Second father's day has come and gone. I guess its appropriate that at the second one I now have a second kid. I should probably stop that ratio before things get out of hand. My 10th father's day might get a little overwhelming.
Natalie Love ~ 11 Weeks
Jackson Mayer ~ 16 Months
Jack is no calling me dada, and although I'm fairly sure neither him nor I understand the full meaning of that yet, its thought provoking to hear. I read something today that pretty much sums up my feelings in a far more elegant manner than I could express myself:
Of all the names we have for God, the one we use most frequently is "Father". I imagine that says something about how our species sees God--as a bringer of life, protector, provider and friend. But I worry it might also say something about how we see fathers. And I am not certain I am in favor of setting the bar that high.
- Matthew D. LaPlante
Regardless of how high the bar is, I'm pretty excited just to have the opportunity and I wouldn't have it any other way. I love my kids. Happy father's day? Yes. Happy is a good word.
You'll most likely want to skip this blog entry. It hold no value. Really. None. Its simply a rant to make myself feel better. It will be full of typos. It my blog after all, I get to do those things.
I've had a really exciting business venture in the works for quite a few months now. I've been able to secure a development team, the planning phase is pretty much complete and we've been all but ready to break ground on the initial code within the next 2 weeks.
As with any project on the web, one of they key aspects is the domain. This project in particular requires something extremely short & simple ... which of course is a major challenge. After countless brainstorming sessions I finally enlisted the help of my wife and way too many online word generator tools and she ended up discovering something that was nothing short of perfect. I thought it over for a few days and every time it passed my mind I became more and more attached to it. I was convinced I had struck gold and couldn't wait to secure it. Much more than a domain, it was genius branding for the entire project. It captured everything that it needed to. It really couldn't have been more perfect.
The only problem, which I thought would be minor in the beginning, was that it happened to be an international domain. I studied the rules and did as much research as I could just to make sure I was okay to purchase it. I even enlisted the help of a friend in Europe to add as a contact on the domain just in case. Everything was in place and set up .. there should have been no issue.
The registration process turned out to be ridiculous. I tried 12 registrars and the first eleven all failed for various reasons. The mass majority of them all had broken websites. This amazed me. Another part of them all had invalid security certificates ... a definite no-go from me. And then a random few had payment processing problems, most likely getting denied by my bank because of the international nature of the transaction. With these final few, I did everything I could, including using different banks, different accounts and calling my bank to pre-authorize the transaction. Still nothing.
Finally, in the middle of May I had some luck and found a registrar that appeared to work. My credit card went through, and although they were nearly 5x what other's were charging, I didn't care at this point. I just needed to secure it and worry about the details later. I expected the process to be similar to purchasing a domain here in the US, that is, 5 minutes after you purchase it the domain is available to you. But apparently that's not the way it works over seas. After 3 days of a "pending" status I finally gave them a call and was informed that the process sometimes takes awhile.
I then proceeded to call them twice a week checking on the order of my status. Every time I was fed a line about how the country's official registrar had received the application and sent the approval notice but they still needed to submit some final notes blah blah blah blah. I stayed patient, continued my phone calls and prayed. More than a month later, when checking around to dig deeper into what was going on, I noticed one registrar was showing the domain as unavailable. I figured this was great news as it meant the country's official registrar had finally informed its resellers that the domain was purchased and unavailable. I then checked the whois information on the domain and imagine my surprise when it wasn't me! And even more surprised was that the registration had been created only 3 days prior. The domain is now squatted by a generic ad site.
I called the registrar I dealt with in London as soon as they opened and all that I was given was "sorry" and "we'll promptly refund your money".
Really?
Needless to say, over the last month I've spent countless hours on the marketing & graphics material for it. The branding took me forever to finalize and once I had it nailed, it was perfect. I couldn't wait to get it out there into the wild ... and now ... all for nothing.
Of course my initial reaction was extreme anger. It took everything in me not to scream at the registrar customer salesman ... and I suppose the only reason I didn't was the knowledge that it wouldn't do any good yelling at someone thousands of miles away on another continent who really doesn't give a shit about my situation or experience. All I could do was finish the conversation, hang up, and sit there bewildered about the situation. Its a bit comical I suppose how frustrating it can get when things don't go as planned, and how that frustration is multiplied when so much planning has gone in to it.
