During the busiest of weeks I should still find the time to write something to the Internets, but I don’t. There is a direct inverse relationship between the amount of disposable time I have and how much I blog. In other words, when I am busy, I don’t find the time to write.

I guess that is pretty logical, but the busy times are probably the most interesting. This week has flown by because I can’t find the time to get everything done. I have a huge backlog of videos to edit, and we are beginning to work with some new clients whom we have to build new products from scratch. The creativity is fun, but I am pretty thin right now (time-wise not waist-band).

I have found that creativity can be very frustrating when you have to have it. It is delightful when you are blessed with a great idea before you need it. More and more, I need creativity before it happens naturally. Forcing creativity gives me a headache. I am getting over a headache tonight.

Well, it is done. Now we can get back to the real news like which rehab Britney is in and up to the minute news on the last strikingly beautiful white girl who recently disappeared. (Can you tell that I am not enamored with our news situation here in the US?)

But a few of thoughts have come to mind now that the dust is starting to settle.

Thought #1

What would our world look like if McCain had gotten the nod back in 2000 rather than George W. Bush? I don’t have an answer to that question right off the bat, but it is indeed interesting to think about. What do you bet we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq? I am sure we would still be having troubles in the economy due to normal undulations and cycles in the market but would it be this dire? I don’t know. One thing I am pretty sure of is I bet our standing in the world community would be better than it is right now.

Thought #2

A lot is on the shoulders of Barack Obama right now. The hopes and dreams, fairly or unfairly, rest squarely on his shoulders. He did ask for it after all.

There are many who have pointed out his relative lack of experience. Two years from now we will have a much clearer understanding on how that plays out, but that is something to keep an eye on.

Thought #3

I am growing exceedingly tired of the media’s portrayal of the South as being exclusively racist. I take extreme exception with that. Yes, there are racists in the south, but the fact that black men and women find it hard to hail a taxi in New York City proves that we haven’t cornered the market in that area. I think the bigger reason that McCain won the day in the South was the evangelical vote. Church is big in the South. I would bet there are way more conservative Christians than there are out and out racists in the South, and it seems to me that that is the real reason for the vote count down here.

My biggest outrage of the coverage on CNN last night was when one of the pundits called the south “The Confederate States”. Rarely does something make my blood boil, but that was an unfair stereotype and seemed driven by ignorance. We, as a country, have made great strides in righting the atrocities of our past, and name-calling and finger-pointing needs to stop, and stop now. We have a long way to go, but man have we come a long way, and rhetoric like what I saw on CNN last night only slows the progress. CNN don’t bring that lady back!

I will be watching with great interest at Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office. It will be very interesting to see what he does to set the tone for his first term in office. Has he learned from Clinton’s mistake in going to far, to fast? We will see.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t remark on John McCain’s speech. It was one of the most gracious and hopeful concession speeches I have ever heard. My opinion of John McCain has only grown. He is an exceptional man, and too bad we didn’t have him as president these last eight years. Unfortunately for him, it was simply time for us as a country to have change. Timing is everything, and he got swept under that bus.

I don’t blog politics much, and I don’t think I will much in the future, but last night’s election was historic and a giant step forward in moving our country forward in the area of race. Hard work lies ahead for Barack Obama, Godspeed and good luck. If nothing else, it is good to let the other side see if they can do any better.

Wow, it has been an entire month since the last time I updated this blog. Hey, that is ok. It is after all, my blog.

I have been spending all my creativity at the office, and how many people can say that? Probably not many. How many people go to work dreaming of the day that they can start their own business or move to another position that better suits their passions; probably most. I get to do what I am passionate about nearly everyday. Yeah, there are days that are slogs, but most aren’t. Also, I work on a small team that trusts me. That means that a lot of the time, it is my vision, or I have a big say in what is created.

I have had the opportunity to do some jobs that are completely up to the client, and the final product isn’t what I would have done, and that is pretty excruciating. I can only imagine how hard it is to be the art guy at a t-shirt shop or somewhere where you spend your days creating the imaginings of customers who have limited or no vision. Ewww.

I am always impressed with the people who can do that without blowing up and becoming so frustrated that they lose their job. Or, maybe I pity them because maybe they have just given up; passion gone, just turning the wheels.

If you are there, I challenge you to sit down and make a list of the things that you are good at and you absolutely love and start making progress towards crafting your job to look more like that. You are surrounded by people who are passionate about the things that you hate. Give those jobs away. Find ways to be a part of the things you love. Ask to help out. Donate your time to fulfilling pursuits. You will find that over time, you will start having to donate your time less and less as you become an expert.

I am an artist at an organizational development company. We help companies develop their talent. Most companies like ours don’t have an artist on staff because they don’t believe that they can afford them. In the past, that was true. Now however, the cost of computers, cameras, software, and other tools of the trade have dropped so much in price they may be surprised at what is possible.

Ten years ago, I would have had to work at a magazine, television station, or design shop to do what I do. Not anymore. The real surprise here is that since I am not on a huge team of creatives, I have huge variety in my job and I get a major say in what it looks like.

