Core Dump

The crisis at hand

2008-09-24T09:59:00.002-05:00

Ok, so I don't know all that much about everything going on in the financial sector, the root cause of the problem, or how to solve it, but there are a few things about what's been going on the past few weeks that kind of bother me.

First, I don't trust this plan by Sec Treasury Paulson. It just doesn't smell right to me. He's claiming that the reason why Merrill, Lehman, AIG and all these banks failed is because they have all this worthless derivatives paper that is based on mortgages that people have stopped paying. So the solution he proposes is for the taxpayers to buy up this "worthless" paper at a price that is supposedly fair to both parties so that the companies can have enough capital to lend out and go about conducting business as usual. Now like I said, I'm no expert, but if all these smart financial people can't put a good price on it to enable the companies to work the situation out themselves, then why should the government be doing it? As I see it, they'll either end up overpaying or underpaying.

Now if they overpay, that means the U.S. government (the taxpayers) end up losing money on this deal, and I'm not a fan of that, obviously. But if they underpay, then the companies won't have enough capital to sustain themselves anyway and they'll still fail. If by some chance the government is able to set a price that everybody thinks is fair, then why should the government have to commit any money at all? If people know what a fair price is, then they'll be able to make their own deals without our involvement. So why do they need $700 billion again?

Second, as I understand it, all this paper that these companies are holding and can't get rid of is essentially the right to receive money from payments that people make on their mortgages. The problems started because people got mortgages that they couldn't really afford, so now they can't make the payments and the banks end up foreclosing on houses that nobody wants to buy (I'm going to put aside whether the blame for these mortgages lies on the people that agreed to them or the people that were pushing the mortgages, both sides should share plenty of blame).

So if the paper is worthless because people can't/aren't paying their mortgages, wouldn't helping people restructure their mortgages in a way that is bearable for them solve all the problems? Less people losing their houses, more mortgages being paid on time, and so then shouldn't the value of the derivatives rise as well? I understand some money would eventually be lost, since the home prices would fall, but I see no reason why people that bought the houses (and end up getting their mortgages restructured) shouldn't take a little bit of a loss because they can't sell them for a profit, and the companies that sold these mortgages shouldn't take a loss by having the value of the instruments drop and be worth less in the long run. Unless that kind of adjustment happens things will just remain artificially high and invite another crisis somewhere down the line.

I don't know if this analysis is overly simplistic, but it makes some sense to me. I don't see why such a big deal should be made about saving these specific companies. Let them declare bankruptcy and let other companies pick over their carcasses. I mean, this country is supposed to be about capitalism and creative destruction right? So let it happen. I'm just getting flashbacks of the Patriot Act when somebody from this administration comes in front of Congress and says the proposed bill must be passed immediately otherwise there will be dire consequences. I think things will be fine until January 21. I just don't trust Democrats to have the backbone to stand up to be steamrolled, especially during election season.

Connectedness

2008-04-23T17:22:00.002-05:00

It's kind of weird. I'm sitting here at my computer at work, and for a span of maybe 15 or 30 minutes, I've gotten no emails (work or personal), no IMs, no text messages, no phone calls, no new articles or posts popping up in my feed reader, no messages or status updates on twitter or facebook, and I don't even hear anybody walking around outside my office. It's kind of creepy. I keep sitting here thinking, that there has to be something going on in the world or with somebody I know right now, so why haven't I got any notification at all about it?

So what do I do with such a nice little moment of peace and quiet and absolute silence? I go write a blog post. Go figure.

La-Di Da-Di

2008-04-19T16:53:00.001-05:00

Why do you go out to clubs? What exactly is it that makes you want to
get dressed up and go out on the weekends (or whatever weekday you
feel like getting out the house)?

A conversation that I had today made me start asking that question
again, because I have no idea how most people would answer it. Most
days I can't come up with a good answer myself, which is a big part of
the reason why I don't really go to stuff like that very often. The
few times I do, it usually has something to do with my friends. Either
they're in town visiting and want to go out, or I'm in town and it's
the only way I can see all of them. Other than that, I struggle to see
the point, and I honestly want to know why people do it, because at
times it almost seems like it means that there's something wrong with
me that I'm 28 and rarely have any desire to go kick it at a
lounge.

IRONY WINS!

2008-04-16T14:57:00.002-05:00

This picture says it all

How gracious of you....

2008-04-02T23:21:00.003-05:00

Every now and then I come across something that just makes me laugh out loud Today it was this. Go check out the article, it's pretty short.

Don't tell me that didn't make you chuckle a little bit. The tone of the article (blog post, actually, I guess) is what really kills me though. This woman worked stocking shelves for however long, had a terrible accident and "lost much of her memory and ability to communicate." She gets a very modest settlement and then the company tries to get back the money paid for medical bills. What idiot insurance company bureaucrat said to himself, "yeah I know she can't work again and only has $270,000 to care for herself for the rest of her life, but she should give back that $470,000 that we spent on her!" But whatever, I can even allow that people who win big settlements might have to pay back the insurance company (even though taking care of shit if something happened to her is the whole reason she was paying for insurance). What kills me is that they are trying to spin it like it's such a benevolent action by the company. No, no it's not some great act by them. The only reason they backed off is because they were starting to draw the wrong kind of attention, the kind that might stop bullshit like that in the future. They don't deserve any credit.

I won't get into her personal injury lawyer and how she only got a few hundred grand for an injury like that. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

An open letter to black men

2008-01-29T10:27:00.000-06:00

Brothers, I know how hard it is to get them waves correct, but please, do me a favor and stop whipping out your brushes on the train, in the Corner Bakery, and generally in all public places just so you can get a few extra brush strokes in. You look ridiculous. And young. Take it to the bathroom and handle that, if you must. Thank you.

