Shanti’s Dispatches

A friend of mine will be checking out The Art of Exotic Dancing classes.

Molly, 41? Mother of 4? Gee, from that picture, I’ll take two. (*kidding*)

I’ll have to report back after the classes, and let ya’ll know how they worked out for my special lady friend.

Of course… we all know who the real winner is when they take these classes.

So… my new Mac Mini came in today.

I’ve been playing around the last few hours getting dualing LCD flatscreens setup (a la this article) using Synergy.

I’ve got Tiger OS X running on the left screen and Win XP on the right.

All I can say is… after taking just a few hits of the Tiger OS X dope, I’m hooked.

After adding a new connection today (an old high-school buddy of mine), I discovered that I now have an NFL player in my extended LinkedIn network.

Not sure if that’s useful in anyway… but it’s just plain cool.

You’ve been battling Microsoft demons in your code all day, non-stop it seems… with an occassional Sybase, JBoss, or SOAP interoperability issue/error to boot.

Then you get home and read on Slashdot that your bank account might have been breached.

Freaking. Awesome. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

If it weren’t for my daily iced Venti Vanilla Latte (not too much ice, please), I just might crack!

You know who you are.

LinkedIn, for those new to the service, is a popular social networking site for business / work associates.

Like Friendster, but used instead by and for mostly dudes who want to schmooze virtually and help each other get jobs, close deals and make business connections.

Here’s a quick quiz:

• Do you have over 500 LinkedIn contacts?
• How many of these have you actually met face-to-face?
• How many of these people have you met outside of LinkedIn?
• How many of these people would you feel extremely comfortable recommending (for a job or consulting gig) to a very close friend?
• Do you just send the generic LinkedIn invitation request, without personalizing it one bit?
• Do you not reply to polite emails asking for more information, or just saying hello back, after you “invite” (*cough* spam) people in your network you don’t know?

If you answered Yes to most of the above questions, with a high # of connections met only via LinkedIn, there’s a good chance you’re a LinkedIn Ho.

Finally got all moved in to my new place here in south phoenix…

Will post some pictures soon. I’ve got the total bachelor pad thing going here.

Lava lamps and everything

Chris Bunting of Thumb Gods fame reports for the NY Post on a new kind of crossword puzzle sensation.

April 2, 2005 — Think conventional crosswords are the only thing to do on the subway? Get a clue, Will Shortz, there’s a new puzzle in town.
Enter Su Doku, a new-wave crossword ? er, hold the words.

Being a crossword puzzler and creator myself, I was, at first, a tad hesitant to try the newcomer on for size.

This turning of the crossword world on its head would force me back into the minor leagues.

But there’s no crying in puzzling.

This is not a game of addition or multiplication; it’s simply a game of logic ? which is a nice break from crosswords that rely on vocabulary, puns and anagrams.

Random: I once had a college professor who said that a university could achieve the same effect (as it normally does) by instead, merely requiring students to complete crossword puzzle after crossword puzzle, for four years solid.

After getting out of school (Washington U. in St. Louis) and rarely, specifically using what I learned there, I can say there is some level of truth to this statement.

Next, if you are an entrepreneur like myself, and would like your GPA (even at a healthy 3.6) to never play a role in your financial success in the world (*cough* job applications), this statement holds even more true.

So, kids, my advice - spend 4 years doing crossword puzzles, getting loaded, hooking up with random freshmen from a nearby university, and working on your own Startup — all while spending your parents $35k a year that would otherwise be squandered on a university degree (*cough* safety net for being a corporate drone). Was that last part out loud?

JPMorgan Chaise is thinking about building an Internet-based payment system similar to PayPal.

This is an early April Fool’s joke, right?

That’s what Milton Glaser says in his speech
10 Things I have Learned.

Sorry about the caps -

Number 1
YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE.

Number 2
IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB.

Number 3
SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.

Read the rest here.

Stumbled across this short story by J.D. Salinger - A Girl I Knew via Zach Klein’s blog.

It’s from a Good Housekeeping magazine from Feb 1948.
Salinger:

Probably for every man is one city that sooner or later turns into a girl.

Do you think after Salinger dies, they’re going to find like this tomb of novels he’s been writing over the years while in seclusion? That would freakin rock.

Insert random Chris Farley reference:

Chris Farley interviewing J.D. Salinger, on some Caribbean island where all the people who fake their deaths go, and living “celebrities” get to visit as well.

Chris Farley: Do you remember the time when you wrote Cather in the Rye?

Salinger: Yeah. I remember that.

Farley: Yeah… That was Awesome!!

Salinger: Okay… Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Farley: How ’bout when you went into seclusion and gave that interview to a high-school newspaper?

Salinger: Yes… what about it?

Farley: That was Awesome!!

That’s all.