Ramblings of Bob

Google is Spooky

For reasons that still are not clear to me, I googled my self tonight and this came up:

Twitter / kr8tr

"I can't reach the trees. This hurts me"

http://www.youtube.com/v/HIULIJxVr7A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1

h/t shippedout via SDA

and thanks to tnoyf.com

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Recession, what recession

Not surprisingly perhaps capital expenditures by energy providers (power plants, refineries, LNG facilities) do not seem to be suffering from the general malaise that has enveloped the retail and commercial companies.  This goes to show that the major energy (especially the big oils) companies of the world are not hording profits, they are expanding for future growth.

Between the level of spending we are seeing and, anecdotally the number of cars traveling on the highway and the number of empty seats not on airplanes lately, it

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I am getting better at failing faster

I was reminded by a friend of the beautiful thing that is the Opera web browser.

It is blazing fast, it has a great e-mail function with the world’s most awesome e-mail search function and it is free.  What more could you ask for…

I am glad you asked.  There are two things I would ask for:

1) The ability to send and handle read receipts on e-mails.  It is not a deal killer for me, I just would like to be able to choose how to handle them and not ignore them by default.
2) Flash compatibility that works.  The incompatibility between Opera and most of the sites I visit frequently has been nearly eliminated in version 9.5.  However, there is the odd secure site (banks for instance) that refuse to play nice with Opera.

There is one other issue, but that has to do with downloading my massive inbox into Opera’s IMAP mailboxes.  Nobody has figured out how to play nice with gmail or Google Apps’ IMAP configuration.  Hopefully the much rumored Google Gears e-mail client is really just around the corner.  (Thanks to ReadWriteWeb for the information.  The article is short and informative even with the broken links)

After several hours of playing with settings (download headers, download messages, do not download All Mail) to no positive effect, I guess it is Thunderbird and Firefox for the foreseeable future.  It’s not that I don’t love Mozilla, I just think they could do better.

P.S.  I know what you are thinking: Why don’t you just use the web interface?  Speed is the primary reason.  Searching my mail via the gmail interface is slow and the goat rope required to tag emails is absolutely painful compared to Thunderbird’s Nostalgy extension.

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Kicking myself for missing an opportunity to make my company better

One of our competitors has gone through some difficult times lately. One of their most senior people has a stellar reputation in our business.

Having been through similar circumstances, I gave some thought in June to opening up a line of communication with him to let him know that if the corporate politics got to be too much, we might have a home for him at our company. You know what they say, always higher smarter people than you.

I got word late today that another of our competitors has hired him. My inattentiveness to executing a strategy to at least have been in the hunt has cost us an opportunity to improve our already strong competitive position.

The good news is that the company he went to may or may not be able to keep him happy. I hope that in six months I will have the opportunity to right my wrong.

The ongoing question in my mind is how appropriate is it to contact a high level member of a competitor company directly? Is there an easy way to get the word to him through a third party or is that old school?
What should I do differently next time?

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Why we should vote for a Democrat this November

That is probably not the headline my friends would expect to see here, but Bob@OilfieldTrash offers some interesting insights into why he is voting Democrat this election season.  He almost has me convinced. 

Thanks Bob, for opening my eyes.

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Another video I can't watch without laughing

What a great way to see the world! Get a gum company to pay for it.


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

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I haven't a clue...

…about what all of this social networking is about.  I have Twitter, I have FriendFeed, I have Facebook, I have MySpace, I have… well, I must have something else.  And this is how I use them:

• MySpace: Haven’t been on it in months.  Too much crap, not enough meat.
• Facebook: I get on occasionally, but it has mostly served as an opportunity for others that I have lost touch with to find me and vice versa.  That is worth something. I update my Facebook status via…
• Twitter: I still don’t get Twitter, but I do like bragging about eating a club sandwich
• FriendFeed: I don’t much get this either.  I like having all of this information collated in one place, but what good does it do?  Although I do keep track of all of my shared RSS feeds from Google Reader.  Also, please ignore my FriendFeed picture… It was taken when I was playing with the camera built into my MacBook.

Here is the next great step in web technology (Web 3.0 perhaps?).  If you want to get rich on the web, figure out a way to teach people like me how to use all of these services and get something out of them.  I want to understand, really, I do.

If you can help me out, drop me a line.  Somewhere on these social networks there has to be a way to get in touch with me… leaving a comment here would work also.

P.S.  I am also on LinkedIn… I knew there had to be one more!

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ScribeFire is cool

OK. This is stupid, I know… but I finally downloaded ScribeFire for Firefox and it is pretty cool. If you are smart, you will stop reading at this point and go back to your coffee and newspaper.

If it isn’t already obvious, I am not a blogger. Someday, maybe, but not now. This tumblog is mostly an easy place to store net junk that has no other home for me.

Now to push the publish button and see what happens…

What I am not built to do...

• Web page developer
• jockey
• stay tuned…