Fixing Foibles & Follies

Most bloggers should tweet instead

2008-06-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

In the cacophonous jumble of thoughts that bounce through our heads every day, there are a few that stand out. We feel compelled to share these observations and ruminations -- the uncommon moment, for example, where you see a mailman who is walking quickly and smoking a cigar.

I've been using Twitter for about a month now and I've found it's a handy way to bookmark such observations and ruminations when they happen. And I've come to appreciate the beauty of Twitter's brevity constraint: your posts (or tweets) can be no longer than 140 characters.

What's so good about this extreme conciseness? This: it forces you to get to the point. Have you ever taken a random walk down blog street? Granted, there are great blogs out there, but the vast majority are one of two types:

Ramblefests: Stream-of-conscious rants that are ferociously uninteresting.
Copycats: Multi-paragraph quotations from news sites and other blogs, with maybe a sentence or two of original commentary.

All the bloggers that fit in the above two categories should discover the joy of Twitter -- where there's really only room for original content. And where it's difficult to repeat yourself (unless you accidentally hit the "update" button six times, like I did the other day).

You can stalk me on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/thefoible

Tags: Twitter

Remembering Grammy Shaw

2008-05-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

Over Memorial Day Weekend, Katy, my dad, and I headed out east to Palouse, WA. My parents both grew up there and that's where I lived, too, as a wee little fellow.

We joined my cousin and my aunt and uncle Deerkop (who live in this beautiful place just outside of Palouse) to remember Grammy Shaw. She passed away three months ago. Her death caught us all by surprise, and the fact that she's gone is really still sinking in. Grammy and I talked almost every night on the phone ... indeed, we talked the night before she died. I'll always remember that final phone call -- she was happy and in good spirits.

I remember thinking over the past few years how it was odd that Grammy didn't really seem to have any hobbies or things she was interested in. But now that she's gone I've realized that she valued what's really important in life: people. To call her a social hub would be an understatement. She had an absolutely amazing ability of bringing people together. She thrived on her family members connecting with each other. We all joked about Grammy's famous "phone pass" -- where you'd be talking on the phone with her and suddenly she'd pass the phone to, say, your aunt standing nearby.

After we visited Grammy's grave on Saturday, my dad and I took a walk down along the railroad tracks that wind along the outskirts of Palouse. He recounted his memories from 50 years ago, when he was a kid playing by those same railroad tracks (not much has changed in Palouse) and causing a considerable amount of mayhem.

It struck me that our father-son walk down memory lane was exactly the sort of thing that would make Grammy happy. It was the perfect way to honor her memory.

Healia Communities

2008-05-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

Healia, where I interned last summer, recently launched a health social networking site: Healia Communities. Just like the Healia search engine, which generates high-quality, high-relevance results, Healia Communities uses algorithms to guide users to other users who can best help them.

Healia Communities integrates with the Healia search engine via resources. Essentially, these allow users to "clip and save" results from the search engine to their communities profiles. This integration with health search is a key way that Healia Communities differs from other health social networking sites.

I was involved in several planning discussions on Healia Communities last summer, so it's exciting for me personally to see how far it's come. Also, I wrote the help section for this site. :)

You can give Healia Communities a try here.

Tags: health social networking health search Healia Communities

Almost done

2008-05-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

In less than a month, I'll graduate from the UW MBA program. My schedule this final quarter has been refreshingly open-ended and I've had a chance to catch up with old friends. Many of them have told me it seems like this has gone by really fast.

For them, perhaps. For me, the past 2 years have had so much packed into them that it really hasn't seemed like time's flown by. September 2006 seems like a long time ago indeed.

While my first year (and first quarter of this year) were unbelievably busy, these final two quarters have eased up. I joined classmates on a study tour through South Africa during spring break -- it was an incredible trip. This quarter I've been walking a lot (Gmaps Pedometer is a really handy tool -- it showed me that I walked 7 miles yesterday), reading the news, and just relaxing.

I'll be traveling to Thailand and Cambodia after graduation for 3 weeks and then in mid-July I'll start work with Vitalent.

Tags: MBA UW University of Washington South Africa

My sister's on the radio today

2008-02-06T10:14:00.000-08:00

While I've been undeniably lax as a blogger over the past several months, my sister has been on an incredible blogging spree. Her blog about the 70s has quickly built up an active community of readers. Indeed, she's gotten so popular that she was interviewed about her blog by local radio station KUOW. The interview will air today at 2 PM, and Katy will post a link to the interview after it airs.

