doublepositive

The silent state of the explosion

2009-03-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

When I was 15 or so, I started a BBS using my family's Macintosh LCIII, mailing several months worth of my allowance money to a guy named Terry Teague who promptly mailed me back a 3.5" floppy of WWIV BBS.

My BBS was pretty low-frills as far as they go, focusing on shareware distribution and other nerdtastic things - but I did a decent job advertising it through other local BBS systems (you twitter kids have it easy, let me tell you). Within a week or so, my userbase was up to something like 10 people (!), and it became apparent that I'd need a dedicated phone line. I can't recall exactly how I convinced my parents (something dripping with guilt about not wanting me to be "unprepared for the future" I hope), but that lasted for another few months, until it was clear that I really needed a second modem because it was always in use.

Back then, it was devastatingly obvious when things were "taking off". I'd go to use my computer, and the modem would be in use. And handling an explosion of growth was a chore, like ordering equipment and calling the phone company.

When I set up my first web site, I used an old PC and our DSL line. It could handle like 2 people visiting the site at once before its disk would whirr and the fan would enter "jet mode". A digg back then (had it existed of course, you kids) would have been devastatingly obvious - my computer would have probably just exploded.

When Brian Hawthorne and I launched likebetter.com, we got digged, and hard. Our little Rails site got over 25 million hits that first weekend. Needless to say, with Rails 0.83 or whatever we were using back then, this wasn't even remotely an easy thing to wrangle. One moment of elation ("we made the front page!!"), to "um, the servers aren't looking so good". This time, calls to our data center and some refactoring, and we were back in action.

Today, an explosion of users is handled silently with scaling platforms like S3 and Mosso. You don't really even need to monitor your server status if you don't want to. Scaling up to handle the explosion, is effortless. Not having to do work is awesome, absolutely, and by saying this I feel a little like that old man in the grocery store mumbling something about walking uphill in the snow, but this lack of involvement has negative consequences as well.

Over this past weekend, I launched my first iPhone application to the App Store. I half expected to sell a single unit (to myself) and let it be a fun learning experience. This morning, I looked at my sales reports and was shocked at what I saw - I'd sold lots more than 1. Still modest numbers, definitely, and it was thrilling, absolutely, but it made me feel strange. Call me a glutton for punishment, but I sort of miss the good old days of the whirring fan and that blinking busy light.

I'd liken it to the difference between jogging along Crissy Field looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge, and jogging on the squeaky treadmill at 24 Fitness. Yeah, you're still running, and you feel the endorphons all the same, but you don't have that connection with the pavement, the air, the world, that you do when you're outdoors in a beautiful place. That whirring fan or real-time 14.0 load average are the indicators I once used to determine if something was successful.

I want to see those sales numbers climb in real-time, see that hockey-stick graph, and know "I made this, I made something people want!". Without that, or some indication of growth or the "challenge" of scaling, it just all feels too easy. I'm a technology worker Apple, I grew up in the days before eWorld, let's at least pretend this is hard, why don't you?

Join me at DIYdays SF today

2008-08-17T10:12:00.001-07:00

2:15 to 3:15pm
PANEL: The art and science of crowdsourcing
There is power in the crowd. When they rise up they can fund, create, distribute and promote. But how do you turn an audience into an active community where members become collaborators? Panelists: Slava Rubin (indieGoGo), Skot Leach (Lost Zombie), Jason Harris (Mekanism), Bryan Kennedy (Mobmov.org), Blair Erickson (Millions of Us) Discussion Leader: Lance Weiler

I hope you come, it should be an interesting discussion!

Battling the beast within - malware attacks my computer

2008-08-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

I don't know how I managed to get infected with malware, let alone this little beast (details about Antivirus 2008).

Some crazy things it managed to do to Windows XP:

1) Open itself up with a window that looked like a cross between a Microsoft product and Spybot Search and Destroy (a program I use to manage malware infections). It appeared to "scan" the hard drive for "infections" and proceeded to find 800+ infections (yeah right).

2) Remain open/active despite repeated efforts to close

3) Add gross desktop shortcut icons to porn-themed "applications" and then warn me about the "legal" implications of having them on my hard drive. God, I'd hate to be a n00b right about now.

4) Use the balloon window to inform me about "viruses found" (ala above screenshot)

5) Literally take over IE, in that any time I'd open it, I was confronted with several pop-ups prompting me to purchase "Antivirus 2008" to save my computer (blackmail anyone?)

