Four Things to Know About Seattle

seattle

As a recent trans­plant to Seat­tle, I feel like there might be some knowl­edge I can drop on future transplants.

1. The Depart­ment of Licens­ing, while over­see­ing both dri­vers licenses and car tags, does not han­dle both in a sin­gle office. You’ll have to go to two dif­fer­ent offices.

I got my driver’s license approx­i­mately three weeks after arriv­ing in Seat­tle, and only after dig­ging online did I real­ize that they’re dif­fer­ent offices. Also impor­tant is that after you get your new driver’s license you’ve got 30 days to get your tags changed. Before what? I don’t know. I just know that’s the win­dow I was told.

 2. If it snows more than flur­ries, the city shuts down and pub­lic tran­sit is going to be hours delayed everyday.

Hav­ing just sur­vived a snow­poca­lypse, I can per­son­ally attest to this. The city expects and lives with rain, but if it turns to ice then much of the city is help­less. I live two miles from my office and the weather made it unsafe for me to get to work. But the good news is that the snow doesn’t last.
3. Seat­tleites are good peo­ple, but they’re not the kind­est of people.

The first night my wife and I were here in Seat­tle, we went to the place peo­ple have gath­ered for thou­sands of years: the mar­ket­place. Or as we call it now: Wal-Mart. And at Wal-Mart we dis­cov­ered that peo­ple here were blunt and not the same polite­ness which we were accus­tomed to in Florida. Peo­ple moved us out of the way, cut us off, and gen­er­ally gave us the cold shoulder.

 4. Teriyaki shops are everywhere.

In Florida it was Mex­i­can food, here in Seat­tle it must be part of the build­ing code to require a teriyaki shop in every strip mall. Cheap, easy, quick and… every­where. Lit­er­ally. So far I’ve really enjoyed the teriyaki places I’ve tried, but there are also some amaz­ing sushi restau­rants to be had, so don’t be shy in try­ing them out!

How I Got Fat: A History

Me being goofy in high schoolLook­ing back, I don’t think I really got fat until I was in col­lege, but I def­i­nitely began get­ting fat in high school. Up to my Junior year I played high school foot­ball and I was on the row­ing team, these activ­i­ties cov­ered much of the school year and allowed me to stay in okay shape despite my never really push­ing myself phys­i­cally. Man did that exer­cise and sports boost my metabolism.

I can recall vividly after a foot­ball game I was starv­ing and I was in the car with my par­ents as we drove home. I requested we drive through and get me some food. We stopped at a Wendy’s and I ordered not one, not two, but three chicken sand­wiches. And fries. And a soda. Oof. High school metab­o­lism why hast thou for­saken me!?

It was my Junior year when sports stopped being fun and I began to really dis­cover how much I liked hang­ing out with friends or bet­ter yet, work­ing and earn­ing money. So I quit. But as far as I can remem­ber, I still ate like I was an athlete.

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iPhone-i-fide Goddamn Hero

iphone

Last week­end I offi­cially turned off my Android phone and felt the power in my hands as I began using an iPhone. As I wrote last time, it wasn’t a deci­sion I took to lightly.

I spent a fair bit of time before my last post, and after, con­sid­er­ing why the chang­ing of Android to iPhone bore such weight for me. In some ways, I’ve tried to cham­pion Android among my less tech savvy friends. I held up the open­ness, show­ing off my cus­tomized inter­face with unique icons and mov­ing wall­pa­per. I con­stantly defended Android to my tech savvy friends who had iPhones. I even, for a short time, con­verted one to the world of Android only to see him return to iPhone ‘because it just works.’

The fact is that Android is fol­low­ing the path of Win­dows, becom­ing a more open OS and trad­ing cost to the detri­ment of sta­bil­ity or smooth func­tion. When a siz­able OS change occurs, as did with their still-rolling-out Ice Cream Sand­wich ver­sion, old phones are left in the dust. And unlike Win­dows, where users tend to cling to the ver­sions they know and love, many Android fans lust for the next ver­sion. Why? Because it might do more bet­ter. The OS still feels unfinished.

