Chance Bliss

Someone requested that I do a search on my own name. Pretty much sums up my life.

1. Love
2. Life
3. Heart
4. Happy
5. Ignorance
6. Kiss
7. Friend
8. Ask
9. Berry
10. Music

I just read an interesting post from Go Big Always where they used IBM’s Many Eyes software to visualize the top 10 words used on a particular person’s blog. The only problem is that they only looked at blogs of complete social media geeks so I decided to my own research.

I have a blog mining tool at my disposal called RelevantNoise which captures posts from millions of blogs. I can search against a person’s name then cluster the results and find out the most common words or phrases used in conjunction with the name. Some of them read like a Haiku.

A Star War Holiday Christmas Special of course. I don’t think I saw this when it aired. If I had, I definitely would still be having nightmares about it. Despite the terribleness, it’s still better than “Attack of the Clones”.

I’ve written my fair share of user manuals, help sections and FAQs. Very few people actually read them, but maybe that’s because they’re not sexy enough. Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users explains how creating beautiful manuals will create passionate customers. Here’s an example I mocked up. Enjoy.

Franklin Pierce is considered by many scholars to be the worst president of the United States. He bungled the Ostend Manifesto, repealed the Missouri Compromise and was in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. What a total dick!

Happy president’s day and screw you 14th President of the United States!

I’ve really been into drawing lately so I picked up The Simpsons Handbook: Secret Tips from the Pros. Drawing cartoon characters gets at the basics of sketching circles, cones, etc. I started with Homer and have working my way to Scratchy.

I should have went art school but my damn hippie parents forced me into an MBA.

So to prove I’m a complete internet greek, I didn’t go the old route of buying a valentine’s card. Instead I went all nerd and ran a phony ad through Google on my wife’s name. The ad linked to super special secret landing page that had my valentine message. I won’t tell you what was in the message, but I will say it was devastatingly romantic. She almost fainted…I swear.

Why Amazon sells used diapers (and Diapers.com doesn’t)
This is an great article from Mark Hurst of Good Experience on how small details can create buyer confusion with hilarious results. I’ve always noticed how Amazon tries to shoe horn every product into the same template. Consistency in layout and function is a nice virtue, but it must be applied with common sense. What works for selling a lawn mowers might not work for diapers.

The Rock sounds like Barack
Someone in the office pointed this out to me. They really do sound the same. Too bad Huckabee doesn’t sound like Chuck Norris. He could roundhouse kick McCain in the head.

Most of my driving life has been spent in less than stellar cars. In the beginning, each car had at least 50K miles on it to start. Most were all sold for under $1,000 in a mall parking lot to someone just entering or leaving the country. Here’s my full car history:

High School

• Honda Civic – Green hatchback…rock on.
• Ford Ranger - I got this re-painted blue for $99 bucks. The blue was never quite right.
• Volvo Sedan – Some sort of beige color. This thing was a total hog. Absolutely no pick-up. It had a weird Overdrive button on the automatic shifter which I suspect was connected to nothing.

College

• Mercedes 300 Diesel – I loved filling up my car next to an 18 wheeler.
• VW Fox – Talk about a piece. Every knob and electrical device broke on this thing. The RPG gauge would flip back and forth from 0 to 10,000. Also a weird white smoke would come out of the AC vents. Mostly likely cancerous.

Semi-Adulthood

• Toyota Tacoma – This was a new car which was cool, but the excitement last about 1 week. How excited can you get about an $11,000 truck? 1 week’s worth that’s how much.
• Isuzu Rodeo – Another new car, but different problem. Who can get excited about a car named “Rodeo”? This car also left a bad taste in mouth literally. An old bottle of milk had been spilled in the back. As the temperature went up so did the stench. Only recommended for winter driving!

Semi-Semi-Adulthood

• Honda CRV – I got everything you could on this car. Again I was excited, but then I started to notice that the profile of CRV driver was really old to about to take a dirt nap.

Semi-Final Adulthood

• Honda Pilot – Ok. I know this car is a half-step up from a mini-van, but damn is it comfortable. It has leather, navigation, satellite radio, a rear-view camera and most importantly a lot of room. I can finally sit up high and proud and declare myself as an adult with an adult-like car. I’ve finally sold out.

Semi-Mid-Life Adulthood Crisis
What’s next? The Lexus SC 430 I hope.