Tags: Rollerblog interview

The top 10 social networking sites, 2006 - 2007

2008-01-21T14:03:00.000-08:00

Although there was explosive growth in social networking over the past year, a few sites actually lost a significant amount of users over the year: AOL Hometown is down 32%. Ouch. I hadn't ever heard of this site (have you?); when I checked it out just now it had a banner ad for another user-losing site: Classmates Online.

MySpace is still on top, but its user base grew only 9% from 2006 to 2007 -- compared with Facebook's 72% growth during the same period.

It's only a matter of time before Facebook seizes the #1 spot. I mean, my mom is on Facebook, as are two of my aunts. They never hopped on the MySpace bandwagon. Indeed, many people I know have deleted their MySpace profiles.

But MySpace remains popular with the young'uns. T-Mobile's Sidekick, which targets the 14 to 22-year-old set, boasts of one-touch MySpace access. I find that humorous. Then again, I programmed in one-touch Facebook access in my phone..

Tags: MySpace Facebook AOL Hometown Sidekick social networking

Even my mom is on Facebook

2008-01-13T22:48:00.000-08:00

Tags: Facebook mom

Habanero and lime delight

2008-01-12T09:47:00.000-08:00

Trader Joe's Habanero & Lime salsa is insanely good. I don't know why I never tried it before. I bought a jar on a whim the other day and spread it on Trader Joe's non-dairy veggie burritos (of which I've consumed a multitude over the years). Good lord! It's got this delicious, unique tanginess going on. I woke up today thinking about it. I'm going to have some on a burrito. For breakfast. Right now.

One thing: it's not spicy enough. (Nothing is every spicy enough for me.) But that's easily remedied by stirring in a little hot sauce.

Trader Joe's is like Apple -- it's one of those brands that inspires rabid customer loyalty. I've always been curious about why this is, and maybe I'll get some answers soon. One of the teams in my brand management class will be studying the Trader Joe's brand this quarter.

Tags: Habanero and lime salsa Trader Joe's brand

Snow! Or rain?

2008-01-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

It sounds like it's raining hard outside my window. There's a hypnotic sound of raindrops echoing up from my apartment building's mini-courtyard area.

But out my window, I see big, fluffy snowflakes drifting towards the ground.

Odd.

Tags: Seattle snow rain

Zeppercise

2007-12-17T12:02:00.000-08:00

My sister recently penned an award-winning post: Zeppercise. Please enjoy.

Bye bye, Comcast

2007-12-05T21:57:00.000-08:00

I've been curious about Clearwire for a while now, and finally I've decided to give it a shot. Comcast has always seemed to have issues in my building, and after my Internet connection was out for three days last week, I'd had enough. So I'm up and running on my new Clearwire modem tonight -- it was very easy to set up and I'm not finding that the download speed is slower than Comcast. Actually, I'm finding the opposite: I'm able to watch episodes of The Office on NBC.com without a hitch, whereas with Comcast, my connection constantly blinked out.

Tags: Comcast Clearwire

Here I am!

2007-12-05T21:48:00.000-08:00

Hello. It's been a while! The first quarter of my final year in the UW MBA program has been a busy one. I've taken classes that have been time-consuming and challenging (but in a good way), spent a lot of time doing MBAA (student government) work, and over the past month, I've focused considerable energy on the job search. I should -- fingers crossed -- have an offer for a post-graduation job in the near future. If so, I'll have more free time during the next two quarters.

Which would be nice, I must admit. :)

Healia's new Facebook application

2007-08-30T10:56:00.000-07:00

Healia, where I've been interning this summer, has just launched a Facebook application: the Healia Health Challenge.

The game tests your general health knowledge with questions that cover nutrition, anatomy, and STDs, among other things. It starts you off as a pre-med student, and if you rack up enough points, you get promoted all the way up to Chief of Medicine.

It's definitely been a lot of fun to work on this as a group over the past few months. If you have a Facebook account, please give it a shot and let me know what you think. And if you like it, please feel free to pass it on. :)

Tags: internship Healia Facebook application health

This is fun

2007-08-28T13:08:00.001-07:00

Warning: there is insta-audio in the above-linked website, which I hate. Still, though, its build-your-own avatar tool is quite fun.

