| argh, 3.0 wiped out the names of my favorites . . . | |
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| yea for lazy Sunday mornings reading the paper, relaxing, and just
enjoying the sun . . . | |
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| this weather is kicking my butt. Where are the warm summer nights? | |
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| argh, OAK's "free" wifi's javascript injection of an ad banner
screws up so many damn websites . . . | |
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| Am I the only one who takes pleasure in browsing everyone else's iTunes shares when on public wifi? | |
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| Wow. I haven't been to a Global Finals since 2006. For those who aren't familiar, Global Finals are the culmination of the Destination Imagination program year, and involves over 10,000 team members. It's an amazing celebration of creativity and education. Anyway, highlights and thoughts: - On the shuttle bus from Nashville to Knoxville, I had a conversation with some women from Oregon who had a structure team. I asked them what kind of research they'd done, and they mentioned a balsa goddess. I had no idea about this page, but a quick lookup on the iPhone verified my hunch that it was Heather Compton's page. What a small world structure is. (Of course, I was hoping they'd found my old site, but they hadn't heard of hairylunch . . . )
- Days were long as usual. Tuesday I left Reno at 7:40 AM, and didn't get to Knoxville till almost 10 PM, and then had the events team meeting for another hour or so. My appraiser duties on the Construction Challenge took me from 7:30 or so till 5:30-6:00 each evening. On Wednesday night, we were working on CC stuff till midnight, Thursday was Improv Fiesta till like 10 PM, and Friday was the Team Managers and Officials competition, followed by Midnight Madness (a teen party) till after midnight. Throw in website maintenance for mt-di.org, and some time unwinding with others, and I figure I was lucky to get 4-5 hours of sleep a night. In fact, on Saturday, I only had about 30 minutes before having to catch the shuttle to Nashville . . .
- Speaking of Midnight Madness and the events team, I definitely felt like a hypocrite that night. This was a big teen party, with food in one area, and DJ and dancing in the big, grass field. Maybe 500-1,000 kids or so total attendance? Anyway, the hypocrite in me was that for part of the evening I played crowd control, which meant breaking up crowd surfing, mosh pits, and some bump-and-grind. Definitely a bit strange to be breaking up the crowd surfing and mosh pits, considering those are still activities I participate in. (Though I have no issues with stopping the bump-and-grind of teenagers.)
- The structure challenge this year had a late clarification (5/1/2009) that many teams were not aware of. This clarification was issued after most (perhaps all?) affiliate tournaments. Anyway, a number of power-house structure teams ended up with 0 weight held scores, which is devastating for structure teams. Reminded me of the '95-'96 year, when my team was competing in Crunch!, and there was an appraiser's only clarification that invalidated our structure. Ohio ended up holding a weigh-off that year, allowing teams to re-test a new structure if they wanted. Of course, this isn't really an option with Globals . . .
The real kicker here was that the clarification was intended to prevent teams from having structures that "dropped" in height when the crusher board was placed. Unfortunately, to enforce this rule, it meant that teams that had any wobble in their two-part structures were told that their structures were not valid, as the configuration of the structure changed. This has of course created a fair amount of controversy over the challenge (and it's writers). Yuck.
- One of the best parts of this year for me was getting to work the floor during Closing ceremonies. I was responsible for helping maintain the flow of traffic onto the stage, and this meant I got to congratulate some of the teams I know well, as well as getting to see the pure expressions of joy on other teams. Getting to see and hear the screams, cheers, hugs, tears, and other celebrations of having placed at Globals was a humbling experience. The raw emotion was so powerful.
Of course, getting to see all the friends I've made over the years was awesome, especially after two years away from Globals. While people have gotten older, they're still amazing, incredible people, and I love spending time with them. (We'll ignore the fact that I think I'm getting sick, and have basically slept through two days since getting on the bus Sunday morning). | |
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- Work till 1:30 AM
- Sleep
- Work until 6:00 PM
- Finish laundry
- Play some X-Box
- Go to Lincoln Lounge for a shot of Patron and a Tecate
- Go to Silver Legacy - get up close to $1,000, but walk away with only $400 (up $200)
- Imperial for a nightcap and a rack of pool
- Blow out rear tire on the bicycle 15 feet from my front door
- Post to LiveJournal
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| @tahoedrew and I were having a discussion on twitter about @wealthbyland, who followed me (and had an empty profile and an empty Wordpress blog). Conversation went like:
@wealthbyland why start following people on twitter when you don't even have any content?