- Your boy E

The Main Ingredient

2008-01-28T20:41:00.000-06:00

The past few months I've been trying to figure out what exactly makes me really love an album. I'm looking for the right word to describe that special something that makes me keep bringing that album back out and bumping it. Right now the best word I can come up with is that my favorite albums are always "coherent." To me it's like saying that the album speaks with one voice. Instead of a jumble of tracks coming at you from different angles, somehow the artist managed to get out the ideas they wanted, AND chose the right music to go along with those ideas AND put them in the right order, no filler. No matter how many albums that artist puts out, when you hear a certain song, you know exactly which album it was on, because all the songs on that album sound like they just belong together. No amount of skits or proclamations about how an album needs to be listened to as a whole can make an album feel coherent.

When I think through all of my favorite albums, almost all of them have that kind of coherence. Here's a brief selection, in no particular order:

Marvin Gaye - What's Going On?
One of my very favorite albums. The way the beat changes slightly to flow into the next song never ceases to amaze me.

Nas - Illmatic
Wow, steady rotation for this one since 1994. I could probably recite every word from it in my sleep.

Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
I really gotta thank smokingsection.net for putting me on to her in the beginning of last year. For me, this was the best album of 2007. I don't know if a week went by that I didn't listen to it at least once. For years, whenever I was in a bad mood, I put on the two albums I already mentioned, one after the other, and by the end of Illmatic, everything seemed much better. I had to add this album to those two. Now I just put all three on repeat. Get off them drugs Amy.

Little Brother - Getback
I was really surprised by how much I liked this album. I mean, I liked their other two albums, but not on the same level as this one. Maybe my second favorite album of 2007. Gonna be on the playlist for a long time.

D'Angelo - Brown Sugar
His version of Cruisin' is easily one of the best remakes I've ever heard.
Close runner up: Voodoo

ATCQ - The Low End Theory & Midnight Marauders
Bonded with one of best friends because of Low End Theory. I'm convinced Midnight Marauders fits any situation.

The Roots - Illadelphalflife & Things Fall Apart
Not only do they fit internally, I always think of these two albums together.
Close runner up: Game Theory

The Pharcyde - Labcabincalifornia
"Yaaaaaaaaay _________!" I can't believe this album is so heavily slept on.

Outkast - ATLiens
These songs all feel like they had to be together on this album. Haunting.
Close runner up: all of their other alums. The actual ones, not Idlewild and The Love Below/Speakerboxxx

Bob Marley - Catch A Fire
Probably belongs with the first three albums, but I listen to it often enough anyway.

Jay-Z - Reasonable Doubt & The Blueprint
Don't care what anybody says, American Gangster was good, but a lot of those tracks could be on any Jay-Z album. I don't feel the same about the tracks on these albums.

Do any of you feel me on the coherence thing and feel the same about some of these albums? I have more I would probably name, but this is a start.

- E

Does a Plaxo-Google combination make sense to anyone else?

2008-01-23T11:45:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I know that everybody has some kind of "Google should buy X company, what's wrong with those guys!?" opinion, but I still would like to add my $.02. To that end, a couple of weeks ago news popped up that Plaxo was putting itself up for sale (see here for more). That news (and some updates to it) got me thinking, it would be great (for me at least) if Google actually went and bought Plaxo.

I remember Plaxo from a few years back when it started. I think they were trying to market themselves as an online backup for all your addresses or something like that, I'm not sure. It seemed like everybody knew about them because once you joined, if you didn't pay really careful attention to all the choices and check boxes, they would end up spamming everybody in your address book. I remember getting several emails from the service, followed by apologetic emails from friends that vowed never to use it again (though to be fair, my girlfriend said all you had to do was pay attention and there was no problem -- but who pays attention when something is installing, you're just clicking yes until it finishes, right?). Recently, after hearing that they cleaned up some of their annoying ways and were trying to reposition the company as a social network, and after some prompting, I signed up. Honestly, I haven't had much use for it yet. I have it keeping in sync with my contacts from Address Book (the program), but I already keep those contacts in sync with my phone, and I back up my computer pretty regularly, so I don't really worry about losing any info (sorry to all those people I told that I lost your info, you were just a victim of some regular pruning). It's nice to have people's contact info constantly up-to-date as they change it, but I don't really talk to any of the people in my address book that use it anyway. All of the social networking aspects of it are just lost on me, because I just don't see the point -- I already have myspace and facebook. I don't want to keep tabs on everybody in my contact list like that, and I certainly don't want all of them keeping track of me. Plenty of them are just work contacts that I would like to keep as far away from my personal life as possible (something Google should keep in mind as well). Right now Plaxo is just sitting there, using up processor space on my computer.

I use Google's products pretty extensively though, and one of the glaring problems that connects all these services is that the contact management sucks on all of them. This is the case even with the product where contact management would matter the most -- Gmail. They rolled out some new updates to the contact manager in Gmail recently, but honestly, it still sucks. I hate that it automatically adds everybody I email to my contacts, which has had the effect of making me give up and stop bothering to prune the list anymore, since it'll just get messy again in a few weeks. The unpredictability, with some addresses showing up in Gmail, but not showing up when I want to email a story to someone in Reader or share a document, and showing up in a different, seemingly random, order each time, is irritating as well. And, (probably a good thing because of gripe #1, now that I think about it) it doesn't sync with addressbook, all I can do is upload new contacts one by one. It would be nice to add an address to my phone, sync it with my computer, and have all my contact info living in perfect harmony. The extra step of explicitly adding it in Gmail is getting to be too much for me.

Google buying Plaxo would help me out a lot with this whole contact management thing. I recently signed up for GrandCentral (another Google service), and I have no desire to import all my contacts into it, so I'm just doing it one by one, as I need them. Having Plaxo be the back end to GrandCentral and every other Google app immediately shores up this glaring weakness in Google's products. Plaxo's sync service seems to work pretty well. I don't know if Google has any pressing need for Plaxo's 20 million (according to the company) subscribers, but it seems doubtful, since I thought the number of Gmail users was well past 50 million (I may be making that up, couldn't find a link for it) and on its way to catching up with Yahoo!'s 200+ million. There is also bound to be some overlap between Plaxo and Gmail users, but imagine how much that could help grow the GrandCentral service if all of a sudden Google has some pretty detailed (and constantly updated) contact information from each one of those subscribers. That would be much better than Google's own mish-mash of email addresses that you only ever sent one message to and contact info that is only filled in every now and then. Makes it very easy to offer all of those people a permanent number with GrandCentral, doesn't it? I could be wrong, but I think it could integrate quite well. Is it that Plaxo is asking for too much money? I'm not a financial guy, so I can't analyze it very well from that standpoint, but from strictly a product/technological standpoint, I think the two could be better than the sum of their parts.

