Project OrielEmbracing Change

* Today is the 8th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day http://www.sysadminday.com/

* Heard in an interesting interview on Science Friday http://www.sciencefriday.com/ with Elliot Aronson, the author of “Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs…” The term Cognitive Dissonance, which much of the show was about, is now 50 years old: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

* When Google bought YouTube earlier this year, YouTube’s IT staff consisted of 9 techies: 2 sysadmins, 2 scalability software architects, 2 feature developers, 2 network engineers, and 1 DBA. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6304964351441328559

* Google with a black background could save up to 750 megawatt hours per year. Article at the WSJ http://tinyurl.com/2wb7gm or see the demo site at http://www.blackle.com/

* For questions about Wikipedia vs Britannica, here’s a fun list of “Errors in the Encyclopedia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia” http://tinyurl.com/93aa2

* Craig Dare suggested the site: http://myfamily.com/ as a way to connect and keep up to date with extended family.

* Quote: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” -Richard P. Feynman, Nobel Prize – winning physicist

Well, I’m not sure if I liked it or hated it. But he has given me some things to think about in any case. Book Website

He starts the book poorly with a strong get-rich-quick feel (the web site has the same feel). He introduces the “NR” New Rich concept, has some acronyms that I rolled my eyes at, and proceeds to end the book poorly. The end feels like he is trying to justify his self-absorbed travel and pursuits.

That being said, the middle of the book was very interesting. He seemed to have some pretty good ideas, though most were applicable more for the business owner or entrepreneur. One thing he suggested was hiring a personal/virtual assistant (cheaper if in India). I looked into this on one of a few sites he suggested and it is not nearly as cheap as he makes it out to be.

His big idea is to find a “muse” – some business idea that is cheap to make, sells for $50-200, and has a business model that can be automated at every level. He suggests setting up yourself as the owner – not the manager or CEO, and limiting your interactions to email only, and then no more than once a week. He suggests selling one or two items (this reduces complexity in fulfillment, customer questions, etc), make it fairly expensive (so you don’t get the counting-every-penny customers who are hard to please), and outsource everything. He has many good sites to support his ideas, but comes across as shrewd marketer. He would would hold the “Learn Microsoft Windows DVD” guy as a hero – a product cheap to make, with a business ridiculously easy to automate. He suggests building businesses to sell a product for as high of a profit margin as possible. If you followed his ideas, you would have a business that on one hand you’ll say that the customers are poor saps for buying what you are selling, and on the other hand, you’ll say ask, precisely because they did buy it: “why is it not a fair business model?”.

Throughout the book I kept thinking to myself: how much of this was written by assistants? How much of the book was outsourced? Does that change the validity of the points made? The book is sold to make money, or as he suggests, so he can call himself an author.

All in all, I am glad I read the book. He gave me something to think about and listed some outsourcing services I am interested in exploring. The next step: find out which of his ideas actually hold water.

Have a great weekend!

* Design with a Sharpie, not a pen: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/466-sketching-with-a-sharpie

* Jill’s husband Andrew cooks at http://www.angelinaskitchen.com/ in Woodbury, MN

* An email policy suggestion I ran across this week: http://five.sentenc.es/ We are now tracking the number of emails Beth has in her inbox each day. :-)

* Sarah and I participate in an Xcel Energy program where we get about 2/3 of our home electricity from wind power. After the renewable resource credits (and the fee) it cost us less than $2 last month to be in the program. http://tinyurl.com/2zt3kz

* Quote: “Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.” – Robert A. Heinlein

* A while back http://twitter.com was down and this is what was shown on their home page. More can be found at http://icanhascheezburger.com/

I just finished reading Gore’s book, The Assault on Reason. Excellent read. If you are a die-hard republican, you won’t read this book. If you are anyone else, you will be absolutely appalled at the horrendous state of affairs we as a nation have let ourselves sink to. He maps out how we got here, and how Bush has taken advantage of the political climate to legislate in secret without checks and balances. I for one can’t wait till we can get a new administration that can clean up the mess and bring honor and respect back to our politics.

* Ever need to write something down? No access to paper/pencil but have your cellphone? This is one of the most useful free services I’ve come across in a long time: http://jott.com Call their 800 number, speak your note, and the service transcribes it to text and sends it to you in an email. Want to send a reminder or question to someone else? You can jott individuals or groups and it will email them and send them a text message.

* I have been reading The Assault on Reason (good so far). Gore says “We often make snap judgments based principally on our emotional reactions rather than considering all options rationally and making choices carefully.” This is known as the Affect Heuristic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affect_heuristic

* Pachelbel Rant: http://dearhomefront.blogspot.com/2007/06/pachelbel-rant.html

* http://www.etsy.com/ It’s a nice store for hand-crafted and one-of-a-kind artistic items (if you have something, you can sell it there too)

* I’ve previously mentioned the http://www.grandcentral.com service for unifying all of your phones under one number. This service was recently purchased by Google: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/03/ap3880713.html

Stock changes in the last 10 years. Despite the wonders of Google, and the noises from Microsoft, Apple seems to be the one leading the game. For different stocks or ranges, see http://finance.google.com/finance?q=AAPL%2C+GOOG%2C+DELL%2C+MSFT&hl=en