From my buddy Ryan...

There is a Chinese story of a farmer who used an old horse to till his fields. One day, the horse escaped into the hills and when the farmer's neighbors sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?" A week later, the horse returned with a herd of horses from the hills and this time the neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was, "Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?"

Then, when the farmer's son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this very bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?"

Some weeks later, the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer's son with his broken leg, they let him off. Now was that good luck or bad luck?

Who knows?

Unfortunately, I had to close my buddy list about a week or so ago, because I was getting too many spam IMs.  It was particularly annoying, because I forward my IMs to my phone when I go idle.  So now, only people who are already on my buddy list can IM me.  Everyone else sees me as offline.

I don't want it set up that way, but I'm also tired of these "There are 424 singles looking for sex in your area right now" messages and I certainly don't want them on my phone.

First off, I'm sure there are more than that...  that's probably an undercount.

Secondly, the screenames that these messages come from are obviously fake.  They come from lvrgirl32144153153 or sxybtch1341431251.  These are not screennames that real humans have.

Whatever the signup process is for instant messager accounts is at AOL (could be Yahoo!, too... I was using Trillian), its not blocking spammers well at all.  If some product manager over there wants to shed some light on this, I'd love to hear what they're doing to fix this, so I can open up my IMs to the world of real humans again. 

Otherwise, if you'd like to chat, just put your screenames on the footer of your e-mails and I'm happy to add you.

Easy.    I deleted 2800 of them.  Silly blogosphere.  What did you think I was going to say?

Want more detail?

I've blogged before about the stupidity of inbox limits, but most people face them so a lot of people are nearing the need to declare e-mail bankruptcy.   (That's what happens when you just delete your whole inbox and start over.)  I was almost one of those people, until I got serious about cleaning up my inbox over the holiday break.

A lot of people use Getting Things Done and I don't know if my little system corresponds to it at all, but this is what worked for me using Outlook.

1. Download Google Desktop. Next to Firefox, his is probably my most indispensable desktop app and that goes above IM and a feedreader.  I never have to worry about accidentally deleting an e-mail or losing it, because its all indexed and cached. 
2. Attachments.  Attachments are the devil.  Sort your inbox by size and pull them out of e-mails.  Put them in a place that gets indexed.  If you save them in your inbox because you feel like you need them at home, either save them to your desktop or use Foldershare to sync between home and work.
3. Sort by person. This is the easiest way to delete large quantities of unwanted mail, including daily newsletters, evites, blog comment notifications, etc.   It was really easy to go through the list and pull out things I didn't need, like back and forth threads with our IT guy about the computer slowness I experienced back in April.  There were also threads with entrepreneurs on deals we had passed on that I got rid off...  I knew that if I really needed to get those back, they were all indexed with Google Desktop.
4. Cover your butt stuff.  When you're done eliminating all of the obvious trash, take the obvious archive stuff and make a rule out of it.  For us, its portfolio companies and for your firm, it might be clients.  Create a rule that says that anytime e-mail comes from your contacts at a company, it gets copied to an offline folder with the name of that company or client.  Run that for all your previous mails and enable it for mail going forward.  This separates communication from storage.  So, if an entreprenuer sends me quarterly financials, I know I can grab the attachment and delete the e-mail, b/c there's always an archived copy offline tucked neatly in a folder labeled with that company name.  This is good in case you get sued.  :)
5. Now we're onto categories.  I've created categories for my mail that is labeled with numbers that organizes the order that things appear in my inbox because that's the way I have my inbox sorted.  So, I have a category called "3 - Action Item" which appears above "2 - Deals to log" and that appears above "1 - Waiting to hear back".   Whatever you name your categories, design them in such a way that they are self deleting.  In other words, the "2- Deals to log" category contains e-mails that shouldn't really sit for more than 24 hours.  They need to be logged, the relevant info needs to be categorized in our database, and then they need to get deleted.   Here are my categories:
• 3 - Action Items  - Stuff that needs to get done... its what I look to first when I come in and try to mentally organize my day.  This is also where I keep my personal to dos.  I created a rule that says if I e-mail myself, it gets categorized as an action item.
• 2 - Waiting - Means I've e-mailed someone that I really want a response back from soon.
• 2 - Deals - These deals need to be logged.
• 1 - USV Conversation - See below
• 0 - Networking - These are e-mails I'm keeping for one week just to hold onto them long enough to put them into my "keep in touch" process.  They are from people that I don't need to get back to, but probably want to stay in touch with in the future.  I'll turn them into calendar reminders depending on how often I want to ping them.  This can be done once a week.
• 0 - Save - These are e-mails that have important info in them that need to be kept on our file server, not in my inbox. Since I set Google Desktop to  crawl our file server as well, I know I won't lose the info here, but regardless, its best filed somewhere else.  This includes new wire instructions from LPs (there's a file for that) IDs and Passwords  to data services (file for that, too), and important stuff from lawyers.
6. Colleague conversations. Brad, Fred, and to some extent Kerri and I e-mail each other in Reply Alls all day.   This is almost more like a chat room than it is e-mail, and so it needs to be separated.  So, I created a rule that categorizes any e-mail from any one of them as "1 - USV Conversation".  This is mostly a staging area, because what goes on there is mostly either deals to log or things for me to do.