I've jumped onto YouTube

2007-08-13T10:20:00.000-07:00

I was with my family visiting my cousin over the weekend; she lives near Port Angeles, WA. My sister Bethany I and availed ourselves of her trampoline.

This little video -- in all its jerky and grainy glory -- is actually the first I've ever uploaded to YouTube. It's a remarkably easy process. I thought there would be some difficulty with the 3g2 video format that my phone uses, but there wasn't any problem; everything gets converted.

Tags: YouTube trampoline 3g2 video format

Yellow house

2007-08-10T06:35:00.000-07:00

My appreciation of music has always been deeply egotistical. I don't pay any attention to lyrics because I frankly don't care about the meaning the artist is attempting to convey. I care only about the meaning that I create -- arbitrarily and subjectively, yes, I admit -- as I hear the music.

For me, Belle and Sebastian = my swirling sunny emotions in the summer of 1999. Camper Van Beethoven = driving back from my Dairy Queen job, night-time, humming merrily along to myself, high school 1990. I'm not so interested in the technical facts about these bands.

Unsurprisingly, then, I've long been a fan of music with lyrics difficult to decipher: R.E.M., The Cocteau Twins, and so on. I'm also quite partial to music without any lyrics at all. This is the sort of music I can easily tack my memories to and claim as my own.

Grizzly Bear's critically acclaimed 2006 release, Yellow House, is such an album. Since I first started listening to it a few weeks ago, it has become ever more entertwined with nostalgia nodes deep within my mind. You know that feeling when you hear a song or an album a few times and you realize: I will always associate this music with this particular time in my life? Yes.

A text message I sent a few weeks ago sums up my experience with Yellow House: "Floating down the sidewalk on a grizzlybear-spun cloud."

I mentioned nostalgia. Again, I don't know what Grizzly Bear is singing about in this album, nor do I care to know. The thing is, I grew up in a yellow house -- lived there from 1981 - 1991. So I declare that this album is all about me and my own memories. I'll sign off with a quotidian quote from my journal written exactly twenty years ago, on August 10, 1987:

Today we went to Ruiz's to get some games. Some of the games: Mule, Alley Cat, Pool 400. Katy and I played a game of Farming Game today down here in the basement. Katy won. When the game ended, she had 140 cows, I had 110.

P.S. Go here (warning: music starts playing when you load the page) and download On a Neck, On a Spit right away. It's a very good song.

Tags: nostalgia UW Grizzly Bear Yellow House memories meaning lyrics 1980s 80s The Farming Game

Fun with the Feedburner Headline Animator

2007-08-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

I don't post for a week and all of a sudden I post three times in a day. I know, I know, I'm rebelling against blogging best practices. So be it.

I just used the Feedburner headline animator to make a nifty little widget that displays the latest posts from the Healia Blog:

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Fun stuff!

Tags: Feedburner Headline Animator Healia widget

Daily one-minute webcast of Seattle business news

2007-08-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

The Puget Sound Business Journal now offers a daily one-minute online video summary of local business news.

I keep tabs on national and international business news by reading the Wall Street Journal every morning on the bus. But I haven't been covering local business news too closely lately, so I'm happy to see a quick and easy way to do this.

Tags: Seattle business news online video Puget Sound Business Journal

Linkalicious: 8/9/07

2007-08-09T08:40:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, here are some interesting tidbits, hastily proffered. More substantial posts coming your way soon.

In strict botanical parlance, bananas are berries -- but strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries are not.
Google's Chinese name is "Gu Ge," which translates to "harvest song." This is a bit more appealing than the translation of Google's English name: old hound.
A people-search engine called Spock is currently in beta. Among other things, it's an interesting new way to manage one's online identity. Let me know if you'd like an invite.
TV's really all about the ads -- particularly on a new site that NBC will be launching, called Didja.com. This site will offer visitors nothing but ads, both classic and contemporary.

Tags: Linkalicious Spock Didja.com banana berry berries Gu Ge

I'm not a woman

2007-08-02T10:34:00.000-07:00

But Gmail seems to think that I am. These are the ads currently popping up for me (the topmost ad is particularly disturbing, is it not?):

Why am I seeing these? I'm not sure. I guess there's not enough manly talk in my emails.

A year ago, I wondered here whether other people were as curious about Gmail ads as me. Interestingly, 88% of poll respondents said that they, too, discuss Gmail ads with their friends.

