop client that provides real time tracking and shows live usage data. You can actually see what pages are being viewed by which visitor as they are viewing them. That's just the whiz-bang awesomeness, it also provides a plethora of detailed stats. I'll try to play with it some more and write up something in more detail later. Check out the coverage at GeekBrief.TV, Mashable, and TechCrunch. Everyone present at WordCamp was lucky enough to get a beta invite and I started playing with it instantly. It really is amazing. You can try for a chance to win an invite for yourself over at Culturefeast, or request one from the Woopra website.

That wraps up part one of what I got out of WordCamp. I can't recommend playing with Woopra enough. It is an incredibly awesome app, you you really should check it out. I'll have to use Feedburner and WordPress more before I can give real thoughts on them. From what I've seen, though, WordPress will be great. I already see it as being a great tool for me, and one that should improve my blogging experience. I'll probably have part 2 up sometime tomorrow, so check back.

Browsing Habits Based on Wi-Fi Usage

2008-03-31T21:55:00.001-06:00

Every now and then I'm out somewhere that offers public Wi-Fi. This is a great thing, and I'm always happy to see places that have it. It's really becoming more and more prevalent, showing up in many bars, most every coffee place, and tons of other locations. There is one problem, though, and that is how much can you trust it? When you are using the Wi-Fi provided there, you expose yourself to all sorts of dangers. Given their openness, someone with nefarious intentions could really pose a threat. With the right tools and know how, someone could monitor all of your traffic, and do with it as they please. This seems to be something that is becoming more common knowledge, but there are still a lot of users out there that just don't think about this. I'm not here to teach you Wi-Fi safety, though. If you want that, you can head to CNET for a basic lesson on protection at public Wi-Fi hotspots, or just look to our friend Google.

I'm here to see what you find your usage habits to be when you are on a network that is not your own. I was thinking about this when I was at WordCamp this weekend. Just like a good conference should, they provided open Wi-Fi for everyone to use, and I'm willing to bet everyone did. While there, people did everything from logging in to their email to logging in to their web servers. These are things that you want to keep secure, yet people are logging in on an open network that is being heavily used. The thought, of course, is that the group at a conference like that is hopefully not going to be interested in doing bad things, but you never know. I would be interested to know if they maintained the same browsing habits if they were at their local coffee shop. Would they feel more or less safe there? In addition to using their emails and such, did anyone do any shopping? Check their bank account?

Personally, I usually try to error on the side of caution. This weekend I was logging in to my server, email, and other things just like everyone else. When I'm out at a random place, I usually won't log in to certain things. If I'm on any network but my own, I never log in to any financial related site, nor do I do anything where I enter a credit card. There are some places that I won't log into anything from. Maybe I'm overly paranoid, maybe I'm pretty normal. I know there are people that don't seem to be as cautious, though, since I've seen people logging on their bank sites while at Starbucks. What about you. How does your internet usage change based on where you are?

Learning Things at WordCamp Dallas

2008-03-29T13:10:00.001-06:00

I'm at WordCamp Dallas and we're just barely over halfway into day one and I'm already learning some stuff. First, I'm already thinking that I like the stuff that WordPress has to offer. I am thinking that when I get some free time (not any time soon) that I'll migrate my site over to it. I'm also picking up a lot of tips that I'm going to try to implement. John P from One Mans Blog had a talk of 45 Ways to Power up Your Blog that contain a number of useful things that I want to try too. He also had a really awesome statistics tool called Woopra that looks incredibly cool and I'm going to play with it soon. Lots of cool stuff going on here, I'm really enjoying it.

Finding New Things with FriendFeed

2008-03-27T14:34:00.001-06:00

I find myself becoming addicted to FriendFeed. I started using the service about a day or two before it exploded everywhere. I find that I"m actually discovering a number of things just by leaving it up all day. Not only do I love finding out what's going on with the people I'm following, but their "everyone" public feed is great too. Every now and then I'll click over there and just watch the stream of stuff coming from a ton of people, and I don't even know who they are. Today I thought I'd see what searching for Dallas (where I am) in the public stream would get me. I actually discovered that there's a WordCamp event this weekend here as a result. I have no idea how I missed hearing about this before. I'm thinking that since it is a WordPress thing, and I don't use WP, that I just passed over it if I saw it somewhere. However, I'm now trying to figure out my weekend schedule and try to go. It would be great to go and network with people, and try to learn more about WordPress. And to think that I never would have seen this had it not been for FriendFeed.

