Letter Never Sent

General / Society — Comments Off
01
May 07

A new way of living

Matt Haughey of Metafilter fame has started an interesting new blog called Fortuitous where he will be sharing tips on how to run your business online. He will be writing a new essay every Monday. It will no doubt be worth following.

The Internet is changing the way we live. Over the past couple of years web applications have matured and the Internet has expanded into every corner of our lives through smartphones and laptops, providing a new way to life for millions of people. A life where you can use technology to make yourself more efficient, more connected, and more mobile.

The great thing about technology is that is has benefited so many. In recent years, the number of one person businesses has exploded. With the use of the Internet, automation, and virtual assistants, one person can run a successful business anywhere in the world. As Timothy Ferriss says in his book, The 4-Hour Work Week: “Fun things happen when you earn dollars, live on pesos, and compensate in rupees, but thatâ€™s just the beginning.”

If you really want to be free of the grind, you can do it. You have everything you need. You just need to go for it.

Tumblelogs with tumblr

Tumblelogs are a good way to annotate and clip items from the Internet. Now, with a service called tumblr you can make a scrapbook like blog of interesting videos, photos, quotes, and links from your journeys around the web. Tumblr automatically pulls down your del.icio.us items and posts those, too, if you’d like to keep everything centralized. Check out the letterneversent tumblelog for an example.

Cool Tools / General / Technology — Comments Off
25
Apr 07

Cool stuff you can do with Google Spreadsheets

I’ve been using Google Docs for a while now. I love the concept of easy online document management and collaboration. I’ve tried to set up wiki-based solutions, content management systems, etc. for collaboration in the past, but Google Docs does exactly what I need it to do. It just works.

The only problem I’ve add is getting anyone else to use it. For some reason, no matter what I do, the people I work with find it too difficult to use. I’ll share a document with a coworker and they’ll never use it or open it. So, I’ve stuck to using it for tasks of my own or for people who work for me.

I use the word processing app, formerly known as Writely, from time to time, but I use Google Spreadsheets the most. I’m always finding new things I can do with it and since it’s online I can access it from any computer.

Here are some of the things I use it for:

Timesheets: I have a few freelancers I work with on a regular basis. It used to be that they would write down their hours over a few weeks and then submit an invoice at the end of the billing period. Now I just have them add their hours directly into a spreadsheet. It autoformats the various columns, calculates total hours and pay, and allows me to stay on top of our progress on various projects.
Asset logging: At work we often have to purchase equipment for our centers. I use Google Spreadsheets to keep track of all the various information related to company equipment: serial numbers, assignments, etc.
Invoice tracking: If you have invoices that need to be paid or invoices that you need to submit to your clients, an online spreadsheet is a good way to keep track of them. Just list the invoices with invoice numbers, amounts, and the date submitted and you’ll have an easier time following up on them.
Task / change requests: When you work on a project with other people you’ll often need to keep track of change requests or suggested revisions.

What kind of things do you do in spreadsheets?

General — 1 comment
24
Apr 07

Prehistoric giants

Can someone provide a satisfactory answer as to why the earth’s fossil record includes evidence of so many enormous creatures? Is it higher oxygen levels? Larger landmasses?

General / Psychology / Society — Comments Off
23
Apr 07

Thoughts on Virginia Tech and tragedy in general

The Virginia Tech massacre is upsetting on many levels.

One, it is troubling to think that there are people so deranged and miserable that their preferred solution to life’s suffering is to perpetuate mortal violence on others who have done them no actual harm. Insanity can be the only rationale behind such stupidity. Insanity is stupidity, in a sense, ie. being out of touch with Reality / Truth.

Two, we have no adequate solutions for the insane / dangerously stupid. We only do something about it after something bad happens. Virginia Tech should be a wake up call that we need to get more involved in detecting these people before they kill. On the other hand, there is no real way to prevent this sort of thing. The mass murderers of the world act by violating the most basic principles of Society. There is no way to legislate against someone who is willing to violate the very concept of morality, you can only make it more difficult to do so.

Three, I am glad to see the flags at half-mast for the victims of Virginia Tech. It is a heartening symbol of respect. However, it must be difficult for the families of the victims, not only for their terrible loss, but also because the world eventually moves on and forgets, leaving them to their grief, which can never be forgotten.

General — 1 comment
18
Apr 07

Pizza Wars: Pizza Patron and Pizza Hut

There’s a pizza war brewing between two Dallas-based chains, Pizza Hut, and a much smaller and newer entrant, Pizza Patron. It is not a battle of equals, but it is interesting to see how competition plays out.

Pizza Patron markets directly to low-income Latinos with an eye toward low-end take-out pizza market, similar to Little Caesar’s Pizza, which is big in other parts of the country. Pizza Patron locates its franchises in largely Hispanic areas, serving a population that is growing more quickly (good growth prospects) than any other due to illegal immigration and higher birth rates. Marketing exclusively to Latinos is a bold move even in this age of rapid demographic change.

Pizza Patron was in the news recently with a ~~program~~ publicity stunt aimed squarely at Latinos called “Pizza por Pesos.” As expected, this generated outrage among some Americans and probably some mirth among the ascendant Mexican population here in Texas.

