Because Im bored and I love surveys.....
Q: What is your salad dressing of choice?
A. Dizon Farm's Strawberry Vinaigrette & Cardini's Caesar Dressing
Q: What is your favorite fast food restaurant?
A. Carl's Jr. and McDonalds and burger King (ok I wrote down thrwee)
Q: What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?
A. Hmmmm sh*t...a lot!!! e.g Mortons of Chicago, hard Rock cafe
Q: On average, what size tip do you leave at a restaurant?
A. um ..5 cents
Q: What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of it?
A: McDonalds Filet of fish and apple pie and spaghetti
Q: What are your pizza toppings of choice?
A. extra ham, pineapples, Anchovies, Pepperoni (not alot though, i get sick of it easily), Mushrooms and extra cheese!!!!
Q: What do you like to put on your toast?
A. Made in london orange marmalade and strawberry jam , mix with Nutella and Skippy chunky peanut butter or just Butter & Sugar
TECHNOLOGY
Q: What is your wallpaper on your computer?
A: Some resort in Maldives
Q: How many televisions are in your house?
A. 7...wow we have a lot...... a lot that is not working .... haha
BIOLOGY
Q: Are you right-handed or left-handed?
A. Right-handed
Q: What is the last heavy item you lifted?
A. My doggy spencer
Q: Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
A. Yeah, and I dont know why. I just blacked out.
BULLCRAPOLOGY
Q: If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
A. Yes!!!!
Q: If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
A. How about something exotic like...Chelsea Scotts or Claire Elizabeth Daylesford
Q: What color do you think looks best on you?
A. I love pink and I think it looks good because I look sexier.
Q: Have you ever swallowed a non-food item by mistake?
A. Hmmmmmm...............nope...
Q: Have you ever saved someone’s life?
A. Yes, I saved my dog from swallowing my mascara.
Q: Has someone ever saved yours?
A. Yes
DAREOLOGY
Q: Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
A. Of course.
Q: Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000
A. Never . Not even $40 million.
Q: Would you never blog again for $50,000?
A. Yes.. this is easy lah
Q: Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000?
A. Yes, for free also can .i am very proud of my assets.
Q: Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?
A. Hell yeah!!!!
Q: Would you, without fear of punishment, take a humans life for $1,000,000?
A. Yes!but then again, depends on who is the complete idoit.
DUMBOLOGY
Q: What is in your left pocket?
A. I don't put things in my left pocket. Right pocket has a handful of coins and tissue paper
Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
A. Vote for Pedro!!!! It was alright.
Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
A. parquet in my room
Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower?
A. Sit down or sometimes relax in my bathtub and sleep for 20 minutes.
Q: How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
A. One only ... I think.
Q: Last time you had a run-in with the cops?
A. no contacts
Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
A. millionaire
Q: Who is number 1 on your top 8?
A. ME!!!!!
LASTOLOGY
Q: Last friend you talked to?
A. Ava Angelique Lim's father (SL)
Q: Last person who called you?
A. mummy
Q: Person you hugged?
A. SL
Q: Person you kissed?
A. Spencer (dog)
FAVORITOLOGY
Q: Number?
A. 1, 14, 23, 36 ,28, 34
Q: Season?
A: Hot summer nites
CURRENTOLOGY
Q: Missing someone?
A. YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Q: Mood?
A. Tired & Sick
Q: Listening to?
A: akon
Q: Watching?
A. None at the moment
Q: Worrying about?
A. Expenses and phone bills and debts and internet virus
RANDOMOLOGY
Q: First place you went this morning?
A. Park
Q: What can you not wait to do?
A. Get my hands on the LG Shine phone tomorrow !!!!!
Q: What’s the last movie you saw?
A. Jay Chou secret with SL
Q: Do you smile often?
A: hmm yes
Q: Are you a friendly person?
A. Nope. I only talk to people i like. I dislike talking to ugly people.
and yes i am shallow so what.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Nokia Stylish phone N7500
Nokia on Tuesday unveiled two new phones -- the 7500 (pictured) and the 7900 -- that target style-conscious consumers.
Credit: Nokia
The Nokia 7900 (pictured) is compatible with high-speed 3G networks. The 7900 and 7500 are scheduled to be released by the end of September.
Credit: Nokia
iRex iRiad Review
Monday, May 07, 2007
iRex iLiad Reader Review
So I picked up the iRex Iliad reader, and so far I am way more impressed than I thought I'd be. What does that mean? Well lets break this down. I read an entire book on the device, one sized by Manybooks.net specifically for the Iliad, and so I have a good feed for what it means to read on it now.
First, the screen: A nice roomy 8 inch electrophoretic screen. This is the E-Ink that has been talked about for a few years now. The screen on the Iliad is has 16 shades of gray and is functionally a 768x1024x160dpi screen. The contrast is really quite remarkable. Not as good as an actual book, but this technology is really getting close.
The real issue of sorts for these devices is the ghosting and the interpage reset flashing of the screen. It seems if you are going to be updating a significant portion of the screen it will cycle the screen. I don't like it but I also don't think that it is a huge deal. The ghosting has the effect of degrading the experience as well, but it isn't a major big deal.
Page turn speed could be faster, too, but it isn't a big enough problem to break the flow of reading for me (and I am a fast reader). It is significant when the pdf is heavily graphic (like a graphic novel) but acceptable for more pdfs, for me. Screen size being what it is, your PDFs should be sized for an A4 paper to give a good experience on the device.
The pen based input is fun, but unless the software is improved, I can think of only a few tasks that would excite me to use this feature, and that is editing a document. By editing I mean "editing", as in, reading a manuscript and noting where it needs to be edited. The delay inherent in the system right now is annoying and frustrating if you try to sketch something.
The Iliad companion software so far is pretty disappointing. They were going for syncing functionality for the machine, but the implementation is horribly weak. Luckily the device is functionally a usb hard drive. Also, the 'news, books, docs, notes' buttons only apply to the limited internal memory, not on the externally changable cf or sd cards.
SD cards work, by the way, even though only mmc is noted to be supported. I haven't plugged in a CF card yet.
Settings are easy enough to , ah, set, and I had the Iliad on the network, updated and runing quite quickly. The presence of wireless, like the pen enabled input, was neat but in the end nothing all that exciting due to the lack of fun things to do with the pen or on the internet from the device.
The software that is running on the Linux based Iliad is, well, serviceable. I've certainly used worse software on a ce device, but they could make the device quite a bit more usable. The mobipocket reader which recently pushed to the reader is pretty great, but I think that the main reader app should be revved to be just as good. The Sony software is, well, better than the Iliad software, but it is my hope that Iliad continues to improve.
Also, power management needs a fair amount of work, as does the aforementioned ui. As I found out, if you lose your pen, then you can't set a variety of settings. Also, I want to smash the ethernet/usb/power dongle. It angers me. The device should have USB built in and charge from it. To add insult to injury, it wants a B style USB connector to connect to the dongle, while every other device I own wants a usb-mini.
The form factor is just about perfect. Great texturization of the chassis and the page flip bar is brilliant. Good, big screen with decent enough contrast. Books are better for contrast, but reading the Iliad is like reading a very thin-papered paperback book.
But...is it worth the price? If it were cheaper, then I'd say yes, right now, it's pretty expensive, if useful. I'll post again in a few months, if I'm still using it and after a few trips to London....
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
iRex iLiad Review
Reviewed by: Patrick Wignall
Reviewed on: 8 August 2007
To most of us, the idea of reading a book on a computer screen is about as appealing as root canal treatment, however that attitude may change when you clap eyes on the iRex iLiad's display. It uses a technology called E Ink, which doesn't flicker and doesn't use a backlight, so you're presented with a rock-steady image that's very easy on the eye.
This ebook reader is also more advanced than rivals like the Sony Reader (only available in the US and Japan), as it has built-in Wi-Fi, comes with a stylus you can use for making notes onscreen and uses software that lets you download RSS newsfeeds.
Those tempted to join the ebook revolution can pick up the iLiad for £433 from Libresco.
Design
The single most impressive thing on this product is the screen. We'd go so far as to say that it's as easy on your eyes as an actual printed page. The first time we saw it, we thought it was covered with a printed protective sticker until we made the text change.
Rather than relying on the LCD technology used on most laptops and PDAs, it employs a display technology called E Ink. This creates a high contrast monochrome image that is completely free from flicker and doesn't require a backlight. It's even readable in direct sunlight, and because it has a high resolution of 768x1,024 pixels, text looks very smooth and clean.