It's a Cubicle World

2008-03-26T07:51:00.001-06:00

I work in an atrium building so you can see into the offices on each floor. Riding the elevator up to my floor, I see that almost every floor is populated with cubes. Most of the people I know work in cubes. I work in a cube. This is nothing new, offices using cubes to house workers has been going on forever. They site all sorts of reasons for why they do it, trying to pass it off on the employees as if it is a benefit to them. The truth, though, is that it's cheap to use cubes. I don't blame them at all for this, I'm all about cutting costs. I honestly don't care about having to work in a cube, I don't feel like it demeans me or anything like that (as seems to be the case with a lot of people). I do have a problem with my office using cubes, though. I have a feeling that most of my problem is that I wasn't always in a cube. When I first started working here, I had my own office. This office was located down at the end of a hallway, and there was nothing else there. The only reason anyone had to be down that hallway was to see me, and I don't get a lot of visitors. This meant that I had pretty much zero distractions, and the only noise was that which I made. My productivity was great. I could focus on what I needed to, and I didn't have to deal with anything going on around me because there was nothing around me. I had my own office for a while, and then they moved someone in with me. This wasn't too bad, though the distractions did increase quite a bit. Every time she was on the phone, had a visitor (she had a lot due to her job), or just wanted to talk to me, that would hurt my productivity. As a result, the volume of work I could do took a hit. That lasted for a while, and then we all moved into cubes. Now I've got people all around me. The lady next to me, she's great and I like her, but she's on the phone all the time (work and personal), and she's loud. I keep turning my music in my headphones up, but that only does so much. I've got a lot of foot traffic coming by now, and people feel like just stopping by to talk. I've got people that just yell over the cubes to each other when they have a question about something. The guy next to me is constantly getting into arguments with people on the phone (he is the guy that reviews all the contracts, so he is making sure people stay in line, which they don't like to do), and he is loud too. Basically, I have tons of noise and distractions going on. As a result of this, my productivity is just shot. I can definitely see how some people could benefit from being in a cube environment, but I'm a financial analyst for Pete's sake, and my job doesn't really see any benefit from others around. Not to mention the fact that I work with confidential information, and am basically out in the open here. Why don't companies understand that the cost savings of sticking everyone in cubes may not be greater than the loss of productivity? Is that always going to be the case? No, of course not. Do I think it's the case for me and some other people here? Yeah, definitely. I don't feel like I should get anything special, I just want four walls and a door so that I can shut out the world and get some work done.

Oh, did I mention that the location of my cube is such that when the receptionist isn't at her desk I'm the one that gets the door? That happens a lot.

Tweet Tweet, Feed me a Friend

2008-03-25T20:14:00.003-06:00

I've known about Twitter for quite some time. It took me forever to actually sign up, but I finally did. The sign up screen told me to say what I was doing, so I typed in living, and that was that. I didn't sign on again for months. I really wanted to use it, since it was so popular amongst the people that I followed online. There was only one problem, and that was that no one I knew in real life used the service. I can easily understand how great this thing could be, but without actually having anyone I knew personally on there, it didn't seem to do my much good. I told people that I knew about it, but they weren't interested. In the end, I just couldn't bring myself to use the service, since it didn't do me a lot of good to know what Leo Laporte was doing for dinner. I thought about trying to follow it just to see the interesting things, and ignore the rest, but I never did get into it. Then, I was listening to an episode of net at night and they mentioned some new service called FriendFeed. It sounded like a nifty little service. You can sign up, and put in all the services that you use, and it will import all of the updates that you make on those services into a feed. Then, other people can decide to subscribe to your feed so that whenever you make any update to any of the services you're on, it immediately updates your FriendFeed, and all of your subscribers can see it in one place. These sorts of things are called lifestreaming services. Apparently, there are a number of them out there. Another popular one I've seen in called socialthing!. I've not used it, though, so I can't provide any first hand information about it. However, I don't need to since other people already have. The thing is, most of the traffic I see on my FriendFeed is from Twitter. I'm finding myself discovering a lot of new things just by watching the stream of updates that come through from the handful of people I'm subscribed to on FF. This made me want to use Twitter even more. On top of that, to hear things like what Scoble describes just sounds awesome. So now I'm finding myself actually more interested in Twitter because of FF. Also, since FriendFeed now lets you respond to Tweets (those are messages posted on Twitter) through your FF page, it is even more compelling for me to use. I still am faced with the problem that I don't really know of anyone in real life that uses, or even knows about this service. Perhaps I need to work harder on spreading the word.