So here I am, con­verted, hap­pily using my iPhone. I would esti­mate that I spent roughly $50 on apps for the phone, from top notch games like Puz­zle­juice and Ascen­sion, to the best app for Twit­ter, Tweet­bot, and on to other nec­es­sary apps such as ones used to help me eat health­ier. It’s sad, because I’d hap­pily weigh the best Android apps with the best iPhone apps and say that they will often match up excel­lently. But there are also are­nas where Android sim­ply falls flat. Tweet­bot far out­shines any­thing I found on Android, but on Android I found I pre­fer the selec­tion of Red­dit apps such as Red­dionic (which is still in Alpha.)

In the first days I had the iPhone, I spent prob­a­bly six hours toy­ing with it and adding apps, here is the cur­rent list of apps I’ve downloaded.

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Over Android

Today, while dri­ving today, I nearly threw my phone out the win­dow. I thought about rolling it down and chuck­ing it out as I rolled along at 50 miles an hour, watch­ing in joy as the phone shat­tered and broke on the pave­ment and snow. I had had enough.

You have to under­stand, I’ve sup­ported the Android OS since the Droid 1 got into my hands. It was a fan­tas­tic phone and I was very happy… for the first year or so. And then the phone began to fall behind, tech­nol­ogy moved for­ward and the Droid 1’s proces­sor and mem­ory quickly fell fur­ther and fur­ther behind. I was able to com­bat this with cus­tom ROMs and thanks to the preva­lence of the Droid 1 I was able to enjoy a thriv­ing hacker com­mu­nity to squeeze every ounce of power out of it.

Come a few months ago and my Droid 1 was nearly dead. It limped along with a bro­ken power but­ton, poor bat­tery life, and increas­ing forced reboots. I held out and fought, drag­ging the phone kick­ing and scream­ing to my two year phone upgrade with Ver­i­zon, but when the time came the promised phone — the kwisatch hader­ach for Android was not to be seen, the Sam­sung Galaxy Nexus kept get­ting pushed fur­ther back. And I was forced to suc­cumb to a sub­par phone, the LG Rev­o­lu­tion. My patience had run out, and I did not rel­ish the thought of dri­ving across the coun­try with a half oper­at­ing phone. And my loss of patience led me to make a rash decision.

The LG Rev­o­lu­tion has been noth­ing but painful as far as phones go. For our drive we relied on Katie’s iPhone’s GPS to get us nav­i­gated safely. Why hers and not mine? Because using the GPS was caus­ing my phone to reboot. For phone calls we had iffy qual­ity. Some­times when I get a call the phone never shows me a use­ful screen and just vibrate rings end­lessly. The only way to stop it is to pull the bat­tery. I mean seri­ously, What… the fuck.

Now, my anger isn’t against the Android OS. I think it does fine and will con­tinue to improve. But if a per­fect Android phone exists out there, then I might have to go through three or more phones before I find one which works. Whereas if I go straight to the iPhone I know I’m guar­an­teed a sat­is­fac­tory per­for­mance. Maybe not stel­lar. I know there will be frus­tra­tions there, but… well… I’m ready for a change.

So in the next few weeks I’ll be going for it. Time to try out iOS.

Our West Coast Christmas

As it turns out, the west coast cel­e­brates Christ­mas just like the rest of the United States. I wasn’t cer­tain, but am glad to see it’s true. After buy­ing a tree ear­lier last week, Katie and I waited until Christ­mas Eve to actu­ally dec­o­rate it. We had to go through the still packed boxes in our garage before find­ing the right ones. We unpacked our dec­o­ra­tions and enjoyed a won­der­ful tree by our fireplace.

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Where You Might Be Swept Off To

“It’s a dan­ger­ous busi­ness, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no know­ing where you might be swept off to.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Five years ago, when I launched Man­a­Na­tion, I had naivë dreams of untold riches as I cap­tured a niche mar­ket and gained throngs of fol­low­ers. Lit­tle did I know how dif­fi­cult grow­ing a Magic web­site would prove to be. It became a mon­u­men­tal task to con­tinue to expand, inno­vate and find new ideas for the site. Then two years ago fate decided that it was time to take it to the next level and the site exploded and I was dropped into pos­si­bly the per­fect job for me.

It’s been quite a jour­ney. One that I admit I had no clue where it was tak­ing me. And one that has swept me off my feet.

Today I get to announce a new leg of the jour­ney. One that is a sur­pris­ing and delight­ful turn: Start­ing next month, on Dec. 12th, I will work for Wiz­ards of the Coast as their Con­tent Spe­cial­ist over­see­ing DailyMTG.com.