The iLiad certainly doesn't look much like a normal book. Although the front of the reader is around the same size as the average hardback, the device is actually very slim, and at 390g feels fairly light to hold. The design is functional rather than flashy, but the rear of the unit has odd rectangles cut out of it for no apparent reason -- these give it the look and feel of a prototype rather than a polished product targeted at the mass market.
The front of the device is mostly taken up by the large screen, but there are also a number of buttons to help you navigate the user interface. The most prominent of these is what iRex calls the Flipbar. This is really a very long rocker switch mounted on the left-hand side that you flick back and forth to move through the pages of a book or document. It's very intuitive to use and makes the device feel just that little bit more like a normal book.
At the bottom of the screen, iRex has also added four buttons marked News, Books, Docs and Notes, which act as shortcut keys to the relevant folders held in the ebook reader's memory. They provide a fairly effective way of keeping your documents in some kind of sensible order.
Features
The iLiad has 256MB of internal flash memory. This is shared with the operating system so you're left with around 128MB of space for storing ebooks and documents. That may not sound like much, but when you take into account that the average ebook weighs in at less than a megabyte, it's not actually too stingy. Anyway, if you need more space you can slap a memory card into the Compact flash or MMC/SD slot at the top, or use the host USB socket to attach a memory key.
When you want to transfer new files to the iLiad you have to connect the travel adaptor to the expansion port at the base of the device. This includes not just a USB port that can actually be used for connecting the device to a PC (the one built-in to the reader is only for connecting up external storage), but also has an Ethernet port to connect the device to a home network. Transfers over USB were quite slow, but then the file sizes of ebooks are so small it wasn't exactly a deal breaker.
Why are all our gadgets glossy ?
The same cleaning rituals that obsess some car owners are now being adopted by the gadget lover. Our public transport network is filled with grown men using small felt cloths to rub fingerprints off their Sony PSPs or lint off their LG Shine.
Despite our protests at iPods that scratch too easily and laptops that end up looking like post-operation swabs, we secretly love to wrestle dust out of their nooks and crannies, polishing them back into a glossy shine -- there's a strange sense of satisfaction to the task.
In fact, many gadgets now come with a branded cleaning-cloth, a shammy leather for the technology lover. In maintaining the object we grow closer to it, taking on a responsibility for its appearance as an extension of ourselves. In the same way we iron a shirt, or comb our hair, we clean our iPods -- lest we be judged for the fingerprints they carry.
But where does this desire for shiny things come from, and why is the consumer electronics industry so keen to exploit it?
Some academics explain our attraction to gloss as an innate human desire to touch things that reflect light. Birds, cats and fish are all attracted to bright surfaces that glisten. In 2003, a psychological study into the effects of reflective surface finishes on human children concluded that, "infants and toddlers have been observed to mouth and to lick the horizontal metal mirrors of toys on their hands and knees", apparently taking the reflection as a visual cue for the presence of water.
So, are gadget-makers taking advantage of a primitive human habit of attributing value to water, and therefore attributing value to surfaces that appear like water?
If you're reluctant to accept the water theory, there's also our adult fascination with gems and diamonds to consider -- largely fostered by decades of marketing campaigns associating jewels with social status. Many consumers feel a psychological need to publicly display their wealth and power. These conspicuous status symbols could take the form of a diamond, a shiny red Corvette or the new iPhone.
The laptop industry has taken particular advantage of our 'magpie instinct' to flock towards the glossiest computer in the store. A few years ago, glossy laptop screens were the exception -- it was considered undesirable to have the room you were sitting in reflected back on to the document you're working on. Now you're hard-pressed to find a laptop without a glossy screen.
Consumers have a tendency to mindlessly migrate towards the glossiest thing in the store and buy it on impulse, a habit that the industry is catching on to quickly. If you can accept the hypothesis that as animals we just can't resist the shiniest objects, then prepare to defend yourself against the onslaught. Wearing sunglasses in the Apple Store would be a start.
Specifications for the LG Shine phone >>>>>>>
Europe UK : LG Electronics has named February 7th 2007 as the UK launch date for its stunning new handset, LG Shine (Shine). The UK launch is the first stage in Shine's global programme, with the handset being available in all major global markets by Q2 2007.
LG has already sold more than 180,000 Shine handsets in Korea since its launch in November, with more than 3,500 units a day still being sold. As the second handset in the Black Label Series of premium mobile phones Shine has already created a massive amount of interest globally with its wide 2.2 inch ‘magic mirror’ screen, multi functional scroll key and brushed full metal body.
“With Shine, LG has yet again pushed the boundaries of mobile phone design,” believes Mr. Jae Bae, Executive Vice President of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company’s Overseas Sales & Marketing Division. “Inside its sleek, full metal body, LG’s cutting edge design technology delivers a high specification of features coupled with impressive battery life. With superb music, photography and video capabilities, we’re expecting Shine to be even more successful than Chocolate, which continues to sell exceptionally well worldwide, 12 months on since its launch.
Full technical details for the UK version of Shine will be announced at the launch event on February 7th.
Not so long ago, only the residents of Geekdom (usually in academia) would attempt to architect an entirely open source email system. Architects norma
Not so long ago, only the residents of Geekdom (usually in academia) would attempt to architect an entirely open source email system. Architects normally assembled the system from an à la carte menu of email system parts. Hooking the pieces together required an in-depth knowledge of email protocols and mail flow. (If you are a wannabe email geek, here's Carnegie Mellon's email system architecture.)
All too often, however, the architect may not have adequately documented the structure. The architect relies on the respective open source community of each part (e.g., IMAP or OpenLDAP) for support. Community members do assist each other, but the support may not be timely enough for a production problem. Consequently, an open source "build it" model for email is a scary venture – particularly as businesses are so reliant on email communication.
Tarnished creditability is difficult to clean up.
Nearly 100 percent of organizations have an email system, of which approximately 80 percent use IBM Domino or Microsoft Exchange. The remaining 20 percent are using systems from established vendors, e.g., Gordano, Ipswitch, Mirapoint, Novell (GroupWise), Oracle, Sun and many others. So… why would a vendor want to introduce a new email system into a market that is 100 percent saturated?
The commercial arm of an open source community (e.g., Sendmail.com versus Sendmail.org) is an active participant in the community, while providing for-fee enterprise-level support, packaging and upgrades.
Start-ups with commercial open source email and messaging systems are gambling their futures on changing organizational beliefs about open source.
Nat Torkington's blog post Open Source Trends discusses four emerging trends about open source overall (underscores mine):
Adoption - we've written the main apps, now the real challenges lay in convincing users to adopt it. Usability, marketing, and support.
Freedom Wins - there are crappy business models built around half-hearted adoption of open source. Embrace open source's strengths, don't treat it as a weakness.
Web 2.0 is Open Source - the web is built on open source, and the scaling and platform challenges for Web 2.0 are the challenges for open source.
Open Beyond Source - the best practices of open source extending to proprietary software development, hardware, and data.
Open source start-ups are riding on the wings of "computing freedom." Computing freedom is a reshaping of how technology is designed and implemented. It leverages the individual's relationship within a group (or community). Computing freedom is as much about social change as it is about technology change.
In the big picture, new open source email and messaging entrants, e.g., Jabber, Jive Software, Open-Xchange, Scalix and Zimbra, must "stay the course." The established email and messaging vendors see that open source is gaining respectability and, therefore, are building open source into their existing systems.
All too often, however, the architect may not have adequately documented the structure. The architect relies on the respective open source community of each part (e.g., IMAP or OpenLDAP) for support. Community members do assist each other, but the support may not be timely enough for a production problem. Consequently, an open source "build it" model for email is a scary venture – particularly as businesses are so reliant on email communication.
Tarnished creditability is difficult to clean up.
Nearly 100 percent of organizations have an email system, of which approximately 80 percent use IBM Domino or Microsoft Exchange. The remaining 20 percent are using systems from established vendors, e.g., Gordano, Ipswitch, Mirapoint, Novell (GroupWise), Oracle, Sun and many others. So… why would a vendor want to introduce a new email system into a market that is 100 percent saturated?
The commercial arm of an open source community (e.g., Sendmail.com versus Sendmail.org) is an active participant in the community, while providing for-fee enterprise-level support, packaging and upgrades.
Start-ups with commercial open source email and messaging systems are gambling their futures on changing organizational beliefs about open source.
