I'm said that Equity Private seems to have abandoned her blog.

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You just need to see this site.  It needs no further advertising from me...

Blogged with Flock

I don't really watch that much television at all.  I've not been a regular follower of the Soprano's, Entourage, Lost, 24, Grey's Anatomy, etc...   even though they're all probably really good shows, to me, there's just not enough time in the day.  

So this writers strike isn't really affecting me at all.

But it got me thinking...

What would happen if both sides dug in, and they just never went back to work?

What if the big media companies said, "Fine, screw it, we'll just put reruns for the next year or two"?

Would people stop watching television?  What would they do with their time?  Would they go and read books?  Would online traffic start to go up?  Maybe we'd emerge from our houses and start to discover the outside world in a big way.  Has attendance at Meetup's gone up since the strike?  Are people in NYC apartments desperately knocking on the doors of neighbors they've lived next door to for years and never talked to before? 

"Please...  entertain me... I'm desperate!  Charades!  Jenga!  Anything!"

How many seasons of reruns and reality television could they put on before they shake loose every last viewer?

I have to be honest, I was surprised that TV writers get royalties.  I thought of it more like a salaried job.

Aren't there tons of creative people dying to be writers anyway?  I could never figure out how workforces get away with striking when there's probably 2x their number waiting to get into that job.  I'm surprised there aren't more hobby writers that wouldn't cross the picket line.  I'd write for one of these shows.  How hard could it be to write for Grey's Anatomy, seriously?

Blogged with Flock

One of my least favorite things in this whole world is a shower on a cold morning. It doesn't warm me up at all... it just makes me wish I stayed under the covers where I was protected, warm, and most importantly, dry.

Getting on the train this morning, I saw a kid with a Student Metrocard. Kids have it easy these days. If you went to high school in Manhattan, you'll remember trying to get the attention of the token booth clerk to buzz that special gate. She saw the long line of students, but it didn't matter. You still had to wait in line after all those people bought their metrocards.

I think I played my best game of dodgeball last night with the nextNY team.

Shoulda been Mets-Red Sox.

Angel financing is clearly an exercise in herding cats.

While I'll grant that I don't like showers in the morning, I will grant that a post workout morning shower makes me feel fantastic. I wish you all could feel like I do now, Frampton style.

These two girls next to me are whispering about my phone. The amount of hardware and accessories the average teenage girl from Brooklyn carries around is getting out of hand. Somewhere in late 2006, we hit a turning point where phones became so slim, while the size of big hoop earring stayed constant, allowing phones to actually pass through the earrings of their owners.

Its weird how text messages somehow pass through subway walls. I just learned that Brian Oberkirch read a book. Brian's going to hook me up at the Future of Web Apps conference in February, right Brian?

I'm wearing dark jeans and my black hoodie. When I put the hood up, where do you think the polls would wind up on the "Is this guy more likely to mug you or launch a startup?"

I think Facebook may be a bubble unto itself. Is that possible? Can you have a localized bubble? I'll write more on that later.

Mangoes are good eats, but picking mango strands out of your front teeth is a chore. We have seedless watermelons...can someone invent mangoes crumb up instead of shred?

There don't seem to be any movies out there that I want to see, nor have their been for a while.

I'm going applepicking tomorrow.

This week, I instituted a little more structure in my life to make sure all the odds and ends of my life are taken care if. A lot of times, administrative work for your own behalf takes a back seat to all the things you need to do for your startup, for school, for others. Making time becomes an exercise in fixing the squeaky wheel... the unpaid bill, the pile of mail on your table, the friend who complains they never see you.

So yesterday, I drew myself a chart for the week. On the list, I put Gym, Read, Fix, Clean, Build, Friend. Gym is what I want to do during my workout. Read is to manage between the book I'm reading for pleasure and various career related books I'm reading for Path 101. Fix is because things generally seem to need a lot of fixing in my life, from my bike to my bedroom door which has never had a handle on it, to the keyboard on my home computer which just crapped out yesterday. Clean is about clutter. It usually means clearing old mail from my living room table or putting away clean clothes. Build most often means food, actually...like making lunch to save money or just because I like to cook. Friend means catching up with a friend either by IM or email (and maybe the phone, but unlikely because I hate the phone) and really being somewhat purposeful and focused on it, vs just casually paying continuous partial attention to someone.

I wrote down targets for each of these things and hope to get one of each category accomplished each day.

I just got an invite to a "Meet and Greet" hosted by The Action Network.  The Eventbrite invitation gives invitees plenty of opportunity to donate--citing a "suggested" donation--but you can go for free if you want.

There's only one problem with the invite.   I have no idea who The Action Network is, what they do exactly or how I got on their e-mail list.  I checked out their site and it says their mission is to "encourage, sustain, and develop volunteerism among young people in New York City."  When you click on "Program" to find out how, you get a "This page is under construction" message.  There are no names and no pictures of any actual people on the site. 

I'm going to assume that there are well intentioned people behind this endeavor (hopefully) but there's absolutely no way I'm going to show up to an event that asks for money before I even know who's asking that is run by people who won't publicly associate their names with the program.

Does anyone know who is running this and whether or not this is real?

What to say, except that I'm pretty sure this is the first year that we didn't get that same perfectly blue sky we had that day.  It's raining here.  Seriously, if there's anything that stood out to me about September 11th, it was how amazingly blue and clear the sky in NYC was.

