Transparent Volatility

Kyle Wilson Highlights vs. Oregon, Sept. 3, 2009

2009-09-11T01:53:00.000-05:00

CBS2 'rollin cribs': tour the Kyle Wilson RU#1 RV

2009-09-07T23:33:00.003-05:00

Kyle Wilson #1 Punt Returner in the Nation

2009-08-24T20:36:00.002-05:00

Kyle Wilson #1 Punt Returner in the Nation from justfndoit on Vimeo.

Video highlights of #1 Kyle Wilson from Boise State University during the 2008 season. KW led the nation in punt return touchdowns scoring 3 TDs in the month of November alone.

After taking over punt return duties for the last 6 games of 2008, Bronco fans are eagerly anticipating an entire season of KW returns. That's if opposing teams are daring enough to kick to him.

D.O.C. [Death of Cornerback]

2009-08-19T00:16:00.004-05:00

D.O.C. [Death of Cornerback] from justfndoit on Vimeo.

Video of #1 Kyle Wilson from Boise State University on the Bronco's Pro Day (May 2, 2009). Video includes full 40 yd dash, broad jumps, L drills, and action from the Blue White Spring Game.

Through his play on the field and verifiable statistics KW shows why he is the most complete athlete at a skill position in college football. D.O.C. is a short documentary exploring the basic requirements necessary to become the nation's top cornerback.

Video responses are welcome. Enjoy.

Boise State Broncos Cornerback Kyle Wilson: A 2010 First-Round Pick? (Vote today!)

2009-05-12T00:54:00.005-05:00

by Lace Banachek @ the Bleacher Report

It appears that Boise State senior cornerback Kyle Wilson’s stock just continues to rise and he hasn’t even begun his senior season.

Not to long ago it was reported that Wilson was sitting at No. 43 of the potential early picks for next year's draft. Thus his senior season would declare just how far he would climb up or fall on that list.

Chad Cripe, sports writer for the Boise Statesmen recently made reference to Wilson being at the 32nd place of the potential first-round picks in the 2010 NFL Draft.

Considering the dire need for safetys and corners (defensive backs) in the NFL, look for Kyle to get snatched up early in next year's NFL draft.

The 6’3", 230 lb Taylor Mays of Southern California is the only viable free safety available next year, all the rest of the secondary athletes are corner backs.

Many expect Mays to go early. As a general rule, quarterbacks are the first to go, and with Tim Tebow and Colt McCoy available, that most likely will not change.

The three senior corner backs that head the list are Kyle Wilson, Boise State (5‘10", 190lb), Trevard Lindley, Kentucky (6'0" 178lb), and Javier Arenas, Alabama (5'9" 198lb).

Lindley and Arenas, the two SEC super corners, are excellent early picks but neither truly compares (at least to date) to Wilson.

Of the two rivals, Lindley comes closest, but Wilson does so much more that he quickly separates himself from Lindley or any other corner. Wilson offers much more than “great coverage skills.”

Kyle tackles (35 tackles, 26 unassisted), break up passes, intercepts (15 defended passes, five intercepts, and 10 breakups), and is a superb special teams player—returning punts (33 punt returns, 470 yards, for an average of 14.2 yards per return).

Add the ability to score touchdowns on those returns and there is one deadly dude. In fact, Kyle Wilson scored three touchdowns last November on punt returns.

Full story here.

Kyle Wilson Pro Day

2009-05-03T02:08:00.003-05:00

I'm an MC

2009-04-13T11:38:00.009-05:00

But this is my art, (art), this is my music
I'm speaking from the heart, hit record and I'll lose it
Bite my tongue for no one, I'll put you on blast
So all the news channels, ya'll can kiss my a$$

And if I dish it, I can take it; fix it, if you break it
Could hit rock bottom and I'm still gonna make it (why?)
Cause I'm a born hustler, natural survivor
Seed of a gangster, I put that on my father

Youtube or Google me, turn it up and play it
Cause many people think it, I just had the balls to say it (what?)
And risk losing everything, I stand for the weak,
Plus I live for my freedom of speech,
Cause........

