10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

Yesterday, a mother of 3 died while tubing and I must say this is a very sad event. We could say that we have seen this coming. This part of the river which was once desolate and remote, is now usually filled with boats and people. The river here is not very wide or deep and is not the place where one should should be engaging in water sports which involve speed and a long rope.  There is simply not enough room in the river for tubing, and the other boats go way too fast.

See the story here if you are interested in reading more about this event.

I am using a new Firefox add on to handle the creation and submission of my blog articles. This tool integrates with Firefox and allows you to add images, text, links and video to your blog entry and then handles the submission of the blog to your site.

Due to high gas prices, people are more conscious than ever about gas mileage. Given that I drive a rather large truck (which I need to pull boats, trailers and motorcycles), I am keenly aware of my gas mileage. The combination of the price of gas, coupled with my long driving distance, have caused my gas bill to be one of my highest single monthly expenses.

In an effort to see if there is some small things I can do to help this matter (mainly saving money), I have tried a very simple method called hypermiling. Simply put, the term hypermiling is used to denote the various methods of efficiency used to get the most mileage out of our cars and our gas. Hypermiling has proven that with just a few simple steps, gas consumption can be reduced by as much as 30% or more. The simple steps are the following:

• Do not drive like an asshole.
• Maintain your speed and velocity with respect to the natural flow of traffic.
• Minimize slowdowns/speedups and maximize coasting to preserve momentum.
• Get in the right lane and pretend you are invisible.

In my effort to save some money I have given this method a try and I have found some surprising results. In merely slowing down by 5 miles per hour, getting in the right lane and switching from Metallica to Bob Marley, I have found that I have been able to change my average mileage per gallon from 16 MPG to 23 MPG.

I am calling it “Marley Miling”

After several months of testing, I am very surprised how much money this savings has really added up to. Without any attempts at conservation I found that it costs me about 100$ to fill up my truck and I use 1.5 of tanks of gas per week. This total comes to 600$ per month for my gasoline expenses. The 30% I save by “Marley-Miling” now adds up to a whopping 180$ in savings per month. This is simply amazing.

Beyond the money, I have found that there are additional effects of “Marley-Miling” that are almost as equally profound.

1. I am more at ease in the car, at work and at home when I removed the constant aggravation of trying to get just that tiny bit ahead in may car to and from work.

2. The savings in Gas was an equal or greater reduction on the pollutions and greenhouse gasses I am now NOT emitting.

3. My 30% reduction in gas usage means 30% less demand on an inefficient and dangerous source of energy.

4. The roads are 30% safer.

5. I have a renewed vigor for my music collection and listen to 30% more music.

So try this simple technique and I know you too will see some amazing benefits. I think that we will all be better for it.

As of late there is some discord within the village. This discord has created an atmosphere whereby everything the village is and has ever done is being questioned. The reasons everything is being questioned is not due to a failing in the current processes nor the the actual Whogamawhickies themselves, but rather the blind following and the ranting of the Cult of Google.

The Cult of the Google are a legion of followers who base their entire platform on the wisdom of others. The Cult of the Google makes anyone feel like they are a marvel of ability and choice simply by viewing its text. The Cult of the Google empowers those to feel that they have attained instant experience and awareness. In the Cult of the Google, the view is that there is no longer a need to have actual experience in making Whogamawhickies.

According to he Cult, the new way of making Whogamawhickies should be produced as stated in the Cult of the Google using the methods described in the Tele Funken U 47. The telefunken U 47 is an academic only approach using the Cult of the Google as its basis.

So into this village came a personality, Zang who through the Cult of the Google has garnered a legion of followers. The teachings and preachings of Zang , garnered by exhaustive use of the Cult of the Google, started in a complete re-write of the Whogamawhickie process.

During this process, any of the Stalwarts, those who originally created the Whogamawhickie process, were viewed as being old and unable to change. Zang became leader of the Whogamawhickie process and instantly began to abandon the long trusted and carefully crafted processes and methods used to create the Whogamawhickie. Zang began promoting and rewarding only those who also supported the belief in the Telefunken U 47 and the Cult of the Google. This group of people became known as the Zangifites.

In the times that followed, everything about the trusted processes were abandoned and changed in an attempt to blindly implement anything and everything that was stated in the Tele Funken U 47.

In the wake of these changes it was determined that the Whogamawhickies would now be created using only the teachings of the Cult of the Google. In the times that followed, Zang and the Zangifites led the followers on a long and endless trek into the desert. The long and endless trek into the desert would be used as a proof of concept to prove that the only chance of staying alive in the new world was to abandon the old ways and to use only the academic ways of the Cult of the Google.

Along the trek into the desert, the followers, as a proof of concept, spent all of their time pondering how they would stay alive during their trek. The pondering however did not address nor include the reasons they were trekking into the desert, how they would stay alive, nor includes any notions about about the actual Whogamawhickie process.

In the early days of the trek, they continually poured out their water and burned other necessary items because those items did not conform to the teachings of the Cult of the Google. Once all the water had been poured out they would then continually refine how the process of how a Jug of water “should” be created according to the Telefinken u 47. In the days, weeks and years that followed, all of the time and effort was spent arguing and refining the next generation Jug of Water and who would be in charge of its various parts. In this manner the 1 original water jug was broken and recreated 15 times using 15 of the latest techniques pondered in the Cult of the Google.

Pretty soon, during testing of the jug, it became apparent that in order to keep a jug holding water, 150 people, 10 to a jug, were required to hold their fingers over the many holes in each jug that would continually loose water. That is once they actually found and put more water into those jugs.

In testing it was revealed that each of the 15 groups of “hole pluggers” would have no clue how to plug up the holes in each others jugs because each jug was crafted using a completely different method. Each jug was built using a different method, held water differently and were dependent on the same 10 people dedicated to that jug in particular.

After some time, the reality of how far off course the trek had become was apparent to everyone. The Zangifites had begun to realize that the new fangled Chinese finger torture, empty jugs of water, nor the thirsty desert trek had anything to do with the Whogamawhickie process, which by now had nearly been forgotten.

Discord and discontent quickly started to settle in as the group found itself standing in the middle of the desert, thirsty and tired of plugging holes. The truth was that the jugs did not even hold water. In the realization that followed, the thirsty group watched as the Zangifites rode off on camels to find another desert trek, hoping that a different trek, into a different desert, would prove that the Cult of the Google was indeed far superior to the school of experience.

This is not the end of the story nor is it a sad or pointless tale. After the camels faded into the distance, the group began to realize that the Whogamawhickies still thrived and awaited their return. A comforting realization began to emerge unto the group.

The realization was that they did not need to shuffle in small pointless steps, huddled in groups of 10, with all of their fingers plugging holes in the new fangled jugs that currently did not even hold water on a pointless journey into the desert.

The group slowly began to remove their fingers from holes in the empty jugs. With their fingers removed from the empty jugs, they found that they could again walk with a speed that would allow them to at least get out of the desert.

Now, walking smoothly again, the group quickly arrived back at home. The remains of the group realized that the Whogamawhickies and the trusted processes, built from experience, awaited them just as they had left it before their pointless excursion into the desert.

The story of their trek would serve as a reminder that they survived by building Whogamawhickies, not by trying to recreate a Jug of Water.

I am here to tell you that Email sucks. I am also here to tell you that talk is back! While email is a cool and novel idea when you don’t have time to write a letter, stuff it in an envelope and snail mail it off to your pending Russian mail order bride, it is in fact a terrible communication mechanism.

My problem is that people are using Email in the wrong ways.  Email is a bad communication mechanism. Well actually email is not the problem, but rather it is people’s use of the medium that is the issue.

Many times I am seeing people trying to communicate and coordinate through the use of email even though their recipients are within a stones throw away. Many times email allows people to say things they would not otherwise say in person. People are also not quite the writers they could or should be and as such the communication is never quite clear.

I think the concept of Talk is being lost. Walk down and chat with me! Walk down and let us coordinate and walk through a problem together. Email seems only a way to say “Hey I did my part , you’re it!” It is becoming a way to have time and productivity vanish before your eyes.

I work in an office where everyone is within a nearly instant walking distance.  Even in this proximity I see far too many emails being used when s simple TALK would result in far more meaninful communication and miles more productivity.

The next time you are about to hit the send button please ask yourself if you could just as easily have a TALK with the person. I think you will find that it is much more effective and gratifying at the same time.

PS. Do not get me started with the “REPLY ALL” button. There are very few times when this button should ever be used.

• The State of the Economy.
• Vacations now suck.
• The world is supposed to end in 2012.
• Finding Meaning in our jobs.
• I had dinner with the Pope.

So how is it that I could even possibly bring this all together for you in a way that precludes you from thinking that I am a rambling wacko who drank far too many whiskeys in an over hyped, overstretched Cadillac Escalade Limousine last night.

How does one even begin to tell you about my dinner with the Pope last night followed by my inability (or actually unwillingness due to fear) to go up and do a Live Karaoke version of Big and Rich’s “Save a horse, Ride a Cowboy”? I think I could have killed it but why did I not force myself to do it?

BTW.. Watch the Video at this juncture and realize that this is how I want to live.

PS. If my “Save a horse, Ride a cowboy” dreams do not materialize then this is my backup plan… Click this now and let us dream together

Anyway….This morning it was far too painful to lay there in bed with a swollen head, so I decided that a quick dip in the pool followed by some coffee, eggs and grits would help me feel better. As I choked down some grit-covered eggs I read a few articles from the dailymashup.

Energy fears looming, new survivalists prepare

The best way to find meaning at work? Don’t look for it

Some days you can almost judge how accurate (or not) your view of the world is based upon how serendipitous all of the articles you read support your internal view of the world.

If you have read some of my previous blogs you would probably see that I have a dichotomizing approach to my writing where by I am positive and uplifting about some things and others I often appear to be like the 3 witches who told Caesar to beware of the Ides of March.

I am frankly, very concerned about the state of the world and I have been for some time. My visions for being like Big and Rich are not materializing.

The first sign is that vacations are starting to suck. When I was a kid, Disney appeared to me to be a magical fun place I wanted to go and hang out. Now I view it as I do most vacation destinations. Places that are designed to separate you from your money in more ways than can even be counted. From parking to drinking and eating, everything about vacations is an non-fun expensive hassle filled with rude, self-absorbed strangers that would rather run over you with their strollers than to be even a bit courteous.

I am also concerned about the crash course the American economy has been in. I think I recognized this earlier than most as I could see the writing on the walls of my Mcmansion. Many people thought I was crazy in my views that the value of everything would drop by 50%. Now that I am driving again after nearly 3 years of hiatus, the reality of our demise is even more clear to me.

Instead of strollers killing me at Disney, I now face the constant threat of being killed on the highway by mindless nobodies who would risk life and limb at 80 MPH to simply get in front of me at all cost. As a side note, it is funny that these people are those who would never do something like that in a grocery store line and in person. Why are they 10 feet tall and bulletproof in their Toyota motor cars? Are they drinking Early Times?

These people seem to be on their way to work where all the bad karmas of the current world have left them with no meaning and little ability to derive pleasure or value in anything that they are doing there.

Is it because the world is ending in 2012? Is it because telling fat jokes and throwing cookies off of my shoe into my mouth is no longer enough to excite and motivate people?

The people I am seeing are not deriving enough value in their jobs, in their moods and in their lives for the right reasons. Is getting more pay and better titles without putting in that extra effort really a means to an end for the betterment of their happiness?

So is it crazy that I am cultivating a garden, raising chickens and stockpiling canned Salmon (with way too much Mercury) and now gasoline? Am I crazy for fearing the world may be going to hell in a hand basket?

I had dinner with the Pope last night…..

So in the middle of my dinner last night I thought I could look to the Pope for some divine inspiration. See the Pope (or at least a life size bust of the Pope), sat in the middle of a large table in a round room in the “Bucca De Peppa” restaurant. I spun the large “lazy susan” so that he was looking directly at me and I asked him what “he” thought were the answers were to my bullet points of life. Needless to say, he did not know about that, but in the Spirit of Catholicism and all the wacky things it stands for, he somehow knew that it was about suffering.

I agreed, or at least, I did then because it took 30 minutes to deliver each of my drinks which, as the night progressed, got progressively clearer? So in those whiskey doldrums I had a chance or 13 to ponder his suggestions. Once I had a chance to think about it I began to realize that he may have had a point. In our safe little American bubble, we have not had to suffer in the amounts and proportions than should probably should be required by a human in order to intrinsically understand the ways of the world.

I think I started to understand the Toyota guy in his hurried rant, endangering his fellow travelers to save a precious few seconds in the drive to his meaningless job. It was a meaningless and unproductive job created by his own inability (or unwillingness) to suffer and to get himself ahead or to at least provide some sort of self-created meaning and enjoyment from his own efforts.

If he perhaps suffered for the betterment of himself, might it not make his own existence better for us all? While he works hard to save a few precious seconds on the freeway, could he not take that much effort to further his own learning, patience or common courtesy in everything he does? Could he perhaps take it upon himself to do more, work harder, read more, rub more, slow down and just maybe suffer a bit in order to make his own situation better? Maybe then his job would suck less and at the same time possibly create an environment of positivity and productivity for himself and everyone around him.

So after I pondered all of my bullet points I started to think that the Pope may have had a point at dinner last night. He may be on to something… Might we need to strive and suffer only for the betterment of ourselves? A new friend of mine mentioned a motto of his last night.

Dream, Suffer, Win…..

I think he may have been speaking to the Pope too.

The article “Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web” is no different. As I read the article however, I suddenly realized that I was “old”. Please don’t get me wrong by being offended by the term “old” as some sort of slander against age.

When I speak of being “old” I am speaking of the condition of where most of the people you work with, around and yes even FOR, are not of your generation. As I read this article I realized that I have officially crossed the divide where my generation (GEN X) has moved into the “waning” stage of our careers where we are now the “oldsters” in our respective environments.

As oldsters we begin to see a whole lot of things happen.

1) We begins to make comments about music, songs and tv which most people have no idea what we are talking about.

like hey, do you remember “Hong Kong Phooey“? As a side note to the “newsters” (Gen Y). I would like to to say that you will never be so inventive to come up with a Crime Fighting Dog, with the voice of a delta blues black man, who works as a Janitor and changes into a Martial Arts Superhero and who drives in a Jalopy while doing it!

2) At the beach, you begin to feel like “Chester the Molester” for looking at the modern women so you have switched to looking only at the “Cougars“.

3) Yes, we are balding. Most of the hair is not falling out but it is however being relocated to other places like our eyebrows.

4) We aint as good as we one was but we are as good once as we ever was. And for your listening pleasure, Toby Keith can say it better than I…

PS…Yes we can do it more than once, it takes some concentration, some effort and an hour in between… There is also the law of diminishing returns….

5) What was I talking about? Oh hell with it…

It was July of 2006.

I was living in the big house that Hurricane Charlie almost leveled. In that short span of 30-40 minutes I lost 47 trees. By the graces of god, none of those trees hit the house. This event set my wife and I off on a mission to make that house a mini-mansion. A McMansion if you will. We were estate creating.

Like a dumb ass, young buck with no sense at all, I refinanced my first and second mortgage into a new first, rolling in some debt, some cars, many “Froggers” trips and some of the past monetary sins that we are all guilty of.

It was then that the county, seeing this, felt the need and opportunity to raise my Taxes from $3,600 to $7,200. After looking at my finances and my earning power, it was then I realized that “This cannot continue”. I felt that the bubble that was our economy, our real estate market, was going to burst. I told my wife: Look around and everything you see WILL be devalued by 30%. I started telling everyone this. I think people thought I was wacko.
I walked out to the road in front of my Mcmansion and this is what I saw.

I said, this house will never be worth more than it is now. GET OUT NOW.

Well, looking back I see I was wrong. The Real Estate market would not fall 30%, it would fall 50%.

Now that you have reached this point, this is where you can begin to read the following article by Eric Janszen. Read this entire article and take a few steps back. I have long written about how I am fortunate to have seen and been a part of many waves or bubbles. This is yet another one I am and will be a part of.

