"...and that's why you NEVER get out of the tree."

Android Growing RIDICULOUSLY Faster Than All Other Mobile Platforms (In the US)

2010-03-10T16:03:00.000-05:00

From Phandroid.com:

Comscore has just published their smartphone reports detailing statistics from October 2009 through January 2010 and although we knew Android grew incredibly – the actual statistics are quite staggering. Take a look at this chart which shows market share from RIM, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Palm:

Second to last place with hardly more market share than Palm? How is that staggering? Well… as Kevin Tofel explains it is all a matter of how you look at the numbers. What we SHOULD be looking at is growth rate – that is – percentage growth from October through January:

That is HUGELY indicative of the momentum Android has and the deceleration of other platforms. Looking just at market share gain/growth you might not realize how poorly Microsoft is performing, how Palm is slowing more than any other platform, and how little RIM and Apple are improving. And for that matter, how ridiculously quickly Android is growing.

The numbers are looking good my friends and I would fully expect these various momentums (momentii?) to continue. Apple always gets a huge uptick with a new iPhone, and WebOS should perform better when they finally offer some new devices (if they’re unique), but I don’t see Android slowing down much over the next 10 months – at all. Not domestically or globally.

Holy crap, has it been 7 days already?

2010-03-08T10:03:00.003-05:00

Boy, lose your laptop and all hell breaks loose.

Things I've done since my hard drive died:

1. Played more X-box. Seriously, Bioshock 2 is the greatest fucking game of the year (so far). I'm seriously in love with that game, the return to Rapture is astonishing. But more important, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 came out. This is a perfect example of short-term and long-term gaming. I'll play Bioshock for the next month non-stop. I'll beat it to death. Then I'll send it back to Gamefly. Battlefield? I'll still be playing Battlefield next fall. I currently have 109 hours into Battlefield: Bad Company, and if the first hours of this game are any indication, I'll easily outpace that time. On a side note. 109 hours of Battlefield may sound like a lot, but if you consider the PC game, I'm afraid that's child's play. I've got almost 300 hours into the PC version of the game. So if you only count those two, I've got over 400 hours of Battlefield play under my belt... and we haven't even discussed Battlefield: MC for Xbox.

2. Read more. I'm currently hip deep into "The Passionate Programmer" and I love it. This is a fantastic book. It's all about finding happiness and fulfillment as a programmer. In fact, the full title of the book is, "The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development". The mantra of the book is "Be Remarkable". Who wouldn't love that? I've also picked back up my Fantagraphics Popeye Collections and started back where I left off last winter. When we last visited our squintyy-eyed sailor, he was searching for Dooma, "a lost city of gold in an unknown sea". Constantly thwarted by Merlock Jones and his insidious disguises, the story culminates with the introduction of Popeye's greatest nemesis, Bluto (in his only appearance in Segar's strip). Between "The Passionate Programmer" and "Popeye" I'm almost tempted to let the Macbook sit for another couple of weeks.

Almost.

3. Ride my bike. Finally! After weeks of discomfort, I'm finally on a perfectly fitting bike. I will blog EXTENSIVELY about that, but suffice to say, if you ride a bike, please, by all means go and get a professional fitting! I spent three and a half hours with the guys from Trek and I'll never get on another bike again without having it precisely fit to my body. To think that I rode 4,600 miles last year on my bike the way it was set up. It's enough to make a grown man cry.

Anyway, so no laptop for about a week now, but damn if it hasn't been the best week in recent memory! I should destroy hard drives more often!

What an immensely rewarding weekend spent doing absolutely nothing of significance.

2010-03-01T14:15:00.005-05:00

In the past seven days, I've had what can only be described as "some of the best professional and personal accomplishments in recent memory".

But you know what? In less than a month, I will have probably forgotten most, if not all of them, and moved on to bigger and better things. I won't look back. That's the nature of what I do. It's rewarding, but it's fleeting.

However, I don't think I'll ever forget spending Saturday morning, putting together a playhouse for my daughter, while she drew on the concrete with chalk and "helped me". You see those green squiggles in front of her house? Why, that's grass, of course. And that checkerboard pattern to the left of it? That's her hopscotch game. When I was finished building it, I went inside, made her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and left it for her on the window sill of her new house.

On Sunday, her cousin, who lives down the street, came over and the two of them played "Catwoman" for two hours in her new playhouse until their noses were runny from the cold, stopping only to come in once to use the bathroom and eat oatmeal cookies.