11:11 PM Apr 15th from web
 tahoedrew@ernie disagree on @wealthbyland. if they're 4 real, maybe they just need to listen 1st and try to understand what to say/how to add value
11:43 PM Apr 15th from TweetDeck in reply to ernie
@tahoedrew listening first makes sense, but on twitter, that kind of behavior makes you appear like a spammer (or trying to be an "expert")
10:16 AM Apr 16th from web in reply to tahoedrew
tahoedrew@ernie potential to appear like spammer is true, but since they list location (Reno, NV) and follow locals I'd give 'em benefit of doubt
11:04 AM Apr 16th from TweetDeck in reply to ernie
At this point, the conversation went to direct message (since twitter is not a chat), and I don't feel at liberty to share the tweets. Summary: I wondered if Andrew was defending them since they were a client of his (they're not), and he said I was imposing more scrutiny on a new user than had been expected of me (as an early adopter). I pointed out that anyone with a large number of following, w/o many followers is suspcious to me. Andrew raised the good point that he's willing to deal with this skew, as long as there's a good bio and first tweet, explaining that they're learning/listening. As I've thought about this some more, while I can understand what Andrew is saying (and he's absolutely right that transparency is key), I don't think it's a good practice. I allude that @wealthbyland seemed like a spammer, because there are plenty of people who claim to be social media experts because they have so-many-thousand followers on twitter, and how quickly they were able to build this number up. These types take a a fair amount of flak. One of the ways that people build these large followings is by just following everyone under the sun. Much like it takes minimal effort for a spammer to send out 1,000,000 emails and hopes that one person buys a product, these people follow lots and lots, and hope that 1 then follows them back. Crappy practice, and I tend not to reciprocate follows unless there's something interesting in their profile, tweet history, or I know them. So why do I think this is a bad practice? Well, first off, for a growing minority, this mass follow behavior tarnishes your name. Andrew accused me of being an "early-adopter eliteist", but I think this attitude is growing more and more prevalent. The bigger issue here is that there is a reason why "social media experts" build their lists the way they do - IT WORKS! It looks like @wealthbyland had about a 1 out of 3 success rate in building followers (570 followers vs. 1,521 follows right now). My prediction is that 570 will decrease a bit over time, unless they actually start posting, but they may get lucky and people forget they're following them, and don't un-follow them. Right now, @wealthbyland may feel they have generated value becase they have over 500 followers, it's actually meaningless. The value of social media is the networking, which involves give and take. While I predict a slight decline for them over the next few days, I'm imagining an even bigger decline in their follower numbers when (if?) they start tweeting - the followers will realize that either they are or are-not interested in the content, and act accordingly. The small number that remains will be those who are truly interested in their tweets.
- Those with high follower:following ratios - these may be celebrities (@oprah, over 19,000:1
), those with insight (@timoreilly, over 540:1), true connectors (@superamit, over 12:1), and many others
- Those with close to 1:1 follower:following ratios - these are the vast majority of twitter users. They tend to have lots of reciprocal follow relationships
- The upside-down - these are the folks who are heavily skewed, following way more than they have followers (a la @wealthbyland). Anyone who's upside down instantly raises a red-flag, and I start thinking they're a spammer . . .
In any case, the better way to gain followers would have been to get the blog going, develop some content, and then start following, and make sure you have a couple tweets. Gives people a better idea of who or what you are, and the followers you do get will be following you for a reason. You don't risk tarnishing your name, and by growing a bit more slowly, you get to do the realy exciting part of social media - NETWORKING. You can get to know your followers, have conversations with them, etc, before your popularity starts overwhelming you. (Though I imagine the market for what sounds like a real-estate investment blog will not get to the overwhelming numbers that @aplusk, @THE_REAL_SHAQ, or @oprah have . . . ) | |
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| Gmail has some nice event recognition to add things to calendar, it seems weird that they can't figure out standard airline emails. I just got a Southwest confirmation, and you'd think it could detect flight departure and landing times, and let me add it to my calendar with a single click . . . Update:I found a workaround - I use tripit for travel, which creates a calendar. Fortunately, tripit makes an ical feed that I can subscribe to from within Google calendar . . . | |
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| I ended up going to a strip club for the first time in my life last night. Definitely was not planned, and got dragged along with the group I ended up hanging out with. Anyway, one of the guys in the group has some connections, and with a bit of name dropping, we ended up in the VIP area, with a bottle of Grey Goose.
I really don't get strip clubs. The guys knew it was my first time, so first thing they do is order me a lap dance, and I just don't get it. I appreciate the female form and all, but really? What's the point? You know up front it's not going anywhere. The woman was attractive, and was an all right dancer, but I was not aroused at all. The awkwardness of being in a strip club, and the strangeness of the situation probably didn't help matters.
I can see myself going to a club again, but it would be to hang out with friends, not to check out nude women . . . | |
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