Monthly Archives: April 2011

215lbs

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215lbs. An important milestone. Next stop 210!

Finally! Seemed like I was stuck on 216 forever, but now that I look at it, I’ve lost 15lbs in about a month. So that makes me feel good. That would get me to my goal in just over two months from now which excites me.

I was talking to my sister yesterday, and we both agreed that when it comes to losing weight, you just gotta go with what works for you. I’m numbers oriented, so counting calories was a good way for me. Others may prefer a more holistic approach. It’s just whatever gets you motivated.

I think the important thing for me, and maybe for everyone is just getting off the dime. The iPhone app and counting, seeing it digitally displayed is what helped get me off the dime, but once I got moving and saw some results I’ve sort of settled into a “coast” mode. I’ve been eating similar things, so I haven’t been entering every calorie as much any more. In other words, once you do a while of “counting” per se, you start getting a “feel” for how much you’ve had and it gets easier. Also, after you’ve made some real progress, you don’t mind relaxing and having a “sweet” now and then. It doesn’t throw you off because you know you’ve made good progress and will continue to do so. You start getting a feel for what works for you, and there’s not so much stress once you’ve got the ball rolling. So that’s why I think getting off the dime, starting, no matter what your strategy is, is the most important thing.

What motivates you to get started?

It’s National Poetry Month – So I Should Write Some Poems

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I was just glancing at Youtube, and it said that it was national poetry month. Man they have a day and a month for everything, don’t they? Hehehehehe. Well, since I’m a poet, I thought I should write some poems, especially this month! Just wrote this sonnet a few minutes ago. Hopefully I can do one each morning for the remainder of the month, in honor of the month. I’ll just keep posting them here so I don’t have to have a new post for each and every poem. Maybe I’ll do a Youtube video at the end of the Month in honor of “Spoken Word Poetry.”

 

Sonnet – April 11th, 2011

It’s middle April and the rains have come
The silent morning rings to life and sings.
Each note a whisper of our long lost love
that glides on creeks and swims through springs. 

The turtles’ silence guards the lake all night.
The frogs swim through the moistness of our song.
When morning curtains nudge, they plop from sight,
Soul searching for our long lost golden ball.

The crickets provide the strings, the ducks the horns;
An evening symphony that gives us bliss;
To help in healing what the dragons tore,
And bring us comfort for those that we miss.

The flowers bloom, and trees sway in the wind.
They dance lost songs to visit us again.

___________

Sonnet – April 12th, 2011

At dawn we lost the whisper of our song.
Dreams carried us to worlds we’d rather stay.
The mind builds places our souls don’t belong.
And so the heart remains asleep all day. 

Who’s driven long and who has driven far
To face the mountain hiding secret love?
Inside a bower lit with dreams by stars
They’re parted by the birthing rays above.

Below her bathing pool is where they hid:
Two gems of corn who’d seek the northern light.
She knew their power even just as kids
To overcome the monsters which they’d fight.

The road to follow is a mag’cal one
To marry dreams with the light of the Sun.

______________________

Sonnet – April 13th, 2011

I’d like to hold your essence cool and free.
Your hair is waving spirits to rise up.
Your parents are the mountains and the sea.
You dance with legs of deer and arms of dove. 

Your eyes are saying dive and swim this stream.
They speak a language without having sound.
Tonight I dance with you like in a dream.
I can’t describe but know this thing I’ve found.

There are no tensions in this purest form,
Here even where Yeats said the ladder starts.
You are the place where happiness is born,
and fill with light the center of our hearts.

You are the warmth of Sun that’s brought by Spring
We glide on light by saying not a thing.

____________________________________

Sonnet – April 14th

I’ve noticed that the people seem to glide
And sing down by the river through the trees
They seem to have the glow that’s born inside;
Exuberance from not caring what life means. 

A shadow carries water to their Spring.
They’ve always known that someone lived in there.
Was it a spirit or a human being?
They say it breathes the water, drinks the air.

The children leave their houses for the Sun.
They swim like fish this river made of snow.
It feels though time had just begun
The garden nature made so long ago.

And in the forest still the spirit rests.
Upon stars made from Mother Nature’s breasts.

____________________________

Sonnet – April 15th, 2011

We’re meant to glide upon a beam of light
But here in one wave where life splits in two,
Collapsed a notion of what’s wrong and right.
And now there’s nothing but toil and work to do. 

Sometimes I think therefore I’m not so free.
The stagnant water forms where walls are built.
Drowning spirit born effortlessly.
Like burning rays so hot the flowers wilt.

It feels like its only those fleeting times
A moment when the mind naturally rests
A spirit born inside the heart’s red wine
Appears in actual joy and manifests.

A bliss that doesn’t seem the need to show
With pride how far it’s infinite knowledge goes.

_________________________

Sonnet – April 16th

There was a darkness that surrounded her
What do I do I thought as things grew dim.
A feeling of emotions’ vision blur
When she brought night and cold from where she’d been.

What was this night so sad shown through her eyes?
It was an empty stare she laid down cold.
How can you judge a thing through all the lies
And describe a feeling that has not been told?

A path through strife we see a shining truth
Come here again so I can touch the face.
A land of plenty rises from the root
A mouth says things we feel but cannot trace.