So while the past week was filled with amazing times both professionally and personally, it's a lazy Saturday morning spent putting together a cedar playhouse that will forever be etched in my memory.

My latest obsession has nothing to do with Vampires.

2010-02-25T13:01:00.005-05:00

I can't tell you how much I love these guys. They were at Lollapalooza last year, and prior to Tammy and I flying out to Chicago, I put together this little, "So you're going to Lollapalooza" playlist for my phone and these guys were on it. Initially, when I got back from Chicago, I was listening to Kings of Leon and Manchester Orchestra almost non-stop, but then over the last couple of months I started listening to their debut album "Vampire Weekend" and I just became completely obsessed. We're talking "screaming-sixteen-year-old-little-girl" obsessed. I don't know what it is, but anyone who can work, "who gives a fuck about an oxford comma" and "all your diction, dripping with disdain" into a song is automatically on my intellectual radar.

The new album, "Contra" just came out a month or so ago, and it's sheer perfection in a can. As the video below demonstrates, this is a clever, smart, witty, fun group of guys who happen to be making kick-ass music. Lead singer, Ezra Koenig refers to their sound as “African Preppy,” or “Upper West Side Soweto.” Give it a listen.

Careful, your happiness is showing...

2010-02-22T18:06:00.010-05:00

This weekend, I met some friends up at Gordon Biersch and I ran into an old friend who I hadn't seen in ages.

It was a sad lesson in the inevitabilities of life, but a reaffirmation for me about how powerful controlling your own life and making your own decisions can be.

When I knew this girl she was outgoing, smart (she finished college in 3 years with a communications degree from a pretty large, somewhat prestigious university), overflowing with self-confidence and refused to let anyone or anything define her. A pretty rare thing and something you don't run into every day. I guess you'd call her an "alpha female". Now, I'm not saying that in any derogatory way. In fact, just the opposite. I was always convinced that she'd be way bigger than any of us in our little "group".

My, how the years change people.

Now she's overweight, sad, and worse of all, she saddled with some horrible douchebag of a guy who's emotionally abusive, kind of an asshole, not very nice, and generally "a dick" to everyone who knows him ("Have you met the guy? He's a total asshole" is basically all anyone ever says). She's one of those women who have never really made a connection with someone meaningful, is getting way up there in years and hasn't gotten married, and is all about settling for the best thing that comes along...because, "let's be honest, that's about the best she's gonna do" (my friends are much less forgiving in their opinions than I am, I guess). What started off as a promising career in advertising, somehow turned into a menial job working in perhaps the most mindless government job on earth (now granted, not all government jobs are bad... but trust me on this one... some of them truly are).

The thing that's so sad though is how obviously she hates her life, and how easy it is to see. When she's telling you "all about the great things she's doing and how happy she is", she sounds less like someone who's telling you "all about the great things she's doing and how happy she is" and more like someone who's trying desperately to sell you on the idea that "all the things she's doing are great, and she's happy". You know what I mean? You kinda wanna say at a certain point, "um, next time don't try so hard...mmkay?"

That kinda bums me out.

Then again, it doesn't bum me out at all. I mean, it's one of those things that initially makes you sad, but then you realize, you can't control anyone else. They're gonna do what they're gonna do, and the decisions they make are theirs and theirs alone to live with.

What it does do, however, is actually make me almost hyperaware of the life that I've got and how all decisions I've made leading up to this moment have resulted in that life...and how completely happy that makes me. Not "pretend" happy. Not "happy to all my friends". But a deep, meaningful, "this is exactly how you're supposed to feel when you're happy" happy. At no point in my life will I ever fall into that trap of telling myself ever again that, "this is the best it will ever be" or "Well, this is how my life turned out I guess...". It's just too depressing a scenario to ever consider. It was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn over the last year or so, but ultimately was so rewarding that it stands to rewrite the definition of "rewarding". After all, decisions are opportunities. With every decision you make, you're presented with an opportunity to do great things. Positive things. Life-changing things.... or, well... not.

So as I walked out of Gordon Biersch on Saturday, muttering under my breath, "that is just so sad", I turned right and walked down to Barnes and Noble for a coffee. I called my wife on the way, to tell her I was on the way home (but wanted to grab a cup of coffee first) and make sure I mention that I loved her, which for some reason seemed like a really important thing for me to say at the time. Because by the time I made it to the bookstore, my happiness was showing.