The anger calms, exhaustion sets in, life goes on ... and ...
I've got this issue, and now it's time to get it out. You know those psychiatrists on made-for-tv movies that always say "letting it out" is better? Well, I'm heeding their advice and letting it out.
I do a lot of typing. A lot. And along the way, I've formed some pretty bad habits. Like not using my pinky. Yes, even Mrs. Beacon couldn't rid me of this horrible habit. (It is just a guess that "Mrs" is correct because she's so sexy. How could she not be married?) I did the same thing when I first learned how to play guitar, but a wise friend beat it out of me by telling me I'd suck the rest of my life if I didn't learn to use that damn little finger, and so I did. But typing? I guess I've just never cared enough. I can still type fast ... freakishly fast I think. But my poor pinkies go unused and my indexes do double the work they should have to. I'm sure one of these days I'll get sued for not using my resources efficiently, but until then ... whatever.
That's really not the issue that I'm having though. Its more in the composition of words and sentences. I have a few things that literally haunt me every time I sit down at a keyboard. Like, for instance, the word "definitely". I can't for the life of me remember how to spell that stupid thing and every time I spell it wrong. I've tried little mind memory tricks to no avail. Its too ingrained in my mind as "definitley" and I'll continue misspelling it that way making myself look like an idiot until I die I'm sure.
The more serious offender however, and the one I'm specifically wanting to address today, is the use of quotation marks. You know, those little things you used to represent by making flapping doggie ears with your boy scout fingers back in 1996? I abuse them more than they should be, but I've never been able to wrap my head around their proper use in conjunction with punctuation. I remember my english teacher telling me again and again and again that I'm supposed to put in punctuation before I close a quotation. To such a degree that when I see it differently I cringe. This of course makes sense if a whole sentence is a quote ... but in the majority of the sentences I type it doesn't make any sense, and it drives me insane!
Let's have us an example. Take this sentence I just wrote:
Like, for instance, the word "definitely."
Now, in my head, that's correct punctuation. I should admit that I had to retake English 2 times in University, so there's a high chance I'm wrong, but at least its what I've been taught. But it makes no sense to me. To me, it should look like this:
Like, for instance, the word "definitely".
Apparently, that's not correct. But it feels right in my head. The period is for the whole sentence, not just for the quote. And so, since I have much bigger fish to fry in life right now, I've decided to do it my way. I could be wrong. My high school English teacher could have been wrong. But I Just don't care anymore. Whoever came up with the rule I couldn't put a period outside a quotation ... I'm sure you don't read my blog. So never mind. To you three, you'll have to live with it.
I feel so free now.
Oh, and P.S., I noticed when looking up the link, for all you single guys out there, Mavis isn't wearing a ring. Don't let the business suit fool you ... you'll thank me later.
I'm sure anyone who's passionate about Apple and its products has heard of this guy. He has a habit of posting links to malinformed reports about Apple products and labeling them a "Jackass of the week." Most of the time, these people are probably simply misinformed, but it is a bit "jackassy" to write about something on a popular website without doing research first. Then of course there are the purposeful jackasses who know they're wrong but write silly things to drudge up traffic.
I was a bit surprised to see him embark on the same malinformed reporting today when he provided a link in his linked list to this review of using the M8 in Iraq. Now, there's some good points in this review, like the on/off switch that flips into self-timer way too easily ... but a lot of it is a bit of misinformation.
A lot of the issues, like the white balance and some of the noise issues have been corrected with firmware months ago. And this user obviously hasn't upgraded. It'd be like me complaining about a bug in OS X 10.5 that Apple fixed in 10.5.3 and writing a bad review of my MacBook Pro because of that bug. Make any sense? No.
John also goes out of his way to note the low-light performance that the reviewer mentioned. Well, yes, for f/4 its not that great. Go figure! But contrary to his review, there is good fast wide-angle glass available, including a 9.8mm f/1.8. The M8 has great low light performance and has some of the most fabulous low-light lenses available for use on it, including the famed Noctilux and most everything from the Summilux line.