So in a few short weeks, with a hol­i­day and a major Magic tour­na­ment (World Cham­pi­onships) in the weeks in the mid­dle, Katie and I will be mov­ing to Seat­tle with an epic 6 day cross coun­try road trip. And like every good war-time com­man­der, I’m ready to throw plans out the win­dow at a moment’s notice.

Leav­ing Cool­StuffInc was a tough deci­sion, my bosses and every­one there have been fan­tas­tic — in many ways it’s been my dream job. They gave me almost carte blanche to pur­sue ideas and explore my entre­pre­neur­ial spirit to find new ways to make the com­pany money. I was a one man mad-scientist R&D, the “res­i­dent dreamer” and it has been awesome.

The truth is that Wiz­ards is just about the only com­pany who could pull me away from here. Talk­ing to my bosses and telling them the news is prob­a­bly one of the hard­est things I’ve had to do pro­fes­sion­ally. But, I’m excited at what’s com­ing down the road.

I wrote an arti­cle about this news for GatheringMagic.com, and in it I use a quote from Conan O’Brien: “Work hard, be kind and amaz­ing things will hap­pen.” I can 100% con­firm this is true.

Villain and Hero

“It’s Easy to Be a Vil­lain, it’s Hard to be a Hero.”

Three Months of Wisdom

It’s been nearly three months since my last blog post. I feel like a lover spurn­ing an old flame, but the trap I con­tin­ued to fall into for the past months is that — my life hasn’t been overly inter­est­ing. I haven’t felt dri­ven to chase my muse across the key­board, though I’ve watched her flit about to and fro.

I’ve con­sid­ered sto­ries, like one I have work­ing titled “RIOT­Ball” which explores a world where sports and police forces inter­min­gle almost indis­tin­guish­ably. It sounds zanier than it actu­ally is, but it’s a con­cept still — nascent and unready to be brought forth.

I’ve done some travel and I could talk about the places I’ve gone and the things I’ve done, but not yet — there is a story there, but as above… it’s time hasn’t come yet.

My wife and I just cel­e­brated our first year of mar­riage, a muted but inti­mate affair. We’re over­joyed that we sur­vived the first year and have agreed to carry on for at least 79 more years.

I have opin­ions on the cur­rent state of pol­i­tics, the cur­rent finan­cial cri­sis, and the whole #Occu­py­Wall­Street move­ment but again, none of these are wholly formed and ready to be put down on paper.

There is wis­dom all around us. Spun out in bands like radio waves from a tower, if only we are pay­ing atten­tion to see them. The wis­dom which res­onates in the world comes from the news of Steve Jobs’ pass­ing, and it’s a quote that is now six years old. I remem­ber read­ing it when the tran­script of his com­mence­ment speech was posted — but it never res­onated with me until he died.

Remem­ber­ing that I’ll be dead soon is the most impor­tant tool I’ve ever encoun­tered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost every­thing — all exter­nal expec­ta­tions, all pride, all fear of embar­rass­ment or fail­ure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leav­ing only what is truly impor­tant. Remem­ber­ing that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of think­ing you have some­thing to lose. You are already naked. There is no rea­son not to fol­low your heart.

To me, that’s three months of wis­dom. Gained at the cost of three months, to be spent friv­o­lously over the rest of my life.

My Current Gadget Shopping List

Being the gad­get hound / tech­non­erd that I am, I keep a run­ning list of the gad­gets and giz­mos I want. And see­ing as how I’m no longer run­ning up credit card debt to buy all my new gad­gets, I no longer just go out and get them — instead opt­ing for a rea­son­able and respon­si­ble approach. I blog about it.

Droid Bionic

The next Android phone, expected in August. It will be a 4g dual core phone and is gen­er­ally believed to be the next must-have Android phone. I’m still rock­ing an ‘OG Droid 1′ and sadly its age is begin­ning to show as app require­ments con­tinue to expand. When I went to my local Ver­i­zon store to get my wife an iPhone, the sales peo­ple unan­i­mously agreed that wait­ing for this phone was the right call. If how­ever, once it is released, it falls short of expec­ta­tions I’ll have to re-evaluate what to purchase.

