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Pick Any Two

BlahBlog — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:09:32 +0000

Better, faster, cheaper. Pick any two
Integrity, validity, security. Pick any two
Strategy, execution, luck. Pick any two.
Profits, Passion, Purpose. Pick any two.

10 Ways to Make Your Boss Love You

BlahBlog — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:45:50 +0000

Here is a draft post that has been waiting to be published. The October 2009 issue of Smart Money had a short list of top 10 Ways to Make Your Boss Love You. I think these are still applicable now.

Put in the hours-when it counts.
Empathize
Defuse a bad situation
Be a conduit
Ask for help
Connect the boss’s way
Show initiative
Be positive
Make like mini-me
Get your face time

Infinite Shakespeare Theorem

BlahBlog — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:52:51 +0000

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. My question is, what would get if you have Shakespeare hitting a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time?

Top 10 Most Powerful Women

BlahBlog — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:47:33 +0000

The September issue of Forbes has a list of The World’s Most Powerful Women top 100 list. Here are the top 10 women, according to Forbes.

Angela Merkel
Sheila Bair
Indra Nooyi
Cynthia Carroll
Ho Ching
Irene Rosenfeld
Ellen Kullman
Angela Braly
Anne Lauvergeon
Lynn Elsehans

Top Fab Five Tumblr for September 2009

BlahBlog — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:04:53 +0000

Tumblr is a one of those micro-blogging social sites, not to unfamiliar to Twitter or the current incarnation of Facebook. What I find unique about Tumblr is the community of artist that gravitate around the site. Here are my top fab five tumblrs for the month of September, 2009!!!

Twitter Search is Not Search

BlahBlog — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:16:56 +0000

Twitter’s search is pretty much useless for research. Twitter’s search is not search at all, in the Google sense, but instead it is database query with hard coded limits. Unlink Google, which can render a search result page out of hundreds of millions for a given search query in under half a second, Twitter limits the number of pages you can view for a particular search term. Twitter’s search feature allows for 20 tweets per search page, times the 100 page limit, means you can only search for the 2,000 most recent tweets for any particular search criteria. For a trending topic, 2,000 tweets are posted for a topic in under 20 minutes. So you can not use Twitter’s search functionality to find original tweet of a trending topic. Since Twitter’s search is implemented as a database query and not with a rank algorithm, you can’t find the most retweet, or most pertinent, or most linked tweet!

Twitter Verified Account Fail

BlahBlog — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:36:04 +0000

How do you verify something that is fake? How do you verify an impostor? You can’t say, ‘yup, that is the real fake McCoy, the genuine impostor article, the real counterfeit deal.’ How can you verify that the fake Steve Jobs is really the Fake Steve Jobs? If there is one Fake Steve Jobs, can there be a Real Fake Steve Jobs?

Twitter recently launched Verified Account to verify the identity of Twitter users. So, if you ever wondered if Perez Hilton was related to Paris, Niki, and Kathy Hilton then you can rest assured because Twitter has done extensive background checks to verify his identity. I thought Perez Hilton was Mario Armando Lavandeira but that Twitter account has not been verified.

The question is, is fake online identity theft such a problem as real life identity theft? Twitter thinks so. If you are like me, you have had your online handle stolen from you. You think you are the only IHeartPonies76 on social networking sites but find yourself disappointed when you join a new site and find that that user name is already taken, so you settle ILikePuppiesToo2009. Well, this is is the problem that Tony LaRussa had when he was ‘impersonated’ on Twitter. LaRussa sued and Twitter responded by suspending the account, all because people thought the real Tony LaRussa? Did people really think that the real LaRussa would post tweets like the following…

Lost 2 out of 3, but we made it out of Chicago without one drunk driving incident or dead pitcher.

Instead of verifying accounts, Twitter should verify satire! I mean, which of my 10 online identities will Twitter verify first?

