Unfortunately, the mandolin didn’t meet the reserve on eBay, and didn’t sell. Much to my surprise, there were no bids in the last 12 hours of the auction. Maybe I’ve got a disordered view of the way eBay works. Despite this setback, I’ve got two more auctions going on right now to see if eBay …
Category Archives: Rants
Clear Like Tar
Contrary to my normal behavior, I’ve been a stranger lately. Not just because I haven’t been communicating much. When I have communicated, it hasn’t been deep. So I’m going to treat everyone to a few posts that are deep. Family Life – what’s new with the family? Career – it’s funny how I don’t complain …
Transparency of The Web
After this post, I got an email from a friend asking my opinion on how much information is “safe to reveal” on the Internet. In the above referenced post, I write about how a website is becoming a must-have. But how far is too far? You’ll find that I’m a pretty transparent web-body. Maybe that’s …
“My Webwhat?”
Since I spend about 90 minutes a week with a large group of high-school students, I get to spend time picking their brains about the ins and outs of culture and the vast teenage wasteland. Even with myspace being “so wicked awesome” and pervasive, I’d guess that 50% of the high-schoolers I know don’t even …
Who does Yahoo! think they are? (or How To Turn Away Your Biggest Fans)
Flickr: Really cool. Yahoo!: Really big. I decided to use a Flickr account for the youth group that I work with at church. In order to do so, I needed to create a Yahoo! account (yes, I got in after the acquisition). I created one, uploaded some pictures and then went a few weeks without …
Continue reading “Who does Yahoo! think they are? (or How To Turn Away Your Biggest Fans)”
What Happened?
Last Friday I celebrated my last day of work in a job I wasn’t suited for. On Monday evening, I flew to New Jersey to teach a 3-day class on a technical certification. Right before I boarded my plane home, my worst short-term fear was realized. The project: cancelled. I return home from my first …
Use Your Experts Wisely
Congratulations on your new company. I hope you’ve found some experts that you expect to make your job as CEO easier. Hire a graphic artist to do your graphics, give him direction, but don’t hold his hand. That’s his thing. Hire an accountant to take care of payroll and taxes. Don’t ask him to cook …
Meetings: Good Idea, Bad Idea
It seems that the one carryover from brick-and-mortar, manual, old school business to the new knowledge-based economy is that upper management likes to have meetings. Meetings are necessary. Meetings suck. Here’s my meeting school: Meetings are good: Task assignments are best identified by the team, rather than just direct orders by a superior. Resource allocations …
Motivation
Happy New Year! I think. Hopefully your endeavors for the year are off to a good start. If you’re a leader working to motivate people, I have some ideas for you. Compensation alone can only motivate temporarily. Substantially higher pay for mundane work may get Samuel motivated to work on a project for a very …
iBook Returns With No Change
I received a call from Visual Graphics and went to pick up my iBook with a replacement drive the day before my warranty expires. Of course, like the car that won’t clunk for the mechanic, she wouldn’t give in to their poking and prodding and they determined that the drive was fine. The night before …