Full disclosure: I own some shares of YHOO in my retirement account and about $1.50 of GOOG as well. Yeah, I know, I'm practically Warren Buffett.

Back to Black

2008-01-22T11:25:00.001-06:00

Ok, so I have definitely been slacking in the posting department for quite some time now, but with the new year upon us and 28 years behind me, I'm trying to refocus and do some of the things I keep paying lip service to but never quite end up finishing. So expect my number of overall posts to increase this year. You can also expect them to start addressing some of my interests a little more. Yes, that does mean I'm going to start talking about technology more. But it wouldn't be me doing it if I didn't try to make things a little more unnecessarily complicated. SO, if you don't feel like hearing all that technology stuff, then go ahead and continue checking the blog on myspace. That'll keep just having all my random thoughts whenever I manage to get them to coalesce into coherent sentences. If you want to get everything -- random thoughts and other, more business/technology oriented thoughts -- then you need to check out littlelazer.blogspot.com. If you happen to be one of those odd people that only want to hear the technology stuff, then you need look no further than thetechlean.blogspot.com, because that will have all you need.

There you have it. Hopefully all of you will only go to littlelazer.blogspot.com so that you can see (and comment) on all of it. But at the very least there should be something for everyone. Hope I see a comment from you soon.

- E

Counting Thought

2007-09-26T19:42:00.000-05:00

I first thought of this almost a month ago, but I'm just now getting the time (or rather, making the time) to write it down. Luckily it stuck with me and I didn't forget it in the meantime.

So a good while back (back when she was still my girlfriend), one of my ex's went away for the summer, travelling abroad. Of course when she came back, she came bearing gifts -- several of which were for me.

I open the first gift: a club soccer team jersey! Wow, real dope gift. I later found out that it's basically the most popular team in the country. I'm a big soccer fan, so of course I love it.

I open the next gift: the country's national soccer team shorts and the Olympic volleyball team jersey (it was difficult to find a national soccer team jersey). Nice, I really like watching that country's team play. I probably would have ended up trying to buy that stuff myself over the Internet at some point -- ok maybe not a
volleyball jersey, but the volleyball jersey was nice, and besides, it's the thought that counts, right?

On to the next gift (yes, 3 gifts, crazy nice and unnecessary, AND she got my brother something too): a hat and scarf with the logo of the same club team from gift 1.
--Ummmm, ok. Kinda odd, since I already got two really good soccer/sports-related gifts, but whose turning up their nose at more gifts, right? What kind of gift snob does that, right?..........right?

These three gifts made me couple of different ways. The majority of me was just happy I got some gifts from another country -- after all, I'm not 100% ungrateful bastard. But then there was this other nagging thing in the back of my mind that I couldn't make go away.

Disappointment.

Here's my girlfriend. Supposed to know me better than anyone else. She goes away and all she brings back is a bunch of soccer-related stuff? Is that really all that I'm about? Is that really all she gets from me? I could've sworn I had other interests. I like art, I like music, I like computers, gadgets and technology. What about that stuff? Anything else?

Basically I was disappointed because those gifts just made me feel simple and one-dimensional. It was an even more bitter pill to swallow because I always fancied myself a jack of all trades -- someone that could do anything well if I felt like it. A young Gordon Parks or something like that. And just like that, reduced to sports.

Fast-forward to early September, 2007. Cascais, Portugal, tail end of a great 2 week vacation with my girlfriend. I'm taking a shower (come to think of it, most of these posts come to me while I'm in the shower), going over the past 14 days in my head -- thinking about where we went, what we did, and what we bought. Specifically, I started thinking of the stuff I had bought for myself. And at that point I realized that, somewhere along the trip I unwittingly decided what my personal souvenir from every city on this vacation (and probably all future vacations) was gonna be -- club soccer jerseys.

Hmmm. This is surprising.

So was I just being wack there? Was she just able to see right through me and figure out exactly what I didn't even know I wanted, years before I could figure it out on my own? Or did she just not know what else to get me? I can't let myself think I was completely wrong. But that was definitely an interesting turn of events.

Who really C.A.R.E.s?

2007-08-27T20:46:00.000-05:00

I was reading this article a week or so ago in the New York Times about aid organizations in Africa. Basically the gist of the article was that this big African hunger relief organization, C.A.R.E. has decided to forgo millions dollars of money, and a bunch of other organizations were (lamely) trying to defend their refusal to make the same choice.

I apologize for waiting so long to write this that the article is no longer available on the times website, cause it was a good article, (here's the Time.com article about it). I would put up a link to a pdf with the full article, but I'm fairly sure that would be illegal (if you really want to read it, let me know, I'm sure I know somebody that pays for Times Select). The way I understood it, the way things were currently working was that the US government would buy all the surplus crops from US farmers. Then, they would give the grain or whatever other crops to these aid organizations. The aid organizations would then sell that food in the African countries in order to generate funds that they use for their operations.

So according to that article, C.A.R.E. is the largest single recipient of that kind of aid, and they turned it down because they felt that it was harming the very same thing they were supposed to be helping – the African economy. They felt that the system had a lot of inefficiencies (they only recouped 70-80 percent of what the US spent buying and shipping the food) and that it undercut the African farmers that were trying to sell their own crops but couldn't afford to sell it as low as the prices that C.A.R.E were selling it at.

This reminds me of an interview I read a while ago with this Kenyan economist (at least I think he was, my memory sucks) who was saying how the best thing all these developed countries could do for African countries was to just leave them alone, because their kind of help only really hurts the population and makes them more dependent. At the time I didn't really feel him, because i generally think that things are way more nuanced than people usually make them out to be, and situations dealing with countries and economies and the developed vs. developing world especially so. After reading this article though, I have to say that I am feeling his point, and I MAD respect C.A.R.E. for making this choice.