I'm a lyricist to the death, so I got what you need
Ludacris, I'm the last of a dyin' breed
And we almost extinct, so I'm saying it loud....

MC means move the crowd

Greatest Freestylist of all time?

2009-04-11T08:04:00.003-05:00

Question: Greatest FREESTYLIST of all time:

(A) Christopher Bridges
(B) Cordozar C. Broadus
(C) Dwayne M. Carter
(D) Shawn C. Carter
(E) Rashia Fisher
(F) William M. Griffin
(G) Lauryn N. Hill
(H) Brad Jordan
(I) Marshall B. Mathers
(J) Reginald Noble
(K) Christopher G. Wallace
(L) Germaine Williams
(M) Other (please supply government name)

Don't get mad if you're favorite rapper isn't on the list.
Also, please rank!

Just FN Do It

2009-03-05T16:11:00.007-05:00

The BCS is WAC

2008-12-03T06:44:00.004-05:00

Congrats, Kyle.

2008 2nd-Team All-American Returner (SI.com)
2008 1st-Team All-WAC Defensive Back
2008 2nd-Team All-WAC Special Teams

And WAC Player of the Week

The End of Wall Street

2008-11-21T16:02:00.005-05:00

Wall Street is dead! Here's an example of the subprime debacle told by one of the few hedge fund guys who made money during this collapse.

One day, his housekeeper, a South American woman, told him that she was planning to buy a townhouse in Queens. “The price was absurd, and they were giving her a low-down-payment option-ARM,” says Eisman, who talked her into taking out a conventional fixed-rate mortgage. Next, the baby nurse he’d hired back in 1997 to take care of his newborn twin daughters phoned him. “She was this lovely woman from Jamaica,” he says. “One day she calls me and says she and her sister own five townhouses in Queens. I said, ‘How did that happen?’ ” It happened because after they bought the first one and its value rose, the lenders came and suggested they refinance and take out $250,000, which they used to buy another one. Then the price of that one rose too, and they repeated the experiment. “By the time they were done,” Eisman says, “they owned five of them, the market was falling, and they couldn’t make any of the payments.”

Read this article in Portfolio ..... it's long but will certainly satisfy your curiosity.

Swagger like us

2008-11-20T23:46:00.003-05:00

Yes, I know it's been awhile. Enjoy for the time being.

The largest, and most intimidating

2008-08-21T16:49:00.007-05:00

But don't take our word for it. I'm just reporting the facts.

What the hell was this cop thinking?

2008-07-30T21:27:00.002-05:00

I leave NYC for 2 weeks and this is what happens. This is why I don't ride bikes in the city. Like always, parental discretion advised.

Who knew Mardi Gras would influence the election?

2008-06-28T12:42:00.002-05:00

What other presidential candidate can inspire this!

Getting fired on my first day wasn't so bad after all...

2008-06-24T08:35:00.005-05:00

at the very least it got me an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning.

A Learning Experience

Professionals urge people who have been laid off not to lose perspective, and to try to grow from the experience. That was the case for Gerry Wilson, who says getting laid off turned out to be a good thing.

Mr. Wilson graduated from Princeton in 2000 and took a job with MicroStrategy Inc., an Internet software company. After two months training at company headquarters in Virginia, he headed to New York to begin work. The first day, he was told that his consultant position was being eliminated.

Mr. Wilson parlayed his expertise with MicroStrategy's software into another consulting position, making nearly double what his salary would have been. He later started consulting on his own and saved enough money to attend business school. There, he developed a plan for his own business, yoonew inc., an online exchange that lets sports fans bet on a shot at Super Bowl or World Series tickets, long before the event. He raised funding from angel investors and now runs yoonew.

"All I have done has been because I was laid off on my first day," he says.