Base Cost: $299 + 2 year con­tract extension

 

21.5″ iMac 2.7gHz

My wife has been some­what of a home­less com­puter user for the past six months. We got used lap­tops from my pre­vi­ous employer when I still worked for them, we got an amaz­ing deal on them (which may be related to me ask­ing for the deal while the boss was pos­si­bly ine­bri­ated.)  They per­formed admirably until about a year ago when the first lap­top went out. We then switched her over to mine which went out just a few months later. Since then she’s been shuf­fling between machines as pos­si­ble. Less than ideal. So I badly want to get her a new machine and I don’t want to cut any cor­ners on this one.

Base Cost: $1,499

 

Nook Touch

I have a first gen­er­a­tion Nook and I love it. I have almost com­pletely moved away from the world of paper books. I have a ver­i­ta­ble library on my Nook. And while I love it, Barnes & Noble has suc­cess­fully made me feel like I need an improved reader. The new Nook has a touch screen, it removes the e-Ink flicker dur­ing page refreshes, and most impor­tantly — it’s bat­tery is sev­eral mag­ni­tudes stronger. As it is, after one long plane ride, I may need to recharge my Nook. The new Nook’s bat­tery is sup­posed to be able to han­dle a great deal longer before need­ing a charge again.

Base Cost: $139

 

Doxie Scan­ner

My mother used to pub­lish a newslet­ter called “The Get Orga­nized! News” which was a monthly newslet­ter all about orga­ni­za­tion. I am far from an overly orga­nized per­son. I’m fine with piles of papers, and a lack of obvi­ous orga­ni­za­tion. How­ever, there reg­u­larly comes a time where I need to find some­thing. Bank info, account cre­den­tials, etc. Going paper­less is a won­der­ful dream. The idea that I can sim­ply uti­lize my extra-appendage of phone or lap­top to find what­ever it is I need. I can uti­lize this scan­ner and the cloud to achieve this dream.

Base Cost: $149

 

WD TV Live Hub

For our wed­ding, one of my bosses gave us a WDTV Live box, it’s a lit­tle box which con­nects to our TV and lets us watch media files eas­ily on it. It’s become a sta­ple in our home enter­tain­ment, and while it works well in most cases, it has a few prob­lems such as view­ing MKV files and requir­ing an exter­nal hard drive to be con­nected. Shortly after we got our box, West­ern Dig­i­tal released this new box, WD TV Live Hub which cor­rects a lot of stuff includ­ing all of the issues I out­lined above. So, obvi­ously, I need to have it.

Base Cost: $199

 

Unde­cided Gadgets

There are still a hand­ful of other types of gad­gets or tech­nol­ogy I have yet to decide on. These are ones where I know I have a need to fill but I have yet to decide what I want.

Enter­tain­ment Sound Sys­tem — Katie and I want a bet­ter sound sys­tem for our tele­vi­sion and enter­tain­ment sys­tem. I don’t yet know what sys­tem I want.

Tablet — iPad 2 seems like the clear choice, but aside from peo­ple going, “ooh you have an iPad” — I’m not sure it’s worth the $$$. Is there a bet­ter choice? Would a Chrome­book be worth it? Or a net­book? Or even the Nook Color rooted to give full tablet con­trol? I just don’t know yet.

Dig­i­tal photo frame — One of my projects has been to begin archiv­ing fam­ily pho­tos. I want to have one which shows fam­ily pho­tos, but could also be used to show art. On a larger scale, I wish there was a dig­i­tal photo frame which I could give to my grand­mother and be able to eas­ily update via cell phone sys­tem (she doesn’t have wire­less inter­net) remotely. Liv­ing in rural geor­gia there is cell phone cov­er­age but no wifi.

 

The Craziest Thing I’ve Ever Done

Dean Karnazes

Dean Karzes, image cour­tesy of UltraMarathonMan.com

Some­where along the line we seem to have con­fused com­fort with hap­pi­ness. — Dean Karnazes

If you’ve never heard of Dean Kar­nazes, you shouldn’t feel too bad. He’s not a bas­ket­ball player. He’s not an olympian. He’s not a bil­lion­aire. What he is though, is a mar­vel of what the human body is capa­ble of. He’s the Ultra Marathon Man. He ran 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states. That’s pretty impres­sive. In fact he had an episode of Stan Lee’s documentary-esque show about Super­hu­mans, and in it they revealed that his body has devel­oped such a strong sys­tem for trans­port­ing lac­tic acid (the stuff that makes our mus­cles hurt after exer­tion) that his body main­tains or low­ers its lev­els while he’s run­ning. That’s insane!