I have a degree in Transportation and Logistics. I should be in the trucking industry. I am not passionate about that. I have no official training in art. (Though at times that would be handy…) I just started to do what I was passionate about more and more and started dropping the things I wasn’t passionate about. I got noticed and hired. Now I am in my own personal bulls-eye. It is possible. Do it.

So apparently Apple must not take a shine to Amazon stealing its customers because ever since I downloaded the latest version of iTunes, the Amazon MP3 Downloader program doesn’t automatically put downloaded MP3s in my iTunes library. Of course, it is trivial to get them in there, but it is still a little lame. Boo Apple!

I just learned about something that is extremely disheartening and down-right scary.  There has been a practice on Wall Street that I just learned about on This American Life called naked short selling.  It was the final straw that broke the camel’s back for The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy.  They were engaging in naked short selling in the hopes of bringing their company out of dire straits.

Here is how it works.  Let’s say that you are interested in purchasing 1000 shares of IBM.  I tell you that I will sell you those 1000 shares IBM with the promise that I will deliver them in 30 days.  Here’s the deal. I don’t actually have those shares.  I have lied to you.  But, here’s my plan.  I sold you those shares on the hope that they would appreciate in value so I took your money, and bought the shares and now I am waiting for them to appreciate and the difference I take as profit.  I plan to short sell your stock, and I am naked because I don’t actually own the stock I am selling…thus the naked short sell.

Now, if the price I sold you isn’t enough to purchase the shares I promised, I am screwed, and I default on the sale, but that is ok because all I have to do is avoid your calls for a while.

Bells should be going off in your head right now!  Wait a second, you are selling me something that you don’t have, and in some cases, never intend to deliver.  Isn’t this fraud?  Isn’t this illegal? The answer to the fraud question is yes.  But, hold onto your hats, the answer to the illegal question, at least until lately is no.  WHAT?!?

Apparently, this practice stems from back from the day when there were no computers on the stock market, and traders send their assistants across the floor with wheelbarrows of paper stock in order to close a sale.  Obviously this would cause a traffic jam and would bring the entire market to a stand-still, so the practice of a gentleman’s agreement that the stocks would indeed be delivered came to be accepted.

Flash forward to today were the entire Stock Market is driven by computers.  Stocks are represented by 1’s and 0’s that flit about from one database to another at the stroke of a key.  We no longer wait for a wheelbarrow of paper to close a stock trade.  The stock now appears, as if by magic, in our accounts.

In this day of light-speed communications the arcane practice of naked short selling should have been eliminated a long time ago.  We just don’t need that apparatus because of computers.  Yet, it persisted.

Now, the Fed is closing this down, but that leads me to ask, what other BS is going on out there? People, it seems, will do anything if they make money and they won’t get caught.  They will even believe that fraudulent activity is not only ok, but indeed a cornerstone in the proper functioning of the Stock Market. The Fed should have jumped in long ago to stop this practice.  There may have been ramifications and short-term issues, but if our economy is depending on shaky, fraudulent practices, then its failure is sure.  Once trust is lost, all is lost.  Shame on you Fed for not stopping this earlier.  This is ridiculous.

Photo Courtesy of www.exploreshop.com.

Darwin Award Nominee, Kevin LePage

I know, I know, the vast majority of the readers of my blog could care less about NASCAR, but I can’t help myself. I have to say something about the dumbest thing I have ever seen in sports. Yesterday at Talladega during the Nationwide Series race (used to be called Busch Series) a driver who is old enough to know better took out $3 million worth of racecars in one fail swoop. Kevin LePage, #61 was coming out of the pits with 71 laps to go. He was down on the apron with the pack coming from behind at a MUCH faster pace.

LePage’s spotter (his eyes and ears on the track) was telling him to stay low (off the track) because the pack was coming fast. For no apparent reason, LePage started pulling out on the track going a heck of a lot slower than the traffic he was pulling into. The first car he pulled out in front of managed to get out of the way but the next in line, Carl Edwards, absolutely drove through LePage’s car. This was a wreck where the cars invloved were going over 200 mph, extreme danger.

What kind of moron simply pulls out into traffic that is going MUCH faster than you are? Now, let me add to that, what kind of moron pulls out in front of traffic that is going 70 to 100 mph faster than you are driving? Apparently that moron is Kevin LePage.

I had never heard of the aforementioned moron before yesterday, and when they said his name in the broadcast, I figured he was some young 20-something who was just learning the sport through the school of hard knocks. I was wrong. LePage is mid-forties, maybe fifties (I am not sure cause I don’t care enough about this doofus to be sure). I think he’s been racing since the 80’s. At any rate, he should know better. He should know better.

Can NASCAR fine a man for being stupid? I sure hope so! They fined Carl Edwards $100,000 for an infraction in the first race of the year and lost his pit boss for 6 races. All of that for a loose oil lid. LePage destroyed $3 Million worth of equipment…his racing license should be revoked.

Response…Where’s the Response?

I got online today to try and find the response for this titanic blunder, and for all intents and purposes, the web is fairly silently about this so I thought I would say something.