6) Changed the desktop background to a warning message that says "Virus Detected!". I liked my desktop background. This is pissing me off.

7) DISABLED THE TASK MANAGER! Why in god's name would windows permit such an action, but somehow CTL-ALT-DEL resulted in a window with a disabled Task Manager button.

8) Unlink Explorer action: Somehow they managed to prevent Explorer from handling the directories - a double-click on the C drive resulted in a "How would you like to open this file?" dialog. For a freakin directory. And of course you can't assign "always open this with explorer". So each time I wanted to open a new window I'd have to call Explorer directly and type in the location. Sigh. This is not looking good.

9) Disable the Tools->Folder Options->View preferences screen in that "Show Hidden Files and Folders" was permanently disabled and unchangable. Presumably to hide its internals.

10) It changed the freakin "AM/PM" somewhere in the Windows language files to read "VIRUS DETECTED!!!", so the taskbar time read "3:30 VIRUS DETECTED!!!", and all the timestamps on my files as well. WTF? Why on earth can an application in XP possibly do this?

11) Bonus Round! It was horrible, but I had tools dammit! I managed to open Spybot, did a scan, and removed some items it found. Some couldn't be removed, so it restarted to run on startup. The startup scan was interrupted by a Blue Screen of Death. Holy shit! We're losing the battle, men! I'm beginning to think this sucker will force me to reinstall. So I forced the machine to hard-restart.

On next boot, good ol Spybot started scanning again, and sent me to a BSOD again. Crap! However, this time I waited a few minutes (to pout a little I guess) and the BSOD disappeared. WTF?? The freakin malware/virus actually EMULATED A BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH in an attempt to force me to restart in the middle of the scan (presumably by some background process that invokes the faux BSOD to get me to hard-reset the computer and therefore stop any scan that was delaying boot-up!!)

Epilogue:

I wish I could say that I was successful in killing off this monster. I was eventually able to cut off its head by removing its main DLLs (thanks to Spybot and a tool called Unlocker), but I couldn't seem to undo some of the underlying damage it did (like the annoying AM/PM change). So I just did what we've all become too accustomed to doing: reinstall XP.

To this day I can't figure out how I got infected. I'm usually very careful about these things, don't open attachments, and keep up to date on my Spybot checks. The only oddity was that I had JUST uninstalled "Avast! Antivirus", a free antivirus program. Though the timing was suspicious, I hesitate to implicate them, as no one else has mentioned this and they come highly recommended, but I don't plan on using that product again, just in case! A more likely case was that it was on my memory card when I returned from Peru, because I'd used it in an internet cafe there.

But I ask again: How did this little program possibly obtain enough permissions to make such fundamental and extreme changes to the OS and settings? Yeah, I'm planning on moving on to OS X someday soon to avoid this chaos in the future. But aren't we all?

2008-08-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

An interesting old snap I found while browsing my parent's slides: Is this the great Clint Eastwood? He still looks old in this picture... He must be 120 by now.

Synergy: An alternative to KVM switches for multiple computers

2007-08-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

I have three monitors and two computers: one laptop, one desktop. The desktop is powering one of the monitors, and the laptop is powering the other two.

I used to use a simple USB KVM switch to move keyboard and mouse control between the computers, but then, almost randomly, I came across Synergy. It seamlessly connects two computers such that you can share a keyboard and mouse without a KVM switch.

The experience is fantastic. My two computers behave like they were one - as I move the mouse to the left of my middle monitor, the mouse and keyboard hop to the other computer as if they were the same machine. Better still, I'm using two different operating systems (windows on the laptop and fedora core 7 on the desktop).

It's a little tricky to set up but there are tutorials on the web to lead you through it. I highly recommend this method of sharing a keyboard and monitor with two computers.

