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Thought I would take a time to update everyone on what is up with me.

- If you know me, you know I’m dreadfully terrified of having to end up in some corporate desk job punching numbers for the man. I am so terrified of it in fact that I have moved back in with my parents for a few months, to save up some money and continue work on a few of my startup projects. It really hasn’t been that bad, and in all honestly I’m happier here then some of my past living arrangements. My brother is still at home so we have been able to hang out more, and time with the folks has been nice. The saving has been great in allowing me to pay some stuff off, and hopefully make some fun trips this summer before getting a new apartment before the fall.

- We got a new dog! He’s an Alaskan Husky named Trecker. He actually showed up out where my parents are building their new house. We were sure he was a neighbor’s dog, being that he is fully trained. Yet, after putting up signs and asking neighbors all over the area, no one claimed him. He has since become a big part of the family!

- Speaking of that new house, work still continues. I hope and pray that the folks are in there by the end of the summer at the latest.

- Those startup projects are coming to a critical point, I’ll soon be able to blog in greater detail about them.

- My Good friend Noah has had a lot of success with his TwitPic project.

All in all, I am quite happy, things have been very good in the last month and I feel like I have put myself in a much better situation to chase my dreams and work in the areas that I will excel at.

My conversation with 1&1 the other morning…

me: Hi, I need to updated my Credit Card information
1&1: mhfdsfaslkjflsjdfsa
me: I’m sorry, I’m having a hard time hearing you, could you adjust your mic
1&1: Is this better?
me: Yes, thank you. I need to update my card information, I think I had an old card on my account.
1&1: member number
me: ok, ######
1&1: Whats your card number?
me: Well I was waning to change my plan to monthly billing.
1&1: no
me: uh, why not, what options do I have?
1&1: Quarterly, 6-Monthly, Yearly.
me: OK, lets do quarterly.
1&1: No
me: (awkward pause) why not?
1&1: because that plan is not available
me: what, wait, i’m confused?
1&1: nothing

This is a bit of a summary of the conversation, but I would venture to say it was worse in real life. Needless to say, I’m looking for a new host. Any suggestions?

This story is awesome! Imagine being arrested for taking pictures of a demonstration in a foreign country. Then simply sending a text to twitter to alert your friends, who in-turn alert your school and the US Embassy. Bam! Your out of jail. Check the full story from the folks over at TechCrunch.

For years I have told companies that I work with, cold calling DOES NOT WORK, period. Matter a fact, I would argue that it is the worst way to sell your product and can even hurt your brand image. Cold calls flat out piss people off.

ReadWriteWeb has a great post this morning on “Business Development 2.0.” Here’s an excerpt,
Besides being annoying, cold calling is no longer effective. People are smarter these days, and have learned to ignore upsells. A targeted email which avoids the spam box has a higher chance of getting a response than a call. With a call, the default allergic reaction is now “no.” But with a brief and sincere email it could be, “hmmm, this might be interesting…” However, even cold emails do not work. To have a chance at making a sale, you need to get a warm introduction. It used to be that the business web was hidden inside of people’s heads and rolodexes. Today, however, a lot of it is out there in the open - inside a digital business network called LinkedIn.

In case you missed my last post on Randy Pausch’s last lecture, or didn’t have time to watch the whole thing, here is a 10 minute condensed version of the lecture.

Randy highlights some of the things that I find so important in life, in particular putting people over things. Listen for the line about pouring a coke in the back seat oh his new car, and how his parents let him paint his room.

If you have not taken the time to watch this… you need to.

Dr. Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, is not your everyday academic. He’s one of the good ones out there. He was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer in September 2006. After aggressive treatment he was told in August of 2007 that he had 3 to 6 months to live. In September of that year he gave his last public lecture at CMU, which has been widely viewed on the Internet, below is that lecture.

My favorite quote from the whole thing is “You have to choose if you’re a Tigger or Eyeore”

From Wikipedia
Pausch delivered his “Last Public Lecture,” titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” at CMU on September 18, 2007.[5] This talk was modeled after an ongoing series of lectures where top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a hypothetical “final talk,” i.e., “what wisdom would you try to impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?”