Open the Tubes

2008-03-17T10:17:00.001-06:00

So this is pretty cool, I think. Michael Arrington is reporting on TechCruch some results of being put on the Yahoo! homepage via their new Buzz service. I'll be honest and tell you that I've never even heard of this new Buzz thing before, but I've been a bit out of it lately. It sounds like it's another Digg clone with a slight twist. Stories that get voted high enough will make it to the front page of Yahoo!. That means that if you get up there, you'll have the potential of a whole lot of traffic. That's precisely what happens, too, based on Arrington's post. In the online world, there is something known as the Slashdot Effect, and more recently the Digg Effect. This is when a link becomes popular on the Slashdot or Digg sites, and suddenly has a ton of visitors. While I'm not sure exactly how many people this sends over, it's considerable, but nothing like what Yahoo! can do. None of this is my point, though. What I found really interesting is what this means for broadening people's views. The demographic of sites like Slashdot or Digg is pretty much nerdy pasty kids that are under 28, and probably have as much porn on their computers as you have music. The vast majority of the public has never even heard of these sites. However, a ton of people go to Yahoo.com everyday. While a site like TechCruch probably makes it pretty high on Digg everyday, your typical Yahoo! user doesn't even know it exists. What this means is that people who may usually be completely oblivious about some things online are suddenly seeing it linked to off their homepage. These people may click through to a story on some tech site, and find it interesting enough to read something else there. At this point, I should probably admit that this is an entirely selfish enjoyment I have for this new service. Basically, it means that your average Joe (or Jane) now has potential to know just what the heck I'm talking about when I mention something I read online. To me, that's pretty darn cool. The trick, then, is to get these normally geek-centric sites to be appealing enough to attract the typical Yahoo! user (that is, assuming they even want them sticking around). I'm basing that on the assumption that having one million users coming from Yahoo! is actually a beneficial thing for the site.

Just Like Ol' Times

2008-03-16T10:56:00.001-06:00

Years ago when I first started writing on here the main thing that I would write about was movies. I used to watch a ton of movies, and so I'd give short little "reviews" of them after I watched one. This was good because it meant that I had at least one thing to write about close to every day. Now, however, I don't watch nearly as many movies as I used to, and when I do I really don't post about them. This last week, though, has been a different story, and I've watched a number of things so I thought I would share.

The first one is Resident Evil: Extinction. The Resident Evil series is one of those rarities where they made a movie based on a game and it wasn't horrible. I actually never played the games, but I've enjoyed the movies for some good old fashion zombie shoot 'em up entertainment. I picked this one up on a Friday night where I had no intentions of doing anything other than sitting on the couch with a beer and a movie and just veging out. I think that I prefer the first movie of this trilogy over the other two, but this one wasn't a let down. While I wouldn't go giving this movie five stars or anything, it is worth watching if you enjoyed the first ones, or just are a fan of watching girls shoot zombies. I figure that if you're really into the series that you would have seen this one by now anyway. While I wouldn't say that you need to have seen the previous movies to understand this one, it would at least help to explain a couple of things. The movie can stand on its own, though, as I don't recall there being any major plot points that wouldn't make sense if you hadn't seen the others.

I was in a trilogy mood last weekend and the second movie I picked up was the Bourne Ultimatum. I love the Jason Bourne series. Many years ago, before the movies came out, a friend of mine had tried to get me to read the series, but I never got around to it. Sadly, I still haven't, but I'm much more likely to after seeing the movies. I figure that since books are usually better than the movie, and these movies were so good, then the books must be awesome. I would definitely say that this movie is a true third installment, as in, you don't want to see it unless you've see the first two. I like that in these movies that things stay fairly true, and there aren't a lot of over the top scenarios. The action scenes are pretty exciting, and the plot isn't cheesy and really predictable. I didn't used to be huge on Matt Damon, but this series has really made me like him more. He does a great job playing Bourne. If you have seen the first two, but haven't seen this by now, you should. If you haven't seen any of the trilogy, you should definitely check it out.

This Friday night was another didn't want to think, get a mindless movie based on a game night. This time, the movie of choice was Hitman. I have played a couple of the games in the series, but never the first one. I think that I heard that the movie is based on the first game of the series, but I don't know for sure. To be honest, I was not expecting anything out of this movie other than some bad plot, lame lines, and a bunch of shooting. I was pleasantly surprised, though, that it actually turned out to be pretty good. The plot was pretty decent, and not entirely without depth. I wasn't sure what to expect from having Timothy Olyphant play 47, but he didn't do too bad. There were certainly some parts that I don't think matched up too well with the game (come on, you lose points for having witnesses, you really shouldn't leave any), but from what I know of the series they did a decent job. I'm not sure if one of the reasons I enjoyed this movie as much as I did is because I had such low expectations, or if it was genuinely that good. My friends, whom I don't think had as low of expectations as me, and had never played any of the games, thought it was pretty good too, though. There are definitely some fun action scenes, which was really all I was looking for. The soundtrack also bears mentioning. The game had a pretty nice soundtrack, and I noticed some of the same songs showing up in the movie. They have some good music in there, though. While I wouldn't say this movie is for everyone, obviously, it is a fun action movie. Don't expect anything too heady from it, but it is definitely some good entertainment.