Nat Torkington's blog post Open Source Trends discusses four emerging trends about open source overall (underscores mine):
Adoption - we've written the main apps, now the real challenges lay in convincing users to adopt it. Usability, marketing, and support.
Freedom Wins - there are crappy business models built around half-hearted adoption of open source. Embrace open source's strengths, don't treat it as a weakness.
Web 2.0 is Open Source - the web is built on open source, and the scaling and platform challenges for Web 2.0 are the challenges for open source.
Open Beyond Source - the best practices of open source extending to proprietary software development, hardware, and data.
Open source start-ups are riding on the wings of "computing freedom." Computing freedom is a reshaping of how technology is designed and implemented. It leverages the individual's relationship within a group (or community). Computing freedom is as much about social change as it is about technology change.
In the big picture, new open source email and messaging entrants, e.g., Jabber, Jive Software, Open-Xchange, Scalix and Zimbra, must "stay the course." The established email and messaging vendors see that open source is gaining respectability and, therefore, are building open source into their existing systems.
The Millionaire Test
When Will You Be A Millionaire?
This test can tell you how old you will be when you make your first million dollars, if you invest your money properly. It's certainly not exact and any number of factors can and will effect how much money you actually accumulate in life, but this test can give you a rough estimate of your earning potential.
Below are actually two tests. The first tells you how old you will be when you will become a millionaire, and the second will show you your maximum earning potential over a given time. All you have to do is fill in the fields and press the calculate button. Feel free to take the test multiple times, entering different numbers into the fields to see what results you get!
My results : >>>>>>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You said: You are 30 years old, and in 0 year(s) you will start investing about $30,000 per year at 10% interest.
Based on this information....
You will be 44 years old when you make your first million dollars!
Note: This test does not correct for inflation, so you should know that a million dollars 14 years from now will be worth less than a million dollars today. But still, you will be a millionaire!
Now you can GO BACK and take the "How Much Can You Possibly Earn?" test, or scoll down and take this test again with some different numbers to get a different result. Scroll down further for an explanation of this test.
This test can tell you how old you will be when you make your first million dollars, if you invest your money properly. It's certainly not exact and any number of factors can and will effect how much money you actually accumulate in life, but this test can give you a rough estimate of your earning potential.
Below are actually two tests. The first tells you how old you will be when you will become a millionaire, and the second will show you your maximum earning potential over a given time. All you have to do is fill in the fields and press the calculate button. Feel free to take the test multiple times, entering different numbers into the fields to see what results you get!
My results : >>>>>>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You said: You are 30 years old, and in 0 year(s) you will start investing about $30,000 per year at 10% interest.
Based on this information....
You will be 44 years old when you make your first million dollars!
Note: This test does not correct for inflation, so you should know that a million dollars 14 years from now will be worth less than a million dollars today. But still, you will be a millionaire!
Now you can GO BACK and take the "How Much Can You Possibly Earn?" test, or scoll down and take this test again with some different numbers to get a different result. Scroll down further for an explanation of this test.
Getting data OUT of Facebook
One of the ongoing criticisms of Facebook is the perception that you can’t get data out. This goes down well with the open source crowd who love nothing better than a walled garden. That perception may be wrong. Here’s how.
SAP’s Craig Cmehil scared the living daylights out of me yesterday by pulling some of my Facebook data into an application he created in about 15 minutes. In fairness, I had challenged Craig to figure a way of accessing my data in a usable form so no harm, no foul.
Enterprises looking to create apps for Facebook can use most of the data individuals input for their own purposes. Craig says:
…what I did with that very small little app was pull the birthday, education and work history of the user - now let’s say the user is a new hire at a company and the company has a small Facebook application (of course they would need to discuss TOS with Facebook and all that first). This application would allow the new hire or potential new hires to simply copy their education and work histories as well as any other data of importance over to the companies internal system - for me that would be brilliant no more copying that data from LinkedIn to Facebook, to who knows where else. Considering this took me only the 15 minutes imagine if you really devoted some time to it certainly an Enterprise application in there I would think…
And then Craig did give it some thought and posted those into a Facebook video. You’ll need a Facebook account to see this but I will paraphrase:
Assume a company wants to find a new hire. It could put out a call over Facebook, maybe even create a group for that job. It could buy some Facebook inventory to advertise that draws people to a small application.
A user adds him/herself to that group and fires up the application which sucks data about ‘you’ into itself.
With appropriate permissions, ‘you’ authorize the app to send your data to the company in question.
In turn, the company accesses that data and maps it to its hire process system, using its own algorithms to create a short list of candidates.
OK - so there are all sorts of issues around data collection, privacy etc but given this information is likely to be volunteered, then I suspect the practical realities are that no-one will care, provided they know which of their data is being gathered. Moreover, potential candidates may well provide MORE Facebook data if they think that will help their chances of being shortlisted for a position. Regardless, this is a serious enterprise play.
The other week, I suggested that HR should be leading the charge in the adoption of social computing applications. Jason Corsello, an HR specialist and fellow Irregular responded saying ‘no’:
IT, especially at large organizations, still maintains a command and control approach to applications and communication technology and will continue to do so. As much as it would make sense for HR to own internal collaboration, I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
Here surely is a sensible use case that any HR department could put forward as a solid reason for allowing access to social applications of this kind. IT departments that ignore this call will be made to look incredibly silly. The only problem is that such cases require forward thinking of the kind that geeks like Craig exude. It’s all upside because I can say - having both met and spoken with Craig on a number of occasions - he ‘gets’ business need. Working with folk like Craig is always a pleasure because you just know something good will come out of it.
Apps like this deliver value way beyond the effort expended. Remember Craig said it took all of 15 minutes to create a ’scary’ prototype? Imagine what he could do in a couple of days? And lest anyone runs away with the idea that Craig is a Facebook fanboy - he states very clearly that’s he’s not a huge fan - yet.
But that still leaves the question of monetization for those smart enough to build these kinds of application. This is a topic that will become increasingly important for incumbent providers like SAP and Oracle as the light weight yet extraordinarily valuable social computing metaphor takes hold.
I hope the Facebook founders are thinking about this because as many of us in enterprise land already know, the value to be delivered is way beyond anything that consumer apps can muster. And that has a price.
Proof that there are 2 types of computer users - Dumb and dumber
David Berlind Under the hood of disruptive technologies Subscribe Alerts Bio Mobile
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Proof that there are two types of computer users: Dumb and Dumber
Posted by David Berlind @ 2:26 pm
Categories: General, IT Management, Software Infrastructure, Personal Technology, Technology Shakedown
Tags: Car, David Berlind, Computer, David Berlind
+42
84 votes
Worthwhile? First, the good news. Our Technology Shakedown videos seem to be striking a nerve so expect more of them. The idea? We shouldn’t have to accept mediocrity in our technology products. Period.
Now, the bad news. Judging by the responses to these shakedowns (yesterday’s in particular), there’s a contingent of end-users who think mediocrity is well-enough and that I (as well as others) should be leaving well-enough alone. For example, ZDNet reader Don Burnett wrote:
Technology Shakedown is Right
I think the [David Berlind] should think about what he’s writing and find solutions to what he’s writing before he writes and puts something out there. I get very angry when I read this column because it usually makes people who are unfamiliar with computers or computer operations with Windows Vista unfairly think that there are problems with it.Most of the time the published material just points to the author’s unfamiliarity with problem solving for himself and calls attention to things that are really not problems for the uneducated user.
The only shakedown I see here is what’s happening to the readers of this column if they actually believe there is truth in this blog. The spin here is way too much in high gear.
Responses like these have led me to the conclusion that there are two types of computer users in this world: Dumb and Dumber.
Dumb: I’m using this term as endearingly as I possibly can. It refers to users like me and ZDNet reader Kris who, in direct response to Mr. Burnett, wrote:
Vista does have issues
I’m glad you are a brainiac that can figure everything out. But the typical end user just wants to turn on his computer and have it work. And that is what Microsoft advertises, ease of use. Imagine every time you got in your car, “do you want the oil pump on? Click here. Do you want the fuel pump on? Click here.” What fun driving would be if our cars ran on Vista!
Kris is on to something. The idea behind software is to automate and to make us more productive. Attributes like automation and “ease of use” are theoretically the expediters of productivity. They allow us to be blind or dumb to what’s going on under the hood so that we can do something outrageous like get work done. In fact, the messages we get from Microsoft (as well as other software providers) makes it clear that it’s one of their obsessions to convince us that their software makes us more productive than the alternatives. We shouldn’t have to be computer mechanics in order to be productive any more than we should have to be car mechanics in order to get from one destination to another with a car.