Trying out the new Likebetter embeddable

2007-01-22T16:51:00.000-08:00

This won't work out very well yet:

Funny iTunes error message

2006-11-17T12:57:00.000-08:00

I know Apple thinks of me as just another fish in the sea when they send me this error message when I try to log into iTunes:

View my photo channel

2006-08-31T05:16:00.000-07:00

A photo channel is a votable stream of images - they can have themes, and report back results. View my Likebetter photo channel now

Assess your personality

2006-08-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

This is a really well done personality assestment site. They even have the same concept as the psychprint, though theirs is better developed than ours is right now. Here's my report:

http://www.personaldna.com/report.php?&k=juMvrZUgueELjci-HG-ADDAA-7b1b

apply for ycombinator

2006-08-15T06:50:00.000-07:00

the deadline for this winter's ycombinator.com program is October 18th. It really helped out my own project, and was a really well-organized and fun program. I can't believe it's almost over!

http://www.ycombinator.com/w2007.html

likebetter.com launched

2006-08-05T08:35:00.000-07:00

the likebetter game has launched for good. click on the pretty photos, and tell me what you think! thanks!

what is a psychprint

2006-07-29T15:45:00.000-07:00

a psychprint is like a fingerprint for your personality. it depicts in an icon the personality traits that make you, you. it's just one of the crazy new features we've rolled out on likebetter.com in the past few days before launch. come try it out.

this is my psychprint, it shows you my personality as it stands right now. as I use likebetter, it will grow and change as it learns more about me:

what's your psychprint?

random acts of advertising

2006-07-22T18:59:00.000-07:00

my cofounder and partner in crime, Brian, mentioned something interesting while we were discussing the story about the starbucks customer (below). starbucks could have made the whole thing up for the purposes of viral marketing.

think about it, what if they gave one out of a thousand drinks for free, and told the customer it was the car in front of them who paid? two things would happen: they would make a lot of customers happy for very little money, and people would start noticing a trend.

provided starbucks could keep it under wraps, this would undoubtedly make news - "starbucks customers a friendly lot!" the headlines would exclaim. In fact, I think running this campaign for just one or two weeks, before anyone had a chance to catch on to the ulterior underpinnings, would be enough to tip a fad, and regular customers would start paying for the people in back of them.

pretty soon, the movement would have wings and everyone would think of starbucks customers are these amazing people who do wonderful things (and in fact, they would be). heck, people would then attribute it to the company itself, and starbucks would shine their tarnished image.

Whoa, I just gave myself chills. I think I need to package this up and mail it to them or something.

random acts of kindness

2006-07-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

My good friend Jono forwarded me this encouraging story and I thought I'd share it:

In the drive-up lane at a Starbucks in Lynnwood, David Haslam reached out for his usual nonfat raspberry latte with two Splendas stirred in, but the barista wouldn't take his money. "She leaned way out and said, 'You're not going to believe this, but the lady ahead of you paid for your latte. She said she wanted to make your day.'" Events like these don't typically make news. There's no Samaritan Index to say whether anonymous good deeds are up 11 percent or down 2 percent from last year, or whether Seattle ranks 7th or 77th in per-capita goodness. But Seattle Times reports that anonymous acts of kindness are catching on!

And why not? A latte sets you back only about $4, but I know I'd pay $4 to get the kind of love of humanity that David must now feel. It's a net gain - you are exchanging money for a product, but you are creating good will wealth as a free byproduct. I really think this idea could catch on. It kind of reminds me of my staged kindness idea.

rewarding trust

2006-07-19T06:27:00.000-07:00

I finally got my haircut today.

It's been a few weeks, and it was starting to look shabby. So I took a stroll to the local barber shop, and waited my turn to go under the knife. Anne was the hair massacurist of the day, she owns the two-seat shop with her sister. Been cutting hair for 20 years. Two decades hence, she worked across the street, and saw the "for sale" sign posted on her current shop. I wonder what it would be like cutting hair for 20 years.

Once the gobbs of hair were successfully detached, I grabbed my wallet, expecting money would await me there. It was somewhere else. One nervous glance at the cash register indicated that they did not indeed take fake money either. I, er, um, could I run down to the ATM? I offered her my cell phone in exchange for her trust.

No, don't worry about it. Just pay the next time you pass by.

Wow. That's trust. I really respect that. In a world full of suspicion and mistrust, she gave a stranger the benefit of the doubt. It cost her nothing, but it made me feel great. People need to do this more.

So I headed to the ATM, grabbed some cash, and gave her a 100% tip on the way back. She politely refused, but I told her that I appreciated her trust, and wished more people were like that. And I gave her the tip. It was worth it.

If a tree falls in a forest

2006-07-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

In both Buddhism and Quantum theory, there's an interesting shared hypothesis: that our world is created through our conscious interactions with it. As the saying goes, if a tree falls in a forest, it won't make a sound because it wasn't observed. In fact, the tree cannot exist without an observer.

