rand9

Binary search in ruby, or, "Picking the right number, as quickly as possible"

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

So you're writing a parser in C that parses the lines of a file. The line you're parsing is made up of a 40 character key and any number of ip addresses after, space-separated. You need to know a max line length to read (because C is mean like that), but you're not sure how many ip's you can fit on a line for a given key.

Such was my case yesterday and decided to write a mini script in ruby to figure it out. My first stab was to iterate from 1 to 100 and checking the line lengths by literally building a line with x number of ip elements on the line. While the code was correct and produced the necessary information for the given inputs, it was horribly inefficient and so I decided to rewrite it to be smarter. Enter the Binary search algorithm.

Using the binary search algorithm, we take a lower and an upper bound of possible elements and try to quickly guess which number is the highest possible without exceeding the line limit. So here's the concrete data we know. The line format (as described above) will look something like this:

86f7e437faa5a7fce15d1ddcb9eaeaea377667b8 174.18.0.1 174.18.0.2 174.18.0.3 174.18.0.4 174.18.0.5 174.18.0.6

... with theoretically unlimited ips per line. The first value is a key we'll use to store the ips against in a lookup table, but don't worry about that right now. The key is generated using sha1 digesting, so we know it will always be 40 characters. The max length for any given ip address is 15 assuming all 4 blocks are at least valued at 100 (e.g. 100.100.100.100). Space-separating the key and x number of ips and your line length calculation is f(x) = kl + (el*x) + x where l is line length, kl is key length, and el is element length (ip address length). In other words, if we're testing 50 elements on the line, the line length would be 40 + (15*50) + 50 which equals 840.

Now that we can arbitrarily calculate the length of a line based on the number of ip elements we want to test, we can start "guessing". This isn't guessing at all, we just split our possible range in half and use the middle ground to test the possible length. In other words, if my initial range is 1..100 (read as "anywhere from 1 ip element to 100 ip elements"), then our first test value for x above would be 50, which if you remember produces a line length of 840. I assumed that I'd be okay with a max line length of 1000 characters, and so we assert that if len is less than the max, then we can use the upper half of the range boundary, or 50..100. If len was more than our max of 1000, we'd take the bottom half, or 1..50.

Using this technique recursively we can whittle down to the exact number of ip elements that can be inserted on a line before we go over the limit of 1000 characters on the line, which happens to be 60. You know you're done checking when your range is only one element apart, in this case 60..61. With my first solution to iterate up from 1 to 100, this meant we had to check 61 times before we knew we were over the limit. With this new range, we actually only needed 8 iterations! Very cool how "guessing" can solve the problem quite nicely.

require 'digest/sha1'

@k_len = Digest::SHA1.hexdigest('a').size     # 40
@ip_len = "255.255.255.255".size              # 15
@range = 1..100                               # starting range
@max_line_len = 1000                          # length to check against
@count = 0                                    # iteration counter

# Given a upper and lower boundary, determine if its
# middle value is over or under the given line length
# If over, use the lower boundary (lower..mid) for a recursive check,
# otherwise use upper boundary (mid..upper)
def check_boundary(lower, upper)
  # determine middle value
  mid = lower + ((upper-lower)/2)
  # Exit recursion if we've found the value
  throw(:found_value, mid) if (upper-lower) == 1

  # only increment iter count if we're checking the length
  @count += 1
  # Get the line length for the variable number of elements
  len = @k_len + (@ip_len*mid) + mid

  # Perform the test
  if len > @max_line_len
    puts_stats lower, mid, upper, len, :over
    # use the lower boundary
    check_boundary(lower, mid)
  else
    puts_stats lower, mid, upper, len, :under
    # use the upper boundary
    check_boundary(mid, upper)
  end
end

# Log method for values in a given test
def puts_stats lower, mid, upper, len, over_under
  puts '%10d | %10d | %10d | %10d | %10s' % [lower, mid, upper, len, over_under]
end

# Specify some information for readability
puts 'Determining how many ip elements can sit on a line with a max length of %d' % @max_line_len
puts 
legend = '%10s | %10s | %10s | %10s | %10s' % %w(lower mid/test upper len over/under)
puts legend
puts '-'*legend.size

# Run the recursive boundary checking
golden_ticket = catch(:found_value) do
  check_boundary(@range.first, @range.last)
end

# Output results
puts
puts 'Golden Ticket (under) = %s' % golden_ticket.to_s
possible_iterations = @range.last-@range.first
efficiency = @count.to_f / possible_iterations.to_f
puts '%d iterations for %d possible iterations (%f efficiency)' % [@count, possible_iterations, efficiency]

Running the above script will produce the following output:

Determining how many ip elements can sit on a line with a max length of 1000

     lower |   mid/test |      upper |        len | over/under
--------------------------------------------------------------
         1 |         50 |        100 |        840 |      under
        50 |         75 |        100 |       1240 |       over
        50 |         62 |         75 |       1032 |       over
        50 |         56 |         62 |        936 |      under
        56 |         59 |         62 |        984 |      under
        59 |         60 |         62 |       1000 |      under
        60 |         61 |         62 |       1016 |       over

Golden Ticket (under) = 60
8 iterations for 99 possible iterations (0.080808 efficiency)

I'm not really sure if the efficiency part makes sense, but you get a sense that it's a LOT faster, not only because we're calculating the line length per test, but also because we're recursing a fraction of calls that the brute force method performs. It's also fun to inflate/deflate the max line len or the starting range values to see how it affects the number of recursions needed to find the number. For instance, set the max line len to 100000 and see how many extra calls have to be made. Also, what happens if your range isn't big enough? What if the range is off (e.g. 75..100)?

Algorithms are nifty.

Git pre-receive hook for rejecting a bad Gemfile

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Bundler has a cool facility with Gemfiles that allow you to specify some fine-grained options for a given gem beyond specifying a version. Things like :path, :branch, :git, and :tag. All of those things are neat for development, but horrible for production. I wanted a way to reject pushes to a repo if the Gemfile was changed to include any one of those options, and a git pre-receive hook was just the tonic.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

BRANCHES = %w( master stable )
REJECT_OPTIONS = %w( git tag branch path )

old_sha, new_sha, ref = STDIN.read.split(' ')
exit 0 unless BRANCHES.include?(ref.split('/').last)

diff = %x{ git diff-index --cached --name-only #{old_sha} 2> /dev/null }
if diff.is_a?(String)
  diff = diff.split("\n")
end

if diff.detect{|file| file =~ /^Gemfile$/}
  tree = %x{ git ls-tree --full-name #{new_sha} Gemfile 2> /dev/null }.split(" ")
  contents = %x{ git cat-file blob #{tree[2]} 2> /dev/null }

  invalid_lines = contents.each_line.select do |line|
    line =~ /\b(#{REJECT_OPTIONS.join('|')})\b/
  end

  unless invalid_lines.empty?
    puts
    puts '> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'
    puts '> ---- PUSH REJECTED by origin ----'
    puts '>'
    puts "> You've specified an invalid option for #{invalid_lines.size} gem definitions in the Gemfile"
    puts "> Invalid options are: #{REJECT_OPTIONS.join(', ')}"
    puts '>'
    puts "> The offending gems:"
    puts ">\t" + invalid_lines.join(">\t")
    puts '>'
    puts '> To fix:'
    puts ">\t* Remove the offending options"
    puts ">\t* bundle install"
    puts ">\t* Run tests"
    puts ">\t* Ammend previous commit (git add . && git commit --amend)"
    puts ">\t* git push origin #{ref.split('/').last}"
    puts '>'
    puts '> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'
    puts

    exit 1
  end
end

The script above monitors pushes to the "master" and "stable" branches (our development and production lines, respectively). It checks to see if the Gemfile was listed in the new commit file list, then parses the blob of the Gemfile for any of the offending options. Each offending line is then output back to the pushing developer with instructions on how to fix his/her Gemfile and how to amend the commit. Here's what the output looks like:

$ git push origin master
  Counting objects: 5, done.
  Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
  Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
  Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 362 bytes, done.
  Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
  Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
  remote: 
  remote: > !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  remote: > ---- PUSH REJECTED by origin ----
  remote: >
  remote: > You've specified an invalid option for 2 gem definitions in the Gemfile
  remote: > Invalid options are: git, tag, branch, path
  remote: >
  remote: > The offending gems:
  remote: > gem 'utilio', :git => 'git@github.com:localshred/utilio.git'
  remote: > gem 'rails', :git => 'git@github.com:rails/rails.git'
  remote: >
  remote: > To fix:
  remote: > * Remove the offending options
  remote: > * bundle install
  remote: > * Run tests
  remote: > * Ammend previous commit (git add . && git commit --amend)
  remote: > * git push origin master
  remote: >
  remote: > !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  remote: 
  To git@git.mycompany.com:repo1.git
   ! [remote rejected] master -> master (pre-receive hook declined)
  error: failed to push some refs to 'git@git.mycompany.com:repo1.git'

It's also worth noting that since this is a pre-receive hook, when returning an exit status of anything but 0, git will reject merging the commits. This is good because we don't want "bad code" in our repo. You could also use this to do other checking measures, such as running a CI build or syntax checks.

To use the above hook, simply copy the script above into the ./hooks/pre-receive file in your origin repo. Be sure to chmod +x ./hooks/pre-receive otherwise git won't be able to invoke the script when a new push occurs. We have ~15 repos that I manage at work that I want to use the hook on, so I just kept the file out on the git user's home directory and symlinked it back to each repos hooks directory. Same results, just easier to manage if I need to make a quick change to the hook.

Happy coding.

Thor script for managing a Unicorn-driven app

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Today I deployed a mini sinatra app on one of our test servers to manage some internal QA. I've put out quite a few apps backed by Unicorn in QA recently and finally wrote a little script to handle stopping, starting, and reloading of the unicorn processes. Nothing super special here, just thought I'd share a useful script. Drop the following code into your application's tasks directory, or place it on the app root and call it Thorfile.

tasks/unicorn.thor (or Thorfile)

# put me in /path/to/app/tasks/unicorn.thor
require 'thor'

class UnicornRunner < Thor
  include Thor::Group
  
  namespace :unicorn
  
  UNICORN_CONFIG = "/path/to/app/config/unicorn.rb"
  RACKUP_FILE = "/path/to/app/config.ru"
  PID_FILE = "/path/to/app/tmp/application.pid"

  desc 'start', 'Start the application'
  def start
    say 'Starting the application...', :yellow
    `bundle exec unicorn -c #{UNICORN_CONFIG} -E production -D #{RACKUP_FILE}`
    say 'Done', :green
  end

  desc 'stop', 'Stop the application'
  def stop
    say 'Stopping the application...', :yellow
    `kill -QUIT $(cat #{PID_FILE})`
    say 'Done', :green
  end

  desc 'reload', 'Reload the application'
  def reload
    say 'Reloading the application...', :yellow
    `kill -USR2 $(cat #{PID_FILE})`
    say 'done', :green
  end
end

Usage

From your application root directory, run any of the three commands. Keep in mind you'll need a unicorn config file that actually dictates how Unicorn should behave (like number of workers, where your logs go, etc). You'll also need a Rackup file (config.ru) which tells unicorn how to run your app.

$ thor -T
# thor unicorn:start    Start the application
# thor unicorn:stop     Stop the application
# thor unicorn:reload   Reload the application

$ thor unicorn:start    # starts the unicorn master
$ thor unicorn:stop     # sends the QUIT signal to master (graceful shutdown)
$ thor unicorn:reload   # sends the USR2 signal to master (graceful reload of child workers)

Plop this puppy behind nginx and you're golden. Thor has a lot more things you could do with this (like overriding which config file to use) by providing method-level options, but this is a great starting point for most people. Leave a comment if you have any improvements or other ways you handle this.

Mapping object values with Ruby's ampersand-symbol technique

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Discovered another little Ruby nugget the other day. The nugget gives a shorter syntax when you want to map the return value of a message sent to a list of objects, say, the name of the class of the object. In the past I would use Array#map to produce the list with something like:

objects = [1, :number_1, "1"]  
classes = objects.map {|o| o.class }
classes.inspect
# => [Fixnum, Symbol, String]

Turns out that Ruby has a shortcut that shortens your keystrokes a bit:

objects = [1, :number_1, "1"]  
classes = objects.map(&:class)
classes.inspect
# => [Fixnum, Symbol, String]

The two snippets are functionally identical. By passing a symbol to map preceded by an ampersand, Ruby will call Symbol#to_proc on the passed symbol (e.g. :class.to_proc), which returns a proc object like {|o| o.class }. Where would you use this you ask? The day I learned this little ditty I was writing some tests that were verifying some active record associations. Whenever I needed to update values on a has_many collection for a particular model, I actually needed to assert that the associated collection of objects were rebuilt with the new values, deleting the old rows and recreating new ones. The ampersand-symbol technique above was nice for this.

describe Father do
  it 'should create new children when I attempt to update the children' do
    father = Factory(:father)
    orig_children = father.children.map(&:id)
    # perform the update method
    father.reload
    father.children.map(&:id).should_not == orig_children
  end
end

So I thought I'd pass the word on. Cool stuff in Ruby. Who knew?

Areas of Focus

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

In 2009 I created a website to keep track of the simple goals in my life. It was a new way to set goals for me: set one simple goal each day. One Simple Goal was born out of a few days of work, because the concept is simple, and as you all know, I like simplicity. It helps me focus on what matters most, while assisting me in ignoring what doesn't.

In the lead-up to 2011, I've been quietly thinking about what types of resolutions I will make, if any. Typically in the past I've shied away from making grandiose resolutions, usually just picking certain directions I'd like my life to flow, and then storing them as high-level ideals about my life. This year will be different.

Not different in that I'll be buying that gym pass or whatever cliche's abound when talking about resolutions. No, I am fairly certain I won't be doing that kind of generalized stuff any time soon. Different because I'll be more concrete about two things: 1) Focus, and 2) Timeframe. Humans generally love to set goals, and almost always find a way to not achieve them. I'm no different. But when I realized that I still wanted the results of those goals, I stumbled on the idea of making a simple goal every day. No long to-do lists, no lofty "Mount Everest" goals. Simple things, like:

Finally paint wall patches I did last August. Go me.
Push out some code to OSG. Anything.
Write the first of the ruby daily series

Fast-forward to tonight when I realized that OSG is exactly how I should be determining (and implementing) my goals for 2011, with a few tweaks. The first and most noticeable tweak is the time frame. Instead of limiting my goal work to one day, it'll be 2 to 4 weeks, with a preference to lean on a full month. The focus aspect changes slightly also, as it's easy to set a specific focus for a given day, but more challenging to do so for a given month. I have a few ideas about how using a system like Scrum can help me achieve real focus with a longer time frame. Keep in mind that as with OSG, the idea is that you have something concrete that you can say: "I did (insert goal here)". So things like "Become more good looking" don't count because they're arbitrary in what their completion may look like. We're looking for concrete goals, things that (as Seth Godin says) you actually ship. The concept of shipping is paramount.

I threw a list together on SpringPad with a few ideas that I plan on thinking into a little further, but the first month is more or less solidified in my mind as to what I'll be working on (and yes, it actually is scary to me, in a good way). The over arching focus for 2011 is to develop myself further. 2010 was a banner year for me professionally, and 2011 is poised to be the same or more. But something I felt was lacking was a commitment to be better, not for my career or job, just for me. So 2011's list looks like that.

One over-arching goal that falls out of this framework is that I want to get back into writing. I was into blogging in '07 and '08 and thoroughly enjoyed it. Not the page-views and all that garbage, just the act of writing about something. Anything. I want to enjoy it again. With all that in mind, I've decided that I'm going to work hard at documenting my ride through 2011 and the way I'm setting this whole thing up. Hopefully it'll help somebody out, but mostly it's for my own records and enjoyment.

So here are a few rules for setting goals this year. And yes, I just made them up.

Only concrete goals that can be definitively completed within a month are allowed. Can you answer "Yes" or "No" to the question: Did you ship it?
Do things that are worthwhile and that stretch me. No maintaining of status quo, go beyond.
Planning for the month's goals happens at the beginning of the month, preferably the first day of the month. Plan only for the current month (iteration).
Retrospectives about what was or wasn't completed happen at the end of the month. Honesty is key here.
Blog often.
Have Fun.
Write more lists like Ryan ;).

I'll post more soon. In the meantime, why don't you go set some simple goals?

Intersecting arrays in Ruby

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Just found a slightly satisfying approach to checking the contents of an array in ruby.

I like using Array#include? to figure out whether or not my given array has a certain entry. Unfortunately, if you want to check if an array has a set of possible values, such as, does it contain :a or :b, you can't just pass an array of those values. Let me show you what I mean:

food = [:milk, :bread, :butter]
food1 = [[:milk, :bread], :butter]
expected = [:milk, :bread]
food.include?(:milk) # => true
food.include?(expected) # => false
food1.include?(expected) # => true

In other words, include? is very specific about the way it does the matching. But what if I want food.include?(expected) to tell me if food has any of expected's values? Enter Array#&. It doesn't make include? do anything different, but does give us a simple way to get this newer behavior:

food = [:milk, :bread, :butter]
expected = [:milk, :bread]
(food & expected).size > 0 # => true

Array#& gets the intersection of two arrays (the values that are present in both) and returns a new array containing only those values. You could add this to any Array instance by simply defining your own include_any? method:

# myapp/lib/ext/array.rb
class Array
  def include_any? values
    (self & values).size > 0
  end
  
  def include_all? values
    (self & values).size == values.size
  end
end

[:milk, :bread, :butter].include_any?([:milk, :butter]) # => true
[:milk, :bread, :butter].include_all?([:milk, :butter]) # => false
[:milk, :bread, :butter].include_all?([:milk, :butter, :bread]) # => true

I cheated and gave you an include_all? method also, which just ensures that all of the expected values are present.

I could've used Enumerable#any? but then we'd have to use a block and still use Array#include?. This way, we're golden.

What cool things have you done with ruby today?

Hooking instance methods in Ruby

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Everyone and their dog is familiar with ActiveRecord-style callbacks, you know, the kind where you specify you want a particular method or proc to be run before or after a given event on your model. It helps you enforce the principles of code ownership while making it trivial to do the hardwiring, ensuring that code owned by the model is also managed by the model.

I love this kind of programming and recently found that I needed some similar functionality in a particular class, one that wasn't tied to Active[Insert your railtie here]. My case was different in that I knew that any class inheriting from a particular base, which we'll call HookBase, needed a hardwired hook for every method defined, functionality that needed to run for virtually every instance method call. The following example illustrates my need:

class HookBase
  def hardwired_hook
    # functionality every method needs
  end
end

class MyClass < HookBase
  def find_widget
    # needs setup/teardown help from HookBase
  end
end

So, operating from the idea that every instance method extending classes implement should have default wrap-around behavior, I got to work. First off, you need to know that ruby has built-in lifecycle hooks on your classes, objects, and modules. Things like included and extended and method_added help you hook in to your code to ensure that the appropriate things are happening on your classes, objects, and modules. So in my case, I needed to know when a method was added to HookBase (or one of its children) so that I could appropriately tap into that code.

method_added is where the meat of the solution lies. When a method is added, ruby fires the method_added call on the object (if any exists), passing it the name of the new method. Keep in mind that this happens after the method has already been created, which is crucial to this solution. We'll next create a new name from the old name, prepended with some identifier (in this case we chose "hide_").

