| 1 | Teste Post | This is my first post to my fucking uber cool blog running with a rich JavaScript client front end that pushes the annoying DB Management that I previously had to deal with when using Wordpress to the uber cool NextDB. | 1 | 57099.884410174214 | 2010-05-24 16:40:15.167 | show |
| 2 | Imagine | VeryDemotivational.com can be very motivational. And a reminder that, even now, I watch too much porn; I'm very sure I know which site this video comes from, and I think the woman on the bottom is named Priscilla.<br><br><br><img src="http://verydemotivational.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/129167788550330308.jpg"> | 1 | 28430.444042369916 | 2010-05-24 16:42:01.172 | show |
| 3 | Negativity | I don't really ever have anything intelligent to say. I read more blogs daily, by people who are more coherent than I ever will be, regarding topics that attract more readers than I will ever garner.<br><br>For the most part the popular people speak positively about topics. They speak about things that they like.<br><br>And there's a part of me that desires to vomit, to procure the remnants of my stomach all over the floor as I read the standard blog article. I understand the political implications of being negative; I understand that one should be nice to thy fellow man.<br><br>But why?<br><br>I mean really, why? Because some stone tablet told us to at the dawn of recorded history? <br><br>Or because we have become such utter pussies that we cannot stand negative feedback?<br><br>I think more the latter than the former. I plan on being negative in this blog, the new incarnation of my old blog. Even better, I will be both positive and negative, a libra like balance between the good and the bad.<br><br>And thus, my new blog is born. | 1 | 26351.489561012233 | 2010-05-31 02:29:26.867 | show |
| 4 | Honesty, it's a worthy bitch | I've never been very good at being fully honest. Around 2005, after I had a few quarter-life crises, I decided that I'd start down the long path of discovering what it meant to be honest.<br><br>A little over 5 years down that path, I think I know less than when I started, but I think I found the punchline of being honest:<br><br><strong>Once you start down the honesty path, you have to keep going.</strong><br><br>This has been the simplest, yet hardest piece for me to grasp. What does this look like in real life?<br><br><blockquote>[Random Person]: How are you doing?<br><br>You realize they are talking to you, and you're having a for the love of god and all that is holy my anus is bleeding shitty day. No immortality for you today, your emotions are fucked up, your hormones racing, it's like you've been donkey punched, and you haven't had your coffee yet. All of a sudden, though, you realize that you're at work. So you respond with:<br><br>[You]: I'm fine.<br></blockquote><strong>YOU JUST FAILBLOG.COM'D THE HONESTY PATH!</strong> Yep, it's that simple. Nothing is safe once you start down the honest path. Here's another test:<br><blockquote>[Random Super-obese Person]: Do these vertical stripes show the 5 lbs. of bacon that I ate this morning?<br><br>[If your name is Jeremy, even if you're at work, and you're being honest, you have to respond with]: Fuck you for not sharing that bacon!!!!!! It's been 5 minutes since I had a piece and I can't believe you for not sharing with me. You're not my friend.<br></blockquote>Honesty, amazingly useful when applied <strong>ALWAYS</strong> but not very useful when applied only sometimes. | 1 | 89540.23556846827 | 2010-06-04 06:04:48.541 | show |
| 5 | Skeletons | In Dungeons and Dragons, skeletons are described as:<br><blockquote>Magically animated, undead monsters enchanted by powerful magic-users or
clerics of evil alignment.<br></blockquote>In real life, they're a euphemism, at least in English, symbolizing hidden secrets that everyone has; hence the term skeletons in the closet.<br><br>EVERYONE HAS THEM. I LIKE TO YELL IN MY BLOG. Steve Carell sez: "I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE YELLING ABOUT!" But Einstein says:<br><blockquote>Stupid people will paraphrase everything I say 80 years from now. BLAH BLAH BLAH.<br></blockquote>Skeletons + Einstein = Relativity. And like BAM! It makes sense why all senators who are against gay marriage are secretly having massive amounts of dirty, sweaty, chest shaving, genital draining, orgiastic sex with other men. They haz skeletonz in their closets. Some people have like Challenge Rating 1 skeletons, some people have CR 20 fucking giant ass, warrior captain, cow slinging skeletons. But we all haz them.<br><br>Why?<br><br>Because Einstein said so.<br><div firebugversion="1.5.4" style="display: none;" id="_firebugConsole"></div> | 1 | 24937.165827375517 | 2010-06-05 05:10:52.552 | show |