This is a pretty crazy statement, but let's assume it's true for a moment. And let's assume we're part of a computer simulation like the matrix.

For any sufficiently large application, developers must implement some sort of caching to save programming resources for where they are most needed.

Think about it: It would be remarkably inefficient to process areas of the simulation that aren't being directly observed. Imagine all the pixels needed to render the eruption of a volcano? If no one were observing it, it would make more sense to just render the aftermath.

So are both these theories just arriving at the truth - that we are, in fact, just digital beings inside an efficient computer simulation? Or are all our theories about the world up until now, incorrect? The former just seems so much simpler to me.

likebetter update

2006-07-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

likebetter and pairwise are going well, now that Louise Crow is here helping Brian and I. We've released a ton of new features, and have really been working our behinds off loading new images and enhancing the algorithms. so if you like looking at pictures of really cool things, and dating, check out likebetter.com.

likebetter.com relaunched (unofficially)

2006-06-28T09:26:00.001-07:00

after much thankless working weeks, Brian and I released likebetter.com. while we expect many more such weeks to come, at least people can see what we're doing. it's a social networking and dating site. the *old* likebetter has been moved to morehotter.com, where you rate peoples ' pictures.

Check out stylfile.com

2006-04-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

This is a project of my inventor buddy - it's a really cool nailfile.

y-combinator

2006-03-06T06:59:00.000-08:00

I just got accepted into y-combinator's summer founders program. Got the call at Macaroni Grill with Julia. This is a dream come true!

More to come in the following months.

Costa Rica blog

2006-02-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

visit the blog for Julia and my's trip to Costa Rica

Casual laundry room banter

2005-10-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

If you have sensitive ears, don't read any further. Though this conversation was overheard (or rather, passively participated in) in a public laundry room, it is not suitable for everyone. And my telling it forces me to dive far below my normal level of verbal decency. However, I felt it was a tale worth telling.

I went about my bi-weeklyish laundry ritual this afternoon. Usually this time of day the laundry room is empty. However, today, I had a companion.

It started out as a normal I-don't-know-you-but-I'll-be-friendly "hello". I'm a strong advocate for those sort of hellos, so I fired the first shot. She replied as one normally would, with a "Hi, how are you." I politely ignored this request for information, wishing to convey that I had a job to do, and started sorting and loading my clothes into the washer.

Then behind me I hear a sound. What is this? A conversation starting with me as the recipient? Why, I don't recall giving you permission to engage me in conversation miss fellow laundryroom person. Fine, I will parlay, though whilest pretending to be far more engaged in my laundry task than is normally required.

Unfortunately, these first few words are lost in nothingness, for my brain had tagged them as inconsequential blabbering and thus set them for immediate deletion. However, the first word I *did* hear and remember clearly was not something I should mention here. Suddenly less interested in my clothes, I stopped really sorting them at all. Fully engaged now, my brain started recording the conversation.

For about five minutes she talked to me about her relationship with her recently ex-ed boyfriend, involving several details about sexual acts and practices.

That's some serious stuff to throw on a stranger. All the while I'm loading the clothes in the washer about as quick as I can without ripping collars and pocket rings, hoping to get out of there as fast as possible. Then, as I'm loading the last bit she asks me a question (up until now the only I'd said was hello): Do you know how I could get this stain out?

Believe you me, I had the same thought as you - and my immediate instinct was leave the clothes and high-tail it out of there! However, against the activation in my frontal lobe, my primal cortex forced me to look at the object of her query. Phew. Just a backpack that looked to be splattered with something brown. Maybe blood. At least it's not what I thought it'd be.

I tell her I have no clue how to get that stain out, ram the quarters in the slot, and head quickly back to my humble abode, all the while thanking the powers that be that I don't have to stay in the laundry room with her and read a magazine or something.

Article on Berkeley Innovation

2005-10-07T12:22:00.000-07:00

The Daily Cal finally wrote up something about Berkeley Innovation. I'm quoted too. Cool.

Server HD died, recovering

2005-10-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

Right, so now I think hard disks are a pretty silly idea. I mean, why should I own a $200 piece of equipment that heats up to no end, makes noises, and eventually suddenly dies for no reason and to much regret for not having backed up anything.

