[My Plugoo] [grr] how do i no if my my dog is dying
12:38 PM
[grr] she is only 4 months old
12:39 PM
[grr] hello plz i need an answer

ceonyc12:39 PM
Take her to the vet.

myplugoo12:40 PM
[grr] i done have enough money

ceonyc12:41 PM
Most vets will at least look at a sick animal for free if you really don't have enough
12:41 PM
it's worth a try... I can't see them turning away a sick animal b/c you can't pay

myplugoo12:41 PM
[grr] she breathes weird she doesnt want to move a bit and will a few days ago she took a little totsie roll out of my hand

ceonyc12:42 PM
chocolate is very harmful to dogs...you should take her to the vet

myplugoo12:42 PM
[grr] i should

ceonyc12:42 PM
Yes... worry about the money later

myplugoo12:42 PM
[grr] ok thx

ceonyc12:42 PM
no prob

myplugoo12:42 PM
[grr] will bye

Donor’s Choose is a fantastic way to get educational projects funded.  I had a great time with it last year and raised $1875.58, to be exact. 

This year, I want to double it:  $3751.16  Check out my giving page.

Here’s what I need from you: $3000

If I make it to $3000, I will kick in the $751.16, because I think this is an awesome way to get people involved.  Also, I’d like to beat the pants off the O’Reilly folks.  That’s right Tim.  I’m calling you out!  (The way I figure it, I probably wasn’t going to get invited back to another Foo anyway, so might as well go down in flames, right?)

Here’s an additional challenge…  if you get me to $4000, I will kick in another $1000, b/c $5000 is a psychologically satisfying number.   Anyone else want to throw in some matches at different levels?  Comment away.

So let’s get started!  I handpicked the projects this year… and they represent about $10,000 in needed funds.  Getting halfway there would be amazing!

When I lived on the Upper East Side about five years ago, I used to frequent DTUT, a cool coffee shop that was supposedly the model for Central Perk on Friends.  It was a favorite spot for laptop users because they gave away their wifi. 

It started with some signs that said you had to buy one item per hour.  Then, they started shutting the wifi off if they thought that people hadn't bought anything.  Eventually, they shut it off altogether, driving some of their most frequent customers out.

And yes, we were actually customers.  Not only did we get hungry and thirsty, ever so often ordering something--but we often came back with friends when we weren't working.  You see, more and more, DTUT became the go to spot.  I went there so often when I was just working on my laptop only drinking a cheap green tea, that when my friends wanted to place to go, that was my default recommendation.  So, while it might have been true that my laptop sessions weren't well monetized, the staff there wasn't realizing that I was coming back for food and drink at other times without my laptop.  When they chased me out for being a "laptop moocher", they were also chasing me out as a better paying customer other times.

So when I read today's piece in the WSJ about the end of free WIFI and power at coffee shops, I feel like it's a serious strategy failure on behalf of retail shops.  If you have something that is pulling regular customers into your shop, and you can't monetize them better, kicking them out is not the answer--especially when this is the uber connected social network influencer crowd that often affects your overall recommendation more than you'd like.

Reporter complaining about all the work he did for a story that Gawker reblogged:

"Gawker's version of my story, headlined " 'Generational Consultant' Holds America's Fakest Job," begins by telling its readers to "Meet Anne Loehr" -- with a link to my story but no direct mention of The Post. It then condenses her biography: "Loehr is 44. She spent the entire decade of the 90s running hotel and safari operations in Kenya." That's information I got after an hour-plus phone call with Loehr and typing out 3,000 words of notes."

Funny, because I got that same information in like 10 seconds, off Anne's website:

"I spent five years as owner and operator of an East African eco-adventure safari company. Despite 9/11, SARS and other international crises, Eco-resorts was a successful tour operator. Part of this adventure included writing Kenya’s national eco-rating policies and an eco-rating manual for Kenya’s hoteliers."