This next movie is just downright interesting. It's this Korean movie called Green Chair. My I saw it on my roommate's Facebook page so I got it for us to watch. She didn't want to watch it with me, though, as she said it'd be too uncomfortable. After seeing it, I can understand why she said that, but not sure if I agree. The thing is, there's about ten minutes of opening story, then what feels like 30 minutes of them having sex. The point is to demonstrate the intimacy and nature of their relationship, but that really could have been accomplished in significantly less time. This movie definitely confirms my hypothesis that Korean chicks are crazy, though. The story is that an older lady has sex with a younger guy, goes to jail because of it, and then gets out and he's there to greet her. That's the beginning of it. The rest of the movie is how they are having this relationship, and the ups and downs of it. There is also an inordinate amount of eating. Pretty much, if the scene doesn't involve sex, it involves food. Despite what my roommate thinks, I really didn't think that the sex was all that explicit. I've seen worse in American mainstream movies. That's not to say that a kid should watch this. It's not rated here, but would definitely be a hard R. While hardly a romantic comedy, there are a lot of things that are amusing, and I laughed a number of times. There is also a lot that confused me. I'm not sure if it's just a cultural thing, or what, but there are parts that don't seem to add up for me. The end of the movie is especially odd. If the director were to tell me that the end of the movie was all a dream, I'd think that made more sense than if he said it actually happened. It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. My roommate doesn't agree, and thinks that it is cheesy, but completely real. I don't think cheesy is the term I thought of when watching it, but rather WTF? I can't say that I recommend this movie, but I also wouldn't discourage watching it. If you want some more insight into how crazy ladies are, and don't mind a bunch of sex, then go for it. Otherwise, go ahead and pass.

The last movie I watched in the last seven days was No Country for Old Men. This one had gobs of buzz made about it. It won some awards, I think, too. People I know that saw it all said it was great. I figured I should check it out. While I will say that this was a good movie, it is hardly deserving of all the accolades it has received. The story was good, the acting was good, the movie was good, but it wasn't that good. The end of the movie is definitely what got me. I don't like how they did it, at all. I've got no problem with what the final outcome was, but how they got there really bugged me. Things that I would have liked to see expanded upon are just brushed over. Pieces of information are just left out. I feel like they just flew over some things out that should have been included. Up until that point, I felt like they were doing a pretty good job. Don't think I'm trying to discourage watching it, though. It is a bit on the violent side, though. Javier Bardem does a really good job of playing a creepy psycho. You really don't like him much at all, which I'm thinking is what they were going for. All in all, I'd say that this is worth watching, but all the hype surrounding it is just that, hype.

More Election Brilliance

2008-03-06T21:22:00.001-06:00

As a lot of you know, I live in Texas and March 4 was our big day. Of course, that means that there's going to be a lot of stuff about the elections that are from here on the local level. I was reading one of the local papers here yesterday, and they were interviewing some people after they had voted. One of the things that they were honing in on was the way that females were voting. They were talking about how ladies had a difficult choice to make between voting for Hillary, because she's a woman, or voting for Obama, because they agree with him on things. Here's one of the good quotes, talking about women that like Obama.

"...and some of Obama's biggest fans were unable to vote for him, fearing a vote against Clinton would be a vote against their gender."

Hmm, so that's a good idea. Let's not vote for who we think will be the better president, and instead vote for someone just because they're the same sex as us. The reasons that some people have for voting astound me. If the reason that you are voting for someone is just because they are black, or a girl, or an old rich white guy, then you really don't need to be voting. Vote based on character, on where they stand on issues, and on how well you think they'd do the job. People need to vote for someone that they want to be president because they think they would be the best president, not because they want them to be the first black, first woman, or oldest.

On a somewhat related note, if you actually did want to vote for Hillary, check out what Lawrence Lessig has to say about it, it's very interesting.

Helpful How-to of the Day

2008-02-21T21:39:00.002-06:00

No one likes to work. Let's face it, if faced with an opportunity to rake in money without having to actually put forth a lot of effort, most people would take it. So today I present to you the how-to guide for stealing an old person's estate away from rightful heirs. I know what you're thinking, "That sounds like it could be evil." You're right! And that's the best part. You get to be evil and get rich. What's not to love? I personally love the closer.