The good news is that it may not actually in fact be dead. While I can't boot the sucker, I can see the files. Maybe I'll be able to recover them. Or maybe it's just dying, and it's like being able to see your loved ones through a window in a sinking car. I think I saw that in a movie once or something.

An this has happened to me before. Hard drives are bound to fail, I know, and each time I say - never again will I trust them to never fail! I will back up each and every day! And then I don't, because backing up almost 1 terabyte of data is a -shall we say- boring thing to do. HD size has easily overcome backup media size. Why is that?

I really think the next step is massive online data. Maybe provided by goggle. They seem to have this whole storage thing down. I'd store my stuff on google. Not even backup, really. All I should need is a fast connection and an account on some limitless server hard disk somewhere. I'd even *pay* for it.

Tombstone Hold-em

2005-10-06T21:30:00.000-07:00

On Saturday October 15, 2005, Graveyard Games will be in Colma, San Francisco's very own City of the Dead, so you can meet the living and play with the dead.

You're invited to the Italian Cemetery to get to know your local dearly departed, pay your respects, and learn Tombstone Hold 'Em —the secret poker game you can only play in a cemetery.

http://avantgame.blogspot.com/2005/10/play-with-me-graveyard-games-october.html

Idea: more free web sites, please

2005-10-06T06:54:00.000-07:00

We're very lucky to be living at a time when some web sites are still charging. It used to be that that was the primary income model - but with the costs of internet construction plummeting, and the availability of income-producing advertising increasing, it's seemingly less necessary to charge, at least for basic features.

That means, to me, that there are areas of the net that can easily be conquered by free sites that accomplish the same thing. Take online dating for example. I've tried Yahoo personals and eHarmony. Both work reasonably well but are also reasonably expensive. Are there any free-as-in-beer dating sites out there? Not any that do a reasonable job. Now all it takes is for me to build a good dating site that's free, and people will like it. What other areas of the web haven't yet caught on to the trend?

Staged Kindness

2005-10-01T22:36:00.000-07:00

I've set up a quick web site detailing my Staged Kindness concept. The premise is that if you stage acts of kindness in front of an audience of strangers, the world will become a happier place. People will see your "play kindness" and may indeed repeat it in real life the next time they encounter a similar situation. I'll be posting pictures and videos soon.

Let's pretend to make the world a happier place.

Where the negative is actually a positive

2005-10-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

I think the reason I don't post much on this blog (or any other blog that I've created in the past) is that I rarely have anything to say that I want to say to everyone that I haven't already told to some people. ;-)

So I think I'm going to adopt a theme. Rather than shout out random thoughts, ideas, and events, I'm going to restrict postings to ponderings on thinking positively about negative things. It's so easy to immediately go to the negative when presented with a new bit of information - heck, politics these days is rife with stuff that makes me angry and depressed. But there are always two sides to every coin - sometimes it takes a bit of effort to lift, but I'd prefer to gaze at the shiny side if I can. Wouldn't you? It'll take a bit of creative effort, but that's what I'm going to attempt to do from now on. Positive ways of looking at negative things. I like it.

So if this is the last post, it means I'm an evil, hateful person who can't see the positive side to anything!

Judge your smartiness

2005-09-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

http://similarminds.com/intdoor.html

This is an interesting test of intelligence. It's not like IQ tests, but rather, uses an intricate pattern matching scheme to determine how smart you are. Unfortunately, I didn't know this was a test of intelligence going into it, and instead thought it was a test of creativity. This resulted in me kind of goofing around, and not taking the full 20 minutes to figure them out (only 4). Funny that. Why don't I take creativity seriously?

So, when you take it, be sure to remember that the test has right answers!

Skydiving tomorrow

2005-09-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

I'm going skydiving again with some friends on Saturday! Yeah!
PS: If this is my last post, you'll know why.

Higher than ever gas profits

2005-09-12T18:52:00.000-07:00

Gas companies are turning into one of those evil nasties that happen from time to time until the government steps in to help. Remember the railroad barrens of the 1800's. Unfortunately, our current president is in bed with the oil barrens of today. Now they are crippling commerce with their high gas prices. Are you convinced, like most, that it is due to New Orleans? Don't fall for it:

ÂThis is the mother of all booms,Â said Oppenheimer & Co. oil analyst Fadel Gheit. ÂThey have so much profit, itÂs almost an embarrassment of riches. They donÂt know what to do with it. Read more

Does that bother anyone else? Now it seems:

"They [the oil industry] got $6 billion in the energy bill over 10 years. That's a huge, huge amount of money," said Claybrook. "And you'd think with the price of oil at $65 a barrel, they didn't need any new incentives." Read more

It's hard to stay positive with this fact staring you in the face. I don't get it - who falls for republicans again?