Tags: Gmail online advertising ads

Appaholic: facilitating obsession with Facebook statistics

2007-08-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

If you're curious about which Facebook applications are hot (or cold) at the moment, Appaholic is worth exploring. It displays statistics on Facebook applications, updated hourly.

The Viral Dashboard page is interesting, but I was confused by it at first. The site FAQ doesn't explain this, but the applications are ranked by "% change" -- percentage change in users from yesterday to today. So this list is not based on the total number of Facebook users who have installed that particular application.

Because the appaholic rank list is based on daily percentage growth, it changes frequently. At the bottom of the list are applications that are, for whatever reason, quickly shedding users. In the rapidly-growing universe of Facebook applications, these negative-growth applications might have been at the top of the list not too long ago.

Tags: Appaholic Facebook application statistics percentage growth users rank

Picnik

2007-07-31T08:50:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I read about Picnik in a recent Mossberg column (sub req'd). It's an uncharacteristically glowing review with nary a negative word:

Picnik has a beautiful and responsive user interface .... If you want to see how good a Web application can be, take Picnik for a spin.

Intrigued, I hastened to check it out for myself. It didn't take me long to acquiesce (always loved that word) to Mossberg's assessment. It is indeed a beaut. And there's a fetching sense of humor sprinkled throughout, like in the loading screen (pictured above) -- "floating kites .... laying a blanket... warming breeze..."

Oh, so what Picnik actually does? (Guess I haven't mentioned that yet.) It's a web-based photo-editing program. It does the simple stuff -- crops, resizings, etc -- quickly and painlessly. I definitely recommend giving it a spin.

Check out their blog, too -- in a fun touch, they ask folks to help them come up with a name for the premium version, which is coming soon.

Tags: Picnik Mossberg photo editing

Mysteries of the bus

2007-07-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

As I boarded the bus the other morning, I saw the scene at left: a woman seated with a "Congrats!" balloon so large that she had to turn her face to the side to make room for it.

I wondered: did someone give her this balloon -- was this burdensome prize hers? Or was she bringing it to work, to give to someone else?

Speaking of the bus, as the Seattle Weekly has recently pointed out, bus drivers have a tough job.

Tags: bus driver balloon mystery Seattle

Can The Simpsons improve your mental health?

2007-07-27T06:11:00.000-07:00

I was researching connections between The Simpsons and health for today's blog post on The Healia Blog, and I ran across this story:

Simply acknowledging mental health on such a popular television show might help 'normalise' the illnesses, say Australian trainee psychiatrist Dr Hannah Mendelson and director/cinematographer Gil Poznanski from Melbourne.

This idea is not without its detractors, however.

I'm not sure what to think about this question. On the one hand, if something is suppressed and kept under the carpet, there's an argument for bringing it out into the light. On the other hand, it's possible to go too far and make people feel belittled. Has The Simpsons done that? I don't think so.

After reading about the brilliant marketing campaign over the past few weeks (The Seattle Kwik-E-Mart is a sight to behold), I'm looking forward to watching the movie and seeing if it lives up to the hype.

Tags: The Simpsons movie mental health

Children of the 70s

2007-07-26T06:02:00.000-07:00

Born in '74 (me) and '76 (her), my sister Katy and I are children of the 70s. We wore the funny clothes. Everything was orange and brown and hazy and bellbottom-y.

In honor of the strange decade of our birth, Katy has started writing The RollerBlog. In her words:

This blog chronicles my journey into the decade of my birth, in which I will immerse myself in all things seventies. Movies, books, music, television, pop culture, and more await.

Definitely take a look; her blog is a lot of fun. She's posted reviews of the film Silent Running, the discography of Yes, and a very...interesting...book called Half Past Human.

Katy, I bid you a warm welcome to the world of blogging. :)

A few more photos of us from the 70s:

On the couch, when Katy was just a baby.
Christmas! No, we weren't exactly wealthy.
Halloween, With Grammy and Dad.
Wheelbarrow ride.

Tags: RollerBlog siblings sister 70s music movies culture seventies photos

What do you think?
	She gave the balloon to someone else, after the bus ride.
	Someone (husband?) gave it to her that morning.
	A stranger randomly gave her the balloon as she boarded the bus.
	It's hers; she just carries it around as an accessory.

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