cool

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Hopefully as things get back to a more normal state my feed reading will become more than a weekly event (and I can begin replacing some of my dead feeds). Until then, the Atw posts will be a bit inconsistent.

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Of course it isn’t realistic, but I wonder if people would be more likely to absorb good Twitter behavior if they had to follow people for a week before they could post.

I self-censor in Twitter at times because what I’m writing will be distributed to 1000+ people. I’m sure I still post crap from time to time, but I do make an effort.

It’s similar to the mailing list warnings I’ve seen. I remember one that would tell you something like:

Your words will be sent to n people and approximately x man hours will be spent reading them. Are you sure you want to send this?

Steve and I have similar tastes in Twitter behavior. After much chit-chat, we have come to the conclusion that Twitter could be vastly improved if they simply changed the question from:

What are you doing?

to:

Say something interesting.

Only somewhat snarkily submitted for your review.

One other thing we’ve been discussing is how we react to “friending” activities in various social networks. I’ve gone so far as to set up a filter to auto-delete e-mail from Facebook, but similar e-mails from Twitter don’t seem to bother me. The difference is that the Facebook e-mails all come with a request for me to do something (log in, hit some buttons, etc.) while Twitter’s are just notifications that I can ignore or delete at my preference.

After discussing several different social networks, I’ve got a new postulate: the more a social network asks from me, the less likely I am to embrace it.

Agree or disagree? Sound off in the comments.

1. I’ve written about tweeting properly in the past. [back]

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UPDATE: Unfortunately Brian won’t be able to make it, but I look forward to meeting Heather and SuzAnn from Launchpad.

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Like most small businesses, Crowd Favorite has need of legal counsel from time to time. Finding a lawyer who is a good fit for you and your business isn’t easy.

Ryan Howell of Hedberg | Howell, LLC decided to come to Startup Weekend and provided the legal services for us, making VoSnap, Inc. a real company (with all of us as shareholders) by the end of the weekend.

During the craziness that is a Startup Weekend, we had a chance to chat a couple times. I had a few general legal questions that he answered for me, including one that he looked up and got back to me on.

Since Startup Weekend, I’ve had need for a lawyer on several occasions and Ryan has been a tremendous help for me. We’ve created a couple of standard contracts for us to use and most recently he’s been helping me through the process of getting some office space for our growing team.

I give Startup Weekend the credit for my relationship with Ryan. Because of Startup Weekend I was able to see that he was a hard worker, reliable, interested in technology and willing to work with small businesses like mine. This is what Startup Weekend gives you that a tech meetup doesn’t. You actually get to see how people work and what it is like to work with them.

Besides, how many lawyers do you know that take PayPal?

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year in review

• January - I begin offering premium support and TechStars is announced. I start helping RedMonk in their site update efforts, PHP Tag Engine reaches 1.0, I release a variety of WordPress plugin updates and we upgrade the Use Tasks service.
• February - I get to release a plugin to the public that was built for a client (yay!), share some thoughts on comments and blog posts, continue talking about the alexking.org redesign and start talking about browser tab usage. I also was interviewed and decided I like Code Igniter.
• March - A quick weekend jaunt to Phoenix for some golf, then I take the plunge on an EVDO card. I start a tumblog and release a bunch more plugin updates (including a new one). Thought it hadn’t been announced yet, I also started working on AllThingsD.
• April - I start using GrandCentral (and now wonder how I did without it) and open the curtain a little about how I make policy decisions. AllThingsD launches and I start getting the itch for a new work set-up. FeedLounge decides to shut down.
• May - I further embrace my tumblog and restructure my SVN repositories. In perhaps the most significant move of the year, I hire Eric Miller to come on board with me.
• June - Finally haven found the right name, King Design becomes Crowd Favorite. I debate domain names then buy the .com, making the entire thing moot. I start giving Adobe a hard time (I’m not done yet) and decide to move from the Hive. I met with the ShareThis team for the first time.
• July - I cave to curiosity and get an iPhone and attend the first Startup Weekend. This site moved to a new server and while I mention briefly I was busy, the tell-tale sign of this is the low number of posts for the month.
• August - Crowd Favorite continues to grow as Mike Hostetler joins the team. I get a new phone and a new keyboard, both of which I am still satisfied with. Another month of light posting due to busy-ness.
• September - I manage to release a new WordPress plugin and talk a little about prioritizing with a small team. The news about ShareThis is finally public and I make another trip out to work with the team in Ohio.
• October - The Rockies go crazy and make it to the World Series, the iPhone’s influences spreads and I decide I still can’t make the switch to it. A much-needed vacation in Hawaii.
• November - Crowd Favorite takes a big step when Peter Gornell joins the team as a project manager. This frees a great deal of my time back up for more development work. I conclude a year of trying to eat healthier with good results then discover that Jack in the Box has arrived in Colorado.
• December - I have some crazy buzy days while Dougal is out interviewing with us, and he agrees to join the team. Several projects we were working on go live and Mike and Julie have a daughter.

For you statheads out there, I’ve continued the blog/site stats.¹ I guess I’ll need a table for this next year for it to remain ledgible.

