I can turn a phrase. High school journalism is where I discovered this. Mrs. Wickett kept bringing stories to me in my junior year “Needs a clever headline.” I’d read the story and throw out a terse, clever headline. No clue where this ability come from. If I actually think about how I pick the… more
Right now, there’s a CEO standing in front of his 85-person start-up at an all-hands meeting and he’s saying, “In the next 90 days, we need to do the impossible”. The particular version of impossible doesn’t matter. What matters is that everyone in the room is shocked when he says it. You can tell by… more
It all started with a tweet: “Making a list of superstitions / foolish consistencies / lightweight OCD behaviors e.g. I always put my RIGHT shoe on first. You?” This right shoe behavior started during ice hockey. The team was bad… like 0-10 bad. Last game of the season against the best team in the league… more
At my favorite local coffee shop, Lorraine gives me shit when I purchase coffee in a paper cup, “You… are not saving the world.” She’s right. I’m not, and it’s actually worse. Each time I reach for a sip and this sad little corpse of tree flesh greets me with its pathetic weight and palpable… more
The rumor that Twitter is abandoning Ruby on Rails comes as no surprise to those familiar with Twitter’s shaky uptime record and its tendency to lose its mind in increasingly impressive and creative ways. So, new platform. Fine. Saw that coming. What continues to surprise me is this: why aren’t we more pissed when Twitter… more
I’ve been ripping on the mouse for years. The argument is one of precision. The mouse, while incredibly useful as a casual means of interacting with a computer, is not a productivity tool, because when you use a mouse you sometimes miss and missing isn’t productive. WAIT WHOA RANDS. PHOTOSHOP MAN. PHOTOSHOP LOVES THE MOUSE.… more
This article was written over a decade ago, and business has changed. You can read a much-updated version of this article here. You’ve had a small number of career-defining moments. These are the select few moments in time when the trajectory of your career changed instantly and drastically. I have two buckets of these: ones… more
I was introduced to Ask A Ninja via this podcast. In the podcast, the Ninja complains extensively about the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. The gist: “Every single character has their own damned plot line and it’s incredibly hard to figure out what the hell is going on”. The third movie,… more
I’m at the end of a conference week and I’ve just moved hotels. This is normally a hassle, but the broadband in the prior hotel blew, which means I’m a week behind on everything. Once I’ve checked into the room, the first thing I do is fire up Safari and watch the first page load.… more
The presentation season kicked off for me with a week in New Zealand at the Webstock conference. I arrived early, which, as it turns out, wasn’t the best use of my time, as I spent two solid days of what should have been vacation stressing about slides. Among the many highlights was the speaker dinner… more