JSON, JSON, JSON

I love JSON.

I was going to write more than this for this weekend, but I got off topic.

Pick your Archtype (CEO, Professor/CTO, Humanitarian)

I've tried to reply to Dan Miller's recent post in less than a paragraph, but it just doesn't work. So, here is the longer version.

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I think it also depends on how you define success and how you measure the rewards. For instance, playing monopoly or a video game has very low risk, but it has reward. Can you make a living doing it? No. So, you have to do something else. Could you get good at it and have a part-time job mentoring other people in it? Sure.

I highly recommend Dan Pink's book "Drive" (or watch this awesome youtube video) which basically breaks down into three things people want: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

It is very clear in your article that you are preferring autonomy and being your own trouble maker. Being a full-time entrepreneur is all about autonomy. What about mastery? Well, look to academics. It's not exactly rewarding in a capitalistic sense, but it is very clear how people driven by mastery end up there. What about purpose, this would be the domain of the non-profits.

So, it boils down to this: What is your arch-type?

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When you answer this question, your path unfolds. Actually, answering this question is similar to what is your life's goal is probably key to your own sense of happiness.

γνῶθι σεαυτόν (Know thyself)

This is probably the most fundamental and important thing you can do in life. Stop pretending based on what others want or need out of you. Don't listen to others; they are wrong. Be yourself and understand yourself. Understand your strengths and your weaknesses. Maximize your strengths, compensate for your weaknesses. Find humility in your weaknesses. Find confidence in your strengths.

Part-time Saturday Entrepreneur: Time Management

The first bit of advice would be to not write about time management. This entry is with respect to having a part-time business while maintaining a full-time job. It's also a longer comment to Dan Miller's recent blog post. Dan's my former employer and CEO of RedNova Labs and a great boss, and he has ambitious goals. This entry is about having a part-time business with less ambitious goals.

At any given time, I maintain the details of about 7 to 9 projects in my head with about 20 to 300 ideas on the back-burner. This annoys my wife since I'm always "on", so I try to make sure my wife has a time in the reserve.

So, how does time work into this hectic and crazyness. Well, there are 168 hours in a week. You should sleep for 56 of those hours. You should eat a good lunch and relax for 7 of them. You should eat a good dinner and relax for 7 of them. You should shower for 3 of them. You should take a long bath for 1 of them. You should also probably have about 3 hours of sexy time a week. You can rush your breakfast in about 2. You need to exercise about 9.

This gives 80 hours.

I live in an apartment, so I don't have to maintain a house. Houses cost me time.

I live in the city, so I don't have a long commute. Driving everyday is not for winners, and it is bad for the environment.

I don't have kids nor do I plan to have them.

My wife doesn't work outside the home, so I can have as much time as possible from life. I love having a house-wife! It's awesome.

My life is structured such that I'm not wasting precious time on stupid things that don't add value to my life.

Now, the rub is this. You can't focus all your time in one thing. You will burn out. You need distractions. Your distractions need not be a loss.

Instead, you need to manage your projects and manage your goals. Everyday, make progress.

As long as the progress bar moves towards 100% somewhere, you are winning. Now, you may not find the win you expect. For instance, moving projects forward slowly means they may become irrelevant or uninteresting. But, that doesn't mean the process of moving things forward was a waste of time. I learn things everyday, and I like that. I like to learn. Because of this, my life is in a constant state of win.

For instance, this blog could be considered a waste of time. But, I'm writing words and composing sentences trans-coding my thoughts from my disorganized grey matter. My writing style is developing. This helps my professional activities by improving my communication with others as well as opening up discussion with people. It's helping me express myself in a way that isn't code.

As long as you gain something from an activity, you win. It's as simple as that.

The key to keeping motivating is having the daily option to change your priorities. This is why work can be stressful because you are not in full control of the priorities. Your hobbies should not have priorities except to just try.

This is why my wife's business is not a service business. Service businesses require you to adjust your priorities to the people you are servicing (duh!). Instead, my wife's business is all about content. When the creativity is available, inventory is built. When the creativity is distracted, inventory is going stagnant. I'm looking forward to about a week every summer where I can sell inventory. I can hustle it at pike's place, and that helps me professionally in understanding want. Understanding want is the key to making customers happy.