Interestingly, Pizza Patron seems to draw much of its identity from Pizza Hut. In the image above, notice how both the Pizza Hut roof / hat and the Pizza Patron chulo hat seem to share a similar shape. Also, notice the similar fonts and the similarities between the dotted “i” and the accented “o”.

The pizza business is very competitive because it’s such a simple model: cheap ingredients, simple kitchen prep, minimal retail space, and low labor costs. All this equals healthy margins if you make a good product and can market it.

Anyway, Pizza Patron advertises a $4.99 pizza. This is their hallmark. They call it “Pizza Lista”, ready pizza. This means low-income families can enjoy a quick, cheap dinner. Pizza is the ideal family food; you just call it in and pick it up. I’m guessing Pizza Hut is eager to make it difficult for competitors like Pizza Patron because these cheap prepared pizzas compete directly with them and their efforts to expand their franchises, which do really well in poor areas despite the premium price (Pizza Hut is not cheap). The other day I noticed that Pizza Hut launched a program called “Pizza Mia” here in Dallas. The approach is very similar to Pizza Lista: 3 one topping pizzas for $5.00 each. The part that I found really clever was the name: Pizza Mia. In Spanish, of course, this means My Pizza, but the best part is that Pizza Mia also sounds Italian. It’s a two for one phrase, although in researching, I noticed that several other restaurants already go by Pizza Mia, so maybe they saw the same angle and stole the idea for themselves.

It’ll be interesting to see if Pizza Patron keeps growing and how Pizza Hut addresses competition on their flank.

Franchise cost comparison:

Pizza Patron – Franchise fee: $20,000 Basic royalty: 5% gross sales #. Total start up cost: $122,800 to $176,050.
Pizza Hut – Franchise fee: $25,000 Start-up cost: $218,500 to $1.3 million Basic royalty: 6.5% #

General — Comments Off
18
Apr 07

Sometimes I forget myself

The last few years have been a blur. Every once in a while I’ll get a reminder that I need to stop, slow down, and pay attention. There is a world out there – full of possibility – outside the limits of any need to understand it. Life is not an unpleasant chore you need to rush through to finish.

General / Personal — Comments Off
18
Apr 07

Some jobs get in your head

Even though it’s been six years since I worked there I still dream about being a courier at Fedex. Some jobs get in your head. I don’t know if I still dream because I worked there for five years or because of the repetitive, routinized, physical nature of the work. The dreams are absurd. The most common theme is that even though I haven’t been around, my route has been waiting for me and no one really noticed that I wasn’t doing it. I’ll walk into the warehouse and there’s a truck waiting with my clipboard and crates, ready to hit the road. Everyone else is bustling around the warehouse as usual. Last night, there was a new wrinkle, my file in the check-in room was full of uncashed checks.

Even when I worked there I dreamt about it. My most common dreams involved entering an intersection and seeing Fedex packages all over the road as if spilled out of the back. Other times, I would move in my sleep as if I were picking up boxes.

Maybe our brains are designed to adapt to such situations, slowly shaping our minds to meet the physical, mental demands of our day to day activities until we become optimized for our work, in my case, as a courier. When you do physical labor and grow familiar with it, you can achieve a zen-like state of mindlessness where your subconscious mind operates your body. Maybe dreams are just the residue of these orphaned mental routines.

General / Software / Internet — Comments Off
17
Apr 07

The network is the computer

Jeremy Allison puts it well:

There are now no interesting non-networked applications. Standalone computers are devices for watching stored video or listening to music, usually on airplanes. People doing offline email are simply working in an extreme case of a network disconnect, a rather large network latency if you will. The Internet has become the real computing environment of the next century and all programming will become network programming. This is a more challenging environment than programmers have been used to, with connection, latency and concurrency problems making our work much more interesting than it used to be on the standalone DOS box. All entertainment and communications such as television, radio and the telephone network will move onto the Internet. Poor Sun Microsystems were twenty years too early with their “the network is the computer” slogan, but they will eventually be proven right.

General — Comments Off
11
Apr 07

Grindhouse and I’m a curmudgeon

I read in a few places that Grindhouse was having problems with people not realizing that there were two movies. I did notice this when I saw it in Austin this past Easter weekend. Some people even left before the second movie started. I think the problem is that since there was little advertising for the movie nobody knew the deal and that when the credits actually started rolling for the first film, it confused people.The movies (both of them) were a lot of fun. It’s refreshing to see someone have fun with film, which Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez clearly did.

Since Austin loomed large in Grindhouse, it made me miss being there, the city where I spent so much time and created so many fundamental memories. But, I was also simultaneously annoyed. It’s like if you were a regular at a small bar or diner, paying your dues over a decade, then a bunch of happening people come in and quickly claim it as theirs and start dancing around like they own the place. This must be how the Indians felt when the white man showed up: “Hey, America is rocking! It’s fierce! Way better and less crowded than Europe. Isn’t it awesome that we discovered this place before anyone else? We are the coolest!”

Letter Never Sent Tell me when to go.