“The Next Bubble — Priming the markets for the next big crash”

In this time I actually forgot how to log into this blog.

In any manner, we have a lot of catching up to do. When I logged into the blog this morning, I saw some of the posts I had laying in the hopper. This one was written almost 6 months ago now but I never published this.

It has only been recently that someone has coined the term “Enterprise 2.0″which is what really reminded me that I should be sticking to my guns. I realized that I am not as Whacky and as far out as I believed I was getting. After putting my blog and my research into the next wave of technology on the back burner while rebuilding Spawn, some of these items have come to light and have begun to be discussed by the general population.

When reading “this here blog” again after some months, I musts say that I feel a wave of gratification and contentment come over me. So in this light I have pressed the “publish” button on a few of the items in the “chute”. Here is one of those whereby I also have a butload of code and ideas that are also sitting around in the “you are a whacky asswipe” category that should likely have been published and explored further…… So without further adieu…..

In a recent post “This Software Cures Cancer”, I wrote about the doubt in my head about pouring myself into a software avenue or creation when it seemed as it was only a fruitless effort due to the many other guys that were out there surfing that wave already. See, it takes a lot of effort to paddle out there and catching a bad ride means a lot of energy wasted. So you want to make sure the wave you commit to is worth the paddle.In my searches for the next wave I have been following the rise of the Social Web, the Semantic Web, the Programmeable Web and Web 6.0.1 + tax.

I have also written about “The Alternative Minimum You” whereby I am raising the concerns about so much networked information about me flying around in this Social web.

Now, I want you to go back an look at these items closely so that we can all pay attention to the next wave coming.

It not a secret that the Social World of the Web is upon us and we are even to the point whereby we have “The Facebook National Presidential Debate”. This is no genius moment. It has reached general adoption. Information that is private and secure, whatever it may be, is information that is not making money.

Anything from a blog about “I’m Shy but I have a Big Deck”, to a blog on whether “Can Mullets Save the World?” or even one video of a girl in her underwear can spawn an entire sub-industry of money making and advertising ventures. The value of Joe Shmoe’s personal pictures, tastes, browsing history, friends has grown to be valuable commodity. The Subliminal Billboard of Life has arrived.

Due to these concerns about privacy and considering the recent MySpace issues with taunting and the misleading of online identities for bad intent we are seeing a backlash. This backlash is spawning a new awareness of the dangers of some much information proliferation.

There is a series of announcements and developments underlying this world however that is being undertaken that will vastly level the playing field in the areas of software development and opportunity.

Data Portablity .org

Open Social

These efforts will very much affect all of the players in the Social Web Industry because it is defining standards that will almost “commoditize” the concept of a “Social Site”. These concepts will develop standards on taking this information from site to site and will develop an Interaction Framework and set of Service Standards that will allow one to interact with these sites from anywhere or any device. The Social elements and interaction/awareness will be built into almost every product and service. All of these social elements will be built right into WordPress and anyone can run their own Social Network.

As I am writing this article a piece of ajax could be running in the background reading each word that I type and can easily search Flicker for pictures, Google for articles and Delicious or Digg for links and clouds related to my words. This type of functionality will be built into a lot of products due to these standards.

Everyone in the Social world seems to be focused on the Social Sites and using them as ways to provide a Home Page type of “Chat room on Steroids”. As I look back to that article “This Software Cures Cancer”, I realize that in a way I am exactly right. There are too many people surfing that part of the beach. That space is too crowded.

There are not many people however who are seeing that these concepts as having more far reaching value and opportunity in the Enterprise space.

Enterprise minded developers like myself have long sought after the elusive “Enterprise Service Bus”. To those ends we have poured ourselves into Frameworks, XML, Standards, Service Oriented Architecture, Best Practices and all things that make software more interchangeable, reusable and configurable. There have many attempts, but no one in the Enterprise ever reached the killer Enterprise Service Bus.

In all those years of trying we had a lot f issues to overcome because the standards, frameworks and open source offering were not in place as that are today. The browser was not there for us as it is today. In the 90’s the Enterprise folks ended up coming to the Web via Porn. The Porn people had to overcome many obstacles selling Porn

Few people are seeing that the social element, combined with portability and a service framework has fare more value, opportunity and profit in the enterprise space

So there is gold in them hills if you are someone who is paying attention to the wave that will be DataPortability and Google Social, Project Weave and others.

There are lots of facts and lots of figures about this and about that, but a quick litmus test of median income to median home price tells us we may still have a long way to go.

The only way I can do a litmus test is to pull back the curtains and take a look at your house. I can find out what you paid, I can see what you are driving and when and where you are working. I can take look at the large pieces of crap waiting to be sold. I can look at the desperation on Craigslist.

Sub-prime is not the sole problem here. Well that is where it all starts, but there is a complex web of blame. Everyone in this web will need to make major changes before we can even begin to see the bottom.

Blame Game

1. Ourselves — How did somewhere along the way we think we could afford so much. Someone did not do the math correctly, or we did the math correctly but left out a lot of the categories. Yes you can afford the payments on 280,000 provided you live with your mom where you do not pay any of the cost associated with life in general.

2. Cost of Selling — When a large amount of money changes hands, everyone has their grubby little fingers in the pies. Real Estate Agents, Title Services, Recording Fee, stamps, State Taxes have all escalated dramatically.

3. Local Governments — The boom in housing values has caused local governments to see dollar signs. Local taxes have gone through the roof due to the false escalation in values. Once the local governments taxing authority caught up to the boom by reassessing values, they established a tax basis floor for the property that will last a lifetime. In many places this basis is actually higher than what the property would sell for, if it could even be sold. An yes , I do have some figures on that one because the example is my own. That, however, will be its own article.

In the past few years houses have been selling like hotcakes even if they were not hot. Any 30 year old box of problems was escalating in value along with all the other houses.

Now that is gone. The Average price of a house will fall to some level that is directly related to peoples income levels. A simple litmus test is this:

The cost of a house in a lower end neighborhood can not outstrip the income earning ability of someone in the middle ranks of income. This same principle applies all the way up the neighborhood/income scale.

Here is an excerpt from a CNN article that show some cities that have this parity.

As I worked among the rows and rows of contractors I realized that we were creating the same piece of crap every time. The same processes were re-invented every time. There were also far too many of these issues and they were often brought about by whimsical requirements with no cost control. In the end the speed and frantic nature of what we developed anyways often caused the important SDLC (Software development life cycle) only to add complexity and time to the real business solution.

I know that many of my crony’s are sucking wind right now and I am not bucking the SDLC. I am just saying that it does play an impact on the speed of business. In my endeavors I was fortunate to be at the right place at the right time to see and experience all of this happening.

I could see that applications needed to be built quicker, faster, simpler and in a more standard way.

It was then that SPAWN was born. I did not know I was actually creating a CRUD framework for the web and for Oracle in particular. I could take ANY Oracle database and generate entire web applications with rich functionality. All Foreign Key parent references were rendered as drop down select elements and children tables could be added as links or as child detail grids. It was a complete web application from your database.

As I went on to explore the concepts surrounding code generation and auto application creation, I was able to see many “Technology Lifetimes” come to pass. In general these lifetimes seem to last only two years. After this time the collective world seems to come up with something that takes our focus and attention on to the next “thing” , “wave” or “technique”.

During these lifetime changes I began to see a pattern. The applications that were simple, arising from need and which were developed quickly, inexpensively and those created solely out of the mind of a few, were the most enduring and successful. The long and over complicated projects usually failed, lost funding or fell out of favor with new management. Often these “long process apps” were being revisited in 2 years in any matter with a new front end or a revamping of something that never really met the needs of the business.

I wrote in the Spawn product….

In the time after Spawn I spent a lot of time supporting the Timeshare, Telesales, Tour and Vacation Industry. This industry, particularly in the call center operations, needs to move very quickly. This is due to this being at the point where our telesales and dialer applications needed to interface, change and operate with each other in ways that change often. There are a lot of systems involved in extracting marketing campaigns from lead management systems and managing the flow and results into and out of the dialer operations is a large task.
I spent many of twilight mornings running the application as well as running long asynchronous reports to debug the whole process when something went wrong. In the interest of my own sanity I began to develop quick but full featured dynamic HTML applications to solve our problems. Often in an evening I was able to develop a quick tight solution in this manner. It would always turn out to be a handy instrument. These small widgets could be built in an evening, on my own time and done so with only the requirements of and opinions of Necessity. They cost the company nothing.

To develop a solution within the SDLC for many of the problems I dealt with would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming. We would not have solved the problem. We would have spent more money and wasted more time. These dynamic web application widgets might even turn out to be infrastructure marvels and boons for the environment.

An example of this was the Reporting infrastructure at CFI/Westgate Resorts.

Running any report in this environment would forbid the use of the application while the report actually ran and was rendered to the screen. Once the report was displayed, the responsibility was on the user to save the report. If the report was closed it had to be run again which meant the white screen of wait. This was expensive on the system and a waste of the users time on many fronts.

After many weeks of dealing with report issues after going live, I realized that I needed something that created less work for me.

Again, in an evening, I created a dynamic HTML application that solved the problem. I created and application that allowed the company to manage ALL of it’s reporting infrastructure, operations and reports from that console. The next morning every report in the company ran asynchronously so that the user could immediately return to the application while the report was running. Each user would be notified when their reports were finished and every user had a private queue of reports available to them anywhere and anytime in the application. The user would not need to even wait for the report to finish before exiting the application because it would be waiting in their queue when they next arrived or it would be emailed to them if requested. The report could always be accessed again instead of running the same report again.

For the DBA, it allowed them to see ALL running, schedules and failed reports in a color coded, easy to read manner. The display for them showed the report, it’s name, running statistics and also allowed the DBA group to view the queries running and to trace them or kill them from the console.

In one evening, with no cost, danger or effort to the company this disposable application became one of the most crucial architectural elements of the enterprise infrastructure.

I had lunch yesterday with a crony who reminded me that many of these widgets are still being used today. So in the end I am not so sure that the term “Disposable Applications” does justice to the concept as it may give the visualization of something of no value.

Rather than this being a concept that is applied to the application itself, it may be better suited to being a concept that is applied to the approach. It takes out of the process that which causes the most problems:

• People
• Complexity
• Process

Every table was playing video games! The food had ended long ago but each table had a kid or two playing some video game.

So now I go from carefree to agitated and for good reason. These people sat there, and sat there and sat there.

I realized that this was the dumbest concept ever created.

What they are saying is they are going to feature a concept whereby every table has the ability to play video games for the convenience of the patrons? While that is all cool and modern, it actually causes people to remain at the table for long periods of time. They are not spending and they are not eating. They are simply taking up a table that would both make the restaurant more money and keep my daughter from getting agitated and upset.

As I looked at the menu, the kitchen and the concept, I realized that everything in the restaurant was contrary to any sort of logic.

A large portion of the restaurant was taken up by this enormous counter that served no purpose but to act as a hindrance in giving your orders to the counter. So now people are stretching to reach over this counter on one end to give the cook the order. The rest of the bar is empty and useless. It may be there simply to block some of the Industrial whiteness coming from the stadium lights in the open kitchen concept.

Once you place your order you then pay for you meal and get a big number to carry around until you are given permission to sit down by the rosy cheeked teenager at the front.

So what they have been able to masterfully create is a combination of:

1. Pay first, making it difficult and less likely that you will buy more later at the table.

2. Stay longer and play video games

This is the dumbest concept ever created.

Even more to the point is that no matter whom you ask, NO ONE thinks about Pizza when they think of American Pie.

They are thinking about Stifler’s Mom.

I read an article about a precarious situation. The article spoke in first person. The narrator was a woman in a hut on a rain soaked hill in the jungles of southern Guam where she worked as a remote development engineer.

“The new people know not of me ergo the number of boxes my salary contains”. she said….

“I know not of the people either ergo the noise that I see being created so far.” I was captivated as she wrote in first person.
My communication comes…., Like an encrypted message to a sub off of the coast of the Gulf of Taanken, My orders. My directives..

These message are also encrypted. The actions that I should take are lightly specified and vague as to mission or purpose. I know not know why, who, how, or where all these things are being decided but they do not fit a pattern of logic, nor do they provide the reasons or the actions that unfold in the squinty eyed view of what has happened thus far.

I say I do not not know them and they know not of me. I do not have personal feelings against them but as a carpenter, if you saw me holding the saw backwards, would you not have professional agitation with me.?

The only time I spoke with them was in the beginning. I thought they were there to find about all the rich knowledge I contained about the industry and the history of the enterprise they stepped into. Really all I remember is the person interviewing me sprouting “I” just to hear himself say that. ” I will need you. I am going to. I have my ego in my hand. Look at it in awe and amazement! All this was without asking me anything about the existing business, my past or the rich history an very amazing and unique collection of other people in the industry being part of this team?

Since then I have seen a lot of knee jerk, and running downhill simply trying to bleep one cow unsuccessfully. The decisions seem to come from some magic place where a few, who hold power, seem to come up with ideas and a strategy that defy industry logic. This must all be coming from some room somewhere, not in or near where the real business is actually taking place.

Who has been talking with these people? How is it possible that they can consider decisions that have such clear indications, results and realities of the past that are completely contrary to good sense.

The actions and results thus far coming from the decisions amount to spinning noise and useless cycles of peoples time. They seem to be doing something with zest in vigor I do confess, but for what purpose I cannot say?

The environment contains 4 or 5 of the world leaders in both the both the particular Industry and in Enterprise technology. No one has more experience, success or skill than these members, yet no one has spoken to them and none of them knows a thing about the decisions and reasons where they are going.

The decisions now come from invisible mysterious locations and for reasons equally as miscommunicated and unplanned.

They rush forward designing large piles convoluted cut and paste code. Creating database separation, duplication. linking, snapshotting and triggering copies of and interfacing of all this garbage data to multiple places. All for nothing.

In the end they have 15 copies of the same data. The separation of the database is completely unable to stand on its own. Links, dependencies and code are scattered all over the place, linked and joined at the hip such that makes the new database completely dependent on the first. We know how to load 700,000 records in two seconds.

The problem is that someone somewhere in some room, new to the environment and grossly unaware of basic design, has come up with a design that involves 10 hours of processing only in the end managing to create duplicate data across those databases. Nearly all of this for reasons that could have been solved by the addition of a single column.

From the rain soaked hill in Southern Guam she continued…

On one hand they want to throw away all the history, ability, knowledge and capability for an outsourced an impossible solution. (So we think that is what they really want to do)

On the other hand they rush forward to create and build their own something that the system already did well . Additionally, along the way in that process, they broke, changed and altered the system in adverse ways trying to do the thing that the system already did.

They are no further along and they have broken good parts of the architecture doing nothing. For them it really amounted to Enterprise 101 where they got to play and dabble in the environment..

I am sure they are masters of understanding the enterprise from a stock or takeover high-level point of view. From an architecture standpoint however, their actions appear to us to show them making novice decisions and some obvious mistakes about things we have learned in the past.

We know not why they make the decisions they do.

And they don’t know us. And we don’t know them and therein lies the problem. There is not a clear communication of the REAL intent. Are you going angling to slash costs through departmental retirement and outsourcing, raise the income figures through a push in sales and a push in collections for temporary gain, only for the preparation for the sell?

To them, she directed the following question:

Are you planning to:
2-5 – 10 million for transitioning (in their minds) the enterprise to a third party system outsourced system so that your operations will look lean and trim so that the company looks better in the sell?

She went on and on in the article and I was entranced…….

“I have been there and I have seen the sell” .. she said from the Rain soaked hill in Southern Guam….

I have have made and received the pitch for either venture capital and the lock stock and barrel company purchase.

Here is the the worth more dead or alive question.

Did you see the company as undervalued when you purchased it, knowing that you could pick it up, clean it up, re-brand it, rearrange the balance sheet and highlight the income statement such as to make it all look the more valuable?

The metaphor is that those that helped get you get the money to buy the company know simply how to do it again. This time for a much higher dollar. They go out through the opposite end of the transaction from which they came.