Enjoy Being Evil - Think about all the fun you will have and all the wonderful things you will do with the target’s money and how much you enjoy hurting the stupid, unsuspecting heirs.
You are so much better, smarter and deserving than they are.
You deserve the money.
The human mind has no firewall. Elderly people are weak and vulnerable.

See, you are supposed to enjoy your evilness! Relish in the fact that you're more deserving than those other people. After all, if they really wanted that old guy's money they would have taken it themselves.

Oh, and from what I can tell, this is meant to be a real site. As in, it's not readily apparent that this is some kind of joke. Granted, I didn't exactly look into it, so it might be. Sad, sad, sad.

Rebate Ridiculousness

2008-01-29T09:32:00.001-06:00

I bought a hard drive a while ago from a brick and mortar store. A while later, I got an email from the company telling me that they were now offering mail in rebates for the drive, and that I would be getting one. Here's that email.

Dear Jeremy,
We're happy to announce that we're trying to make an effort to increase business, and to do so by offering mail in rebates to our customers. We see that you recently purchased a hard drive from us, and this qualifies for a rebate. Please be patient as we process these, but recipients should be receiving checks in the next four to six weeks.

Regards,
Sam Peterson

Well hot dog, right? Just had to buy the thing, and I'm going to be getting some money back. I waited for the check to come, but it never did. After eight weeks, I emailed the company.

Dear Mr. Peterson,
I was thrilled to hear about the rebate offer you announced some time ago. In the email, you stated that I should expect the check in four to six weeks, however, it has been eight and I've seen no signs of it. I just wanted to make sure there were no errors in my information, or if I just need to wait longer.

Thanks,
Jeremy

The next day I heard back from the company. I was a little taken aback by what they had to tell me.

Dear Jeremy,
Hi Jeremy, thanks for your email. I'm glad to hear that you were happy to hear about our program to help increase business. Rest assured that we have all of your information correct, and that you don't need to worry about waiting any longer. While you were the one to purchase the hard drive, we have sent your rebate money to a Mr. Christopher Johnson. He contacted us requesting that we send a check to him. I hope this clears up any confusion.

Regards,
Sam Peterson

That just made me even more confused. They had everything correct, but they sent my check to someone else? That doesn't make much sense at all. I decided to go ahead and email back trying to dig a little deeper to see if I could find out why my money went to some other guy.

Dear Mr. Peterson
Thank you for your attempts to explain where my check went. I must admit, though, that I'm even more confused now than before. Why exactly did my rebate check get sent to someone I've never even heard of? Was there a mistake? If it was my rebate money, should it not have come to me? I appreciate any further clarification.

Thanks,
Jeremy

The following day he responded. This time, though, his response made even less sense than before. I don't know what's going on.

Dear Jeremy,
Don't worry, there was no mistake at all. While you were the one to purchase the hard drive, we decided to send your money to someone else. Mr. Johnson never actually bought anything from us, but since he asked us to send him money, we used yours. We believe that since you had the money to purchase the hard drive in the first place, that you probably don't need any more. We do appreciate all of the money that you do give us, though. We look forward to you giving us more in the future, as we won't likely be getting any from Mr. Johnson.

Regards,
Sam Peterson

So let me see if I understand how this works. I give them my money, then they just give my money to someone else? I'd rather that they just kept it for themselves and used it to make improvements. I fail to see how exactly this is a rebate program. Don't rebates usually entail you giving them money, then they give it back? Not, you give them money, then they give it to someone else. Am I completely off base here? If they really don't need the money, they should give it back to whomever gave it to them. If they do need the money, don't give any of it back. Use it to improve the company. Let me know what you think.

Cop Gives Kids Porn...Sorta

2008-01-27T23:19:00.001-06:00

I came across this story via Doc Searls' blog. Some school cop at a middle school in Florida set up a MySpace page as a way to better communicate with the kids. The page was done with the support of the school and police. Apparently, one of the people on his friends list had a link to an adult web site. Now, I know what you're thinking, and the city's police are thinking the exact same thing: Investigate the cop for providing porn to minors. Duh, it's so obvious that this guy was up to no good. I mean, as was pointed out, kids could get to the porn from his page in just three click. My goodness, that's practically a direct link to the porn. Personally, I'm a little worried for myself. After all, I have linked to Google before, and we all know you can get to porn from there in just two clicks. Coming from my site, that puts you at the same three clicks. If some kid visits my site, I'm doomed. About the only good part of this story is that they're not blaming MySpace for it too.

