Favorite Day of the Week?

What is your favorite day of the week?

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If I am right, you probably said Friday (If I am wrong I'll present some data in the chart on how you are actually wrong).

I agree, but why Friday? You have to work on friday? Is the promise of a weekend better than the actual weekend? It should be Saturday. Saturday is the only day you get to sleep in, do whatever you want, and not have to wake up to go to work.

There is a neat website called MoodyOrNot.com (Could be done better w/ Geo targeting etc) They take users mood data and colect it to see trends.



Saturday is pretty good, but for all the reasons above it should be a better day. And Sunday drops way off. I thought when I started working full time that I enjoyed Sundays more because I didn't have to think about when to start my homework. But if you ask Rachel, she'll say I get in a bad mood on Sundays (especially if I spend it in a mall).

I have trouble explaining it but when I am in a Mall on the weekend I feel like "They" are winning and I am losing (the same "They" from Elizabethtown - A+). I feel like it is a big scam to get people to work all week then build a strip mall near by to have them spend their weekends their giving all of their money to the stores (can't the stores go to work for me to cut out the middle man?).

So I guess I should focus on my "Strengths" from Strength Finder and spend more time on those things in my free time. Lets see how I have been doing:

Learner- A DVR is key for this. I wake up on saturday and I have some Modern Marvels or a Nova special. The other day I stayed up to 2am to see a WWII special and realized we did not learn enough about that war in school.

Focus- This one is tough for me, it means I would love to carve out most of a day reading 1 book but I tend to get distracted. Hence The Tipping Point still sitting on my Current Book list even though I have picked up Trading Up.

Futuristic-I've always worried about the future. I still think cell phone towers will disappear once a network of 300 million cell phones is powerful enough to transfer calls by itself (imagine the programming to find a path of cell phones from NY to LA to relay your call).

Intellection- Being married is great for this. Rachel and I talk a lot about the theories of things as we encounter them. I can't imagine being married to anyone else where we couldn't talk like this.

Analytical- Wikipedia is great for this. Academics may knock the accuracy, but I find people tend to include more of the important things you really want to know. I am working on the data of why there will never be a playoffs in Div IA football due to the Bowl money scams (Did you know the Big 10 gets to split about $34 million/year, while Boise St had to split their $9 million from their BCS game with 5 non BCS conferences)

I guess my point is as much as I look forward to time off for Thanksgiving and the Winter Solstice, I tend not to maximize the use of that time off (3 football games a day doen't help either).

Thoughts on being 30

Today I am 30 years old.

1.I don't feel 30. Maybe 25, but I still feel about the same as when I graduated college. I still even wear some of the same t-shirts.

2.The best part of being 30 is now it will be even more ridiculous when I get carded.

3.Turning 30 isn't a big deal to me.

4.I am really glad to be married and settled. Even if it means I now lose all my whip cream on any ice cream sundae.

5.It has been a really neat time to grow up. Kids now naturally have cable TV and the Internet. It was kinda cool to have V66 and a unix based email address. It helps you appreciate the access to information. I just paid my mortgage online, my grandpa used to drive his checks to the phone company etc. It amazes me that Rachel has so much access to nursing school online.

6.I wasn't always so interested in traveling. Seeing Alaska, St Lucia and Italy has been great, but seeing the Grand Canyon was the most impressive. You hear about it and know it so well growing up, but to actually see it is awesome.

7.Looking back, I am glad the Red Sox lost the '86 World Series. I would have felt very unattached to the Red Sox history had they won when I was so young.

8.There is something wrong with our educational system when at 30, I still wake up in fear of an overdue paper or book report. Last night I did try twice, to save my wife and dog from the ceiling fan falling on us. Only it wasn't, and they weren't as concerned as I seemed to have been in my sleep.

9.It's not even Thanksgiving and our neighbor has Christmas light up. I'm afraid to turn on the radio.

10.Spending a lot of time in Vermont, I grew up watching a lot of weird Canadian TV that no one else remembers (G Force, Force 5, The Boogaloo's, Secret Garden)

11.I have a need to keep learning new things. I would really enjoy going back to school for many subjects I didn't even consider at the time (economics, some psychology, business, accounting).

12."Oldies" stations have gone too modern (too much 70's, not enough 50's) hopefully the neo-retro movements will fix that.

13. 30 years and still not a coffee drinker.

14. I am glad to see classic board games show up in stores for the holidays. I don't think they are as popular now, but I love board games. Most these days are simple to learn and last an hour. I still prefer really complicated games (Monopoly, Risk, Axis and Allies)

Things that will make me seem old:
I showed up to college w/o a cell phone or an email address
I hate IM
I had a lot of cassette tapes
I got a 212 Mb hard drive for Christmas one year
I had a 2400 baud modem
I remember 386 computers
I remember paying under $1.00 for gas
I played Pac Man in the arcade
I had an Atari
The first VHS I saw was Splash
I went to college w/ 5 CDs

These sports teams have left their homes:
Montreal Expos
Hartford Whalers
Quebec Nordiques
Minn Northstars
Winnipeg Jets
Vancouver Grizzlies
St Louis Cardinals
Houston Oilers
Washington Bullets (name change)
LA Rams, Raiders
a bunch more...

Made to Stick

I really enjoyed this Book on CD (B+). I got it because Dale had talked about it, I was a little worried that it wouldn't be very concrete or actionable, but it was very insightful.

**From Wikipedia**
The basic outline of the book follows the acronym "SUCCES" (with the last s omitted), which is summarized on the back of the book. Each letter refers to a characteristic or tool that can make an idea "sticky":

* Simplicity—finding the core of any idea
* Unexpectedness—grabbing people's attention by surprising them
* Concreteness—making sure an idea can be grasped and remembered later
* Credibility—giving an idea believability
* Emotion—helping people see the importance of an idea
* Stories—empowering people to use an idea through narrative

Chip Heath is a professor at Stanford University. Dan Heath is a consultant and developer of innovative textbooks. They also write a regular feature for Fast Company magazine.
****
Even the outline doesn't really sound great, but the examples are really really good. They talk about how Jared became a Subway commercial star, how Southwest has made their vision for low fares crystal clear for every employee.

But the best for me was the discussion on how people vote for president. It turns out people do not learn about the issues and then vote for the person who would benefit them the most. They tend to vote based on the group association they put on themselves. Most people think "I view myself as this type of person, and this type of person would vote for so and so" even if they do not personally benefit from that candidates plans.

They gave a great example of Firemen. This company made a public safety video and called around Firehouses to ask if they would be willing get a free copy to preview. They almost all agreed. Once they agreed the company asked what type of free gift they would want as a "thanks" for watching the video. The response was very bad to that free gift because firemen do not view themselves as people who need incentives to view safety videos. Whereas most of us at home would probably accept a free gift for a subscription to a magazine or anything we were already interested in.

Probably explains why when we took Karen's quiz on the election issues, it turned up presidential candidates we had never even considered.

Great Commercial

Shopless in Seattle

We cruised through Seattle on our way to Alaska last year (not sure how the 5 hour layover on the way back counts as cruising through), it seemed like a nice city. And as everyone knows, it is the home of...Jones Soda, correct!

But I don't think I'd ever move there, or at least not buy a car anywhere near Seattle.

Here's why...

Typical Sports Team Story.
Starbucks guy sells the Seattle basketball team for $350 million.
Some guy buys it hopefully doing his homework to see if it was a smart deal.
Now the new owner demands the city build him a new $500 million arena so he can charge more for tickets and make more money off of the people of Seattle.
The city of Seattle using their brain power (very high density of PHD's, I hear) says no way will we use tax payers money to build you an arena so we can pay you more for tickets.
Owner does the adult version of "then I'm taking my toys and going home" by saying he will have to move the team to Kansas City to find a free arena.
New owner goes crying to his mommy (David Stern) who tells Seattle if the team is "forced" to move, Seattle will not get a new team anytime soon.

This happens in most cities (see Cincinnati in 2000) usually the city caves and we get a tax hike. But this is crazy for Seattle. We bought some things in the airport, while paying I was shocked at how much the sales tax cost (8.9%!)
I asked why it was so high and the guy said they had to pay for a light rail system and 2 new stadiums (Football and Baseball).

How much higher will it need to go to pay another $500 million for basketball?

It will be interesting to see what happens. But it brings up a good question. Fans all assume a team moving away is like losing a puppy, but is that really the case these days? With all of the sports packages you can be anywhere (even Ohio) and still follow your team (without paying for the stadiums).

Good Luck Seattle.