In a former life, I liked nothing better than getting under the hood of car. The same went for my computer. But when the 80’s came and went, so too did my recognition of just about anything that was visible when I lifted the hood on my cars. The same can be said of today’s software. This is disappointing to those of us who like to tinker. But now that I’m less of an enthusiast about both by car and my computer (I do have other passions), I see them more as tools to get things done and done more expeditiously given that time is my most precious resource. I want to be dumb about what makes them make me more productive (or mobile as it may be). I just want to get my work done (or get from point A to point B) and anything that gets in my way (be it a misbehaving warning message on my PC or the need to individually activate the water and oil pumps in my car) is just slowing me down.
By letting me be dumb about somethings, I get to be smarter about others: the things that really matter to me.
Dumber: This is the contigent of braniacs (in other words, not all braniacs) who think that because they can actually lift up the hood of a computer or a car and overcome their mediocrity, that those of us who can’t are idiots. They see themselves as being in the majority and roll their eyes at the sight or sound of any of us who complain that something isn’t quite right. After all, if it’s not quite right, the creators should be forgiven and we should be able to divine the solution from the same omnipresent, omnipotent technical God that they divined their technical superiority from.
They think they’re smarter than the rest of us but as it turns out, they’re dumber.
They’re dumber because they’ve lost complete sight of the fact that for most people, the machines they see as toys to be tinkered with are just tools to get stuff done. They’re dumber because in their lust to overcome the machine — a desire which most of us tool users do not share — mediocrity is actually their friend.
They accept it.
They probably long for it.
Without it, they’d have nothing to do.
Newsvine - Get smarter here
http://www.newsvine.com/
Updated continuously by citizens like you, Newsvine is an instant reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment.
Seeking 'thinspiration' - pro-anorexia sites start social networking
Pro-anorexia websites offering tips on extreme dieting are nothing new, but their growth on social networking sites is a disturbing new twist and brings them within reach of a wider audience.
As a conversation opener, it's as blatant as it is troubling.
"What diet pills work best?" a young female user of a social networking site asks. The responses begin to trickle through from other members of the group which is an online meeting place for those people with anorexia.
Comments from Rebecca Yarowsky
Sad. And frightening, gd.
Apart from the cultural bombardment of unhealthy female images, the tacit and not-so-tacit media messages that "thin is desirable but skeletal is best", what prompts these women to aspire toward such an unrealistic and life-threatening condition?
I don't know much about the psychology of anorexia. It seems as if, on some level, these poor victims want, quite literally, to disappear and -- in the process -- become walking suicides. If that makes sense.
You bring up another issue, too, generald. The Web as a medium for the unchecked spawning of misinformation and propaganda -- whether it be chat rooms where teenagers encourage one another to starve themselves or sites where hatemongers spew without reprisal.
This new virtual reality. It has so much potential for good. And evil.
Yet? When we consider the introduction of monitoring mechanisms, we open up an entire new can of (scary) worms.
I'm stumped. Sigh
Comments from generald
find the irony troublesome: it is the media who perpetuate the notion that you have to be skeletal to be accepted and popular and happy, and they are very people who jump on pro-anorexia sites and people for supporting the condition.
That's not the main issue, of course, but it sticks in my throat. And I'm not saying that I condone or support pro-ana sites in any way shape or form. What is needed is the antidote to such sites, whatever form that would take.
But to the reason I seeded this piece:
It would be impossible to regulate sites like Myspace and Facebook. For example, there was some consternation this week about the British National Party (the National Front, basically) on Facebook (see here and here, if you're interested). Is this acceptable because the BNP's agenda is objectionable, or is it just plain and proper 1984-esque censorship? Similarly, regulating and banning pro-ana groups and individuals from social networking sites might not be the answer.
If I recall, this issue came up on livejournal a few years back (I've been on livejournal for years and years and years!) when attention was drawn to pro-ana communities on the site and it received mixed responses.
http://generaldecay.newsvine.com/_news/2007/08/08/884671-seeking-thinspiration-pro-anorexia-sites-start-social-networking
As a conversation opener, it's as blatant as it is troubling.
"What diet pills work best?" a young female user of a social networking site asks. The responses begin to trickle through from other members of the group which is an online meeting place for those people with anorexia.
Comments from Rebecca Yarowsky
Sad. And frightening, gd.
Apart from the cultural bombardment of unhealthy female images, the tacit and not-so-tacit media messages that "thin is desirable but skeletal is best", what prompts these women to aspire toward such an unrealistic and life-threatening condition?
I don't know much about the psychology of anorexia. It seems as if, on some level, these poor victims want, quite literally, to disappear and -- in the process -- become walking suicides. If that makes sense.
You bring up another issue, too, generald. The Web as a medium for the unchecked spawning of misinformation and propaganda -- whether it be chat rooms where teenagers encourage one another to starve themselves or sites where hatemongers spew without reprisal.
This new virtual reality. It has so much potential for good. And evil.
Yet? When we consider the introduction of monitoring mechanisms, we open up an entire new can of (scary) worms.
I'm stumped. Sigh
Comments from generald
find the irony troublesome: it is the media who perpetuate the notion that you have to be skeletal to be accepted and popular and happy, and they are very people who jump on pro-anorexia sites and people for supporting the condition.
That's not the main issue, of course, but it sticks in my throat. And I'm not saying that I condone or support pro-ana sites in any way shape or form. What is needed is the antidote to such sites, whatever form that would take.
But to the reason I seeded this piece:
It would be impossible to regulate sites like Myspace and Facebook. For example, there was some consternation this week about the British National Party (the National Front, basically) on Facebook (see here and here, if you're interested). Is this acceptable because the BNP's agenda is objectionable, or is it just plain and proper 1984-esque censorship? Similarly, regulating and banning pro-ana groups and individuals from social networking sites might not be the answer.
If I recall, this issue came up on livejournal a few years back (I've been on livejournal for years and years and years!) when attention was drawn to pro-ana communities on the site and it received mixed responses.
http://generaldecay.newsvine.com/_news/2007/08/08/884671-seeking-thinspiration-pro-anorexia-sites-start-social-networking
"Drive Hordes of Targeted Traffic To Your Site With Zero Cost Promotion From YouTube.com"
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And that's why it's important that you learn about this new medium today...so that you can take advantage of it and advertise your products and services with short video clips, without paying any fees per viewer (Before it gets played out like all the other website promotion tactics).
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Explained: The 5 minute process to create a custom profile and your own custom channel information (This will give you a big advantage when people sort for 'Channels', 'Groups', and 'Playlists').
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What you should absolutely NOT do after you've uploaded your video.
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Case Study 2. Amateur Video Sells High-Ticket Item
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How one technology company created a funny video about office life which was at one point being viewed thousands of times per hour.
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How long should your video be? The answer may surprise you...
The best places to outsource your video production to you just don't feel up to the task of creating your own.
Do you even need video footage to create a great video? How to create compelling videos from still photos.
Where to get pre-made movie clips (super-cheap) that you can use in your own promotions.
3 places where you find great production music clips online for video soundtracks.
Where to get great royalty photos, clipart and video clips to use when editing your videos.
How to capture the most controversial video footage.
Where to download free video editing software (and how to use it!)
The best way to practice making videos.
The best format to upload for high quality.
How you can get around the 10 minute limit if needed.
Who should be actors in your videos and what papers should they sign?
What kind of equipment you will need to have before you can create a video (you may be suprised to find that you might already own video equipment).
A little known (but very useful) feature of many digital cameras which few people use.
The best webcam to use for YouTube videos.
The best screen capture software on the market today and how to record your actions on the computer screen along with voice narration (use this to make software demonstrations, digital product demonstrations, or show off membership websites).
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Specific Tactics For YouTube Marketing
Building A Community On YouTube:
Creating A YouTube Group
Getting Subscribers To Your YouTube Videos
Promoting Your Own Products With YouTube:
Creating An EBook Trailer
Demonstrating Your Product
Promoting Business Opportunities
Marketing Yourself
Promoting Affiliate Products With YouTube:
Affiliate Domain Redirects & Affiliate Domain Masking
Tracking Affiliate Sales
Increasing Adsense Revenue With Video
List Building
How To Build Your List By Offering Free Videos
Using Video To Build A Personal Relationship With Your Subscribers
Trust Building
Educational Sample Videos
Video Testimonials For Your Product
Videos Of Customers Using Your Product
YouTube Videos As Content For Your Site:
Embedding Video In Your Own Site
Demonstrating Your Product
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Facebook - the CIA conspiracy
Facebook has 20 million users worldwide, is worth billions of dollars and, if internet sources are to be believed, was started by the CIA.