Social Media Insight #2 - Seriously? How could you fail so utterly at something so easy?

2010-02-18T06:27:00.005-05:00

See, the thing about Social Media is this. It rewards "the content creator". You have an active Facebook page because you create compelling, original content. You have a blog with a lot of followers because you're creatively prolific. You have a lot of Twitter followers because, frankly, people like what you tweet. You've got a tremendous amount of "gravity" on your YouTube page because you upload awesome videos.

Social Media loves content.

I love Twitter. I get Twitter. Twitter is easy. Twitter is fun.

Twitter is basically a microblog. You get 140 characters and you get to put your stamp on something. You get to state your thoughts, opinions, observations, and rather than be a limitation or a restriction, 140 characters actually pushes you to be clever, concise, elegant, witty. They make it tremendously easy to pepper your feed with all kinds of great content. You can tweet videos. You can tweet photos. You can be spontaneous, fun, and engaging. All in 140 characters (or less!).

They even facilitate this process by providing the easiest, most spontaneous integration on the planet. The cell phone. You don't need an "iPhone" or a "smartphone" or some far-out, expensive, crazy phone to tweet. All you basically need is a phone number and SMS. You can literally phone it in. See something you wanna share while you're standing in line at the Supermarket? Share it. Got a great thought or idea while the waitress is bringing you the salad? Tweet it. Driving along and inspiration strikes? Text it to 40404 at the next stoplight.

So why do you suck at it so much?

Why, when given the opportunity to show everyone how creative you are, do you choose to instead do the LEAST creative and witty thing you can with your twitter account?

In my small town (relatively small I should say. After all, we're not Chicago) I began following people who build their whole business on the idea that they provide creative content to clients. Turns out, their entire twitter feed is nothing more than ReTweeting other people's thoughts, ideas, and content. When given the opportunity to show everyone just how creative you are, you choose instead to let someone else do the talking for you.

Think about that for a second. ReTweeting -- nothing more than clicking a button and passing something on that someone else wrote. I mean, I do it. Heck, everyone does it. Difference is, they don't exclusively do it. Most people do it maybe ten... fifteen percent of the time, because they're actually busy creating content. Tweeting a blog post. Posting something from a conference they're at. Uploading pics from their phone, etc. They're sharing. They're creating content. They're winning.

Likewise with the people who do nothing but endlessly quote the Bible, Mark Twain, or some other person who apparently has far more creative and worthwhile things to say than you do. Hey, here's a tip... If I wanted to see what the Bible said, I'd read it. Of course I enjoy a Thoreau quote as much as the next person, and when the mood strikes, I might share one that's particularly inspiring, but anyone can waste their entire twitter account pasting quotes. I followed you originally because I wanted your insight, your wisdom, your experience. Instead I got a sanctimonious stream of blather that I could've gotten from a google search for "inspirational posters".

You're creative. You're in a creative business. You write. You produce. You direct. You create. Step up to the plate and show people what you're made of. Rise to the occasion. Don't just demonstrate to anyone and everyone that you're another in a long line of people who "talks the talk" but can't "walk the walk".

Hahaha... "He's just not that into you"... But you should TOTALLY marry him!

2010-02-16T11:59:00.006-05:00

Earlier today my friend Stefan (A.K.A. "Mr Sometimes But Not Very Often Good Enough") mentioned this, and after a quick Google search, I found this article:

Why settle for Mr Good Enough?

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From the article:
"...the much discussed book Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough. In it, author Lori Gottlieb argues that single women, particularly those who have hit the big 3-0, need to have more realistic expectations when it comes to men. They cannot rule out potential suitors simply because they have red hair, or no hair, or find chores disagreeable. It they do, they risk spending the rest of their lives alone and lonely, their only backscratcher a blunt pencil, their only spider killer a tattered Sex and the City DVD case."

You have no idea how long and hard that made me laugh. You really don't.

Suffice to say, my Valentine's card this year wasn't addressed to "Mr. Good Enough". I hope yours wasn't either.

Hey, Lemme Tell You About the Greatest Valentine's Day Dinner Ever...

2010-02-15T11:56:00.007-05:00

Currently, I'm participating in Leadership Grand Strand. It's a year-long, leadership training program for developing future local community leaders. We work on several projects over the course of the year, and one of the projects we're involved with is the Michelob Ultra Bike Ride. It's an annual event to benefit Horry County Disabilities and Special Needs.