Asteroid Flies Past Earth, Birds Try to Get Laid

2008-01-27T22:42:00.001-06:00

So there's an asteroid flying past earth pretty closely, which has scientists all giddy. That makes sense, I suppose since this stuff doesn't happen too often (apparently the next one doesn't come for another 20 years). What I find so amusing, though, is that while the heading warns of this big rock coming close by earth, the picture is a lark that's trying to woo a mate. Talk about random pairings.

Better Wording of My Point

2008-01-09T12:36:00.001-06:00

I'd never heard of Judi Sohn before today, but I really like what she has to say about the Scoble/Plaxo thing. She wrote four days ago what I wrote last night, only she did a better job. I didn't read much about this before so I missed her post. Being out of the loop for so long drives me nuts. Check out what she has to say, though, because it's right in line with my thoughts.

Glad We Have Our Priorities Straight

2008-01-08T21:28:00.001-06:00

I was reading over an article on the New York Times online about the results of the New Hampshire caucus, and some of the things that it talks about are truly amazing.

First, let's look at why a candidate thinks you should vote for them, and why they think they are the best candidate. Here is a bit that address why Mrs. Clinton thinks you should vote for her. (emphasis mine)

Mr. Obama, who trailed in most state and national polls until his surprisingly broad victory in the Iowa caucuses last week, was seen by New Hampshire Democrats and independents as the Democratic candidate most likely to defeat the Republican nominee in November, a marked turnaround from earlier surveys. Mrs. Clinton has cited her strength and electability against Republicans as the strongest argument for her candidacy.

Ah, so that's why we need to vote for Hillary: she can win in a vote against the Republicans. See, I was under the impression that maybe we should vote for her because we agree with her views on Iraq, or healthcare or something. I didn't realize that we were supposed to be voting for who had the best chance at winning instead of who we want to see elected. Maybe this is a problem that is only on the Democrat side, though. Maybe those Republican voters won't be so bad. Let's take a look. (emphasis mine)

As they had in Iowa, Democrats cited a desire for change in making their votes. Republicans said leadership and personal qualities were more important to them than positions on the issues.

Oh, well that's refreshing to see. The Republicans aren't all concerned with who might win the election, they just look at what type of person the candidate is. I don't really know if that's all that much better or not. Apparently, for Republicans, they don't really care whether or not the candidate agrees with them on economic policy, or tax reform. No, they just want to make sure that he's a good Christian that loves his family.

So, really, are either of these things all that bad? Shouldn't we be interested in electing someone that has a chance at winning so we don't just hand the race over to the other guy? Shouldn't we also be interested in making sure that the person is a decent human being so that we can assume they won't think genocide is a good idea? Yes, to both of these. However, to make them your primary focus is a horrible idea. The concept of looking at non-issues when determining who deserves your vote is why we're in the current situation. And no, that's not directly solely at Bush, I mean politics in general. By taking away the issues (and I really should clarify that I mean all issues, not just the issues that get mentioned on CNN), we reduce the race to a contest of not who would do a better job, but who we like more. We're not voting for homecoming queen here, we're voting for the person that will be the figurehead of our country. You shouldn't hire someone that knows nothing about tax law to do your taxes just because he's a good guy, and you shouldn't hire someone to be your president just because they have better poll numbers.

This is exactly why we shouldn't leave it up to the idiots to pick a president.

Who Owns Your Email Address?

2008-01-08T19:39:00.001-06:00

For the last month or so, I've been pretty out of the loop in terms of news, both online and off. I normally read a few hundred articles a day, but during this time I read maybe a dozen total. The holidays just kept me pretty busy, and I didn't have much time to read my feeds. That being said, I'm a little late to the party on this particular piece of info. Robert Scoble decided to test out a utility from Plaxo that would basically screen scrape information from his Facebook friends list and put it in a Plaxo database. If you're familiar with the Facebook ToS, you already know what happened next. That's right, Scoble got his account taken away. After raising a big fuss online for a few days, he eventually got his account back. I was completely unaware of any of this until today. Had I found out earlier, I probably wouldn't have waited so long to unfriend him on Facebook. I try to limit myself to not friending the "celebrity" type people on there, but I did have him, Leo Laporte, and Amber MacArthur. Now I just have the latter two. I had contemplated removing him earlier, but decided against it, as it was fun to see his updates. After this, though, he's off my list.