The social networking phenomenon started as a way of American college students to keep in touch. It is rapidly catching up with MySpace, and has left others like Bebo in its wake.
But there is a dark side to the success story that's been spreading across the blogosphere. A complex but riveting Big Brother-type conspiracy theory which links Facebook to the CIA and the US Department of Defence.
Comment by Prospero1
Wish there was a little faster alternative to Tor. I'm nervous about even commenting on this article without cloaking my IP.
Either all of this is just so much stuff and nonsense, or we are in the vortex of the kind of changes in the world as we know it that we will only really be able to see in hindsight. I'd like to think there's something we can do -- but I couldn't begin to know what it is.
http://aine.newsvine.com/_news/2007/08/08/885553-facebook-the-cia-conspiracy
The social networking phenomenon started as a way of American college students to keep in touch. It is rapidly catching up with MySpace, and has left others like Bebo in its wake.
But there is a dark side to the success story that's been spreading across the blogosphere. A complex but riveting Big Brother-type conspiracy theory which links Facebook to the CIA and the US Department of Defence.
Comment by Prospero1
Wish there was a little faster alternative to Tor. I'm nervous about even commenting on this article without cloaking my IP.
Either all of this is just so much stuff and nonsense, or we are in the vortex of the kind of changes in the world as we know it that we will only really be able to see in hindsight. I'd like to think there's something we can do -- but I couldn't begin to know what it is.
http://aine.newsvine.com/_news/2007/08/08/885553-facebook-the-cia-conspiracy
10 Secrets to Happiness I learnt from Andrew Matthews
What is more important than being happy?” Andrew Matthews asked the audience in a seminar I attended 6 weeks back. He then started to draw funny little cartoons and continued… “I learnt to draw in school during mathematics!”
Everyone bursted into laughter.
In case you don’t know who Andrew Matthews is, let me give you a little introduction. He is an international speaker on “attitude”, “being happy”, “success” and “prosperity” and the best-selling author of motivation and personal development classics like “Being Happy!” and “Follow your heart”.
Andrew is an extraordinary man and I would like to share with you what I learnt about happiness from him. Are you ready to know the 10 secrets to happiness? Listen up!
1) Be happy where you are now
Right now! Be thankful for what you have, instead of moaning about what you lack. Be satisfied with what you have when you are in pursuit of what you want.
2) Happiness, more than anything, is a choice we make every day
Happiness is a conscious decision. You choose to be happy today or you choose to be miserable. Your action/reaction is determined by how you choose to perceive a situation. Andrew gave an amusing illustration of a couple surrounded by a pack of crocodiles. The man thought “OMG Crocodiles!” while his wife thought “OMG Handbags!”
3) Happiness is understanding the things we can’t change yet and working on those we can
Some things are hard to change overnight. It’s unusual to change from a pauper into a millionaire in a day. Happiness is knowing that some things take more time. We can start by working on what we can change immediately.
4) Put a smile on your face. It changes how you think.
I was teaching a friend to ice-skate last Friday evening and there was this beautiful girl I met while getting a drink. She smiled as we both walked towards the vending machine. I smiled back and allowed her to buy her drink first.
While on the ice-skating rink, we passed each other a couple of times. I was trying to keep my friend on his feet while she was falling happily on the ice with hers. Our eyes met again. She smiled and I smiled back.
Then as she was making her way out of the rink, I smiled and waved goodbye. She smiled back. I could hear her friends asking “Is that your friend?” I didn’t catch her reply but I remembered her turning towards me with another smile. I returned the smile with a wave to her bewildered friends.
We didn’t exchange a single word. We didn’t need to. The smiles were enough to brighten up both our days.
5) Whatever you get, accept it and deal with it
All too often, when something bad happens, we are too quick to point fingers and start placing blame on everyone else. Happiness is about accepting responsibility and dealing with what comes your way. Blaming the whole world is not going to solve anything.
6) Problems = Catalyst to take Action
Andrew advises to see problems as a catalyst for us to take action. Problems are good teachers, so learn to love them. Next time, when you face a problem at work/in business, remember to run up to your boss/partner and say, “We have a huge opportunity!”
7) Learn from the elephants!
How do you eat an elephant?
Answer: One bite at a time.
What did the elephant say to the naked man?
Answer: How do you breathe through that thing?
8) Put everything you have into whatever you are doing now
Do your best (100%) and life will support you!
9) It’s not what you get. It’s what you become that matters
Know what to expect - Expect a better you.
10) No one else is going to make you happier. Work on yourself.
A lot of people get things mixed up. A wife thinks about all the bad things her husband does while a widow remembers all the good stuff. That is the ultimate recipe for misery! Isn’t it better to switch the lists around?
Work on your mindset. See things from a positive light.
Conclusion
Happiness is in the way you think. No one can make you happy except yourself. To conclude this article on happiness, I would like to share with you a video of an extraordinary dog (Faith, the two legged dog). I hope Faith will teach you something about happiness that goes beyond words.
How you can begin to attract more opportunities into your life
Today, I will be sharing what I learnt about goal setting from my millionaire friend Jet Toh. Jet is a remarkable man whom I had the honor to meet recently. One of the things he taught me is to systematize my goal setting process, through the use of 9 powerful questions:
1) Is your Goal S.M.A.R.T.?
Specifc
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-Based
I am sure you know what a S.M.A.R.T. Goal is (because you are all incredibly SMART people!) so I won’t go into too much detail here. Let’s just use an example to illustrate this point:
“My Goal is to achieve a net worth of US$1 million by 1 January 2009, 0000hrs (GMT +08:00).”
2) Why must you achieve your goal? What’s the pain associated with not achieving the goal? What’s the pleasure of achieving the goal?
Using the previous example, the pain associated with not achieving the goal would be:
“I would have to slog hard all my life and be a perpetual money-making machine for others!”
The pleasure would be:
“I would be able to invest the money to grow income passively and have more time and freedom to do the things I like.”
3) What do you consider as the most important thing in your life?
Is it your family, personal development, health or financial pursuits? Could it be your career, friends or maybe even time for leisure activities? Identifying the most important thing in your life right now helps you to focus and set clear goals based on your priorities.
4) Is it a must or is it a want?
There’s a big difference between wanting to achieve a goal and having it as a must. We all want to achieve a lot of things – that dream house and/or car, to lose weight, to write a book, to have that million dollars in your bank account etc. But why do most of us not achieve those desires?
Because it is simply that - a mere desire. It’s not a must. It’s not something that needs to get done! Unless you make your goal a must, it is very likely you would never achieve it.
5) What obstacles are preventing you from achieving your goal? What must you do to overcome them?
Knowing what you must achieve is not enough. You have to anticipate the challenges you are likely to face. Think about what you can do to deal with those challenges and perhaps turn them into opportunities.
Going back to the “millionaire goal”, some obstacles could be the lack of know-how and suitable, qualified mentors. One way to overcome this obstacle is to attend more seminars and networking events to get to know more people and discover new business opportunities.
6) What are the resources that can help you achieve your goal?
Who are the people you know or should know that can help you achieve your goal? List them down.
What are the skill sets you possess, that you believe can contribute towards reaching your goal? List them down too.
Knowing and gathering what you need will aid in propelling you towards achieving what you are aiming for.
7) What is your plan? How are you going to achieve your goal?
Now, you may have heard this before:
Your “How” is important but it is not as important as your “Why”, because once you know your “Why”, somehow you would be able to figure out your “How”.
You can start off having a goal without knowing “How” you are going to achieve it. But along the way, you MUST figure it out.
Are you going to earn your first million from internet marketing or the stock market? Investing in real estate or networking marketing? What are the concrete steps you must take to move yourself closer to your goal?
Your “How” prepares you to execute on your goal. Rack your brains, form a mastermind group. Think about HOW you are going to achieve your goal.
8) What must you do every day to reach your goal?
To get where you want to go, you have to change what doesn’t work. Installing new empowering habits is crucial.
Now that you know your target and you know how you are going to achieve it, delve into the details of what needs to be done every single day to move you forward, gradually but surely, towards it.
9) Are you using the power of your sub-conscious mind?
