A critical error.

So - I woke up this morning early (thanks, dog) and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I hit the gym before work.  As I was lifting, I was reveling in all the extra calories I’d be burning while at my desk today.  I ran home, ate breakfast, and headed in to the office.

One thing I didn’t consider - lifting weights increases your metabolism dramatically for several hours post workout.  I, however, decided a Special K/All Bran combo would be enough to get me through to lunch.  It’s now 10 till 9 and I’m gnawing on my monitor.  Only 2.5 hours left until I leave for lunch!

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock.

May 20th 2008 Posted to Fitness
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Do something good today.

If you know me, you know I’m a sucker for a cause.  You also know I’m passionate about sports - and their role in helping our children develop (you can learn a lot of lessons on the field).

On that note, my friend/colleague Marty is raising money for a Fantasy Sports Camp for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Kids.

I know times are tight and all that, but surely you can spare $20.  $10?  Something?  Nothing in this world feels as good as giving - and I can’t think of anything more pure than kids getting a chance to play baseball.

Click here to learn more and donate. 

May 19th 2008 Posted to Doing Good
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Super Mario Theme on Bottles?

Played by an RC Car? File this one under “No Freaking Way!”

May 01st 2008 Posted to Everything Else
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Three ways to make meetings more efficient.

One of the curses of the corporate world is the meeting.  When executed correctly, they are vital to getting things done.  When executed poorly, they are a burden and take time away from productive work - as well as cause frustration and discontent among the masses.

Thanks to some great career gurus like Dave Lorenzo - I’ve got some tips for making meetings work for you.  A fair warning though, it’s tougher to implement than you’d think.

1) MOST IMPORTANT - Have a desired outcome for the meeting.  A deliverable.  A reason for spending an hour in the conference room.  It could be a list of questions you want answered, sign off on a project, etc….if you’re meeting over something you could just as easily pass around in an email, don’t waste everyone’s time.  (I’m looking at you, weekly staff meeting)

2)Be Prepared - Every time I’m in a meeting with someone that has to be brought up to speed, I want to smack them.  If I called the meeting, I sent you the materials in advance.  If you called the meeting, you should have asked for information in advance.  And, if you called the meeting just to get up to speed, God help you.

3)Be courteous, and know it’s ok to say no.  Never schedule a meeting just because someone doesn’t have time marked off in Outlook.  People that do that are the reason I keep 70% of my time marked off anyway - even if I have nothing going on.  Ask first - schedule second.  Give me a day’s notice, so I can get up to speed (see #2).  And, realize, I may say no.  The most liberating moment of my life was the day I said - “I don’t think this really justifies a meeting, can you just send an email, and we’ll discuss if there are any further questions” - that saved about 8 man hours of time.

That’s all for now folks - here’s to making meetings shorter, more efficient, and fewer in number!

May 01st 2008 Posted to Business, Entrepreneurship
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Is Entrepreneurship a Personality Disorder?

Fred Wilson is one of my favorite bloggers, and he listed his answers to “10 Questions About Entrepreneurship” - including referring to it as a personality disorder, and questioning whether or not entrepreneurs are happier than “regular” folks.

For one, it may not be a disorder (because that carries a certain negative connotation) but it definitely is a personality aberration.   I mean, who would consider high-level OCD coupled with ADHD, severe insomnia, extreme excitability, and mood swings a “disorder”……oh, wait…All those traits could also be referred to as passion, drive, ambition, and a quest to make the world a better place and achieve self-fulfillment.  It just depends on whether or not you’re trying to sell medication :)

As to whether or not we’re happier - I think our mood swings take us higher (it’s the self fulfillment thing), and the lows don’t take us quite as low, since a successful entrepreneur learns at a very earl age to embrace a challenge as opposed to let it keep them down too long.   Now, that is completely achievable outside of our little sphere of crazy people, but I think it affects entrepreneurs at a much higher rate than your cubicle warrior.  Hence, I would suggest entrepreneurs are, on average, slightly happier.

He also talks a bit about how Indeed is making job searching more intelligent. This sounds kind of like some stuff we’re working on with HHOD.  I wonder if Fred would be interesting in hearing about that?

*crickets*

And, yes, I know that these posts are a bit older, but I only get to my aggregator about once a week these days.  I’ve been too busy running around and talking about HHOD to schools and finding out exactly how cool our idea is.

April 29th 2008 Posted to Entrepreneurship, HHOD
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10 More Things I think I think.

As usual, stolen entirely from Peter King.

1) All the SEO in the world doesn’t help if your conversion elements suck

2) We don’t send enough emails anymore.  It’s tough for acquisition, but the best for retention.

3) Johnsonville Turkey with Cheddar sausages are better than real hot dogs.  And, I love real hot dogs.

4) Going to dinner with friends tonight.  Rather be working.  I think I have a problem.

5) The startup process has forced me into thinking more like a leader, and less like a cubicle drone.  I’m also much more comfortable talking in front of larger groups of people.

6) My cover of Fast Company is now 14 months away.  I’m calling it right now.

7) It’s pretty easy to tell when running shoes go bad.  One day, they’re great, the next, they are like running on cardboard mats.