It's an amazing experience that takes place over the same weekend as the annual Myrtle Beach Marathon. This year, the marathon was to take place on Saturday, and the bike ride is on Sunday. This meant that I would be working from about 5:30 AM on Sunday until about 3 or 4 PM. An exhausting, full day of work. Hugely rewarding, but unfortunately precludes any meaningful Valentine's plans.

Or so I thought...

We had worked Thursday and Friday at Event Registration and were prepared to work all day Saturday with setup and Staging, but the Marathon was canceled due to weather on Friday night. This meant that Saturday's work was significantly cut down and I was heading back to the house on Saturday after only having to put in a couple of hours of easy setup.

So I decided to be a little spontaneous.

Since I'd be out all day on Sunday, why not take the wife out to dinner Saturday night? So I called around and got buy-in from in-laws to babysit allowing me to take my wife out to a surprise dinner. I had all these great plans. Melting Pot maybe? Perhaps I'd take her to Divine's and treat her to a great evening.

Then I got home and started talking to my wife about our date.

Turns out, my gorgeous, pregnant wife wanted... no, craved, a hamburger. Who am I to argue, right? Valentine's day isn't about me or where I want to go, it's about the person I love more than anything else on earth.

Waitaminute.

Don't I love TWO women?

Of course I do! Why would I want to celebrate Valentine's day with only one of the two most important women in my life?

So naturally I canceled the babysitter and took my two favorite women to Five Guys for Hamburgers and French Fries. Because that's what they wanted. Hamburgers, hot dogs, and french fries.

You know something? I've been married for 11 years and I've known my wife for 16 years, and when I look back on all the Valentine's Days we've spent together, this past weekend, enjoying Hamburgers and Hot Dogs, and playing "I spy" at the dinner table will go down as one of "The Greatest Valentine's Day Dinners Ever".

Jamie Oliver from TED 2010

2010-02-15T00:33:00.005-05:00

This is a must-see. If you only watch ONE VIDEO from this year's TED conference, then this is the one to watch:

Social Media Insight #1 - You're Just A Cow

2010-02-12T11:11:00.002-05:00

Hey, guess what. When you're a fan of EVERYTHING. You're a fan of NOTHING.

You're a fan of "John Mayer", "iPhones", "Some Random Business That a Friend of a Friend of Yours Owns", and 342 other pages?

Which one are you really a fan of? How could anyone tell?

They can't. And that's why you suck at social media. Because you still think it's a popularity contest and somehow the more pages and groups you're a member of, the more... I dunno...you can point to as some sort of "badge-O-success"? ("Oh yeah, I'm awesome at Facebook, I have 694 'friends', I'm in 386 groups, and I'm a fan of 482 pages")

But what does that really say about you? Are you passionate about something? Do you actually like anything? Or do you just click, "Become a Fan" at every Facebook suggestion that's tossed your way and every invitation that crosses your inbox? Do you just eat whatever someone puts in front of you? Do you just turn on the TV and watch whatever's playing? Do you go to the library and just grab the first book you see?

See, you can't be in a "tribe" if you're a member of EVERY "tribe". And you're not a "purple cow" if you make it a point to look like every other cow in the field. You completely missed the point.

Be unique. Be yourself. Like WHAT you like, and simply don't like things you don't really like. We understand. We won't be offended. We'll actually appreciate your honestly and character. You'll become... oh, what's the word I'm looking for?

Oh yeah, real.

I Remember It Like It Was Yesterday...

2010-02-10T19:54:00.009-05:00

I originally wanted to start blogging for one reason only. Doug Dimberg. I really wanted to make sure that before I left this earth, I put into words exactly what I remember from that night.

Today I was driving home from work and another thing crossed my mind, "I can remember the exact moment I met, and fell in love with my wife". It suddenly occurred to me that it was extremely important that I never forget that moment, and even more important that I simply write it down, if for no other reason than one day, many years from now, someone may be interested in the day their parents (or grandparents) met and fell in love.