Let's look for a second at who benefits from this current arrangement: the U.S. agricultural businesses benefit, because this guarantees a floor on the prices for their goods, since the U.S. government will buy up any surplus they have; it's probably neutral for the government, because they are doing the buying and transport, but 180 million dollars is honestly like some spare change the government forgot in its pocket (the FY08 federal budget is 2.902 trillion dollars) and didn't care about, and it gets to look like it is doing a whole bunch to help starving Africans; it helps the aid organizations, because its basically the equivalent of donations and keep them in business, hopefully doing what their mission statement says; and it helps people that have enough money to buy the food; it also probably indirectly helps people that benefit from the relief organizations' services too.

The thing that made me start to question this arrangement came from the mouths of the people involved. Peep some of the quotes from other organizations:

“Sure it's self-interest if staying in business to help the hungry is self-interested,” said Avram E. Guroff, a senior official at ACDI/VOCA, which ranked sixth in such sales last year. “We're not lining our pockets.”

But while Catholic Relief Services and Save the Children, which ranked fifth last year in such sales, agree with CARE that the system is inefficient, they also say they will not stop converting American food into money unless Congress replaces the lost revenues with cash. They help poor people with the money, they say.

Those two quotes alone were enough to make me agree with C.A.R.E. I don't trust that these organizations don't even acknowledge the possibility that there might be conflict of interest for them. I think its fairly obvious that American organizations coming in, selling huge quantities of food at cheap prices might screw over the local farmers. In that first quote, it really sounded to me that this guy was hiding behind the people he was supposed to be helping and trying to make it seem like his organization's interest directly align with those of the people in the countries it operates in. Sure they would like to be able to buy food at reasonable prices, but that seems to pay no attention to sustainability. He completely dodged the question, in my mind. Nobody claimed he was trying to line his pockets, but he tried to make it seem like just because he was trying to help people, there was no way what he was doing could be wrong. I can't put my finger on exactly why, but that second quote just feels wrong, saying that well if they stop doing that, then they need to give us cash. Where did that sense of entitlement come from? These are charitable organizations, so they obviously survive on donations, but when you're that dependent on the government, whether you're a person, business, or organization, there is a problem.

As noble as the aims of these organizations seem to be, what happens to them if the people of the country can feed themselves? At that point, they're obsolete. On the other hand, as long as the people can't grow their own crops or develop businesses that would help their economy start to survive on it's own, those organizations have a purpose and there is a need for them to be there, collecting money. The fact that you have these huge agricultural businesses (let's not pretend these are poor individual farmers) and these charitable organizations all lobbying for the same purpose means that they basically can't lose. That's a lot of money lining government pockets, so at that point, I think whether or not it actually does these countries a disservice becomes practically irrelevant.

What C.AR.E. has decided to do instead is to find ways to help farmers and other people in those countries find ways to start their own businesses and develop markets for the products they can produce. I have to say, I have never been one to support unchecked capitalism, but over the past few years I have become a much bigger supporter of the free market (checked and stopped form its worst excesses by the government of course – we can all dream, right?). The idea of people selling their own crops and having their own self sufficient economy is way more appealing that these organizations depressing their growth.

Maybe that's an unrealistic ideal, because it requires a lot more intensive and personal work that just throwing money and food at people, and maybe a lot of people suffer in the mean time, while things get off the ground. But there has to be some kind of middle ground, that helps people eat right now, while at the same time working toward them no longer needing that help at some time in the future. Basically, I definitely fuck with C.A.R.E. now and will be donating money to them when I can afford to give to anybody, because that was a ballsy move, giving up a good chunk of their income because they felt it no longer aligned with their goals. I respect that.

- E

Home Ownership

2007-07-31T15:38:00.000-05:00

Someone forwarded me this NY Times article yesterday. Basically it has 4 or 5 stories of people/couples in New York City and what they went through in order to buy a co-op, condo, or house. Go ahead and read it, I'll wait................. Done? Ok.

I have no idea whether that article was supposed to just be informative, whether it was supposed to show how difficult it is to buy a place in NYC, or whether it was supposed to be some inspirational stories of how people managed to overcome the odds. I think it was supposed to be an inspirational story. If so, it failed.

Basically, that article gave me some serious doubts about moving back to NYC. I've been up in the air about that for the past few years, but that article put me on the non-NYC side of the fence for now. The type of deprivation and scratching and clawing they had to do really kinda sucks (except for the couple that quit smoking - that was good). And it's not like their self-imposed deprivation ended once they bought the house either, they still gotta make those monthly mortgage payments. They should do some follow-ups after a year. One person used her credit card to make up the last 6 grand she needed -- not exactly the best recipe for success, hopefully she manages to knock that debt out real quick. I want to find out what happens to her. I didn't have to go through anything close to that out here and honestly, if I had to do that kind of stuff at 25 to get a house, my ass would still be renting right now, until I fully appreciated the value of owning a house. I will freely admit, I'm just too lazy for that right now, even if it would encourage some good habits that I should have.

The article also confirmed something that I had been thinking about the difference between living here and living in NYC, because I always wonder how my friends there can afford stuff when it seems expensive as hell just to rent a nice apartment (unless you get lucky or know someone). I think I would be able to live in NYC on what I'm making right now, but the difference between living there and here is that here I'm actually able to save up money, not a whole lot or anything, but something. I'm already not the most fiscally sound person (steadily improving though) and I have a feeling that living there would just do me in. Maybe that's just cause I've spent just about the whole time I've considered myself an adult outside of the city though. If I was there I might have figured it out. There's also a difference between living in Manhattan and staying in BK, I guess. How do y'all NYC people do it?