I love my M8 as much as I love my Apple products. Yes, there are a few things that could be done much better, just as there are things Apple could improve on. But to base anything of the M8 off of this review is, well, silly. There's also some great reviews of the M8 from photojournalists overseas.
Anyway, to my knowledge this is the first piece on the M8 that Gruber has linked to from his blog, and for it to be such a misinformed negative review ... well it reminds me of those pro-bloggers who post negative a review about the iPhone despite never having used it and claim things like "it can't make phone calls."
Update: He posted one of the positive reviews I liked to today. Yeay for balanced journalism.
So enough of the serious talk, let's get back to the geeky stuff.
I'm a Flickr fan. I love it, use it and abuse it. One little niggle that's always perplexed me however is Flickr's use of the "thumbnail" size instead of the "medium" size in their RSS feeds. If you'd like mostly to look at photos in your RSS reader and not have to click on every single one to see them, viewing the thumbnail gets a little frustrating. So I set out to change this. Here's a quick 5 step process to get you larger images in Flickr RSS feeds.
I hired Yahoo! Pipes to do the job ... it seemed like a perfect fit. And it was!
Step 1
First you'll need to login to Yahoo! Pipes. And for that you'll need a Yahoo! account. Lucky for you that if you're trying this tutorial for a Flickr feed you'll already have a Yahoo! account. Once logged in, select "create new pipe."
Step 2
Grab the feed you'd like to modify. In my case I grabbed Flickr's feed for "All Your Contact's Photos." Use the "Fetch Feed" item under the "Sources" list first and enter the feed's address there:
Step 3
This is where we'll do the quick find and replace to get the image size we want. First add the "Loop" item under the "Operators" list. Then drag the "String Regex" item from the "Strings" list and drop it into the "Loop" item. After its in there, make sure both "For each" and "assign results to" are set to "item.description".
The first thing we're gonna do is tell it to look for any reference to "_m.jpg" and replace it with just simply ".jpg".
Now you'd think this is all it would take ... but you'd be wrong. The problem is that Flickr sends the image size in the html img tag, it doesn't rely on the size of the photo alone. So even though this will get you the correct image, it'll still display small.
Step 4
So in this step we're gonna do a couple more find&replace's and get rid of those silly dimension html elements. We'll just replace them with something silly for now so that they won't be parsed correctly.
Step 5
Now we just save our pipe & run it. After you do, Yahoo! will have an RSS link for you. Grab that and place it into your RSS reader and Voila!
I turned 25. It doesn't seem like it happened, but deep down in the bottom of my stomach I can feel that it did. I'm not sure if it works this way for everyone, but 25 seems to be self review. Not obsessive, but reflective and perhaps something comes out of it.
I feel old. Too old for 25. The logic says I've got plenty of time, the heart says please stay here for awhile. I think this comes from an overwhelming catch-up process that's been flowing through my mind since my teenage years and a desire that comes out of that to conquer the world. In the last few months, I've made more exciting plans for my life than I have in the rest of my entire life. I'm not ready to publicly divulge them yet, but let's leave that if I was mentally where I am now 6 years ago ... that'd be interesting. Exploration. The new. The seemingly impossible. Its going to be fun.
There's emptiness. Not empty ... but emptiness. (please no email from religious peoples about this, if you think you know, you're missing the point.) It comes from a longing to do so many things and a fear there might not be enough time to do them all. Of course, when I look back at the last 5 years I start to feel the silliness of it, if I could just stay at pace I'll be ahead ... but what if, eh? It consumes me, and I don't know of any other way out of it except to conquer it all. I have to do it, and it excites me.
The weight of responsibility & big dreams probably occupies my mind a bit too much these days and I believe I may have found the answer: "One step at a time." Of course, I need now to convince myself that they'll be enough time for those steps. I'm running faster than I ever have before, but maybe pacing myself is a life lesson I have yet to pick up on. Its just the "what if" right? "What if I don't get there?" One step at a time Josh.
