I've been put on notice

It feels like its been a while since I last posted, maybe because a lot has happened in the last few weeks. I finished up my internship at Intel in Arizona the week before Christmas then drove back to NY. The trip was pretty uneventful. I took a southern route to avoid the colder temperatures, which took me through Dallas, Atlanta, and up the East Coast on my way back to New York. I kept my self entertained talking to friends and family on the cell phone and listening to sirius radio. My little two seater was packed to the gills, my laundry basket on the front seat and every concievable nook and cranny filled.


Once I got back to NY I repainted my room off-white with one blue "accent" wall. Since I haven't watched queer-eye recently I wasn't familiar with that term, but luckily my brother's metrosexuality helped me as he became my interior decorating consultant.


I got back to work on the website I've been working on since the first week in December. After a month of working nearly every night on the computer, 8rate.com finally launched yesterday. This is a site I created with Pieter, my friend and roommate in AZ. The idea is to compare how your friends in your MySpace Top 8 rank you versus how you rank them. The site takes a look at a MySpace user profile and looks for the order of your Top 8 friends, then goes to their pages and looks at the order of their Top 8's. It then puts this information into an algorithm to come up an 8 Rate Score. If you don't use MySpace, well, you probably will have no use for this site. But if you do, you should find it pretty entertaining comparing your score with your friends. Either way be sure to check it out and give me feedback on it since we just launched and we are still testing and improving it.

I am an Intelligent Designer

Today a decision was rendered in the Intelligent Design trial from Dover, PA. The Federal District Court Judge's ruling reads like a script from the daily show. It's really a shame the daily show is on vacation for the next 2 weeks because they would have a lot of fun with this. The Judge drops this gem in his decision,

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

Proponents of Intelligent Design claim ID is not a religious theory, yet, Pat Robertson says that by voting out ID people in Dover, PA "voted god out their city". Hmm.

For good articles on the subject search Google News. I found this editorial on the subject, and I think it's pretty funny. If you are really bored read the entire 139 page decision. Or just skip to page 136 for the conclusion.

Today's Reading

An essay by Penn Jillette, the taller, louder half of the magic and comedy act Penn and Teller.

Don't Get Too Comfortable

A quote from David Rakoff's new book that I am reading:

"Surely when we've reached the point where we're fetishizing sodium chloride and water, and subjecting both to the kind of scrutiny we used to reserve for choosing an oncologist, it's time to admit that the relentless questing for that next undetectable graduation of perfection has stopped being about the thing itself and crossed over into a realm of narcissism so overwhelming as to make the act of masturbation look selfless."

Money as an Amplifier

There is a story today about a couple who won the lottery a few years ago who have since died of drug and alcohol use.

"Any problems people have, money magnifies it so much, it's
unbelievable"

This statement intrigued me. It suggests the more money one has, the more amplified their underlying behavior becomes. Simply put, one will be the same after they have money as they were before, just amplified. A person who spends all of their extra money on gadgets and clothes on $25,000 a year will most likely continue to do the same on $250,000 a year. Albeit on bigger, better, and more expensive items. On the other hand, a person who is responsible and frugal on a $25,000 paycheck will likely continue to be responsible with their spending given a large salary increase.

In our heads we are the same person we were in elementary school, high school, and college, even though we have outwardly changed. On every birthday we hear a new number, 15, 18, 21, 24, yet in our minds we still feel like the same person. In the same way, when one has $5k, $50k, or $5M in the bank, we still have the same material desires inside. The increase in money allows us to now realize these desires to a greater extent, hence amplification.

New Content

I wanted to post something new before I go home for Thanksgiving break tomorrow. Today is the official launch of the new Xbox 360 Video Game console. The retail price for the "Premium" system which comes with most accessories you need but without any games is $400. The stupefying thing is due to the incredible got-to-have-it-before-anyone-else demand, systems are selling for $700-1100 on eBay. Kind of makes me wish I camped out last night to pick one up. I would have made an easy 100% gain or more overnight by just selling it on eBay the next day.

More Propaganda

Well not exactly, but I did read a good article about the oil company executives meeting with congress this week. I like the author's point about taking responsibility for our actions and his prediction of seeing the real-estate industry in congress in a few years when people can't afford their mortgages.

Despite the lessons of the '70s and '80s, when gas got cheap in the '90s, we spent money on giant cars. When bank money got cheap in the noughts, we demanded the 1,000-square-foot "executive estate" 50 miles from work.

Now I realize that this is a generalization but I think he's on point for the average American's attitude.

