STICKY POST
Wednesday, 4. March 2009, 03:33:04
Friday, 13. November 2009, 18:52:07
twitter, myspace, business, social networking
...
Ok so let's get something straight. Social networking, whether it be on Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Twitter or the multitude of new startups out there, is not going to be the do all saviour to tie your company together with the real world. I know, it seems like such a great idea now but what are you really going to gain?
Let me explain a little of my own personal experience for a bit. Most people that I know are gung ho about using any and/or all of the available social network forms at first. A few months down the road most of these websites become more of an annoyance than anything else. Why? Probably because you just added all of your family and friends, your friends friends found you and because they met you once they added you and you accepted. Soon you find out that Aunt Milfred is having a get together, not that you could care as she is like your third aunt removed. Before you know it this Mifred model is repeated with every person you know. Your event invites are 75 events deep, your inbox is full of crap that you could care less about and you have been tagged in thirty photos with a grid of random describing words with you tagged for one of them.
Much like the rest the interwebs, the social networking arena is now full of crap. Techno junk is surrounding you from every which direction when you enter the social networking arena. So I have an idea... Perhaps companies should inject themselves into the social media world! Wrong. Considering that there is so much junk already why would you think that people would want to deal with corporate junk? Are people not getting enough advertisements as they drive to work in the morning? Does the newspaper not pimp more goods than a Compton swamp meet? Does the TV not pause for a commercial break every handful of minutes?
Sure I can hear your defense right now, "but we are only trying to get our customers more involved". Yes, sure. So innocent that you certainly don't expect to drive your sales up through various forms of social networking.
The real question here is, do you understand that when you tweet about a new widget that you are pimping to the masses that no one really cares to listen?
Your customers may visit your twitter site once but I can bet that in most cases they aren't receiving your tweets directly to text message like they would with their real friends.
If you think I am being harsh perhaps an article in InfoWorld may prove a little more convincing (Read #6):
IT Snake Oil: Six IT cure-alls that went bunk.
Monday, 2. November 2009, 23:14:25
moron, success, life, street smart
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Since when did people's inability to read instructions become so rampant?
It seems to me that more and more often people have forgetten that reading something may actually teach you something. I am not talking about sitting down with an encyclopedia and reading it cover to cover to learn something. What I am talking about is something simple like building cheap particle board furniture from Ikea or learning how to do something new on your computer.
I am not sure why but people are even overlooking the blantant obvious details. For example if a document were to read something like "make sure to read carefully", in big bold letters, then it would probably be important to read everything. I can understand that sometimes people want to do their own thing and I am 100% for that but when it comes to doing something simple and doing it right the very first time then why not read the stuff that will set you on the path for success?
I can attest that I do not always read the instructions on things. The difference though is that I will toy with something until it works correctly. I tinker with things, it's just in my nature. If you know that you are not so saavy in the problem solving department or you just have no understanding of what it is that you are trying to do then do yourself a favor. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS.
Monday, 3. August 2009, 18:09:23
playful, time, friends, life
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Abused Memories
Wasted days never to be redeemed by memories.
Thoughts passed on by, by the carelessness of ones playfulness.
The hours tick away one by one and nary a regret seen.
Later on you recall a day without thought and how it could have been.
It could have been a playfulness diverged into memories.
The thoughts and tales of passing moments being beautified.
But forever now those times are gone because you didn't care.
Selfishness shared amongst friends but void of the outside world.
Written by Jonathan W Ostroushko
Friday, 31. July 2009, 18:59:18
time, water, life, trout
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Eventually, over time, the meandering curves that flow through your mind will end up like an old stream running through a prairie. All of those curves will be long lost with age. No longer will there be large unexpected pools of excitement where once the brooke trout darted. The ripples and rapids that used to bring splashes and calming background noise will cease. The river will shallow and widen but the life is still there.
The water will continue to flow although not as pristine as it once was.
The birds will still hover although not quite as many.
People will still be excited to test the waters although less often.
Time will go on.
Night will inevitably turn into the morning, the morning into day, and the day once again into night.
Time will go on.
Written by Jonathan W. Ostroushko
Wednesday, 29. July 2009, 23:22:42
music, life, up, college
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If I had one piece of advice for the young people of the world it would be: Do not grow up.