So, if you want to be a part-time entrepreneur, then make sure the venture is compatible with it. Example part-time ventures: Making video games, writing books, composing songs, making youtube videos, teaching kids, mentoring college graduates, make swords, build a giant robot of death, coaching little-league, doing odds and ins for people, design board games, giving city tours, etc.

Now, the ultimate question is: What makes you happy?

I think this is the ultimate question. Once you answer it for yourself honestly, you can determine the path you really want to be on. How do you make it work for you? That's a different question which I don't have the answer for. I do know that what-ever you do, it at some level needs to make money.

This is the cruel reality of capitalism. At the end of the day, some of your projects need to bear fruit. The things you want to do may not bear fruit. A challenge for the social web is to make it possible so that more and more people can make a living doing things that they want to do. For instance, look at Etsy. It opens up a lot of doors for people that would of had to sit in tents during fairs; now those people can reach a global audience.

This is the challenge for full-time entrepreneur: make me more effective. Make sure I'm spending my precious time producing what makes me happy. Make it easy. Unblock me. Provide me a service that lets me jump over hurdles. Provide me marketing. Provide me sales. Figure that shit out, so I can win!

Part-time Saturday Entrepreneur: Week 1

I did some administrative stuff. Picked a name, got the domain, set up the domain, picked a background color (#E6DFD5), created a slogan, set up a basic landing page, setup and installed google analytics.

I wrote a children's book this morning; this unblocks my wife on the first project.

It has plot broken down into 22 scenes that when printed on two sides of paper should make for a decent sized children's book.

It has a title: "The Robotic Mr. Ducky"

It has a moral: "Errors are ok, you're just human. Don't be perfect. Find Love." (I know, how awesome is that).

So, now that I have the story done, my wife can edit it, illustrate it, compose it. Now, I need a dead-line. Well, one of my dear friend's from high-school is going to have a baby in two months. That sounds like a good dead-line.

All before 8:00 AM.

For the rest of the day, I'm making sure she can actually get to work. Is the desk clean and ready? Are the supplies accessible? Etc.

Part-time Saturday Entrepreneur: Introduction

So, I'm starting my wife's company. My wife is an artist, and she needs an art dealer. This is my hobby. What is your hobby?

All things aside, I want to talk about being an entrepreneur. So, I'm starting a new series. Namely, about being a part-time entrepreneur since I've got a full-time job that's funding my wife's venture.

So, what is my wife's company all about? I don't know, but it involves her turning her hobby into wealth, and my job is to sell it and turn that wealth into money. I've got six hours a week to do it.

Now, as to my writing. What should I write about today before I put on the CEO hat and get shit done for my wife's company tomorrow.

No idea. I have no idea what it means to be an art dealer! Awesome, something new to learn (I could be learning to fly, but my wife will not let me fly...)

Well, the first goal is to get the wife producing and turn on the factory.

Project 1: A children's book.

Seriously, I'm going to have her do a children's book and I'm going to write the content (because I'm an awesome writer as you well know). I'll turn off the cursing.

Once I get this as rough product, I'll buy illustrator.

I've never produced a children's book before, so what do I need to do? How do I promote it? The nice thing is that there are a lot of parents out there, so there is a market. I can sell copies at Pike Place market, but I fear that will fail. I could involve pike place market in the scenery (TODO: research the copyright of the "Public Market" sign). Now, I'm fairly sure I can get production going. However, sitting on inventory kind of sucks.

Ok, Ok, I'll hold off until tomorrow.

The sucky thing about being a CTO (or C*O)

Your voice is representative of your company as you are in charge of the ship.

This is one reasons I left Kansas and my stewardship of a small company.

So, you can't write about religion in a controversial way. You can't be a atheist/agnostic in the mid-west and expect to have customers. You can't talk about the richness of human sexuality and represent a company in the mid-west. You can't raise money while wearing a death-metal t-shirt. You definitely can't wear pink and be happy at the same time.