8) I should be working instead of blogging.  Or, at least blogging more about work.

9) I need golf lessons.

10) I’d like to hear from real people about their experiences with Rackspace.

April 25th 2008 Posted to 10 Things I Think
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I’m assuming that not blogging makes me a bad person.

And, it probably does.  Ah, well, life goes on.  Maybe this little post will help break me out of my blog funk and get back to it.

Lots of stuff has happened lately - we presented HHOD to a private school in KY, and it went over insanely well.  Now, we’re lining up investor meetings for the next steps.  I’ve still been running, and was happily forced to purchase a new suit because my old one looked like a pillow case when I tried it on.  Hopefully, I’ll be needing several more in the near future.

The puppy got really sick for a couple days, and is better now.  I got to spend a great weekend playing golf with dad and my friends.  I can’t wait for Craig’s bachelor party.  The Royals got off to a great start, but have been playing like, well, the Royals for the last two weeks.

Ok, that brings us up to speed.  I’m working on something of actual value for tonight.

April 24th 2008 Posted to Everything Else
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Assumptions on Sorting Importance…

This post is inspired by Seth Godin’s “Alphabetical Order is Obsolete” Post a couple weeks back (sorry, sorry, I can only get through my aggregator every so often).

Anyway, he makes some pretty awesome observations about  how senseless the alphabetical system is for some applications…..

Your address book is in alphabetical order, right? Why? If you want to look someone up, type the name in. Alpha is least useful way to browse 4,000 names in an address book. I want them sorted by recency of contact, or in tickler-file order.

It’s a difficult concept for many people to grasp, simply because it’s been hammered in as THE default ordering system (sharing it’s reign with Numerical…) since we were little kids.  It caught on because, simply, we weren’t looking for the best way to order things…we were just looking for A way to order things. So, the default catches hold and we are stuck with it…until someone smarter than me rifts really hard and figures out a better way to do it.  (I’m looking at you - Dewey Decimal System)

Now, I can manage libraries sticking to alphabetical order, and my address book search is good enough (thanks 37signals!) so that I don’t need it to change.  But, you can correlate the seemingly senseless adoption of alphabetical order as “The Way” to the adoption of Google’s Search Results as the end-all-be-all for ordering what you’re looking for on the Internet.  If you’re looking for specific information, a specific product, or a certain web page - what you generally get is 1MM+ nonsensical results.

Don’t believe me?  There are 3.2MM results for a search for “Polynomials” - from a Wikipedia entry (not bad), to some worksheets, a glossary page, and a couple practice tests.  Of course, I was looking for information about Integrals, but Google didn’t know that.  So, they pushed back results to me that were relevant…by their standards anyway.  (the Title Tags, Content, and Inbound Anchor text matched my query…the domain was old enough, and was registered for the next 4 years) Granted, these results weren’t useful to me, but they were ‘relevant’.

That’s my problem - if we rely on a system that, while the best one out there, is still not even close to good - we are missing out on the greatest learning opportunity in history.  There is a great deal of information out there that we only have access to if we’re willing to dig, dig, dig through pages of SERPS.  What we’re working on at HHOD is a way to give you back results that aren’t relevant to you.  They will be USEFUL to you.

Relevant or Useful.  Which set of results would you rather have?

April 02nd 2008 Posted to Business, HHOD, SEM, SEO
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Finally - talking about the Startup.

So, a few times around here, I have alluded to “The Startup”….never being in a position to talk about it until today. Let’s get to the meaty details.

What is it? - HomeworkHelponDemand.com - an online resource that will finally make all those potentially educational resources out there on the Internet easy to find, evaluate, and put to use. We’re talking about a complete shift in the way kids, parents, and teachers use the Internet in relation to school.

We’re not releasing much more information about exactly how we are doing what we do until we are a little farther along - but if you go to the site and sign up, you can get access to early-bird previews and VIP access to some information.

I am very, very excited about this - not just because I think it’s an absolutely great idea that will create a very profitable business…..I also feel very strongly about the mission of this business. You see, on a daily basis we find new web businesses out there that are compelling, cool, or even revolutionary in their creation or application of technology. Twitter is a business that comes to mind that is very ‘cool’.

One thing that’s different about HHOD is that our impact won’t just be measured in return on the VC investment, Fast Company covers (although that would be sweet), or how many ripples we can make in the blogosphere. Our impact will be measured in levels of improvement for students, increase in efficiency for teachers, expansion of the parent’s role in their child’s education - things that, at the end of the day, are what really, truly matter.

You can read my first post on our company blog to see why this is important. When 50% of the kids in your hometown aren’t going to graduate from high school, you really don’t care much about the social grid (although we have that), ajax (that too), or bright and shiny graphics (again..) - what you really want to do is give these kids, their teachers, and their parents the tools to access the greatest learning resource of our time effectively and safely.

That’s what we’re here to do. Stay tuned (and, by all means, go to the site, fill out the form, and stay up to date with what’s going on)

April 01st 2008 Posted to Entrepreneurship, HHOD
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Get Rick Rolled At Youtube

Go to Youtube.com - click on any featured video.

Hilarity Ensues.  Happy April Fool’s Day!

April 01st 2008 Posted to Daily Snark
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