Your age will inevitably increase and you will someday be able to see pg-13 movies without an adult. You will be able to get a license and drive to school. You will eventually be able to buy porn and visit a strip club. And ultimately you will someday be able to buy alcohol and gamble in vegas. Whatever you do, do not grow up.
Do not go to college.
Do not find a career you will feel stuck in.
Do not take out loans and credit cards.
Do not get into politics or even discuss them.
Do not settle unless you are truly happy with something.
Do not stop perfecting the things you are good at.
Do not ignore the music.
All in all, do not grow up no matter what. You can always be young.
Wednesday, 1. July 2009, 16:46:05
nokia, smart phone, contract, money
...
So I read this morning, over here, that Best Buy Mobile took a survey of 1000 people and determined that most Americans want a "smart phone" but don't have a clue what to do with it. Well, that makes sense. I encourage you to go ahead and read the article, that is as long as you return here. Go, go right now, I'll be waiting.
Welcome back.
Ok so now that you read the article you will realize that this enhances my point with the whole iPhone post that I previously posted. People are clueless. I mean it obviously makes the most sense to spend the most possible amount of money to get something you will use almost solely use as a phone while signing your life away for a 2 year contract to "save yourself money" (in case you don't understand the quotes around that, it was quoted for emphasis to mock those that think they are saving themselves money by being locked into lengthy contracts in order to have a discounted price on a phone).
Don't get me wrong here. I think that "smart phones" are the wave of the, well, past present and future. But I think that this is much like the person who buys a super fast computer but only uses it to check their email and surf for porn. What was the point? If you are going to have a super fast computer why not run folding@home while playing Crysis on one screen, while listening to The Clicquot Club Eskimos in iTunes, while watching Home Alone 3 on a second display all while surfing for porn on your third screen. That would make more sense.
What I'm trying to say here kids, is that you are biting off more than you can chew and wasting your money on stuff you don't even understand. Why? Do yourself a favor and go by yourself a RAZR or RIZR or PEBL or whatever they call them these days. Actually save yourself the trouble and go by a Nokia, I dig them so they have to be good.
Sidenote: Run on sentences are great by the way, especially when mocking people.
Friday, 19. June 2009, 16:50:12
mobileme, ovi, symbian, AT&T
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So anyone that knows me and knows my technology preferences knows that I am a big fan of two technology companies, Apple and Nokia. Lately I have taken up issues with all this iPhone business. Being that I am a mac admin and everyone knows that I love to use macs and Apple related products there hasn't been a day since the original iPhone release that someone hasn't asked me where my iPhone is. I generally politely reach into my pocket and retrieve my Nokia N85 and say, "It's right here, only this iPhone does more". They usually respond by saying, "but, that's not an iPhone". To which I reply, "you are correct, but this phone still does a whole lot more".
Let's face it, even with the third rendition of the iPhone almost out, Apple is still playing catch up especially in the hardware realm. I would agree that Apple has done a marvelous job marketing the iPhone and I know better than most that if you slap an Apple logo on it you may as well just fire up the money printing press at the mint and drop the money off at Apple. The deal with the iPhone is that Apple has drummed up a pretty insane level of fanaticism. I would agree that I am a fanatic of Nokia and it would be tough to pry the Nokia from my hands even if I were dead but I can safely say that if someone came out with a phone that had:
A. The build quality of a Nokia
B. Software that is as tried and true as Symbian/S60
C. Features that best the feature set of a Nokia
Then I would give said phone the time of day and consider switching to it.
It is nice to see that I will finally be able to send pictures to my iPhone disabled friends, a first for those that have upgraded their handsets or paid the ridiculous amount to upgrade. I am also glad that those that purchase the 3Gs can get lost in the woods and find their way out (as long as their battery doesn't die first) with the incredibly useful compass app.
I get it people. The iPhone is a sexy little piece of hardware, not going to deny that. But really? I mean, before the iPhone came out most of these people couldn't give a crap what phone they had in their hand. Remember the RAZR? Remember how everyone jumped on that one and Motorola road it out until they couldn't even give the things away? The RAZR had a horrible camera, a lack of any extra functionality. But hey, everyone else had a RAZR and it looked good when you had it up to your head. At the time I was rocking a Nokia with a 3 megapixel camera. So fast forward a bit. All those people that had phones that didn't have any functionality beyond a phone that made a decent call all of a sudden care about a quasi smart phone? Is it that or is it that they really like to download an app that lets you pop bubble wrap on the screen of your phone?