We'll need to check the private_instance_methods array for already defined method names to ensure we're not duplicating our effort (or clobbering someone elses), as well as checking our own array constant for methods we don't want to hook. Remember that method_added will be called on every method that is found for HookBase as well as children. I found that there were HookBase methods I had implemented that were supporting this behavior and didn't need to be hardwired, so I added this to my list of methods to ignore.

If we've made it this far, go ahead and alias the old method to the new one, then privatize the new one. Now we can safely redefine the old method without destroying the code it contained. We also now know that no one (except self) can invoke the private method directly, they'll have to implicitly go through the HookBase first.

Redefining the old method is as simple as using define_method and calling our hardwired_hook method within, passing our new_method (which is privatized), and the old method (for convenience), and any associated arguments and blocks.

The final implementation looks something like this:

class HookBase
  class << self
    NON_HOOK_METHODS = %w( hardwired_hook some_other_method )

    def method_added old
      new_method = :"hide_#{old}"
      return if (private_instance_methods & [old, new_method]).size > 0 or old =~ /^hide_/ or NON_HOOK_METHODS.include?(old.to_s)

      alias_method new_method, old
      private new_method

      define_method old do |*args, &block|
        hardwired_hook new_method.to_sym, old.to_sym, *args, &block
      end
    end
  end
  
private
  
  # Hardwired handler for all method calls
  def hardwired_hook new_method, old_method, args*, &block
    # perform any before actions
    puts 'doing stuff before method call...'
    
    # Invoke the privatized method
    __send__ new_method, *args, &block
    
    # perform any after actions
    puts 'doing stuff after the method call...'
  end
end

class MyClass < HookBase
  def find_widget
    puts 'finding widget...'
  end
end

MyClass.new.find_widget
# doing any before actions
# finding widget...
# doing any after actions

The great thing about this approach is you may not even care about hardwiring anything, but just want to provide hooking functionality. If that's the case, simply define a class method in HookBase to register a hook (such as before or after), optionally accepting an :only or :except list of methods. Internally store the blocks passed and invoke them in the hardwired_hook method either before or after the method call.

Let me know if you have any comments or different approaches. Happy hacking!

UPDATE: Forgot that method_added needs to be defined in class << self to work properly. Also updated to use the Array#& intersection method I described in Intersecting arrays in ruby instead of using Array#include?.

Paper Skater

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

How unbelievably sick is this video. I love this.

Skateboardanimation from Tilles Singer on Vimeo.

Variable-length Method Arguments in Ruby

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

In yesterday's post regarding the four things you should know about ruby methods, I covered some basics about ruby method definitions. For this post, I just wanted to go into a little more detail here with some of the things I left off the table that came to me later.

Variable-length arguments

Number three on our list of things you should know, we talked about variable-length arguments, also known as the array-collected parameter. At least, that's what I call it... sometimes. This cool feature allows you to pass any number of arguments to a ruby method and have all the unmapped parameters get collected into a single parameter which becomes an array of the values that were passed. Whew! That was a mouthful.

def log_all(*lines)
    lines.each{|line| @logger.info(line)}
end

log_all 'foo', 'bar', 'baz', 'qux'

# File: logs/your_log_file.log
# foo
# bar
# baz
# qux

This is neat, no doubt, but what if you don't want to specify each value individually to the array-collected parameter in the method call? Say for instance, in the previous example, I already had the values 'foo', 'bar', 'baz', and 'qux' in an array. Ruby allows you to pass the array through as a pre-collected array of values. The only thing to do is pass the array as a single parameter, prefixed by an asterisk (*).

def log_all(*lines)
    lines.each{|line| @logger.info(line)}
end

# values are predefined
values = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz', 'qux']

# Don't forget the asterisk!
log_all *values

If you were to indeed forget the asterisk before the values array being passed, log_all's lines parameter would still be an array, but would only contain one element: the array you passed. So in order to get to it you'd either have to flatten lines or call the 0th index on it, which sort of defeats the purpose.

Don't forget blocks, lambdas, and procs!

This array-collection technique to method parameter definition is not only confined to normal methods, but also to ruby's trio of anonymous function definitions: blocks, lambdas, and procs. Take the same example from above, with log_all rewritten as a lambda.

log_all = lambda do |*lines|
    lines.each{|line| @logger.info(line)}
end

# values are predefined
values = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz', 'qux']

# Don't forget the asterisk!
log_all.call *values

You can even do this with ActiveRecord named_scopes, which is wicked cool.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
    named_scope :with_names_like, lambda do |*names|
        {
            :conditions => names.collect{|name| "lower(name) like '%?%'"}.join(' OR ').to_a.push(names).flatten!
        }
    end
end

User.all.with_names_like 'jeff', 'jose', 'jill'
# Creates a condition sql string like so:
# WHERE (lower(name) like '%jeff%' OR lower(name) like '%jose%' OR lower(name) like '%jill%')

I'm interested to know what other ways you've come up with to use this technique. Please leave a comment below if you have any questions or examples of your own work.

Four things you should know about Ruby methods

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Just wanted to jot down some of the really cool things I've learned aout the way you can call methods in ruby. I may end up expanding this post into four separate posts with more info if need be, but for now I'll try to keep this short.

1. Default values

When defining a method with parameters, inevitably you'll find that it can prove useful to have some of the params revert to a default value if no value is passed. Other languages like python and php give you similar conventions when providing the parameter list to a method.

To use default values, simply use an equals sign after the parameter name, followed by the default parameter you wish to use. Note however, that while not all params need have a default value assigned, all params that do have defaults must go at the end of the parameter list.

# Invalid method definition. Either from_date must be at the end of the method list, or to_date must have a default value
def back_to_the_future(from_date=1985, to_date)
    puts "From Date: #{from_date}"
    puts "To Date: #{to_date}"
end

# Valid method definition
def back_to_the_future(from_date=1985, to_date=1955)
    puts "From Date: #{from_date}"
    puts "To Date: #{to_date}"
end

back_to_the_future
# => 1985
# => 1955

back_to_the_future 2010
# => 2010
# => 1955

back_to_the_future 2010, 2000
# => 2010
# => 2000

Pretty simple, but hey, maybe you didn't know.

2. "Named Parameters" using the special hash parameter

Python, Objective-C, and various other languages have an interesting syntax for method arguments where you can name an argument beyond the scope in which the method is defined. These named parameters give you the ability to assign values to method arguments in an arbitrary order, since you are assigning a value to a specific parameter by that parameters name.

While ruby doesn't have Named Parameter syntax built in, there is one way to gain something very similar, and it has to do with Ruby Hashes. Ruby's hash syntax has a very simple, minimalist style that I really like, especially in Ruby 1.9. The interesting thing about using the hash parameter as a "named parameter" or "variable-length" argument, is that there is no syntactic sugar needed when defining the method. All the interesting work goes on while calling the method.

def back_to_the_future(options)
    puts "From #{options[:from]} to #{options[:to]}"
end

back_to_the_future :from => 1985, :to => 1955
# => From 1985 to 1955

back_to_the_future :to => 1985, :from => 1955
# => From 1955 to 1985

back_to_the_future :with_doc => false
# => From  to

Notice here that we didn't have to include the open and close curly braces usually present in a hash definition. You can put them in if you'd like, but sometimes it's more confusing to see it that way (what with block syntax using curly braces or the do...end syntax).

You can still have regularly defined parameters with or without defaults in the parameter list, just make sure they come before the expected hash collection.

def back_to_the_future(from_date, to_date, options) ... end

def back_to_the_future(from_date, to_date=1955, options) ... end

def back_to_the_future(from_date, to_date=1955, options={}) ... end

You've probably noticed by now that rails does this all over the place.

3. Variable-length arguments using the special array parameter

While named-parameters is nice for passing a list of configuration options to a method, sometimes you just want a method to accept any number of arguments, such as a logger method that can take any number of log messages and log them independent of each other. Ruby has another parameter condensing technique where all parameters passed that do not map to pre-defined arguments get collected into their own special array parameter, that is, if you ask for it. Defining a method in this way, you simply place a parameter at the end of the parameter list with an asterisk (*) preceding the parameter name.

def back_to_the_future(from_date, to_date, *people)
    puts "Who's coming?"
    people.each {|person| puts person }
end

back_to_the_future 1985, 1955, 'Marty', 'Doc', 'Biff'
# => Who's Coming?
# => Marty
# => Doc
# => Biff

Also worth noting is that the parameters collected do not need to be of one type like Java forces you to be. One could be a string, the next a number, the next a boolean. Whether or not that is a good design for your method is another story.

This style of parameter definition can be mixed with all the styles we've discussed so far, just remember the order things go: Regular params, Regular params with defaults, a Hash-collected param (if any), and finally the Array-collected params (where the param is preceded with an asterisk).

def back_to_the_future(from_date, to_date=1955, delorean_options={}, *people)
    # ...
end
back_to_the_future 1985, :use_flux_capacitor => true, :bring_back_george => false, 'Marty', 'Doc'

4. Saving the best for last: Blocks!

Arguably the most powerful feature that Ruby boasts is the ability to send an anonymous function to a method to be executed by the method in whatever way it was designed. Ruby calls these anonymous code blocks just that, blocks. In other contexts you might hear them called lambda's, procs, or simply anonymous function. You've probably already used blocks a ton in your ruby code, but what exactly are they for, and how can you use them in your own code?

Virtually every class in ruby's core make use of blocks to basically extend the language's abilities without having to add more syntactic sugar. Take for instance iterating over an array, the conventional way with a for loop, and ruby's more idiomatic way, with the each and it's associated block.

people = ['Marty', 'Doc', 'Biff']
for person in people
    puts person
end

people.each do |person|
    puts person
end

The first example uses ruby's syntax sugar to run the loop, printing out each entry in the people array. The second calls the each method on the people array, passing it a block. Array#each can and likely will run it's own code before or after invoking the block. As a developer outside looking in, it doesn't really matter to me what each does, so long a it calls my block for each element in the array. If we were to write a simplification of what ruby is doing in the background, it'd probably look something like this:

def each
    for e in self
        yield e
    end
end

But wait a minute, isn't that what we wrote in our first example without the block? Indeed, it's very similar. Where our block example differs is that we have the ability to pass an anonymous block of code to the each method. When each is ready to call our block, it invokes yield, passing the argument applicable, in this case the e variable. In other words, each is handling the iteration for us, allowing us to focus on what matters more, the code being run for each iteration.

Syntactically, the big things to jot down with defining your methods to accept blocks are as follows:

All methods implicitly may receive a block as an argument.
If you want to name this argument, for whatever reason, it must be last in the argument list, and preceded by an ampersand &.
Just as all methods implicitly may receive a block, you can always check in a given method if a block was given, by calling block_given?.
TO invoke a block, simply call the yield method, passing any paramters your block may be expecting
Alternatively, if you have named the block, say &func, treat it as a lambda or proc that is passed to you (because that's what was passed), using the built-in call method available to procs: func.call(some_param).

def back_to_the_future(*people, &cool_block_name)
    puts "We're going back to the future with..."
    people.each do |person|
        cool_block_name.call(person)
    end
end

back_to_the_future 'Marty', 'Doc', 'Biff' do |person|
    puts person
end
# => We're going back to the future with...
# => Marty
# => Doc
# => Biff

All of these examples are obviously contrived, but I hope it sheds some light on some really cool things you can do in ruby with simple method definitions. I'll likely be doing more posts with blocks, procs, and lambda's in the future, since they are definitely the most powerful tools in the shed (as far as methods go), so look for those sometime in the near future.

Please let me know if you find any omissions or errors in the above examples and explanations. Happy Coding!

Ruby Dailies

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Back in January (a whopping 5 months ago!) I started at a new position for an up and coming startup company in Utah. I left my previous employer who had treated me extremely well, given me great opportunities to learn and grow, and ultimately put me in a great position to yet again catapult into even bigger and better things.

One of the biggest draws for coming to the new company was the opportunity I was given to choose the language and platform for an entirely new product, one I'd be driving the development of while running my own team. The majority of the team was leaning towards Python, but during the interview process I made it quite clear that it was my goal to do the thing in Ruby. Previous to this opportunity, I'd done a lot of ruby on the side for clients and my own projects, but it hadn't quite cracked into the full-time gig. Here was my chance.

It took a week or so to nail everyone down to the decision to move forward with Ruby and Sinatra, but it's been an awesome decision for us. I honestly am so happy each day solving problems in the unbelievably friendly language that is Ruby. I've learned an enormous amount, and feel like I'm at the point where I can start sharing a lot of the ruby tidbits I come across each day. I'm going to call this article series the Ruby Dailies, and the plan is to post a few articles a week showing off some neat things.

Naturally, being a somewhat late newcomer to the ruby party, so much of what I have learned so far allows me to stand on the shoulders of (ruby) giants: Matz, _why, Ezra, Yehuda, DHH, Wanstrath, and tons of others. Obviously I'll give credit where credit is due when posting these tidbits. Stay tuned!

Bundler 0.9.1 with Capistrano

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

On my current project at work we're building a Sinatra app. More specifically, we used the Monk generator/glue meta-framework which is built atop Sinatra. When you generate a Monk app it automagically gives you a dependency/gem management system known as, fittingly, dependencies. This article isn't meant to knock dependencies (which I believe is written by the CitrusByte guys, the creators of monk), but through some continuing issues with it we decided to find something else to handle that problem. That something we found was Yehuda's Bundler.

Bundler is really cool because it allows you to make all your gem management across all your development, testing, and production systems easy to handle. You define a Gemfile which references all the gems required to make your app go boom (in a good way). Once the file is defined simply run bundle install to ensure your system has all the necessary dependencies to run your app.

I created my bundler Gemfile 4 or 5 days ago, installed the dependencies, and then sort of left it alone for a while. Yesterday I wanted to deploy my app to production and so I went into my capistrano deploy.rb to update my recipe to handle the bundler stuff. Naturally, I needed bundler on the server, so I went and installed the gem. Little did I realize that in those few days Yehuda and Carl had updated the gemspec to a new version for bundler, moving from 0.8.x to 0.9.1. When you install the 0.9.x version it asks you to remove any pre-0.9 installations of bundler. If you have an existing Bundler installation and want to upgrade, delete the old install before you install the new. Otherwise, your gem command will be broken. A lot of my headaches would have been alleviated had I just done that.

I found a few blog posts and gists that have bundler specific tasks for cap recipes, so I forked and modified them for your benefit. In order to get the magic of bundler for your app, use the following in your cap recipe:

Two points to notice:

We setup a hook to run after the deploy:update_code task which will run the bundle install command to get any bundle updates. Bundler 0.9.1 comes with a nifty feature where you can lock your gem versions so that any calls to bundle install won't actually update anything.
We're also symlinking the .bundle directory that bundler creates for us into the shared folder. This is just a nicety so that bundler doesn't have to recreate that directory and it's environment.rb file everytime you release your code.

I hope this helps anyone out there who has upgraded their bundler versions. Happy bundling with capistrano. :)

Are you a problem solver or a tool?

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

I'm at a point in my career as a Software Developer where I feel like things are opening up quite a bit for me. I'm not talking about getting a new job or something, I just mean that I think I'm finally understanding Software Development for what it is. I've been writing software since the beginning of 2003, so I guess I'm a little late coming to the game in this understanding? Oh well, it's not the destination, it's the journey, right? Right.

The Journey

My journey began as a craftsman. I got lucky because I learned how to program from a friend I worked with who was just helping me in his little spare time at work. My knowledge of PHP scripting started out super small, but I took rather well to it and essentially launched into a career when I had no idea I wanted one.

Through the following months and years I gained an incredible amount of knowledge by simply working with really bright people. It just seemed that each new job I got I came in contact with someone who helped me in a different way than before:

From Nathan, I learned the very basics of programming: control flow, variables, functions, mysql, etc.
From Rainer I learned a ton about OO programming and CSS-based designs, as well as semantic markup that validates and conforms to standards. He also taught me to love the complex Join Query, and love it I do.
Ben showed me a new way to use objects I hadn't really seen before (closer to framework programming), and also got me a job at a great little startup where we were given a great opportunity to run the show. At that company, I gained absolutely invaluable experience managing, developing, and deploying large applications. We even got the chance to write our own web framework, which was a huge learning experience.
Ryan showed me what it takes to really get things done. He's also a fine purveyor of knives and guns (which, admittedly has nothing to do with this post at all, it's just cool).
From Eric and Kevin I gained the opportunity to take all my knowledge and apply it with a different toolset. I also learned a lot more about enterprise-level systems.

All of these people and experiences has made me the developer I am today. I believe that whatever the road you take, eventually you come to be a developer who solves problems, which is really what software development is all about.

The Destination

So what is the relationship between solving problems and the programming languages or frameworks we use to do so? It's quite simple:

Languages are tools, and we use tools to solve problems.

Much the same way a carpenter uses a hammer to put in a nail and a screwdriver to put in a screw, developers should choose their tools based on the problem at hand, not based on programming ideology. Just because you know Java considerably well doesn't mean that Java should be used in all situations, like website scraping. Ruby or Perl would be much better suited to handle the retrieval and parsing of webpages, due to the better Regular Expression integration.

Scraping websites is just one example of a trillion different scenarios. I've run into this quite a bit lately, where a developer choose a language or framework due to ideology, and it's been driving me crazy. Use the right tool for the job, and move on with it. My career and more importantly my abilities are not defined by the tools I use, but by my ability to solve the problem. Just as a carpenter is not defined in skill by whether he uses Dewalt or Craftsman, but by the experience he's had building staircases or handcrafting beautiful pieces of furniture.

So, as a rule of thumb, write this down:

Your usefulness is defined by your experiences and ability to solve problems, not necessarily by the tools you use along the way.

This will always make you better when you apply this knowledge. Pick the right tool for the job, and ignore the detractors who say that Java is better than Ruby because it has compile-time checking and IDE support.

What good are tools then?

I'm glad you asked. Tools are simply meant to increase productivity and ease manual labor. Simple machines like the lever and pulley were undoubtedly created to alleviate the difficulties of certain types of manual labor, like raising heavy objects up to a higher plane. In other words, some caveman decided to solve a problem in a more convenient way: push the rock up the hill rather than try to heave it up a cliff.

In a similar vein, programming languages and frameworks are created to solve specific problems, which in turn makes them great tools for getting things done. There are thousands of languages out there to use, each of them created to solve a specific need that the creator couldn't solve effectively with other tools. They found the need, so they created the tool, and now we all can use the tool to solve the given problem again and again.

So please don't confuse yourself into thinking that the tools you use are what makes you great. The tools you use today will be outdated in five years or less, guaranteed. Your ability to solve problems with the proper tool is what makes you great.

Fighting the Cubicle Uprising

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Mind you, that's cubicle, not cubical, just so we're all clear.