Before speaking, Pausch received a long standing ovation from a large crowd of over 400 colleagues and students. When he motioned them to sit down, saying, “Make me earn it,” some in the audience shouted back, “You did!”

That’s right folks, yours truly has obtained an exclusive first look screenshot of TwitPic 2.0! TwitPic is a a Twitter add on using the Twitter API allowing you to post picture links to the Twitter service.

Look for exciting new features like geolocation and tagging!

If you don’t watch 60 Minutes, you should. Here a rare and powerful interview with former Vide President Al Gore.

Just made the upgrade to the new WordPress 2.5. The admin area is much upgraded. I would definitely recommend this upgrade to all my friends running their blogs off of WordPress.

I changed the background. I’m not sure if I really like it, but I thought that it needed to change a little.

Here are my personal Google Reader Stats.

… and the sad thing, I still don’t feel like I’m keeping up with all the information that I need to be.

That’s right, Web 2.0 news straight from the fly over states! Heartlandish, a new project from my friend Noah Everett and myself, focuses on the the latest startups and web 2.0 news from the heartland!

Check it out at Heartlandish.com

It’s been one of those days, well I guess one of those weeks. I’ve been procrastinating. Between moving, the part-time job, freelance work, career searching, etc… I’ve inadvertently put a few projects on the back burner.

Here are some interesting sites with a little advice…

Get More Done
Web MD

Staying in touch is hard enough these days… I can barely keep up with all my emails and text messages, I’ve all but given up on replying to personal messages, even from friends, on MySpace or Facebook. It’s non stop. I added a new weapon to my arsenal of constant contact this past week. A new AT&T Mobile broadband card. It’s first real test was on a quick weekend trip to Houston. Surely enough it came in quite handy and paid for itself by not having to throw down extra cash for wifi connections at TUL & HOU. The speeds even worked good enough to have a few iChat video conversations while on the road!

Oh and be sure to check out this great shot of a Windows crash on one of TUL’s flight info screens!

Even though I bet my 8 readers are all bots, I just want to say I love you!

So I guess I’m growing up. Here’s some reasons why….
- NPR is the most listened to station in the car.
- I can’t go out the night before I have to work anymore.
- Little kids coming into the Apple Store drive me CRAZY.
- I worry more about paying for health insurance then buying a CD, or something else fun.
- I worry about interest rates.
- I spend more time looking at stock prices then sports scores.
- It’s a goal to get up early and go to the gym.

This morning around 6am I was shotgunning down a Venti coffee at Starbucks and was thinking, it would be great if I didn’t have to pay stupid T-Mobile $20 to get online… Well my prayers have been answered a few short hours later.

Beginning this spring, Starbucks Card holders can enjoy up to two hours of free Wi-Fi service per day at Starbucks locations offering Wi-Fi access, while more than 12 million qualifying AT&T broadband and AT&T U-verseSM Internet customers will have unlimited free access to the Wi-Fi service. In addition, more than 5 million of AT&T’s remote access services business customers will be able to access Wi-Fi service at Starbucks locations. AT&T will soon extend the benefits of Wi-Fi at Starbucks to its wireless customers.

Here the full story.

Check out this slick little video I found floating around the internets.

So all through college you hear all this stuff about how your resume can’t be more then one page, it’ll get tossed, etc. Well here is a response I got from my new professional headhunter on that issue…

TO HH: “In college we were taught that it was the cardinal sin to have a resume longer then one page. Would you agree with that? Or, if I have relevant information is it ok?”

RESPONSE: “I don’t agree with that at all. I bet less then 10% of the resumes we see are one page these days, and of that most of them are college graduates. It’s a shame that school’s still teach that.”

Noah, a good friend of mine and former colleague at Bluefin, has launched a new web service called TwitPic. To understand TwitPic, you have to understand Twitter. Twitter is a microblogging site where you can send quick updates on your status or mood. TwitPic takes it to a new level with the ability to upload and send picture links along with those messages.