And let's see...  we're mired in a war we can't seem to get out of, Ground Zero is still a whole in the ground, 9/11 workers are sick, Bin Laden looks better than he did a few years ago and our immigration policy now seems to keep the people we actually want to come here out, and we still have no idea who's even here.

I dunno, but I hope that by the time the 10th anniversary comes around, we have a little more to show for what happened...   

Bo Jackson: Greatest video game athlete ever

Jason Calcanis "grew up in the famously gritty Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, where violence was as ubiquitous as graffiti", according to Fast Company.

Bay Ridge?

This Bay Ridge? 

So, um... I guess if the violence is as ubiquitous as the graffiti, then there's... um.... no violence.

We do have tornadoes, though.

I just received an unsolicited e-mail from Robert Sexton of Star Positions.   

I've posted the text of the e-mail below.   

Basically, Mr. Sexton and his company are offering search engine optimization.  Of course, the problem is that he's offering his services unsolicited by spamming e-mail addresses, bulletin boards, and forums, and what's worse, threatening anyone who attempts to out him.

Want proof?   Google ""star position" "robert sexton" spam".  You'll get this link which contains a really interesting thread.

"You know,
I also received this email from a Robert Saxton"

"Robert Sexton and his Star Position company are notorious spammmers. He tries to play high and mighty but a few of our company email alias are bombed with UCE from him on a regular basis."

"This outfit sends from comprimised open-relays such as the current one 66.174.76.167

I was once getting over 10 spams from this guy everyday until firewalling the blocking all the sending IP's"

Other people have gotten similar spam from Star Positions, like this woman.

Apparently, Mr. Sexton doesn't know about the CAN SPAM Act, which has the following requirement:

It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address.

Yeah, um, Bob, I don't see a valid physical postal address with this e-mail.

I wonder what the penalty for that is.

"Each violation of the above provisions is subject to fines of up to $11,000."

Hmm...  that's going to cost them a pretty penny.

Now about that valid posital address?

Google says it is:

"Without being seen first on the major search engines, your

This is the placement we do for a Los Angeles Realtor, Kathryn Bishop.

What you see above even the names of the search engines is her actual

website! The search terms 'LOS ANGELES REAL ESTATE' and several others

always points to her site on the Network, across  the top sixteen search

engines, including GOOGLE, YAHOO and MSN!

And lastly, this is the placement we do for Stone Canyon Mortgage, What you

see above the names of the search engines is Stone Canyon's actual website!

Stone Canyon has the generic search term 'MORTGAGE' pointing to their

website on our Network, across the top sixteen search engines, including

GOOGLE, YAHOO and MSN! What we've done for Stone Canyon on a nationwide

level, we can do for other mortgage companies on a more localized level.

You too can have this guaranteed type of exposure. Our normal run on the

  Network  goes for one year, but for those who register with us, by the end

of this week , you will only pay for the first six months.  As for the cost, you'll

probably spend more over the next year for your morning coffee than you

would spend for this.

We do make specific guarantees, including a money back guarantee.

I can be reached at my office, from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Pacific time.

Please feel free to call me if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Robert Sexton

Director of Business Development, Star Position

Phone:        800.481.2979, ext 2001

Direct Line: 949.215.0022

Hilarious...and cute.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Ok, so its not a Mustang, but now some of our characters (and soon all) will have probs.   Check out his little convertible.  Vroom!

Send this to your dads for this Sunday... hilarious!

I've been reading the Moral Animal and it had a really fascinating observation about self-deception.

It turns out that self-deception is likely to be a natural evolutionary advantage, developed as our perception about our outside world improved.  As you would expect, humans with better sensory perception had an advantage over rivals--they could sense danger, forage better for food, size up opponents, etc. 

Our increased sensory perception also allowed us to read body language, facial expression--look past a bad poker face, essentially. 

The self-deception comes in when it becomes and advantage not to give away a lie with your body language.  And, as we all know from George Costanza, "It's not a lie if you believe it."  To an extent, deceiving yourself first is an effective way to decieve others, and, for better or worse, the ability to deceive others is an evolutionary advantage.  Perfect example: standing up to a bully twice your size.  Perfectly translated observation to cognition to observation should tell you that you're going to get your ass handed to you.  However, if you can delude yourself enough that you actually have what it takes to win, you might get the other guy to think twice, versus smelling blood.

Of course, in this case, the combination of speed and self delusion turns out to be the best advantage.

I wonder if self delusion isn't a natural advantage of entrepreneurs?  You have to admit, attempting to knock off Google or Microsoft or whoever must come with some kind of evolutionary kool aid consumption.

Ok, nix Greenpoint of my list of places in NYC I'd like to move to....

Link: Exploring the Massive, Viscous Oil Blob That Lies Just Beneath the Streets of Greenpoint -- New York Magazine.

News at 11...

Check out my Voki take on "salad"...

Get a Voki now!

You should definitely check this out...  If nothing else, to hear the cameo by my grandmother, who recorded her scene totally ad libbed and on the fly. 

I went to go move my car last night and I happened upon a really unfortunate sight:

Some poor shlub got his car buried by a bunch of fallen branches.  At first, I pitied the owner of the little black car, until I went around for a closer inspection:

Turns out it wasn't the black car that got the brunt of the damage, and it was, in fact, the whole damn tree that game down.   Actually, what I didn't show here is that the tree actually completely missed the little black car, other than a few light branches here and there... by inches!

The whole damn thing got yanked right out of the ground at the roots:

Man, if I would have come out to discover my car like this, I'm pretty sure I would have cried.