And that's it...     I think the main thing is thinking of every e-mail as an e-mail that requires me to do something or a kind of e-mail that should get automatically saved by the system somewhere else because its from a client, colleague, etc.  This is most of my mail and with Google Desktop, I can even afford to make a mistake.

That's working for me so far...     if anyone else has any good tips, let me know.  One problem I found is that I can't use categories on my Win Mobile 5 version of Outlook, so I can only sort and organize when I'm at the laptop.

Goddamn it.   Why is everyone so down on Jae Seo?  We got one halfway decent righty out of the bullpen and a scrub who had a 5+ ERA last year for someone that went 8-2 2.59...  Maybe he had leprocy and I just didn't notice.  If he did, then this was a good trade. 

Link: ESPN.com - MLB - Seo headed to L.A. as Dodgers, Mets swap pitchers.

LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Dodgers, in search of starting pitching, acquired right-hander Jae Seo and left-handed reliever Tim Hamulack from the New York Mets on Wednesday for right-handed relievers Duaner Sanchez and Steve Schmoll.

Seo, a 28-year-old South Korean, made 14 starts for the Mets last season, going 8-2 with a 2.59 ERA. He walked 16 and struck out 59 in 90 1/3 innings. He also spent time with Triple-A Norfolk.

Lots of money went into, was made, (and lost) around network management tools.  Now, if the web is the platform, what should the network management tools look like around the interconnects, like APIs?   This question was posed to me over IM and I'd be interested in hearing feedback.

[15:14] <Nobody>: here's a stupid question... have you heard of any companies that specialize in api tools... i mean... we have tons of tools for rss... but where are all of the api companies?
[15:16] Ceo21: Well, what exactly do you want to do with an API?   Do you want something that sits between you and the API telling you what it does, manipulating it for you, kind of like Dreamweaver for HTML?
[15:16] *** Auto-response from <Nobody>: here, coding. 
[15:18] <Nobody>: well i mean... most companies have an api that allows another user to leverage their system (im thinking mashups on this one).... but they are all non commercial APIs... where is the company that will specialize in outsourced APIs... it isnt a company's main focus... why doesn't somoene create a reporting/payment gateway, and allow companies to build into it, to help them monetize their systems (or even a google appliance type of deal, where you plug in a server on your rack and it starts working)?
[15:19] Ceo21: API middleware
[15:19] Ceo21: or rather
[15:20] Ceo21: API management tools
[15:20] <Nobody>: exactly, it isn't a main product or anything, but it is something that can open up their system if they let people get creative with it
[15:20] Ceo21: Are APIs written similarly enough that you could have a one size fits all tool that works with a basic set of management tools?
[15:22] <Nobody>: I think so
[15:23] Ceo21: Perhaps I should go on a fishing trip and blog this...  do you mind if I post this w/o your sn?
[15:23] <Nobody>: I don't think a company would want to be bothered with billing customers for their APIs as well; seems like another distraction.
[15:23] Ceo21: We'll see if anyone comes up with ideas or leads...
[15:25] <Nobody>: I haven't seen anything similar, i've been looking for the past month or so, i may have to see what goes on at mashup camp
[15:25] Ceo21: Mind if I post it?
[15:27] <Nobody>: Not at all...