One last thing, if you aren’t a fan of NASCAR, I have something for you to try. It probably won’t convert you, but it was what got me watching. Watch a race in HD on a big screen and with surround sound and a sub. Any man would be hard-pressed to say that isn’t a little cool. Loud engines and cars going fast… I mean come on… that is pretty cool.

HP strikes chord with Mini-Note PC | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Am I missing something with these new sub-compact notebooks? I don’t understand what the interest is. Why would I want an underpowered notebook with a tiny screen and a keyboard that is too small to type effectively?

These mini/micro/nano lappies seem to be all the rage, and just 6 months ago people were making fun of them. Palm was planning to put out a sub-compact notebook that was met with jeers and heckling from the kids on the backrow of the internets. Palm scrapped the idea only to see a number of companies, not the least of which HP release similarly underpowered and undersized convolutions.

I know Palm had lost its way in the preceding few months failing to release an OS update for its phones and probably should have refocused on its core competency, but that doesn’t account for the tech world’s change of heart towards the tiny notebooks.

After Palm pulled its name out of the race, the OLPC laptop came out which seemed to capture the imagination a little. I can understand that. If you buy one of these green uglies, a deserving tyke in the third world will be able to brush up on his Quake SimCity skills on the second OLPC that you purchased.

The OLPC had barely had its opportunity to underwhelm when Asus released the first version of the Eee PC. The Eee gained quite a following and my befuddlement started to grow.

I don’t understand it. I must be getting old and cranky ’cause I just don’t understand these crazy kids and their laptops. GET OFF MY LAWN!

If you are seeing something that I am missing, let me know what the big deal is!

There is nearly no one in my circle of friends that likes NASCAR. That leaves me open for ridicule on every side, and yet I am ok with that. Ridicule me, that is fine because for reasons that are beyond me, I have become a fan of NASCAR.

It all started last Summer. It was before the NFL had started, and I needed something to watch. That, along with the advent of HD, led me to watch a little NASCAR. I really did it kind of on a lark and as a joke with myself. I can’t remember which race it was, maybe it was the second Talladega race… I seem to remember it was one of the super-speedways. Anyway, the race along with some of the driver’s stories got me interested.

Next week, I watched the next race, then the next race, and the next race. Before I knew it, we were down to the final 12 races and we were in the thick of the cup race. Each week, like a drug addict, I found myself unable to resist the siren call of the NASCAR.

Now, I am a fan, and I mean a real fan. I know all the racers. I know all the cars. I have favorites. I feel palpable pain every time Kyle Busch acts like a 22 year old (he is 22 years old) and crashes his car early in a race when he should be patient. I am a fan.

I will not be ashamed. I don’t have to have the approval of any man. I like NASCAR, and I will not hang my head. In fact, how can any man say he doesn’t like watching cars crash while going over 200 miles per hour. If you turn that down, I say you need to turn your man-card for the next week. That is sweet dude…SWEET.

I can’t believe that I never hear anyone talking about sharing interesting news links via Google Reader. It is such an easy thing to do and it doesn’t add that much overhead to your news reading regimen. Google Reader is an online RSS aggregation site. That means that through Google Reader, you can subscribe to sites that you go to and get notification when new content is produced. Cool stuff.

I have subscribed to a number of sites, some news, some sports, but mostly tech related. As I scroll through the stories, I look for interesting content. When I find something that piques my interest enough to read it, I share it. That creates an RSS stream of news that I find interesting. That has value. I go through the news and cull out the boring stories.

I will admit that my choices are highly biased by my tastes and what I think is important, but I would find it interesting to subscribe to friends news feeds just to get a glimpse into what they think is important.

Google Reader makes this so easy that I am stupefied that this isn’t something that more people do. We share our thoughts on blogs. We share our thoughts and location on twitter. Heck, we share everything. Why hasn’t news sharing taken off more.

I know Del.icio.us, the bookmarking website has been around for a long time, but I could never get into how it works. It has always seemed like an extra step. Besides, it was created before the explosion of RSS-ified content.

I went to Del.icio.us earlier today to see if there was a way to combine my RSS feed of news in Del.icio.us and couldn’t find it. It would be great if I could wire my Google reader feed to create Del.icio.us links, but I can’t make that happen.

Right now I am only following one news feed, and that’s Steve Gillmor. He shares news in fits and starts, but it is incredibly interesting to see what he finds interesting.

I am looking for more news feeds to read.
Robert Scoble?
Jason Calacanis?
Veronica Belmont?

There are a ton of feeds I and others would read. Why hasn’t this blown up?

You really ought to read this CNET blogpost for background.

Security experts speculate on YouTube outage | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

CNET is reporting that Pakistan was allegedly trying to block YouTube due to some content offensive to Muslims.  In the process, they took out YouTube worldwide for over two hours yesterday, February 24th, 2008.

So, let me get this straight…this is possible?  What the?  How can this be? Does this make anyone else just a little nervous?  I mean YouTube is owned by Google, AKA Masters Of The Internets!!! How fragile is everything else in the Internet if Google can’t keep its sites up?

By the way, legislating morality doesn’t work, but that is another discussion all together.