| 7 | Why I Voted No on Measure J | Tomorrow Santa Clara, California opens it's polls for the California June, 2010 Primaries. Santa Clara City, the city I live in, has been pushing, and pushing, and pushing Measure J. There's some substance to Measure J, but the simple version is:<br><br><blockquote>A yes vote on Measure J means we, the citizens, allow the building a stadium near the that the San Francisco 49ers will play their games in.<br></blockquote><br>Will they become the Santa Clara 49ers? No, that would be pretty stupid. Essentially, my view of this measure, being someone who could give a rats ass about football, is the equivalent of voting for a landfill in Santa Clara that is only used by San Francisco residents.<br><br>I didn't really need a reason to vote no, but I found the BEST reason to vote no. I hate marketing material, especially when the people pushing Measure J seem to have clear cut all of wood in the Santa Cruz mountains to make the fliers.<br><br>For my astute readers, take a look at the wonderful picture below:<br><br><div style="text-align: center;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyosborne/4678630433/"><img alt="" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4021/4678630433_de35efa6c1.jpg"></a><br></div><br>In case you missed it, let's zoom in:<br><br><div style="text-align: center;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyosborne/4679270390/"><img alt="" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4069/4679270390_b273922c49.jpg"></a><br></div><br>Remember marketing people: Nothing pisses me off more than someone trying to shock and awe me, especially when they think I'll be shocked and awed by blue screens of death and MS SQL errors. | 1 | 81097.15721757367 | 2010-06-07 16:16:08.059 | show |
| 8 | Why I don't (usually) mention people's names in my blog | I wrote this subject into the blog title, and it has a very simple answer.<br><br>Short Answer: I'm a raving lunatic.<br><br>And then I just started writing about other stuff, consider this article a bait and switch.<br><br>Longer, rambling, not coherent Answer: Most people aren't as crazy, obnoxious, and shamelessly annoying as I am. People gladly hang out with me in controlled or social-exposure-limited situations, but I most people are somewhat terrified to be associated with me. And it's a win-win situation for me, as in most situations it is much safer to be feared and treated like a lunatic. (Note for those that have read the Prince: In the translations I have read, never, nie, nunca, not-a-once, have I seen Machiavelli say it is "better" to be feared, merely "safer" or "more practical.")<br><br>Then there's my wife, who I do mention because if she was brave enough to marry me, then it's pretty clear she's willing to hang out with me.<br><br>The bad part about my wife: she exposes all of my problems. She doesn't follow me around like some yippy dog, cackling all the while pointing out mistakes and recording them in The Cursed Book o' Grudges -5. It's worse: despite statistics, 3 years of marriage, and 5 years of giving her the same penis over and over, I have a great marriage to her.<br><br>By itself that isn't a problem, but it fucks with the rest of my life.<br><br>Since marriage, a traditionally shitty institution that most people feel compelled to enter so they can join their genitals with their preferred sex and be granted higher taxes, pain in the ass paper work, the compelling threat of, and, eventually, the crush of boredom as the years wear on.... still awake?... anyway, since my marriage is great, it makes me question everything and constantly ask, "If something so stereotypically shitty and boring can be good, then why do so many other things suck so bad?"<br><br>My mind wanders, testing everything.<br><br>"Maybe I can get myself a giant penis!" Turns out I can, but I have let that one go. No knives down there, thanks.<br><br>"Can my wife and I stop fighting about money?" About a year into our marriage, I saw that my biggest problem with my wife was how much we disagreed about money. I wanted to hide it all under the mattress, hug a tree, and give the bird to companies. Really, I just wanted to stop having money be such a pain in the ass, and I wanted her to stop wanting to spend it on little things like eggs and milk and shampoo, you know those crazy luxuries.