Now that I think of this, its a little bit like the Feedburner of APIs.  What would be the challenges here?  Anyone thinking about anything similar?

NY Tech Meetup at Eyebeam, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Waiting to start... This is a great space. Its where we had Sessions. Check out eyebeam.org.

Update:  re:Plaxo:  A lot of my contacts have updated their info via Plaxo, including several people who had moved offices, changed phone numbers, etc.  I never would have found this out otherwise.  Two people got annoyed by it, and four people complimented my attempt at humor.  Some just ignored it.  Apoligies to anyone who was inconvenienced by the mailing, but it really helped me out a lot.  Here's the rest of the post:

I probably have one of the highest success rates out there when it comes to getting people to connect to me on LinkedIn.

I do pretty well on Plaxo, too.

The secret?

Humor people.

Both services have some pretty bland stock invitations and very few people ever take the time to change them.  That's why they annoy people and people call them spam. 

But, I really find them useful, so instead, I set out to try and give people a free laugh in exchange for filling out the little form or agreeing to be a contact. 

Here's my LinkedIn invite:

I'm using LinkedIn to keep in touch with my professional network. Because you're a PERSON, I'm going to take two seconds to write a mildly creative and entertaining invitation, even though you know what this whole thing is about and any text is probably unnecessary.

So link to me, and then I'll troll your network for opportunities, contacts, dates, etc... all the while getting your permission at every step. Pretty soon, your network will realize that I'm a far more interesting person than you are, and one by one, they'll probably unlink you. You'll wind up alone in a bar somewhere, and probably wind up in a fight.  Several haymakers and a black eye later, you'll wonder where all your friends went and you'll only have yourself, Reid Hoffman, Sequoia and Greylock to blame. :)

Of course, I'm joking...

Obviously, you can't blame the VC's.

- Charlie

And here's my Plaxo invite that I just sent out:

Subject: How Plaxo is like one of those college kids getting you to sign a Greenpeace petition on the street

<Your name>,

Some people think Plaxo is spam.  Just like one of those Greenpeace kids, it usually comes at an inopportune time and its mildly annoying.

However, that doesn't mean Greenpeace isn't a good cause.  In the same way, joining a network that solves your contact info and address book problems once and for all isn't such a bad thing either, even if its methods are slightly annoying.

So, once a year, I'll use Plaxo to ask for updates.  Its selfish.  I want you to type it in because I don't want to do it myself.  Can you blame me?

If you are already on Plaxo, this won't affect you, because I'll always have your latest info and you won't need to do anything.  If you're not, you'll have to do the following decide whether or not I'm the kind of guy you want to have your info.  Then, you'll have to manually type out your info when you have a free moment, which is probably never, or politely ignore this e-mail at the risk that it hits your inbox limit.  Isn't it easier just to join?

I'll put my Plaxo and LinkedIn acceptance rates against anyone with these babies. 

"They're gold, Jerry!   Gold!"

I don't drink coffee, but this is interesting nonetheless.

Link: How is coffee decaffeinated?.

Heather, who went to the Superhero's Ball as a our defense against the forces of evil bunnies, had some thought provoking words on her blog tonight:

"It's easy to love being in love, and when you're fresh out of it, you definitely feel an emptiness where something once was. But I know better than to seek it out from the past. One of the greatest pieces of wisdom a woman can have in dealing with a man is to know that you cannot change him. And you should not. The only harmless woman influence is to help him dress better. And of course if he's a good one, he will learn from you and you will learn from him to both be better. But never ever push against a man's nature. If you don't like him, or your situation with him, as is, don't bother liking him at all. If he'll ever change, let him do on his own time, and out of his own volition."

Link: AOL News - 'Old School' Actor Cranshaw Dies at 86.

They say you're not supposed to make this list too long, but I'd rather be ambitious, try a bunch, and then *hopefully* be able to say I accomplished at least a handful of them by the end.