Learn to harness the power of your sub-conscious mind. There are 3 ways you can do that:
a) Autosuggestion
The sub-conscious mind cannot differentiate between truth and lies. If you repeat something over and over again, your sub-conscious mind will believe it to be true.
One way to capitalize on this fact is to make an audio recording of your desires and dreams. Listen to this every night just before you sleep and every morning just after you wake up. These are the times your sub-conscious mind is most receptive.
b) Write down your goals
It is very important to have your goals written down and pasted on places you frequent such as your desk and the bathroom mirror. This will fill your sub-conscious mind with constant thoughts about those goals. Let the power of your sub-conscious mind work in your favor.
c) Dream Board
A dream board is basically a pictorial representation of your goals/dreams. You can create a dream board by using magazine clippings. For example, you can cut out a picture of your dream car and paste it on your dream board.
Like your written goals, place your dream board in a visible place so that you can look at it every day.
Many people swear by the wonders of a dream board. There is also a scene in The Secret (Law of Attraction) that talks about the power of dream boards and manifestation.
Create a dream board for yourself today. You will be amazed at the results!
Additional Resources
Think and Grow Rich elaborates on some of the concepts here such as Masterminding and Autosuggestion. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind highlights the differences in mindset between the rich and the poor and middle-class. Exposing yourself to new ideas through books, videos and seminars can definitely give you a broader perspective and help you in defining your goals.
What do you think of this guide to goal setting? Are there other important questions you feel might have been left out? Let me know. Leave a comment!
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A mouthful of words
To avoid specifics while eschewing generalities: I am an ardent progressive, a product of the public schools in singapore , a graduate of RMIT University, and a lover of architecture. I am a girl, a dog lover, and a non - political agitator with a predisposition for magniloquence, inference, and men.
My interests run the gamut from travelling in London and Paris to the folks that look like me living in Kazahstan and Uzbekistan – from the works of Irvine Welsh to the writings of Oscar Wilde. I welcome criticism, encourage critique, challenge your intelligence and value feedback. I lend my voice as a facilitator of free thought, an agent of dissent, and an engine of change .
I am the one and only, Clarissa
Yours truly,
Clarissa Elizabeth Wong Wei Min
My interests run the gamut from travelling in London and Paris to the folks that look like me living in Kazahstan and Uzbekistan – from the works of Irvine Welsh to the writings of Oscar Wilde. I welcome criticism, encourage critique, challenge your intelligence and value feedback. I lend my voice as a facilitator of free thought, an agent of dissent, and an engine of change .
I am the one and only, Clarissa
Yours truly,
Clarissa Elizabeth Wong Wei Min
In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich
Copied from
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/technology/05rich.html?ei=5088&en=003719e2d0560842&ex=1343966400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
MENLO PARK, Calif. — By almost any definition — except his own and perhaps those of his neighbors here in Silicon Valley — Hal Steger has made it.
Mr. Steger, 51, a self-described geek, has banked more than $2 million. The $1.3 million house he and his wife own on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean is paid off. The couple’s net worth of roughly $3.5 million places them in the top 2 percent of families in the United States.
Yet each day Mr. Steger continues to toil in what a colleague calls “the Silicon Valley salt mines,” working as a marketing executive for a technology start-up company, still striving for his big strike. Most mornings, he can be found at his desk by 7. He typically works 12 hours a day and logs an extra 10 hours over the weekend.
“I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard,” Mr. Steger says. “But a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe in the ’70s, a few million bucks meant ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’ or Richie Rich living in a big house with a butler. But not anymore.”
Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few. Their lives are rich with opportunity; they generally enjoy their jobs. They are amply cushioned against the anxieties and jolts that worry most people living paycheck to paycheck.
But many such accomplished and ambitious members of the digital elite still do not think of themselves as particularly fortunate, in part because they are surrounded by people with more wealth — often a lot more.
When chief executives are routinely paid tens of millions of dollars a year and a hedge fund manager can collect $1 billion annually, those with a few million dollars often see their accumulated wealth as puny, a reflection of their modest status in the new Gilded Age, when hundreds of thousands of people have accumulated much vaster fortunes.
“Everyone around here looks at the people above them,” said Gary Kremen, the 43-year-old founder of Match.com, a popular online dating service. “It’s just like Wall Street, where there are all these financial guys worth $7 million wondering what’s so special about them when there are all these guys worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Mr. Kremen estimated his net worth at $10 million. That puts him firmly in the top half of 1 percent among Americans, according to wealth data from the Federal Reserve, but barely in the top echelons in affluent towns like Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton. So he logs 60- to 80-hour workweeks because, he said, he does not think he has nearly enough money to ease up.
“You’re nobody here at $10 million,” Mr. Kremen said earnestly over a glass of pinot noir at an upscale wine bar here.
Not every Silicon Valley millionaire, of course, shares that perspective.
Celeste Baranski, a 49-year-old engineer with a net worth of around $5 million who lives with her husband in Menlo Park, no longer frets about tucking enough money away for college for their two children. Long ago she stopped bothering to balance her checkbook. When too many 18-hour days running an engineering department of 1,200 left her feeling burned out and empty, she left and gave herself 12 months off.
Yet like other working-class millionaires of Silicon Valley, she harbors anxieties about her financial future. Ms. Baranski — who was briefly worth as much as $200 million in 2000 but cashed out only $1 million before the collapse of the tech bubble — returned to work in March.
Along with two partners, she founded a software company, Vitamin D, and already she is resigned to the sleepless nights and other stresses that await her. “I ask myself all the time,” Ms. Baranski confessed, “why I do this.”
Working inside a start-up has always been invigorating, she says. But she and her husband, 62, who also works, have concluded that she must stick with it if they are to continue to live the life they enjoy here.
Recently the couple hammered out an agreement: Ms. Baranski will work at least five more years for the sake of their bottom line.
“People around here, if they have 2 or 3 million dollars, they don’t feel secure,” said David W. Hettig, an estate planner based in Menlo Park who has advised Silicon Valley’s wealthy for two decades.
The Luck Factor
Many of the more modest millionaires here feel sheepish, even guilty at times, about their piles of cash. Talent played in a role in their financial success, but so did being at the right place at the right time.
“They recognize that if they happened to walk into a different office,” said Marilyn Holland, a Menlo Park psychologist who has been counseling the Valley’s elite for 25 years, “things would have turned out very differently.”
That is one big difference between these working-class millionaires and the country’s wealthiest tycoons, who tend to see themselves as pillars of the community worthy of the hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions, they now possess.
“A lot of the money here is accidental money,” said Bruce Karsh, 51, an engineer who puts his net worth at $2 million to $4 million. “People weren’t setting out to become gazillionaires.”
Ms. Baranski is one of them. The daughter of a college professor who died when she was 12 and left her mother to raise three children, she began college intending to become a musician. But worries about the debt she was racking up prompted her to transfer to the engineering school, where she eventually earned a master’s in electrical engineering.
That today she is worth around $5 million, said Ms. Baranski, who helped to put herself through school cleaning houses, “was unimaginable in my 20s.”
“I always ask myself, ‘Do I deserve it?’ ” she said. “It never feels like you do, because that’s a lot of money.”
Ms. Baranski is hardly the only working-class millionaire asking herself this question. Ms. Holland said she regularly works with multimillionaires who wonder why they are so well compensated when others, like teachers, who contribute so much to the world, are not.
The lucky moment in Ms. Baranski’s career came when she took a job as the head engineer at Handspring, the hand-held device maker, in September 1999. By the end of 2000, Ms. Baranski’s stock holdings briefly made her one of the wealthier women in Silicon Valley.
At quick glance, Ms. Baranski and her husband, Paul, live modestly. She drives a 2006 Subaru, her husband a six-year-old Saab. Their children attend public school, and vacations tend to be modest affairs centered on visiting family.
Ms. Baranski cares little for clothes or jewelry. They have a swimming pool, but only because Ms. Baranski pressed hard for one, a dream of hers growing up in Southern California.
Like most of her neighbors, Ms. Baranski splurged most on a house in a community studded with some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Early in 2001, when Ms. Baranski seemed richer than she was, they paid $1.95 million for a dilapidated house in Menlo Park, knowing they would tear it down. They spent $1 million over the next few years building their dream house.
Ms. Baranski recognizes, of course, that she is far better off than many of her neighbors. Even well-paid college administrators, professors and other white-collar professionals struggle to pay their bills in this expensive redoubt 30 miles south of San Francisco.
“I don’t know how people live here on just a normal salary,” said Ms. Baranski.