---

Coastal was a small school back then. It was just gaining its independence from the University of South Carolina system. In fact, my graduating class had the option of choosing either a degree that said, "University of South Carolina" or "Coastal Carolina University". Naturally I chose the latter. I only say, "naturally" because I was never at any time caught up in which school you attended, and in fact, I valued the science education I received at a small school. To this day I meet people from larger schools that are amazed that I was able to take a class in Recombinant DNA Technology in the early 90s because at a larger school (at the time) such a class would've simply been cost prohibitive.

So anyway, small school...

I enjoyed attending a small school. It was great knowing a lot of people, and with all the sciences housed in one building, I was very close with friends who were Ecology majors, Chemistry majors and of course, Marine Science majors. I took a lot of Marine Science courses as electives, and anything with Marine Science that had labs was a guaranteed blast. I still have fond memories of taking boats out into the open ocean for Marine Science lab and thinking, "who gets to do this for college credit?"

One of the great things about a small school is exactly that. It's small. You have a tight circle of friends, and you see a lot of the same faces over and over.

So of course I knew Tammy. Everyone knew Tammy.

Five words, "Way. Out. Of. My. League."

She was hands down one of the most beautiful women at Coastal (and she was a Marine Science major...beautiful AND smart!). I knew who she was, but I never thought she'd ever talk to me. I was a pot-smoking nerd. I had a computer and I spent the previous summer following the Grateful Dead around. I wrote programs at night... Shit, I had a modem and a comic book collection.

But that day... I remember that day like it was yesterday. I can still close my eyes and see her sitting at the table in the student center. She was sitting with her Sorority Sisters (Tammy was Social Chair... naturally), one of which was in my Microbiology class. It was before class and I was killing time, so I sat down to talk to Lisa.

We met. We talked. I made her laugh.

A little while later, in class, I found out from Lisa that she asked about me after I left, "Really?"

That was all it took.

We started dating, it was my last semester in college, and the highlight was her Sorority's formal.

Because that was when I told her I loved her.

And I never stopped.

Do You Hear That Alexander Haig?!!

2010-02-08T16:57:00.003-05:00

Every so often Saturday Night Live hits one out of the park:

It Suddenly Hit Me Yesterday...

2010-02-07T15:31:00.002-05:00

I was watching Abigail and her mommy talking yesterday before her big birthday party. At one point the subject of "her baby sister" came up and it suddenly hit me like a tons of bricks.

"We're getting ready to welcome a new addition to our family, and this impending addition has no idea how much love already exists for her. She has no idea that there are three people that are preparing to welcome her into their lives without condition and she'll be loved beyond her wildest imagination."

There's something immensely powerful about that. Powerfully scary, powerfully gratifying...

But mostly powerfully exciting.

Reason #458,923 why Facebook sucks...

2010-02-03T11:28:00.007-05:00

Hey, can you guess how old I am? Can you guess what sex I am?

You know, data isn't just some pegs that you drop into holes. That's called "Mail Merge". Just because you can target me based on Age and Sex doesn't mean you need to be so fucking obvious about it.

Here's an idea. Be clever. Be engaging. Sit down and think about what you want your advertising to do and try to craft something that will cause your intended audience to notice.

Because you know what you're doing with this? You're ruining it for everyone else. Everyone else who might have a great product or service, and who could benefit from the power of a social recommendation is now being lumped in with piss poor, obtrusive, obvious, poorly crafted... shit... that only reinforces people's notion that Facebook Advertising is a worse idea than "New Coke".

Seriously. Does anyone even think this is remotely effective?

What happened to creativity? And no, not "design".... remember, execution can be creative too (In fact, I would argue... and perhaps I will in another blog post... that execution HAS to be creative now, more than design.).

Forget that one at your peril.

Here's An Interesting Idea...

2010-02-01T12:32:00.003-05:00

I was watching "RockNRolla" and "Layer Cake" this weekend (Great movies, by the way. I'm in a "British Crime" phase now and I'm overdosing on Guy Ritchie and Daniel Craig) and I started thinking about something.

What would the soundtrack to my life be?

It really resonated with me, because as I drove around this weekend I couldn't stop thinking about it. I started to become obsessed with the idea of putting together a "Soundtrack" to my life. You know, imagine your life were a movie, and the pivotal scenes of your life needed background music. What would the songs be?

I've already decided that mine is a box set. It's way too big and eclectic for one CD, so I'm starting to gel around the idea of a 4-CD box set. Something like a cross between "The Breakfast Club", "Platoon", and "Weird Science". I already see lots of 80s punk and new wave, a good selection of vintage "San Francisco Summer of Love", an obscure set list from the early 90s Grunge years living in Seattle, and a healthy dose of Hip Hop and Lollapalooza acts.

