Letter Never Sent

Software / Internet — Comments Off
30
May 05

Without one particular theme

Found some great stuff while surfing around this weekend.

Inspirational, courtesy of the wonderfully thematic Growabrain blog. How to Make a Million Dollars by Marshall Brain of HowStuffWorks: “There are two mentalities: Be an employee, or Hire employees” A must read.
Five Habits of Millionaires by Barbara Reinhold. “Michael LeBoeuf, author of The Millionaire in You, points out that to increase wealth, it’s essential to emulate millionaires who view money as something to save and invest, rather than income to spend. Many wealthy people live quite simply, he points out, choosing less pretentious homes than they could theoretically afford and opting for financial independence over material showmanship.” Warren Buffett still lives in the same small home in Omaha he bought long before he was a multi-billionaire.
Encrypt your “mailto” links with this handy form. It will prevent most spam spiders from pulling your email addresses from mailto links.
Godaddy’s Bob Parsons on his 16 rules for life: “1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we’re in our comfort zone. I hear people say, “But I’m concerned about security.” My response to that is simple: “Security is for cadavers.”
RandText. Awesome free Perl script to include random bits in your webpages. I’m using it for the testimonials at my Duet Design page. Refresh to see it in action.

Software / Internet — Comments Off
30
May 05

Thought experiment

How long will it take this very cool large-scale marionette event in France (via Waxy.org posted this morning) to appear on Boing Boing?

Personal — Comments Off
30
May 05

Up too early for no reason

Dorky admission: I’m a member of Toastmasters International. It’s basically a club to improve your public speaking skills.

We meet every Monday at 6:45am at IHOP for about an hour and a half where everyone has to speak in front of the group in some fashion during each meeting, either as a prepared speaker, an evaluator, or extemporaneously. Since I was out of town I didn’t make it in for the last week’s meeting. That’s what caused this whole thing.

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Personal — 3 comments
29
May 05

Thunder only happens when it’s raining…

This evening the Texas skies treated us to an early summer thunderstorm that shook the windows and shut off the electricity. It’s an amazing thing to behold. Big clouds and masses of steamy air butting up against each other to produce jagged bolts of lightning that shoot down to the ground. I love that split second when you see the blinding lightning bolt and know the thunderclap is close behind and then “Boooom!” Nothing compares to the feeling of thunder shaking the world around you. When you are in the middle of a thunderstorm you understand the awe and terror of early people who worshipped the sky.

Personal — Comments Off
28
May 05

Get together

After an otherwise uneventful day, it was nice to see some of my now ex-coworkers up at Dave and Buster’s last night. In the week I’ve been gone a lot of things have already changed with people being promoted and moved around to different teams and departments. It’s weird how fast everything around you changes.

Liberties — 1 comment
26
May 05

Why is Homeland Security involved in shutting down bittorrent sites?

Can someone explain why the Department for Homeland Security is getting involved in busting “piracy” sites like the bittorrent site “elite torrents”? I can understand why the Justice Department is the enforcement body for copyright, but isn’t Homeland Security supposed to fight terrorism? I don’t understand why this hasn’t been a bigger issue. What does bittorrent have to do with terrorism? Did they need some positive news coverage of a big bust? Is it that difficult for Homeland Security to find terrorists in this country? Pirates need a lobby. That’s all there is to it. Let’s put all the money we saved from buying CD’s and create a Pro-Piracy Lobby. How much would it take? 25 million dollars? Bill Gates needs to get behind this. These types of busts represent one more ridiculous layer of bureaucratic police-state ballyhoo. I’m very appreciative of the libertarian point of view of small government since if you found some way to drain all the money away from government they’d be less likely to engage in unpopular and short-sighted enforcement regimes.

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General — Comments Off
26
May 05

Nice “Big Lebowski” reference

Gizmodo is rather “eh”, but today they actually made a nice “Big Lebowski” reference in one of their many posts. Check it.

General — 3 comments
26
May 05

Yeah, that’s me

Today was pretty busy and I’m starting to put together a little routine. It goes like this:

Wake up around eight in the A.M.
Fold up bed
Check email
Take a shower and shave
Make iced tea
Work (stare at Outlook and try to remember everything that needs to be done)
Run by the post office

Later in the day, I met with a couple clients including Joyce’s church where I’m doing some pro bono work. I got three solid leads too, so it turned out to be a good day for business. When I got back home I ran by the apartment office to drop off some paperwork and noticed they were having a little bbq thing for the residents, so I got to scam some free food. I’m very curious to see how my dining out expenses will compare for this month versus last month. I’ve been trying very hard to eat all my meals at home even if it means doing a lot of cooking and washing dishes.

Personal — 2 comments
25
May 05

Cat with hands video

For those who are easily freaked the eff out I present, the cat with hands video.

the old stuff