That isn't really what I'm writing about, though, as who I have on my friends list doesn't really matter. What I find interesting is the debate about owning your social graph, and an open system that you can move that information around freely. I am a bit split on this. First, I agree that if I want to use a certain system for all of my contact management, I should be able to conveniently get that data from one thing to another. However, is that data really mine to do that with? Do I own my friends' contact info? If they upload their information into Facebook, that doesn't suddenly make it my information. Their information is still their information. Does that mean that I should somehow be restricted on how I store this? No, not at all. But don't confuse the fact that you can find my email with the notion that you own that piece of data. On that note, you aren't restricted on where you can keep my info once you have it, but I still have a choice of where I put it. Keeping my email in your Outlook address book and keeping my email in your Plaxo account are two very different things. One is only an address book, the other is significantly more. If I wanted my information in the Plaxo network, I would have put it there myself. The same can be said for the concept of social networks. I am a member of Facebook, and I put all my information in there with the intention of it only appearing in Facebook. I don't want my information in some other social network. If you want to use some new startup network as your social network of choice, go right ahead, just don't expect me to join you. Furthermore, don't stick my information there either. I want to put my information in a network and have it stay there. Sure, there's nothing stopping you from writing all my info down and then re-typing it into so other system, but I'm working on the assumption that you will be reasonable enough to not go sticking it in every social network out there.

Remember the fiasco that was Quechup? A new network came along, asked you to upload your friends' contact info, and them spammed them like crazy. That's a bit how Plaxo used to be. Once they had your info, it was spam central. I would really rather not risk having this happen all the time. I know that we should be embracing the freedom of data portability, but let's not forget that not all of us want our data to be portable. Just because we put it in Facebook doesn't mean we want it outside of Facebook. And like I said, I know that it can be done manually, but that manual effort is exactly enough to keep most people from bothering. If it's so easy to do manually, why do people want portability? I'm uploading info with the assumption that it'll stay where I put it.

I don't think that I'm being too unreasonable here, but if you disagree, please let me know. Dare seems to agree with me, so I know I'm not completely nuts.

Sony Misunderstands the Term Online

2008-01-07T10:01:00.001-06:00

A short while ago Sony announced that they would begin selling DRM-free music available for downloading. This seemed like a great thing, as it signified the last label dropping DRM. However, Sony has now given some specifics on how this new offering will work. Apparently, you will go to a physical store, purchase a physical piece of plastic, and then go home and use that to acquire DRM-free music. This, of course, is wonderful because it's so different from the current method of getting DRM-free tracks from Sony. You see, right now, in order to achieve that you have to go to a physical store, purchase a physical piece of plastic, and then go home and use that to acquire DRM-free music. I'm so glad to see that Sony has really picked up on what consumers want and are now providing it.

Honestly, given that this is Sony, I'm not too surprised by their complete inability to understand the point of downloadable DRM-free music. If I want to quickly grab a song, I want to hop online, download it, and be done. I don't want to go somewhere, and buy a little card that will let me go back home and download my music. I admit that I haven't looked into it to see, but I'm willing to bet that Sony has some sort of proprietary downloader that they will force you to use in order to download their music. I also wouldn't be surprised if that downloader did all sorts of nefarious things to your machine, this is Sony, after all. This is one of those situations where I'm not sure if Sony offered this in some genuine attempt to appease customers, or if they created a system destined to fail so they can claim they made an effort, as Duncan suggests. Since Sony has repeatedly demonstrated their inability to give customers what they want, and their superb ability to screw their customers, either situation is pretty likely.

Three Day Weekends, I Hardly Knew Thee

2008-01-04T13:42:00.001-06:00

In the beginning of 2007, my company went through some changes, and determined that they needed to reevaluate the vacation policy. Instead of being able to carryover five weeks from year to year, they would change it to one. This meant that if you did not want to lose your vacation, you should start looking at ways to use it. I rarely actually take vacation, so I had quite a bit saved up. I managed to use some throughout the year, but not quite enough. In September, I was faced with a whole lot of time left to take, and not many opportunities to take it. Unfortunately, while taking off a month would have been nice, there is no logistical way that would work. Instead, I decided that I would take off every Friday, and then a couple weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas. So for Oct-Dec I never worked more than four days a week. The four day workweek, however, was not what I found to be so beneficial. The extra day on the weekend was where I got my joy. Instead of having one day to get things done, and one day to be lazy, I had two days of productivity and one day of relaxing. I was able to get so much more accomplished, but still maintain a relaxing weekend. Sadly, those times have come to an end. I now have used my large backlog of vacation hours, and have to return to working on my Fridays. It's not even the work that bugs me, it's not being able to get more done over the weekend, while still getting the same amount of rest. I really need to work out some way of getting a three day weekend every week. I was just getting used to it.

Can You Hear Me Now?