Should be a fun exercise.

So what about you? What would the soundtrack to your life look like?

Oh, and by the way, I'm going to need a copy of Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme...

The Worst Feeling in the World...

2010-01-29T09:56:00.003-05:00

You know which one I'm talking about. It's the one where you're on a rubber inner-tube, and you're just floating down the river of life. You can't control anything and you're just bobbing along, waiting for a rock, or a half-submerged branch to come along and dump you into the icy-cold water where you'll surely drown.

Well fuck that.

I'm paddling.

It's A Girl!

2010-01-27T12:24:00.004-05:00

Long time no see!

I'll blog more about that tomorrow, but for now I have the pleasure of sharing the best news:

We're having a GIRL!

That's right, I just got back from the Ultrasound and it's official, we're having a baby girl on June 4th.

I know I've written a lot about happiness, and about how my life changed so much last year, but this was just the icing on the cake. Of course I knew last year (2009) that we were pregnant, which was why our New Year's Eve celebration was so... well... celebratory, but we wanted to wait until everything was hunky-dory before "announcing" it and so here we are!

No idea about the name yet, but I can't tell you how excited we are that Abigail is going to have a little sister. All she's talked about lately is helping mommy change diapers, teaching her little sister what not to be scared of (mostly "unders, lightnings and rain") and sharing. So imagine how happy we were that tonight at dinner we get to break the news to her that she's going to have a little baby sister!

You know, it's hard to imagine being any happier than I am right now.

Miles to go before I sleep... (Actually, four to be exact)

2009-12-31T17:08:00.003-05:00

January 5th of this year I got on a bike for the first time in ages. I rode indoors on rollers, and I rode 7 miles.

It took me 35 minutes.

I nearly died.

When I got off the bike, I thought that if I averaged about 5 miles a day this year, I'd be able to finish the year with about 1825 miles under my belt, and I'd consider that quite the accomplishment.

Today I hopped on the bike to ride a quick 4 miles. I wanted to end the year on a round number, and when I was done with my 4 miles, my total odometer read 4,600 miles. That's more that twice was I was hoping for. That's an average of 12.6 miles every day this year.

But here's the cool part. I didn't ride every day this year.

In fact, I only rode 228 days this year. That means that every day I rode, I rode an average of 20.175 miles.

I'll take that, thankyouverymuch.

For 2010? I'm gonna try and exceed that by 25%. I think that's a nice, modest goal. That puts me this time next year blogging about riding 5,750 miles for the year.

I'm gonna enjoy tonight with my family, because tomorrow I've got some riding to do.

Happy New Year.

P.S. It's going to be a lot easier this coming year riding a Madone... I'm just sayin'

Hey, you wanna contact me? Text me? Call me?

2009-12-28T16:50:00.003-05:00

Google Voice, daddy-o. Here's how you do it.

You call 916.91-JEFFS or text the same number. I've got a Google Voice account, and dammit, I need to use it. If you're not on Google Voice, go get you an account, or better yet, text me your email address, who you are, and I'll send you a Google Voice invite. I've got like, 3 of them. You can pick a number, send and receive SMSes, etc, and it won't eat into your existing data plan. I don't care where you are, Oregon, California, Denmark. Just hit me up at that number and I'll hit you back.

I mean, how cool is it to have your name as your phone number?

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-23T14:56:00.007-05:00

Wow. What a truly amazing year. If you had told me this time last year that my life would be this good and I'd be looking back on a year this personally rewarding, I would've offered you $150 for the weed you were smoking.

Of course the most obvious, superficial thing is the weight loss and subsequent lifestyle change, but it goes much deeper than that. It's about changing your life. It's about seeing that you have the power to change everything about who you are and what you represent. It's about looking straight in the mirror and saying, "Oh yeah, we're going to change this. We're going to change all of this, and we're going to be happy and fulfilled." and then going out and doing it. It's about realizing what you have in front of you: A beautiful, smart, loving, supportive wife who really does love you unconditionally, and a daughter who doesn't even know what "conditions" are and only has the purest form of love to give. It's about making positive changes every day you're alive & walking and choosing to enjoy life. Choosing to LIVE life and not merely be content with life living you. It's actually moving your arms as you go down the stream and changing the course of your journey rather than simply floating along, taking whatever life hands you and thinking that's all there is.