The 4-Hour Workweek and The Mexican Fisherman

BlahBlog — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:19:48 +0000

During the first half of The 4-Hour Workweek Tim Ferriss spends a lot of time making the case that he is a self help douche bag, in the classic sense of the word. The first half of his book, he talks about how he bended the rules on a martial arts competition to win a championship, how he travels the world wining Tango competitions and learning foreign languages, all along while virtual minions ran his business. There has been a lot of debate and dispute about the claims he makes in The 4-Hour Workweek. Bu the truth is that his claims to credibility are not the issue. There are many other problems with the premise of this book. Tim claims that we can earn substantially more money by working 4 hours a week than if we worked 12 hours a day. To this, some would reply, why not just work 8 hours a day and make ten times what you would make working 4 hours a week! So the credibility of the author and premise of the book is are immediately thrown out the window.

Thomas Friedman said that The World is Flat. Tim Ferriss is trying to make the case that we can use the flatness to our advantage. One of his arguments if that we can earn dollars, pay rupees, and spend pesos. He talks about being able to rent the equivalent of a Park Avenue apartment in Buenos Aires for less than the price of a studio in Queens, and how you can hire a Virtual Assiantant in India for less than a value meal at McDonald’s an hour. Many hard working blue collar individuals will romanticize with this idea, and this can work well for many individuals that have a free of responsibilities, but it does not work so easy for many people with families. It may be possible but it is not practical in many of the situations that I know.

In the end, his biggest argument for this ‘new found lifestyle’ is the old story, The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman. The author of this story is lost, but story has been retold many times over as such…

The American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.

Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.”

The American then asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?”

The Mexican said, “With this I have more than enough to support my family’s needs.”

The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat: With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you will run your ever-expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15 to 20 years.”

“But what then?” asked the Mexican.

The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions?…Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

Twitter Haiku

BlahBlog — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:09:53 +0000

One of my favorite hashtags on Twitter is #haiku. Every once in a while, when I a bored or need some inspiration, I search twitter for recent haiku tweets. Here are some of my favorite that I have collected over the time.

@Baron_waffles: trying to figure / out the mystery which is / the female species.
@marcmaron: Lazy Tweet Haiku: Tweety tweety tweet / Tweety tweety tweety tweet / Tweety tweety tweet.
@AshiAkira: Winners are heroes / Losers are rebels always / Universal law.
@AndreaBlythe: I miss / the taste of salt air / the feel of sand.
@amiablephd: Critical sister; I feel fat, lazy, stupid; Sadness in my bones.
@jasonm68: The ocean breeze chills / Pelicans dive into waves / I’m still not awake.
@simonscotland: I’m on a diet / strict vegetarian brains / for my consumption. #zombiehaiku
@magnusholmgren: the butterfly’s wings / quickly pushed the air away / everything else stopped.
@simonscotland: The distance between / us can be measured in miles / yet we are still close.
@Christwitery: Fragrant aroma / lures me into my backyard / neighbor’s BBQ.
@KrisLindbeck: Southward down the beach / clouds erase the line / between sky and sea
@coachcreative: How inadequate / just seventeen syllables / to spill out my heart
@Tiny_Fiction: midnight car alarm / there are no car thieves at large / just a lonely car
@UncompletedWork: The Macbook Charges / The Kitten purrs in my lap / I hate writer’s block!
@dracolytch: Planning a bike trip / A ride through my history / Need more camping gear

Some Expensive On The Job Training

BlahBlog — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 02:09:24 +0000

I came across the following business quote from Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM.

Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him.
- Thomas J. Watson/IBM founder

A similar mistake happened at a previous high tech company I was with, a series of mistakes cost the company nearly $70,000. No one was fired, no heads were rolled, but it was one of the most expensive learning experiences one can ever learn.

In some ways, I would say ‘hell ya, fire that sucker.’ But the changes of you bringing on someone new and having that new person make the mistake is probably higher than from existing team members that have learned the costly lesson.