A person that sits near me at work was asking another co-worker if he was going to upgrade his iPhone to the 3Gs because she was thinking about doing it. I had to interject and say "hey, if you are going to pay $300 while on contract to upgrade your phone then why not avoid the additional time on your contract and buy a
Nokia 5800" I explained how it's been out for a little while, costs a bit over $300, offers up the same functionality as the iPhone and then some, can be used with
Ovi for free (as opposed to $99/year for MobileMe), and a whole multitude of other reasons why it would make sense. 10 minutes later she says over the cube wall to me, "but there is no app store" to which I reply, "store.ovi.com, accessible both from the phone and the web". I think that even with all the positive things I laid out that Apple's marketing team did a better job selling their product to this individual even though they can't up with one reason why it would make more sense to buy their product. I tried, I usually do, but people in America are stuck in the "I need to buy what my carrier sells me" mentality.
The interesting thing is that AT&T, as of late, has even seen the light and realized that not everyone wants a subsidized phone. They offer up the ability to walk in and purchase a SIM card and a month to month plan, if you ask. People, listen to me when I tell you this. Cellular carriers are not doing you a favor by selling you a subsidized phone. Instead they are selling you products that they dumb down according to their wants and needs and essentially selling you a broken product. *Cough*iPhone tethering*Cough*
Ok let me sum things up as it seems I have gotten off on a much bigger tangent that I can go into at another time.
The iPhone:
-sexy
-sleek
-marketed very well
-extremely trendy
-behind in terms of technology
-even the 3Gs needs a hardware upgrade
-MobileMe should be free
-Useless free apps are just that, useless
-Compass on an iPhone won't save your life unless you know how to use a compass and the battery doesn't die
Tuesday, 10. March 2009, 01:18:06
awake, music, club, life
...
Life is this perpetual thing. Infinite, not really but continuous for sure. It should never be taken for granted but I think we all do once in a while. I'm not sure how things like this come to a person at such strange times but I am sitting here watching Current. On comes Sigur Ros, a music group that my youngest brother is quite fond of but I have never really heard before and something clicked. Maybe it was the previous call from my one of my very best friends as she was in distress and I sat there and explained how no matter what things will always get better. Nonetheless, something clicked.
I'm not sure what it was it was and frankly it may have been an explosion rather. Something just told me that maybe I need to do something bigger. Sure, the club life is fun. The partying is a blast. I have times I will always remember, I won't stop that really. But maybe I need to do something bigger this summer. Maybe instead of waiting for my next out of state booking to come to me or me searching for it, perhaps in the meanwhile I need to plan a vacation. I haven't had a real vacation in years. Maybe I just need to run away for a bit.
Obligations and ridiculousness are what hold down most people in their mediocre day to day 40 hour a week life. I feel that I have broke free from the mundane quite well in my life but it still feels incomplete. Most anyone would tell you that I am a happy person and I would agree, I even am as I type this but I still feel like there is something missing. I need to feel awake.
Tuesday, 3. March 2009, 02:17:33
jim jones, ludacris, emcee, rap
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I'm putting a challenge out for all of you pop icon rapper types. If you think you have what it takes then come battle me. I'm serious.
I keep hearing all these tracks that you are cranking out with the most ridiculous lyrics. I have heard better poetry out of the mouth of 5 year olds. If you seriously think you are impressing someone by talking about popping bottles of champagne then you are full of it. Chances are you couldn't tell a champagne from a sparkling wine if the bottle cracked you on the head.
So that's the deal, if you think you can pull out lyrics as precise as mine with as much meaning as mine then step right up. I will even set up the location and a sizeable crowd.
Monday, 2. March 2009, 00:12:58
car, life, jackasses, bad
...
So last year, three months after purchasing a new car that meant the world to me because of how hard I had worked in my life to purchase my very first brand spankin' new car I was almost killed in it. It was a life changing experience, I haven't been the same since then. I won't go into the whole story behing the accident because I posted about it last year after it happened, you can check out the story with pics HERE.
I am posting this post here because I made a promise to an insurance agent over at progressive insurance. I know he was suprised when I made the promise to him and frankly it left him speechless. It was pretty priceless to see the look on his face when I promised that I would blog about how horseshit the company that he represents is. I told him that I would for certain put information about how shallow his company is in time of need, when a person is at their lowest because their client was beyond responsible for a situation that nearly killed someone.