I love that quote, because it’s so true. I love being com­fort­able, and for 27 years it’s made me happy.

And it’s what made me weigh 360 lbs.

Yep. I had a pound for almost every day of the year. While not quite mor­bidly obese, and given that I am rather tall, it’s not the num­ber that would get me on Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edi­tion, I’m still very unhappy with the con­di­tion my body is in.

I’ve yoyo’ed numer­ous times, I’ve tried gym mem­ber­ships, I’ve bought equip­ment, I’ve trained with the wife, etc. I’ve done lots and lots of wrong things and fallen off the bal­ance beam every time.

And it sucks.

So I’ve taken to yet another strat­egy, this time key­ing off my buddy Doug, who has been train­ing in prepa­ra­tion of a triathlon. And it’s done amaz­ing things for him! (Look­ing good Doug!)

How­ever, I’m not train­ing for a triathlon (not yet at least.) I’m train­ing for:

Spartan Race

You only fail when you give up. If you don’t give up, you have not failed, you just haven’t suc­ceeded yet.

I’m train­ing to race three races in Jan­u­ary, Feb­ru­ary and March of 2012.

Now’s the point where I tell you, I’ve never run a mile in my life. Despite hav­ing played foot­ball, and rowed Crew dur­ing high school. I was lazy even then! I did the least amount of work required and often less while mak­ing it look like I had done my part.

So, hav­ing never run a mile in my life, I’m going to do a 3 mile, an 8 mile and a 3 mile race within 6 weeks of each other. But that’s not all. These races have things like this:

I have no mis­con­cep­tions. I know this is going to be hard. And I’ve already heard from sev­eral peo­ple that they don’t think I can do it. Or that they think I’m insane.

But also, I’ve found a grow­ing num­ber of friends who think this is awe­some. Who think I can do it. And of them, a small hand­ful who have decided to take on the races with me. That’s the really awe­some part. Not only am I being dri­ven to suc­ceed, but I’ve got a group of friends who want to share this experience.

So the race is my end goal, but what about the in between? Where do I want to be when it comes race time?

You have to earn your body, nobody gives it you.

Well, based on my body fat per­cent­age, and esti­mat­ing mus­cle gain and tar­get body fat per­cent­age I’m look­ing to be around 275–290 lbs. I’m not look­ing to be mus­cle­bound, less Vin Diesel and more Jason Statham. Mus­cled, but not over­whelm­ing, to be so would make my life nearly as dif­fi­cult as being fat has.

Ath­let­i­cally, for the 8 mile race I’d like to be able to run 10+ miles by then, because the obsta­cles will absolutely require higher sta­mina and energy.

Now for another admis­sion: I’ve never suc­cess­fully down a pull up in my life. Maybe in ele­men­tary school but even then I don’t think so. So the obsta­cles will absolutely require upper body strength, not just fan­tas­tic sta­mina. So between the siz­able weight loss, and the gained mus­cle, I’d like to be able to do 20 pull ups.

So where does this leave me? I’ve got 205 days as of this pub­lish­ing for the first race. That one is test­ing the waters. Then a month later I’ve got the 8 miler. And assum­ing that goes well, we’ve got a 3 mile to do just two weeks later.

I’m stu­pidly, naively, heart warm­ingly, ter­ri­fy­ingly excited about this. I’ve got a can­dle burn­ing, and with the work­ing out and begin­ning to see results it’s turn­ing to kin­dling that will soon become a rag­ing inferno of… AWESOME!

And now is the time I tell you, this is hardly the cra­zi­est thing I plan to do in my life. So be excited to see what else is in store!

There comes a time dur­ing any work­out when your mind says, “Okay, we’re done. Let’s go home.” Strength and power is when your body smiles and turns the other way.

Review: “The Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason

The para­ble is one of the time­less meth­ods of shar­ing wis­dom and infor­ma­tion, from the same vein of mytho­log­i­cal sto­ries, fables and leg­ends. George Cla­son fell on this method of writ­ing, giv­ing us a faux his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment to share wis­dom which — in truth — is com­pletely time­less and most likely were points of wis­dom shared by teach­ers to stu­dents and elders to youth.