Don't call me cheap

Ok, call me what you will, but I thought this part from a book I'm reading was interesting:

"Many of us are looking back longingly to an era when gifts were not obligations but expressions of our generosity, when couples didn't use bridal registries as shopping lists, and when kids didn't hand out must-have Christmas lists. The commercialization of gift giving, with all its social pressures, seems to have taken some of the meaning out of the exchange. And the irony is that is has also taken away some of the value."

So shove your pipe up your ass and smoke it.

Back from a long journey

So its been a damn long time since I've written a post. In fact, it's coming up on three months. So I'm back now and hopefully I will begin posting at regular intervals again.

I was reading an article in Wired magazine yesterday which made reference to a new social group identified by The Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) as "Yeppies":

Yeppies are ambitious but confused and won't commit to anything unless they know it will bring them enduring happiness. The Social Issues Research Centre said "Today's graduates are adopting a 'Browsing' attitude to jobs, homes and relationships. They postpone life altering decisions until they feel they have exhausted all their options."

My initial reaction was, "wow that sounds familiar, and seems to hit home with me and many people I know." This concerned me a bit until I read a rebuttal of sorts from the British culture blog, thefridayproject. I agreed with their assessment that yes, life is different today than it was 30-something years ago, and this phenomenon is affecting people of all ages not just some small segment of society. The classification seems to be three-fold:

1. Careers (Jobs)
2. Shopping (Homes)
3. Relationships

So it made me think...

This "Browsing attitude toward shopping" is the natural side effect of having (more) information easily accessible (the internet stupid). For comparison shopping there really is no better tool than the information available on the internet. We get to do the things that people in the past dreamed about. If only there was a way of finding the person selling the item you want half way across the country. The information that until recently had no way of being known.

If there is a product one is considering buying, in no more than five or ten minutes the fair-market price can be determined with tools like froogle, ebay, amazon, and forums for nearly everything imaginable. Never before in the history of the world has information been more freely and easily available so quickly. Twenty years ago one went to Sears to buy a new appliance, or maybe they comparison shopped in a few mail-order catalogs. They had to make their choice out of two or three sources, and had to figure in the time taken to order the catalogs and have them delivered. Now you simply pop open your web-browser and you are alerted to sales going on half way across the country. The consumer benefits from the immense nationwide competition put in place by the internet. So this browsing attitude is what happens when people of all ages have large amounts of information at their finger-tips.

Likewise, the internet has made it easy to tell if you are getting paid or offered a competitive salary for your work. Various forums exist for many professions as well as sites like: Monster, Craigslist, and Careerbuilder, which allow the user to comparison shop for jobs. The vast information available on the internet has killed the idea of working for one company for the rest of your life when you can constantly be aware of your worth at competing jobs. A possibly more significant factor is companies desire to limit pay and benefits by firing or "downsizing" employees every few years. Either way the internet has allowed job seekers to ensure they are getting fair pay and look for new employment if they are not. So I don't see this as a 'Browsing' attitude to jobs, I see it as a realization of what the post-internet, new corporate age is doing to people of all ages.

The final classification point is relationships. It asserts more people are taking a browsing attitude towards relationships. Well why not? "Now society says you don't have to get married to have sex anymore. Nor is there the pressure to get married that there used to be". I think this is a fine point. As the average student tends to continue on to college instead of finishing at the high school level, major life milestones get pushed back by 4-5 years. To continue my line of reasoning, this can be considered a side effect of more information being available. The information being the societal acceptance of less strict adherence to the "traditional" rules such as, meet someone, get married, have kids. It's acceptable to be unmarried longer than it was in previous generations.

Considering this has made me think about the influence of more information on the attitudes and behavior of society, and I believe it has been a good thing.

Sorry to go deep on you there, but I hope you found my ranting somewhat interesting.

Cool Shit That Might Actually Be Useful

Google is available from your cell phone at www.google.com/xhtml if you are lucky enough to have one of the new cool ones. If you still have one of the old crappy ones you'll have to stick with www.google.com/wml. The xhtml version has image search enabled and automatically shrinks the results to fit your screen. Cool shit. Local search works well, with the same results you'd get if you used a computer. Maps come up, but they are kinda hard to read, hopefully they will improve upon that. What is also pretty cool is the ability to use Gmail from your cell. Right now you can but it's not official, and it's not made by google. If you are interested try it at your own risk: www.gmailwireless.com. I'm pretty sure it's legit, but I couldn't get it to work right now. And don't worry, I changed my password just in case.