A blinking cursor begs me to get creative with the impact my wife has had on my life. But however thankful I am for words, sometimes my brain just can't paint them in a deserving manner. She's everything about love. Life without her? Probably not life. Maybe that's extreme ... but then maybe I don't give a fuck what people think, because its how she makes me feel that blows my mind ... and now that I've had it, anything else is tasteless. Loving her is my greatest honor.
Kids at 25. 2 of them! Most find it crazy and give me astonished expressions. Maybe I am crazy, but it feels right. Everything becomes just a little more important. I'm not sure I fully trust myself as a father yet, but maybe that never comes. And maybe that's good.
So what now? Besides the one step at a time plan™, I need to kiss more, pray more, take more photographs, drink more, write more and interact more. I'm on it.
Most of all, thank you. besides the extremely short list of douche bags who I notice go out of their way to power up, you've all been wonderful. I love you and am grateful I get to be a part of this circle. If you're looking for comfortablitiy with me, you might have to wait some years, I'm not there yet. But if you're looking for adventure ... or at the very least if your okay with it ... buckle up. Now on to that quarter life crisis.
So summer is just about underway here in the Pacific Northwest. Here in Seattle, the season is known as "ooo, so this is why people live here" season.
I have but one goal this summer ... to successfully loose my sunglasses.
I'm not a superstitious individual, but sometimes the evidence outweighs even strongest of convictions and leaves only one conclusion.
I love sunglasses. Many brands, many styles, its one of the few decorations men get to enjoy. I don't remember ever not liking them ... and in the last couple of years during periods of incredibly bright sunshine my eyes seem to hurt without them, successfully shooting them into the "need" category.
Here's the issue. It seems that I cannot own a nice pair of sunglasses longer than a few weeks. The day I spend more than a mini-mart price for a pair of "shades" the curse begins, and it's only a matter of time ... a very short amount of it ... until they are either lost, stolen or damaged. I then in a panic to save my eyes will stop at some corner store and pick up the special $8.99 pair ... which will never be lost, stolen or damaged. No matter how hard I try, the cheap ones always stay around.
My latest episode, I dropped a favorite pair of rubber framed Spy's into a lake over 2 years ago. I bought a pair of cheap green disgusting things at a Chevron station in the middle of nowhere to get me through the rest of the summer. I still have this same pair. Gah!
I refuse to buy another pair when I have a pair that functions ... but it'd be really great to loose these hideous things this year and finally provide myself the excuse.
I've often asked myself why this happens to me and I've nailed it down to one possible reason. When I was a kid I was at some church I had never been to before. The details are fuzzy, I have no idea of my age at the time, where this was or why I was there. What I do remember however is the color of the pews (yellow) and finding a pair of sunglasses in a case after everyone had left sitting next to me. I suppose the right thing would have been to turn them in ... but they we cool ... I just couldn't do it. I later found out they were a pretty luxurious pair and then proceeded to treasure them even more. It wasn't much later until I lost them. If I had only known what that single act of thievery would lead to...
Some pretty fascinating stuff going on here in Seattle business lately
Microsoft vs. Yahoo
I've been intrigued by the whole Microsoft vs. Yahoo ordeal. Its pretty rare in a lifetime to witness deals this size being worked out, and with the internet we all get court side seats to watch it all happen.
First check out the letter that Microsoft's Steve Ballmer sent Yahoo's board. I was pretty shocked when I read this letter just how threatening the CEO actually gets. Its funny that in a letter this "official" his character and Microsoft's nature still shines through in such a transparent way. What's definitely clear is that the letter isn't meant for Yahoo's board at all but rather its shareholders ... and the way they get to this is pretty childish. Fits the company.
Then Yahoo responds. Publicly at that, again more meant for Yahoo's shareholders to witness ... but I love it. I especially love the last paragraph, paraphrased ... "Dear Steve, for a CEO, you seem to be pretty fucking dense. Let's try to communicate this again ... in dummy language so you might get it this time."
Whatever happens as this deal progresses, its pretty amazing to watch. I can't begin to understand how in the world Microsoft is going to even attempt at making this work being Yahoo's and MS' technologies are based on entirely different platforms. Unless they just leave Yahoo alone (as they've done in many other acquisitions) it'd mean replacing an entire workforce who haven't been trained in MS tech. Not to mention the MS tech is far inferior. Regardless, its fun to watch. I'd love to see Yahoo get out of it.