<br><br>In comes why I love America. I hired RC from <a target="_blank" href="http://fearlesswealth.com">Fearlesswealth.com</a>. Yep, I paid him money to help me work my crap out with money. That's not exactly true. Fucking around aside for just a moment, I paid him money because I love my wife and I really wanted to have a great relationship with her AND have money stop being such a problem for me. NOTHING that he does is magic. Not a single bit. It's logical, decisive, and the shit works.<br><br>And Janna and I hardly argue about money anymore AND we have more of it.<br><br>Are we rich? Would I still be a W2 employee if I was rich?<br><br>Now that I've mentioned one person's name, let me mention one more.<br><br>I finally, after years of thinking the book was the most retarded piece of crap that I've heard of, bought and have almost finished reading <a target="_blank" href="http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/">The Four Hour Work Week</a> by Tim Ferris. Honestly, the only retarded piece of crap involved in the trio of me, Tim, and his book is me and my need to get myself in the position of such utter, crushing mind numbing busyness in all areas of my life. If I had actually read the book before making fun of it originally, I would have realized my point of this article.<br><br>My point: I'm a douche.<br><br>The not-so-self-deprecating point: I was able to create a great marriage. And I was able to build my wealth over the last couple of years despite the shittiness of the economy. Yet through it all, despite my stoic attitude, I'd lost control of my schedule.<br><br>I'm currently working for works sake. I'm damn productive, but I've been horrible when it comes to taking leadership positions, automating, and finding real ways to improve things other than just protecting my paycheck.<br><br>What's next? Well, a new adventure. First was marriage. Then was money.<br><br>Now it's time.<br><br>I know what the results will be, because otherwise I couldn't spend time creating them. But the results aren't real yet.<br><br>If I win, which I plan to do, I'll write more.<br><br>Rambling done, for now. | 1 | 40865.9901163666 | 2010-07-02 21:26:08.426 | show |
| 9 | Elminated: ScrumMaster | I didn't shoot the ScrumMaster anymore than Bob Marley and Eric Clapton shot the deputy. I am on my quest to eliminate bloat from my life in areas that are not working. This discussion of elimination is brought to by: My quitting being the ScrumMaster at work.<br><br><a title="Scrum development method" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29">Scrum</a> is an <a title="Software Development" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development">Agile</a> methodology, which in turn is one of the methods that can be used during software development. It has subtle complexities, but properly applied, the rule set one needs to remember to tiny, which in turn makes it easy to implement, or so it would seem.<br><br>In essence, if you are in a group that is participating in scrum, these main steps happen:<br><ul><li>Everyone agrees on the length of a development cycle, which is usually 30 days, or 4 weeks. We were doing 3 week cycles.</li><li>At the beginning of a cycle, a representative from the management and product side of things (in Scrum jargon: the Product Owner) provides a prioritized list of what must get done. Each line item that management requests must be doable, must be demonstrable, and everyone must know what the functionality will look like when it's done. This is key.</li><li>The team of software engineers then agree what they will do during the cycle. If some things cannot be done, management is NOT allowed to force the engineers to do things. That said, we assume that engineers are extremely responsible, and will not be sand-bagging their time.</li><li>Once a development cycle, called a sprint in Scrum jargon, starts, the engineers working in Scrum are not to be bothered at all by anyone outside of the sprint. Engineers can request help, as often happens, but management must trust the engineers to do their work.</li><li>At the end of the development cycle, the Scrum team must demonstrate completed chunks of functionality. Not shitty pieces of glued together code that run because people pray really hard, the code must be good enough to go to production.</li></ul>Since the process is so simple, saying why Scrum works or doesn't is also easy. In my situation, 2nd and 4th bullet kept getting broken. I love Scrum, but it's like marriage: it only works when everyone follows the rules.