2008-01-03T13:36:00.001-06:00

First off, let me get the happy new year out of the way. Happy new year! There we go. The holidays have been jam packed for me, and even though I've not been at work much, I've been pretty busy just running around, or with company over. For the few days that I had neither of those going on, I just sat around and rested. The break was not nearly long enough, but it was certainly a lot of fun. I hope that everyone else had a safe, and fun Christmas and New Year.

As for the topic of my post, I'm fairly certain that people are going deaf. Not only are they becoming hard of hearing, but it is their own doing that is causing it. A lot of people that I know have a hard time hearing things that are softer. They always seem to not hear the same things that I can. I don't think that I necessarily have better hearing that I should, but that they have worse. The primary cause of this, is often what they are having to turn up: music and television. They spend a lifetime of listening to loud music, and blaring TV sets, and as they get older they just turn them up even more, perpetuating it.

One of the biggest problems I have with bars is the noise. They are usually quite loud, and I have no desire to sit there and have my ears assaulted. If I'm out at a bar, I'm going to want to talk without having to shout. Most of the places I go have a fairly low level of noise, usually. There are people talking and rustling around, but they don't blast music, or turn the TVs up past a sane level. Last night, however, that was not the case. One of my usual places, a place I visit pretty much weekly, was overrun with crazy OU and WV fans. Instead of being able to watch my Mavericks and Stars in peace, I was subject to a barrage of cheering and a speaker system blasting the TV broadcast loud enough that I'm sure the apartments down the street could hear it clearly. Of course, I'm sure that the only reason they needed to achieve such a volume was to compensate for their loss of hearing. Had these fans grown up appreciating sound in moderation, there would be no need to turn the dumb thing up so loud.

I know what you are thinking at this point: "Jeremy, if you're just going to complain about this, why don't you just not go to the bars in the first place?" That's simple, I have a good time going out with friends. Also, I just like to complain. Really, though, do yourself and your hearing a favor. Turn the volume down a bit, and start enjoying your tunes and your shows at a more reasonable level.

This post was brought to you by the crotchety old-man Jeremy.

Deck the Halls

2007-12-11T20:26:00.001-06:00

Ok, so I didn't actually do any hall decking, but I did get my tree up and decorated. It's pretty sparse on the branches, but after I decorated it looks a lot better. I've actually had it for a number of years now, and it has served me well. So, check it out.

Oh, and I only have a cell phone cam.

Danger! Warning!

2007-12-09T23:03:00.000-06:00

There is a lady that I work with that has been sick for a while. She kept going to the doctor, and found out that she has CMV, which is similar to mono. Even though she wasn't contagious, I thought it'd funny to stick a biohazard sign on her cube. I didn't print one off that had any text, it was just the symbol. Well, on that same day, I was having a rather long, hard day, and thought it'd be amusing to stick a radioactive symbol on my window, signifying a potential nuclear blowup. What happened for the rest of the day was rather disturbing. There were at least five people that walked up and asked what her symbol meant, and then would turn around and ask what mine was. Five might be an understatement. It might have been more. Not a single person recognized both of them, and only one or two recognized one but not the other. This really concerned me. How do people not know, right off the bat, what these symbols mean? I would think that these should be some internationally recognizable, and well known symbols. I really think that there needs to be some sort of educational thing in place that would make sure everyone knew what these things were. Although, I guess that this is a bit like the saying, "I'm not saying we should kill people for being stupid, but let's just take the warning labels off everything and let it work itself out."

So, for the good of everyone, here you go.

Biohazard:

Radioactive:

Texas Winter

2007-12-08T17:03:00.001-06:00

My Google desktop gadget tells me that it's 75 degrees out right now. I'm wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. There is an ice cream truck down the street that all the kids are running out to. There are people out playing around the pond all in shorts. This is insane. To put things in perspective, though, the record low for today (Dec. 8) was 16, and set 2 years ago. Tomorrow it's going to be about 30 degrees lower than today. That just means that I'm likely to get sick again. I miss Oregon.

I Needed a Post for the Month

2007-11-30T18:30:00.001-06:00

Where the heck did November go? It was just here, now it is gone. I don't even understand what just happened. Last thing I knew, I was a hula dancer on Oct. 31, now I'm suddenly celebrating my friend's birthday on Nov. 30. I find that time is going by faster and faster as I get older. Each semester of college went faster than the one before it, and now each week has a bit of a speed up. I'm sure part of this was because of the 30 days in this month, I only worked 14.

I was originally planning on a decent post today, but I slept too late and never had a chance to write. Instead I'll just throw out a link to my Google Reader shared items and leave it with that. Hopefully December won't be so bad. I want to weigh in on Beacon.