Few days of riding through the emotional highs
It disappears up through the nighttime skies.

 

The Reason for the Internet Connectivity Problem

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We all should be riding on waves of light, but false monopolies propped up by Government regulation of communications has stifled innovation and business plans alike.

I was just listening to TWiT and they were having this discussion about the internet connectivity problem, the fact that we have a duopoly of telco and cable controlling it and now threatening bandwidth caps that could effect the coming consumption of video streaming that is coming online with Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and the advent of live streaming from Ustream, Justin.tv, et. al. This is in fact the new paradigm, “Real-Time” as its known in the industry, and the falsely earned duopoly is threatening to turn off the spicket as it were just as video, a major leap forward for the net, wants to take center stage.

Leo Laporte suggested why doesn’t the government just force the cable companies to sell their access to other companies, just like they do with telco, in order to solve the problem.

Sounds reasonable, right?

No, no, no! A thousand times no! This is the very action embodied in the Telco Act of 1996 that caused the problem in the first place. It was the false propping up of competition that killed real competition.

Remember all those small telco companies that cropped up out of nowhere in the 90’s who promised you the moon and then quickly went broke?

Their entire business plan was not competitive, not investing their own capital, but merely using government regulation that allowed them to piggy back on existing infrastructure with no capital invested.

Then the whole thing came crashing down. It sucked the life out of broadband, and since all of the business plans of Web 1.0 were based on ubiquitous broadband, we had the great internet crash of 2000.

Think about it. If you had the billions of dollars it would take to make a go of it in the connectivity market, would you invest in laying fiber to people’s homes, when the government can come in at any time and force you to resell that access at no profit to an upstart “connectivity” company, a phantom company? NO. And that, my friends, lays the problem.

We all should have a fiber connection to our home for a reasonable price. The technology is there, the market is there, but the only thing that is standing in the way is Government regulation in the first place.

People like Leo still believe that the government is on the people’s side in this issue. But it isn’t. The government is on the Oligarch’s side. It’s like the old bit of “Good cop, bad cop.” The government in the major industries plays “Good Cop,” but behind the scenes it is the industry leaders who are writing the very legislation that the Government blesses, and thus stops investment in productivity, and ends up lowering the standard of living for all.

The only solution is for the government to get out of the way. On the one hand you have to let the Telcos and the Cables do what they want and have their data caps if they want. On the other hand they have to make it very clear that they won’t interfere with any real capital that is anxious to enter the market, making it clear that they can fairly compete.

Mylikes Update: A Retweet is All It Takes

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The Mylikes_Retweet account on Twitter. Makes publishing an ad almost effortless, and totally fun!

Remember when I wrote about Mylikes, the social media ad platform, that allowed you to leverage your Social Media efforts? Well, I still love it, for all the reasons I mentioned in the post, but I noticed lately I haven’t been as active on it. There are more than a few reasons for this, but one of the biggest was LAZINESS. For one thing I got a new Mac, I didn’t remember my password, and I’d have to walk ALL THE WAY to the next room to log on. Just think of that: I’d rather walk to another room, boot up another computer, than simply reset my password! I just found out last night that I can log in to Mylikes through Twitter (or Facebook for that matter) but I was alway hesitant to do that because when I used that strategy with CinchCast, Cinchcast simply opened up another account for me, instead of linking me to my existing account. Not Mylikes. Simply logon through Twitter or Facebook and it links you to your existing account. Nice.

But it gets even better, and easier.

A Retweet is All it Takes

I noticed the other day that they have set up a special account called @Mylikes_retweet that tweets ads, and all you have to do is simply retweet (use the twitter retweet button) and of course not only is that ad published to all of your followers, any time that it is clicked you earn money! Talk about removing any friction! Not only do you not have to go to Mylikes and pick an ad, the copy is already written for you. And it’s great, eye catching, fun copy that is more conducive to “clicking” (translate, good for publishers!) As a matter of fact when I do it, I almost have to keep myself from clicking the retweet in my own stream (which would be against the rules.)

I love this feature because of its ease, but not only that, it interests me because it shows the innovative nature of the company. I mentioned in my earlier post that the founders, Bindu Reddy and her husband were ex-Googlers and that that fun, innovative approach was in their DNA, just like it is at Google.

Fun is something that is way underestimated, especially in Western Culture. We tend to divide “fun” away from our business life. Almost a firewall between fun, life, and business. But I just finished reading Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose,and the secret to Zappos’ culture is just the opposite: Fun, social, caring are intrisic to Zappos’ DNA. In fact it is their business model.

This theme struck a bell inside me earlier this week. I was chatting with a web developer friend. I mentioned that I was looking for a photo editing, creative application that wasn’t so intimidating (and expensive) as Photoshop. He mentioned Pixelmator and after telling me all the nice features about it, at the end in an unconscious exhuberence spouted, “And it’s fun!”

Well, for all the philosophical debate we have over advertising and it’s place, especially in Social Media, what about the philosophy of Fun?

If you are already a member of Mylikes, simply go to @Mylikes_retweet and pick an ad from their tweet stream. Simply retweet it, and see if you don’t have some fun as well as potentially earn some money.

And if you are not a member go sign up here: Mylikes.com (It’s free, and if you sign up with that link, I have a chance to win an iPad2, which you can too once you are a member.)