• 404 blog posts (139 link blog posts), way down from the 556 blog posts (32 link blog posts) in 2007, 457 in 2005 and 538 in 2004
• 3,613 comments (276 mine), up from 2,919 comments (442 mine) in 2006, 2436 (437 mine) in 2005 and 2159 (486 mine) in 2004
• Avg post length 1,478 characters (1,709 excluding link blog posts), down from 1,679 characters (2,025 if you exclude link blog posts) in 2006, a 1,457 character average post length in 2005 and 1210 in 2004
• Total post length 597,200 characters, way down from 935,392 in 2006, 665,849 characters in 2005 and 650,980 in 2004

Like 2007, this was a very interesting year. Once again it was filled with enjoyable successes and interesting learning experiences. I look forward to the new challenges that are sure to come in 2008.

1. Run yours using these SQL queries - maybe I should make this a plugin. [back]

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7:30am - wake up, shower
7:45am - read and respond to e-mail
8:00am - status call with Mike, who has bigger things on his mind at the moment
8:20am - more e-mail
8:50am - eat breakfast
9:00am - drive in to office
9:30am - debugging and more e-mail
11:00am - client call
12:00pm - team lunch
1:25pm - team meeting
2:45pm - recruiting chat
3:00pm - e-mail, review plugin code
3:45pm - drive prospective hire who we flew in to meet with us to Denver airport
3:55pm - client calls to debug an issue
4:45pm - arrive at Denver airport, head home
6:00pm - arrive at home, let dog out
6:15pm - sign and return contract for new project, reply to a few e-mails
6:50pm - make a sandwich
7:00pm - leave for volleyball
9:30pm - get online, check in on debugging progress
9:50pm - e-mail and final testing of a plugin before release

Probably another 1.5-2 hours of work left before bed… these days are a bit hectic while we’re getting everything ramped up and properly in place.

UPDATE: 12:45am - 1.5-2 hours was pretty optimistic… hopefully soon.

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I thought it was only right to do a recon trip. The place was packed, and it had a pretty cool self-service ordering kiosk that worked surprisingly well.

As noted in my previous post, Jack in the Box is the only fast food that I really like. I’m going to have to exercise some self-discipline now.

While the Jack in the Box in Golden is not far from my house, it’s at least far enough out of the way that I don’t drive past it on a regular basis. However the one they are putting one in at I-70 and Kipling…

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On Nov 1, 2006 my volleyball team started a 10 week weight loss competition and I was at 216 lbs. I decided to keep going with it and in the last year, I’ve lost 29 pounds and brought my weight down to 187.

This was the first time I’d ever consciously tried to lose weight. I’ve always been pretty active with sports, etc. and I’ve been blessed with an active metabolism, so it wasn’t until I hit 25 or so that the pounds started to creep on a little. From 1999-2006, my weight went from up about 30 pounds (~185 lbs to 216 lbs).

I made a number of small changes during the year, all of which added up to losing 1-3 pounds a month¹. Here’s what I did:

Activities

• I played 2 hours of sand volleyball 2 nights a week. I play in co-ed sand 4’s leagues at the SportsOasis, and the play is pretty competitive.
• I played 1-2 rounds of golf a week, weather permitting. I also stopped riding in golf carts and walked almost all of my rounds this year. Each round is about 5 miles.
• Occasional weight training. After the first 15 pounds or so, I plateaued for a little while. To help get past this, I started mixing in 20-30 minutes of weight training 2-3 times a week. I’ve been pretty consistent with it for the last 4 months.

Eating Habits

• By far the biggest change for me has been portion control. I now make my sandwiches on smaller bread, try to eat smaller things more often, and try to avoid getting so hungry that I stuff myself beyond what I need.
• Try to eat breakfast and try not to eat past 9pm. I’d get so hungry by lunchtime that I had a tendency to overeat at lunch.
• Cut out fast food. Luckily I’ve moved from the west coast and there isn’t any Jack in the Box here in Colorado (mmm, tasty sourdough breakfast sandwiches), so this wasn’t as hard as it might have been. I still get fast food on occasion (maybe once every 2 months) but I generally feel a little sick afterwards now as my body isn’t used to it.
• Limit myself to 1 soda a day. And drink more water.
• A little more chicken, a little less red meat - though I still don’t eat terribly healthy.
• Salads instead of french fries. I still don’t know how to count calories, so I was really surprised when I saw that french fries were generally worse calorie-wise than burgers.

That’s basically it. A collection of small changes that I’ve been consistent with all year, and it’s paid off. Thanks to Jeremy and others for sharing their path down this road, hopefully my reinforcement of their success will in turn help someone else.

1. I started tracking my weight daily in a spreadsheet so I could take monthly averages and see trends better. It’s funny how your weight can fluxtuate from day to day. [back]

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Discuss.

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Interestingly, I think this is a movie I’d never have actually seen if it weren’t for Netflix. I’d heard great reviews of it from several people, but for some reason it just wasn’t clicking with me and I wasn’t that excited to watch it. If I was still going to the video rental store to get movies, I doubt I’d have ever chosen it over something else.

However, based on the good reviews I’d heard I stuck the movie in my Netflix queue a few years back, and eventually it bubbled to the top and arrived at my house. This is an interesting feature of Netflix - sending me movies I don’t actually want at the moment, but am glad I watched afterwards.

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You know I’m busy when my Twitter posts slow to the rate of blog posts and my blog posts stop entirely

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I’ve got a lot of things going on at once right now - all good stuff, much of which I’ll be able/ready to talk about in the near future. I do hope things will settle down and allow me to get back in a more comfortable groove soon.

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