- E

Tech Tips

2007-07-11T14:58:00.000-05:00

This is going to be an ongoing series of posts (I'm starting to get a lot of those already, aren't I?) with random tidbits I've picked up during my wanderings across the interwebs. Today I've got two things for you:

The first is one most people know, for switching between programs on your computer. Instead of going down to the menu and clicking on whichever program you want (among the ones you have open) hold down the "Alt" key and hit the "Tab" key. This allows you to quickly switch back and forth. If you have more than 2 windows open, you can keep hitting "Tab" to rotate between them. To move in the opposite direction, hold down "Shift" in addition to "Alt." When you find the window you want, let go of "Alt" (and "Shift").

The second is something I picked up at Lifehacker.com and is for those of you that are tired of having to remember (but eventually forgetting) passwords to stuff you sign up for. Instead of writing your passwords down, or using the same password for everything (dangerous, because if someone finds out that password they can get into all of your accounts) you can do this. First, come up with a 4 or 5 digit code (best if it's letters and numbers, but it can be all letters or all numbers if you want), I'll use "12345" for this example. Now, you alternate the digits of that code with the first 4 or 5 letters out the name of the website you're on in order to come up with your password. For example, your password for myspace would be 1m2y3s4p5a. Your password for gmail would be 1g2m3a4i5l, etc. You can do the first five letters of the website, the last five, the middle five, it doesn't really matter, as long as you're consistent. Then, instead of remembering all those passwords, you only need to remember your code and the fact that you use the first 5 letters in the website's name. Much easier, and your password for every website is still different, so if one is compromised you don't have to worry about changing the rest. It's also usually a much better password than what most people choose, which is a name, regular word, or birthday. You can still use the name, just now use it as your code.
A couple of caveats with doing things this way:

Yes, at first it will definitely take you a few seconds longer to type in your passwords, because you'll have to pause for a sec and think about it. But, that goes away once you get used to your code. And it's worth it, not having to worry about your bank account just because someone managed to get into your myspace account

If someone gets your passwords to at least 2 different sites, they can easily figure out your code and get into the rest (it's still better for you than if you use the same password everywhere though, then they only need one site).

Obviously, you still have to remember your code, but you're smart, I think you can manage that

That website has a lot of different tricks like that to simplify things, most with a technological bent. Check it out if you're into that sort of thing.

Your personal google

2007-07-11T10:57:00.000-05:00

I've always been the "technology guy" around my family and, to a much lesser extent, my friends as well. Like when it comes to almost anything that has wires and needs electricity, I've always been the person that was able to just fire it up and figure out how to use it. Nowadays, my affinity for technology manifests itself whenever somebody mentions a problem they are having, or an interest they have in something. I'm usually the guy that says, "Oh word, you should check out [insert random website that relates to what they were talking about]." The problem is, people seldom listen anymore (if they ever did). It's actually starting to get a little dispiriting. I'm not quite sure whether it's because I'm always talking about some new website, so after a while people start to tune out, or if they just don't feel like being bothered trying something new.

I fully understand that I have a much lower threshold for finding out about and signing up for these web services, so I mostly understand where my peoples are coming from. For me to sign up for something new, it only needs to have the potential of helping me do something easier in the near future (maybe a year or two - I'd like to know how to use it well by the time I need it). I think most other people will not bother signing up for something unless a few important conditions are met:

They have some immediate problem, and the website/service/whatever will solve that problem.

It is clear that the amount of time spent learning how to use the new thing well enough for it to replace whatever the old thing they were using will be more than made up by the time they will save by using the new thing.

It will not cause a major disruption to their routine in many other aspects of their life.

The last two factors may end up being more important or less important, depending on the severity of the problem, but that seems to basically be the formula.

There's nothing wrong with the utilitarian approach, most people don't have time for any more than that, but I do think you miss out. Part of the reason I want people to sign up for some of the same things I do is "The Network Effect" - the more people that use something, the more useful it becomes. An obvious example of this is email. If you're the only one with an email account, you have nobody to write to and it's pretty much worthless. But as your friends and family get email accounts too, then you have people to write, and people to receive messages from, and everybody else gets those same benefits. The network effect applies to almost everything on the internet, and many things off of it. Unfortunately, very few of the people in my social network have the time or interest to do anything past email. I'm shocked I got a couple of people to sign up for Twitter and last.Fm. I think I might have just caught them at a good moment in their busy schedules though.

The funny part about it to me, though, is that my friends and I do a lot of the same things that these services are made for. We send out text messages with random thoughts of ours to like 5 people at once all the time (most of which are relatively innocuous) so why not sign up to twitter so we can always see what's on each other's minds? We talk about new music and songs we've found, so why not sign up for last.fm so each of us can see what the others have been listening to lately? We send out long emails analyzing and complaining about stuff and reading the responses others send, so why not start a blog? I can see how they wouldn't want to add another account to check, another password to remember, and another website to bookmark, to their daily routine. And not everybody wants everybody else in the world to be able to see something they write/do. But on the other hand, I think we'd get a lot out of it, and a lot more out of each other.

So I don't know whether the problem is my failure to communicate the value of some things, their failure to see the value, or simply the lack of value in some services I frequent. But, I think my solution is going to be to both start recommending less, and to make a clearer and better case for why people should use some of the same things I do. It should help in a professional sense, because I think I'd like to recommend stuff to people for a living (that's all a consultant really is, right?), and it'll help in a personal sense, since maybe going more in-depth with fewer things will actually turn one or two more people to seeing things my way. Plus I can just talk about everything else here. We'll see how it turns out.

P.S. - Make sure you check out So The Days Go and The Thracian Drive. Good stuff.

Interwebs Irritations

2007-07-05T23:54:00.000-05:00

A couple of random things that annoy me about people and email:

People that use a work/ISP email address for personal stuff

hotmail

yahoo

gmail

BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy - use it

bcc

- E

I gotta know you now . . . . . . . .

2007-06-06T10:36:00.000-05:00

It's still kinda odd to me the way the internet can make you feel like you have some kind of connection with someone you've never met, or even had a conversation with.

I follow the twitters (that feels so corny to actually write) of this woman named Veronica Belmont. I heard of her because she is on this technology podcast that I used to listen to, but even though I stopped listening to the podcast, I kept following her blog. Now a blog is pretty personal, but I feel like following twitters is even more personal, because sending one is almost an impulsive act. It's whatever is on your mind at that second, whereas a blog is more thought out and considered.

An example: the other day Veronica sent out a twitter out about some random funny thing her brother said. Not worth a full blog post, but great for twitter. It's like what that person would say to you if you were standing next to them.

Reading what her and other people write and sometimes feeling like I probably know what they're like makes me wonder if reading all of the publicly accessible information about someone could really give you a pretty good picture of what someone is like. Like I wonder if someone went and googled my name, and then went and looked at the posts here on this blog, comments I've put on other people's Friendster, Myspace and Facebook pages(I know, the post-college social networking trifecta), the comments they've put on mine, my twitters, my bookmarks, my musical tastes, my photos (nothing there yet because I'm wary of putting pics of myself and my friends out into the interwebs - that may change once I get more comfortable with the idea) and, soon, my website (don't even bother clicking yet, got some other projects I have to finish first), and my daily reading (also nothing yet, just discovered that feature), would that person get a good sense of what I'm like as a person?

Of course I doubt even all of that info would show the whole picture. Most people would probably agree that their whole personality couldn't be captured just by looking at some of the stuff they put online, because there is so much more. Like if you looked at my interests I think you could almost confuse me with some young(-ish) white guy that lives in San Francisco. But even though you wouldn't get the complete picture, you'd probably still get a heluva lot.

Just a thought.

- E

Making sure I keep writing

2007-05-30T22:56:00.000-05:00

Ok so all those long-ass posts I've been writing take a while to come out because I need to find something I care enough about to start typing. in order to make sure I'm putting something up much more often (hopefully everyday) I added something to my myspace page (once I figure out how, I'll put it on the blogspot page too). It's this service called twitter. Basically you can post whatever is on your mind (in 140 characters or less) and anybody can see it. I did it because there are mad things that I think of during the day that I never write down or end up saying to anyone, and I'm real big on myself, so obviously I think everyone needs to know these things. Just another way for me to get the thoughts out of my head and onto the interwebs. If I write enough each day, I might just post it all as a blog entry that night. Maybe I'll even think something is interesting enough to eventually turn it into a full-fledged blog entry.

I figure this way, I can send out short stuff on twitter consistently, and then keep working on the medium and lengthy stuff in the meantime. Basically, it's all about keeping the fingers going with more material. You can go to twitter.com/littlelazer to get the feed too. So, keep checking in from time to time and see the little things that go through my head throughout the day. Hopefully it won't disappoint.

- E

The Business Side of Art

2007-05-10T14:27:00.000-05:00

I went to this website last night, and it kinda pissed me off a lil' somethin'. It's the website of this guy that travels around with Raheem Devaughn and paints while Raheem is performing. He probably did the artwork on that Raheem Devaughn link. I went to a concert a couple of months ago, and it was kinda dope to watch, cause he did a whole piece during the performance. Plus, I actually like his work.

But, even though I like this cat's art, going to that website definitely annoyed the shit out of me. The reason for that is because I hate it when people that I think are pretty talented in any artistic way (i.e. music, art, whatever) don't seem to pay as much attention to the business side of things. This could just be me and my non-artistic self hating and not thinking about how they want to devote all their time to creating the art (and making ridiculously gross generalizations, unsupported by any facts at all), but I don't really understand why, in so many cases, it always seems like people think business and art have to be mutually exclusive.

What I mean by that is, take a look at that guy's site. I visited it as a person that had seen his work before, learned about the site cause I cared enough to write it down when he said it, knew I liked his stuff, and would possibly interested in buying one if the price were right (which I doubted it would be, but hey, you never know). When I went to the site there was no way, that I could find, to actually buy one of his joints. You would think that, when you are trying to make a living selling something, you would make it as easy as possible for someone to buy it.

Even if there WAS a link somewhere on the site to purchase a piece, I didn't see it. It should have been somewhere that made it IMPOSSIBLE for me to miss. It should have been so prominent that I could go there and immediately see it. All I could see when I looked around were: a page with contact info and a mailing list that I wouldn't bother signing up for, and another page that required you to download some shit (that I thought that I already had on my computer and was unwilling to bother trying to download again, and I download everything, so I doubt less tech-savvy people would try) just to look at some of his works.

That website is straight out of 1997. All it does is present you with a couple of pages of information. I know that I place way more faith and confidence in the Interwebs (and technology in general) than most people, and my perception of what it can enable is a bit farfetched at times, but I think most people still underestimate it. For people trying to get their work out there and seen by people and make a living, the Internet is one of the best things to ever happen to them, because it both lowers the cost of self-promotion and makes it easy to do transactions.

He could pay $25/year and upload a picture of EVERY SINGLE PIECE he's ever done to a site like Flickr and EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD WITH AN INTERNET CONNECTION would be able to see them. No special software necessary, just a web browser. If he wanted to, he could sell large, glossy prints of his work in addition to the actual paintings.

Maybe some people would just save the pics off flickr and put em as their desktop background or print em out on their photo printer at home, but it wouldn't even matter if he missed out on those sales, because all the pics would still have his signature on them and act as free advertising when those people showed it to their friends. And no matter what, nobody can duplicate buying one of his actual pieces. Even if he made no money on everything else, it would STILL act as promotion for people to buy his artwork, because the more people that know about him, the larger his audience of potential sales. He can go to a site like Custom Ink and get his artwork put on whatever the hell he wants.

I don't know anything about the economics of art, so I dont know if maybe he wants to keep his stuff scarce and expensive, but shit, he could do a limited series of full paintings, a separate limited series for shirts, one for bags. The possibilities are damn near limitless. He could do a set that connected a bag, shirt, photo and painting through a common theme, in a way that would make people want to buy all 4 to get the whole story. I won't even get into the communication/blog issues, this post is already longer than I intended.

Sorry for the long rant, and I'm sure doing all that would offend the sensibilities of some true artists that have some vision for their art and think doing that stuff would be selling out in some way, or something like that, but I think that not doing stuff like that is just limiting yourself, and when you limit yourself you end up putting your future in the hands of others.

I need to hurry up and get my shit together and work on my execution of ideas so I can just be a consultant. Thoughts on making some money in music in a later post.

- E

P.S. - I must admit, I developed a lot of the ideas I talked about here based on the articles I read over at Techdirt that talk about how businesses need to react and adapt to change. They got some smart guys over there.

Legal Lessons for Life, Pt. 1

2007-05-03T02:33:00.000-05:00

I suppose that since I'm a lawyer I should start this out with some kind of disclaimer about this not being real legal advice, me not being your lawyer, and you getting a real lawyer before doing anything. So there you go, I have disclaimed, don't try to sue me or anything.

This is going to be part 1 of an ongoing series. Pretty much ever since I started law school, I've been coming across things, either in class or at work lately, that I feel most people need to know, and shouldn't have to pay back 6 figures of loans just to find out. So, I'm going to start writing about some of those things. Most of it is straight common sense when you think about it, but for some reason a lot of people never do. So don't ever say your boy E never did anything for you.

Today's lesson is mostly going to be on something called an advance fee loan scheme. Basically this is a scam where someone promises to make/give you some huge amount of money, but in order for him/her to do so, you have to send in some significant amount as a fee or down payment for the service. If this sounds familiar it's because there's probably an email sitting in your spam folder right now from a deposed nigerian dictator saying the same thing. The scam is so prevalent over there that everybody knows the criminal code for it and it's just referred to as a "419."

This kind of scam isn't new, it's just evolved over time. It was originally called the "spanish prisoner" scam. Now it's been updated to use the internet and email, but it's still basically the same. Believe it or not, people still fall for it, which is why you still get those emails. Think about it, if they send out a million emails, even if they only get a response rate of 1% (from those gullible people that are reading an email for the first time) it's still worth it to them because the cost of sending out a million emails is practically nothing.

Anyway, I'm don't really mean to go on talking about the 419 scams, because I'm sure you're just deleting those. Last week in the judge's courtroom, we had a guy on trial for a similar thing though. People with business ideas hooked up with this guy and his brother, usually through a friend, and he promised them that he could get them tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding in return for regular interest payments on the amount loaned out, as well as a small equity stake in the companies. All they had to do was send in a small upfront payment of $25,000 and he would hook them into an international network of banks distributing "humanitarian" funds that only a select few people had access to. Quite the load of bullshit there, but he ended up getting more than $300,000 from unsuspecting clients before the feds ended up tagging him with wire fraud (the jury found him guilty, quickly).

There are probably many many reasons this guy was able to get over like that on so many people. But there are a few things that stood out to me. I was sitting there listening to the victims' testimony and wondering how they could have ever thought this was legit, and I tried to come up with some warning signs/reasons the got taken like that. In my mind, these seem to be the two biggest factors.

Knowledge/Ignorance. Not everybody is familiar with certain types of financial transactions and terminology. Nothing wrong with that, but just because you don't understand something and someone else says they do, it doesn't mean that you should trust them with your money. This guy just strung together real financial terms and transactions to made up ways that didn't really exist, but sounded official enough, and people handed over their cash. If an opportunity presents itself for you to make some money, please just do some research on your own, or ask somebody else that knows about that type of stuff, and don't let anyone tell you that you can't do that (one aspect of these schemes is that they sign you to a non-disclosure form or tell you you'll be kicked out and lose your money if you tell anybody at all). If you still don't understand it, you probably shouldn't be giving that person your money anyway, even if it's legit. Also, check to make sure the person/company has the correct licenses/registrations.

Greed/Desperation. Bad combination, this one here. Some of the people felt like they wouldn't qualify for a traditional loan, but bottom line, most of these people got greedy. I mean come on now, one person said he was promised $210 million, and all he had to do was give his 25 grand and sign some stuff. I'm sure that huge amount of money staring him in the face, combined with low interest on the loan and a smaller equity stake than what venture capital investors would have asked for sounded like a great deal at the time. Maybe not so much now. Turns out they should've just headed to a community bank that works with small businesses. One guy lost some of his parents' retirement money.

Hopefully I don't paint too many legitimate businesses with this brush, because you could probably describe some perfectly legal businesses that sound like this. But basically, it seems like almost any deal where you have to cough up money upfront just to qualify for a loan or to be eligible to make some ridiculous amount of money in the future is AT LEAST a ripoff, if not an outright scam (I'll talk about those semi-pyramid schemes where you have to sell shit to your family and bring in people to work for you some other time). Don't let it happen to you people.

- E

Hancuffed By Expectations pt. 1

2007-04-30T00:47:00.000-05:00

I started this a while back, but it's been taking me so long to finish that I'm just gonna post it and hope it's a complete enough thought to get my point across. There might be future ones along the same train of thought, hence the pt. 1.

So I'm on Fergie's Wikipedia entry (don't ask - boredom can take you places you wouldn't normally go), and I see that she was on the show Kids Incorporated and in a group called Wild Orchid before she struck gold with the Black Eyed Peas. For some reason it was mad funny to me that she had been involved with those two things, and I made some remark to Sean about how so many famous people just kept trying and reinventing themselves and trying again until they finally come up with a formula to get them where they want to be. They really work hard at being famous. But, now I wondered which one of those was the real Fergie, cause it seems like a long way from Wild Orchid, which I imagine to be one of those angst-filled groups, to Fergilicious. Sean just said hey, maybe they're all her, just at different stages of development - a good point.