Small business C*O have to conform to their environment. This is why I think liberal cities have much more successful entrepreneurial environments. If there is a strong gay presence, then I guarantee you can get away with a lot more things than in a conservative city. The attitude to fight for who you are is the same thing you need to build a company, so I think the correlation stands.

There are things that I want to fight for; I want to fight for gay rights, freedom, women's rights, and other noble things. The engineer in me wants the world to be better. It's in my blood as an American to fight. The problem is fundamentally, I'm not willing to let other people suffer for my fight. Maybe I'm a pussy? No, I think it is sensible. There is no point in recruiting people that don't share your fight.

The fundamental problem of the C*O is that the professional (market norm) and personal (social norm) roles in life are conflated due to PR, secret nature, and stupid human politics.

My favourite and all-time hero is George Carlin. You can not be like George Carlin and be a C*O (in the mid-west). If your company has a global foot-print, then you have to be careful. You have to be neutral.

Neutral is boring.

Neutral is death.

I want to live, so that means I have to experience life. Last Wednesday, I crashed #MozParty to spend time with a old friend. Today, I'm going to goth like bar that I've never been into to listen to music I've never listened too before.

So, I'm having a lot of fun in Seattle. I'm happy, and I can be my plucky self and share it with you. I like that.

Geek Hypervisor Mode; staying sane in the insane world

I call being a professional "geek hyper-visor mode". Namely, it is where you put you wants and personality aside to get the job done and work effectively.

What does this mean?

It means your religion of OS, programming language, library, framework are all out of context.

It means your design philosophy is aligned to what the team can execute on.

It means your goals are aligned with the companies goals.

It means you pick up new tools in your arsenal to #win.

It means exercising good judgement.

Unwind.

The fundamental problem of hyper-visor mode is that it can wind you up.

The wife helps.

Side projects help.

Comedy helps a lot.

Writing helps.

Cursing, oh, cursing lots helps. Fuck yeah!

Why I just give up on Linux Desktop

I've been an advocate for computation in general for the majority of my life. I have no real preference for either Apple, Microsoft, Google, or open source derived products. I measure products on their own merits.

For servers, computation, scalability, performance, expressiveness. Linux wins by far. This makes a great deal of sense when you consider the market. The Linux market is by developers for developers.

For enterprise-y shit like Outlook and Exchange, I'll trust Microsoft hands down compared to an advertising company (Why I use Google Apps for personal stuff? Well, ..., I'm lazy and cheap).

For finding shit, I can trust google.

For my phone, I love the iPhone since it is best product on the market that addresses my needs. Android? LOLz. Maybe... that depends on iPhone fucking up their momentum or another company building something that makes people happier than the cracked out iPhone.

Now, for a majority of my life, I've used both Microsoft Windows and Linux as my primary operating systems for Desktop. I give up on Linux in the Desktop, and while I like it for developing... It will probably never by my primary one at home. Why? I'm old now. I have things to do. I want my shit to work out of the box. It's just that simple. I don't want to tweak my usb wifi stick to work; I just want to plug it in and have it work with out me configuring a bunch of shit.

So, I'm abandoning Linux on the desktop since I primarily just have a ridiculously number of terminal screens open. Do I need an OS for that?

Besides, with all the cloud shit that people are producing, does the OS really matter anymore? I have been meaning to checkout a chromebook...

Now, let me think about Windows? do I want to live in the Windows world? FUCK NO. Windows is great for two things: Outlook and Video Games (I would say Visual Studio, but I don't drink that kool-aid any more).

Now, having seen the WDDC key-note, I have to say: Lion + iCloud = win. If all I need is Internet, then I'm golden. It should work out of the box without problems. For my consumer needs, I'm good.

So, that just leaves me with Games. While some of my favourite games are available on the Mac, I find myself leary of jumping the boat entirely. Maybe I should. I don't have time to play all my games anyway. Maybe this is the part where I grow up, and stop playing games entirely? Some weeks go by these days, and I don't touch a game at all.