2-3 years in not a bad time frame to make a cool 500 million from “Flip This Enterprise”. A fun several years where you come in, get to be in charge, make decisions that only look good only on the cover page, never having expecting to stand the test of time.

During this ride you and your friends will be collecting a big paycheck the whole time.

Is this worth it even if one of the items was squashing a foundation of the company infrastructure by making decisions reasons contrary to the going concern only make the company look better?

“I do not have a single problem with this at all” she said from a rain soaked hillside in southern Guam….

She does not know what they are thinking or why they are making the decisions they are making? The decisions and output thus far clearly come from the minds of those who have not been in, on, or near to the discipline for which they are engaging.

She, considering herself a craftsman (so to speak), and is affected by these seemingly poor or novice choices and mistakes.

No one has spoken up about it in fear and unknown.

We do get the twilight “I love you email” emails at Christmas about being a big family on a mission, but no one speaks to the truth about the lacking of logic in the decisions they are making.

How can you have pioneers of the industry with experience and visible evidence of success, doing exactly what they are trying to do, and all the while being so Machiavellian that you will not even ask those pioneers a single thing? I think that is short sighted, she continued.

Go to any CIO of any of the largest players in the world you want to play in. Ask Them. Who is the most experienced, the most dedicated, most able team of people who are most likely to solve my problem.

“Even developing from a hut, on the side of a rain soaked, muddy hillside in southern Guam, give her a wi-fi card and she is the baddest bitch on the planet.”

Now, some time later I am a professional and I see the same mistake being made in decisions concerning software development environments.

A friend of mine works for a company who has new management/ownership. In an understandably natural bit of ego filled bravado, the new folks are coming in ready to kick some ass and take some names. With new ownership comes new leadership and and a supporting cast of friends.

See, changes in leadership, especially in the top ranks of a technology or software development concern, are always accompanied by friends.

It is very natural that when you control a flow of money, goods, power or influence, the first order of business it to place your friends or your common concerns plainly in the path of such graces. A new CIO/CEO means there will be a new consulting company tied to all the new people. These are the friends. I have seen this on at least 10 occasions. In your new position, you naturally want to flow the money to the people who you think/feel will get the job done. After all, you know them better than the people which you have adopted right?

It is also a natural behavioral tendency to begin to espouse change when you take over in an absolute way. I will wow you with how many anecdotes, blue sky and buzzwords I can combine about ego, change and silos. I will show you how smart I am by immediately talking about Enterprise Service Bus before I really even understand your business.

See in my friends company, the software environment has kept this company alive. The company has seen the strong hold of power and influence change on about 5 occasions and each time he sees the same behavioral traits, situations and decisions occur. Through it all my friend says his boss has been able to ride the wave of change and endure of the power of the day. Because this was an operating enterprise of considerable size, his boss had no choice, but to architect the entire system to be robust, full featured and always available with virtually no down time. In hard times, processes had to be developed through necessity, hard knocks and little funding. Necessity was the mother if all invention. The business had to keep running using whatever worked best. He had to balance all of the objectives of many real but counter balancing forces and spheres of influence.

The software grew over the years by maturing inside of the business it was running. The software supported nearly all segments of the business. The infrastructure grew to be an impressive collection of very standard, high performance devices, software and well designed systems that could actually be maintained and enhanced flexibly by only a small group of people. Even in the face of drastic change in management and company direction, the same small group was able to handle maintenance, significant enhancements and a tremendous amount of governmental regulation and internal auditing and company strife. The architecture has come to embody industry experience and maturity that cannot be obtained any where but the school of hard knocks.

The environment is powered by inexpensive Linux blades running Oracle Real Application Clusters.

The application server environment is all Apache.

The front end code in HTML and JavaScript. The application has made excellent advances in Ajax Technology and has migrated many core processes to this new paradigm.

The reporting infrastructure is a complete open source implementation with asynchronous queuing and schedule management. It has all but completely replaced Oracle Reports in the enterprise.

Tomcat containers are used effectively by this architecture in many ways.

1. As a Reporting Infrastructure Module, asynchronous multi-threaded run time environment.

2. As a high availability print server and document merge system using Open Office and Java

3. As socket, java and URL connection modules to interfaces of all types.

The Oracle database system they use provides a billion times more everything than any software ever created.

1. The powerful database with all of the row level locking, concurrency, consistent read, availability, fail over possible

2. Contains a full featured programming environment. Close to data and unmatched in speed.

3, Can run or call ANY java inside or outside the db.

4 . Can make any URL call from inside the database

5. Can do anything with XML natively

6. Acts as our job daemon, queue manager and notification system in at least 50 ways.

7. Has ability to be called natively directly as a URL.

8. Replicates and backs itself up.

9. Has native encryption of any type of information and is 100X faster than any other solution.

10. The entire environment can be replicated and moved at will into a number of supporting development, test and user environments with little effort or configuration change.

The application that is written upon this environment has endured the years of change and has grown to support nearly every aspect of the enterprise.

It contains knowledge and industry experience at levels that could not be replicated in todays money in any amount. There are literally 100 million dollars in knowledge contained in this software system. Years of heavy spending on application development in an enterprise setting has allowed this environment to leverage the platform to satisfy an unlimited number of users and reports.

In the heyday of the late 90’s, he says the company did put a lot of money into the design of this infrastructure. It had to be this way in order to satisfy the levels of service required by the enterprise. In those days the hardware costs in addition to software and OS licensing alone could have been called “Mega Millions” because that is all that was available.

Now, some years later, many of those costs have been absorbed and should never again recur. The company has used this experience and strong platform to create a very solid and advanced design. Due to advances in open source and inexpensive hardware, the application’s ability to change has been enhanced and many ways as many of the giant overhead costs have melted away. The process is now easily manageable with very little recurring cost.

Now there are several factors that typically play together with the new people and the decisions they make based upon their history and the people surrounding them. These factors are:

• Look how smart I am
• The suck up
• I play in the yard I feel comfortable in.

So the new people are coming in, the axes are falling and names are being taken. The people existing in the company know this is not the time for speaking up. So what happens is the new people, in professing how smart they are, are considering throwing money into a yard that that they feel more comfortable with. A yard that their friends play in. A technology or paradigm they feel comfortable in.

No one will speak up because they are too busy trying to look good to the new guys. I do not blame them. Who is willing to have a Jerry Maguire moment in this economy? It is much easier for one, in the face of no choice, to join them in bashing the old system. It is very easy for a single person to highlight the poor parts of the system in a moment of ingratiation. Most people are not aware that entire Doctoral classes and thesis could be written and lectured upon about any one the thousands of entrepreneurial or architectural reasons that go into a successful well oil development environment and the designs for such. What has been learned over the years in my friends environment is a strategic advantage with unlimited value. There is nothing else like it. My friend says that there are even fewer people that could lay it out in enough detail to help them understand why. Few people contain the deep industrial knowledge combined with real experience in enterprise architectures.

Let me tell you that it is a common misconception that spending a cool $60 Million will guarantee you anything. See my friend says that the new influences, in spouting instant blue sky, feels that the current system is outdated and old and the company is looking to purchase a software to run the entire business.

They are considering a Fat Client Application for their 1000’s of user around the world. These fat clients will each run sessions of the following pieces of software.

1. The fat client software

2. Microsoft Word

3. Crystal Reports

The company says it will run the 1000’s of users through virtual sessions using Citrix or Terminal Server.

One the back end they will still need to license SQL SERVER and IIS.

In order to do this they will need racks and racks of Microsoft machines and licenses. They will get about 10 – 12 users on each box before they will need another one. They will need an army of them before you start making any changes to data. It will lock up constantly with concurrent access and with any amount of hardware, in this type of configuration, will be brought to its knees from the reports of just one location.

My friend knows this all too well because they used to run this same technology 10 years ago. It did not work then and will not work now. You cannot apply work group technology to enterprise requirements. In the end, as we said, it is likely that people feeling comfortable playing in the yard they are comfortable with. This can be large mistake if one is coming from small scale demands to enterprise realizations. You will find no one running an enterprise system in this manner using this configuration.

In the end they will have to spend a year of development and migration before they ever roll out one location. At this time they will realize that the fat client, base table forms, SQL SERVER and the whole rest of the mess will simply not run with enterprise concurrency. This will be true no matter how good the development process is that manages the product.

In addition to this, they will have just signed on the dotted line for many years of giant licensing and support payments before they have established any real results. In the end they will not even be able to make changes to the software on their own terms.

During the attempts to recreate the system into this new software paradigm, the existing application will continue to be used and enhanced to meet the needs of the business as it has before. Urgent business needs will evolve as small skunk works projects, where the existing application is used to meet the “now” needs of the business by adapting as it has.

This noise will continue as large amounts of money are spent and time is wasted repeating history in a process that has played out several times in the same environments history before.

This process will last upwards of 2-3 years before the natural business cycles and pressures usher out the current the spheres of influence out and welcomes in another. Once a company has spent several years and lots of capital with little results to the “friend” consulting company, those expenses along with a hoard of unnecessary software licensing choices end up dissolving into the cycle of big business software cycle of life.

I am here to tell you big spending in software development equals big disaster. Big spending means too many people involved with making too many decisions they should not necessarily be making. If they were not making the decisions, then how would they justify the amount of money that is being directed in their direction?
Even at 60 Million, this mistake will be like chasing pennies while dollars slip through your fingers. Do not fail to see a “Diamond in the rough” and go digging large holes in speculation about one site fits all software that has far less experience than your own. A few highly paid and well intentioned developers can create anything in any amount of time given and will be far superior to any large, hasty slash and burn approach.

My friend stressed that he does not have a bit of disdain for the new leadership at all. He says that they are all well intentioned and their hearts are into their mission 100%. Being a believer that software development is as much behavioral as it is technical, he understands what is happening is a natural evolution as the individuals goes through this “takeover mentality”.

“In a bit of irony” he said, the situations that were occurring presently in his company, are exactly the same situations that played out a decade ago, at the his very same company, with the very same software company they are looking to replace the current system with. It is just a new set of guys.
“Are you going to have a Jerry Maguire moment?” I asked him.

“No”, he replied. and so the cycle continues….

I muscled up to the bar where I intended to have spot of whiskey while I waited for my food to come. As I was mounting the stool the waitress was already handing me a menu which I found to be odd. Usually, bar etiquette, as seen in many movies, starts out with a “Whacha Havin” and menus are often provided only by request.

“I will have a double whiskey and ginger”, I said, “and preferably a low grade rotgut”. “Nope” was all she replied. Well I also found this to be odd and thankfully the guy next to me leans over and says, “Not in Utah”. “What does Utah have against Rotgut low grade bourbon” I asked.

As it turns out, Utah has nothing against rotgut bourbon but they do have an issue with you having a double. They are also concerned that you only consume liquor when you are eating and you are limited to 3.

Well thats not a big deal, they are looking out for me, I ordered some food, so I will oblige and “Ill just have a single….short and please do make my ribs to go”, I say. “Nope” was all she said again. Once again the guy next to me came to my confused rescue. “Not in Utah”, he said. Now this is getting crazy, I just wanted to enjoy a spot of bourbon to warm my belly while waiting for my ribs so the ribs and I could go back to the hotel and be with ESPN and the towels.

So at this point the normal interactions I am used to (bellying up to the bar, ordering doubles, getting ribs) are not occurring with any success. I said, so I can go buy a bottle of Early Times at Walgreens, drive down the snow covered interstate, drinking bourbon, eating ribs, but I cannot have a sip of whiskey and eat some ribs in my room?

“Nope” said the guy next to me.

The only place you can by liquor is from the State Liquor Store.

” That outrageous!”. So what you are saying is that Utah only sees the glass as half full? Yes it seems and whats in it is all theirs too.

Now I am in a quandary . What shall I choose? Be a conformer, have this half drink, eat here and forgo the ESPN?

I had a tear in my eye as I watched her pour out that golden whiskey. In the festival of ribbing afterward, I managed to get some sauce on my Haines which I could not explain to my wife. It was all worth it because I knew in my heart that I did not conform.

The next time you see one of those signs, stop and take a moment to look at the houses around you.

Chances are that one of the houses you are looking at is indeed in foreclosure.

The process of finding foreclosures is really simple. These records are public information and can be searched at the drop of a hat.

Here are the steps from an example in my County:

Step 1. Search the internet for the desired County Courthouse Web site

Step 2. Find the “Search Public Records Area”.

Step 3. Find out what document type the county uses for it’s LIS PENDENS (”Suit Pending”) Filings.

Step 4. Search these document types and add any date parameters.

The results are a bit like looking at a train wreck as you are clearly able to read the personal details publicly.

It is a sad realization when you realize these people are being targeted in broad daylight and in plain view of their neighbors and friends.

Now you know why that sign is there.

I was amazed at the impact demand for biofuels is having on the global food prices and quantities.

Are they that good? Are they that Cheap? Are they that much better for the environment?

Let us take a quick moment to ponder a few questions.

If most commonly used biofuels are really just a combination of 85% regular fuel and 15% biofuel like ethanol, then is 15 % really worth it if it is having an additional global impact other than the impact of burning stuff has in the first place?

Well if we look at the that 15%, I am sure that there are quite a few expenses and involved so this benefit would be eroded even further. It surely cost something for the raw materials. It must also be just as costly to transport it, process it and combine it for consumption. I would imagine that it is also quite an expensive process, since biofuel creation is relatively new.

So are all these efforts really worth it in the end if we are causing yet other problems?

1. Every time it rains my gutters could act as small hydroelectric stations.

2. Those metal spinning vents on the top of the roof that looks like a pinwheel should be putting a small amount of energy into the grid.

3. Common household batteries should be recharged through the use of friction created while braking our vehicles.

4. My gutters (while generating electric) should be collecting all water into tanks which I use for flushing toilets.

5. Is not there a way to have a chemical water heater?

6. I could collect water into a large tank which was raised high into the air through the use of a stationary bicycle. The weight of the water combined with gravity and gearing would slowly lower, spinning the gearing mechanism, turning a small motor, which was generating electricity for my electric car.

7. The refrigerator door should generate a small amount of electricity during it’s opening and closing. In my house it does this thousands of times per day.

8. If the Earth was a giant potato, would we ever have to worry about electricity again?

9. If I mix bleach and ammonia I get some crazy explosions and chemical reactions. Is there not a way to capture this? Like how much electricity could we generate from a whole farm of middle school volcano projects?

10. How much electricity could I generate by the force created by shaking up a 2 Liter of Coke.

10a. If Coca Cola and Pepsi are so American, then why do they go by the Liter and not the gallon?

Just a link should do.

Books, ideas, articles, art and music do however get our minds running feverishly about.

Inspiration gets us thinking, spouting and typing, picking and marking feverishly about in our creative outlets. I think some good quotes, ideas, music or art in the past has probably have come from the creations of people who originally intended to add only 1 simile, metaphor, quip or anecdote in response to good ideas and to add a little bit of AMEN BROTHER to what they had experienced.

So we cannot help it and we feel me must expound.

After reading “Great Programmers” by Bram Cohen, I was having a “You are preaching to the Choir” moment about one of the points when I jotted down the title of this blog. I am not claiming that I or this article is great, but rather that is just the last thing I can remember doing before starting this note.

Now, while originally intending simply to “Digg” the article, inspiration takes hold and comment must follow. Often this Hallelujah Moment is accompanied by divine inspiration and comment, which then in turn leads us to create our own metaphors. Understanding metaphors in ourselves help us to DEEPLY understand the true meaning of something.

“A cohesive design does not an Army create. Ready, Fire , Aim!”

This thought came to mind as I read a section of Bram’s article. I did create this proverb and I have already sent a letter to Confucius Inc. I must say that I did use the “Mashup” approach whereby I combined elements of many different proverbs into one that suits my own. It is a little bit like Hip Hop and the use of Sampling.

My inspiration came when I found the metaphor in Brams’ document which I will “sample” below.

