brainmower

San Diego Critical Mass – June 2008

Critical Mass is a worldwide event that takes place in most major cities on the last Friday of every month. People gather on their bikes in a public place and ride through the city. Due to the sheer number of riders (sometimes in the thousands) the peloton stops traffic. Impromptu volunteers take turns corking to ensure rider saftey. The route is never pre-determined and there is no official leader. The lack of leadership prevents authorities from shutting down Critical Mass. I've partic...

Remembering Productopia

There used to be a website called Productopia.com  Productopia would review products, like coffee makers for example, and rate their top three picks (according to budget). I loved the site and the convenience.  It was easy to navigate and user friendly. If I was in the market for a coffee maker (or whatever) I could go to this site and have three solid choices. A few years ago Productopia was bought by MySimon.  Presently www.productopia.com is a redirect to the hideous Consumer Search. I ...

Interrupt driven

As a technical consultant my work life is interrupt driven.  Long term projects are constantly put on pause to deal with urgent issues that require immediate attention. Today was different:  I forgot to take my cellphone to work.  Without my cellphone, I was not interrupted by text messages, twitter updates, brightkite posts, automated SMS alerts and phone calls.  A direct result of removing these interrupts, a highly productive morning.  This unintentional experiment has reinforced the value...

Gluttony

Tonights Sushi bill was $150 for two people.  Is that an example of Gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins? From wikipeida:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluttony  Derived from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow, gluttony is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink, or intoxicants to the point of waste. In some Christian denominations, it is considered one of the seven deadly sins—a misplaced desire of food or its withholding from the needy. "Pope Innocent...

Insanity of the small business

Last week we lost a large chunk of revenue when a client switched to a new services provider.  Today, it appears that client may be coming back into the fold with a big project in tow.  Also, we received a PO from a new client and a surprise opportunity just came our way. In the span of 24 hours these new opportunities grew to be approximately 1/4 of the revenue we did in all of 2007. We could not have predicted any of this and none of it is certain.  The swings in potential revenue wreck ...

HOA meetings

We just had our annual HOA meeting for my community.  At last year's meeting we had resident accusations of attempted arson, yelling, tears and an abrupt departure of a board member.  It was one midget-transvestite short of being a full episode of Jerry Springer. This year we discussed garage doors.  We're spending $245,000 to replace garage doors. I enjoyed last year's meeting more.

Domain names and privacy

The first challenge of starting a blog is picking a domain name.  This is much more difficult than it sounds.  Almost every conceivable word combination is registered.  Mind you, most domain names are not being used, but the fact someone registered the name means it's not available.  So...brainmower.com it is! On Privacy:  with the proliferation of Web2.0 social applications there are dozens of ways to keep in touch with people.  Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Brightkite and mor...