WaMu vs. Shareholders
Another interesting thing is what's going on with Washington Mutual bank right now. They held their shareholders meeting today and stakeholders came in pretty angry. Killinger went off to spout the usual corporate bullshit of blaming their horrible performance on outside conditions ... but no one bought it. People were actually jeering at the meeting and applause was breaking out for the rebukes. This is pretty amazing and awesome, I would have loved to have been there to witness it, I guess fortunately for me however, I don't own any WaMu stock.
I've had the opportunity to witness what goes on with a bank institution like this when mortgage conditions turn bad like they have within the last year, and it was pretty captivating to watch how leaders were able to shove off responsibility of poor leadership onto the peons. "With great power comes great responsibility" doesn't hold water with companies like these, it seems to be more "with great power comes power."
At the end of the day, WaMu screwed up, made poor leadership decisions and took the company in a wrong direction. The fact that the leaders can't admit this leaves the shareholders feeling like these leaders aren't the best people for the job ... which is pretty funny considering if they would just admit their faults and get on with their plans to not repeat it and make it better, I'm fairly sure they'd be much more well received by all involved. So the world turns I suppose.
What got me interested in this whole ordeal in the first place were statements the board made before the meeting to the press, explaining that they've been focusing on their checking & savings retail business to make things better and things have improved in that arena. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that's what they've been doing in the last year given all their recent advertising campaigns that are littering the airwaves.
What's funny about this is that it seems to be a standard solution. The same exact thing happened at a company I was previously involved with and it had disastrous results. If one major side of your business is failing, drawing attention off of it by focusing on another area thats less lucrative and making it better ... doesn't really make anything better. And there's plenty of recent examples in this industry to go around. Funny stuff.
This one is going to be fun to watch as well. Howard Schultz has been doing some pretty cool stuff lately, including taking back his CEO position at Starbucks recently and making some pretty awesome changes. Its been really fun to watch him step up to the plate and explain how he's going to get Starbucks back where it should be.
Thanks to Otis for the tip on this one, today, he's once again making the news by suing Clay Bennett for taking the Sonics to Oklahoma.
The suit boils down to the fact that Bennett and other owners made a good faith promise to attempt to keep the team in Seattle the best they could. Obviously that's not what they did.
Lawyers are saying the case could be weak because it boils down to the definition of "good faith" and what it really means. Well, maybe I need to upgrade my BA to an MA before I can define what "good faith" is, but I can identify what it's not:
"We didn't buy the team to keep it in Seattle; we hoped to come here [Oklahoma City]."
Hahaha, that's great. Check out more about the story at BusinessWeek.
Monster Cable vs. Blue Jean Cable
And the final one that caught my attention, not terribly related to Seattle, but fascinating nonetheless. Monster Cable Inc. sent a cease-and-desist letter to Kurt Denke, CEO of Blue Jeans Cable Co. trying to get them to stop production of a certain type of cable based on patent infringements.
It just so happened that the president of this tiny company, who Monster Cable most likely assumed couldn't afford good legal counsel on the issue and could bully them around, used to be a lawyer ... and basically owned their ass in his response letter.
There are parts of the letter I feel could have been left out or more effective if worded differently, but as a whole, its a pretty awesome read. Check out the full letter and story here.
About Josh
Born 1983 in Phoenix, AZ
BA in Marketing & Finance from TWU Vancouver, BC
Married, dad of 2
Has fun making cool stuff for the web
Currently residing in Seattle, WA
Lover of gadgets, vintage guitars & mechanical watches
Josh tweeted, "s for a good family friendly viewing spot?" on Friday, 9:51PM
Josh tweeted, "Will be hitting up the Fireworks show in Seattle tonight. Any good recommendation" on Friday, 9:51PM
Josh tweeted, "Interesting note: Haven't seen a single point and shoot at the 4th parade. Everyone's hit the SLR craze, especially moms it seems." on Friday, 7:41PM
Natalie Love ~ 11 Weeks
Jackson Mayer ~ 16 Months