The wis­dom held in this book is indeed valu­able insights, though ini­tially I strug­gled with the idea of work­ing to gain wealth when I myself sit in a hole of debt. This was addressed fur­ther into the book though it took a stand that was less than mod­ern, basi­cally say­ing that if you have debt, you should talk to all your debt-holders and explain your sit­u­a­tion — that you can only pay 20% of your income towards your debts. Since the debt hold­ers will clearly under­stand this and respond favor­ably, you can get used to spend­ing less but while still mak­ing at least some small pay­ment towards your debt.

While it is hope­ful of the best case sce­nario, that’s quite clearly the goal of the book. Its goal is not to train you for every even­tu­al­ity but rather pro­vide you some solid stones as things to think about for your finan­cial suc­cess. Here are some of my favorite pas­sages from the book:

That what each of us calls our nec­es­sary expenses will always grow to equal our incomes unless we protest to the contrary.

A PART OF ALL YOU EARN IS YOURS TO KEEP. It should not be less than a tenth no mat­ter how lit­tle you earn. It can be as much more as you can afford.

When I set a task for myself, I com­plete it. There­fore, I am care­ful not to start dif­fi­cult and imprac­ti­cal tasks, because I love leisure.

Advice is one thing that is freely given away, but watch that you take only what is worth hav­ing. He who takes advice about his sav­ings from one who is inex­pe­ri­enced in such mat­ters, shall pay with his sav­ings for prov­ing the fal­sity of their opinions.

The quotable lines in the book are numer­ous, and I could argue that per­haps every line in the book is quotable. This says less for the amount of what is being said, and instead for the qual­ity of the edit­ing work that trimmed the novel down to the barest of forms leav­ing a sleek and eas­ily read­able novel filled with wisdom.

I think one point which the book doesn’t high­light is the impor­tance of know­ing peo­ple. It talks about seek­ing wis­dom from those who know, rather than tak­ing advice about invest­ing from a brick layer. But you must still know these peo­ple, or know how to find them, and val­i­date them.

This is a book which will def­i­nitely merit reread­ing from year to year and will fall into the stack of books that my future chil­dren will be forced to read and endure.

The Rich­est Man in Baby­lon
ISBN: 0451205367
Length: 120 pages
Rat­ing: 4/5 stars

Help me pick my next book to read by vot­ing on the books in my queue!

My Own Personal Reading Rainbow

So I had this idea. One of those lit­tle things which stuck in the back of my mind. It wasn’t any­thing earth shat­ter­ing, but I was strug­gling with the real­iza­tion that I was about to fin­ish In the Plex, and I couldn’t decide which book to pick up next. I’ve got about 25 unread books on my Nook, so what should I read?

Well, I should ask my friends, clearly. They’re smart peo­ple and they’ve got good ideas.

But how? Do I put up a list of books I haven’t read yet? And then it came to me, I’d setup a sim­ple polling sys­tem ala Red­dit or Digg or Hacker News. But way sim­pler. Your upvote is worth 2 points, a down­vote is worth 1 point. When I fin­ish a book, I take the cur­rent top book and reset the bal­ance as well as adding any new books to the pool of eli­gi­ble choices.

Bril­liant!

I sat down this after­noon and in the course of watch­ing some mind­less tv spe­cial, I ham­mered out the very first 0.1 alpha ver­sion. Put it up and began the fast iter­a­tion sys­tem which has proven so suc­cess­ful for startups.

The first point of feed­back came from my friend Davin via Face­book and his com­ments boiled down to “Uhhh, wtf is this?” Quite right. Bet­ter expla­na­tion needed, check. Then rather than using some rather unclear up and down arrows, I changed to “Read” and “Skip” as the vot­ing options.

Total time invested: 3 hours.

Then I was off for an evening with my wife, went to see a show at the Orlando Fringe fes­ti­val. After we laughed and had a grand ole’ time, we came home and turned on the boob tube and cud­dled on the couch. As she went to bed I pulled out the lap­top and began improv­ing upon the day’s ear­lier work, I still had a few hours of energy left in me.

I set about to improve the sys­tem to allow track­ing of what I am cur­rently read­ing, and dis­play­ing it as you’ll see in the side­bar to the right. Also, I added the abil­ity to col­lect fun facts like how long it took to fin­ish etc. And lastly I added some admin tools to improve the man­age­ment, make it eas­ier to add new books, remove books, etc.