“What truly separates the great programmers from the journeyman programmers is architecture. What’s puzzling is that architecture appears to be one of the simplest parts of the whole process, requiring in most cases little more than some pencil and paper calculations and a willingness to change.”

Is it not a bit of a metaphor in itself that deep meaning, understanding and truth can sometimes only be garnered through metaphor?

From the designs of Leonardo da Vinci to the designs of advanced enterprise architectures it is funny how it really does come back to the pencil.

Two Examples come to mind.

1. The written portion of your Law School Application should not be written in Pencil (on wide lined notebook paper) (ripped out of the binder).

2. Sending an email to your boss that you had the answer all of their problems! You told your boss all that was needed was a pencil.

“Fancy graphs and lines do nothing to convey the deep experience and reasons for this architecture” , I wrote…

I have done my best designs with a pencil but both of the above are NOT examples of where it all comes back to pencils. Both of the above are mistakes I have made.

I am not here to discuss pencils, da Vinci, software developers or even applying to Law School with pencils. I came here to tell you about my Dad.

See my dad used to have a lot of adages, maxims and aphorisms.

Here are some of the Philosophical sayings I remember my dad saying ALL then time:

1. The Good Fairy does not come on Friday.

2. You cant take excuses to the bank.

I hated them.

As I grew older I started to feel exactly what he meant and the message he was trying to give to me. Those metaphors (and best not get all Eliglishly Technical on me on where they be Metaphors or not) are something I now live by. My Dad may or may not have invented them, but he adopted them. So have I, as sure as death and taxes.

As such, creating our own metaphors, truisms or Confucius sayings often lead others to have their own eureka moments. Though many times they are communicated through the use of a bit of playful sarcasm, it is done in sincere attempt to pass down a true understanding. This process then repeats itself.

He told me a story when I was young (but ready).

There are two bulls standing high on a hill.

The young bull says to the big bull, “Hey lets run down there and “bleep” one of those cows!”.

The big bull says to the young bull, “No son, lets walk down there and “bleep” them all”..

The points and subtleties in my words here are vast and many and they really have nothing to do with programming or being a great one, which I am not. They do not have to do with the the Army nor pencils or bleeping cows from high on a hill.

The point here is that there is a vast world of knowledge that we can create within ourselves from reading, creating, penciling, picking, bleeping and adopting our own metaphors. You do not have to explain them or claim them, reference them or blame them. When it comes time you will understand them. When it comes time you can choose to live them. When it comes time you can hand it down through the generations.

Put a little Metaphor in your own truth. Live it, Love it and let the cows run free. Pass it on.

Thanks Dad.

It seems that the sticking point was resolved when the Developer promised the City of Oviedo:

“This project is not an affordable housing project. There has been some confusion with this, but it was never intended to be and is not going to be”.

Interestingly enough, The Deputy Mayor is quoted in this Article:

“I think it is a win-win for everyone involved. Mr XX will move forward and build his high-end quality town home project with a few minor alterations”.

So what we can see here is that the concept of “Affordable Housing” which is:

1. On one of the highest and driest and most beautiful pieces of Oviedo land .

2. Next to other affordable housing already.

3. Next to a beautiful park named Boston Hill Park.

Is something that is completely out of the question.

Now let me stop here and take a moment and give you a bit of history someone gave to me. It only took me seconds to find this when looking for some history on Boston Hill Park. Please read this spectacular article in its entirety about the area that is being developed.

The Oviedo Historical Trail by Steve Rajtar.

BHP.67….Boston Hill Park

This area began as a black settlement in the late 1800s. It is named after Butler Boston, who homesteaded east of here, and who donated five acres to the town to use for what is now called the Boston Cemetery. Boston is credited with budding succulent Temple orange trees in Oviedo.

Boston met Henry Jackson, a black raised by a white family, and persuaded him to settle in Oviedo. Jackson homesteaded 40 acres from 1911 to 1918 on both sides of Long Lake, east of here. The area became a predominantly black settlement, now known as Jackson Heights. For 25 years he worked for Oliver P. Swope and N.F. Lezette, clearing land.

Another memorial for Boston was the naming of Butler Boston Court, a low-rent family housing development erected in 1956 by the Seminole County Housing Authority in the east end of town.

Boston played an important part in Florida’s agricultural growth. In 1896, a fruit buyer brought budwood for the Jamaica orange, and Boston was employed by J.H. Lee, J.H. King and R.W. Lawton to bud their trees with the new strain. About 1900, budwood from King’s grove was taken to a grove in Winter Park, and in about 1915 it was recognized by W.C. Temple, president of the Florida Citrus Exchange as something important. The orange, renamed as the “Temple”, became a mainstay of the Florida citrus industry.

End paraphrase…

So after reading this I was simply amazed and astounded that the largest issue being raised here is the assurance that these are NOT affordable housing.

However if you do promise to build “High End” town homes, then everything is A OK.

In my next article I will detail how the term “High End Town Home” can move wetlands as easily as it fails to consider history.

I read the following quote in CNN this morning:

“direct and rapid income tax relief” to boost consumer spending. “Letting Americans keep more of their own money should increase consumer spending, and lift our economy at a time when people otherwise might spend less.”

I am not sure of the statistics but I have reckon to say that there are likely a lot of people that this made very happy.

I, however do not believe that this makes sense?

1. Tax Relief

Tax relief would be a imply an actual reduction in taxes such that I could expect to pay less of them year after year.

2. That they intend for you to spend on consumer items. (ie. Stereo, beer, movie or cheap cruise!)

3. But tout that they are letting you keep your money.

4. While at the same time spending it.

So it seems that the justification is that due to this tax relief:

Americans will be saving their rebate while at the same exact point in space-time, they are spending it on frivolous consumer items even in the face of High Gas, Home, Tax, Insurance and Cruise prices. So it is a WIN-WIN for everyone!

That is Genius!

Well I am thinking about what got us into this mess in the first place and correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t frivolous spending even in the wake of High Tax, Home, Insurance and Cruise prices what got us into this mess in the first place?

So please let us call this for what it is:

“I will pay you 300 dollars if you like me”.

I noticed that if my mood was hurried and agitated that I would often be rewarded by being given a lot of inopportune Red traffic signals. If my mood was more relaxed and I was in a good place and I was driving to the music and smelling the morning air, then I would be given a long stream of perfectly timed green lights.

Over the years I have tried to master and cultivate this dark force and I do think that I am making some real progress. Where once I would encounter 30 or so red lights, I have gotten it down so I don’t ever even have to put my foot down on the Harley.

Once aware of this phenomenon, I began to see that the Traffic Signals really do read our minds! I do not think this is a vast conspiracy to turn us all into zombies or anything weird like that. I do however think it is a natural occurrence of evolution that just kind of happened by chance.

Like Meteors and Amino Acids or peanut butter running into chocolate, life in these traffic signals just kind of evolved life and have grown to be silent protectors of our daily mental flow. The Red lights, like the green lights are all telling us something important about ourselves for that moment. The next time you are given red light when you are mad, please stop take a moment and look to the power of the traffic signal to tell you a little something about yourself.

Let the power of the Traffic signal be your own “Dr Phil.” and help you to be a better person. If you take a moment to use what the Traffic Signal has given, you will quickly find that this power can turn around your CHI, KARMA, LUCK and GAURANGA. Keep this power with you as you move through all the traffic lights in life. You will quickly find that all of the Traffic lights will be turning green as you approach.

8 2008-01-12
8:18:15 am …….  I wrote

So you want buy a Home?

So maybe you want to make a decision of buy versus rent.

Maybe you are here just wondering how far the housing market will fall?

Everyone certainly has opinions but I am here to tell you that simple math tells you exactly how far it still has to fall.

Take for example in the quaint town of Oviedo, FL where would like to park your family in a 3 bedroom home of average taste and size.

There are 147 properties for same in the 250,000 to 300,000 range. These are affordable to you provided:

You have good credit (680 – 720)

You have $50,000 – $60,000 in cash to spare for your 20% down.

You are lucky enough to be able to find Homeowners Insurance for even $2,400 yearly.

You are prepared $3,200 in taxes to the City and County.

Even before having the privilege of making these payments for 30 Years you will have to endure a host of other expenses and fees.

Home Inspection

Pest Inspection

Survey

Appraisal

Each of these items is about $300 each and each are usually required to be paid by you..

If you are not fortunate enough to have $50,000 – $60,000 laying around then you will likely be paying a lot more for your mortgage including Mortgage Fees, Points and Private Mortgage Insurance.

There are also a lot of other closing costs to consider as Taxes and many other escrow items that must be collected in advance for the entire year when you purchase the home.

If you do not have the 20% down payment plus all the prepaid items and closing costs then say hello to my little variable rate! In any case let us take a look at the real monthly numbers here.

According to my friend Karl, your monthly nut will be about $2,129.93 for the next 30 years.

At the end of all this stress, you have likely exhausted all of your possible cash resources in life and given many thousands of dollars in fees for your new home.

Please do not think that a $300,000 house in Oviedo is some magical dream.

The likelihood is that you are actually inheriting a 1980’s piece of garbage and a lot of problems (Yes even with a home inspection). So now you have devoted your entire possible cash savings and signed the dotted line to a VERY LARGE MONTHLY NUT for the next 30 years for a “Dodge Omni” type of house with the door handles falling off.

It will likely need new carpet and paint just to get the smell of Strangers out of your new home.

I also don’t know if anyone mentioned to you that in most communities in this area, there is a Homeowners Association and whose dues are between $100 and $200 per Month!

Now, if we look at the rental of the same exact house.

There are many to choose from and you can get 4 bedrooms and a pool for $1500.

Paint and Carpet are one of the first things you can ask for and it will not cost you a dime. When the AC breaks it is someone else’s problem.

Don’t let the pundits scare you by NOT being a homeowner, but you please tell me the position you would rather be in.

As a Homeowner:

1. You are a homeowner.
2. You have 0 cash assets and a monthly nut that takes up most of what you earn.
3. You have just spent about 10,000 on fees and costs that have 0 Value.
4. You think you can, will or want to keep this up for 30 years.

OR

As a Renter:

1. You have $60,000 in the bank or in investments earning between 6 and 12% annually.

2. Your monthly nut is $700 lower than it would if you had purchased the home which could be invested or used for Quality of life.

3. No Tax, HOA, Maintenance Expenses, hassles.

So when you read about how far the Real Estate and housing market will fall, please read with a grain of salt. It only takes some simple math about how far off the reality bandwagon we all fell over the past 5 years.

Keep your cash and rent.

Some of the Notables are:

RateMyMullet

Mullet.Com

MulletMadness.Com

During my recent visit to the Bahamas I noted that many Bohemian men seemed to have a small tuft hair at the base of their skulls in which they would decorate in some fashion. It just like a small Hare Krishna type of thing whereby they would decorate this tuft in various ways similar to that of Keith Richards hair and more recently Cat Jack Sparrow.

I, being culturally sensitive and mullet aware, found this to be an interesting movement taking place. I continued seek out another example of this trend but once I had made it a mission, i could no longer find the elusive Doo for a photo.

As I was leaving the Island I was doing the Tourist Parade back to the boat when alas, I saw it! I was being swept along with the crowd as I was pulling out my camera and I was just barely able to click the button with my arm outstretched over a family from Norway before being sucked out the door. I was not sure if I would be able to make out the small cranial landscaping feature in the shot until I got home several days later.

After I got home I was able to download our pictures and low and behold, I had gotten the shot!

The one I caught had been finely brushed out for a day at the market. After some research and several inquiries with the World Mullet Organization (WMO) I realized that I had captured the first reported sighting of rare form of Mullet known as the “Hare Mullet”!

The original Hare Mullet goes back to the man by the name of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. Sri was a monk in India who founded the Hare Krishna sect 500 years ago. He was, according to the Urban Dictionary, the 15th Century avatar of the supreme Krishna. It is rumored that his nickname was Gauranga which seems to mean happiness and “Gold”.

The Hare Krishna have long been angered with the World Mullet Organization for not recognizing their own hair (Bald with a rat-tail) as an official Mullet species. They argued that it was indeed a “Rat Tail Mullet”.

See, the Hare Krishna have longed used this word Gauranga in their chants, teaching and proverbs in an effort to bring peace on Earth through the Mullet that they had created. They felt that if they brought happiness to the world, that their own version would be accepted by the WMO.

The WMO argued that the Hare Version of the Mullet does not meet “The official Mullet Guidelines“, because the long part of the hair is not at least 3″ longer than “The other parts of the hair”. So the Hare have long since held a grudge against the WMO for their stance and the Hare Mullet was rumored to be extinct.

After being in hiding for some 200 years though it seems somehow this Mullet has been spotted on a growing number of Bohemian Men who have adapted the original Hare Hair to one that does meet the guidelines. They have done this by actually including other hair in addition to the official Mullet component that they already had.

So next time you see them chanting at the Airport, you will know well that the Hare Krishna are really just chanting “Be Happy” in an effort to bring about world peace in an effort to have their trademark hair accepted as an official Mullet.

One can wonder if only the WMO had only accepted the Hare hair into the Mullet Community 500 years ago, would we all not be shouting Gauranga and be experiencing global golden happiness now?

Well, actually it was not the Bantu Wind but it was it’s long lost cousin “The Royal Empress” as show at right below.

I love my wife so I was trying to act cool and in her words to “just go with it”. So I managed to park the car in the parking garage which is about 15$per day. When you go on a cruise there are a lot of steps in the process all of which start inside some warehouse at the port and you should be prepared for a lot of paperwork for a family of 5. You had better have your passport for the Bahamas and you better get it way in advance of your trip. or it will cost you over a hundred bucks per person to rush them (in a month or so). Remember I am dealing with a family of 5.

So once you have completed all of this preliminary paperwork, you can begin the cruising process!

No you can instead proceed to the next counter where they:

1. take all of your belongings off to the ship.

2. They separate you and your credit card before you are allowed to proceed any further.

Once that is completed, then and only then can you proceed to the next step is where you see the little yellow sign that reads the following:

“Due to the high prices of Gas and Port Charges, we are forced to charge an additional 15$ per person, per night on your credit card.

So, now that I have been charged for the cruise and I have driven 250 miles, parked my car, separated from my baggage they then tell that they are going to steal 150$ from me.

As you begin to move through this multi step process you can begin to see that every other step in the entire process is designed to separate you from your money. After they stole 150$ from me at the first station, they usher me to the room assignment table. The room assignment sheet shows you how far under the water and next to the engine your room will be. If you do not like that they do, for your convenience, offer room upgrades for only several hundred more per night. You can get a old fashioned port hole in your room for 50$ per night.

After your room selection you will be headed for the wine station. This is the wine that you wish to have with your 4 star dinner and yes, you have to pay dearly for the wine. The general rule of thumb is to take any type wine and double the normal price. When asked what type of wine I would be selecting I think he was dumbfounded at my response of “Early Times” please.

The next step after the wine selection is the food seating. At the food seating table you are given your seating assignment and time for dinner. For your convenience, there is all the food displayed in brilliant colors and succulent delights with pictures of happy people eating it in a dining room that only exists on the big ship to the left. This, of course, is NOT the food you will get. The pictures are of the “upgraded” food which you have the option to pay dearly for at this station. This is merely an “I told you so” moment whereby they have established an alibi for the cafeteria food that you will be receiving as a non selector of the upgraded food package.

Once we found out that we were at Table 62 at 6:30, we could then move onto the next section. Here is where we get professional photos taken as we board the ship. For our convenience, the pictures of how angry you look after being raped for 150$ will be on sale in the ships photo gallery. 1X 2 stamp size thumbnails will be on sale for 40$.

After the picture session you can then (no, not go on the ship) goto the liquor sales area where you can buy duty free liquor. Now you are talking my language! Once you pay for the liquor however, you are then informed that you can pick up you liquor just before your trip has ended and everyone else is already fleeing the ship.

After all of this, you can can actually get on the boat albeit a little liquor-less, lighter of pocket and with some angry photo of your mug on display for all of your co-cruisers to see.