There's a lot out there, and all I had to do was grab it, and it became all mine... and it didn't cost me a cent.

I'm better this year. I feel better, I think I look better, I think I act better, and I think I love better, and nobody else gave it to me but me.

I'm happy, and that's all there is to it.

I hope you're happy too, and if you're not, just make yourself happy. It's easy. Nobody else can change your life but you, and it only takes the simple act of waking up every day and deciding that you're going to be happy, and you're going to live the absolute fucking shit out of life.

Because life is good.

Merry Christmas.

reBlog from fooducate.com: “Less Bad” is “Good” in Bizarro World

2009-12-20T10:39:00.002-05:00

Excellent Article today on Fooducuate:

Well versed, intelligent, thoughtful and well intentioned health and nutrition professionals who have latched onto a notion that must warm of the heart of Big Food executives the world over – that less bad is in fact good.fooducate.com, “Less Bad” is “Good” in Bizarro World | Fooducate, Dec 2009

I couldn't agree more. It's baffling. You should read the whole article.

Merry Christmas from the Small family

2009-12-15T19:28:00.000-05:00

My wife loves to write up a little Christmas newsletter every year and I always enjoy reading her perspective on the past twelve months. This year I thought I'd let her have a spot here and reprint her musings:

Tammy Small - Special Guest Blogger

Dear friends and family, I told myself that I wouldn’t do a newsletter this year, but the past year was such a blessed one for us that we wanted to share a bit of it with you!

Abigail is nearly 4 years old and continues to bring us so much joy. She has been attending Montessori school since January 2007 and her development and socialization has been amazing. We are so grateful that this school is just around the corner from our home and that she loves the Director (her teacher) and family so much!

During the summer of 2008 we took our first family vacation to Disney World and Sea World in Orlando and we had such a wonderful time watching her enjoy herself and relaxing at the Blue Water Resort where we stayed. In February I was sent to Orlando for a meeting so I took advantage of that and brought Abby and my mom down with me to squeeze in a visit to Disney again! She loved it! While we didn’t take a family vacation this year with Abby, Jeff and I did vacation to Chicago for a week to attend Lollapalooza in Grant Park and we had an awesome time! Chicago was a beautiful city to visit, the food was spectacular and the lineup at Lollapalooza this year couldn’t have been better! Maybe when Abby gets bigger we will take her with us because she loves music as much as we do.

With the end of the year approaching, I have to brag about Jeff and the tremendous commitment he has made to live a healthy lifestyle. Since Christmas 2008 Jeff has lost 70 pounds and kept it off with a regimen of cycling (4800 miles this year) and healthy eating! At this year's Heart Walk, he was awarded the American Heart Association 2009 Lifestyle Change Achievement Award! He was also sponsored by his work, LHWH Advertising, and was accepted into the 2009 Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce Leadership Grand Strand program, which trains future leaders of the community. I am so very proud of him! As for myself, I am still employed with the University of South Carolina managing the environmental data and activities of the NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserve’s Centralized Data Management Office. I am thankful to work with such wonderful people and work in a field that is so important amid the global climate crisis we are all facing (Ed. Note: I couldn't possibly be any more proud of the work my wife does).

Lastly, I want to update you on the loss of a beloved family member, our Shar Pei, Chelsea. She died suddenly in October at the age of 10 and is now in dog heaven. Not a day goes by that we don’t think of her and miss her presence, especially Abby.

In closing, we wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and hope that each of you and your families stay safe, healthy and happy in the coming year!

Love, Jeff, Tammy, and Abigail

Oh, I'm going to write a LOT more about this, but here's what I need now...

2009-12-14T11:03:00.003-05:00

Don't worry. My latest decision is actually going to be the focus of a LOT of upcoming blog posts as I work my way through this, but yeah, I'm moving over to PHP from ColdFusion after almost 15 years as a ColdFusion developer. There are a LOT of reasons why I'm doing it, most of which I'm going to try to capture in a bunch of upcoming blog posts, including blogging about what the experience of moving over is actually like, but for now, I really am looking at one thing, and one thing only: An IDE.