Addi­tional time invested: 1.5 hours.

And for now I call the project com­plete as a solid beta. Leave it out and let it breathe, we’ll see.

So I intro­duce you to, “Trick’s Read­ing List” — Have a look and cast some votes. Any profit made from the Ama­zon refer­rals will be used to pur­chase books for the local library or donated to some other book related charity.

This Weekend’s To Do List

Some­times I fancy myself an artist, so I took a blue pen to graph paper to try and sketch my week­end to do list. It came out okay, included a text tran­scrip­tion below in case you can’t read my chicken scratch. I won’t explain any of the sketches though…

  1. Go to SCG Open, shoot some video?
  2. Code side projects
  3. Write
  4. Read more of Bill Sim­mons’ book
  5. Rewrite project code for GatheringMagic
  6. Edit Pod­cast

Happy Mother’s Day Mom

Happy Mother’s day mom.

Secret Word or String

This morn­ing I find myself deter­mined to write a blog post. I’ve been up since 7, work­ing on Man­a­Na­tion, and as I fin­ished a small (but impor­tant) Word­Press tweak I felt com­pelled to blog.

So after I tried to log into this Word­Press site using the stan­dard array of pass­words I go dig­ging through my email. Sure enough there was a pass­word reset at some point, for some rea­son, so I have to use this to get in.

Enough stu­pid monot­ony for you?

Well it is pass­words I want to dis­cuss. After the Gawker data­base was hacked, I went through a fairly siz­able secu­rity rehash and have started using a pass­word stor­ing sys­tem. To some it seems para­noid and a waste of time as I fum­ble for pass­words, to oth­ers it seems a lit­tle over the top (usu­ally when they see my 128 bit pass­word get copy and pasted into the login field.)

But I regard it as smart secu­rity in the mod­ern age.

No, I’m obvi­ously not a hacker tar­get. I agree with you there. But I’m also not a car-jacking / house-robbing / identity-thieving tar­get either. Being a tar­get is not some­thing which is part of this equa­tion. If I waited until I was a tar­get, it would likely be too late.

So I use the open source KeeP­ass app, stor­ing the encrypted file on my drop­box, so that I am able to access it via my phone. This is a new piece of tech­nol­ogy and is still prov­ing trou­ble­some as I have had a few failed attempts to get the file open.

I think my biggest regret in this process was chang­ing the secure pass­words I already knew. I used a pass­word for my online bank­ing which was, for all intents and pur­poses, secure. It was alpha-numeric, with mixed case, and sym­bols included. I had it mem­o­rized so I was able to use it for log­ging in via my phone. But when I went through and did a mas­sive rehash of pass­words, I felt com­pelled to change it.

It hadn’t been com­pro­mised. It wasn’t a weak pass­word. I had sim­ply been using it and decided it was time to change.

There are cases to be made for rotat­ing pass­words, such as in cor­po­rate set­tings, etc. The longer a pass­word is in effect, the longer time a hacker may have access to sys­tems of yours. So when it gets changed, the hacker has to get in another way. But when it comes to some­thing like bank­ing, a secure pass­word should be a secure pass­word. Until proof of intru­sion,  you don’t really need to rotate it.

I made a very smart deci­sion a few years ago. And that is, I have stan­dard pass­words I use on the web. Four or five pass-phrases which I use when log­ging in and can’t remem­ber what the pass­word is. How­ever, I use one pass­word for log­ging into my email, and only for log­ging into your email. In some ways, your email is more crit­i­cal to your online secu­rity than any­thing else. It’s the cas­tle, if a hacker gains con­trol of your email, then he gains con­trol of your dig­i­tal life.

So when the Gawker data­base was hacked, I was only mildly affected. My email was secure, it was all the ancil­lary logins which mat­tered, things like online stores, ser­vices like Rdio.com, etc.

The pass­word stor­age sys­tem is both use­ful and annoy­ing, I use an absurdly strong encryp­tion and comedicly long pass­word to get to it, all to pro­tect about 20 pass­words which are used occa­sion­ally. It’s like car­ry­ing a comed­ically large key ring, and keep­ing an encrypted guide book to help me find the right password.

And there we have it, a mean­der­ing, kind-of-on-topic, blog post about pass­words. But hey, it’s a blog post!

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