Opinionated Software
I went looking for a good scary movie to watch last October on Netflix. You'd think this would be easy, since they have a massive online repository of movies you can rent, and it spans just about everything that's ever been released on DVD. I started with one horror movie I had heard of, then started leaping through the recommended similar movies. You'd think this would take me down a pretty big rabbit hole. But...
Maker's Accounting
I spent four years in college learning accounting which, in summary (to spare you the gory details), basically means I spent four years learning "the equation": Assets = Liabilities + Stockholder's Equity It sounds fancy, but it isn't. The sum total of a company is what's owned plus what's owed. If you have a company worth $100, but $50 of that is on a credit card, it means half of the company is leveraged. This...
It's An Interesting Story...
I imagine that Lorne Michaels gets a lot of email. Maybe not him personally, but his office. And I'll bet it comes from group of people who are all claiming to be "the next 'Lonely Island'". The Lonely Island, for those who don't know, is Andy Sandberg's trio that started making comedy songs out of an apartment and ended up getting featured on Saturday Night Live a few years ago. They're quite famous now. Naturally,...
You Have An Audience
There's a group of people out there who are interested in what you have to say. It's no secret that like-minded people come together and hang out with each other. And these clumps of people, even if they are distributed across multiple cities or even countries, are determined to find each other and connect. Somewhere out there, there is a group of people who want to hear what you say. There's a clump waiting for...
Kevorkian's End
I found out this morning that Jack Kevorkian died last night, and I was more than little sad to hear the news. A small handful of my friends already know this, but when I was living in Royal Oak, MI, after college, Kevorkian moved into the apartment across the hall from me shortly after he got out of jail. He was my neighbor for about a year. I spoke with him a few times. In...
"I Get That Question All The Time"
Sometimes I'll ask someone a question that I think is interesting or insightful, and I get this reply. I met a UCSB graduate about my age, and I asked him, "How did you ever manage to concentrate, study hard, and graduate from a college with such a gorgeous campus right on the ocean?" I come from the Midwest, and the college I attended was landlocked and snowy most of the year, so this question seemed...
My First Kickstarter Project
I read a Stanford study last year that said 75% of iPhone users sleep with their phones. Not just on the nightstand next to the bed, but actually in the bed with them. People said that using their iPhone was the last thing they did before they went to sleep and the first thing they did when they woke up in the morning. I thought this was surprising (I didn't own an iPhone back then),...
The Hardest Part
The hardest part of starting up the first Starbucks wasn't in renting a location in Seattle. It wasn't buying some coffee machines and installing them in said location. It wasn't making sure the place was up to code so the health department would give them a pass. It wasn't making sure the design of the coffee in the bags was appealing enough so that people would buy them. It wasn't getting the money in line,...
Our Groceries
I installed a simple app on my smartphone a few weeks ago, and one that has proven to be immensely helpful: it's called OurGroceries. And what does it do? It lets you manage shopping lists, which can be shared amongst multiple mobile devices. That means if I think of something I need to buy, I can just grab my phone, type it in, and whoever is doing the shopping this week will end up with...
Changing of the Receptionist
The job of a receptionist is never an easy one. At any given time, it seems like there's at least two things you need to be doing: both the work that no one else in the office wants to do, and handling the influx of people both by phone and coming in the door. Not only do they have to handle this, but they have to do it with a smile on their face. For...