I haven't been a huge Eclipse user, but I'm familiar with it, in a more, "hey, I know you, I have some friends who talk about you a lot" kind of way. For those that aren't familiar with me, or live under a rock, I'm the lead-developer-slash-digital-specialist-slash-interactive-director at an Advertising Agency. As such, my whole world of development experience tends to be on the "design implementation" side of development. I create boutique websites for clients that are more creative and marketing solutions driven. I don't create intranet applications, or enterprise applications. I haven't had much use for Flex (More on that later) and the Flash Remoting work I've done over the last decade could best be described as "Here's what we were able to sell the client, given their budget and marketing needs".

I started developing web applications using ColdFusion around 1995-96 and started with HomeSite. Once Macromedia entered into a licensing agreement with Allaire and started licensing a copy with Dreamweaver, I started using both Dreamweaver and Homesite. Around 1999 Dreamweaver became "Dreamweaver UltraDev" and after attending the Max Conference that year, I switched over to using Dreamweaver for all of my development and in 2001 when Macromedia acquired Allaire, that was all I needed to cement Dreamweaver as my principle IDE. I never looked back, and never needed to.

Now, I'm ready to move on.

I develop mostly (okay... exclusively) on the Windows side using a MacBook pro that's running BootCamp. I've owned my MacBook now for about four years and have honest-to-God NEVER booted into Macintosh. I probably boot up in Mac OS about two times a year...if that.

HOWEVER, part of the process of moving over is going to be re-learning how to develop web apps on the Macintosh. As my college friends can attest, I was the first Macintosh user on the block, the ONLY person at my college who actually OWNED a Macintosh, and all of my Biology Undergraduate work was done exclusively on a Macintosh. When I went back to college to get a second degree in Computer Science, I went back AS a Macintosh developer, and convinced my professor to let me turn in work using CodeWarrior.

Then it happened. I had to take Assembly.

Once I walked down that path, I never came back, having purchased a Toshiba Laptop running Windows 98 in order to do my Assembly assignments. My conversion to the Dark Side was complete.

As a result, here we are over a decade later, and I work in an Ad Agency as the ONLY Windows machine in the building (well... my department is windows-based) surrounded by Macintoshes. You can only imagine the Sisyphusian life I lead constantly pushing that boulder up endless hills.

Okay, so where does that leave me? And why do I need you? I want a new IDE. I want a cross-platform IDE that runs on Windows and Mac, is FREE, open source, and plays well with PHP and MySQL. Ideally, it'd also be best friends with CSS and have a "design mode" but that's less of a requirement than playing nice with PHP in a cross-platform kinda way. I'd like to set up both my Windows side and my Mac side as almost "mirrored" development environments and as seamlessly as possible, move between the two. I really want to do most of the work/learning on the Macintosh side, but I have legacy work in place that uses SQL/ColdFusion that I'll have to be able to get in and work on so I'd like to be able to slowly integrate PHP and MySQL solutions in an easy, somewhat effortless way.

So here's what I want. Turn me on to some IDEs and let me know if you have any recommendations. I'm tempted to try Eclipse as my solution. Do any of you out there use Eclipse for PHP/MySQL development? If so, do you like it? Hate it? What else would you recommend?

My time line for this isn't really compressed in any way. I'm meeting with a colleague on December 31st to sit down and set up my Macintosh side as a working development environment, and after the start of the year, I'll be programming in earnest. Right now I'm just reading, looking for PHP references, and learning a little bit about MySQL.

So hook me up interwebs! Turn me on to a good IDE!

Gretchen, baby. Come back!

2009-12-09T06:54:00.006-05:00

Hilarious clip, but the point remains. Why feign ignorance in order to "connect"? Do you think the audience for Fox is fruit that hangs THAT low on the tree? Do you think other women admire a woman who "stashes her IQ in an offshore account"? Is this Fox's idea of what news should represent? The lowest common denominator?

By the way, the "denominator" is the one on the bottom. You know, in case you had to "google it", Gretchen.

"Could anything be more cowardly and contemptible?"

2009-12-07T14:21:00.003-05:00

Christopher Hitchens is my hero.

I see him as a sort of intellectual heir apparent to Hunter Thompson. Hmmm... so then does that make Slate the new Rolling Stone?

Only Hunter could've honed in on the danger of Palin's brand of populism in such a brutally honest (yet deliciously entertaining) fashion. God Bless him.

(I really hope I don't have to explain the wonderful irony of "God Blessing" Christopher Hitchens. Come on people... I don't want to have to work at this...)