New diversion: face analyzer

2005-09-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

I know this Face Analyzer is complete BS, but I found the web site through my friend Debbie's blog and it's pretty interesting, if only from an anthropological perspective. I do find it interesting that they attempt to calculate your ethnicity, which doesn't bode especially well for privacy in the future. Try it out.

How's the accuracy? Apparently they say I look like Freddie Prince Jr. and I fit the "Blue Collar" archetype. I score highest on Politeness and Honor, lowest on Promiscuity and Risk. Okay, well at least the program found my eyes okay.

Good-bye New Orleans

2005-08-31T07:24:00.000-07:00

New Orleans is no longer, which sucks pretty solidly for its former inhabitants. Sure our pump prices are ridiculous now, but drive less and send your savings to the red cross. I did. They could use our help.

Google is good, but will it be bad?

2005-08-26T11:08:00.000-07:00

It's getting difficult to determine if I'm just the sort of person that likes something better when not everyone knows about it. But I'm getting a little nervous about Google and their machinery of innovation.

No one doubts that google has put out some great stuff. I use their software every day, and think it's the best thing since (insert favorite cliche here). And even though some people like to compare them with Microsoft, they are definitely a better company morally than those guys in Redmond. Microsoft steals and plunders, and Google invents. However, I'm a little worried that their sheer success at innovation is in fact stifling it.

Case in point. This past week they released Google Talk, which has the better-than-average potential to become the only free instant messaging and voice platform around. Farewell AIM, MSN, ICQ, Skype.... Again, they triumph by making a program that's simple to use, uncluttered by useless features, and well-integrated with their existing platform. Why no one did this before astounds me, but this is the story of practically every one of google's successes. They succeed by making simple things simpler.

Now, I'm not going to argue that it's bad that they take over the world of IM. I'd prefer that all my friends are on one service anyway. The only reason they succeed is because they're better, and the reasoning goes that if someone else came out with better software, they could succeed as well. Therein lies the grub.

Google is so insanely successful at turning out software on the upper curve of perfection, that it's hard to imagine that anyone could possibly improve any of it with enough magnitude to attract attention. After all, their business is information, so for all intents and purposes, they control our attention. Stop: Does that scare the bejesus out of anyone else?

So with one seemingly simple stroke of the hand, they have wiped out a handful of competitors, including many startups with venture-capitalist backings. When Skype dies because of the success of Google Talk, how many investors will be eagerly lining up to invest in the next internet venture? The world of venture capital suddenly becomes a game of hide-and-seek with Google. The first question asked of every entrepreneur these days is "when google releases your same product, how will you survive?" Notice the inevitability of this statement. It's a tough question to answer, because, frankly, I know I probably won't. It's as if I know the storm will come someday, but I have to decide if I want to build a house anyway.

And this is bad because lone inventors will always be better at innovating on a small scale than companies like Google. But if I know I'll only have to wait a few years for Google to come out with the product that's on my mind now, why don't I just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride? Unfortunately, I think a lot of creative types will.

the place where negative outweighs the positive

2005-08-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

An interesting note and a sad commentary on our society follows. If you aren't a hunt-and-peck typer, look at your keyboard. Look at the plus (+) sign. Now look at the minus (-) sign. You have to hit shift to generate a plus sign.

What's the reasoning behind forcing me to go through this extra effort to type a plus instead of a minus? Really. I want to know. Shouldn't we be adding more stuff than subtracting? There's no way the equal sign is more important than the positive sign, unless we live in a world where negative equations and bank account deductions are the most important thing there is.

Is this a conspiracy launched against positive-thinking people everywhere? I think so. The only reason I used to sign my e-mails with a negative sign was because it took less effort. How could I be so blind to the tyranny?

From this day forward, I will sign my name "+b" instead of "-b". For, with every press of that shift key I am standing in firm defiance of the negative.

Visit me at aboutbryan.com!

2005-04-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

Old blog down, new blog up. Visit aboutbryan.com for info on the author.