Let me tell you a little story. So as it were, a day or so after my car accident I had a guy from Progressive insurance call me up and tell me he needed to meet with me and go over some paperwork and discuss some things. I though great, someone is going to give me a helping hand when I need it most, I was sorely mistaken. Sure we talked about paperwork and that sort of stuff and it was towards the end of the conversation I realized how shallow not only this guy is but the company itself. He told me that progressive would give me $100 right there on the spot. I am sure someone with lesser knowledge of life in general may have picked up their pen and signed right there on the spot. But I knew that if I signed the paperwork and took the money that I would get nothing more than $100 to compensate me for someone's life changing mistake.
Now let me stop this right here. I didn't care about getting money. I would have been more excited had someone from Progressive come over to my house and told me how sorry they were for insuring a moron and putting him on the road and then gave me a hug. But that's not the case. Nobody in life cares a whole lot. Certainly not money hungry insurance companies.
So anyhow. I spoke to this joker over the course of a handful of weeks asking when they were going to get me compensation for therapy I would like to go to but wouldn't be able to afford, or when they were going to put a new car in my driveway. They always just told me they couldn't do that. My insurance company, who I think sucks as well but not nearly as much as progressive, couldn't believe how I was being treated. My insurance company told me that if things were the other way around they would have compensated me for much more to admit they caused a problem. Progressive apparently thinks that they can't do any wrong. Eventually it got to a point that I told the guy from Progressive that I was tired of receiving calls from his company and it certainly didn't help me to recover if they were gong to continue to call me and doscuss the accident. He has the balls to ask me what it would take to get things resolved. I got of fthe phone came up with a number that I felt may ease me getting into a new car, that number was $2500. Progressive got back to me real quick with the only offer they could apparently swing, keep in mind this is an insurance company they reaps money from people every day. Their offer... $1000. I told him fine, I'll come down. I went into the room and he explained a couple things at which point I made my promise to him. I told him I would write this blog entry and tell people how shady his company is and it would be stuck online for quite sometime with negative press. He went silent had me sign a paper and handed me the check. The end.
I almost got killed. Skewered by a steel beam, a beam that was knocked off a bridge by the client of progressive. I don't function the same as I used to, I never will. Progressive guy couldn't care less, progressive the company couldn't give a shit. Each day they are too worried about driving around in their expensive advertisement SUVs with more intention on making money than ever helping anyone.
Progressive, your client ruined my life.
Sunday, 1. March 2009, 23:45:17
entertainment, passion, focus, life
...
To piggy back on my previous post from earlier today I wanted to put up another post. Sometimes when my mind begins to wander I just can't stop thinking, not sure if this is good or bad. LOL. The truth is that communication is sometimes lost in translation if people can't clarify what it is that is being said.
I think that people need to have more passion for things that they really focus on. Caring and passion are two different things altogether so I don't want you to read this as a contradiction to what I previously wrote. You should definitely have passion for the things that make a difference to YOU in your life. So often I think that people kind of forget about this small aspect. Sure people do have passion for all sorts of stuff. But as far the stuff in your life that you have passion for is it going to make a difference to you or the people around you? Having passion for watching a sport like football isn't going to do shit for shit. What's the point? Entertainment is a beautiful thing but it's just that and you have to be able to determine life from entertainment. Sure you can be an entertainer and that would be a large part of your life but if you are on the receiving end of the projected entertainment then enjoy it for what it is. Don't make something as trivial as a sport a determination for what you do on a daily basis.
Sunday, 1. March 2009, 22:00:00
So when things aren't working the way in my life I like to type. I am a person of words, being that I am an MC. People tell me that I am good at talking to other people and that words are my forte. I find that when things go south in my life there is one thing I always have, writing.
Everyone in this life only lives once.
You have to make of it what you can. You can't let people get you down or disturb what you do.
Don't care too much. When you care too much you set yourself up for dissapointment. I'm not telling you to not have compassion or to not be there for people in your life. I just don't understand attachment much these days. Yeah it may be an unhappy thing to say but really? Why? No matter how you look at it life is about keeping yourself happy, which in turn can mean making others happy and being there with people. The problem that I see though is that people dedicate themselves so hard to single things and that thing disappears leave you wondering when that great thing make come back around... if ever.