OK, let's do a systems check on the games I'd probably sell a kidney for: I have a 360. Ok, so I'll be able to play Mass Effect 3. Diablo 3 will run on Mac. Ok, so far good. Portal 2? Check. Combine that with iPhone/iPad, and I should be set. If not, then I can use that bootcamp shit with one of my Window 7 dvds.

Ok, so I've decided. my next computer is going to be a mac. Now, should I get a laptop or a big ass machine? Hrmm... well, my ego and male obsession with bigger points me to the big 12 core bastard. Now, my wife would want one too. So, I have to be willing to get two of them.. Maybe not since that would heat up my apartment like crazy. So, let's plan on getting a laptop.

Going old School; first epic walk in seattle

So, I like to walk. One idea I had which would be cool for runkeeper to do is to have fitness achievements based on GPS. Like, walk from A to B and explore the city. It could be a lucrative business for dense city markets.

Anyway, I was getting into the loop of "Oh, I should build that and turn it into a product" rather than walking. Instead, I'm going old-school. I'm going to use the printer and use a pen.

So, I'm looking at this map.

Then using gmap-pedometer, I plot out my course. Once I complete a few of these, I'll give my thoughts on it as a service.

Update. I failed at my original course, and I made a new one in real-time. It's even more epic. I did ~10 miles.

Booyah.

I'll post a few pics in a bit after my legs recover.

The secret to "Ideas are easy"

Once you get experience, you will have ideas.

Once you are present in the moment and see problems, you will have plenty of ideas.

Once you have problems, you will have ideas.

Are they good? marketable? Can you execute on them? What makes an idea good?

These are the hard questions that I struggle with because I'm interested in many things. I like puzzles. Puzzles are like mental sex.

On College, UnCollege, and Why you should get a math degree

I think about education because I believe that education is powerful ... if effective. I feel that most of a person's college education is ineffective toward producing skills needed for the future (afterall, we can't predict the future). I was reading about UnCollege, and generally I accept the premise.

A majority of students that go to the majority of colleges are not getting a good education; they are paying people to teach them shit that isn't relevant to the future. They are paying people to deem them worthy as a cog.

Is college a waste of time? No. If you love learning, then you can learn things from brilliant people. This is why graduate school is so awesome. However, here in lies the con game. Smart and brilliant people realised that the majority of people don't like to learn, most people just want to have a good job so they do whatever it is that makes them happy (typically: sex, drugs, kids). So, the academics tell industry that college will make your workers better, and industry introduced it as a requirement.

This turns most of the college experience for those that don't love learning into a marathon. If you complete it, then you are worth hiring.

The sucky thing is that this inflates the number of gear-check courses which tend to not be interesting to smart brilliant people since they can master the material fairly quickly. There were a number of courses in my past where I showed up just for the tests and got As. Why was I paying for that? Well, that's a gear-check course for "normal" people.

Math

I love math. The majority of undergraduate math classes are gear-checks for engineering students. However, they are interesting enough to brilliant people. If you want to be brilliant, then surround yourself with brilliant people. Once you get past differential equations, you will be immersed in a new level of mathematics that will surprise you. It isn't a gear check anymore, it's fun stuff that is centered around learning.

For me, I found the math program to be an oasis of smart people doing clever things. It's an oasis because it's hard, and this means the supply is limited to those that have the love of learning.

So, if you go the college route and you are smart, then you should do a math degree.

Hackers

Problematically, good hackers don't have time to deal with the bullshit gear-check courses. They need to hack and get high off their brain. I'll be honest, I can do more and get more with a enthusiastic hacker with a GED than I can with a freshly minted CS graduate that started programming as a freshmen.

I've been exploring this problem, and I have my name picked out (and it's cool). Now, I'm trying to figure out the strategy and how to make it successful. I hope UnCollege will solve this niche because I know the war for talent is waging on now, but if we want to get more talent, then we need to invest in innovative ways of training people (namely by providing opportunities to learn effectively) well in-lieu of stupid bullshit gear-check courses.

What I want

I want a cheaper alternative to College that increases the supply of quality talent that is marketable. The more talent we can produce that's easier to hire means the more cool shit we humans can do.