<br><br>For now, I'm back to fending for myself against the wiles and wants of last-minute-management, which makes me sad because I like Agile development. That being said, I have gained two opportunities that weren't there before:<br><ul><li><span>In the spirit of the <a title="4HWW" target="_blank" href="http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/">4 Hour Work Week</a> I have gained a boat load of freedom and independence.<br></span></li><li>It looks like I'm forming a small team of JavaScript nerds who will be working on a very cool project. I think we'll have a chance to implement Scrum on our own and demonstrate how productive of a methodology it can be when the core values and rules are adhered to.</li></ul><br><div firebugversion="1.5.4" style="display: none;" id="_firebugConsole"></div> | 1 | 94935.42990994015 | 2010-07-06 02:39:31.145 | show |
| 10 | Eliminated: 4 Bags of Clothes | I live a bit like an Amish person, if Amish people liked computers and alcohol. Still, out of sheer laziness over the last couple of years, I was able to accumulate 4 paper grocery bags worth of clothes that I never wore. Dropped those sacks off to Goodwill, whom I will let find a better home for them.<br><br>If you know me, you can easily guess which clothes I kept: running shirts, some of them spotted but still my favorites; jeans; every single pair of my underwear, even the ones that have only 8 underwear-molecules left to them. I also kept my suits (all 3 of them), some nice shirts, and a few pairs of nice slacks. Oh yeah, also kept the belt buckle (but not the belt) that says "Rockstar" on it. It's right by the bed, waiting to become a medallion on some big ass gold chain I need to buy.<br><div firebugversion="1.5.4" style="display: none;" id="_firebugConsole"></div> | 1 | 41801.95753615948 | 2010-07-07 03:05:09.666 | show |
| 11 | Eliminated: Eating as a Hobby | My version of the <a title="Mmmm MEAT!" target="_blank" href="http://paleodiet.com/definition.htm">Paleo-diet</a> is as close as I'll ever get to fasting. Fast from eating food? No way. When I see cows, I see beautiful hunks of bloody meat and beautiful mounds of fattening brie. Pigs look like bacon on legs. And now that it's stone fruit season, I can't get enough.<br><br>And yet, on my quest for a new experience of freedom, I'm thinking the only way there is through controlled experiments of simplification. With the number of things not working in my life, why not try fucking with my diet?<br><br>This is day 4. Here's a shocking (to me) run down of days 1 through today.<br><br>Day #1 (Sunday): Diet starts. I make, oh I don't know, 5 to 10 trips to the potato chip cabinet before I finally remember that I'm not eating potato chips, or that yummy gooey sour cream that belongs bathed all over their oily chip bodies. With a bit of back of the napkin math, realizing how much I do that every day, I figure I almost literally waste 10 to 20 minutes every day eating tortilla chips and potato chips in front of the chip cabinet. Let's not even get into how much I numb myself with alcohol. That's fine, I still have video games. and eat up most of the day in my withdrawals playing them.<br><br>Day #2 (Monday): FUCKING GOD DAMN HEADACHES! God, and I only drank black tea. Sure, I drank a quart or two (not an exaggeration) every day. Those die down relatively quickly. Nuts have become an excellent snack. And truly wild range chicken and all that scrumptious fat has replaced potato chips and sour cream.<br><br>Day #3 (Tuesday): Giant ass poop in the morning. Who'd have thought I could still produce that much? Eating a good amount, but I notice my food (aka. shitloads of vegetables and some animal products, but no cheese) sort of tastes bland. Adding giant amounts of hot sauce cures it all. Tired at night, but sleep really, really well.<br><br>Day #4 (this morning): Not that I'm doing this for my weight, but I weighed myself because I'm vain. Don't really remember my morning weight, but my evening weight has never been 174.5 pounds in a long time. Headaches gone today. Taught class, teaching makes me nervous, ended up finding some black tea to drink. Darjeeling, yum.<br><br>Small baby steps is freeing up time. Time to do what? To do things that are more important than the stupid shit -- like checking my email 20 times a day or eating shit loads of potato chips -- I used to do.<br><br>Like blog. If you're one of the 5 who actually reads my blog, I know you know I'm crazy and it's my craziness that entertains you. But for therapeutic reasons, I love to blog, and I haven't written this much in a couple of years.<br><br>Looking forward to seeing where this continuing adventure takes me. | 1 | 72560.37462527382 | 2010-07-15 00:46:49.546 | show |