Now we are on the boat, we are cruising, inst this great? If you have ever been on a cruise ship you know that the rooms are a bit of a shock. They are so very small to say the least (unless for your convenience you opted for the upgrade). You will want to go directly to your room because your bags will be delivered and placed outside your door for everyone to rifle through.

Once in your room you will quickly become acquainted with “The Foghorn”. Inside each closet size room, there is an industrial speaker whereby announcements are made 24 hours a day. The announcements mostly consist of the ways they will take you money. A popular announcement is the dire necessity of booking some on shore activity with the activity desk. On shore activities are offered for your convenience but if you don’t hurry, they will fill up quickly. They tell you, in not so many colorful words, that if you do not book an excursion, you will be shit out of luck and will have no fun.

So after the barrage of announcements from the in-closet speaker from some guy who sounded like Alec Baldwin, we can then enjoy the cruise! No. After the barrage of announcements you are notified that you have to put on the largest life preserver ever made and then proceed to a practice drill which is required for everyone by law. At this exercise you get to stand around for an hour with this giant life preserver around your neck with all the other victims like you.

You see I normally do “Go with the flow”, but after being raped of 150$, purchased liquor I could not have, blasted with a Fog horn announcements for an hour, I was not particularly in the mood to put on this tire around my neck so I refused. Yes, I refused to put on the life preserver which nearly got me into a fight with some little French bulldog sort of fellow.

Now you can start your cruise! It is time to go sit in the hot tub full of urine with 15 complete strangers. No these strangers are not all hot single twins from South Beach Miami, but rather consists of about 80% fat white Europeans. I ask that my European friends do not be offended as I am also a fat white American but can we please move on?

Since you cannot have your bottle of liquor, you might as well enjoy a drink from the bar. Since bottled water is $2.75 you might as well go for the 7$ daiquiri. Given they got the generic no name brand Vodka in bulk from Albertsons or ABC Liquor, they are pretty strong. That is of course built for taking your money also.

See the science shows that if you have a little head buzz, you are likely to feel like you are having a good time even after being robbed for $150. With a generic Vodka head buzz, most people will likely buy 3 more drinks, 2 – $2.75 Waters (cause you are pacing yourself and trying to avoid a hangover) and you will actually stumble in before dinner and buy your angry picture from the photo salon (or whatever I called it before).

Now, mind you, sitting around an undersized pool, drinking and having the time on a boat in the Caribbean seems fun if you picture it surrounded by 1000 of your closest college friends from the movie “Spring Break”. It is not like that at all. It is not like the Royal Caribbean commercials either where the kids are being babysat by clowns, mom and dad are playing volleyball in the pool. No one notices but really the commercials are mostly of people swimming in the ocean, riding a Jet Ski, playing golf or laying on the beach. Yes it is a sign that very few parts of the commercial actually revolve around the boat. So the instead of a scene from Girls Gone Wild, it is mostly a bunch of fat people walking around the undersized pool no one really swims in and looking at each other.

Now it is time for Dinner! After a quick change in your closet, you get to eat a lot of food. Yes there is a lot of food on a cruise. There is also a lot of food at “Golden Corral” and the food is exactly the same. On the good cruise ships the presentation is very fancy but the food is still cafeteria quality. They have a lot of fruit cut into fancy shapes and maybe they might have an occasional ice sculpture. The room is very fancy and you feel like you are at a convention. The “Fancy” line is officially crossed if someone unfolds your napkin into your lap for you. There was not enough room on our small boat for the fancy carved radishes normally seen on the Carnival Cruise ships.
Since the times of Greeks and Romans, Humans have evolved such that good times and feasting do not go together as they used to. Having far too much cafeteria food to eat on a cruise is really a recipe for a tiring belly ache and an early-to-bed night, robbing you of all the moments you foresaw yourself having like all those people in the commercials. Yes once you do chose to lay down in your porthole-less, underwater closet, near the engine you realize how much the front of a 1,000 foot long boat rises and falls. Hope you brought your Dramamine! And yes, at night, early in the morning and during sea sickness the fog horn (for your convenience) continues to tell you you had better book your excursion or the rest of the cruise will suck as bad or worse than your first night.

Bin-Bong-Bing.. The tone sounds at 7:00 AM. The boat is still rising and falling as you sit at the toilet in the closet, trying to adjust to the fact that in a boat, old “Number 2″ does not actually hit water like it does at home. If in case I forgot to tell you, the “BING-BONG-BING” is a scientifically crafted and computer generated tone that is much louder than the fog horn and whose purpose is to alert you that the Foghorn is about to sound. So at 7:00AM, no matter how sick, nor how hungover you are, you are reminded about the snorkeling adventure you better book or your wife will be mad (I am convinced that the wife mad part is subliminal). So, on cue, you and your wife argue from separate-single 1 person beds about actually hurrying down to book the snorkeling tour for the family of 5.

So after a large , albeit Macdonald’s breakfast, the 250 bucks for snorkeling for 5, is a bit easier to swallow and you can start to get excited. “Yeah I am going snorkeling on the reefs of the Bahamas”! So now we are cruising like the commercials.

No, actually you are being grouped together in the Grand Ballroom with all the other people who fought with their wives about whether they needed to book the snorkeling tour. Here at this location you are notified that if you did not want to be dropped off in town, ashamed and with yet again nothing to do after the snorkeling, you should book the 100$ shuttle to the same beach a 6$ boat ride will get you to. I was also warned of the sun cancer dangers while snorkeling and I bought some ridiculously overpriced sun protection and we were off.

To get to the snorkeling tour, everyone is lined up in single file like a herd of stupid tourists where everyone is walked in single file line to the snorkeling boat. I am sure the locals enjoy the Stupid tourist parade every Saturday.

Now for those of you who are not accustomed to the ocean and boats, the boat ride is a nice relaxing ride. If you are one who is excited about real snorkeling then save your money. Yes the Bahamas has great snorkeling, like many places, but you will never get it from a candy cutter 50$ per person ship excursion. The reality is that you are taken to the Nassau inlet and you get to swim around in 10 foot of water with some small reef like creations that can be found virtually anywhere on any coast in the world.

The truth is you that you get two long boat rides and an hour swim with snorkeling that is of little value except your kids might remember they went snorkeling and it will broaden their social experiences. I did however enjoy biting down on my snorkel that just came from a garbage can filled with some substance ( I am sure was hose water) in which thousands of other fat white people like me have mouthed in the past.

I think my snorkel tasted like pizza! Thanks Tony from Brooklyn!

So, back at what in the Bahamas calls the “Straw Market”. Can you say Culture? Well no, the straw market can not claim any Bohemian culture either. The Straw Market is basically a tent with about 300 vendors trying to sell you cheap mass produced items that say Bahamas. It is not the cramped quarters, or the third world atmosphere but it is the high pressure but is the ridiculously high prices they try to charge you.

My girls got their hair braided in island fashion and that made them happy. Somehow, 1 hour of hair braiding cost me 100$? I guess it was cheap at 2$ per braid.

Since it started raining or maybe it was because we were seeking shelter from the high pressure sales tactics, I do not remember but we found refuge at Senor Frogs. Here my kids did have fun. We all got wacky balloon hats made by a combination mime/clown and then we sat for an hour eating chicken fingers and watching people binge drinking on the free rubbing alcohol shooters.

Senor Frogs provides shooters for their patrons convenience. Well, the rubbing alcohol is free, as long as you are willing to drink rubbing alcohol, do the Conga line around the restaurant and scream loudly such as to lure in all the other tourists . I did not do the conga line nor did I partake in any of the free shots being we had the kids and all. Just as I was about consider this a cool place for all the free rubbing alcohol they provided, I was hit with the mysterious 11$ surcharge applied to every check. I guess I should have enjoyed the conga line and done some of the not so free shots that I did not have.

After lunch, the sun almost came out and we walked over to the “public” beach where the kids could swim.

You know, beach like in the Corona beer commercials where the man and his wife sit in hammocks, look at blue water and drink Corona. Well the public beach in Nassau is located just next to that one. That one is at the Sheraton where you are not allowed to go unless you are staying there. The sand there is raked hourly and ice buckets sit besides the chairs and someone brings you finger foods all day long. Nope not that one. The one we went to is a glass and rock filled area, wreaking of urine, with sleeping locals and a few other losers like me who did not want to shell out 200$ to take my family to the “good beach” to get free triangular sandwiches there.

So, at least my kids got to swim and my wife and I did drink some Corona, upon which we spent the rest of our cash that we had intended to buy a Bohemian bag, made in China, in memory of our little trip.

On the way back we met some nice people in front of the Straw Market that came buy and welcomed me for being so handsome. They wanted to welcome us to the Bahamas and to help me to be “Bahama Pappa” by placing a free beaded necklace on my neck and around the necks of each of my children. How nice of them. Now this is Culture! After that however they said they only asked for a small donation in return. When I explained that we just spent the last of our cash on the 100$ hair braids and over priced lunch, they proceeded to manually remove the beads from the necks of each of our children.

So now, it is time to go back to the ship, eat too much and get tired while we traveled back to the mainland.

Back at the mainland the ship comes into port at about 7:00 AM and (for you convenience) with the bing bong bing comes the good news that you are no longer bombarded by shore excursions messages. Nope, the tone is completely different.

Now you are told that you, and your luggage, with your grumpy children in tow will need to vacate your room at 8:00 AM. Even tough the boat is not docking until 10:00 AM, you are told that customs does not allow you to congregate in the open spaces or near an entrance of the ship. You are instead asked to wait, luggage in hand, on the deck or lined up in long small halls of other peoples closet doors. The food is all put away, The AC is off and all doors are locked (except for the photo gallery), and the best surprise is still yet to await you. The Bill!

See, the cruise ship I was on has a unique policy. Without telling you all along, they have been charging you a mandatory gratuity for everything you thought you had already paid for.

For my family of 5 I was charged 20$ gratuity for the meal. I should be more precise. That is 20$ per person, per meal!

So as I am waiting in a long line of other mad, fat white people in a small sweaty hallway waiting to flee the ship, I realize that in one last giant thrust of Capitalistic joy, they stole an additional 200$ from me for 2 cafeteria meals. Back on the mainland I get a free “Golden Corral” meal every time I order the $3.99 movie of the week from Brighthouse Networks.

At this point I was not all too happy to be robbed 2 different times for a total of $350 without even the courtesy of a reach around by Captain Katanga!

So in the end, the next time you think about taking a cruise to the Bahamas for some culture, fun and sun, don’t. There is nothing of any value that you will find in the Bahamas that a cookie cutter cruise ship can provide.

The “Other Bahamas” do indeed contain many fantastic places to visit that do provide a culture and experience like no other. Places like the Big and Little Abaco Islands, Man of War, Chub , Walkers and Turtle Cay all can provide amazing snorkeling, culture and local cuisine and a price which has 10 times the value for half the cost. That is the real Bahamas. Take heed and don’t be one of the mindless numbers moved along the cruise ship conveyor belt only to be robbed and swindled into thinking that the cruise ship experience is a good time.

Save your money.

Pretty heavy aye? Whacky perhaps, or is it even a curse?

Whatever it is, whatever I have done, I think that it has been there all of my life, but I am not sure that I knew it. In my past I do not recall being aware of of the “Now-ness” of anything. I was unaware of any Karma that might even have blown my way. I may not have acted upon the now quite enough. There are times I have been left looking back at what could have been. It is not that my current Now is lacking love and family and friends, but sometimes it feel like opportunity lost. I do not think I was ever aware of how much “Now” I had. How lucky I have been on many occasions. Let me take a quick look back at some of the Thens I had to see if I can better reflect the Now.

I was born June 16, 1970 which makes me a Gemini so out of the gate I got two me’s for the price of one. As a youngster I felt blessed because my birthday was equi-distant between each Christmas. Having this luck, I was able to get the maximum gift for my birthday and for Christmas.

The period of my conception (or at least the awareness period of all people at the time) was filled the absolute height of love and awareness. The social vibe of the time was about Woodstock, love, acid, freedom and going to the moon. The release of Led Zeppelin 1. Could there be a better time?

In my elementary years, I always did fairly well at everything though I cannot remember trying. I did not take care of my things and I had no awareness about caring to learn anything, to be organized or to have proper manners. I cannot remember having any knowledge of the now.

In the middle school years, I was the first chair trombone though I probably did not deserve it. I remembered scales but I never placed with the feeling of the moment. I never felt the music.

In my high school years, I encountered many life issues but I cannot remember them affecting me at all.

After 8th grade my Dad had an affair and married my moms sister.

In 9th grade I made all D’s and F’s and I was kicked out of school for the rest of the year in 10th grade for selling pot. I went to a special school with all the other people kicked out for pot. We had a great time.

At 15 my dad went to rehab and I lived and worked on my own. I am lucky that I had my own car by then. It cost me 350$. I purchased it with money my buddy Erik and I each earned from re-covering some church chairs while skipping school for several days. Erik bough a drum set and became a rock star. In dads absence, I went to school each day on my own and I think I started to mature a bit. I got out of school each day at 11:00 Am and I worked at Sonny’s BBQ 60 hours a week.

When my dad got out of Rehab we moved to an Indian Reservation where we raised catfish. There I met and befriended the Seminole Nation. I was fortunate enough to know many Seminole souls who in retrospect, seem to pass far too quickly.

At 18 my dad was forcing me out (Thankfully). I was happy to be working and living on the Farm where I spent my time driving a tractor, riding a dirt bike, holstering a 9mm. I was always tying to convince my dad that I did not need to goto college. My argument was that I could goto Stuart and be a carpenter for 200$ a week!

The next morning my dad awoke me way too early, much to my chagrin, for a little road trip. I slept most of the way to Tallahassee that morning. After about the third red light I could quickly see that I was at this “Florida State University” was the right to place. Lots of girls and some place called “Bullwinkles” seemed like it would provide ample opportunity to further my learning. I spent many of nights studying girls at Bullwinkles. Many years later I did almost book a gig for The Dave Matthews Band there. I had never heard of the DMB, I was just trying to get some gig for Eriks’ band Stone House.

I moved into a Dorm on my first day at college. That lasted all but 5 minutes until my cousin came over and told me about Cash hall apartments where he lived. He told me that I could live in an apartment for the same money as this dorm. So, after a made up story to the dorm manager about a family emergency, they cut me a check (less 1 – 5$ meal) and sent me on my way.

Cash hall was happy to take my check and I spent the first day walking around asking every girl I saw if she wanted to come over to my apartment. To my chagrin, no one obliged.

The apartment was a 2 — bedroom whereby, based upon how much you paid, 1 person would be in one bedroom and 2 people in the other. There was some guy in the single bedroom already named Cassus and whom for some reason we called “Cassio”. Later that day I got a knock on the door for the arrival of the third room mate, Chris, who would be my roommate in the new apartment. Chris, upon entering, has a big smile. He backs me up to the wall and says “hey do you like to smoke”? I knew right there a great friendship was born. I introduced Chris to “Cassio” who explained to us that “he stays in his shell”.

Later that night, we (Chris and I – Cassio was in his shell) proceeded to combine and arrange our stereos and posters to create a great college pad. 1 by innocent 1, we got petite little knocks on the door from all of the girls I had been rejected by earlier. Funny how that works… Later that night, (yes even later than before) Chris sang his own version of Band on the Run to the party whereby all of its versus were about me running and jumping like a gazelle and swimming like a gator. “Gator Joe on the Run”. Everyone remembered my name after that and Gator Joe was born. We had a great party and we had everyone document the moment with their John Hancocks all over Cassios’s Door with a Sharpie. Needless to say, Cassio, who was hiding in his room the whole evening, decided to move out the next morning.

Now we were sorry to see him go but it seemed now Chris and I now had our own rooms. The manager kept sending people (prospective roommates) to look at the room, but in defense of our new found freedom, the only thing the prospective roommate found was us acting really angry or really Gay (does Gay need to be capitalized, not that there is anything wrong with capitalizing gay) to prevent having to share a room again. We hung on all year long like that.