Technically speaking, the cubicle uprising occurred probably somewhere in the late 70's (don't check my sources on that though). I'm not talking about when cubicle's gained souls and thrust their way from poverty into national prominence, that technically hasn't happened yet.

I'm talking about the time when Corporate America was born and decided that it was cheaper to put people in boxes to cloud their thinking and judgement. So it's probably a futile attempt to overthrow the archetypal mind-prison for everybody. That's why I'm just fighting my own fight. You can come too, if you want.

I can see the violence inherent in the system! Can't you?

Today at work we had a discussion about how many more programmers we could fit into the programmers office. Our office is a 25'x20' rectangle. We currently have 5 programmers working in this office, but we've had 6 before. My thought is that we could get 2 more than our old max, pushing us to 8. Now, that means we could have 8 programmers in our room comfortably.

Oh, and none of us are in cubicles... yet. I intend to keep it that way.

Fight back you coward!

When I was hired on, we had these kind of faux-wood heavy desks with hutches. Technically we still have some of those, a few of our guys are still in them. Ben and I got snooty though and decided to buy our own from IKEA. It was the best idea, still love that we did it. The company even paid us back for them, which was even cooler.

No, the back of his desk is not an appealing view. Hence the need for diffuse lighting.

The reason I was snooty and wanted a fancy desk is two-fold: 1) I didn't really like the big desk with the hutch and stuff, it was WAY more desk than I needed; 2) I'd like to think that the cleaner lines of the IKEA desk are simply more pleasing to my design-centric eye, so I just enjoy being at my desk that much more. And why shouldn't I? On average we spend roughly two-thousand hours sitting at our work desk each year. Why not have it be a cool desk you like, with a glow lamp in the corner and a cool green bamboo plant growing nearby. Feng-shui baby.

Back to the story, the one I was telling before my snooty tangent, the one about the programming room. The other strategy was to get as many programmers (i.e. cubicles) into the room as we could. Scratch that, apparently they are called Work Spaces now. Bah! And a Ford Focus is an M5. You might as well sprinkle sugar on a turd and call it delicious. It ain't adding up. Calling it one thing doesn't make it something other than what it is. Call the pot black. It's a cubicle: a box constructed of cheap material for managers and investors to save some coin at the expense of employees hating their environment every day. "But it only has 3 sides, it can't be a cubicle!", you stammer. Believe me my friend, it's just a cubicle. The same awful open-box with closed-thinking built right in!

The programmers were luke warm to the cubicle idea, but it scared the crap out of me. I thought my cube days were over, solitary confinement in the gray dungeon a thing of the past. So I spoke up, and denounced that my days of cube-sitting were gone with the days of Tech Deck skating and "¿Gracias por llamar a Morinda, como le puedo ayudarle?".

My assertion was enough to sway the powers-that-be, so let us pray that if/when we hire those additional code monkeys we'll be getting them some nice IKEA desks instead of the beige-cage.

What have you stood up for today?

Update: Apparently Robert Propst, the designer of the Action Office (what the cubicle originated from), called the cubicle a "monolithic insanity". I couldn't agree more.

My Git Workflow

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Recently at work we've taken a giant leap forward in our software stack: We ditched CVS and are riding the git bandwagon.

And oh what a pretty red wagon it is. Drawn by the big Clydesdales with fancy harnesses. In this article I aim to show the workflow I've been using that I feel will help other people just getting in to git.

What's this "git" you speak of?

Just a small caveat: if you already know what git is, or if you don't care about how I got into git, skip ahead. Sometimes I'm boring and I can't help it.

Git's been coming along nicely for the last few years gaining all sorts of popularity in the face of Subversion's apparent lead, and CVS's mind-boggling IE6-like stranglehold on the Version Control Systems universe. A lot of the current fervor attributed to git is attributed to several popular open source projects changing their SCM from Subversion to Git, most notably (for me at least) Ruby on Rails and their switch to Github.

I'll admit that I had no idea who or what git was until mid-2008 when a co-worker of mine told me he wanted to get into it (no pun intended). I was in my nice cozy comfortable Subversion shell at the time and thought how could one possible want anything more than SVN? Ironically, after using git for the past year or so, I'm thinking the same thing from the git perspective. How in the world are people still using SVN (assuming they have the choice)? Ya, I don't know either.

Due to much of git's current popularity coming from the Rails switch, a lot of the git info you read online comes from people doing stuff in Ruby. This was certainly my main usage of git after I finally took the plunge late last year, using it to manage the version control of all my Rails/Sinatra projects. Of course, with any VCS, the content you are versioning need not be a specific software project at all. You could use it to version your photoshop design files if you wanted to.

How sweet it is to be loved by git

Anyways, at work we use Java. And up until about a month ago, we were using CVS to manage our software versioning. We've been doing a great round of tech discussions to improve our stack, and the CVS to Git migration was one of the first targets we moved against, due to the relatively simple nature of the change. I've got to credit Ben for randomly deciding to demo git to everybody in one meeting. I just let him run with it, though I probably know git a lot better. By the end of the meeting we were all like, "Okay, so when do we start using it?". I was floored. I thought for sure there'd be reservations and assumed that if we ever did get off of CVS it'd be to Subversion. Well, just a few short weeks later we had imported our entire repo into Git (approximately 900 mb). A few weeks after that, we were completely dependent on git for our VCS of choice. And boy does it feel sweet.

Not a day goes by when someone in dev just randomly exclaims, "How freaking sweet is Git?!", or, "Git is just so fast!". I love hearing this stuff, cause it reinforces my belief that git really is a superior VCS. It brings some passion back into what we do each day. A software developer's tools should always enhance their ability to put out great software. Git does just that.

Okay, so that was the boring back story, here's some of the meat of git that we've been working with. Most of these concepts were taken in one form or another from the Git Workflow manpage.

Topic Branches

The best thing I pulled from the git workflow article is the concept of the topic branch. In git, branching doesn't create new filesystem directories, it just magically handles it all in the cloned repository. This was a huge upgrade from CVS and even Subversion in my opinion. It's one of the biggest reasons I love git so much. Branching is cheap, therefore much more useful.

Topic branches aren't a special kind of branch, it's just a way of thinking about how to use branches for effective project development. Git creates a default branch for your trunk or mainline of development and calls it "master". Each time the project manager assigns me a project (in this case say the project is called "widget"), I follow this workflow:

How do you manage your projects with git?

Techno Hurdles and Writers Block

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

You've patiently awaited results (don't deny it) from my previous post, and indeed I've been planning on it. Sometimes plans don't work out how we expect them to. And sometimes they do. Here is part 2 of Learning how to focus.

Approximately 6 weeks ago I deleted my Twitter and Facebook accounts. It was an impulsive move. An idea came to me, I talked to my wife about it, we agreed, and I just did it. There wasn't a lot of drama involved, I had just gotten to the point where I felt I was losing valuable time using those services. I'm not going to go into more of the "why" details, I already did that.

The positive stuff

Since purging the web-social scene from my daily life, I've noticed a lot of positive gains. For one, I'm a lot more focused while at work. We're talking orders-of-magnitude more focused. Before it was easy to spend a lot of time posting stuff on Twitter or reading people's Facebook updates. Now, those distractions are not just archived, they're completely gone.

Since "the purge" I've hit all my project deadlines at work, something that is actually fairly difficult for a developer to do in a serial environment. Well, I hate sweeping generalizations; I have a hard time hitting deadlines in a serial environment, though I'm not alone, just go read some Fowler essays on Agile Programming.

Speaking of Fowler, I've totally come to love the essays he writes about software design, agile programming, test-driven development, etc. He's just a genius, and a great writer. If you write code, you should read Fowler. I never would have had time to read any of his stuff had it not been for "the purge". As a side note, I'm using Marco's Instapaper iPhone app on any article I'd like to read, but want to "read later". It's my number one app. Go buy it.

One facet of the purge was removing a lot of RSS feeds from my daily intake. I kept around 40 or so, though most have a post frequency of less than 1 per week, so I rarely have more than 3 or 4 articles at a time in reader. This is really nice because I still can get some info I want, but my take has been that it's completely non-pressuring me. I don't feel the desire to constantly check, because I know that there probably isn't anything there. There are stretches of days where I don't even check it because it's completely off my mind. This is exactly the kind of thing I was going for.

The weird stuff

There have definitely been some weird side-effects to the purge. For example, when I read an interesting blog post or listen to a cool song, or whatever, I still (to this day) think about posting it to Twitter/Facebook. I mean, that's how addicted I was. It's kind of like my withdrawal cravings I guess. Still, very weird.

Something else weird happened: I turned into an old man. Over the past few weeks, my average bed time has gotten earlier than before. I'm now going to bed between 10 and 11, sometimes even earlier. Just a few days ago I literally fell asleep at 8:30 pm. I'm crazy like that.

The "huh?" stuff

You may have noticed that I haven't posted a ding-dang thing since I wrote about the purge. Along with the purge came a huge case of writers block. I mean, we're talking mammoth. I have had a continual desire to want to blog and write stuff that is random and annoying, but I just haven't gotten to the point of writing it. It's really weird, possibly coincidental to the time period. If you followed this blog before when it was on wordpress, you'll know that I had gotten less frequent in those postings too, so maybe it's a deeper issue. I do love how Marco talks about not caring about the frequency of posts on his blog, that he blogs whatever and whenever he wants to. This is totally the style of blog I want to cultivate. I've just not really had the drive to post at all lately. And it's bugging me.

Sure, this post is a new post on the blog. So I guess it's good that I'm getting some of it out there. I just want a bit more consistency. Not like, "I must blog every 2 days" or something stupid, just... you know, semi-regular updates. When I get an idea about a post, I want to just write it and post it. So that's something I'm working on.

Probably the biggest frustration that I've hit is the lack of motivation to work on my entrepreneurial pursuits. I have literally done nothing towards furthering my goal of being an independent business owner. Usually I reserved evenings or saturday's for times when I could push forward on my ideas, and I've just completely fallen out of that routine. This is probably the biggest head-scratcher of the whole purge process. It was when I was "addicted" to the consumption of information that I was passionate about working on my ideas. Now that the addiction is gone... so is the passion. I'm not entirely convinced the two are related, so I'm still working through a lot of that in my head. Crap... that makes me sound like a manic-depressive psychopath. Just know that I'm not. I promise.

What are some gains or shortfalls you've seen in me since the purge? What about yourself?

Learning how to focus

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

There's an interesting saying that is a golden proverb, one that has descended the ages:

[...] and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.
— Plato, The Republic

It's been adapted over the years to read simply: "Necessity is the mother of invention". If you're unfamiliar with the phrase, or don't quite remember what it means, I'll give you my interpretation. It means that invention (or ingenuity) is spawned from a direct need or necessity. Ideas and Machines and Businesses are all created because of an attributable need of some force, be it human or otherwise.

Washing Machines & Microsoft

A few months ago I had a weird thought pop into my head when I heard that phrase during the day. I thought, "Sure, in most cases necessity is the mother of invention, or the cause of why the invention was created. But if you reversed the phrase, would it also be true? Could Invention be the mother of Necessity?" At first you may dismiss this as a mere play on words and give it no further thought. But go back and read it again:

Invention is the mother of necessity.
— My weird brain

Could it be, that a real need or necessity created these ideas and inventions and businesses, and once the ideas and inventions and businesses were created, they created and psychologically enforced a "need" to use them. Take for example the washing machine¹. It was invented because a real need existed. People doing their washing all over the world had to do it by hand, which was slow and hard and probably boring. What if someone created a turning basin that would make sure all the clothes were scrubbed together without having to do it manually? Of course, I'm sure the washing machine wasn't met with immediate overnight success like MySpace or something. Customers were probably sparse at first, but surely as you're reading this post right now, the washing machine grew in popularity and ubiquity because it fulfilled an enormous need.

And here we are 318 years after the first washing machine patent was issued. And everyone has got a freaking washing machine. Ok, I know the kids in Africa don't, and college students and other poor people, but still, it's a big market by even Microsoft's standards. But let's get back to my thought. I'll agree whole-heartedly that the washing machine was invented because of a real need. But now, because we have the washing machine we kind of have to use it, don't we? I'm not entirely convinced either, but it's a weird loop to get into if you've got some time to kill.

Bit by Bit

And so we jump from washing machines to one of the most incredible and unbelievable inventions ever created: the Computer Processor (see ¹). From ENIAC to iPhone, the computer processor has absolutely transformed the world culture more completely than perhaps any other invention has ever done, certainly faster than any other. This pace of evolution was quickened significantly by the arrival of the internet nigh-on twenty years ago (thanks, Mr. Gore).

Entrepreneur's have flocked by the millions to the internet in hopes of cultivating some small corner for their prospective ideas. In this case, the invention of the internet has created a vacuum so strong that for the last 20 years the world has been frantically scrambling to catch up to the opportunities that multiply exponentially each day. As with every free market, there are giants and there are peasants. The internet giants are the household names: Google, Wikipedia, Digg, Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They're so widespread that my grandma probably knows Google, Facebook and Wikipedia, even if she's not sure what they are or how you would use them. Anyone with a lick of sense can tell you that the ones who are making internet Empires are building them on top of some form of content aggregation. In the design, marketing, and advertising industries, the saying goes that Content is King.

The problem with having all of this information being so readily available is that it creates the need to process it. The necessity of finding and consuming information exists due to ease of acquiring it. Okay, let me back up a bit... the problem I have with the internet is my need to process as much information as possible. Programming, Business, Design, Comics, Photos, Friend Updates; all these things cry out for attention, and often I oblige. Much too often.

Why, _why?

On August 19th, 2009, one of the biggest names in the Ruby industry disappeared entirely and completely from the internet. Why the lucky stiff (who often goes simply by "why" or "_why") trashed all his sites, github projects, and any other notable web presence completely. At first people were afraid he had been hacked big time, or feared that he had been physically hurt or even killed. All of this was a bit overkill if you ask me. The final few days on his twitter account he continually posted rhetorical questions about the purpose of life and programming. _why didn't get shot or hacked, he got sick of information overload. He got tired of having to be defined by what the masses thought of him, so he bailed.

I was surprised because you just don't see that kind of thing happening to high-profile people online (unless they really did get hacked). I was sad because he's contributed in some ways to my love for the Ruby programming language (his TryRuby site was key to that), such that I feel like the Ruby community did take a substantial loss. I was intrigued because of the sheer style in which he went out. He knew what he was doing, probably had been planning it for a few months now, possibly even years. He hit a wall. A wall where the invention created a necessity he felt he could no longer support.

Operation "_why not"?

Since the day _why went offline (7 days ago) I've been formulating a bit of my own escape plan. Last night, I launched the first (and possibly only) phase. Time will tell if there are additional phases. You may have already noticed some of the effects of my actions. The first is that you will notice that my recent tweets no longer show at the bottom of this site. Yes, I deleted my Twitter account. Not only mine (@localshred), but OSG's as well (@onesimplegoal). Go ahead, go check, I'll wait. Right, are you back? Okay, good. I also deleted my facebook account. Not deactivated, I actually found the link to completely delete the account. It's supposed to be deleted in about 13 days, though I'm supposedly able to cancel the request at any time before it happens. I won't be. The third strike was drastically truncating the majority of my RSS feeds. I now only subscribe to family blogs and photo feeds, as well as a few key tech/programming resources like 37Signals and Jeff Attwood's blog (and yes, xkcd made the cut).

You may be perplexed by my actions. To tell you the truth, I am still a bit perplexed that I actually went through with it. Quite a few months ago I went through a similar purging excercise, but not to the extent of deleting accounts. The best answer I can give is that I feel like my need to consume and digest information is completely getting in the way of my progress as a programmer and human being. I crave it, need it, just like a drug. And some days it's all I can think about and act upon.

I'm not sure if I'll ever create a facebook account again, as much as I really did enjoy it when I had a small number of friends who mattered to me. I am fairly certain, however, that I will utilize twitter at some point in the future as owning a business becomes more a part of my day to day activity. But for now, I'm partially following _why's example and turning off the invention in order to subdue the necessity. Here's to learning how to focus. Cheers.

Notes

I have never done, nor plan to do any research on the invention of the washing machine (or computer). :)

Why you want me to work for you

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

The day you have all been waiting for has finally arrived: rand9 Technologies is officially accepting clients for projects in Web Application Development, Graphic Design (including Logo & Site Design), and Software Project Consultation.

This article is meant to detail my desire to start building a successful client-work business.

Quite often I'm approached by friends, family, or associates about building [insert application name here], or desinging the branding for [company xyz]. Up until a few weeks ago my response is generally somewhere along the lines of, "Thanks, but no thanks." All that has changed recently as I've decided to turn rand9 into a full-fledged client-work business. I'll be focusing on three areas of my expertise, detailed below, but if you have any work that falls outside of these lines, please don't hesitate to contact me and we can discuss your project.

Web Application Development

I've been finagling web applications for the past 7 years in PHP, Java, and Ruby. On one hand, I've worked on horrible hack-job projects, often outsourced to India; "Apps" that you couldn't really call Apps at all. On the other hand, I've worked on beautifully crafted Object-oriented systems that were well thought out and cleanly implemented. In other words, I've been around the web application block a few times. I've seen enough to know what works well, what will most likely do the job, and what is doomed to failure.

My application development experience leans almost exclusively towards framework-driven object architectures. It's a fancy way of saying, "I believe in and use extensively stable and up-to-date programming software and practices." I've custom-built everything from a simple blog to a PDF-processing Web-to-Print software engine that supports private-branded portals.

Graphic Design

My software background is complemented beautifully by my design capabilities. I've been studying usability and design for over a decade, and have regularly put out logos, site designs, and print work for a variety of project scopes and mediums. I've designed posters for the Children's Miracle Network, Logos for several startup companies, and numerous site designs. I'm even available to design and build micro-layouts within an already designed site.

Software Project Consultation

It may sound incredibly nerdy, but I love talking about software. I love to discuss the theory behind the implementation, to critique the pattern-flow of an object architecture, to assess the feasability of an object-relational mapper. In short, I love to talk about what makes a project successful for the Businesses as well as exciting for the Developers writing the code. If your project is headed off the track, you need another pair of eyes to determine what is going wrong and how to get back on the track.

Other Project Needs

If you have any other projects that might not fit the molds above, feel free to contact me and I can assist or point you in the right direction (if I can).

What are you waiting for? Let's build something awesome together!

Name: BJ Neilsen
Email: bj.neilsen@gmail.com

Movin' on over

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

As you probably can tell, I've gone quiet on the blogging front for a while. It's not you, it's me. I've been lacking creatively for quite a while, being energetically drained by numerous sources that you don't really need to worry yourselves over. Needless to say, I'm back into blogging form, or am attempting it yet again.

I'll likely be transitioning over to my new blog rand9.com. I had initially intended to only post tech-specific things on that blog, and keep more personal matters over here, but this post changed my mind. I want to focus my energy on one blog, and I feel like the rand9 name is what I want to put my energy into.

Fear not, I will continue to strive to put more content than just tech stuff over there, so you will still get the usual banter and rantings. I still plan on posting a lot about entrepreneurialism and projects that I'm engaged in. So head on over to the new blog and give the few articles a read. Oh, and if you've subscribed to this blog's RSS feed, be sure to do so over there as well. Thanks for all the feedback over this last year on these posts!

Doing my own thing

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

In which I describe some of the ideas and thoughts behind my entrepreneurial spirit. It's a bit of a rambler, but was very therapeutic for me in the writing.

Yesterday I read an inspiring and enlightening post from Marco Arment titled "Do your own thing". In the post he talks about gaining acceptance from the stoners at school simply because he "does [his] own thing" rather than the accepted norm of "partying". He describes:

A stoned guy’s idle conversation became the goal for my life outlook. No other statement or occurrence has been more fundamental in making me stop worrying about what other people think and do, which in turn makes it true.

In a rich man's world ...

Lately I've had a lot of thought units (similar to goal units ;)) focused and concetrating on developing a monetizable business product. "But", you say, "I thought you were running One Simple Goal, the fastest growing web presence next to AOL and Friendster!" Hold your horses there friend. To debunk you on two points:

OSG is not fast* or growing (much to my chagrin). Though, to be fair, I haven't really expected lots of popularity from it as I haven't had a chance to promote it properly... yet.
OSG has no monetization value in its current offering. That's not to say I haven't thought about monetizing it with ads or a "Go Pro" area where paying members get more tools and value. Just saying that I've only thought about it, but each time it's like pulling teeth. I know I just don't want to go through with that and ruin the OSG experience. 'Nuff said.

That's not to say that I haven't thought/dreamt of owning or running a business of my own. It's actually something that I strive for every day, at all times some random background process in my head is slowly working on ideas and idealogies to move me forward in that quest. Obviously it'd go much quicker if I could work at it full time, but then the income would be scant for a while, which is basically a non-option at this point (i.e. mortgage, kids, food, etc). I mean, I know that other entrepreneur's do the boot-strap thing, but at my current state, I don't think it'd be wise or healthy to engage in that kind of masochism.

Back to our regularly scheduled program ...

Where were we? Oh yes, monetizing a business product. The whole "doing your own thing" tag is great in concept, but application is a bit more difficult to manage. I'm not saying it's anywhere approaching impossible or in the realm of moronic-thinking. Not saying that at all. I'm saying it takes dilligent and concerted effort. It takes knowing from the beginning what it is that you are searching for, searching to become. Because entrepreneurialism is really about being or becoming something, not just having to report to yourself at work each day instead of that guy.

So who exactly am I trying to be or become? What does "doing my own thing" look like? I can honestly say that I'm still trying to figure that out. I've known for more than 3 years that doing my own thing is what I want in life. I want to dictate what I work on, who I work with, and (most imporantly) why I am doing what I do. I'm a programmer, or developer, or whatever else you want to call me from that realm. That's the majority of my skillset, what I know how to do to make the cash. I've been building web applications in PHP and Java for over 6 years now, and I've gotten pretty dang good at it. Unfortunately it just hasn't been FUN for the last little while. Corporate mandates and bloated systems with bad code rot have kind of disenfranchised me from working on other people's projets (read: my current and previous employers).

Oh Ruuuuuuby, Don't take your love to town

Then along comes Ruby, the most wicked-awesome programming language you've never heard of. Okay, maybe you have, the guy in the back with the glasses. But the rest of you, you know nothing of it. So let me enlighten you. It's amazing. It really makes programming enjoyable, and dare I say, FUN again. One of my recent tweets really describes it fully though:

I do more fist-pumping-programming in Ruby than Java. Probably a 10 to 1 ratio.

So, recently the thought process has been to follow a ruby path towards entrepreneurialism. That may include doing side-projects in ruby, or even setting up a full-fledged Client-Work company (ala rand9?) solely dedicated to building apps in Ruby, Rails, Sinatra, etc. It may involve getting heavily involved in building an app with a real monetization strategy, like a service people are willing to pay for (Huzzah! for good ideas).

Whatever makes programming fun again, that's how I'll do my own thing.

*Playful banter, you say? Go check out the awful performance lag for each request. It makes me madder than it makes you, I promise.

Why I Went Minimal

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

I've always told people that my design skills aren't rooted in illustration or complex elements, but in typography and layout. This probably stems from the fact that I'm pretty much a terrible illustrator (and that I don't have a Wacom Tablet or a scanner). Go figure. So it is that when designing logos or websites I prefer using carefully chosen typefaces and lots of negative space. It hasn't always been this way for projects I've worked on, but I'm learning more and more that my best work has been when I (seemingly) put the least amount of effort into it.

OneSimpleGoal.com · A Daily Goal to Get Things Done!

This has certainly translated to the way I design and build web applications. My pet project One Simple Goal and this blog both show how much I love to leave the fancy colors and gradients out of it. Now, I'm definitely not saying that fancy colors and gradients are a thing of the past, or should be shunned. Matt Mullenweg's blog (screenshot below) is a perfect example of beautiful complexity, and proves that complex designs can be very attractive and still usable. I'm merely stating that I feel like I can provide my best service when I design for a minimalistic user experience.

Matt Mullenweg's blog is complex AND awesome (and not designed by me, I might add)

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a good post from SingleFunction.com on examples of extreme minimalism in web design. The post detailed a longish list of sites who they felt provided a service in a powerful way: through minimalism. Some of these were even over the top for me, but I could definitely relate with the idea or passion behind some of these sites.

I believe the most important thing you can do while building a web app, or designing your site mockup in Photoshop, is to ask one question: "Does everything on the page have a purpose?" Do all of the menus, toolbars, widgets, and design flourishes do well to accentuate the message you are trying to convey, or the action you are trying to invoke? Do they hinder your message in any way? Being too minimalistic can be just as bad as too complex: your users won't know what to do, they'll be confused, and will likely become another home page exit statistic in google analytics. Striking that balance is truly an art, one which I'm still striving to achieve with each new interface I build.

Are you a minimalist?

Alive And Well

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

In a world of tech blogs... why do we need yet another? We don't. So don't read this post. No, seriously, you don't want to.

Ok ok ok, please do. Wait, you're already here. Great, read on then!

"Are you ready to rock?" » Alive and well by Rise Against from The Unraveling (before they sucked)

Once upon a time, I had a dream. That dream was to roll my own blog in Rails and show the world the awesomeness that was me. And so I bought rand9.com with full intentions of launching my blog in a few days. Well, days turned into a week, a week into several weeks, several weeks into several months, etc.

At some point in the early going I realized I wasn't super close to deploying the blog, so I ended up building a simple static "Coming Soon" page (that did not have an "Under Construction" animated gif), stating some important things about me, including the tagline which read: "Coming Soon-ish". Needless to say, that "soon-ish" has been much more "later-ish" than I anticipated, to the tune of 9 months-ish. At least, I think it's been that long, maybe longer.

I won't go into details about the platform I'm now using, only that it's called Marley and it's super rad. I didn't roll it myself, but went with someone else's great idea and did a few mods here and there to suit my needs. I plan on following this post with a comprehensive look at Marley, and when I do I'll update this post with a link to that post. Whew.

I just want you all to know (you know who you are) that I am once again blogging, and this is my tech blog where I'll be adding programming/tech related content and keeping ya'll updated on the great projects I'm working on (yes, I do have a non-tech personal blog). Till then, I bid you adieu.

Oh, one more thing. If you'd like to subscribe to this blog (highly recommended), please click the "RSS" link in your browser address bar, or by choosing RSS or Email updates.

Cheers!

Just to complete a goal people...

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

As you may (or may not) have noticed, it's been a while since I've posted. Life has been life-ing and I've had a plethora of things to write about, just not a lot of time, since most of the things I want to write about require tact and skill so as not to offend one or more parties who read (or more likely don't read) this blog. Ugh, that was a mouthful. So why the post tonight? Well, mostly because I forced myself to.

Some of you may have read the post a few months back where I detailed the new service I've been developing and had just deployed: One Simple Goal (OSG). Today I decided that I was going to write a post, and decided to set it as my one goal that I would like to accomplish today. At the time, I was very much "in the mood" to write, and had a few things on my mind. But, the time being at work, I didn't really get a change to sit down and brain dump. So, instead I set the goal, and have been nagged by it for the remainder of the day.

The best part about OSG is that it gives you a really good excuse to actually get your goals done: there's only one per day. One. Uno. Un. Eins. That means that you only have to focus on getting one goal accomplished for the day. Simple as that. As I finished pushing a few fixes and features to OSG a few minutes ago, I was ready to close the computer and hit the sack. Then I realized I could fulfill my goal by ranting for just a minute or two on the old blog. And hey, it just might get me in the writing mode again. You have been warned.

Oh, and if you feel like your life is out of control, give OSG a try and let me know what you think. It's pretty powerful stuff.

Jumping Straight In

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Let's just say, when I clicked the button to pay for the triathlon, I got a mini panic attack well up inside me. If you want to tie yourself in to doing something that will be hard or uncomfortable, put money on it. Such was the case for me in signing up for my first ever Sprint Triathlon in which I'll be competing tomorrow morning. The funny thing is that I only signed up for it 3 and a half weeks ago, and really haven't done much training to get ready for it.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Triathlon format, I'll give you a short rundown. The normal Triathlon disciplines are Swim, Bike, and Run, in that order. From the time you enter the water on the swim till you cross the finish line running, there is really no stopping. Racers are given a transition area where they can place essentials for transitioning from one discipline to the other: T1 is the first transition (swim to bike), and T2 is the second transition (bike to run). There are four major distances that are used for Triathlon races: Sprint, Olympic, Half (or 70.3), and Ironman. As mentioned before, I'll be doing a Sprint Traithlon: 300 meter swim (usually 750 or 800 for the Sprint distance), 11.6 mile bike, 5k run (3.1 miles).

I really can't describe how excited I am to test my physical fitness and endurance in this race. I'm definitely not in the race to compete, but would be satisfied with a sub-2 hour completion time. If you are interested in coming out to cheer me (and 349 others) on, come on down! It's in Riverton, and the swim starts at 7 am (Directions). Wish me luck!

PS, I should give credit to Joel who has inspired me to do this race (and is doing it with me). He's gonna smoke me... :)

Small Jaunt Across

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Last saturday Tyler, Tyson, and myself took a short motorcycle ride behind Squaw Peak. We were expecting some fairly easy riding since the dirt road is quite broad and well-travelled. Adventure ensued due to large snowbanks and general gooniness. Below are some videos we snuck in of riding and pre/post ride interviews. Enjoy!

Pre-ride Commentary

Tyson tackling the Monster Snowbank

BJ trying the snow... again

The end of the road

Snow rally

The Long Way Round shot

Tyler destroys the Snowbank

Post-ride Interview & Commentary

Client Work

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

This puts a great perspective on how to bill your clients (and if you're a client why you probably sound ridiculous).

Playing For Change: Peace through music

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Dustin sent this along today, and I have to say it is one of the coolest music projects I have ever heard of. The producers travel around the world recording tracks with various musicians, then mix it all into a great video/musical journey. SO COOL. The project/documentary can be found at playingforchange.com where their tagline is "Peace through music". Apparently you can buy their songs on iTunes as well. Absolutely fantastic idea.

Introducing: One Simple Goal

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

In my recent post In a rut and tired of it, I mentioned a possible solution to some nagging issues that continue to be difficult for me to overcome. May I quote:

So, here’s what I’m going to do. Set One simple goal each night before going to bed, to be completed the following day. The goal can range anywhere from spiritual to entrepreneurial. Simplicity will be favored over complexity, but I won’t be shying away from possible complex issues. The point is to do SOMETHING. It is my desire that each day I will produce a favorable gain in removing some obstacle that has stood in my way recently.

That was four days ago, and I have already been getting amazing results out of accomplishing a simple daily goal. My first four goals were: Tuesday) wake up at 8 am; Wednesday) Begin building a website to track goals, pushing it to the server; Thursday) Finalize the beta features of the website and start getting feedback from people; Friday) Contact a friend I've lost contact with. I have accomplished all four goals. The first and last goals were fairly simple, though still required determination to complete. The middle two goals were much more complex and time-sensitive, requiring even more determination and willpower to complete within one day. It was a good test to see how simplicity vs. complexity affects the decisions you make while accomplishing the goal.

By setting the goal to work hard on the website to get it out, I incentivized myself to put away distractions (like email, facebook, twitter) and focus more. I continually was assessing the amount of time I had to accomplish the goal, making value judgements based on the end goal I was desiring. Several times last night I had to abandon the feature I wanted to build because it was taking too long. This was a fabulous way to learn about the power of constraints that Jason Fried was talking about.

OneSimpleGoal.com

The purpose of OneSimpleGoal.com is to provide you with an opportunity to simply set and complete daily goals. There are (and will be) very few bells and whistles to the app, I want the simplicity of the concept to shine through. As such, there isn't much color, imagery, or content. All things are focused on you setting a goal for that day (or the next), and then empowering you to get it done. Upcoming revisions to the site will address some of your initial ideas about how to improve the site. I am so excited to have this app out early and having people using it, even in an infantile or beta state.

You can get daily updates on the status of development on the app through twitter.com/onesimplegoal and the One Simple Goal group on facebook. If you have any ideas, concerns, bug reports, testimonials, or any other feedback about the app, please let me know by commenting on this post, replying @onesimplegoal on twitter, posting to the wall on the facebook group, or emailing me at bj [dot] neilsen [at] gmail [dot] com.

Now go out and start changing your life by accomplishing your simple daily goals!

Gellin' for Great Experience

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Saw two really great videos from the GEL conference aimed at understanding and implementing better experience for users and customers.

Seth Godin talking about how and why things are broken (from an experience and interaction perspective).

Jason Fried of 37 Signals talking about using Less to propel your business to greater success. The beginning is a bit muddy, but it gets pretty good from the middle on. My favorite part of the talk is the very end, here's a transcript of the last minute of the talk:

Less software has less mass, and mass is a very important point, because just like in the physical world, the more mass an object has, the more energy it takes to change it's direction. The bigger a software project is and the more code it has, the harder it is to change it. And if you can't change your software, you're going to die. [...]

My suggestion to people is to keep your software small, less software, less mass, make it easier to change, and think about opportunities to embrace constraints. That's the only thing I'd recommend more of: constraints. Less money, less people, less time, less abstractions, less software. That's where you're actually truly creative, in the space where you have constraints. If you have nothing constraining you, you're not going to be creative because you simply don't have to deliver. But when you have constraints, and you have less money and less time, you have to get stuff done. And putting yourself in a position to get stuff done is the best possible thing you could ever do.

In a rut and tired of it

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

You may or may not know me very well. Truthfully, I doubt any of you really know me, except for Tyler maybe, and my wife of course. I'll just fill you in a bit since you're on the outs: I've been in a big time rut for the last few months. Any semi-regular readers of this blog will know that I have a passion for programming and design, and that I have the entrepreneurial spirit of an eagle (or mongoose?). I have an incredible desire to work on my own businesses (or with a few well qualified individuals) and to have the opportunity to do something more in my life than sit at a desk and perform the whims of an employer.

The Problem

That being said, I have been at the bottom of an enormous rut, trenched largely due to my own inaction. I know, I know, here I sit on the interwebs posting things about how you can be a go-getter and build your own business, and here I am basically hypocritical in nearly every way imaginable. I've been up against a wall of sorts, and I've basically done the worst thing you can possibly do in that situation: stared up at the summit, knowing I needed to be there, knowing I could be there, but deciding to sit at the bottom for no better reason than that it seemed difficult to accomplish.

My mind is constantly restless, ever conjuring new and more grand schemes of how to achieve my lofty goals of owning several automated businesses, yet here I sit, no closer to actualizing those dreams than I was 6 months ago. There has certainly been no lack of idea generation with how to accomplish my goals, or at least, which avenue of business I should take to move forward. The dearth has been in my lacking motivation to overcome the obstacles that arise. Learning new programming languages, understanding the paradigms of business management, continuing to provide for my family (and pay the bills); all these are obstacles that have arisen which I have generally had no answering words for.

A possible solution

I have always believed that we have the power in ourselves (given from God) to overcome all obstacles. At no time has this counsel been clearer to me in my mind than it is now. I have the ability to change my situation, and need only to make a conscious choice to change my state, and to then immediately take action towards the desired goal. The little engine expressed "I think I can, I think I can [etc ad nauseam]", but my mantra will be "I Know I can, I Know I can!" So, here's what I'm going to do. Set One simple goal each night before going to bed, to be completed the following day. The goal can range anywhere from spiritual to entrepreneurial. Simplicity will be favored over complexity, but I won't be shying away from possible complex issues. The point is to do SOMETHING. It is my desire that each day I will produce a favorable gain in removing some obstacle that has stood in my way recently. Some of these obstacles I wish to work on incrementally (in no particular order):

Develop better sleep habits (currently the worst they've ever been).
Finally fix my blog comments form (has been giving me absolute hell).
Actually releasing my rails blog to production (coming soon-ish just doesn't cut it anymore).
Figuring out the Objective-C nuances that I simply don't understand currently.
Introducing some level of Scripture Study and Prayer into my daily routine.
Consistently working on projects that will allow me to one day break free.

Daily, consistent action. Simple, achievable goals (one per day). Happy, well-deserved success. These are the things I strive for, and thank you for allowing me to bare a portion of my soul. I feel a bit better now. :)

What are you doing to break out of (or stay out of) your Ruts?

Purge and Simplify

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

And so it begins: 136 feeds slashed to 99, 54 follows tumbles to 26. Perhaps it had something to do with me being in a quaint little town in central Utah earlier this evening to realize one huge thing that has been really frustrating me lately: I am on information overload, and it is driving me crazy. So it was that after a good chat with my wife on the way home tonight that I decided I was going to clean house a little.

Step 1: Take my feeds to the pool

My Google Reader subscriptions have been getting a bit out of control as of late. You may remember a while back when I posted about how I "stay in touch" with technology and the outside world through the use of feeds. Problem was, I got into a terrible habit of subscribing to a feed simply because I liked one or two posts from the site/blog. Just mere weeks ago, I had 96 subscriptions (I'm sure many of you rolled your eyes at that), but this evening I checked to find I had 136! That was just ridiculously out of control. I've been noticing that it has been taking upwards of a full hour each day (or more for some days) to get through all the news items that came through the feeds.

So, needless to say, Reader got a bit of a trim tonight. I carved a full 37 feeds from the routine. There were a few feeds in particular that will make the daily reading much easier. KSL.com was providing an average of 30.1 stories per day. The next highest per-day-amount was from Major League Soccer News at about 12 per day. I chopped both of those right off, as well as all but two soccer feeds: Soccer by Ives and Behind the Shield. I then went through all my tags and cleaned house. I had previously subscribed to a bunch of the google blogs about Ad Sense and Webmaster Tools, but realized that when those posts came through I was completely skipping them because I just wasn't interested. That was really the crux of the situation: I had subscribed to an enormous amount of blogs assuming that I even cared about what they had to say, or perhaps that I should care about it. The fact of the matter came down that I just didn't care, or didn't have the time to care. And as we all know, time is money. CHOP.

By the way, I can't tell you how liberating it feels to have sliced so much out. I'll report soon on what I find based on the surgery.

Step 2: Noise-cancellation

A few months back I decided I would finally give Twitter a try (this came on the heels of finally giving in to facebook last year, just to see what all the fuss was about (FYI: it's about nothing at all)). For those of you who have no idea what Twitter is, here is their one liner:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

It sounds conspicuously similar to facebook or myspace, and while it does have the flavor of social networking, it's far simpler. The only thing you can really do on twitter is just that: tell people what you are doing. What's more, you only have 140 characters to relate your sordid tale, even if you have links or pictures to share. There are link shortening services that help with this, but still, short and sweet is the Twitter mantra. Now, this all seems like a bash on Twitter, but I must admit that it absolutely can serve an enormous purpose for people trying to have their company or product go viral. Just go ask Amazon, or Jet Blue. They've had customer service nightmares blow up in their faces from Tweeters that send a maelstrom of angry one-liners at the companies for minor slip-ups. To put it bluntly, Twitter provides power to the people.

As you can tell, I've been studying Twitter as much as I can lately. As such, I've discovered quite a few people/companies to that I am interested in to follow. People like Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office), Imogen Heap, Real Salt Lake, and common squirrel (my personal favorite). Over the last week or two I've been following 54 tweeps (like peeps, but not) and one thing I've realized. Just because someone is a supposed expert in their field does not mean they are interesting enough to hear about all the minutia they come up with each day to enchant their followers. My experience with following people that I don't know on Twitter (no matter how high of regard I had for them before) is pretty much an enormous waste of time. People like Jeffrey Zeldman (Design Guru), or Alex Smith (Twitter API Lead), among others. Love the work they do, but I just don't know them well enough (read: at all) to really have any point in knowing that they had a jamocha milkshake and that they think that the local diner is weird for serving potato lasagna.

So it was with un-heavy heart that I chopped the majority of my followings from 54 down to 26. The majority of the people I still follow are friends, with the occasional company or sport tweeter. Interestingly enough, I find that Twitter is a much better outlet to getting quick news info than RSS. With a strict requirement to limit each tweet to 140 characters, you've got to be short and sweet, and to the point.

Step 3: Breathe the fresh(er) air

While the purging and slashing I did tonight on my tech info overload was significant, I'm sure there will be room for improvement and more slashing in the coming weeks. What's important is that I realized what was going wrong and took the steps necessary to begin changing it. I'll still have to work on suppressing the urge to subscribe to new blogs, doing so only when I am certain the content is worth the amount of time it takes to consume it. The Twitter bug won't be as hard to shake, as I'm still forming those habits and ways to deal with them as we speak.

What are you doing to purge and/or simplify in your life?

Our regularly scheduled program will return shortly...

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Just passing word along that I'm on a brief post-writing hiatus due to a big project at work we're trying to close out. No, that doesn't mean I write my posts while at work (at least, not all of them), but means that I'm so burned out by the end of the night from having worked 10 or 12 hours that I have no desire to use the computer at all.

Our regularly scheduled program will return shortly, but in the meantime, have a cocktail and enjoy this random video I just dug up for you... going to youtube to find something random

Star Trek meets Monty Python

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

'nuff said.

Soccer Unites

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

I just came across this amazing video of how soccer unites people around the world. It's a bit long, but it has absolutely been the highlight of my day.

The Soccer Project from Rebekah Fergusson on Vimeo.

Did it make me shed a tear? Maybe.

UPDATE: I got Pelada (the name of the documentary) for Christmas in 2010 and it is EXCELLENT. Go buy it today.

A Fatal Flaw

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Rarely a day goes by where I do not think about or act on my business ideas. Most of the actions/thoughts are centered around formulating a system or product that will create an Automated Income Stream, or pave the way to such opportunities. Every so often I'll break from the norm and formulate ideas about business philosophies in general, how would I set things up in certain circumstances.

So it was that this past friday I was out to lunch with some developer friends from work and we got to talking about our current work load. One friend mentioned how he was tired of doing overtime (we've been ultra-slammed with a large project for the past 8 months) and had made a commitment to "only work one or two overtime's per week from now on". I rather rudely laughed in his face. Had I been drinking something, it would have been sprayed all over the backseat of the car. It should be noted now, that I have a highly disgusted opinion of that little thing that business owners love to promote: Overtime.

Mandated Overtime should be illegal.

I don't know who would enforce that law, maybe some employee police who show up at business places after hours looking for people who were "asked" to "put in a few extra hours this week" because of a "big deadline coming up" for "client x". Punishment for violation of this law would be placed on the business owner or manager enforcing the overtime work, punishable by revoking that person's managerial duties for a certain amount of time (determined upon severity of the given offense). Managers with company ownership would be required to divvy up their share of the company with all harmed workers (those doing the overtime). Ya, maybe that's how I'd do it.

Okay, but seriously, it should absolutely be illegal. It is my opinion that the business owner or manager who "asks" or "requests" overtime from a peer employee has a misplaced perception of reality, one in which their employee has lesser rights or privileges than that of their own. They think that the employee should do so for "the good of the company", and too often, the employees buy it. "You see, we've got this really really big project that is coming down the wire, and we just can't miss." I don't buy it. I strongly believe that Mandated (requested or required) Overtime is a sign that your boss or employer doesn't understand a few important things about business and life in general. I present here two questions that owners/managers should consider when thinking about mandating overtime.

Is the employee a person? I'm serious about this one. I truly believe that some managers don't really see their employees as people, just drones to carry on a task and get paid for it (which means they are also an expense and a liability). Seriously, employees are people to. They have friends, family, and separate lives from work. Let them maintain those other relationships, rather than letting them crumble due to workplace stress and time away from home. The answer is that, Yes, employees are people.
Does the employee want to work Overtime? Now, 99% of all employees "asked" to do overtime will say yes. When asked if they "really" want to do overtime, most will say, "sure, it's no problem." That's because most people are too afraid to say No, fearing that (in a down economy) they will be looked down upon by their employer and could possibly be jeopardizing their jobs by appearing not to be a "team player". The answer to this point, No, your employee does not want to work overtime, whatever they may say to the contrary.

So what's this really about? Why am I making such a fuss over Overtime? It's like I said before: Overtime represents a flawed perception of reality. So, let's stomp it out. What does overtime really mean? In one definition, Overtime means that there is more work (sometimes far more) than we have the ability to do during normal work hours, or throughout a carefully planned project schedule. This usually means one of two things:

Whoever signed off on the project did not understand the amount of work required to get it done.
Whoever signed off on the project understood the amount of work required, but signed the deal anyways, knowingly committing to more work than the company or team was capable of performing.

In either case, the problem is that the project was over-sold, and will likely under-deliver, though at great cost to those involved in doing the work. In one case, it is Ignorance; in the other, Indifference. Often times it's a mixture of both that get them in trouble. I've heard CEO's and managers talk about how "Project X will make or break this company. We deliver on this one, and none of us will have to work again in our lives, unless we want to. Sure it will be hard, but that's how it's supposed to be, and it'll be worth it. By the way, if we fail, we'll all need to go find new jobs." In short, Overtime is simply the result of someone making a deal that they probably know will be too much for the team to handle, but is too lucrative in some way to pass up. So how do you avoid the Overtime trap?

First: STOP SELLING VAPORWARE.

Stop selling something you don't have. Stop promising to that client that you have this ultra cool widget that whistles like a monkey and dances like a ballerina. All of your employees know that the widget actually honks like a goose and trips down the stairs, or worse, that there is no such widget at all. If they knew what you were promising, 90% of them would be on Monster before you could count to five, and you might get a few that will up and walk out on you.

Second: Stop trying to be something you're not.

You are an orange, not an apple. If Client X wants an apple, they certainly won't get one by biting into your orange. So stop pretending to be something that you aren't. Instead, focus on the truly novel concept of doing and being what you are. You will likely find that there is a viable market for oranges that you can build into and be just as happy. Oh, and you have the added benefit that your employees will absolutely love you for this.

Third: Turn Demand into a path to success, not a death march.

Don't have a rotary-girder, but Client X really really wants one? Tell them the truth. Then, when you get back from the meeting, talk to your top people and figure out if building that rotary-girder would be a viable arm to grow into for the business. If one client wants it, are there others that would be looking for the same thing? How long would it take to put together? If this client were gone when you actually created the rotary-girder, would it have been a waste of resources, or would there be other opportunities available? If this new path is viable (and doesn't stray too far from the focus of what you do best), then go for it. But by all means, do it right. Do your homework, plan it out, create a sensible approach to creating the product or service, and then execute with your team. But by all means, do not agree to building the product or service if you don't have it. Build it first, then sell it to your hearts content.

The moral of this long-ish story? Mandated Overtime is something that should be avoided like the plague, as it is an indicator of something far scarier about your business: you are creating an unsustainable environment for your employees. So reel it in, stop the Overtime, scale back your ambitious selling that is putting all your employee's that much further from their spouses. Go back to your initial focus that made you successful in the first place. Your employees will be more loyal, and you won't have to give up parts of your company because the overtime police came calling at 10 o'clock at night to find your senior developer chest deep in production system compile errors.

The Impetus of Inspiration

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Just over two months ago I made a promise to you. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, that's probably good and bad. The promise I made at the end of the article Turning off the Corporate Cruise-Control was that I would within a day or two provide a followup post detailing actions one could take with the knowledge. I have since utterly broken this promise for which I profusely apologize. As promised, I'm continuing the thread where I pointed out the obvious benefits that can come from building an Automated Income Stream, or simply, AIS.

This time around I'd like to focus mainly on what it takes to create one or more AIS's. Ultimately, the desire and determination will have to come from within you, it's not something I can provide for you. If you've read the previous post and agree with even half of what I said in it, then continue reading. If not, I truly hope that you can achieve your life goals by working for someone else, though I have found it difficult to do so. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone, and neither is the corporate 8-to-5 model. Let us carry on.

Have you ever had that spark? I know that you have. It's an experience I'm convinced everyone has had (likely) many many times during their lives. I'm talking about the time when you were minding your own business when "out of the blue" an idea came to you that was so absurdly amazing that you stopped everything you were doing just to think about it. Depending on how consumed you were with whatever it was you were doing, you spent anywhere from 15 seconds to several hours thinking about this idea. Sometimes, the idea was so good you talked about it to friends or colleagues. You might have written about it in your journal or blog, or perhaps kept it in the back of your mind for another time that was more appropriate to explore and/or act upon your initial thoughts.

You can call this process of discovery whatever you want, dumb luck, happenstance, Inspiration & Insight (wink), revelation, etc. Regardless of what you call it (though I would have to argue that it is not happenstance or dumb luck), it is Powerful. I'm sure that many people have these "Aha! moments" and simply let them slide by, or keep them around just to keep conversation. Assuming you are an entrepreneur or would like to be, DON'T let them go by! Write down your inspirations as they come. Keep a notebook or similar on you at all times, ready to take this inspiration as it comes. Write and do not edit. A sheer brain dump will always be more powerful than if you stop and think. Go on autopilot for this.

Lately, I have had a very specific biological clock regarding when my inspirations come. I either receive amazing inspirational ideas in the dead of night (generally from 1 to 4), or while showering in the morning before heading to punch the clock. My two most-recent examples:

1. Typical Programmer

For nearly a year I've had a specific idea kicking around in my head about a certain business product I would love to find or build. The initial idea was fairly ambiguous in nature, not like the sudden inspiration we're talking about here. For several months I would think of it randomly, without much inspiration surrounding it. Then one night a few months ago I woke up at 3:30, the idea had finally reached inspiration status. At first I mulled the new concepts over in my mind hoping to go back to sleep and I could think about it in the morning. This was obviously not working by 4, so I decided to do something about it. I popped open my laptop, sat up in bed, and went to work. By the time I needed to start getting ready for work, I had a fairly good working copy of the application in Rails. I hadn't dealt with specifics like design or branding, but just focused on building some of the core features that had come during the night. Since that time the idea has again taken a back-burner role while I sniff out some potentialities regarding some of the more high-level features. Even then, I have a fairly solid base to work from when I decide the time is right to come back and work on it. Lesson learned: you can get an incredible amount of work done in the middle of the night because there are zero distractions.

2. Singing in the Rain, er, Shower.

I take really long showers. Like, 30 or 40 minutes sometimes. Ok, so lately they're usually more like 15 minutes, but still, I love hot water. The funny part is that I basically just stand there under the water the entire time, washing my hair only when I'm ready to get out. Weird quirks aside, I've noticed that I get quite a lot of inspiration just standing and not really thinking about much at all. It gives my mind time to wander and think about random things, rather than when I'm at work or with my wife and kids where I have to keep up some level of logical thought and concentration. So it was about a month ago when I was taking a shower, thinking about something random when the inspiration struck. For the past 9 months since the iPhone SDK has been out and available to developers, I've always wanted to come up with some app ideas to build and sell through the App Store. Up until this particular day, I had basically come up with a lot of really lame ideas that would be so wildly unpopular apple would surely send its thugs to break my fingers to prevent me from ever writing a line of code again. Then the inspiration came, and within a 10 minutes shower I had well over 20 new app ideas that were absolutely feasible, dare I say profitable. When I got out of the shower I immediately wrote down the bare minimum for each idea that came, then throughout the next few days gathered feedback from developers and colleagues alike regarding supposed feasibility of the apps. Since that time I have steadily been growing my knowledge of Objective-C and the iPhone SDK (many thanks be to Jason Barker on this), as well as lining up business contracts to make this a viable income stream. Lesson learned: don't give up if the ideas don't seem to be coming. One day they will flood you out if you are looking for it.

I was hoping to be able to contain this into a single post, but it is clear to me that I can write pages and pages about creating income streams and entrepreneurialism in general. So, I will let your eyes rest for now, and promise that a new post will come soon with more good things. I part with a query from Ryan Byrd, leave your comment below:

What are you doing today to break free?

The Grape Lady

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

This is too funny for a description. It gets good about half way through. Kudos to Chad for pointing this out to me.

Not Enough Work

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

My Personal Favorite is the Haiku-Compliant markup. :)

Are you a Breaker?

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

A recent post by my friend Rainer prompted me to realize that while I have been fairly active throughout my life, I've also been a bit clumsy at times. I pride myself in the amount of physical activity I subscribe to each day*, but it hasn't come without a price. Off the top of my head I've broken 6 bones in my trials and tribulations. I'm pretty sure there's a few more, but that's what I got for you at this point. So without further ado, I will give you a short rundown on each of these breaker stories, ordered from least impressive to most impressive.

Minding My Own Business.

I used to love to go skating at an indoor park called the Proving Grounds in Pleasant Grove. They had some majorly fun ramps and rails to skate, and while I've never been an incredible skater, I've always thoroughly enjoyed rolling around, popping some ollies, and sliding rails. One evening I was skating at the PG in PG (hehe), I was practicing some flat-ground kickflips. While concentrating on my feet setup on my own board I suddenly collided with another skater who was coming the opposite direction. We both were thrown off our boards and onto our backs. In the foray, my right arm did a massive windmill and slammed into the concrete, breaking the fifth metacarpal joint on my right hand (the joint joining my palm with my pinky finger). I didn't think it was broken right away, but it hurt enough that I immediately went home. By the time I got there, we decided to go in to the ER and get it checked, and voila! The pathetic thing is that the break was like this miniscule piece of bone that was chipped off the outside of the joint, but it felt like the whole joint was fractured. Yes I know, I am a wuss.

Obviously not ready for the Majors.

Most who know me know that I LOVE playing soccer. I've played on various indoor teams over the past few years down at the Indoor Soccer field in Lindon. A few years ago I was playing goalie for our team since we were short handed (I don't regularly play goalie because, well, I'm not very good at it at all). We were getting pounded by the opposite team, mainly because they had a bunch of super good players with cannon's for legs. Nearing the end of the game a shot was blasted my way that I successfully parried away with both hands, but the brunt of the shot was taken by my left pinky which subsequently decided to alter it's angle by about 10 degrees. OUCH. While I didn't go to the ER for this one, but it hurt like crazy for weeks and has eventually settled in to a nice skewed angle on my hand. Oh, and for the record, I stopped playing goalie after that. :)

Not as strong as I once was (or bright).

In 2003, while Tyler and I were working on marketing our infant business eveRide, we decided to put on a rail competition. The problem was, we didn't own a comp-worthy rail, so we decided to build one. A trip to Metal Mart and a few hundred bucks later, we had an impressive bulk of Steel tubing at our disposal. The rail we built was an A-Frame, that started at ground level and angled up to about 5 feet high, then 20 feet of flat rail, then angling back down to ground level. We built the rail in 4 sections (up, flat, flat, down) which would allow us to transport the 40 foot behemoth to the comp site. While grinding a weld on one of the flat sections (a 10 foot long bar, with two legs and no feet (yet)), the rail lost support and started to fall. I was closest and knew the fall would be deafeningly loud, so I rushed forward to catch the enormous section, realized at the last moment that it was a completely futile attempt and tried to jump away. The rail came slamming down on my grandpa-style-slipper-clad left foot, breaking the tip of my second toe. I'm pretty sure I lost an enormous amount of religion that night, but I'm not sure you would've done otherwise, so stop judging me. :) To this day, the tip of that toe is much more plump and skewed than all the others. Again, no ER visit on this one.

Dude, we JUST got here!

December 26th, 2001. Kevin and I decided to use our Canyon's Season Passes to go ride on a frigid wednesday following Christmas. We took one trip up the short lift to go ride the rails and boxes. The first rail was a low mailbox style rail that we both tried a few times, taking our boards off and hiking the rail after each attempt. I think I did it Twice. As I recall, we hadn't even ridden the rest of the park at all yet. Kevin slid the rail a 3rd time, then took of his board to hike again. It was my turn to go, so I rode into a boardslide. At the end of the rail I had a brain fart and forgot to turn back, landed facing down the hill, and caught my front edge on the icy snow, catapulting me directly onto my left collar bone (on the ice no less). I knew immediately it was broken, but kevin had already hiked the rail again and was out of earshot, so I had to wait for him to get into his bindings, wait his turn (it was very busy), slide the rail, then stop next to me lying on the ground seething with pain. I didn't know what to do but ride the rest of the run, so that we did, I booked the entire thing, each bump throbbing into my collar bone, sending pain EVERYWHERE. The med station was at the bottom of the run and I remember collapsing outside of it, still strapped in. They took the X-Ray there, confirming a break, and then released me with a sling to go home a mere 40 minutes after we had gotten to the resort.

Don't you just love Cats?

Late one evening last June I was having a leisurely ride down by Utah Lake with Tyler after dusk. We had ridden down to the Lindon Boat Harbor and were on our way back on a backroad. I had recently been riding my brother's road bike to work (with the fancy clip pedals), so I was again riding it that night. I was slightly parched, so I grabbed my water bottle and started drinking out of it. To my surprise, just ahead of me on the road is a dead cat, lying directly in my path. With hampered maneuvering skills (one-handed due to drinking the bottle), I decided in a split second the best option is to run over the cat and see what happens. After the minor "speedbump" (which was quite a bit harder than I expected), I started to lose my balance to the left, veering towards the unsuspecting Tyler (who was slightly ahead of me). My front wheel collided into the side of his back wheel, which brought me down immediately onto the pavement of the road and my left elbow. In the crash, My right foot came loose of the pedal, but the left was still locked in, and I could not get it out. This was slightly alarming because I had crashed in the middle of the deserted road, but a car was coming in the oncoming lane, meaning I had to Frankenstein-drag myself and attached bike off to the left shoulder of the road. By this time, Tyler had stopped and was trying to figure out just what had happened. After losing a bit more Religion, I was able to get out of the bike and walk it off a bit. With two miles to go till home, and no cell phones on either of us, the only option we had was to finish the ride, which was surprisingly calm, albeit one-handed. By the time I got home, there was no question in my mind that it was broken. ER, here we come. I still have a small limitation in how my left arm rotates around the Radius bone.

The Pièce de résistance: Hardheaded.

February 12th, 2001. Another Snowboarding trip gone awry, this time while en route to the resort. I drove with my brother Scott up to pick up some friends who lived in Provo Canyon, then started driving to Park City through the canyon. The morning was sleeting pretty bad, and the roads were very sketchy. I was afraid of driving in my '89 Jeep Wrangler, so I pulled over and asked Scott to drive. He had no qualms about the bad roads, so away we went. Not more than two minutes later, while turning a large bend in the road at Vivian Park, the Jeep lost all traction and slid out of the turn and off the road towards a small group of homes near the park. Both wheels on the right side of the jeep (where I was sitting) tilted off of a 10 foot retaining wall separating the road level from the backyard of one of the homes. We rode that wall for nearly 30 feet before rolling over the rest of the wall, landing on the rollbar on my side of the Jeep, then completing the barrell roll by landing back on our wheels.

The last thing I remembered was the car sliding off the road, grabbing the door with my right hand, and the Jeep tilting to the right (the wheels going off the side). Everything else was black until I woke up in the Ambulance, answering questions about who the President of the US was. Apparently, Scott was unhurt (luckily we were both wearing our seat belts), and I apparently was not unconscious by the time we were back on our wheels. I was told I attempted to unbuckle my seat belt, then collapsed into seizures. Scott had already exited the Jeep and was running to the house to get help. A nice couple behind us stopped to help out, and the woman supposedly held me in my seizures until the Ambulance arrived. Apparently, in the rollover, the rollbar above my head broke completely free and knocked me on the upper left side of my skull, knocking in a piece of bone about the size of a dime.

Scott was sobbing in the Ambulance, and I remember being really annoyed at the guy asking me all the questions (assessing my brain functionality and comprehension), as I had enormous pain in my body, as well as the uncontrollable urge to vomit. I remember arriving at the hospital, being taken out of the ambulance on the stretcher, and immediately seeing my parents there, both crying. Remembering that single image is enough to still bring tears back, I just remember how scared my mom looked. Amazingly, I was in the hospital only 12 hours, from 8 am to 8 pm. They didn't perform any surgery, just closed my head wound with stitches since it was small enough to heal on its own. I do remember seeing my then-girlfriend, Alice, visiting me, as well as Tyler and Kevin trying their best not to laugh, but doing a terrible job at it. I recall playing Tony Hawk on the Playstation that night, though sleeping was absolutely miserable for the next several days.

Thanks for sticking with me through this monster of a post, hope it brought some good laughs. If you're still reading this, throw a comment and tell me:

What Bones have you broken, and how?

Though I work at a desk job and have absolutely been a slug for the past 4 months... ugh.

Keeping in touch with the Blogosphere

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

I think it's safe to assume that Blogs are here to stay. There, I said it. Was that so hard? No, not really. With this (semi-)new-fangled trend going on, you can think of pretty much anything and everything you've ever dreamed about, and there is somebody out there blogging about it. Probably passionately (and often times using Blogger no less, shudder). With all of this available information out there, I submit the question:

How do you keep track of it all?

For myself, I definitely don't follow every blog I hear about or find. I'm semi-choosy. I'm definitely a big fan of RSS feeds, I've been using them probably since 2003. (For those who are lost at this point, the quick definition of RSS Feeds: An auto-updated subscription file available on blogs, news sites, etc, that allows you to get the recently posted topics from those sites. Certain programs can read these feeds and display them in a human-friendly format. It's kinda like personalized email, but without the use of emails. :)).

Not until recently did I finally come up with a system that I feel works well for me. Up until a few weeks ago I have been using Apple's Mail.app to manage/read my RSS feeds from all my blogs. Unfortunately, it's a fairly new feature in Mail.app (came with Leopard) and in my opinion is lacking in a lot of areas, especially when you have a lot of feeds. Needless to say, it got burdensome in the end trying to manage it all through Mail.

Enter Google Reader.

As you can see, I'm quite a read-a-holic. I have 96 RSS subscriptions (blogs or otherwise) that I follow on a regular basis. I've "read" 1,732 iteams in the last 30 days of using Google Reader (which I believe is about as long as I 've been using it). While that seems like an incredible amount of articles to read, I honestly browse probably 70% of the posts, skim 25%, and read probably 5% of the posts in their entirety (thanks Ben for showing me my bad math on this). Though this seems like a waste of time, it's very useful to me to get the information I'm looking for in a quick way. I can check the posts at any time of day in ONE PLACE (rather than visiting a huge list of blogs or other sites and having to scroll down the post lists). It's much more convenient. Also, if I've subscribed to a site and tend to skip most of their posts over a period of a few days, I'll usually unsubscribe to keep my feed-bloat to a minimum.

So what exactly am I following? I would say the majority of my subscriptions are programming related, especially relating to Ruby/Rails or Objective-C/iPhone programming. I also have all my friend's & family's blogs on there, as well as a few soccer news feeds (ESPN and Fox soccernet). A few of my favorite feeds you ask? Here is a short list, in no particular order (I'm sure I'll forget a few):

xkcd.com - (COMEDY) - absolutely hilarious comic strip for the nerd in all of us.
MacRumors.com - (TECH) - A pretty good Apple rumor site, one reason why most of you think I know a lot about Apple (which I do, btw.........:)).
CocoaWithLove.com - (PROGRAMMING) - A really great site for learning some of the more complex pieces of Objective-C and Cocoa development.
RyanByrd.net - (ANYTHING & EVERYTHING) - Prominent blogger Ryan Byrd and his daily ramblings. You'll find everything from chemistry expiriments to stories about shooting old T.V.'s at night in the desert (with an ENORMOUS gun).
37Signals.com - (TECH/DESIGN) - Everything from Programming, Design, Usability, and just plain ninja-awesomeness.
Real Salt Lake Blog - (SOCCER) - The RSL team blog, written by employees of the RSL organization.
KSL.com - (NEWS) - KSL top stories.
Ron Paul - (POLITICAL) - Campaign4Libery.com, Ron Paul's online political community.

So, to end this post, I ask you to comment on a few questions:

How do you keep track of blogs/sites you are interested in?
How do you get to my blog in particular? Links from other blogs? Email updates? RSS?

The comment box is below...... you know what do to.

P.S. You can subscribe to this blog's RSS Feed by clicking on this: *

Simplicity is Bliss

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

I just came across an article by Scott Stevenson (an Apple developer) where he talks about the strategy behind developing the Cocoa framework, the current Objective-C framework that Apple is pushing as the standard for all Mac and iPhone programming. While it is specific to programming, I believe the concepts are applicable in every day life and decision-making.

The most important thing you will ever learn as a developer is this: start with the simplest thing that works correctly, and see where it takes you. This always leads you in the right direction because you're not trying to solve problems that you don't understand yet.

Instead of trying to guess at what you'll need ahead of time, just leave yourself room to make changes as necessary. Cocoa's dynamic design is ideal for this model. Not only is it less stress and more fun, but it leaves you with a much better final product.

As a novice, it's tempting to try to take on a larger challenge by designing something more sophisticated. I think there's some concern about embarrassment from showing off code that's too simple. Tune that out. Good code is simple code that works correctly.

It's so refreshing to know that in all we do, the simple answer is always the best one. This is true in so many facets of life, not just in programming or graphic design. Don't worry or fuss with the complex unknowns; focus on what matters right now. The future will always take care of itself. With regards to your experiences (programming or not), does this philosophy hold up? What are your thoughts?

Another great joke in a long line of bad jokes

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

I am still laughing ridiculously over this. This morning I was working on a feature in our internal CRM to apply given supplier subscriptions (clients) to reps (our sales guys) so they can get the commission. The feature would allow any rep to override another rep's link to a supplier, but it first will notify you that a link already exists to another rep. In my testing this morning, this is the message my feature gave me while trying to add an already linked supplier (and no, I did not doctor this):

int getRandomNumber()

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

I will be laughing about this one for years.

via xkcd.com

3 Life Lessons

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Yesterday I found a link to the text version of Steve Jobs' commencement address to the Stanford class of 2005. I highly recommend reading the full address, it has some really great insights to life and why we live it. I thought I'd share some of the more notable pieces from the address.

1. Connecting the Dots

Jobs describes the process of dropping-out of college, then dropping-in to take the classes he was interested in. He took a Calligraphy class on a whim, which taught him all about the beauty of Typography, which he later used to incorporate into the world's first PC, the Macintosh.

But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I find Steve's advice brilliant here. This is a style of living that I have tried very hard to follow for the majority of my life, especially over the last 4 or 5 years. Do your homework, trust in God, and ultimately, follow your heart. I have been amazed time and again how the dots connect in a phenomenal way as I look back on the decisions I have made throughout my life.

2. Love and Loss

After building Apple into a successful $2 Billion company, Jobs was forced to leave due to conflicts within the company. At first he was stricken with the loss of completing his dreams, but soon came to realize that he still was passionate about the computer industry. During this time he met and married the love of his life, went on to found NeXT and Pixar, and was eventually brought back to run Apple when they acquired NeXT. Since then, he has been regarded as a business and technology icon to look toward for inspiration.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

3. Death

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

[...] Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Brother Steve, Amen.

Turning off the Corporate Cruise-Control

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Readers Caveat: This post will likely seem like a heretical rant to most readers, as the content is mainly focused on showing the flaws inherent in the corporate 8-5 model. That's okay, it is meant to make you feel uncomfortable. It also is 100% my beliefs, and you don't really have to agree with me if you don't want to. All the same, give it a read and let me know what you think at the bottom.

I've never really felt like I fit into the corporate mold of an 8-to-5er. I just don't like being told what I'm going to do all day long. I feel like I have more things that I can do with my life than be subservient to the whims of a boss or CEO. Now don't get me wrong, I've worked under some good (but some bad also) boss's and CEO's. For me, the problem isn't the people, it's the system. I loathe the system. I know that there are things to learn and gain from being an 8-2-5er, such as task responsibility, depending on others, learning to work closely with others for potentially greater gains, etc. In spite of that, I feel like it's such a hinderance that people (read: me, myself, or I) use as a way to coast through life. Wake up (usually later than you're supposed to), normal morning routine, drive the commute, punch-in a few minutes late, check emails, check youtube, do your best to get into the flow*, have a melt-down or two based on current project, check emails, punch-out, drive commute, etc. Due to this routine, family members generally do not get to see or interact with each other until around 5:38 pm. But what if my daughter is having her pre-school graduation today at 1? Or what if I need to be there when the internet guy comes to set stuff up at the house?

One thing I've realized over and over for the past 4 years: Corporate Cruise-Control (aka Coasting) is so easy, but it's also brain numbing, and it robs you of your family and/or dreams.

I don't want to be a Coaster.

You don't either? GREAT! Now that you know you're a sheep of a different color (like me), what are you supposed to do about it? How do we turn off the cruise-control? I have a secret formula that I'm not supposed to tell you: A Burning desire + Committed Action = Success. Step 1 is knowing that you don't want to play by their rules, and also that you have to forge your own way. The Desire you create is to know that you can create a successful income for yourself (and family) without having to fit the corporate mold. There are other alternatives. This is the land of the free, the home of the brave. The committed action you take is to become a Learning Entrepreneur. I emphasize the word learning because you have got to be able to take your "failures" and learn from them. In speaking to my friend Tyler about this last night, he said something that I'll never forget. In life (not just business), the word "Failure" and other derivatives is simply a synonym for "Learning Experience". Failure isn't the end of the road, it's simply another bend in the S-curve of life. It can only ever be another step towards success, or simply termed "Incremental Success", if you learn from the experience. If you choose to ignore the learning experience, 1) I feel sorry for you, 2) you will likely develop mental or emotional walls to convince yourself that you don't have what it takes.

So what's the best part about breaking free, you ask? IT'S EASY. Oh ya, and it's fun. Now don't get all twisted up on this one. You've made it this far with me, just go a bit further. The National Wage Index reports that in 2007, the Average annual household wage in the US was $40,405.48. I'll round that off to a nice even $40,400. So, you being the average Joe/Jane, it seems natural to suppose that in order to break free you would need to replace your annual income of $40,400 in order to break the mold. So, let's break that down.

$40,400 yearly =

$20,200 bi-annually
$10,100 quarterly
$3,366.67 monthly
$1683.33 bi-monthly
$776.92 weekly

So far, that's pretty impressive, but it's also generic. As an employee or an entrepreneur, I know I need to accumulate appx. $777 a week in order to maintain an income of $40,400. Not bad when you break it down, but let's get even more granular. Suppose that you are currently an employee of a large corporation that pays holidays and allows PTO and Sick Days. So, taking out weekends, but leaving all the holidays as paid, and assuming that you work an 8 hour shift, we arrive at income generating days per year = 261 (365 -2(52)), or 2088 hours of work. Given these numbers, working at an 8-5 job, in order to sustain $40,400 per year you need to make:

$154.79 daily
$19.35 hourly
$0.32 minute

Wow. Every minute you sit at your desk you are generating 32 cents. Which means that you probably made around $1.00 simply reading this article. Good Job! Okay but seriously, those numbers are pretty neat when you break them down. But what happened to the other 3752 waking hours in that year (an average 8-hour per night sleeper sleeps 2920 hours in a year)? It was likely spent with friends or family, doing what you would rather be doing when you're at work. You're forming new relationships, growing existing relationships, and learning a lot about life and yourself. Unfortunately, over half of the hours in a given year you are either working or asleep (57.2%). What's worse, of all the amount of time that's available each year including sleep hours (8760 hours), 76% of your time is spent during non-income generating hours. So you work a quarter of the year in order to live for the rest of it.

This model is very inefficient in my opinion. Why not create an automated business model that allows you to generate money at all times. No matter what hour of the day, people can give you their money through this new-fangled thing we call the interwebs. Let's crunch those number one more time, but let's assume that every hour, nay, every minute of the day is an income-generating moment in time. All of a sudden our granular numbers drop significantly:

$110.68 daily
$4.61 hourly
$0.08 / minute

Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that I cut my income per minute by 400%? No silly, I was telling YOU that. Anyways, it's true. In order to generate the same income of $40,400 in a year through a normal 8-5 job, you need to make an average of 4 times more per minute than an entrepreneur who wants the same salary. The hourly and daily numbers aren't at such a high factor simply because the amount of time you have to work with is different. An even crazier number is this: if the Entrepreneur in our example makes the same per-minute wage as the salary worker (32 cents per minute), his/her annual salary would be $168,192! If by the same token the Salary worker only earned the Entrepreneur's per-minute wage, their annual salary would be $10,022.40! Time = Money.

Now most detractors at this point will say how hard it is to setup a business to deliver a consistent flow of income. "It takes some companies months or even years to get a positive cash flow, and some never even achieve that!", or, "4 out of 5 startups fail within the first year", etc. etc. (ad nauseam). I don't really know what makes these people tick, that they feel it is their sworn duty to make sure no sane person enters the world of entrepreneurialism. By all means, use your brain, be smart with your decisions (and startup capital if any), learn how to adapt. But please, don't lose sight of the pursuit of a path that excites you because you're afraid of what may (or more likely, may not) happen to you if you do. You never know, you might end up getting it right the first time.

I plan to follow this post in a day or two with another on ways to form business ideas, how to get a website going, and the #1 rule of Business. Stay tuned.

PS: I've built a quick javascript calculator to run the numbers on an annual wage, comparing entrepreneurial wages to salary worker wages. It is astounding how easy it is on a per-minute basis to make 100k a year. Go on, try it out.

I've heard of studies that say most employees waste 60-80% of their work day performing trivial or non-work related tasks, such as checking email, surfing the internet, making phone calls, taking long breaks, etc. Not you? I applaud you then. But take a look at most of your co-workers: I'd bet a nickel that most have found ways to appear fairly productive while accomplishing virtually nothing at all in an 8-hour span. The best part is that most of them don't even realize it, which is another byproduct of the Corporate Cruise-Control.

Imaginative Careers

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Driving to work this morning I saw the above image displayed prominently on the back of the van ahead of me. The image is blurry, so I'll translate:

NOW HIRING

Satellite TV Installers

A career where the only limit is your imagination.

dishnetwork.com/careers

Apparently, imagination solves all problems, including the fact that your career might be a dead end and boring as all-get-out. If the above is true, I wonder what it is that Satellite TV Installers do think about while at work to increase their job satisfaction. I suppose I may never know.

The art of decision making

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

A while back I was googling around for some ideas on how to form better sleeping habits and I came across Steve Pavlina. He's a self-help guru who runs a Blog that generates him a cool 40k/month just off of donations. The content of the blog is all related to self mastery and such, things that are very interesting to me because I'm always looking for ways to better myself. Most of you reading this article who know me are probably rolling your eyes because you've seen my many many flaws, but just know that I'm aware of the faults and am actively changing many of them. But I digress, back to Steve...

This afternoon his latest blog post, Overcoming Indecision, came across my RSS reader. I was very impressed by the content of the post, so I thought I'd mirror some of this thoughts here. At the beginning of the article he defines two ways that we grow: Linear Growth and Growth Forks. I wont' go into detail, because I don't want to plagiarize his content; Needless to say, I agree with him on both of these concepts. The most prominent part of the article (for me) is in the section entitled An Alternative Decision-Making Process, where he talks about the concept of the present moment, and how we make decisions based on consequences that are only felt in the present moment. An excerpt is as follows:

Instead of trying to predict the future to determine the long-term implications of each possible path, drop the whole branching timeline model. Instead of regarding time as a line, consider time as a single fixed point. In other words, assume that only the present moment is real, and nothing beyond that exists.

Your decision point no longer involves the selection of a long-term path. Now it’s merely a state change to your present moment.

As you consider the alternative choices you might make, ask yourself this question: "If I were to commit to this choice, how would it affect me right now? What immediate changes would I experience?"

Imagine each possible choice as real, as if you’ve already made it. Pay attention to how the choice makes you feel. Does it feel good, or does it feel wrong somehow?

This concept was a breath of fresh air for me. As most of you know I am in the process of closing on our first home purchase. Through the past 12 months there have been so many ups and downs, but I feel that through it all we've been able to make some pretty tough decisions with relative ease because we used the principles Pavlina talks about above. Whenever we are confronted with a decision to choose either A or B, the future consequences don't really matter all that much. We just focus on what it means for us in the hear and now, in the present moment.

You may gasp in horror at this, but truly, I cannot even think of one instance where we have felt like the future consequences even mattered. Just take each challenge as it comes. Learn from the difficulties and move on. If they keep coming up, learn from them again, and move on. Remember, it's the journey, not the destination, that matters most.

Note: Ironically, I wrote a song on my mission entitled "Indecision" that violates a lot of what I just wrote about. So either I was "right" then or "right" now, either way I am progressing (the direction of progression is determined by which "right" I was.) Come to think of it, pretty much every song I wrote back then violates the above stuff. ....Internal thought processing.... Awkward...

What Do You Collect?

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

I sometimes ask people the question, "If you were to have a reasonable amount of money to maintain a collection, what would you collect and why?". It's kind of a random question, but you can sometimes get interesting answers out of people. If you ask me, collections are weird things on so many different levels. People collect everything from bugs to coins to cars, and many other random things in between. My collections were on the more nerdy end of the scale (surprise!).

Card Games

My guiltiest collection addiction I had while growing up was collecting and playing the Star Trek and Star Wars Playing Card Games (I also played Magic every now and again with the Erickson's, but never indulged in purchasing my own cards). I had way more Star Trek cards than I did Star Wars, but both were fun to play. I think the Star Trek version was easier to play, I'm not sure I ever got the hang of Star Wars' Attrition in "battles". I think at last count (which was several years ago) I had over 900 Star Trek cards. And yes, I still have them somewhere around the house. I seem to remember that Kevin and I actually played a game a few years ago for good times remembrance.

We all customized our Star Trek deck's according to the individual Race's in the game: Federation, Klingon, Romulan, or Non-aligned. Tyler and Kris both had their decks customized towards Klingons, Kevin towards the Federation, and I had mine towards the Romulans (D'deridex! Devoras! Hahaha, sorry, just had to throw that out their for those guys). Oh the good times. I even remember getting in a fight with Kevin because he and Tyler had hidden my Romulan deck. You don't get between me and Sela. :)

Shot Glasses

At one point I had a collection of shot glasses, which I think was largely inspired by my brother Scott. If I remember right, he brought me home a few shot glasses from his mission to Baltimore, and that sorta started the whole thing. I'd buy shot glasses in random places where I'd been. I don't think my collection got more than 20 pieces in it, so not much to brag about. I did have one shot glass that was a Pirate's shot glass. It was the size of a small cup (probably 3 shot glasses worth) and had lines up the side indicating your manliness as a pirate if you filled your rum to such height, something like Swashbuckler up to Full Pirate.

POGs

I also had a large collection of POGs, a modernish version of Jacks where you have small cardboard circles with random images on them. You stacked the pogs up and used a slammer (a heavier and thicker POG made of plastic or metal) to smash the stack. All the pogs that stayed face up you get to keep, and you continue playing till there are no POGs left. You were supposed to be able to steal other player's POGs, but I don't think we ever played that way. As I remember, the game was very fun and addicting, but seems enormously boring now. I think we still have my POGs somewhere around the house, but I doubt I'll go looking for them.

Future Collections

)")

While all these things held my attention as an adolescent teenager, being an adolescent adult requires much more manly things to collect methinks. Unfortunately the more manly things require more cash than I currently have excess of, so for now I'll have to just wish upon a star.

The main answer I give to the above question is that I would LOVE to collect Vintage and Modern Guitars. My Dad had a friend (recently passed away) who was a guitar nerd and every time I'd see him we'd always talk about his guitar/amp collections. At one point he actually procured one of the PA amplifiers used by The Beatles at one of their shows in some stadium in Houston, though I never dared ask how much he paid for it. I guess back then they didn't have PA systems installed into the stadium, so they basically had to get these insanely loud amps to do the work for them. Way cool.

I also realized today that I would also really enjoy owning a bunch of old Macs. I am a self-proclaimed Mac-ist and a bit obsessed in some ways, okay in a lot of ways. I think it'd be pretty cool to have an Apple Lisa or an Apple II kicking around my office. I could even setup a fancy display for them. Part of what would be so neat about it would be to be able to use the older software on them, to see the evolution of GUI Operating Systems since their inception. I know, I know, pretty nerdy. But everyone reading this blog (at least those who know me) understand that it comes with the territory.

Other Collections of Note: Ryan Byrd has many thousands of books, several dozen swords of all types, and a "respectable coin collection". Let's all go on over and coax Ryan into giving us a post about those.

*UPDATE: **Incidentally, I just read that the Apple Lisa was released the day after I was born. Destiny? You decide. *

Programmers and Religion

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

My friend Ben forwarded this link to me today that I thought was very funny: If Programming Languages were Religions. For the non-programmers among us... spare me this brief stint of nerdy-ness. This guy nails it on the head entirely. The applicable languages to my skills are listed below (though there are many more at the actual link):

Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it's theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn't feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it's the best language in the world, but they're willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.

PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity - Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it's not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of "goto hell" was abandoned.

C++ would be Islam - It takes C and not only keeps all its laws, but adds a very complex new set of laws on top of it. It's so versatile that it can be used to be the foundation of anything, from great atrocities to beautiful works of art. Its followers are convinced that it is the ultimate universal language, and may be angered by those who disagree. Also, if you insult it or its founder, you'll probably be threatened with death by more radical followers.

C# would be Mormonism - At first glance, it's the same as Java, but at a closer look you realize that it's controlled by a single corporation (which many Java followers believe to be evil), and that many theological concepts are quite different. You suspect that it'd probably be nice, if only all the followers of Java wouldn't discriminate so much against you for following it.

Perl would be Voodoo - An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on friday night.

Ruby would be Neo-Paganism - A mixture of different languages and ideas that was beaten together into something that might be identified as a language. Its adherents are growing fast, and although most people look at them suspiciously, they are mostly well-meaning people with no intention of harming anyone.

Interesting stats about our family

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

I thought I’d give a rundown on some various statistics about our family since we’ve been one.

4.5 - the number of years we’ve been married.
2 - the number of kids we have.
6 - the number of jobs I’ve had: The Quarry, Primerica, Wildcat Software, Heritage Web Solutions, MarketPartner, BidSync.
480% - the amount of annual pay increase I’ve received since we’ve been married (which is more staggering because of the low end than the high).
41,674 - the number of plausible business ideas I’ve had (and not implemented).
Infinity - the number of years more we have to be together (and that’s a good thing :)).

This post is part 5 in a 5 part series. To see the other posts go to the main post entitled My Really Great Family (and our search for a home).

Round 4: How about just perfect

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

The heartbreaking loss of that house numbed us emotionally forever towards buying a home. I’m not saying we won’t buy one, or that we won’t like what we buy, but we’re literally at the point where putting in an offer is now more business than the pure adrenaline excitement it was before. It has come to that point where emotional detachment is better, saves you from being kicked in the stomach when things (more than likely) don’t work out.

Such it was for us that these feelings came as the next real opportunity to own our own home was presented. A friend of my brother’s was getting ready to put their house for sale, but knew that we were looking to buy and asked if we’d be interested. Their home is located on the next street over from my sister’s house (you can see the back of theirs from the front window), and 2 streets from my brother’s house. We went to see the home, and definitely knew we would like it since the floor plan is nearly identical to my sister’s. We gave them a straight up number we could go at, and they rejected us outright on it, said it was too low. That’s okay, right? No hard feelings, move on.

Well, just a week or so after they rejected our price they came back ready to re-negotiate (something we hadn’t counted on) and within a day or two we had a deal struck, where we both gave a little and took a little. It has been utterly refreshing to work with people we know semi-well, especially because the seller’s wife is the agent. For a while there, Dustin didn’t have to do much at all because my wife and the seller’s wife were doing all the communication. We eventually handed it back to Dustin and he’s been handling things wonderfully.

Today we had the home inspection done, and it passed with nearly flying colors. Tomorrow is the appraisal (cross your fingers), and next week if all goes well we’ll have signed on our very first home! Due to some scheduling issues with Christmas and whatnot, we’ll be moving in somewhere around the 1st of January. We are super excited to get things all wrapped up, have a great christmas, and then get moved in. BTW, you’ll probably be getting a call sometime around new years to see if you’re willing to help us move. You have been warned. If your cell phone rings once (or not at all), I’ll assume you’ve gone incommunicado for a few days as a result, and will not hold you accountable.

Wish us luck!

Oh, and one more thing. We’re planning on doing an Open House / Birthday party for me a few weeks after we move in. Homemade Sushi will be served (as well as other asian cuisine for the not-so-sushi friendly crowd). So, you should plan on being there, cause it will be a good time.

This post is part 4 in a 5 part series. To see the other posts go to the main post entitled My Really Great Family (and our search for a home).

Round 3: Too dishonest to be worth it

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

By this time, I was tired of seeing houses. This came mostly because I don’t have nearly as strict a set of criteria as Angelee does, so when we’d go see a house that I really thought had potential, she just didn’t have any eyes for it at all. Eventually we came up with a system where she worked with Dustin at getting lists of homes to go see, and then if any were of high potential on her list, I would go see them and we’d decide whether or not to put in an offer

The first home she found using this system she was ecstatic about. She had almost not even taken the time to go see the house, even after they had pulled up and were looking right at it. In the end she went in and immediately fell in love with the interior. She took me to see it that night, and we had an offer sheet drawn up the next day. After nearly a week of drama in counter offers, where we came up 20k from our original offer price and the seller had only come down 3k from asking price (with their agent putting his entire commission toward the sale in order to make it happen), the seller actually signed the Offer Acceptance as well as the Seller’s Disclosure.

Sadly, even getting to this point in the contract, everything fell through. They signed the acceptance on a thursday, but by Monday we were already hearing from the selling agent that they wanted to back out. The seller’s wife called my wife, the seller called me, all in attempts to weave a sob story about how their agent had duped them about the house they were looking to buy. They said if they couldn’t afford the house they were looking at buying, they didn’t want to leave. I was straight with him that I wasn’t going to sue him, but was so frustrated and disappointed that he felt like he could honorably dispose of the contract. I guess a million sorries really are worthless. In the end we agreed on a cash settlement, and they got to keep the house. We once again walked away (mostly) empty handed, mere weeks from owning our first home.

This post is part 3 in a 5 part series. To see the other posts go to the main post entitled My Really Great Family (and our search for a home).

Round 2: Too stingy to be sane

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Just like before, we went through a lot of crap houses before we found one we really felt would work well for us. Once again, it was down near my family, and only a few streets over from the first house, and only 2 streets from my sister’s! Angelee absolutely loved this one also, so we went for it. The house was the last house in the subdivision that hadn’t been purchased, and had been on the market nearly a year, so we felt like we could snatch it pretty low. The selling agent told us another offer had gone in on the house a few hours before ours, and so (once again) entered a bidding war. Only this time, I had a sneaky suspicion that the agent made it up because we offered so low (I think it was 60k less than asking price). In the end, we only came up 15k to our ceiling price, and the builder wasn’t willing to sell for less than 20k below, so we lost out again, not willing to move the extra 15k they were asking for.

This post is part 2 in a 5 part series. To see the other posts go to the main post entitled My Really Great Family (and our search for a home).

Round 1: Too good to be true

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

In March we found an absolutely fantastic home in provo near my family. The house had everything we wanted. The location, size, layout, and sheer awesomeness of the place was really really cool. Only one problem. There was already a buyer on the line and they were pretty close to closing. Well, we wanted that house something fierce, so we went after it and went into a crazy bidding war on it (mind you, it was a short sale). In the end, we lost out on the house, which was semi-devastating at the time. A look back on it now,what a blessing we didn’t get it. It was WAY out of our current budget, for one thing. I had at the time a fairly high paying job (highest I’ve ever been paid by a long shot) and we felt very secure there. As I’m writing this, that company has been out of business for nearly 4 months, and I’m still owed two final paychecks that I’m not really banking on anymore. Long story short, it is a good thing we didn’t get it!

After we lost that house we kinda lost faith in house hunting. The budget thing came to a head and we realized that we would’ve died had we gotten that mortgage (just like all the other in-over-their-head mortgage owners causing this fabulous financial crisis). Also, Anders was due to arrive mid July and we didn’t have much heart to get set on a house in the midst of the business end of the 9 month haul. Once we felt settled with Anders near the end of July, we felt like it was time to get started again.

This post is part 1 in a 5 part series. To see the other posts go to the main post entitled My Really Great Family (and our search for a home).

My Really Great Family (and our search for a home)

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Angelee and I were married in June of 2004. After a brief stint staying at her parents house, we moved to her sister's newly purchased home that had a basement apartment. This is where we lived when we had Bella, and were there about 6 more months before we decided to move into my parent's basement apartment, which was a sizable space and kitchen upgrade. We've been there ever since, over 3 and a half years! While my parents have been so kind to let us stay, and we love that our kids are so close to Grandma and Grandpa, for close to a year now we've been really hungry to get a place of our own. With Angelee's brother Dustin as a real estate agent, we've been searching for a home since January-ish.

We've tried to keep an open mind throughout the process, but definitely have our criteria that we try to match up to our supposed dream home (at least for this stage of life). My major concern was that I didn't want us to buy a home that we would be forced out of due to space issues when our 3rd and 4th kids come along. That being said, if within 5 years we're ready to skedaddle... as long as it's financially feasible, why not? In other words, we wanted the length of tenure at our first home to be on our terms, not forced on us by unwieldy family size. So, space being the main issue, I made sure that nearly every house we saw was at a minimum of 2500 square feet. In the end I was pretty sure that even 2500 was pretty small for what we will likely need to grow into, so my secret number was really at 2700 :).

We found some houses early on that were semi-promising except for the single cockroach in the ice cream: The Lehi house was far from family and at a super wacky angle on the lot, so bizarre; The Cedar Hills house was gorgeous but also far away from family (though close to AF canyon climbing... but we all know that didn't hold a whole lot of clout in the discussions).

What follows is a series of posts about our house hunt and other family-related stats. It seemed easier for readability to break this into multiple posts. I actually had it all in one, but it seemed kinda bogus, so here are a list of the posts in this "House Hunters" series:

Reversing the Polarity Decoupler-majigg

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Okay, I am seriously crying over here this is so good. This morning I came across a post from Dvorak Uncensored that I am still laughing hysterically over: 10 things I hate about Star Trek. Dvorak actually just posted a link to a forum post, which is where the original list is at.

I must confess, I am (or used to be) a hard core Trekkie. Admittedly I haven't watched the show in years... but I cannot rescind my past Trek obsession and the awkward sense of pride I have in it. Not that it matters much, but I was definitely of the TNG generation, don't get much enjoyment over TOS.

Here are a few of the questions that had me rolling:

Seatbelts. Yeah, I know this one is overdone, but you'd think that the first time an explosion caused the guy at the nav station to fly over the captain's head with a good 8 feet of clearance, someone would say, "You know, we might think of inventing some furutistic restraining device to prevent that from happening." So of course, they did make something like that for the second Enterprise (the first one blew up due to poor lubrication), but what was it? A hard plastic thing that's locked over your thighs. Oh, I'll bet THAT feels good in the corners. "Hey look! The leg-bars worked as advertised! There goes Kirk's torso!"

A Star Trek quiz: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and 'Ensign Gomez' beam down to a planet. Which one isn't coming back?

Okay, so a lot of people may not find those funny, but there is no question in my mind that any respectable Trekkie's (current or otherwise) are just dying at those reasons. In case you missed the link, here is the original forum post.

An open letter to Politicians and their election campaigns

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

On September 9th of this year, I woke up at about 3 am for some unknown reason. I'm quite a deep sleeper, so I was surprised that I didn't just fall right back asleep. I kept tossing back and forth and couldn't fall back asleep. For what reason I don't know, I kept thinking about the upcoming Presidential election, more specifically about the campaign slandering that is so prevalent in politics today. I worked myself into a fervor fairly quickly just being so frustrated over the issues in the election and how neither of the candidates seemed to be addressing them. The only things that the media reported on (at least in the limited attention I gave to the media) were campaign slandering practices.

Pretty soon I gave up all hope of going to bed since my mind was so entrenched in frustration. What follows is my 4 am brain dump I wrote and delivered to each candidates websites. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Dear Mr. Obama, Mr. McCain, Mr. Biden, and Mrs. Palin,

In a state dominated by the Republican Party, I am what you would term a “swing-voter”. Formerly thought to be a Republican by upbringing, I can find no decisive reason to vote on the Republican ticket in the upcoming election. What’s more, in an election race that seems to be incurably bi-partisan, it seems that my only other option is to vote on the Democratic ticket. As I do my best to sift through the media’s interpretation of the messages that both camps are trying to convey to their respective voters, one message continues to ring loud and clear from each side (if you’ll allow me to paraphrase): “You should vote for us because the other guys are not qualified, and indeed, are liars.” Forgive me for not believing either of you.

The sad truth about our current political climate is that the general public have a general distrust for most of what comes out of a politician’s mouth. But I find it sickening that a day does not go by where I don’t hear a smear from either camp. The attacks are political propaganda, one-sided information that is cooked up in order to unseat the opponent by making him look foolish, like a liar, or a cheater. In other words, “Mr. Neilsen, please vote for Me because He is clearly an incompetent fool.” I’m tired of it. If you want to talk politics, let’s talk about YOUR politics. If you want to talk about policies, let’s talk about YOUR policies. If you want to talk about change in America, let’s talk about the change that YOU intend to make. I don’t care what you think the other guy is going to tell me. It doesn’t matter, you have no control over it. What’s worse, it makes YOU look foolish for trying to do it in the first place.

At 25 years of age, I am a relatively new voter. I’ve voted in a few previous elections, and generally haven’t taken a lot of time to weigh all the options before making a decision. Like most people, based on a limited amount of information, I rely on my morals and judgement to determine which politician would best lead me. The four individuals this letter is addressed to stand in a phenomenal position. You stand atop the political climate of this entire planet. When elected, two of you will literally have the executive power to change this country, and indeed the power to change the world. Why then would I base ANY decision to elect MY President based on a message where all I can hear is “He said, She said”.

I’m fed up with this style of campaigning. I call on both parties to end this ridiculous charade now. I call on both parties to start talking about the benefits this country will receive if you were to be in charge of it. I don’t want to hear why you think the opposition will do a bad job, tell me why you’ll do a good job. I feel like I cannot make my point any more plain.

Real frustration comes to me because in the end, were I to vote “Democrat” or “Other”, because of my geographic location my voice will inevitably be drowned in the crowd. Because of the Electoral College voting system, the 5 votes from Utah will inevitably all be for Mr. McCain, regardless of who I wish to become the next President. But I still believe in Democracy and the chance that we the people have of controlling the destiny of this country. That is the reason for this letter: to exercise my right to free speech and tell two would-be presidents the kind of message I am looking for. As it stands, neither candidate will receive my nomination this november, and it has nothing to do with the fact that Mr. Obama’s skin is a different color than mine, nor has it anything to do with Mr. McCain’s age. It’s because I haven’t heard a defining voice cutting through the barrage of insults and smears. Gentlemen and Lady, please tell the American People what you will do for us, and we’ll take it from there. Thank you for your willingness to serve our country.

Mr. BJ Neilsen

Ron Paul addresses the scary issue of Federal Bailouts

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

I cannot even describe how scary the federal bailouts are to me.

Woot! just rules

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

One of my favorite sites on the web for witty content is woot.com. They also sell stuff, but I'm more interested in their witty commentary on life and being weird (after all, we are ALL nerds). They rarely send a newsletter out (like once every 4 months or something), but it's always jam-packed with great stuff. I just received their newsletter for the "holiday season" and thought it was so great I decided to post it. Without further ado, woot!

Attention, thelocalshred:

Welcome to Woot's first official recession-era newsletter! For the next 12 to 24 months, all citizens are expected to fret over, worry about, or even directly experience the nadir of a consumerist society - OMG! What will we do when we stop buying stuff? Economists now agree that we're headed through a prolonged period of decreased consumer spending (you really need an advanced degree to come up with insights like that). Beyond that, it's anybody guess. Will the only growth sectors in the economy be shoe repair, pipe salvage, and roadside apple sales? Or will we bring on a quick recovery by doing patriotic things like buying stuff we can't afford and spending more money than we make?

As a retailer, it'd make sense for us to fall in with the BUY STUFF, AMERICA conga line. But by now, you know that we at Woot never do things the "normal", "sensible", "rational", "intelligent" way. We're not about to follow the herd over a cliff. When we go over a cliff, it's because of our own poor judgment, not someone else's. That's been our credo since about five minutes ago, when we first thought of it. And we've stayed true to it ever since.

That's why we're encouraging you and your fellow wooters to save this holiday season. Save your money! Save until you pull a saving muscle. Horde your money until you are literally choking on it. Save until maybe, like, mid-February or so, when the market will be a-glut with great deals for the taking every day. You'll avoid the crowds, take advantage of desperate retailers, and not have to hear "Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time" even once.

Sure, maybe you'll disappoint some of your loved ones. But if they really love you, they can wait a couple of months, especially if your finances are at stake. Besides, if your so-called loved ones wanted you to set yourself on fire, would you? Of course you wouldn't. And that's the kind of independent thinking that will one day break the mindless conformity of our consumerist holiday ways.

But be warned: you'll want to stay far away from Woot.com this week. The breadth and scope of bargains we'll be offering - especially starting Tuesday morning at midnight - will be powerfully tempting. They could even lead you back down the spend-spend-spend path with the rest of the sheep. And that would make us sad enough to cry while we're taking your money.

See you in February!

Woot.com

How not to court a software developer

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

I am currently tied to a ubiquitous 9-5 software job. There are things that I like and some things I would change if given the opportunity. Given everything, I'm happy to have a paycheck and get to learn some new stuff. Good. Great. All that being said, I wouldn't be sad if a company came out of nowhere and offered a substantial pay raise and/or promised me the ability to fight off aliens with my custom regular expression engine. Translation: I wouldn't be sad to leave if the right offer came along.

However...

What happens when said "sweep me off my feet" potential company calls my work phone to discuss possible employment opportunities? Such was the case for me this afternoon. I received an instant message from a girl in our tech support department saying that I had a Lawrence Jamison (do I know this guy?) on the line to speak to me. I was surprised at this since I've been at this company over 3 months and have not received (nor have needed to receive) any phone calls. I write code. Talk to someone else about the project details. I told the gal to send them to voicemail because I was "in the middle of a project" and "didn't have time".

A few minutes later the voicemail comes through. Lawrence is apparently no one I know at all. He's some guy I've never met wanting to "talk to me about some things". He could be a member of the mob for all I know. Apparently he "found me on linked in". So, I go to linked in and do a search for his name. There's two results to the search, but one of the results has a shared connection to me, so I'm assuming that's the guy. The best I can figure, he is a recruiter for a company looking to hire a Java developer. I've been investigating and it looks like a fairly viable opportunity, but I am wondering what in the world he was thinking by calling me at work. Isn't that what linked in is for? Getting in contact with professionals in a professional way?

Maybe I'm just weird, but it seems like an odd way to go about things. Now that I know who this guy is (he didn't even give me the company name he was with) I'll call him up to get the scoop. Looks like a job offer, but we'll see if his professionalism is better the second go around.

Note: names in this post may or may not be fudged.

In other news, I'm apparently a nerd

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

So I found this new java app the other day from wordle.net. It allows you to enter a block of text, a blog url, or a del.icio.us username to get a large body of text content. Using some really great algorithms they build a word cloud based on the frequency of words in the document. I ran the generator on my del.icio.us tags and generated the document you see on the left.

As I showed it to my brother-in-law he blurted out, "Man! You're a nerd!" Ouch. Indeed it hurt for just a moment, a small fleeting moment. Then I got over it.

I also created a wordle from the content of this site a few days ago, that one is below. You should try it out, it's really really cool!

Back in the saddle again

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

My friend Ryan of RyanByrd.net fame (touted as "probably the coolest site in utah") posted an article this morning per my recommendation about today being Day of the Ninja . He kindly added a link back to my tech site rand9.com for the tip, unwittingly catapulting me into website-release-mode. You see, though I have owned rand9.com since April-ish and have had plans to do many noteworthy things with it, I have yet to be "on the ball" about it.

Don't get me wrong, I've been building it slowly and steadily since buying the domain, I just... haven't gotten around to finishing it. Okay, you got me. I haven't touched the thing for at least 3 months. Nevertheless, my intentions remain. For now, the masses will have to ogle at my ability to put a "Coming Soon"* site up in under 30 minutes. I hope you enjoy.

And I promise that I will do better to follow through on my posting, both here and at rand9.

* Not to be confused with the "Under Construction" label common in the era of bad websites.

Business Idea: Web App competitions

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Name ideas

Snapplication
AppZapp
AnteIn
AnteUp
TakeThePot
ZoomApp
appcomp
applicompete
applicomp
applipete
minimalapp
miniapp
minimapp

Judging Criterion

Fastest App.
Most innovative.
Most lucrative.
Most eyeballs.
Most users after certain period.
Most revenue after certain period.

Objective

To foster fantastic development principles through cutting-edge application development. And have a blast doing it. Create a burning desire in developers and their companies to create fantastic applications.Incentivize developers to innovate and be creative during the development process. Give Investors greater access to great developers and great apps that will generate revenue. When developers compete, developers get better. Stop dealing with the bureaucracy of development and write some code! Stop writing shortcuts and hack-jobs, write GREAT CODE.

Angle 1

Everyone puts in x amount which goes into the pot. Whoever wins based on criteria x, y, and z takes the pot. Pot = Pot input + investment capital - competition cost (revenue for company) - small payout to losers (or percentage off next competition).

Questions? Considerations?

Are they solving their own problems, or a specific problem? How do you regulate the rules? What are the payouts? How do you generate repeat developer competitions? Competition Blogs

Get an expert panel of judges:

Jeffery Zeldman Dave Shea Eric Meyers Joel on Software Dave Thomas Andy Hunt others?

Separate competitions by:

Team Size Opt-in price Time Period allowed Feature set required Specific Language Specific Frameworks Specific OS or Hardware

Additional Rules (how to enforce?)

Have to adhere to team size. Can’t have previous codebase greater than 1000 lines of code? No OpenSource code that comprises greater than 30% of your application (excluding application frameworks) Inspection of codebase at each phase of competition. Short time periods

Why would people come back?

Discounts for subsequent entries. Getting your dev company on the map. Getting your dev company in front of investors.

Investors

Show investors viable companies/applications that are making a difference. No hassle for investors. They can peruse the database of clients and their apps at their leisure.

Angle 2

Bidding wars (?) for development companies for submitted needs from investors and other companies less apt to do the development. Companies wishing to bid, investors and companies wishing to buy, all pay a service fee to list their app/need for an app.

Achieving [insert life-long dream here]

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Napoleon Hill's book Think and Grow Rich is a must-read. I'm saying this and I'm only 2 chapters in. It's fantastic. The insight into the psychology of human decision making is fantastic. My last post, Escaping Paralysis-Thinking, offers a few excerpts from Timothy Ferriss' brain child The 4-Hour Workweek and details possible steps to define your fears and how to get over them.

Similarly, Hill offers 6 ways to turn your ultimate desires into gold. He learned these six steps (or the principles behind them) from Andrew Carnegie, the early 20th century steel tycoon who created U.S. Steel, a company that earned over twenty billion dollars by today's rates. Although in the steps he illustrates that the goal is a certain dollar amount of money to gain, I strongly believe that these steps can and do apply to ANY goal or desire we wish to achieve. The psychology of the human brain is the same no matter what the end goal may be. So keep in mind that whenever he says "riches", or "money", you can insert your own life goals or desires and the effect should be the same.

The method by which your desire for riches can be transmuted into its financial equivalent consists of six definite practical steps:

Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say, "I want plenty of money". Be definite about the amount. There is a psychological reason for such definiteness explained in subsequent chapters.

Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. There is no such reality as something for nothing.

Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire.

Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.

Now write it out. Write a clear concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire. Name the time limit for its acquisition. State what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it.

Read your written statement aloud, twice daily. Read it once just before retiring at night, and read it once after arising in the morning. As you read, see, and feel, and believe yourself already in possession of the money.

It is important that you follow the instructions in these six steps. It is especially important that you observe and follow the instructions in the sixth step. You may complain that it is impossible for you to "see yourself in possession of money" before you actually have it. Here is where a burning desire will come to your aid. If you truly desire money so keenly that your desire is an obsession, you will have no difficulty in convincing yourself that you will acquire it. The object is to want money, and to become so determined to have it that you convince yourself you will have it.

If you have not been schooled in the workings of the human mind, these instructions may appear impractical. It may help you to know that the information they convey was given to me by Andrew Carnegie, who made himself into one of the most successful men in American history. [...] It may be of further help to know that the six steps were carefully scrutinized by the famed inventor and successful business man Thomas A. Edison. He gave his stamp of approval, saying that they are not only the steps essential for the accumulation of money, but also for the attainment of any goal.

There is so much more after that I wanted to transpose, but my fingers are tired. I highly recommend picking up this book. This material is where many many motivational speakers (see Anthony Robins) have gathered much of their curriculum and teachings. Even the cult hit The Secret uses near-verbatim teaching of Hill's concepts, though technically Hill's concepts are not his own, but are the concepts he learned from many successful people whom he met with and studied.

As for myself, I intend to follow Hill's instructions to the letter. Hundreds (or thousands, or millions) of successful people can't be wrong, can they?

Escaping Paralysis-Thinking

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

The following is an excerpt from chapter three of The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, "Dodging Bullets: Fear-setting and Escaping Paralysis". Tim describes his paralysis-thinking that was keeping him from going on a short vacation away from his business.

Why don't I decide exactly what my nightmare would be, the worst thing that could possibly happen as a result of my trip.

Well, my business could fail while I'm over seas for sure, probably would. A legal warning letter would accidentally not get forwarded and I would get sued. My business would get shut down and inventory would spoil on the shelves while I'm picking my toes in solitary misery on some cold shore in Ireland, crying in the rain I imagine. My bank account would crater by 80 percent and certainly my car and motorcycle in storage would be stolen. I suppose someone would probably spit on my head from a high-rise balcony while I'm feeding food scraps to a stray dog, which would then spook and then bite me squarely in the face. Goodness! Life is a cruel, hard, beast!

Then a funny thing happened. In my undying quest to make myself miserable, I accidentally began to back-pedal. As soon as I cut through the vague unease and ambiguous anxiety by defining my nightmare, the worst-case scenario, I wasn't as worried about taking a trip. Suddenly I started thinking of simple steps I could take to salvage my remaining resources and get back on track if all hell struck at once.

I could always take a temporary bar-tending job to pay the rent if I had to. I could sell some furniture and cut back on eating out. I could steal lunch money from the kindergartners who pass by my apartment every morning. The options were many. I realized it wouldn't be that hard to get back to where I was, let alone survive; none of these things would be fatal, not even close; mere "panty pinches" on the journey of life. I realized that on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being nothing and 10 being permanently life changing, my so-called "worst-case scenario" might have a temporary impact of 3 or 4. I believe this is true of most people and most would-be "holy crap my life is over" disasters.

Keep in mind that this is the one in a million disaster nightmare. On the other hand, if I realized my best-case scenario, or even a probable-case scenario, it would easily have a permanent 9 or 10 positive life changing effect. In other words, I was risking an unlikely and temporary 3 or 4 for a probable and permanent 9 or 10, and I could easily recover my baseline work-a-holic prison with a bit of extra work if I wanted to.

This all equated to a significant realization: There was practically no risk, only huge life changing upside potential, and I could resume my previous course without any more effort than I was already putting forth. That is when I made the decision to take the trip...

I love the candor Tim speaks with that allows him to get down to the guts of his situation to define exactly what his vague fears were. Of course his "worst case scenario" is just sopping with sarcasm, as I'm sure any of the same conversations with yourself would be as well.

Eliminating the Paralysis

Tim then goes on and asks 7 important questions (well, really 7 topics of questions) that help you to pinpoint and identify your own self-inflicted thought-based paralysis. If you are in any way unsatisfied with your current direction in life, you NEED to do this exercise. Write down your answers to these questions, and as Tim says, "Keep in mind that thinking a lot will not prove as fruitful or as prolific as simply brain-vomiting on the page. Write and do not edit. Aim for volume. Spend a few minutes on each answer."

Note: I did not come up with this content or exercise, thus all copyright is retained by the author and/or publisher. I'm not trying to rip the guy off, but am extremely intrigued by his thought processes and insights.

Define your Nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you're considering. What doubts, fears, and what-if's popup as you consider the big changes you can and/or need to make? Envision them in painstaking detail. Would it be the end of your life? What would be the permanent impact, if any, on a scale of 1 to 10? Are these things really permanent? How likely do you think it is that they would actually happen?

What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily? Chances are it's easier than you imagine. How could you get things back under control?

What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probable scenarios? Now that you've defined the nightmare, what are the more probable or definite positive outcomes, whether internal (confidence, self-esteem, etc.) or external? What would the impact of these more likely outcomes be on a scale of 1 to 10? How likely is it that you could produce at least a moderately good outcome? Have less intelligent people done this before and pulled it off?

If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control? Imagine this scenario and run through questions 1 through 3 above. If you quit your job to test other options how could you later get back on the same career track if you had to?

What are you putting off out of fear? What we most fear doing is what we most need to do. That phone call, that conversation, whatever the action might be, it is fear of unknown outcomes that prevents us from doing what we need to do. Define the worst case, accept it, and do it.

What is it costing you, financially, emotionally, and physically to postpone action? Don't only evaluate the potential downside of action, it is equally important to measure the atrocious cost of inaction. If you don't pursue those things that excite you, where will you be in one year, five years, and ten years? How will you feel having allowed circumstance to impose itself upon you and having allowed ten more years of your finite life to pass doing what you know will not fulfill you. If you telescope out ten years and know with 100% certainty that it is a path of disappointment and regret, and if we define risk as the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome, inaction is the greatest risk of all.

What are you waiting for? If you cannot answer this without resorting to the previously rejected concept of good timing, the answer is simple: You're afraid, just like the rest of the world. Measure the cost of inaction. Realize the unlikelihood and reparability of most missteps and develop the most important habit of those who excel and enjoy doing so: ACTION.

It's high time I start thinking positively about my current situation in life. It's time for me to stand up and take action to accomplish my goals and dreams, and those of my family. How incredibly amazing is it that we have the ability to change everything about our lives, and it all begins in our minds. As President Benson (and Nike) say: (Just) Do It, and Do It Now.

Narrow your search results

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

In light of the current thoughts and inspirations that I have been experiencing, I thought I'd record this epiphany that I have had in the last few days with regards to achieving goals. Like many people I know, every so often I get the gumption to set a bazillion goals to improve my life. I've had lists with 10 things, and lists with 110 things, yet each time I've created a goals list I am on fire for a short time, and then subconsciously decide not to do them.

I generally bail on a set of goals because of the scope those goals entail. I'm often setting goals for things like hygiene, eating/sleeping habits, work ethics, etc. What's more, many (or all) goals that have been set and abandoned are truly worthwhile things that I'd like to achieve... which is all the more frustrating. So here we go again. Only this time, I plan on succeeding.

This time my M.O. is to focus entirely on one goal at a time, overshadowed by a much larger goal that I could work on for the remainder of my life. A singular focus. By focusing on a single goal, I will have the ability to devote all my time and energy into incrementally achieving it, and getting incrementally closer to the "pie in the sky".

A few weeks ago in church I had a similar stroke of inspiration and took some quick notes... so here it is.

PERSONAL INVENTORY

Bad habits I don't like

Sleeping In.

Too much carbonation.

Not enough physical activity.

Poor Commitment to certain personal aspects.

Good habits I do like

Constant refinement of software skills.

Spend most of my time with my family.

Better than average talents.

Vigorous determination to be better.

Goals I'd like to Achieve

Consistently overcome my bad habits, converting them to good habits where possible.

Continue to improve upon my good habits.

Start multiple business.

Own rental property.

Own/trade stock.

Ways to overcome bad habits

Choose one subject at a time to overcome.

Set small achievable goals for a one week period of time.

Continue to achieve the goal in one week increments until I get 100% accomplishment for the week.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat....

The next few posts will likely start boiling down to "whadda you want, whadda you want, whadda you want, whadda you want, whadda you want, whadda you want" so that I can decide what it is that I want to focus on. This is where the fun begins.

The "Key" to Success

2011-07-01T11:18:34Z

Recently, I've started listening to Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It's a classic business novel aimed at grooming current and would-be entrepreneurs to be fantastically successful. Recent books I've read in the same vein include Rich Dad, Poor Dad, The Cashflow Quadrant, **Rich Dad's Guide to Investing (all of which are authored by Robert Kiyosaki), and The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris.

I feel like I've been continually brought towards an ever nearing event or events in my life by reading these books. Each one has changed the way I think, often in large ways, and has allowed me to once again take a personal inventory of who I am, and what I feel like my purpose is.

Thus far in Hill's book, he has talked about the power of "the secret". After talking to Dustin, who has read Think and Grow Rich numerous times, I realized that the "creators" of the cult hit movie/book combo The Secret have borrowed many of the same ideas that Hill points out in the book. Anyways, this secret that Hill keeps alluding to (he doesn't say exactly what it is) is a power that has propelled many men (and women) throughout history to achieve great things and accumulate large sums of wealth.

Thus far, I have taken the definition of "the secret" to be unrivaled determination. I am so excited to continue to grow and learn through reading the success stories and habits of those who have been successful before.

In the end, I am determined to grow and progress as a human being. I am determined to write my own history (not literally, at least not yet) by making choices and decisions that improve who I am. There is definitely going to be more to follow on this, but I'm writing this several hours after I read the book and apparently am not that fantastic at writing... yet.

Small, measurable, achievable goals is the name of the game. Oh yeah, and solid determination to achieve them.