So, here goes:

1. I will see my parents in person at least once a week.  This shouldn't be hard to do since they're in the neighborhood, but sometimes its easy to take that for granted.
2. I will try to organize my life around several small groups of friends.  Evites with 150 people on them do not constitute friendship and, too many times, I've tried to "merge the worlds" by inviting everybody to everything for the sake of my own convenience.  I want to pick out like three or four groups that I really want to see more regularly and try and plan something with a natural set of people that makes sense.
3. I will begin to code.  Its kind of frustrating to have all these ideas never be able to even begin attempt any of them, so I just bought myself "MySQL+PHP for Dummies."
4. I will go to church twice a month.  This is as much for my interest in participating in my local community as it is anything else.  Every Sunday not only isn't practical for me, its not something I feel like I want.  Its just that I'd like to have a stronger bond with my community and, to some extent, I do miss the whole idea of a spiritual community that I had when I was at Fordham.
5. I will learn about my local government.  I'm going to look up my Community Board, go to some meetings, maybe even blog about local Bay Ridge issues. 
6. I will be more empathetic.  Sometimes, I can be a bit of an emotional bull in a china shop, and so I think one thing I can work on this year is to try and think about others first in terms of my reaction and interaction with them.
7. I will go to bed earlier and wake up earlier.  New bedtime: 12:30AM.  Wakeup time: 7AM.
8. I will make more of an explicit effort to learn from those more experienced than me. I've been very lucky to work with some great people, and I've always preached a more active approach to one's network, but there are definitely a few people whose brains and experience I need to pick over a little more.
9. I will keep my inbox empty and better organize my contacts.  Last week, I spent two full days taking my inbox down from 3000 down to about 300.  Most of the 300 are organized by action items, like "deals" which get logged, reviewed and deleted (i.e. they go away) or "save" which means the info in that e-mail is supposed to go somewhere better than my inbox.
10. I will cook more and broaden my recipe base. I need to pick out like 30 recipes or so to put into a little bit of a rotation and have the ingredients always on hand.  I think I got a little lazy in the past year in terms of going out to eat, and spending more than I wanted to for food that isn't as good as I can make it. 

LVHRD Superhero's Ball - Me as skeletor, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Do I look pale there?

Link: USATODAY.com - Marriott timeshare unit says customer data is missing.

ORLANDO (AP) — The timeshare unit of Marriott International is notifying more than 200,000 people that their personal data are missing after backup computer tapes went missing from a Florida office.

Link: Jeremy Hermanns dot org � Alaska Flight #536 - Rapid De-Pressurization and Panic at 30K Feet.

Link: In Pursuit of Unhappiness - New York Times.

"Sociologists like to point out that the percentage of those describing themselves as "happy" or "very happy" has remained virtually unchanged in Europe and the United States since such surveys were first conducted in the 1950's. And yet, this January, like last year and next, the self-help industry will pour forth books promising to make us happier than we are today. The very demand for such books is a strong indication that they aren't working."

Great article...   reminds me of Debi (Minnie Driver)'s quote from Grosse Pointe Blank,

"Everybody's coming back to take stock of their lives. You know what I say? Leave your livestock alone."

Link: New York Daily News - Home - Submariner Bradford drops into Mets' relief corps.

I think I speak for all former wiffleballers everywhere when I say that its great to have someone with a ridiculous windup back in the mets bullpen.

Let's bring back Jeff Innis while we're at it.  How's this for a stat?  In 1991, he pitched 69 games -- 84 innings... and didn't have a win or a save.  He had a 2.66 ERA and a 1.05 WHIP.  Anybody know what he's up to now?

I'm usually a fantastic sleeper.

But, once in a while, I just have these odd nights where nothing works and I putz around my place unable to even begin to think about sleeping until way too late.

Its 3:47 AM.

I was going to bike to work tomorrow, but its going to rain.  Sucks, because that's kind of what I was up to in my workout cycle.  I guess I kind of need the sleep now.  Perhaps I'll go at lunch.