There are a lot more stories I could tell about Deion Sanders or about living with the Seminole basketball team at those times, but I need to keep moving to get where I am going. I should not stop to include stories about abandoning my apartment at FSU and or dropping out of school for a year for a girl. If I did continue with the story then I would then need to tell you about leaving my car on the side of the road and hitchhiking back to FSU with everything I owned when the year with that girl ended.

See, everything I owned fit into a standard recycling bin. My recycle bin and my tool belt (I ended up being a carpenter after all) were all I needed. It reminds me of Steve Martin in “The Jerk” where he was leaving his wife and all he needed was his chair ( and the ashtray but thats all). I left my car on the side of the road when the right wheel fell off and hitchhiked my way back Tallahassee.

That summer, I slept on Chris’s couch. Well, I mean I slept for at least for 1 or 2 hours per night. The other hours consisted of drinking until 2 or 3 AM, a trip to Whataburger at 3Am and then the joy of hitchhiking 40 miles (yes uphill with my tool belt) to work after my 1 hour of sleep. After a while I became good at meeting the other carpenters at one of the closer crossroads which was only 20 miles or so from the apartment. It is interesting that you are not allowed to sleep at a convenience store to wait for a ride at 5AM. It is also interesting that you are allowed to sleep next to the road by the stop sign. That was easier for my ride to find me sleeping there anyways.

Well, at the end of that Summer my dad bought me a truck down in Okeechobee. So again me, using my thumb, hitchhiked from Tallahassee to Okeechobee. It all went well until I was hit by a car while walking on the side of I-75. I think he (the guy who hit me) was a pervert and was trying to pull over to pick me up. When he hit me it completely side swiped me so hard that my shorts were torn from my hips. My brown grocery bag full everything I owned was ejected all over the highway. The funny thing is that I did not even need a ride at that point because my dad was meeting me at the next exit on the side of that road. So, in my underwear, with the remains of my grocery bag, I met my dad at the next exit.

When I arrived at the fish farm, there it was and I was in love. My dad bought be a 150$ 1972 Toyota pickup in which someone ripped off the bed and built a flatbed with wooden fence sides. There were 10 Seminole Indians right there painting every inch of it with red, black and white spray paint cans.

I had also saved enough money from my summer stint as a carpenter and Chris and I were able to get a little apartment next to Doak Campbell (Now Bobby stadium).

When I got back to college, in my truck, Chris mentioned that it looked like something that should be carrying goats up a hill in Scandanavia.

“The Goat Truck” was born.

I could also keep going about The Goat Truck (you thought I was kidding) or I could keep going about this apartment too. At this apartment, Chris and I had many pagan parties in which we would either have large oil wrestling events or large bonfires consisting of all the furniture in our apartments. Chris graduated but he continued to visit for every game. It was great fun because each time he came he felt he had to create a new and profoundly unique entrance to our apartment with his car. He would use creative means and paths through forest, trees, lawns and sidewalks. Usually this was all done in reverse. What has the Nova done for you lately?

I went on to bigger and better things. I became the Janitor at at the Silver Slipper restaurant for the rest of my time at FSU. Bill Kalfas, the owner of the Silver Slipper, which was known for dining presidents and legislators, told me that I was the best employee he ever had. This was just after telling me that if I ever had oil wrestling without inviting him, I was fired. Daddy Chris Kalfas, Bill’s dad, came in in next. Daddy Chris was a heavy set elderly Greek gentlemen who smoked a large cigar and carried around a small poodle all the time. He came in just after Bill but he did not tell me I was the best employee he ever had. “Joey, if you ever have oil wrestling without inviting me, you’re fired”, he told me.

On the way out of Tallahassee, after graduating from FSU, I sold all my Vinyl LP’s to Vinyl Fever, gave some plasma for gas money, and I moved to Orlando to go to UCF. I was lucky to be hired by some company called Oracle. I did not know it at the time but this company called Oracle was on a meteoric rise along with everyone in and around it. I immersed myself in Oracle and became driven to learn.

I went on to meet my wife who somehow agreed to meet a guy named Gator Joe though she felt she should not. The signs were there.All I owned was 3 computers, a mattress on the floor and a plywood nightstand to hold my jar of pennies.

In spite of the vast Dowry she received from me, we still managed to become pretty happy and successful together at having kids and flipping houses. What a ride the Real Estate boom was! It was a lucky time.

That pretty much brings us up to the the “Now” now. I hope that taking myself through all of that “Then”, makes me more appreciative of the “Now” I have now.

For 2008 my resolution shall be to live in the Now that my Then has created.

In retrospect I have many more thens to account for but I am running out of time.

We will save these stories and more for the musical action montages/flashbacks in the screen play including:

I was drowning but man did she have nice legs.
Old Black Joe.
The Honda Mini Trail 50.
Don’t we always have the same address?
Nothing is as sweet as the first time you are hit by a car.
Woody and the Parisienne.
Please pee on the green bottle. I prefer Robitussin.
You have never head the words “Crack Pipe” sung so beautifully before…
Would anything be complete without the Tales of a guy named “Baby Chicken”.
Todd Neely’s eye for a great summer.
Let do Fish Tails!
Return of the sun of how Crack blew up the space shuttle in 85.
We loved to chew wood at the driving range.
5150 and the rise of Stone House.
I ran the bitch over!
The pizza heist.
Hug the door!
Please tell Mr. Leioni this is Shawfield Shanks and Meyer..
Honest, The flares were here when I moved in.

I should just have thanks for the Now that I have now. If I did anything different I would probably not be where I am now. Each Now gets better than the last, so I shall endeavor to enjoy each and every one. There is an endless supply of now if only I am willing to grab it.

I came here to to tell you how it seems that everything comes around. Be they social concerns, haircuts, music, clothing style or whatever, the collective USA seems to have been thrust back into the 1970’s. See, in the 1970’s when I was a small child, say 6 or 7, I seem to remember a lot of things that are similar now. It is also even more interesting that my kids are about that age and all of the same things seem to apply.

• Gas Crisis — I remember long lines to buy gas all the time
• War — We were in something called the Cold war versus The war in Iraq.
• Hair — All kids had some version of the “Brady Bunch” haircut, which has somehow come back into style.
• Apocalypse — There was a lot of talk when I was a kid about the threat of nuclear war. Now we are threatened with global warming, water crisis, nuclear war again and a whole bunch of other stuff.

So it seems we are all on some 30 year cycle where there are only so many social issues we can digest at a time. We are all on some recurring type of time warp whereby we get to live all of the same issues and styles from every vantage point. Does this speak to reincarnation?

So NO, I did not come here to tell you about reincarnation, yet, (yes I am off the wagon on using parenthetical notations cause I love em) (I am not all astrological and stuff).

I came here to tell you about your bomb shelter, Donal Fagen and Camping.

See yes, just as everything has come around, I think the bomb shelter in a sense too will come around.

At this point there is no better mental image I can give you than what Mr Donald Fagen has done. Please watch this and let us return.

So you see a similarity to what my children are feeling 30 years later. Erie, yes. In history there have been great tragedies but few people today has ever had to actually visualize such tragedies. Yes the twin towers falling is probably the worst thing modern people have ever visualized and that is not even a blip on the tragic scale as history is concerned.

That aside, it was tragic, but as an adult, having actually seen times where we have:

1) a large scale attack on our own soil and

2) times when nature unleashed weeks of no water and power,

These things have made it all to clear that:

Life is not a rehearsal. Everything possible does, can and will happen.

So My apologies for making it so gloom and doom (like, how did we get from Bobby Brady’s hair to global terrorism?), but as an Adult I have been affected by many of these things in a real way. I think that thinking about things that come around is important. You know the learning from the past stuff?…

So really what I came for is to be able in some way to:
1. Mention that Brady Bunch Haircuts are back.
2. Talk again about the 70’s
3. Give you a chance to see one of the greatest recording musicians of all time, Mr Donald Fagen.
3. Talk about Camping.

“Oh wait what does camping have anything to do with this you say”. Oh. I forgot to tell you about camping, that is what I came here to tell you about.

I read an article about the 100 things to disappear first in times of Famine or War. I was struck by how this list resembles everything I take camping. This article stems from some rather grim situations (Sarajevo), but does have some real connections to Bomb Shelters, camping and everything we have talked about here.

So let me say that one probably needs to have many of these items anyway be it for Hurricanes or Apocalypse. So, camping is a great practice in the event we do have a world situation occur that affects our pampered US lifestyle. It is great fun and a relaxing experience. The experience is tough and rewarding and does give us a better sense of conservation and thankfulness to Mother Nature.

So have a look at this list and set aside a weekend to take your family camping.

Take virtually any concept and do a search to see who is providing software for that niche. I bet you will find a vast number of people who are already claiming they have software that will revolutionize the world. It can be a daunting experience to overcome should you decide to build something.

Even if your Blue Sky software was the answer to everything, would you even have a chance to be seen, noticed, or even to have a cult following? Well yes, there are a lot of stars out there and there are more to be made, but the chances are indeed slim.  Similar, I would imagine, to that of being a professional bobsledder from Jamaica. Certainly with this attitude anyways. Well, positive thinking speeches aside, how can one take his or her skills and choose an endeavor with any degree of confidence in your chances for success? Or is it profound determination and reckless belief? Either way….

The “next level” is a state where your professional skills can create some asset which provides a lasting income stream. Kind of like the Facebook kid, the YouTube or Google guys. Let yourself be set in life to a given respect so you can then hit the next level of consciousness and technical savvy free of the Capitalistic encumbrances.

Many of us feel that we are really good developers, but we always know that the gravy train does end as soon as we stop working. So, whilst we are at our hungriest, let us prepare for the future by building some sort intellectual of perpetual money machine based upon our intellectual prowess.

In the 90’s (back in the 19’s), when I was building Spawn, I felt as if I really had a shot at building something that would be noticed.

Now, again feeling hungry to build, it seems that avenue that I would devote myself to (ala building a software product), would have only a remote chance of success because I was one of so many options saying the same thing as the next. It would be like opening a restaurant in most places. Fleeting to say the least even if the slogan was “This software cures cancer!” Brought to you by your friends at Blue Sky Software.

That aside, now I ask myself: Given the current software environment, job market coupled with my age and family concerns, what is the best use of my time to actually achieve or create “the next level” opportunity?

Every time I think about this I come back to the same thing.

I should just build a money machine.

I looked to Seinfeld for some help but that did not pan out. When I called MovieFone, “Why dont you just tell me what category to put your article in”, did not work.

I think it took some self-evaluation about what my articles actually consisted of in order for the categories to be clear.

I pondered….. Why do people blog in the first place?

In no particular order, here are my reasons why people blog.

• Money
• Look how smart I am
• For the betterment of mankind
• Cynical in nature
• She blinded me with Science
• Entertainment
  
• Fame
• Sharing with Family and Friends

I think I am right based upon the articles I have written thus far. I am not sure however what % of my blogs go in which category?

If you have other categories you think should be part of the standard, please let me know and feel free to drop a comment. I will make every attempt to make large amounts of money showing you how intelligently I can be cynical in a purely scientific context, ultimately leading me to be a household name amongst the people I already know using that comment.

I ordered and read everything under the sun. Oracle Press, Oracle documentation as well as complete video sets and internal documentaion in an effort to become an Oracle expert.

Over the years, and especially in the Web Craze of the 1990’s, I had many dreams of using this information for my own advantage by writing books, building web sites and products where I could sell my technical knowledge to an eager public. This level of “Web Stardom” never materialized for me.

This did materialize for Don Burleson.

Don Burleson is the author/consultant/entrepreneur known for his Oracle content. His books, adds and web articles are everywhere. If you look for virtually anything about Oracle, his stuff will come up first in the results. He offers solutions, white papers, consulting and books. It is simply amazing the reach he has achieved using the web.

I LOVE HIM.

On the other hand, I, and many of my fellow Oracle professionals have come to view his work as shallow repeats of stuff obtainable from the spectacular Oracle documentation manuals or other commonly available information. As I became more and more of an Oracle expert, I have come to view his sites, rankings and information to be a distraction in my problem solving. It seems like he has so much content, and some might say, already present in amazingly similar verbiage as the Oracle documentation, that it is actually slowing down my problem solving.

See the issue is that when tuning a slow Oracle cluster, I have already RTFM! I have already read the manuals. In his endeavors, he seems to be mastering the art of driving massive amounts of traffic to his resources by seemingly churning out large volumes of information and this results in much time wasted for me in solving my real problems.

So in executing my dream perfectly, he is actually slowing me down as a user of the things that I had wished to create. I HATE HIM, but is it for jealousy or principle?

Now I dont really hate him but can you think of a better dichotomy for a title? He just did it best. There are many other sites like this. Sites are commonly listing complete lists of Oracle error messages followed by links to verbiage the error already provided.

Is this a shame, or is this a perfect execution or a bastardized system that Google and the Adsense revolution is creating? Hit the publish button on this one!

Enjoy.

There was an interesting scene in “The Minority Report” where Tom Cruise was walking into a commercial building. The glass screens all around recognized him and offered him tailored products of every possible design.

This is already a frightening reality for millions of web users. It kind of all started with Spam whereby we could scour the web scraping web pages for emails, links and information about people. Information about the connections between information (ie PEOPLE) has become big business. We know who and your friends are better than you.

We know what web pages you like to view and we know every search term you ever entered.

As the Social Web grows, more and more people are attaching their complete identities to web sites where anonymity is instantly lost. They are uploading their friends, names, pictures and all sorts of personal information. Pretty soon every store will be playing the Tom Cruise commercials for you as you walk into Sears because they know you like camping.

In an emergency response to this new reality, I am creating the concept of the “Alternative Minimum You”.

The Alternative minimum you is a creation that is completely up to you. This “You” is devised as your business face, name and persona to the world. It is a name, face and location of your choosing. This Alternative Minimum You essentially hides you from the public eye and represents you to the world in the most minimal way. This is very similar to many entertainers and actors whose real names are something completely different.

IN this manner you are completely in control of that you. You can essentially close down that you at any time without sacrificing your information about yourself and your friends.

PS. It is only now that I realize that one way to lose your anonymity is to create a blog about yourself using a domain with your sir name in it where you keep your personal family photos. So even if I am demonstrating my own point, I am only doing it because I love you.

In the article “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids” the debate is intelligence versus effort and the corresponding effect on success.

Growing up, I was not a particularly smart kid. Growing up I am not a particularly smart adult.

In my youth I have been called Intelligent and in my professional career I have been called “Brilliant” many times.

While I certainly am and was not brilliant, this apparent brilliance more often than not, appeared in ways and means completely unrelated to intelligence but rather from effort. My”Brilliant” Effort or performance many times was only a perception garnered as a result of Herculean efforts. Many hours of complete focus and dogged determination are what usually resulted in the appearance of brilliance. In a bit of Hyperbole, most of these efforts were completely the opposite of brilliant. My secret was the many hours of mindless “commitment” to the process.

I think that is why this article spoke volumes to me. In the world ahead intelligence will be important but learning how to learn, through intense effort will be even more crucial to personal success. Anyone interested in Self-help, personal advancement , or most importantly, the education of our children, should read this article.

If you notice, no one ever talks about how dumb Hercules was?

Happy Reading

As I sat there I realized that even Seinfeld has some categorization. The overall all topic in Seinfeld is “Situation Handling”. These episodes are about naturally occurring social situations that everyone encounters. There is a Seinfeld episode for every life situation. So in an effort to devise a blogging category, I am practicing by reading about about every Seinfeld Episode. At then end of this exercise, if I can categorize the Situational Handling in the Seinfeld Chronicles, I think I might me able to categorize this blog.

Some of the Web other phases I have personally been involved with are:

• Linx — The era of the text browser was born
• The Porn Era — The first people to sell things over the web
• B2B and the Enterprise Service Bus
• ASP – Application Service Provider.
• DHTML
• DHTML Revolt — Rise of Flash
• Googlemerica — The Googlization of America
• XSP — Everything Server Pages (ASP,JSP)
• Ajax and the return of the sun of JavaScript
• WEB2.0 (mimnmalization of rounded rectangualness and soft colors)
• The Social Face Space.