Him saying that reminded me of something I had been thinking about a while back about people trying to change. It seems like one of the most difficult and frustrating parts of a relationship (any relationship, not just the significant other type, but also familial relationships and friendships) is when you are trying to change and it feels like people are kind of holding you in place. I'm not even necessarily talking about a subjectively good/bad type of change, but maybe just doing something different from how you would normally do it. I think it happens because over time the people that have known you for a while tend to develop expectations about you - what you think about things, how you would react in certain situations, what you want to do, etc., and usually that's a great thing. Having that kind of familiarity leads to situations where something happens and you just look at each other and start laughing. But, other times it's not so great. I know every now and then I just feel restricted - like I can't do something different because people might not know how to react to it, or might look at me funny - whatever. There are definitely times when I don't even want so much as a comment about how I'm doing something different. With some things I'd just rather not get any acknowledgment at all that I did something that I wouldn't usually do

The perfect examples of this are my dealings with my mother. Basically, I'm fairly sure that my mother still thinks I'm the exact same person I was the last time I really lived with, and was fully dependent on. I'm talking 1997 here. Nevermind all my experiences in the intervening 10 years, I'm positive she still thinks of me as pretty much the same - at least, that's what her actions seem to tell me (you can always argue that I'm looking at her the same when she's changed, but I'll ignore that argument for now because I think you change a lot more between 17 and 27 than when you're reaching retirement age, and I also think I've tried to recognize any changes in her).

An example of the way she looks at me: she still thinks that I don't drink. At all. I admit, a large part of this misconception is due to my laziness. Every family function, when the champagne comes out, she'll be like "oh, don't offer him any, don't waste it, he doesn't drink." And I'll ignore just ignore what she said and take a pass on the liks, because it's easier and more comfortable than accepting it and having to hear comments/have a discussion with her about how and when I started drinking. Besides, I'm usually the one driving home anyway.

My mother is a more extreme example, because she just has something to say about everything. I know most of my friends and family aren't going to bother to say more than something small acknowledging it (if even that much) then keep it moving, unless it's a pretty significant change that deserves some kind of comment. I'm also sure some people don't consider what other people might have to say at all, but I think most people think about it to varying extents. Most of the time it isn't a big deal, and doesn't really affect what you're doing. But that kind of inertia preventing change is at its worst when you want to change and you're trying to change, but you are just so used to and comfortable with the relationship being a certain way for so long that you end up relapsing into the roles you usually play.

I've seen that happen with a lot of couples, where they just get way too set in dealing with each other in a certain way and playing the role they're been playing for a while. And it ends up getting to the point that the only way they can break out of that is by breaking up so they can change on their own and hopefully come back and be in a different position. After all, even if you want to change, if someone keeps treating you the same way as before its too damn easy to fall back into old habits. I'm always hoping I don't get stuck in any ruts like that with any other people I'm close to. Still trying to break some of those assumptions with my mother, but it gets tiring.

So coming back to Fergie for a sec, I wonder if all those people that were fans of Wild Orchid and loved her then are now rejecting her because they don't like the change. Or if maybe some of those fans have changed too and like her new music. I guess its possible that they could like fergilicious and still like whatever hit songs Wild Orchid had as well. And, I wonder what Fergie thinks of all the music she made with that group - if she still listens to it now and then.

So I guess besides just trying to change whatever things about myself, I probably need to make sure I'm doing a good job of letting the people around me change and not doing anything that would hold them back. Maybe at the next family event I'll take the champagne, and maybe when I do that, my mother won't comment on it. I doubt it though.

- E

Allow me to reintroduce myself . . . . .

2007-02-26T01:18:00.000-06:00

I read a lot of blogs. I would say it's probably too many, but I'd be lying. It's definitely too many. Far too many. It's basically just voyeurism. It's amazing because there is basically a blog about damn near any topic you are interested in. Some of them are people that just talk about their lives, which is cool to me, just seeing how other people live and what they think about the things they go through regularly -- a different perspective is enlightening sometimes. Some of them are there for when i need a laugh, sports info, a lot are about technology, whatever (in case you're wondering, this'll probably be all of the above). I skim and read the interesting posts and waste entirely too much of my time doing so.

I'm also terrible at keeping in touch with people (not you, of course, just everyone else). Atrocious would actually be a better word for it. Sad really, because as much as I don't like people in general, there are still a lot of people I do like. There are plenty of people I would want to keep in touch with, but I hate hate hate hate hate talking on the phone (unless it's you. If I'm talking to you, then I love talking on the phone). I basically have an unofficial 20 min. phone limit (for everyone else). After that it better be a helluva interesting conversation, 'cause between the hot phone making my cheek sweat (not pleasant, plus the screen gets greasy), my neck getting a cramp from being cocked to the side, and me thinking how many other things I can't do because I have to concentrate on the phone call, I sort of tune out a little. Only a little, but when you're talking on the phone even a little bit is probably noticeable. And that's what I do when I talk to my friends and family that I love to death. I would really much rather be talking to someone in person, because these telephone convos tend to be just a catch up on any big things that have gone on in the past week to month. You don't really want to start talking about how two family members and your favorite pet fish just died and you're filing for bankruptcy tomorrow. Or at least I don't, but maybe I'm weird like that. So I wait until I see people to really catch up, and if I don't see 'em, I don't really get to catch up. Unless of course they're on IM (gmail or AIM). If they're on IM and actually have time to talk every now and then, I'm golden, because who knows, between all the idle chatter a conversation might actually break out. Even text messages are enough, because it's not like you have to sum everything up in one conversation. Myspace and facebook fill in some of the holes too, I try and check out the bulletins every once in a while.

But in a perfect world, the thing I really wish would happen is for everybody I know to just start their own blog. I fully admit that I'm saying this for completely selfish reasons, but I can do that, because it's my blog. Don't you want that freedom? (hint, hint) It wouldn't even matter too much what the blog is about. Of course personal insights and all that would be great, but I wouldn't care, it could even be your joke of the day, stolen from another website (thief). So long as I could read it, see what other people wrote, and maybe leave a comment if the feeling strikes me, I'm cool. The connection is what's really important. I like connecting with people, and detest situations where I'm talking/communicating with someone but won't get that connection. That's why I only tolerate networking events. I don't get much of a connection with a quick conversation -- that ol' hi, what's your name, where did you go to school, what do you do for a living kind of chit-chat. Some people can do that, but I can't. I try to attend with other people that can. Phone calls are the same way, and I wouldn't have time to talk on the phone with all the people I want to keep in touch with anyway. The way I see it, making everyone I know blog would be the ultimate solution to my problem.

But since you probably won't blog, I'll just start blogging and hope you leave a comment every once in a while. It's still a connection, ya know?