The fingers around this subway pole have chipped purple nail polish--seemingly quite a few days old.  I wonder if you could plot that out consistantly.  Like, 35% coverage means six days.   It matches her yellow eye shadow--that is, if she were a Lakers fan.  I doubt it.  She's reading a comic book--graphic novel rather.  Mice with sunglasses are in the one flopped over panel that I can see.  The man next to her is trying to man a call as we cross the Manhattan bridge.  It doesn't seem to be working.  He is reading an article in the paper about some kid hit with a stray bullet that just got out of the hospital.  I wish someone would adopt all these stray bullets--or at least spay or neuter them to help control the bullet population.  Airwalks.  That's what she's wearing.  Bronx mother admits to fatally bashing tot.  Poor tot.  Never had a chance.  Canal St.  Asians get off, hipsters get on.  Sudden turn...  I nearly fell over but I grabbed he pole just in time.  It was good aim because there were five hands on the pole already.  Comic girl is sleeping standing up.  For some reason I think everyone knows I'm writing about this subway car.  I'll stop now.  The jig is up.

I dated someone once who tried getting to know me better by going back and reading every single one of my blog posts from day one--back in February 2004.  Whenever she would confuse the events of the present time with something that she read about years ago, I'd say, "No, that was Paralell Charlie."  To her, the near-daily account of my thoughts was backstory--years of context to compliment her realtime experience of me.  Facebook photos work the same way--visual evidence of the rest of the life of this stranger you just shared dinner with.  What's more is that it's all content not curated to impress--at least less so than date banter.  It's the animal in its natural digital habitat--to the extent that their digital self represents their true nature. 

It's certainly better than nothing.  In fact, it's so much better than nothing that sometimes I wonder how anyone ever gets to know anyone who is basically off the grid.   It feels so forced and unnatural.   You have to ask someone about their day and what was on their mind--manually!--instead of just commenting on it directly.  To make plans to hangout, you have to call them.  How obnoxiously disruptive! 

Ever think about introducing yourself on the subway?  Ask them to unplug from their iPod to talk to a stranger in mid-sardine can transport with no ability to Ignore or Block?   Yeah, right.  How would they know who I was if they couldn't Google me?  BTW, exactly what day was it that it became creepier *not* to have a web presence?

The web is so much more casual.  It's timeless and asynchronous.  A real life first date can feel like a race against the clock.   Will you score enough points before to time runs out to stay alive or will you fail to reach the next round?  Maybe you didn't find that shared interest as you were blindly feeling around in the dark of uninformed, non-prestalked meatspace conversation. 

The idea of being judged based on dinner, drinks, or a single pithy pickup line feels almost unfair.  I have a whole body of work--over five years of blogging, two plus years of Tweeting and thousands of Flickr photos.  I'm a person, dammit... look at all these ones and zeros--I have proof!  See, published character depth! 

"How did you meet?"

Nowadays, it goes something like this, "Well, I found her after searching a keyword that I'm interested on Twitter.  I clicked around to her Facebook, saw that she was attractive, seemed to have a nice *normal* group of friends, no upside down keg photos.  I started following her blog and her Twitter.  Then, I waited until I had something genuinely useful and relevent to say--something I wanted to say not something I felt I had to say in the pressure of the moment.  That began a short, but interesting, online conversation and then we decided to take it into the real world.  We had real conversation, over a delicious meal, based on things we already knew about each other.  "

How did we ever meet anyone before the internet?

Someone sent a note to the nextNY list about how he was unemployed and looking to work for a startup--how it was really hard to find something.  He sent a link to a piece he wrote on a site about being unemployed.

This was my response:

"So the one link you send us is on a site about being unemployed?

Why on earth would you market yourself as an unemployed guy?  In your first instance of participation in this group, you cast yourself as laid off and desperate.  Who wants to hire an unemployed person?

No one.