The obvious emerging wave is the social web wave. Google, followed by many other companies are focused on creating frameworks and standards to facilitate the web’s Social wave.

Mozilla, who, in their own right have changed the face of the web, intends to contribute to the social web wave by creating Project Weave to explore the use of Firefox to enhance our web functionality in conjunction with the Desktop.

From the Mozilla Labs Web Site, Weave is described as the following: “This project will be known as Weave and it will focus on finding ways to enhance the Firefox user experience, increase user control over personal information, and provide new opportunities for developers to build innovative online experiences.”

It will be interesting to see what is to become of this effort. Firefox has certainly brought new and exciting possibilities to the web and browser market. The combination of Firefox (The browser), Thunderbird (mail client) and the new Social Frameworks should certainly offer a whole new level of exciting potential for web applications.

There are lots of sites that you can use, but the ones we use most often are:

• The Seminole County Property Appraiser
• Seminole County Clerk of Court Records
• Google/Yahoo Maps

You can find an unbelievable amount of information about a house using these sites. The process, however, quickly becomes overwhelming after just a few houses.

In order to make this process quicker, I built a mashup of sorts to help using these sites go much faster .

I created a simple form and some tabs (Really I just wanted to play with the Yahoo User Interface Library) to help the process go faster. Click the Link to access it.

To start with, we need to take the address and programatically scrape the property appraiser site for the owner and parcel details. With that information we can obtain the owner and the direct link to the the relevant page about that parcel.

In the above screen shot we can see virtually everything about a parcel.

Once we have this parcel information, we can use the owner information for that parcel as an input into the program that scrapes the Seminole Clerk of Court records. There we have a large amount of information about the owner and possible financial situation.

To round it out, we pull up a map of the parcel;

While this application is a bit arcane, especially in its look and feel, it is a huge time-saver by instantly displaying all relevant information quickly and in one place.

Within minutes I can tell you the following:

1. All property details including owner information, property size, year, composition, additions, purchase price, tax values and history.

2. The mortgage dates, amounts, liens on the property.

3. All county records for that owner including but not limited to Lis Pendas (Foreclosure), divorce and anything else ever documented by the courthouse.

All of these items are instantly available and I can view everyone of these documents immediately. It is amazing that you are actually allowed to view the actual documents.

Within seconds, I can look at a house and immediately tell that you are mortgaged to the hilt, you are facing foreclosure, or that the reason your house if for sale is because your divorce has just become final.

Have a look and enjoy. There are quite a few bugs in this version I am trying something new by actually scraping the sites ajax, rather than coordinating separate windows.

After this exercise you will see exactly why web services are important.

I cant wait to try this on the plasma and home stereo system.

Enjoy.

In Google’s definition from the above announcement:

“A Google Profile is simply how you represent yourself on Google products — it lets you tell others a bit more about who you are and what you’re all about. You control what goes into your Google Profile, sharing as much (or as little) as you’d like…”

If you have read some of my past blogs about Social networking and the Social Web, you will have noted the importance and dangers I have placed in the concept of a profiles and activity streams in the Social Web. I believe that these concepts hold much more potential than simply being to upload photos to flicker and see when my friends do the same. You may have also read how I believe there could be an inherent backlash due to the Security Issues involved with so much personal information flying around the web.

Activity Streams, Social networking, Profiles, Networks and the Social Graph are all concepts that I believe really represent the next generation of event based programming. This generation of event programming however differs from previous incarnations in that the events, data and network are occurring simultaneously across multiple sites and across multiple applications. Each of these applications and sites will have all of the profile and social networking information available about a user across all of these applications.

What Goggle is able to do with the profile, is to keep all of the Session Information at the users fingertips across all of their product, tools and widgets. No matter where we are in Google groups, Calendar, Maps, Earth or Gmail, the system will know who we are, who are friends are as well as our likes and dislikes. This profile system gives a more seamless solution when we have all these events occurring in disparate applications on different networks and web sites.

Combined with the Google Open Social Framework, Google Profiles is the next logical component in what I have been defining as a “Social Activity Cloud”. Eventually Google will be a one stop information and application shop whereby I can have vast networks of applications, sites, applications, calendars, emails and social networks, all working together on my behalf in such a manner that I never even need a machine or software.

This is nothing new as we have similar technologies such as LDAP, Microsoft Passports, Oracle Wallet and many others. Corba, EDI and Web Services. What makes this component so powerful is that all of these technologies will use the Profile to work across the entire web making everything available for virtually anyone to create new and exciting applications with a much more rich and self-aware communication mechanisms.

Here is an except from a blog about a recent announcement by LinkedIn.com that really highlights the direction.

“As an example of the second half of LinkedIn’s new platform, the company has announced a partnership with Business Week which will see LinkedIn data pulled into the Business Week site. For instance, if you land on a Business Week article about IBM, the site will then look at your LinkedIn profile (assuming you’ve given it permission to do so) and highlight the people you know at IBM. Call it six degrees of Business Week, but it does something Facebook has yet to do — it connects your data with the larger web.”

“The New LinkedIn Platform Shows Facebook How It’s Done” — Wired Network

Here is the visual crux of his article. Click on it to read More.

I have struggled with interface design for the past 10 years. In some of my other blogs you can see this dramatically highlighted in Spawn and some of my other tools.

Thinking in this kind of “Squinty Eyed View” can really help to see the balance in a graphical type of layout.

The next time that you endeavor to create a web page or an application of some sort you might try to start out with an outline like this to organize your thoughts in relating these shapes with purposeful placement of functionality.

Another Tip is to Download Firebug plugin for Firefox. Open firebug when viewing a web site and enjoy.

In a typical Google search result there are so many listings that the average user can not possibly examine all of the sites and pages presented. They are becoming les and less likely to find success when trying to find the”nuggets” of information they are actually seeking. Results on the first page are usually those that are more interested in getting you to click their Ads, rather than providing meaningful content. Most of the first few pages of any search result seem to be this way.

Is there anyway we can provide an alternative?

An alternative? No.. You could never amass the power and experience that Google has obtained.

But ,we can certain add some value cant we? The answer is Yes.

Many of us may not be lucky enough to be power browsers whereby we have developed an almost unconscious instinct on how to quickly evaluate the millions Google search results in a glance and are able and find answers we need. Those of us who spend all day long searching Google for answers in in any number of ways as part of our profession have often developed this ability. I am a programmer and I am searching for bits of information all day everyday.

To provide value to the Google search, let us seek a way to bottle some our sauce up for those who may not have developed this ability. Let us provide a means such that they may find actually the information they need in a much more effective way much as we do.
I do not need to build a web crawler as Google already does this very well. It is all there, but not necessarily in an order that facilitates me in answering my questions. Google probably did in the beginning before the advent of Adsense and pay per click.

I need a “Google Crawler” which acts as a filter for Google Search Results that filters out what is high ranking garbage from what may be completely relevant information nuggets. Information that, as an ordinary user I would never be able to take the time to see on the 23 millionth result.

To facilitate this endeavor I built a quick application to interact with Yahoo Search API. I also needed a way to see all the information that was available in order to visualize what I needed to provide in my secret sauce.
I started by building a simple interface to a search engine API that let me build my own search utility.

Test the “Shawfey GVA Search” Here
Note: I am using the term “Google” and GVA (Google Value Added Index) in a more general sense in that I am referring to the role of the Search Engine. So I mean Google and similar providers like them in the industry. I am finding that Yahoo is just as much a player and resource in this market. I am finding myself drawn to their Yahoo Search API and Yahoo User Interface Library.

Now that I have a little programmatic control over my search results I can begin to laydown my value added rules and apply them as I spider the sites that google has given me. I will spider the sites based upon my GVA rules

Some GVA examples:

1. The domain type (edu, mil, gov,org) — I tend to find that information on these sites is a better source of information without the added interference of .com pages.

2. The type of document the result is a factor for me as well. In the example above I have limited the search results to only those results that are of a type PDF. I find that these are sources of information that someone has taken a bit more time to create and often this leads to better more qualified research. There are exceptions but we are working our way down.

3. The breadth of the information. May sites are high ranking and do not contain very much content and a large amount of keywords. These sites are not raked highly in our GVA (Google Value Added) Score. If a section contains only 23 words about a subject versus a section that has 2,000 words is likely a better source of information.

So in this respect we can easily take what Google has done for us and to refine and analyze the output that allows us to more easily gather all relevant information about a given topic. We can simply cover more ground.

Many sites are starting to use the “Cover more Ground” approach by utilizing many different search services and breaking the results up in to categories such as “Blogs/Groups About X, Photos about X, Buying X.

Here is what ASK.COM does.

Note that they take a search term and give you a more complete set of categorized options that are already categorized and already contain related results from multiple web services for things such as blogs, photos and videos.

So we base our value added proposition to Google/Yahoo/Ask on our ability to make assumptions on resources based upon many things including, history, experience, content and best-practices.

Many of us are not “Web Surfers”. We use the web like we shop for food or gifts. We know what we need and we go get it. We do not have time to be distracted by ads and purchasing opportunities. The current web structure with Google and Adsense is skewed toward this type of user interaction. It depends on you getting distracted. The GVS Index and a GVA -based search utility s a great help to user to find resources in web atmosphere with lots of noise.

If you look at some of my last few posts you can tell that I like to develop code generation and information gathering tools. In the “Spawn” days I was generating complete web applications based upon the structure and intent in a relational database model. Today, a similar methods apply except the database model has turned into a web model which can involve the entire universe of items reachable by a Web URL. The Semantic web is becoming more and more a reality as standards comtinure to emerge and be adopted by enterprising individuals.

Technologies like XML, JSON, ATOM, RSS, Web Ontology Language (OWL) combined with open source libraries are making it possible for anyone to create dynamic web tools, widgets and utilities combined from many different services on the web. More dynamic and diverse Semantic Web Applications will emerge as the most of the web moves from the Unstructured world of HTML and moves into a more structured markup strategy that allows resources to be more completely defined that most sites currently are.

I will continue to report on my efforts in defining a GVA so please stay tuned.

We stopped by a dealership called David Maus Toyota. David Maus is known for being in his own commercials and he has a trademark “six shooter” type of thing where he points at you with both hands.

Well, upon entering the showroom we immediately see an absolutely beautiful custom Harley Davidson sitting there in the middle of the showroom floor. The bike was clearly not like any other stock Harley we had ever seen. It had a custom paint job and every piece of chrome available not to mention the 103 engine rather than the 88.

While my wife looked into the possibility of trading in the Excursion, I sparked up a conversation about the bike with one of the car salesmen. He told me that this was David’s personal bike. it only had 300 miles and was indeed for sale though to this day I am not sure why. Pretty soon David Maus himself came out of the back, did his trademark point, and then proceeded to ask me if I was ready to buy that bike.

We took it home and have loved it ever since. David and I are now forever linked.

Now, much like Arlo Guthrie said in “Alice’s Resturant”… That is not what I came her to tell you about.

I came to tell you about internet scamming, eBay and the simple dangers of the world.

So I will start by telling you about how I, David, this bike and two other randomly miscellaneous people are also linked.

After having the bike for some time, and several dead batteries from non-use (sad), I began, at one point to question whether having so much bike was really necessary. I thought that I would rather have a Stock Road King and 10,000$ in which I would buy some land.

Using this very picture, I did an eBay auction. Thats not what I came here to tell you about either, but needless to say, I got no bidders and I decided not to sell the bike at that juncture.

One day, some time later, while working at the computer I notice two non-standard police cars come into my driveway. In my concern I go out to meet the officers who say they were there to ask about my Harley and where it was located. I told them right there under that cover. They told me it had just been sold to some lady in California for $5,000. Now this was certainly news to me, as I, actually being the real me, know full well that I did not engage in a transaction with a Lady in California. The Rims on the bike probably cost that much, the police already knew that because they had already gotten all of my information from Harley Davidson.

They had the same picture of the bike complete with circles and arrows and paragraphs on the back of each one to be used as evidence against us. The same picture you see above and Yep, there was no denying it, that was me, and my bike, and my car right in the back.

Anyways, I start to immediately have a flashback to a distant morning much near the time of when the bike was on eBay. My wife had her eye on that $10,000 she would have after the bike sold and so, she was perusing with determined diligence all of the other Harley’s on eBay. She happened upon a curious add that was selling (2) Road Kings, very new, for the combined low price of $9,000. I remember immediately shouting (in a very Kramer like manner) ”SCAM!!!”. Even wrecked, these bikes would fetch that much money not to mention the shipping from “GERMANY!”. Ignoring me completely, she proceeded to have emails with the auction dude to buy the bikes. After some back and forth and the inevitable mention of “WESTERN UNION”, I think she could see that this was indeed a scam.

So now I am back to my senses with the officers in my garage. I knew immediately (from my flashback) exactly what was happening and I explained these events to the officers about my wife almost falling for the same scam. After some words it became clear that they had already done their homework one me. They already knew everything about me and that I was not internet scamming motorcycles. Although looking back, I am a Software Developer, working from home, it probably did look funny.

As it turns out my wife went to school with the officer’s sister and he also now lives down the street from where I live now.

Ahyhoo, some time later, as the memory was almost gone and I was tired of telling that story, another officer in a non-standard police car rolled up into the driveway one day. I was sure that he was bringing my dog home, who at the time, was getting out on a regular basis.

Once again an offer except this time from a neighboring county I will only call “Orange County”, strolled up, with the same picture in hand of my bike (the one above) as the last officer. It seems that now that some guy in Missouri, or one of those other mid-west states, just paid $5000 for the bike. The officer explained to me that he (the guy from Missoure not the officer of course) was coming down to break my legs. So after explaining all of this to the officer, he moved on knowing already that I was not a motorcycle internet swindling fellow.

Soon after this visit, I received a long letter which was sent to then Incumbent Governor Charlie Christ (cause he was the Attorney General at that time). The letter explained how I had internet scammed the guy out of his money and that he wanted retribution.

I proceeded to call the guy up and leave a message that he was welcome to call me. He already had my address and personal information for his leg breaking excursion and he might want to get some directions to my house. I explained that I was sorry that he was scammed, but did he really think he was actually going to buy a brand new $30,000 bike for $5,000 or that I would actually use a VIN number of my own bike in a picture of my house and my vehicle?

Needless to say I never heard from him again as I think he realized his ignorance had gotten the better of him. Or did he just think that involving the entire Missouri Mafia over his oversight was not really necessary?

So, that is how David Maus and I are forever linked together with these two randomly miscellaneous people. People who indeed learned a very hard lesson. I am sure that Kevin Bacon is only 1 more degree away from us but let us stop there for now until he surfaces. As one more note, my fathers pastor also fell for the same scam in Okeechobee and is still making payments to this day. His lessons area bit harder pill to swallow as he actually went as far as to drive from Okeechobee to Miami to meet his mythical motorcycle on a non existent ship.

I will spare these miscellaneous folks the long list of quotes, quips, anecdotes, metaphors and Confusius sayings that they would now recognize instantly as pertaining to them. Just beware out there.

Enjoy and good day…

1. Privacy of Information — Millions are letting these sites crawl their computers and address books, aggregating detailed information about thier perosnal lives, tastes, communications, photos, where abouts and all else. This is emerging as a giant issue for people.

2. Google Open Social — The emerging standardization of many of the “Social” concepts that will allow these social sites to work together and interact amongst the different Social Sites. I am starting to discover and create applications for new and more interactive enterprise applications. These enterprise frameworks can utilise the Social concepts to provide a Service layer that are aware of all activities, posting, documents and communication in an enterprise. This can allow the infomation in an Enterprise to be collected and aggregated as a whole and bring role specific information and control directly to the user.

See my post about Enterprise Activity Cloud later.

3. The Social backlash. What happens when something bad happens to people.

These 3 emerging topics in the Social Web are and will play a much greater role in how people and enterprises communicate. The world is changing much in part to the emergence of the Social Web.

Privacy and Sociopath — “The Facebook Killer “

It is going to be a very large issue. If you use the Social sites you are uploading great amount of personal details which can be used to know things about you that you dont even know .  Mark these works that people are going to revolt from this concept. It is simply too evasive.

Sociopath is a product similar to Wordpress whereby anyone with web hosting can download to their site. The product contains a MySql database, a PHP web application,  and a set of API services based upon Google Open Social.

The product allows one to control all of their Social Network logins , profiles and privileges, personal information, bookmarks, photos in their own database on their own site.

The product allows one to be a member of any of these social sites and use their services and comunicate like they always have however there is one difference. Your complete Facebook page is actually a module running on Facebook but which data interaction is all done completely through Sociopath “Your Social Gatekeeper”. Request for data, profile information or any other component inside these sites from another profile are routed to to your Facebook plugin, which communicates to your own database, checking permissions and protecting all data against any outside use or comsumption.

Sociopath’s client side is Module (See my last post) , which you plug into Facebook, Orkut/ others, receives all information request and data in encrypted format and are only decrypted inside the module container. This effectively keeps your data in your own hands.

The concept is rather simple. We re-route all information requests from the Host Social site, through to the module running in the client social container, and the client side module reroutes all information requests to the users Sociopath installation.

Your Facebook page continues to look and act like a facebook page but your information and friends are your.

More to come here.
Social Web Concepts as a Service Layer

I became interested in the concept as it has been gaining steam in providing a new layer of interaction that I find fits some missing components in the goal of the ultimate “Service Bus” or as we on the 00’s now say “Service Cloud”. Same concept – different time.

Side Note… Everything comes around. Brady Bunch haircuts are back. Re-Engineering the Corporation (ala Hammer and Champy).  Rocky, Service Oriented architectures. Evety gets a second chance to revamp.

So now the world is revisiting the Service Bus er.. Cloud, JavaScript, like the Phoenix, has arisen from when DHTML was the enemy of all things.  Social sites are becoming the de-facto standard for group messaging and information exchange. If we put all these things together we might come up with a few emerging product ideas.

Enterprise Activity Cloud 

The concepts of a Social network are creating emerging standards (ala Google Open Social) that make these Social platforms more interoperable. There are valuable concepts that have excellent uses in the Enterprise. Concepts such as Activity, Streams, Profiles and Networks have great ability for a deeper interaction of all things.

These concepts, when standardized, provide a nice layer in an Enterprise that could allow intelligent information awareness, collection, retrieval, notification, choreography and control. The concept of profiles and networksof the Socal world fit perfectly with a Social service Cloud that is aware of all document types, profiles and networks in an enterprise. These components would allow business rules to be create that permeate the enterprise and when combined with Social API’s, make the enterpise aware of all things, know how to introspect them, know what document they represent, know what service they are allowed to and can call. The Could knows the profile of the user, his primary network (department). Certain activities by certain profiles upon certain document types to given Web Services can be choreographed and controlled as a routing an intelligence layer.

Networks and Roles can consume information from the cloud in real-time similiar to the Social sites know when a persone in their network downloads something, uploads something, shares something. Architected carefully as a service layer that supports and routes information, every user can have a personalized enterprise dashboard tailored to their profile in the network.

Activities such as submitting Purchase order can be submitted to the Social Cloud. The user does not need to know where to route it or to whom or does not necessarily care. Her profile submits a given document type (purchase_order.xsd) to the cloud period.

It is up to the service layer in the cloud to simply look at some routing tables, ebxml, OASIS type definitions to say.

What do I do when  a Network Profile (Desk Clerk1 Network) submits a document of type “purchase_order.xs” (The form).  An Activity profile (Business Rules) is created that tells the cloud to:

1. Submit the Document instance to the given Endpoint (A Standard service our company has created, which, conviently and purposefully accepts a purchase_order.xsd)
2. Handles notification to all network associations, profile according to business rule definitions.

Here are some diagrams I did some time ago. You gotta love the Pencil!

Modules, Gadgets and Widgets — What did you just call me? 

I have been studying lately of “Modules” or “Gadgets” from Google along with development concepts surrounding the “Social Graph”. In exploring these topics further I found some interesting concepts related to Service Oriented Architectures that I would like to share.

Let us start out by saying tat a “Module” it is a plug in, a small portal-like object that can be plugged into any HTML page at various services and locations and sites such as Google Home Page, MySpace, Facebook, Linked In etc..

The Module is all defined in its own document structure called a “Module” document. The Module can be inserted into your Google or MySpace homepage and does neat little things on your behalf such as Weather Ticker, Map Mash up of Restaurants, etc

Here are some examples of Modules from http://www.ProgrammableWeb.com/

The idea is that this self contained unit can be installed into ones site very easily and provides neat little widget functionality to the user. What is more profound than the widget itself, is the nice simple way that this Module can be packaged and used by unlimited number of end users, on their everyday sites, and can be used and displayed virtually anywhere. The Standardization of these widgets and the Social concepts surrounding a “Profile” a “Network” and an “Activity” , are becoming an important design concept in Enterprise Technology and Sales and Marketing efforts.

This Module above is advertising a little widget I found in the results from above. You can load onto your site and it lets you keep a wish list of items and it will search them for you and provide a real time “ticker-like” stream of functionality. The Widget does the searching on Amazon for you, displaying items it finds when they become available.

The Module Document Type

Everything about the Module is defined in the Module Document.

Looking at the head of this document, much of this is self explanatory. The header holds data about the module that acts like a “Advertisement” that lets you install that component in nearly any location. It lists the author, some preferences, a preview object link people see when previewing Modules. This section is used to display the module when used are browsing for items they would use on their sites. This section acts as an enticing beacon. The beacon acts an enticement to install the plug-in into your own sites.

What does this little beacon look like?

ProgrammeableWeb.com allows you to search for these widgets to install onto your home page. When we preview it we are enticed to simply, “Plug it in” to our site. We see above a list of “Beacons” for various Modules that one can plug in to their site. I noticed one called.

If we look closer at the link we see that we reference two things:

1. An Endpoint that knows how speak the “Module” language
2. The Modules XML location

The above is the link from “Add to Google Homepage”

The code living at the http://fusion.google.com called “add” accepts a URI of the XML that describes the Module and where to get the code for this module. It will insert the Module into a Users home page using Google Homepage as their “Home Page” of choice.

The Module can be inserted into most any sites pages because they are entirely HTML and JavaScript references. It is a standard that is being supported whereby these Modules can run autonomously without disturbing the rest of the page navigation the user has plugged the module into. It is just a web widget using Ajax to run in its own space in the hosting page container. The part of the Module document that describes where to get the package.

The content section has the base HTML and JavaScript locations. When the user runs your Smidget, it is actually using HTML and JavaScript from your site from inside their homepage; they do not need to go visit your web page.

After looking at this I started looking into all the Modules that are being built for virtually everything. Some are goofy and some are extremely helpful. The point is (I will hint) is that these could be powerful little self contained Sales and Marketing widgets!

I will call it a “SMIDGET”.

A Smidget is a “Module” in the sense that it follows this standard. The S and the M can be the connection where the Module is for specific purposes such as Sales and Marketing Campaigns. The Smidget allows fine grained control of targeted content armed with specific profile data about the user, all contained in one tight, easily managed little bundle. It can represent both the advertisement and the point of sale/capture logic connections between the customer and the company. The concept is that you bundle the pitch and the close, the zing and the close all in one. Furthermore, they don’t have to visit your site directly, they have it embedded in their site but with a nice personalized pipe for which to interact with that profile all the while knowing their exact context, behavior, frequency and tastes, friends and networks. It is on their terms with the utmost of ease provided.

In negotiating the sale of the home the previous owner who, in my mind was presented as a nice old man, asked that as part of the contract he would be able to maintain and preserve the tree. Needless to say that we thought that the request was very odd and we struck that from the deal.

Some months later after settling into the house, the orange buds began to appear. We did not pay much attention as it seemed as it would be many more months until they would be ripe and ready for the picking.
It seemed like it happened one day but all of a sudden the Oranges were not Oranges, they were tangerines, and they were huge. As it turns out the tree is a type of tangerine called a Poncan.

On a visit one day from our friend and contractor, Jeff, he noted that we needed to get these tangerines off the tree as they were actually starting to get over-ripe. He said we could tell by the puckering of the orange peel. So we started picking. No, I started “pulling”. That was until my wife corrected me and showed me the error of my ways. We do not pick or pull a tangerine but we instead “twist” such that we do not uncork the sweet center. The fruit will continue to sweeten and ripen up.

So we started twisting.

We had absolutely no idea how ridiculously filled with fruit this tree was. There seemed to be hundreds and hundreds.

One we had picked 800 or so Tangerines, we realized that we needed to start giving them away because we simply had far too many. We gave them to everyone seemed seemed more than happy to receive. We had not even Dented this tree.

The tree has so many fruit that branches that were 20-25 feet in the air were hanging down to the ground and contained several hundreds of pounds of fruit each.

I now understood what the wood barrier was designed for. It was designed to hold up the enormous amount of fruit this thing bears. It had literally broken several large branches under its own weight.

Here is the tree from various angles…

Note in this next picture how small the chairs and fire pit are below…

This is after removing about 800 oranges. It does not look like many are left until you go look inside.

This is one of hundreds of pods of oranges. My wife nor my kids could lift this one branch.

Here we can see the Puckering of the skin that says they are ready to “twist”. These Tangerines peel easily without creating a mess and are a spectacular snack.

You cannot see the wood structure that is holding the branches of this tree from crushing under its own weight. The branches of this tree reach about 20 -35 feet from the ground and in this picture they are all actually hanging close to the ground.

It is dawning on me that this resource is one of the most amazing gifts on Earth. I am simply in awe on how much fruit this tree bears.

Well sort of me too..

Back in the 90’s I was hungry to learn and build enterprise level applications. The Application Service Provider (ASP) and not not the Microsoft Web stuff, was all the rage and the concept of B2B was all over the place. I had just come from my first job at Oracle where I had dabbled in their emerging web products. I was at a Timeshare company as a software developer. This was the 90’s and in the 90’s development shops were like the Cars of the 1970’s, big and heavy. We had rows and rows of developers churning out who know what. It was really fast and furious. The 90’s was like surfing a giant wave of technology. That aside, let us say I was hungry. I saw a better way to build applications besides the fat client methods we were using in Oracle Forms.

I saw a pattern to all the things that were being built day in and day out. Because few people could see the iterative pattern in everything we were doing, no one was really aware of the model that was emerging.

I became hungry to build a code generator. I developed ways to analyze the data dictionary and to categorize the relationships of the meta data further that just relational tables. I wanted to define how the relationship of tables and keys related to how an application could be represented to the user. I felt I could build the entire database using an automated framework.

Spawn was born.

Check out the Old Spawn Web Site here.

This is not an attempt to NOT be a “one note johnny”, there is some really good items in the product and the web site. There are many many levels of technical discussion using this old material. The ability to understand what we were trying to do with what was available in Browser technology then, using these concepts paralleled against what we are or can be doing today, can hold many profound presentations.

I para-screeshot here for brevity.

It was one thing to get the product built using 90’s browser technology. It was completely another to build a web site that was effective in conveying what automatic code generation from the database was about.

What it did, Why it saved time, Why it generated independent code, yada, yada, yada.

It was hard to build all of the parts to bring this product to market then. The Web Site, the PDF’s, the downloads , the web store, the video demos and not the least the graphics. The site did have some good flash presentations but the graphics, layout and design were horrible.

No one understood what I was talking about so I wrote it all on the wall. Click around on the old web site and pretty much everything started on the wall.

I got some 3 feet wide brown butcher paper and I wallpapered a 10 X 50 ft wall with it. I drew out the diagrams and descriptions of the product, how it worked and the steps and the reasons for everything. That became the web site and many of the flash presentations. I wish I had pictures of that wall. It was a very large low-fi prototype. Those low fi prototypes from the wall became these:

Here the Flash started showing you the data model in your database. The Flash would progress showing you the different stage of the analysis and build. The Flash ended up in what was initially drawn on the low fi wall.

Some others.

IN pulling all of this out of the closet I really see now how little it was about the product. There is a lot of minutia that is required be a real product. We were a real product company with all the parts and we were trying to hit the big time. We were a bit too late. Many people got millions selling air. We had a real product. You would not know it from this article because I realize now it was not about the product then, it was about the hype.

IN 2001 I had everything together, the product , the hype, the infrastructure. I remember September 11, 2001 when that all changed. This helped to put the death blow on the DOT COM era and this product.

With that all behind us I still say these old web pages provide us a good history lesson about where we came from and where we are going. It seems like we have it easy today with all the standardization, AJAX, DOM and endless libraries. Let us combine these lessons from the past with the opportunities of today and take it to the next level.

So yes, I am Hungry to build again and I am not looking to re-packaging my same song.

So, in that I guess I, like old Spawn stuff, am out of the closet.

Did everyone forget how much they didn’t make? Does everyone think that there is even a remote chance that they will be able to earn and live at their current pace, for 30 years?

Lets do some math.

The average price if a house in Orlando (from my perspective) has risen from about 100,000 to 280,000.

So let us take 280,000 and see what it really costs.

Let just say you managed to put 20% down ($56,000) plus the 7,000$ it cost you to close the loan.

Let us use the 280,000 * .80 = 224,000

Monthly Expenses

Mortgage Payment– 1,415

Insurance — 250

Taxes (2 mills per k/12) — 333

Electric — 250.00

Phone — 50.00

Cable — 50.00

Water — 30.00

Internet — 50.00

Cell Phone — 100.00

Car Insurance — 100

Life Insurance — 50

Gas — 100

Food — 400

Total = 3178 Monthly

Oh, yes what about Health insurance? If you are lucky enough to have it offered by your employer, and you have a spouse and children, you can expect to pay 300$ per month split between your two paychecks.

Health Insurance $300

So now where are we?

Monthly Nut = $3,478

So, if you are lucky enough to have a job that is making $50,000.

50,000 / 12 = $4167

= $4167 Monthly Income

-13% or so for Uncle Sam’s cut ($541.71).

Leaves Net Monthly Pay = $3625.29

Noted Monthly Nut = $3,478

Now, if we really looked back at my expense numbers there are clearly many that are left out and many that are even way too low. For example, 25$ a week for gas? If there are two of you then you better stick to your $12.50 per person per week! Nutty.

Also note that I did not include Baseball Fee, dance class, vacations, 401k, house repairs and unexpected expenses. I also did not include your 20% of the health insurance bills + the deductible. I also did not include a weekly visit to Beef O Brady’s for wings and beer or a little light dancing at your friends.

I did not include 1 or even two car payments. I did not count tolls, Christmas, birthdays or beer.

Now, if you are lucky to have all this going for you, and you have a good job then great. Don’t waver. Don’t get sick. Most importantly, do not do anything to upset this balance for the next 30 years.

Oh, didn’t you mention you were taking the family to the UCF game this morning?

Now I am not the type to wallow in self pity or the world is going to hell in a hand basket stories. But let us brainstorm the fix later?

– it cost 300$ month to have a nice yard anymore.

– We are having lawsuits about the dirty water coming from the swamps of Georgia.

– In Miami they have mandated only 12 seconds of weekly watering via sprinklers.

–Igot a ticket from a police officer in a Ford Excursion for washing my dog during the middle of the day.

–Your 8 year old son says hs “going green” and to do his part he will no longer shower on days ending in Y.

The world is running out of water. Cities are fighting about the water flowing from its borders. Sprinklers are becoming a way of the past. The lakes arent filling up like they used to. Green has been keen for a long time. But only to be cool. Now being green is about survival. 500 bucks a month to cool the house in summer and 500 bucks to heat it in the summer. I installed new grass in the back yard and watering it for a month alone cost me $300. They are not making it any more anymore. Yes there is drought. It does not seems to rain like it used to. I can only water on Thursday and Sundays in Seminole County. I need a way to capture the water from my roof when it does rain. I think I can distribute the rain better than if it just rains once, most of which rus off, because it is dry. Allow me to use a combination of water capture and city usage.