- From, "Turning That Layoff Into Career Catalyst", WSJ

My acting debut

2008-06-09T07:54:00.002-05:00

I'm sorry, but we're going to have to let you go. (Hiring for a startup part 1)

2008-06-05T23:36:00.009-05:00

It may seem trite, but when it boils down to letting someone go......there is no pleasant way to say it. Firing employees is not an easy thing to do, especially if you were the one to hire them in the first place. HR classes and "soft skills" were things I thought were BS in bschool, but in the real world they are very important, especially at a startup.

When you're running a team that is small, every new hire can and will dramatically affect the rest of the team. If there are 10 people, just adding one person will increase your costs by at least 10% as well as change the team dynamics. Hopefully this change is positive, but many times (especially in the early stage of a company) it can be destructive. This is why it is extremely important to do your due diligence before hiring anyone (including part-time employees). Even more important is letting someone go immediately after you realize they are not contributing to the team and/or are not the best person for the job. Allowing mediocrity is the ultimate downfall of any ambitious startup. If you're striving to be/beat the best, you must hire the best. There are NO shortcuts. This may mean that you have to pass on really good candidates.......only the best and that includes part-time employees.

Large companies have the luxury of keeping people on board and helping them find "alternative" opportunities within the firm. In the case of a startup, if an employee cannot find a way to create value in such an open and ripe environment, he/she is probably not built for working in a startup. What does that mean? Not everyone has the physical, psychological, and/or physiological capacity to work at a startup. The hours are long, the work is hard, the problems are complex/never ending, the pressure grows daily, the pay isn't wall street, and nurturing/hand holding is nonexistent. Individuals who need a lot of direction/coaching are not built for working at a startup in the early stages. I've learned that the hard way. We've a number of positions that have been open for well over a year. This is not because individuals lack competence; some candidates have tremendous backgrounds and skill sets. The reason why these candidates are not built for yoonew is because they typically lack the testes/ovaries to believe in themselves and take the road less traveled. In theory it seems cool and sexy to work at a startup, but for those who live it.....we know that the GOOG brick road is a long term goal, not the short term reality.

So why in the world would one work @ a startup? I don't think you can truly appreciate the freedom, excitement, and teamwork evolved with working at a startup unless you have some corporate work experience to compare. At my first job out of undergrad I was laid off on my first day in the office. At my next job, I was dumbfounded by the number of seasoned employees who literally spent 45 minutes out of an actual work day to do real work. That's less than 10%. I would argue that this is the norm and not an exception for many "blue chip" companies. When you subtract minesweeper and solitaire, lunch/smoke breaks, personal phones calls, web shopping, and company gossiping you're left with 45 minutes of productivity. That CANNOT happen at a startup. When the system administrator's main role is to stock the refrigerator with Snapple, you know the company is in trouble. (These are NOT hypothetical examples.)

When making early hires, you're going to make mistakes. As difficult as it may be, you must man up and handle your handle immediately. I've read a lot of literature on when to fire (day of week and time). Contrary to popular belief, the best time to fire someone is immediately, even if that falls on a Monday at 9am.

After saying all of this, here's what can happen if you don't handle a firing professionally.
(If this ever happend in our office, let's just say the monitors would have had friends who came to their defense.

From another angle (in color)

(Btw, to answer everyone's curiosity, NO we did not have to let someone go recently. I wrote this post long time ago and just saw these videos. I felt it was time to give my 2 cents.)

Fastest man of all time

2008-06-01T08:40:00.013-05:00

As a former sprinter in college, I've always loved the 100m dash. There's nothing like having the ability to say, "I''m the fastest man in the world." Yesterday, at the Carl Icahn Stadium (literally right in my backyard), Usain Bolt broke the world record and ran the fastest 100m dash time in history (9.72 seconds)! What's even more amazing is he is only 21 years old and is 6'5". Let the steroid allegations begin....thanks Marion.

I've heard of Tyson Gay (gold medal winner in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay at the 2007 World Championships) and Shawn Crawford (gold medal winner in 200m in 2004 Olympics) and Wallace Spearmon (second fastest 200m @19.65 only behind the track god) and Asafa Powell (former world record holder at 9.74). These are world class athletes and Usain made it look like a race in elementary school. He's tall, long, and has great turnover. If he develops a better start out of the blocks, he could run a sub 9.70 in the next couple of years.