If I showed up to a date and the girl introduces herself by saying, "I've just been going on nothing but first dates and they never work out...   I'm so desperate to find someone" I'd be looking for the door in a heartbeat.

We all want to hire someone who kicks ass at something.  If you do not kick ass at anything, you should at least be in the process of learning how to kick ass at something.  Startups, or frankly any company for that matter, cannot afford to hire a non-asskicking generalist.

Think of it this way...  If you know the media, perhaps you could have spent the last five months doing free PR and marketing for a handful of startups.  You weren't working anyway.  The goal would be to be so good at it that one of those companies can't help but hire you--or some other company would hire you because they noticed how good you were at it--or worst case you'd suck at it but you'd really learn something.

Forget pursuing.  Spend 110% of your time honing some kind of value proposition that you'd be a no-brainer hire for.

Forget the "I'm unemployed" shtick and work on the being awesome without advertising the fact that you are awesome to everyone.  If you do not know what awesomeness is, try and figure out who the top 30 most awesome people in the NY tech scene are and interview them.  Publish the interviews on your blog.  Make a list and publish it.  Here are my suggestions:  David Karp, Anthony Volodkin, Chris Hughes...

And God help you if I see your blog and it's yourname.blogspot.com.  To be awesome, you must splurge for the $13 domain name."

I went to a very selective high school--Regis High School in New York City--and from very early on I was intimidated by my peers.  Our class was made up of the top 130 or so students out of nearly 1000 boys who took the test to get in.   I felt like I was #130, particularly at the speech and debate tryouts, where the guys waiting next to me were debating some political topic I wasn't even aware of.  For four years, I basically tried to hangout somewhere in the middle--and the top of the class both in terms of leadership and academics seemed unattainable to me. 

Fast forward four years and after an amazing internship, I felt ready to take on the world.  My time at Fordham was all about leadership.  I started a newspaper, ran clubs, interned, etc.  At the end of my time there, I was selected to be one of the top seven student leaders in my year.

So what changed?

It was a few things for me.  First, I didn't think I was capable of leadership--so why try if you're pretty sure you're going to fail, right?  Second, I never really saw a path to leadership.  I didn't really know where there were opportunities for leadership.  It was only when I got to college that I realized the third point--that you can create your own opportunities for leadership.  I had an idea for a newspaper about business in college and so I just went after it.  I did the research, figured out what I needed to do, and it was easier than I thought.

I'm curious about other people, though. 

If I said that the top people in your field, at your experience level, are active participants professional societies, write popular blogs about your industry, get asked to write articles for magazines and regularly speak on conference panels, that's probably a reasonable estimation of what it means to be on top, right? 

One would assume that such a person in a visible leadership position would basically be able to call their own shots in terms of the direction of their career, right?  If nothing else, they'd certainly be less likely to be laid off.

So, my question is why wouldn't everyone be setting that as a goal?  Of course 99% of people don't take a
look at their own industry and say "I'm want to be the most highly sought after person in this field... be recognized as an expert, and call my own shots."

But why don't they--specifically?

Is it because...

a) It seems like a big risk, because if you try and put yourself out there, you could fall on your face.

b) It seems like an awful lot of work and you don't have a ton of extra time.

c) You feel ok about your career and you don't really see the value in being one of those top people.

d) That seems like a good path, but you really don't know how or where you'd really start on a path like that.

e) Some other reason.

I'm curious...   Ask your friends that you think highly of, but who don't strive for leadership.  Ask yourself.  I really want to identify the causes.  I suspicion is that it's more of an information problem (what to do, where to do it, perception vs reality of taking career risks).

I wrote a post about losing our family dog that now has nearly 100 comments on it...mostly dead dog stories.

Listen to this story...

