A Work in Progress

What passes for news some days: Bigfoot was just a rubber gorilla suit.

NIfty idea from Amazon. It's a bookmarklet that lets you add items from any e-commerce site to your Amazon Wish List. Looks as though it simply creates a link to the item on the original site, and displays a photo and some optional text. For somebody who uses their Wish List fairly extensively for gift ideas (* ahem *), this appears to be a great way to have a "one-stop-shop" for everything, regardless of whether or not it's actually available on Amazon.

I'm still figuring out the best way to reply to this e-mail that I received earlier today. Will likely take an "elderly statesman" tone, and recommend that when sending something like this, it's best to (1) not address it to 37 other people and (2) actually include my first name in the salutation, which, in this case, was impossible due to the problem identified in my first suggestion.

Hello,

I'm interning until Friday and just wanted to reach out during my remaining days here. I got your name from the alumni directory and was wondering if you had time for me to shadow or have a coffee to learn about your role. If so, my calendar is rather free between today and Friday so any time that works for you is fine with me. I know this is last minute so I hope someone has time for me this week, but I thank you for considering.

Thank you,
[Name Withheld to Protect the Innocent]

Maybe that's what bugs me more than the impersonal mass-mailing: the stunning lack of effort behind the request.

So I'm planning to stop by the local auto shop tomorrow morning for an oil change and to price out a replacement headlight. I glanced at the little sticker in the corner of my window, and, as it turns out, tomorrow is the date printed for my next recommended oil change. Trust me, it's rare that I fall within 60 days of those things.

But it got me thinking: what if that little sticker was also a coupon, say, for $5 off an oil change good for that date only? I'd imagine more than a few folks might be more inclined to bring their cars in more regularly, if only for the discount. You get people in the door for the oil change and maybe they need some additional work done. I've got to believe that finding a way to generate more frequent trips to the auto shop would be well worth five dollars off the oil change.

Maybe they could even incent repeat trips -- $3 off coupon the first time. But if I hit that date and redeem my coupon, I get $4 off. Hit that date again -- two in a row -- gets me $5 off the next time. Heck, they could go all the way up to $10 off the oil change if I managed to show up exactly on schedule, every three months for two consecutive years. Some serious repeat business, that would be.

Speaking of videos, Kottke highlights a number of great films available for viewing, free for nothing, on Hulu.

I'm about three-quarters of the way through Beautiful Boy, and a paragraph two-thirds of the way stuck with me, about how much the author, David Sheff, found Requiem for a Dream to be "unbearable," while his meth-addicted son, Nic, was "thrilled by it."

Nic later told me that the drug scenes, accompanied by throbbing music from the Kronos Quartet, which are cautionary, nearly unstomachable for most people, made him want to get high.

While in the midst of creating a list of favorite songs from the mildly extensive iTunes library, I decided I wanted to limit my song selection to only one per album.

Tougher than you think, creating a list that might well have multiple artists, but only one tune per CD. Even tougher if you don't let yourself pick twice from a double album (only one from Stadium Arcadium or Substance -- yikes!). Certainly makes for a good mix, though.

Very cool technology on display in this demo, with all sorts of implications for that continual blurring of reality in video. How do you trust that what we see is real? It's already become challenging enough to differentiate fact from fiction. This is absolutely amazing, no doubt, but it does raise some good questions about potential future uses.

Project details here. Link via Waxy.

Admittedly not a family of Olympics fans, we were nonetheless drawn to the compelling story line over the weekend. One of the things I love about the Olympics is how often I find myself in awe of these athletic performances. How many times I think "no way" when I see a synchronized dive, or routines on the uneven bars, or the blistering pace of a marathon champion. Or, as was the case Friday night, an incredible finish to the 100M men's butterfly, all kinds of pressure and history on the line.

And what a great set of life lessons to go along with Phelps' performance as well -- natural ability and hard work are both necessary to truly excel. Never give up, even in (especially in) the face of adversity. Believe in your dreams. Persevere.

Thinking about working in technology, in general, really. Or maybe I'm just biased because I've been a "knowledge worker" for almost my entire career, pushing sixteen years now. Maybe this is a condition that exists everywhere, not just in my corner of the world.

But I've been thinking lately that it's okay to not know something. Really. That's fine. What's not okay, however, is being okay with not knowing.

I'm not going to pretend that it's easy to churn out consistently funny 2-3 minute videos, so there's bound to be some misses now and then, but the team at College Humor has been gonzo hilarious lately. There's a lot to be said for juvenile jokes.

New Editor
Awkward Rap

And, from last month, the geek-friendly font conference.

Only recently have I decided that I wanted to do a better job of keeping track of my gas mileage. An obvious side-effect, then, would be to translate that information into some better driving habits. I'd repurposed an old moleskine for the task -- just a few simple numbers to be written down with each fillup.

But now it appears there's a new tool in town: Fuelly. Only three fill-ups into it so far, but behaviors are already changing. I'm hoping to break my "personal best" with this next tank of gas.

With the mobile UI locked in as a favorite in my non-iPhone, this looks to be a great, simple way to continue tracking miles and dollars and gallons (and comparing those numbers with other drivers and their similar cars).

Update: not record breaking, but at least trending back in the right direction after dropping forty bucks into the tank yesterday.

Man. I've been putting off any updates here because I really wanted to change the look and feel. Didn't like the template. Didn't like that the sidebar was busted. Didn't like some quirks with the MovableType UI that I couldn't resolve.Since I haven't had a chance to dig into CSS and HTML and Javascript that much lately I knew it would take me longer than I wanted to, and the likelihood that I'd screw things up was pretty high.

But I decided to tackle it last night. After about six to eight hours between yesterday and today, a mixture of inspiration and frustration, I'm finally feeling good about the site again. It's not all the way there yet, but it's at least in far better condition than it's been in for months. Apologies, again, for the general state of disrepair.

I absolutely do not want to do that again. Either the brute force repairs that were required, or the month-long gap since I last wrote anything.

"Northwest Airlines Corp. said on Wednesday it will cut 2,500 jobs because of high oil prices, and will soon begin charging $15 to check luggage and up to $100 to redeem a frequent-flier award ticket."

Minneapolis Star Tribune