Some people have told me this only shows that I'm afraid. I don't see it that way. I know what bad shit happens. I know and have seen how the good can turn to horrible. So instead of walking through life with no control as to what happens I am setting myself up for success and happiness. I don't think that most people realize they have ultimate control of everything around them and that many people need to learn this. Through this sort of philosphy I have realized there is no need to be mad about things because it's only a waste of time. Contemplate the issue for a minute or two and dismiss the problem. Be happy.
Monday, 13. October 2008, 18:16:40
n73, nokia, n-gage, toyota
...
First things first. I should really put an update to some previous stuff I posted.
When it comes to the car I was going to purchase I changed my mind at the last minute. The car was set to arrive the next day and I even got to sit in someone else' of the same model to see how it was. At the last minute I realized how much I loved the 2009 Toyota Matrix S (S stands for sport). It has a modified body kit, fog lights, sequential shifting and an upgraded 2.4 Liter 4 Cylinder engine (over the stock 1.8L 4 Cyl.). Needless to say, for it's size and weight this thing is fast. Here is what my car looks like:
Ok so onward to this thing we call Ovi. Not quite the newest of of services but new enough and so incredibly useful that it needs mentioning. As most of the people that have read my Blog before know, I am an avid Nokia owner/user. I currently own a Nokia N73 and N95. Not too long ago Nokia introduced a new service/website called
Ovi in which it will sync data from your phone with the web service so that no matter what happens to your phone or, if you have multiple phones, which phone you are using. The service reminds me a lot of Apple's Mobile Me although the big difference here is that Ovi is Free, unless you need to have data storage but for me that's not an issue. So essentially you sign up on the website, make sure you have the Sharing 3.0 application on your phone and follow the instructions while setting your user profile online and they will text you the service settings and away you go. It is incredibly nice to be able to have the same calendar no matter where I am and be able to update and see it either on my phone or my computer. The Ovi service also allows you to upload pictures and videos to your galleries and make them private or public for all to see. The service is currently in Beta so I am sure a lot more will be added as there are tabs on the site that tie into Nokia's Music service as well as N-Gage, (the Nokia platform for gaming and purchasing games). If you currently have any N-Series device I highly recommend checking this service out.
Wednesday, 13. August 2008, 17:49:47
happy, life, stupidity, optimism
...
When was the last time you:
1. Were supposed to be in the car when one of your best friends rolls the car over and dies.
2. Held the hand of a sibling as they took their last breaths by way of machine.
3. Spent New Years morning trying to hunt down a best friend who was later found by the cops in a snow bank nearly frozen and half dead.
4. Nearly died and were told you only had a handful of hours left because the strep and mono you have has gotten so bad your throat would close up within hours. (#4 recently added because I tried to forget about this, 5 & 6 moved down)
5. Stared death straight in the face as you get nearly killed by a piece of falling bridge.
6. Had to talk a friend down from killing their self with a kitchen knife.
I really don't want people to feel sorry for me because of what has happened throughout my life. People sometimes think that I try to make people feel that way about me but in truth it's just because I am so comfortable with everything that has happened that I don't mind being completely open. But sometimes I wish that people could open their eyes to the world around them and especially their own life to understand that the stupid little day to day details that get blown out of proportion really don't mean shit in the grand scheme of things. People worry day in and day out about nothing, WHY? What are you stressing about. There is so much more to your life that you should actually care about other than he said/she said crap. So much more to care about other than how to not help people by passively helping them only to understand in the end that you will have to help them anyway because people are clueless (yeah I had a certain situation in mind, but I would rather not go into it). Are they really clueless? Maybe it's just the fact that so many people out there are so lonely in their daily life that they just want help.
The funny thing is that I am so much of an optimist that not a single one of the five things listed above have ever really gotten me down. You can throw whatever the hell you want at me and it's pretty difficult to break my optimistic outlook on the universe. What the five things above have done to me have made me open my eyes. I think at this point in my life I appreciate life so much that I just cannot understand the trivial stupidity that other people call problems. If you are reading this and thinking that I am an ass for thinking your problems aren't that bad then you might be right. But then again maybe you should prioritize things in your life a little more as your problems might as trivial as I think they are. I am not trying to be an ass here. I am trying to open some people's eyes to the fact that you are a person with your very own life. You have the power to do whatever you want with your life and you have the right to feel whatever way you want to in your life. Why would you want to feel stressed about something if there is no need to feel that way? Why feel mad, sad, disappointed etc. when you can just move on with your day and be happy?
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