Right is its own defense

Mark Cuban is smart guy that I respect.  Well, at least as much as you can respect someone whom I have never met in person and in fact would not know if I ran over him with a ice cream truck.

I’ve ‘known’ Mark since his days starting broadcast.com, one of the extremely rare bubble-era companies on who’s stock I actually made money (DAMN DIRTY PeaPod!).  He saw the digital media wave long before most people and was rewarded for it.

Although I couldn’t give two beads of sweat about his thoughts on the NBA, I do follow Mark’s (I can call you ‘Mark’, can’t I…  Mark?) thoughts reguarding digital media and business with great interest.  This post is interesting in two ways; the annoucement of a new web site/service to discuss/expose corporate fraud and his tenat that ‘Right is its own defense’.

I think I’m adding that one to my list of “Tim’s Rules of Life”.

Right is its own defense – Blog Maverick – www.blogmaverick.com _

It’s been an interesting week.

On my day job we signed not one, but two H U G E clients. One of these we have been chasing for a year (to the day). This basically ‘makes’ the company. There was Dom all around. We also received commitments from two other clients for large-scale tests. Dammmmmmmn.

If that wasn’t enough fun for one week, my weekend gig filed a provisional patent. I’m someone now!

Whew — I need a nap.

And now for a word from Engineering…

One often asks one’s self, “Self, How many is too many?” Here’s the answer I got from myself.

– 1 motorcycle accident

– 3 startups, concurrently

– 115 comment spams in a single hour

The first one, a Tim vs. Tree incident I discussed briefly yesterday. The second is a side-effect of my personality, sad but true.

The last however, has a technology solution. A quick trip to Goggle lead me to the WordPress plug-in Spam Karma 2. The install process was completely painless; from download to running in about 10 minutes.

Once installed and running it examines all comments posted to the blog and assigns each a ‘karma value’. The points associated with certain characterstics of the message along with the actions to take based on the total karma are highly customizable. Even the admin interface is adjustable (basic vs. advanced); Brilliant!
I dug deep into my long (long, long, LONG) systems architecture and engineering experience bag and pulled out a basic tenant of systems design: “Go with the defaults!”. This is, of course, second only to the first tenant; “Let’s try rebooting”. Both are dwarfed of course, by the immortal words of Tech Support minions everwhere; “Ok, try it now.”.

According to the handy dashboard, in the first hour of operation SK2 squashed a grin-inducing 22 comment spams. Sweet.

What year Honda Civic?

I ride a motorcycle and before you ask, Yes, I do wear a helmet. I’m still not sure if Mom is aware of this fact; ever since the ‘incident’ back in High School where I went head-to-bark with a tree I’ve been loath to discuss the entire subject with her. But I digress…

I work in downtown Boston and parking here follows the general rules of economics; a scarce commodity begets high prices. Bearing this in mind, and the fact that most commercial lots do not accept two-wheeled vehicles I opt to park on the street. By .on the street. I mean anyplace I can wedge my scooter into without creating a public nuisance or putting it into the likely path of a garbage truck or Starbucks starved commuter.

In fact, I found a .perfect. place directly across the street from my office. It is a space along the curb approx. 25 feed wide, bounded by posted no parking zones, (what the hell is a .counsul tag. anyway?) centered on a fire hydrant. I back up against the curb, with my rear wheel touching, at one of the extremes of the space to maximize my distance from the hydrant. I.ve parked here on numerous occasions without incident. Imagine my surpize to emerge from my office to discover the day-glow-can-see-it-from-space orange ticket slipped under my seat strap. .HYDRANT. was listed as the violation. I proceeded to step off the distance between the hydrant and my bike, 11 .boots.. (I.ve the happy coincidence of having feet that are close enough to 1 foot long to double as measuring sticks. Thanks Mom & Dad). A few quick snaps with my camphone to document the scene and I was off. Continue reading What year Honda Civic?

This site is… well… Damn Interesting

Ok, so I’ve been a bit radio silent of late.

You may have heard that we had a bit of rain here in New England.  And by ‘bit of rain’ I mean about 12 inches in 4 days.  That’s more than enough to fill a gallon jug.  I learned a few things during the deluge:

  • My house looks funny with a moat
  • I can say with 100% certainty that my basement does NOT leak
  • A Toyota 4Runner can ford a stream… err.. road with 14 inches of water on it.
  • Subway tunnels smell VERY bad when they have standing water in them.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have to worry about my well going dry until about 2018.  So I got that going for me…

I stumbled across this site the other day and found it… well… Damn Interesting.  I’m hoping that at least 1 of the 4 people that read this blog will also find it so.

Damn Interesting

The Perfect popcorn topping

We eat a lot of popcorn. And when I say ‘a lot’ I mean we consume our body weight twice a month. But we don’t go for that fancy schmancy Orville Newman double movie-time butter with extra sea salt, I mean the $0.99 for 2lbs store brand genetically mutated ‘corn based food’.

We, my partner and I, have very different methods for popping the ‘corn based food’.

The air popper that we have been using since… well… there was a ‘we’, has a measuring scoop built into the top. I carefully pour into the scoop the prescribed amount of kernels and then dump the contents of the scoop into the popper. This results in a full-but-not-too-full bowl of white fluffy magic. A very left brain method. Continue reading The Perfect popcorn topping

Digital Media and whatever else flows through my head…