In less then a week Noah’s new site is receiving thousands of hits and has gotten written up on the likes of KillerStartUps.com and Download Squad. Mad props to Noah for his hard work and great new service.

You can check out more of Noah’s projects over at his blog Find Motive.

Well my Internet connection is out and I’m making this post from my iPhone. Nothing too new or exciting, just busy working at the Apple store and keeping up with otherthings. I’ll have a full post soon, right now I’m just hoping to be connected again soon!

So you may or may not have heard about the big news last week in the fly-over state of Oklahoma. It’s been nothing short of an Ice Crisis. Last Saturday night we were hit with the biggest Ice storm I have ever seen.

Over 600,000 Oklahomans were left without power, it took us more then a week to get back online and I still do not have internet access from home. (hence why I have been camped out in an internet cafe for over 6 hours today).

I was going to write a post about what I am calling the “Ice Storm Idiots,” and I still might, but I think for the most part people know this is nothing even close to Katrina and the power company is not racist.

I do have some interesting posts on the way… Including… Core to Shore [OKC's kicking our ass again] and How to survive in the dark[life w/o a flashlight sucks]. Also note the new feature of our blog, cool comments in [these things]. It’s totally stolen from Vallenwag, the Silicon Valley gossip rag.

Below are some images form the crisis of the last few weeks.

So after having an all day online bitch-fest with friends about the Tulsa job market, its absolutely terrible by the way, it finally appears that my time in TUL is limited. I broke down today and started sprucing up my resume for some jobs in DFW, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. I guess we’ll see what happens. Ultimately, I still think I want to stay here in Tulsa. My family is here and it would be hard to leave them. Though I find myself being more attracted to a major change everyday. Things are very static here in Tulsa, I’m pretty board, and that has more or less gotten me into trouble in the last several months.

I don’t really get into all that “meant to be” crap, but I often wonder if I could push myself harder in another market. I’m sure I could. Tulsa is something like the 47th biggest city in the US. It feels so small though. I always feel more at home when Im in a bigger city. It spurs my imagination.

I know this is a bit of a random post, and I guess I’m just venting a little. This whole job thing has really gotten to me. Who knows, I guess we’ll just see what happens!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope everyone has had a wonderful day! Heres a picture that my Mom took with her new Razr 2 at Thanksgiving dinner at the Eber house. Yeah, thats Dad and I playing on our MacBooks at the dinner table.

I’m a little annoyed today. I’m getting a cold, my parents are pissed at me that I’m not out slaving away at the castle in the hills. The house smells like a clorox factory because roommate is cleaning, and won’t open the door cause of bugs, which is bad. Yet none the less I saw this video and it cheered me up.

Now I’m sitting on my porch smelling the fresh air and being positive, though I still have a box of clean-ex next to me for that pesky cold.

For over 25 years Jim Giles was the voice of weather in Northeastern Oklahoma. For the last few of those years he became a friend our family. Jim’s passion was apparent in all that he did from covering breaking weather to supporting programs like Catholic Charities Coats for Kids program. After Jim’s passing last last year KOTV vowed to continue supporting the Giles Coats for Kids Program.

You too can help! Now through December 31, take new or gently used children or adult-sized coats to any Yale Cleaners location. They will clean and mend the coats and then Catholic Charities will distribute them to those in need. Check Here for more info.

So far this week I have been in front of the computer for a good 40+ hours, and its just Wednesday. Recovering from my stolen laptop has added a ton of work flow since I lost a lot of projects that I was working on. (I can’t tell you hope important it is to back up everyday) Right now I’ve got 4 + web development projects working, plus changing servers, and rebuilding some of my work flow. So things are hectic.

Here’s a few things I’ve stumbled upon this week from around the web.
- Your boss is on facebook, don’t lie (Valleywag)
- Facebook Workers are also stalking you! (Valleywag)
- More dry runs on airlines (The Aviation Nation)
- Some truths about bottled water (TreeHugger)
- Maybe when all these crazy projects of mine are done, I can relax in one of these awesome infinity pools. (Hotel Chatter)

I find it sad that during this time of war most Americans are not more awar