He may very well be the fastest human ever to live. Michael, we know you're worried. But I guess records are meant to be broken.

How much lower can the time go? Here's the progression of the 100m over time.

Time	Athlete	Nat	Location of race	Date
9.95	Jim Hines	United States	Mexico City, Mexico	October 14, 1968
9.93	Calvin Smith	United States	Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA	July 3, 1983
	Carl Lewis	United States	Rome, Italy	August 30, 1987
	Carl Lewis	United States	Zurich, Switzerland	August 17, 1988
~~9.83~~ ^[3]	~~Ben Johnson~~	~~Canada~~	~~Rome, Italy~~	~~August 30, 1987~~
~~9.79~~ ^[3]	~~Ben Johnson~~	~~Canada~~	~~Seoul, South Korea~~	~~September 24, 1988~~
9.92	Carl Lewis	United States	Seoul, South Korea	September 24, 1988
9.90	Leroy Burrell	United States	New York, New York, USA	June 14, 1991
9.86	Carl Lewis	United States	Tokyo, Japan	August 25, 1991
9.85	Leroy Burrell	United States	Lausanne, Switzerland	July 6, 1994
9.84	Donovan Bailey	Canada	Atlanta, Georgia, USA	July 27, 1996
9.79	Maurice Greene	United States	Athens, Greece	June 16, 1999
~~9.78~~^[4]	~~Tim Montgomery~~	~~United States~~	~~Charléty, Paris, France~~	~~September 14, 2002~~
9.77	Asafa Powell	Jamaica	Athens, Greece	June 14, 2005
	~~Justin Gatlin~~	~~United States~~	~~Doha, Qatar~~	~~May 12, 2006~~
	Asafa Powell^[5]	Jamaica	Gateshead, England	June 11, 2006
	Asafa Powell	Jamaica	Zurich, Switzerland	August 18, 2006
9.74	Asafa Powell	Jamaica	Rieti, Italy	September 9, 2007
9.72	Usain Bolt^[6]	Jamaica	New York City, New York	May 31, 2008

2008 Jamaica Invitational 100m Male Usain Bolt 9.76 Sunday, 04 May 2008

2007 Jamaican National Championships 100m Male Usain Bolt 19.75 Sunday,24 June 2007

iam sterdam

2008-05-28T07:31:00.007-05:00

For those who missed me this weekend, I was out of town. By the title of this post and the shirt, you should be able to guess my destination.

Since I don't have time for an appropriate blog post, I thought I'd set the stage with an early quote.

amsterdam reminded me of firenze, but "cooler" and more diverse.

(Keep in mind that florence is one of my most favorites cities.)

We stayed at the Swissotel near the Dam Square. Yes, the hotel was very, very nice, but for some reason I don't recall our hotel looking like this.

That's all for now......Stay tuned.

I told you on Bloomberg

2008-05-07T09:26:00.005-05:00

No one believed that I "predicted" that all four number 1 seeds would reach the Final Four. Thanks MonsieurCactus for your excellent analysis.

"You know, the no. 1 seeds are probably the best pick."

Look here to read the full transcript.

(And no, that is NOT the same tie.)

We're moving on up

2008-04-24T13:07:00.006-05:00

We were recently awarded one of the top 100 private companies in the Northeast according to AlwaysOn.

Thanks everyone for all of the support. You can check out our presentation at the Venture Summit East, Boston.

Click on the image below to watch the video.

Ads and ad networks

2008-04-16T14:56:00.005-05:00

Who knew there were so many ad networks?

But that begs the question; are there that many ads?

Which leads to the biggest question of them all, who is paying for all of these ads?

I'm trying to figure it out. I'll let you know what I find.

Cramer's 2 cents minus your $2 leaves you broke

2008-03-20T21:35:00.002-05:00

The Madness Market

2008-03-20T17:06:00.002-05:00