"well i had a dog in kindgarden threw 4th grade and it was hit by a car in those grades i didnt have any friends and it was my only friend i would talk to her i would pet her for hours she was my only and best friend i loved her dearly the day i was told she died i cried for months but right after she died i made my human best friend and then other and now im 13 and have alot of friends and im thinking she died for a reason. R.I.P buttercup"

"It is, I think, that we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so unable to find the words, and perhaps the courage to speak with unlocked hearts, that we dont know at all that it is the same with others." Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy"

a lifetime burning in every moment

I can stay on my feet like nobody's business. I don't mean in terms of taking a punch. I mean that I never slip and fall to the ground. There have been too many times to count, like with dress shoes on ice or misstepping up a flight of stairs, where I say to myself "Wow, I can't believe I didn't fall flat on my face there." In particular, when something causes one of my feet to just completely wipe out, I'm incredibly good at shifting my weight and recovering without a fall. In fact, I sometimes think that I'm so good at it that I might be the best person in the world at doing that one tiny insigificant thing--not falling when a foot that I'm planting on loses traction.

Do you ever have that? Where you do something totally random so incredibly well over and over again where you think that you may very well be the best person in the entire world at it?

Fifty People, One Question: Brooklyn from Fifty People, One Question on Vimeo.

I hadn't seen this before.  It's really amazing.  The woman in the blue scarf pictured above gives my favorite answer--a world where every closet connects to someone else's closet and you can use it to travel to meet someone new and have breakfast with them.

That's kind of how I think of Twitter.  I wonder if she Twitters.  Probably.

Long eyelashes and a long thin smile...pointed nose just like the guy she's with. He's in a dusty Yankee cap. They are both too casually dressed to still be single. I can't see her hand but they must be married. My view is blocked by the baby carriage turned towards them, awning and plastic weatherproofing raised to expose the baby in pink. It belongs to the woman next to them.

They are making funny faces at the baby. I can only see an arm poking out the side--tiny fingers pointing. Mom was a tattoo on her hand and a ring under her bottom lip--just a stud. She has big star earrings. The couple is chatting between themselves now. She has pulled down the hood of her coat. She has a single blonde streak across her otherwise brunette hair. They're nuzzling and he's kissing the top of her head as she buries it in his chest.

She's back to the baby now...and back to him. She makes a comment and he responds with a kiss. I can't hear because Alphaville is playing Forever Young in my ears.

Mom is tired. She yawns. She has a small piece of rolling luggage with her next to the carriage. The baby has thrown something on the floor. She pushes the carriage back to find it, exposing yellow leather boots.

The woman in the couple next to them is tapping the Yankee cap with her arm outstretched behind her against the subway car window. Her nail polish is very dark--almost black but not quite. Her nails are short.

The baby has an Elmo. I yawn myself and my eyes tear up as they always do when I yawn. The couple exits at Pacific Street. Elmo is dancing now--in rhythm with mom's arm. I can see the baby in the reflection of the subway door window. I didn't realize that before. Mom leans back. She seems a bit pregnant actually, but it could be her coat. Oh. Definitely not her coat.

This is seriously the worst Hans Gruber impression ever, and the dialogue they wrote for him was even worse... but Jamie Gumm saves it.

"Trust me I'm the all time wrongest tree to bark up..."

Yesterday, my blog turned five.

I'm not really inclined to write much about that...  I've got too much work to do today.

And, I suppose that's somewhat fitting.  This is me working.  You want to look back on it?  Knock yourself out.  It's all here.  Me?  I'm looking forward.  I have stuff to do. 

I'm not going to write about how much my blog has given me or who I've met because of it.  If you're blogging with any kind of consistancy and effort, you know what I'm talking about.  If you're not blogging, then the rest of us are inclined to think that either a) you do not want feedback on your thoughts, b) you do not think your thinking needs practice or c) you do not think you have any thoughts worth sharing.  In any case, we're not inclined to chase you down to force you into it. 

It's 2009 and if you don't get it by now, the world is passing you by.

I will, however, leave you with three lessons that I hope, in my five years of blogging, that you've learned from me by now:

1) You do not know everything and neither do I, so open communication makes us all smarter.

2) There are a lot of people out there who are working hard on awesome things.  There are a lot of other people out there talking about other people who are working hard on awesome things, talking about awesome things in general, and tagging themselves on the 8,000 pictures they took of themselves during social media drinkups and tweetups.  These latter people are to be avoided.  Strive to seek out those are are actually changing the world--leave no stone unturned.

3) You can't please everyone... so the best you can do is be a lightning rod for those likeminded people that you do see eye to eye with, and poke bears and rattle cages around the rest of them. 

Ok, back to work...

"If the intent is to help homeowners, then foreclosure is undoubtedly the best solution. Household balance sheets have been destroyed by taking on too much debt via the purchase of inflated assets. With so little savings, a household with negative equity almost implies negative net worth. Walking away from the mortgage immediately repairs the balance sheet. Credit may be damaged, but homeowners can rebuild it. And by renting something they can afford, instead of the McMansion they cannot, homeowners are most likely to have some money left over each month that they can save toward a down payment on a house they can eventually afford."

Why Be a Nation of Mortgage Slaves? - WSJ.com

Incorrectly valuing assets--that's basically what this financial collapse comes down to. All the stuff we thought we had--our houses, mortgages, and all the wacky financial derivatives we layered on top of them--turned out to not be worth that much.

Now that prices have fallen off a cliff, investors are out searching for undervalued assets. There's one asset out there that few people are talking about that is severely undervalued in a bad economy--and its the one thing that has the most potential to get you through 2009 in one piece.

Your body.

It's actually the only asset we ever truly own. Our ownership of most of our other stuff is pretty tenuous--and often highly leveraged, making it a missed payment away from being taken away. Your body, on the other hand, is always yours. In fact, the government even prevents you from selling it.

It is the physical instrument by which we carry out everything that flows through our various digital lifestreams--it is the source of the lifestreams.

This really hit home for me when I found out that a friend of mine and fellow entrepreneur, Tim Marman, told me that he has cancer--fortunately a highly curable form, but still... It made me realize how much I have invested in and depend on my body to carry me through the day--and how much my employees and investors are riding on it, too.

That's why, if there's any one thing I think we need to focus more on over the next year--it's taking care of our physical selves. We're going to need those few extra minutes of lucid thinking a day and that extra spring in our step when we're trying to make a flight to a customer. We can't afford extra sick days, financially and just in terms of meeting ever increasing professional expectations.

Does that mean we all need to run a five minute mile? No, but how about trying to break a 10 minute mile...or just get out and walk a mile?  Unplug and treat your lungs to some fresh air--and maybe have a new idea or two while you're away from the screen.

Additionally, I'm stunned to see anyone--let alone relatively smart people who should know better--smoke nowadays.  To me, taking investor money from people who invested in you and smoking is like taking their money to buy a server and just kicking it once a day...maybe after lunch.  You are an asset just as much as the machines are--and there are much more effective ways of destressing that don't make you smell like you've been eating matches all day. 

For those of you who think that self abuse is part of the deal--no sleep and Ramen make startup happy--start reassessing not only whether or not this is truly sustainable--but how, in ways you might not realize, you're actually doing more harm to your startup than good.  Fuzzy thinking, bad first impressions, missed appointments--when you act like you are duct taped together, then your company appears duct taped together and, not surprisingly, duct tape will be the only think you can afford.

So before you get freaked out over competitor on TechCrunch or writing a marketing plan for the first time in your life, start with priority one--your physical self... and move outward from there.  Look at yourself in the mirror.  Forget about whether your nose is too big or you're losing your hair--just assess whether or not you look well taken care of.  Are you putting as much care into yourself as you are into server optimization?  Sleep well, eat right, exercise, and then try to change the world with AJAX and APIs--don't put the cart before the horse.  

What's one thing that you can do over the next year to optimize your own physical self?