Her nanny rents an apartment in Palo Alto, Ms. Baranski said. She pays her what she described as a generous salary and gave her the keys to her old Saab when she bought the newer one. But “basically I have no idea how she survives here.”
Mr. Hettig, the estate planning lawyer, sums it up for many: “We’re in such a rarefied environment,” he said, “people here lose perspective on what the rest of the world looks like.”
‘A Dime a Dozen’
David Koblas, a computer programmer with a net worth of $5 million to $10 million, imagines what his life would be like if he left Silicon Valley. He could move to a small town like Elko, Nev., he says, and be a ski bum. Or he could move his family to the middle of the country and live like a prince in a spacious McMansion in the nicest neighborhood in town.
But Mr. Koblas, 39, lives with his wife, Michelle, and their two children in Los Altos, south of Palo Alto, where the schools are highly regarded and the housing prices are inflated accordingly. So instead of a luxury home, the family lives in a relatively modest 2,000-square-foot house — not much bigger than the average American home — and he puts in long hours at Wink, a search engine start-up founded in 2005.
“I’d be rich in Kansas City,” he said. “People would seek me out for boards. But here I’m a dime a dozen.”
No one knows for certain how many single-digit millionaires live in Silicon Valley. Certainly their numbers reach into the tens of thousands, say those who work with the area’s engineers and entrepreneurs. Yet nearly all of them still have all-consuming jobs, not only because the work gives them a sense of achievement and satisfaction but also because they think they must work so much to afford their gilded neighborhoods.
That certainly describes Tony Barbagallo, 44, who over the last two decades has collected around $3.6 million in stock and options from companies he has worked for. Despite his good fortune, though, he is surprised to find that he worries like most other Americans about matters as varied as the soaring cost of health care, the high price of college and the pressure to sock away more money for retirement.
Taxes have devoured about 40 percent of his stash, Mr. Barbagallo said, knocking that figure down to $2.2 million. Over the years, he has tried to live off his salary, but not always successfully. To limit their monthly expenses, he and his wife Catherine bought a ranch house far from Silicon Valley, in the town of Moraga, for $750,000 — by Valley standards a modest sum.
But they spent $350,000 on extensive remodeling — causing them, not for the first time, to dip deeply into their nest egg.
Today, he has roughly $1.2 million left in savings and another several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of home equity, Mr. Barbagallo said, with one child in college and a second on her way.
So he works as hard as ever, logging more than 70 hours a week at a San Francisco start-up.
“Poor Tony, he’ll never be able to retire,” Catherine Barbagallo said.
Chasing the Top 0.1 Percent
Many of these millionaires have options, of course, beyond working hard to earn another $5 million to $10 million. A few even choose to jump off the golden treadmill.
That is what Mark Gage, 51, an engineer, and his wife, Meredith, did when they left the Bay Area in 2005 with $3 million or so in assets. They bought a house in Bend, Ore. — “a bigger, much nicer home with dramatic views” — and now Mr. Gage works only when the perfect consulting job presents itself.
Yet the same drive that earned so many of the engineers and entrepreneurs who live here their fortunes keeps them tied to the Valley, which resembles nothing so much as a sprawling post-war suburb, though one whose roadways are thick with cars costing in the six figures.
Umberto Milletti has fantasized about downsizing his life to ease the financial pressures he feels despite a net worth around $5 million. In 2000, when his stake in DigitalThink, the online learning company he co-founded in 1996, was worth around $50 million, he bought his family of four a five-bedroom house in Hillsborough, an upscale suburb south of San Francisco. After his net worth fell 90 percent, though, he found the house more of an albatross than a dream.
“We could move,” Mr. Milletti said. “But if you do that, then you’re admitting defeat. No one wants to go backwards.”
So he works 60 to 70 hours a week at InsideView, an online sales intelligence company he co-founded in 2005, in part to prove that his first success was not a fluke — but also to meet his monthly nut, which includes payments on a seven-figure mortgage.
Silicon Valley offers an unusual twist on keeping up with the Joneses. The venture capitalist two doors down might own a Cessna Citation X private jet. The father of your 8-year-old’s best friend, who has not worked for two years, drives a bright yellow Ferrari. Temptations loom everywhere.
“You see how much money you have in the bank,” Mr. Koblas, the computer programmer, said, “and your eyes get really big.” He described it as “upsizing your life to your cash flow.”
Then there are the additional burdens on this digital elite, said Ms. Holland, the psychologist — demands they are typically not prepared to handle.
“There are all these people who come to you for money,” Ms. Holland said. “Siblings, parents, other relatives. Organizations seeking charitable contributions. There’s this assumption you have all this money — so why don’t you write a big check to the school or to this other charity?”
Other pressures can come from within the social circle. Mr. Barbagallo, for instance, remembers when several couples tried cajoling his wife and him — unsuccessfully — to fly to Las Vegas for a charity event featuring Andre Agassi.
“You look around,” Mr. Barbagallo said, “and the pressures to spend more are everywhere.” Children want the latest fashions their peers are wearing and the most popular high-ticket toys. Furniture does not seem up to snuff once you move into a multimillion-dollar home. Spouses talk, and now that resort in Mexico the family enjoyed so much last winter is not good enough when looking ahead to next year. Summer camp, a full-time housekeeper, vintage wines, country clubs: the cost of living bloats.
To Mr. Milletti, it all looks like a marathon with no finish line.
“Here, the top 1 percent chases the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent chases the top one-one-hundredth of 1 percent,” he said.
“You try not to get caught up in it,” he added, “but it’s hard not to.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/technology/05rich.html?ei=5088&en=003719e2d0560842&ex=1343966400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
MENLO PARK, Calif. — By almost any definition — except his own and perhaps those of his neighbors here in Silicon Valley — Hal Steger has made it.
Mr. Steger, 51, a self-described geek, has banked more than $2 million. The $1.3 million house he and his wife own on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean is paid off. The couple’s net worth of roughly $3.5 million places them in the top 2 percent of families in the United States.
Yet each day Mr. Steger continues to toil in what a colleague calls “the Silicon Valley salt mines,” working as a marketing executive for a technology start-up company, still striving for his big strike. Most mornings, he can be found at his desk by 7. He typically works 12 hours a day and logs an extra 10 hours over the weekend.
“I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard,” Mr. Steger says. “But a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe in the ’70s, a few million bucks meant ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’ or Richie Rich living in a big house with a butler. But not anymore.”
Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few. Their lives are rich with opportunity; they generally enjoy their jobs. They are amply cushioned against the anxieties and jolts that worry most people living paycheck to paycheck.
But many such accomplished and ambitious members of the digital elite still do not think of themselves as particularly fortunate, in part because they are surrounded by people with more wealth — often a lot more.
When chief executives are routinely paid tens of millions of dollars a year and a hedge fund manager can collect $1 billion annually, those with a few million dollars often see their accumulated wealth as puny, a reflection of their modest status in the new Gilded Age, when hundreds of thousands of people have accumulated much vaster fortunes.
“Everyone around here looks at the people above them,” said Gary Kremen, the 43-year-old founder of Match.com, a popular online dating service. “It’s just like Wall Street, where there are all these financial guys worth $7 million wondering what’s so special about them when there are all these guys worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Mr. Kremen estimated his net worth at $10 million. That puts him firmly in the top half of 1 percent among Americans, according to wealth data from the Federal Reserve, but barely in the top echelons in affluent towns like Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton. So he logs 60- to 80-hour workweeks because, he said, he does not think he has nearly enough money to ease up.
“You’re nobody here at $10 million,” Mr. Kremen said earnestly over a glass of pinot noir at an upscale wine bar here.
Not every Silicon Valley millionaire, of course, shares that perspective.
Celeste Baranski, a 49-year-old engineer with a net worth of around $5 million who lives with her husband in Menlo Park, no longer frets about tucking enough money away for college for their two children. Long ago she stopped bothering to balance her checkbook. When too many 18-hour days running an engineering department of 1,200 left her feeling burned out and empty, she left and gave herself 12 months off.
Yet like other working-class millionaires of Silicon Valley, she harbors anxieties about her financial future. Ms. Baranski — who was briefly worth as much as $200 million in 2000 but cashed out only $1 million before the collapse of the tech bubble — returned to work in March.
Along with two partners, she founded a software company, Vitamin D, and already she is resigned to the sleepless nights and other stresses that await her. “I ask myself all the time,” Ms. Baranski confessed, “why I do this.”
Working inside a start-up has always been invigorating, she says. But she and her husband, 62, who also works, have concluded that she must stick with it if they are to continue to live the life they enjoy here.
Recently the couple hammered out an agreement: Ms. Baranski will work at least five more years for the sake of their bottom line.
“People around here, if they have 2 or 3 million dollars, they don’t feel secure,” said David W. Hettig, an estate planner based in Menlo Park who has advised Silicon Valley’s wealthy for two decades.
The Luck Factor
Many of the more modest millionaires here feel sheepish, even guilty at times, about their piles of cash. Talent played in a role in their financial success, but so did being at the right place at the right time.
“They recognize that if they happened to walk into a different office,” said Marilyn Holland, a Menlo Park psychologist who has been counseling the Valley’s elite for 25 years, “things would have turned out very differently.”
That is one big difference between these working-class millionaires and the country’s wealthiest tycoons, who tend to see themselves as pillars of the community worthy of the hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions, they now possess.
“A lot of the money here is accidental money,” said Bruce Karsh, 51, an engineer who puts his net worth at $2 million to $4 million. “People weren’t setting out to become gazillionaires.”
Ms. Baranski is one of them. The daughter of a college professor who died when she was 12 and left her mother to raise three children, she began college intending to become a musician. But worries about the debt she was racking up prompted her to transfer to the engineering school, where she eventually earned a master’s in electrical engineering.
That today she is worth around $5 million, said Ms. Baranski, who helped to put herself through school cleaning houses, “was unimaginable in my 20s.”
“I always ask myself, ‘Do I deserve it?’ ” she said. “It never feels like you do, because that’s a lot of money.”
Ms. Baranski is hardly the only working-class millionaire asking herself this question. Ms. Holland said she regularly works with multimillionaires who wonder why they are so well compensated when others, like teachers, who contribute so much to the world, are not.
The lucky moment in Ms. Baranski’s career came when she took a job as the head engineer at Handspring, the hand-held device maker, in September 1999. By the end of 2000, Ms. Baranski’s stock holdings briefly made her one of the wealthier women in Silicon Valley.
At quick glance, Ms. Baranski and her husband, Paul, live modestly. She drives a 2006 Subaru, her husband a six-year-old Saab. Their children attend public school, and vacations tend to be modest affairs centered on visiting family.
Ms. Baranski cares little for clothes or jewelry. They have a swimming pool, but only because Ms. Baranski pressed hard for one, a dream of hers growing up in Southern California.
Like most of her neighbors, Ms. Baranski splurged most on a house in a community studded with some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Early in 2001, when Ms. Baranski seemed richer than she was, they paid $1.95 million for a dilapidated house in Menlo Park, knowing they would tear it down. They spent $1 million over the next few years building their dream house.
Ms. Baranski recognizes, of course, that she is far better off than many of her neighbors. Even well-paid college administrators, professors and other white-collar professionals struggle to pay their bills in this expensive redoubt 30 miles south of San Francisco.
“I don’t know how people live here on just a normal salary,” said Ms. Baranski.
Her nanny rents an apartment in Palo Alto, Ms. Baranski said. She pays her what she described as a generous salary and gave her the keys to her old Saab when she bought the newer one. But “basically I have no idea how she survives here.”
Mr. Hettig, the estate planning lawyer, sums it up for many: “We’re in such a rarefied environment,” he said, “people here lose perspective on what the rest of the world looks like.”
‘A Dime a Dozen’
David Koblas, a computer programmer with a net worth of $5 million to $10 million, imagines what his life would be like if he left Silicon Valley. He could move to a small town like Elko, Nev., he says, and be a ski bum. Or he could move his family to the middle of the country and live like a prince in a spacious McMansion in the nicest neighborhood in town.
But Mr. Koblas, 39, lives with his wife, Michelle, and their two children in Los Altos, south of Palo Alto, where the schools are highly regarded and the housing prices are inflated accordingly. So instead of a luxury home, the family lives in a relatively modest 2,000-square-foot house — not much bigger than the average American home — and he puts in long hours at Wink, a search engine start-up founded in 2005.
“I’d be rich in Kansas City,” he said. “People would seek me out for boards. But here I’m a dime a dozen.”
No one knows for certain how many single-digit millionaires live in Silicon Valley. Certainly their numbers reach into the tens of thousands, say those who work with the area’s engineers and entrepreneurs. Yet nearly all of them still have all-consuming jobs, not only because the work gives them a sense of achievement and satisfaction but also because they think they must work so much to afford their gilded neighborhoods.
That certainly describes Tony Barbagallo, 44, who over the last two decades has collected around $3.6 million in stock and options from companies he has worked for. Despite his good fortune, though, he is surprised to find that he worries like most other Americans about matters as varied as the soaring cost of health care, the high price of college and the pressure to sock away more money for retirement.
Taxes have devoured about 40 percent of his stash, Mr. Barbagallo said, knocking that figure down to $2.2 million. Over the years, he has tried to live off his salary, but not always successfully. To limit their monthly expenses, he and his wife Catherine bought a ranch house far from Silicon Valley, in the town of Moraga, for $750,000 — by Valley standards a modest sum.
But they spent $350,000 on extensive remodeling — causing them, not for the first time, to dip deeply into their nest egg.
Today, he has roughly $1.2 million left in savings and another several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of home equity, Mr. Barbagallo said, with one child in college and a second on her way.
So he works as hard as ever, logging more than 70 hours a week at a San Francisco start-up.
“Poor Tony, he’ll never be able to retire,” Catherine Barbagallo said.
Chasing the Top 0.1 Percent
Many of these millionaires have options, of course, beyond working hard to earn another $5 million to $10 million. A few even choose to jump off the golden treadmill.
That is what Mark Gage, 51, an engineer, and his wife, Meredith, did when they left the Bay Area in 2005 with $3 million or so in assets. They bought a house in Bend, Ore. — “a bigger, much nicer home with dramatic views” — and now Mr. Gage works only when the perfect consulting job presents itself.
Yet the same drive that earned so many of the engineers and entrepreneurs who live here their fortunes keeps them tied to the Valley, which resembles nothing so much as a sprawling post-war suburb, though one whose roadways are thick with cars costing in the six figures.
Umberto Milletti has fantasized about downsizing his life to ease the financial pressures he feels despite a net worth around $5 million. In 2000, when his stake in DigitalThink, the online learning company he co-founded in 1996, was worth around $50 million, he bought his family of four a five-bedroom house in Hillsborough, an upscale suburb south of San Francisco. After his net worth fell 90 percent, though, he found the house more of an albatross than a dream.
“We could move,” Mr. Milletti said. “But if you do that, then you’re admitting defeat. No one wants to go backwards.”
So he works 60 to 70 hours a week at InsideView, an online sales intelligence company he co-founded in 2005, in part to prove that his first success was not a fluke — but also to meet his monthly nut, which includes payments on a seven-figure mortgage.
Silicon Valley offers an unusual twist on keeping up with the Joneses. The venture capitalist two doors down might own a Cessna Citation X private jet. The father of your 8-year-old’s best friend, who has not worked for two years, drives a bright yellow Ferrari. Temptations loom everywhere.
“You see how much money you have in the bank,” Mr. Koblas, the computer programmer, said, “and your eyes get really big.” He described it as “upsizing your life to your cash flow.”
Then there are the additional burdens on this digital elite, said Ms. Holland, the psychologist — demands they are typically not prepared to handle.
“There are all these people who come to you for money,” Ms. Holland said. “Siblings, parents, other relatives. Organizations seeking charitable contributions. There’s this assumption you have all this money — so why don’t you write a big check to the school or to this other charity?”
Other pressures can come from within the social circle. Mr. Barbagallo, for instance, remembers when several couples tried cajoling his wife and him — unsuccessfully — to fly to Las Vegas for a charity event featuring Andre Agassi.
“You look around,” Mr. Barbagallo said, “and the pressures to spend more are everywhere.” Children want the latest fashions their peers are wearing and the most popular high-ticket toys. Furniture does not seem up to snuff once you move into a multimillion-dollar home. Spouses talk, and now that resort in Mexico the family enjoyed so much last winter is not good enough when looking ahead to next year. Summer camp, a full-time housekeeper, vintage wines, country clubs: the cost of living bloats.
To Mr. Milletti, it all looks like a marathon with no finish line.
“Here, the top 1 percent chases the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent chases the top one-one-hundredth of 1 percent,” he said.
“You try not to get caught up in it,” he added, “but it’s hard not to.”
Sunday secrets
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