Checking AIM...   Tim's on... but he's ALWAYS on.  Guy never sleeps.  He's hilarious, though.  I almost don't want to start chatting with him because then I'll actually have a reason to stay awake.  Jarah's on, too...   but she's on the west coast, so its not so late there.  I don't honestly know what time zone Tim is in... he's on a farm in Saskachawan somewhere.

I had Starbucks with Ken this morning.  Nice guy...  I seem to get along well with Canadians. 

Damn, I don't have one single interesting thing to write about.

My leg is tapping...  it does that sometimes.  Annoys Kerri, I'm sure.

This whole sleep thing is kind of like how we need a leap year every four years.  Turns out it takes 365 and 1/4 days for the earth to go around the sun, so to catch up, we need to have this extra day in there.  Well, I guess I'm on some kind of weird 23 hour day thing where by the time the end of the month comes, I don't need a nights worth of sleep.

Why am I blogging?

This is lame.

Echo. Echo. Echo.

Alright...  I'm going to just lay in bed, even if I don't fall asleep.

You know, I didn't want to put up a Christmas tree this year, but my parents moved so they needed somewhere to put up theirs.  Admittedly, it kind of makes me feel warm and fuzzy when I see it.  Its the first thing I turn on when I get back home.  I may just keep it up all year.

There can be only one..., originally uploaded by ceonyc.

This is the coat that should have won. :)

Link: QDB: Top 100 Quotes.

<jeebus> the "bishop" came to our church today

<jeebus> he was a fucken impostor

<jeebus> never once moved diagonally

If the human race dies out, I think we are all pretty sure that it will somehow be the result of our own undoing.

Pollution?  Global warming?  Nuclear war?  Perhaps...  But so many of these issues come down to one fundamental flaw.

Deep down, we all think we are right.

Its just not true.  It can't be.  Some of us are wrong, just like we're all not above average, too.  Oh, and many of us aren't  special either.  Your mom lied to you.  Sorry. 

What's even worse, though, is that our righteousness is killing our connections to other people.  Sociologists have seen a prolonged and steady decline in group participation in all forms.  We don't truly seek out groups of others because we don't feel like other people can offer us anything we don't already have or tell us anything we don't already know. 

Even in the blog world...  This isn't about community.  We like to say it is, but if it was, egalitarian message boards would have worked just fine.  No, we needed a medium whereby our own thoughts were big and monopolized the screen, and anything anyone else had to say got marginalized down at the bottom, requiring a click to view.  Why do we think most of the blogging platforms haven't integrated the "publish a comment as a post" thing that elevates our readers on par with ourselves? 

Probably because not enough people are asking for it.

Surely if they can find ways to stream 30 MB podcasts into an RSS feed, reblogging a comment can't be a huge technological hurdle.

Its bad enough that this problem of being right prevents us from being good listeners.  It causes us to carry around a lot of spite and animosity, too... for people that we should really be better to.

When I was in college, I thought my girlfriend had a crush on this kid out in Ohio that she met on a community service trip.  Everyone seemed to like this kid and, man, whenever I heard his name, it drove me up a wall.  I just to just hate the sound of his name, let alone the thought of this girlfriend stealing do-good dick. 

So when her connection to Ohio wound up becoming a job opportunity, and she took, it, this became an even bigger obsession.  I went out there for her birthday once and decided I was going to throw her a surprise party with her coworkers.  I decided the best way to "combat" this Ohio kid was to be the better guy and actually invite him to it, since they were actually friends.

Of course, I dreaded meeting him, but you wanna know something?

He was harmless.

Totally harmless.

In fact, he was so harmless that the two of us actually wound up kind of hanging out that night and I have to say I actually liked the guy.  He was a pretty cool guy.

Big bad Colin.  Ha!

All those mental and emotional cycles wasted over something that was all perception, not reality.

The point?  The point is that we need to stop dropping stuff like this.  We need to figure out our visceral reactions, our unwarrented animosities and start trying to figure out why.  Chances are, its not even the other person's fault... its your own internal issue.  So, you keep trying to duke it out with them, but, in the end, the problem isn't with them, its with you.  Go sit in room alone for a while and work it out by yourself.  Come back to us when you're done.

"Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead ... only try to realize the truth."

"What truth?"

"There is no spoon."

"There is no spoon?"

"Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself."