Do a search for the word burp and take a look at the first result. It just so happens that this is exactly what I was looking for. It’s a tool for testing web applications that I learned about in a magazine earlier today.

What’s amazing to me is that the word burp is so general of a term and testing for vulnerabilities in web applications is not something most people are into. So how does the word burp return that as the very first result? Google must be bias towards certain types of sites.

The same holds true for the following general terms

snort
kernel
basic
worm
apache (the entire first page is about the web server, not the group of Native Americans)

I thank Google for helping us geeks search for stuff but I can’t imagine that the majority of people researching Apache online are looking into the web server and not the Native Americans.

- Henry David Thoreau

I am a fairly active twitter user. Follow me @sethm

What’s interesting is that I haven’t heard much about the much larger sum of 108 billion being paid using funds from the bailout package to other financial institutions. Institutions such as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs who have already received their own bailout packages.

Why is AIG paying these companies 100 cents on the dollar using money provided to them by the tax payers? The real winners here aren’t the employees at AIG getting their bonus, it’s the heads of companies getting a slice of that 108 billion. Not only are they getting a shit load more cash, but they aren’t taking any of the public heat for it. Fucking brilliant.

I think people are pissed because they’re not getting the bonuses themselves. It’s easy to be righteous when you’re broke. Try being the good guy when someone is stuffing millions of dollars in your pockets. I know I wouldn’t turn down the bonus, would you?

Here’s some links to articles relating to this

Forbes
Washington Post
Business Week
CNN

A life of preparation is no life at all. It’s best to just live in the present and let the past and future work themselves out. You won’t be as productive, but that’s the point. Productivity is a scary word used in industry; it shouldn’t be applied to human life.

You should not strive to be efficient. Being efficient is for the result driven. Result driven people can never truly be happy as their happiness is predicated on a belief that the end result will make them happier which is a fallacy. Regardless of the standard set, there will always be something better just ahead.

If you’re goal is to make 100 thousand dollars a year, you will eventually seek additional income. A new goal may be 150 thousand or higher. If that goal is achieved, you’ll perpetually want more until your life is spent working towards the next rung of an imaginary latter you’ve created for yourself.

There was a Simpsons episode several seasons back where Bart created a movement called “Do What you Feel”. This should be everyone’s mantra. There is no intrinsic order. The world is a chaotic mess with arbitrary rules setup by an educated minority looking to control the ignorant majority.

We should let civilization crumble. Art, politics, law, religion, military, education, agriculture, and even linear time itself all need to go. We can never be happy while these weapons of control exist.

Dennis Lockhart, the current President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has predicted that a national economic recovery should begin in the second half of 2009. To which I ask, based on what information?

Lawrence Yun, the National Association of Realtors’ chief economist feels that the Vegas housing market will bounce back in 2010. He says he wouldn’t be surprised if prices appreciate more than 5 percent in 2010, but adds one caveat to his prediction — although the long-term outlook for the housing market looks good, it is hard to make short-term forecasts.

Why do people keep making predictions and more importantly, why do people eat them up? The world is waayy to random to ever predict.

Experts believed Bear Sterns was fine just days before their collapse. No one saw Lehman Brothers going down or Washington Mutual getting eaten by JPMorgan.

If analysts can’t make sound predictions days in advance, how can we believe their predictions for months and years down the road?

The truth is that they can’t predict anything. People should realize the scary truth that the world is a random place and the best advice is flexibility. Be flexible and you’ll at least stay afloat.

Seth,

Your resume is solid, but for thsi position I must have ecommerce.

Lisa

OK, let’s neglect the grammatical and typographical errors because that’s just hitting below the belt. What does ecommerce experience even mean? Does shopping on Amazon count? What about setting up an osCommerce shopping cart? Since they were looking for someone with experience managing F5 load balancers, I’m certain they want more than that but it’s such a vague term and who puts that on a resume anyhow?

So I responded with saying that I have experience supporting several large ecommerce sites, PCI compliance, yadda yadda and here’s her next email.

Can you please resend that to me highlighted in your resume?

Lisa

Are you kidding me? People in human resources seem to just search for keywords on a resume. More keyword matches equals better candidate.

If the position is technical, especially senior you better have another senior tech person looking over my resume.

• Phase 1: Feel bad for not updating the blog and try to write something, anything.
• Phase 2: The juices get flowing and I actually write some decent material.
• Phase 3: Something pulls my attention away and I begin to neglect the blog again.
• Phase 4: To try and turn things around, I start copying and pasting things like quotes to keep it alive.
• Phase 5: Blog is neglected for a long period.

Each time phase 5 is reached, I go back to phase 1 at some point. So here I am at phase 1 blathering about nothing so that I can get something on the page. Stay tuned for phase 2, the bestest phase ever!

My plan now is to float around, live very cheaply, and get my newly started business off the ground. I don’t think I’d like to work for another company again. Hopefully this consulting thing will work out and I won’t have to. I may not be a millionaire but the freedom is enticing.