Technically Speaking

Many of my readers, all 6 of you, are probably about tired of me talking about me and my quitting smoking thing. It’s only Day 3, but I feel that my internal Efx Loop – which is more commonly associated with an amp and a guitar – but – in this case, my brain on drugs I guess is the best way to describe.

What does it feel like? Imagine every single memory you have over your lifetime – all coming at you in bursts out of nowhere. For me at least, that is what is happening. Anything, or so it seems like everything that has an association even in the minutest possible connection will trigger a sudden burst of that event into my mind. Annoying? Yes. Very much so.

It even seems to have gone into my sleep state, as last night I probably had the most vivid dreams I have had in a long time. The weird thing, one of the people in the dream last night – I guess you would call the person the “main character” – has been dead for probably 10-12 years! Quite a weird dream sequence I had last night.

I know that from past experiences of coming clean of this, Day 6 is still looming. For some reason that is always the hardest day at least for me. I guess because you have by that time coughed up enough of the surface of your lungs that are covered in the tar and nicotine from smoking. At that point, your body has nothing to draw on nicotine wise, and is freaking out.

One thing I do know, is that these commit tabs are full of nicotine. That’s why I’m not taking one every hour or whatever I should be. For example, I have not even had one yet today. I’ve been up since about 6:30am this morning. My mind is jumping all over the place just as I stated above. You’ll see how much so in a moment as I tried to finish this post up!

Many of you, at least I am guessing, are tired of reading this addict who is trying to kick the addiction for good and become known as an ex-smoker, but hey – don’t be judgmental about it! Just in the same way as you would not try to judge a homeless person, a meth addict, a crack addict, an alcoholic, or any person that is dependent on something – quitting smoking is quite a breaking experience for some. I’ve done this before, but end up always going back.

I’m getting too old for that. Plus, it’s become so common place now to not smoke, that it’s not a good thing to be doing anymore in 2009. It wasn’t in 2008 either. But as I just stated above, don’t be judgmental of anyone trying to do the same right now.

Technically Speaking, I hope that my 6 readers are somewhat enjoying my rambles. I’ll try to find something else to post about, and once my brain re-wires completely – that could be a long time btw – I’ll probably write about something else more interesting like “Why FriendFeed has so many clones?” and “Why is everyone trying to do something with twitter” or “How do you get hated enough to have complete strangers come up to you to spit on you and harass you?

That last one was just me being a smart ass, I think that whole incident was lame if you ask me. Lame on two fronts – One – that the guy actually did it, and Two – That Big Mike didn’t go after the guy and go old school on that person and just beat his ass! I know the whole “lawyer thing” and “assault charges” probably crept into his mind. I just hope that at least he was tempted.

But hindsight is 20/20, and I’ve been in a similar situation where something very close happened to me once. And to answer – No, I didn’t beat the guys ass either, but my buddy and I did chase him down and when he pulled out a hatchet on us from his coat (yeah, don’t ask – let’s just feel sorry for the person; he was a Vietnam Vet) – decided that it was time to stop the chase and call the cops!

That’s a story for another day. I’ll have to dig out the newspaper article of the event and scan it in so that people believe me anyways. The even took place in 1990, so it’s more than likely not online since it was a small town paper!

Now what is more rockstar than saying something like the title above! That obviously refers to my below blog post in which I was embarking on a journey that hopefully will last until the end of my time. As I head into day #2 now, I realize that my dogs need to be groomed, and soon! They smell like someone’s unwashed crotch to be quite blunt. It’s nasty. That was the first thing that slapped me in the face this morning.

One thing that I have changed after yesterday’s disastrous taste of coffee and commit is to drink the coffee first. At least a few cups. Hey, I’m giving up smoking and not caffeine! Maybe some rockstars can handle it, giving up both at once, but this one doesn’t have the money to be in some rehab clinic in Malibu. I guess if you are a superstar rockstar, well maybe you could give up both as well as other vices.

I also figure that since the commit’s have nicotine in them, I don’t want to get addicted to that. Trust me, if you have ever tried one, there is probably no way to do that. They are at best – a quick nicotine fix. Other than that, they are definitely not certs or a breath mint! I guess you would have to be one of those who have been there, done that to understand.

Another thing that I have founded that I really like is that Tumblr that I also mentioned the other day. I find it really cool to be able to see something while browsing and putting your 2 cents in on it. Whether or not mine makes much sense, and also since I have a pretty wide range of interests, it’s great not being forced to sit down and write an entire blog post when all you want to do is say a quick “This is f**ked, get a life moron!” Not that I have said that, at least yet!

If you haven’t given it a try yet, and you think you spend too much time blogging, I highly advise it. Yes, the way I have it set up, it can resemble your own FriendFeed stream. You do have to be careful of what you put in the RSS import feed. Currently I have my Tumblr set up to only import this blog, the Lookery blog, and my tweets.

Technically Speaking, I guess this is like that whole 12 steps thing that alcoholics have to go through, the whole one day at time thing. To answer the burning question of the moment: “Yes, there are times where my immediate thought is – Time for a smoke!” What I have been doing is trying to change up my routine a lot so that thought isn’t so prominent.

You may as well start those office pools now! I’m not talking about the Super Bowl, but if you follow me on twitter you may have seen a tweet I made about 3 hours ago.

That was about 15 minutes before I actually smoked that last cigarette. No way was I going cold turkey, I have some of those commit lozenges. I just put one in my mouth before sitting down to write this.

The last time I attempted to quit, and did quit for about 3 months was about a decade ago. I made it by using the patch, which is in a way similar to how these lozenges work. Except those patches dosed you all day long, and started out with steps and stepped you down to a certain level of milligrams your body had dosed into you daily. The bad thing is once you step off the patch after week 12 – my urges caved within 6 days. Talk about a learning experience I wasn’t prepared for.

With these, you can at least control when you take one. The box says to start out with at least 9 of these daily. We shall see if I can take 9 of these a day. It says mint flavored, but it’s not like sucking on a breath mint. I just found that out the hard way – and yes, I did RTFM the booklet! Now I know why! The more you accidentally swallow the melting lozenge, the worse your heart burn becomes. So I’m following the manual, flipping it side to side in my mouth.

While you took the moment to read this, you should hop over to my earlier Lookery FSOTW post I did this morning. Much better reading, and more informative – especially the ending of the post where I list out all of our cool services!

Speaking of Lookery, I guess I should embed my stats for this month so far while I think about it:

If you look at December 2008 stats, you can see a slight shift in my loyal 6 readers I have on this blog.

Technically Speaking, tomorrow is the first full day I won’t have a smoke (today I just finished up what I had left; and yes, I have been cutting back over the past few weeks). 12 weeks from tomorrow, January 28th is – April 22nd, 2009. The key of course as learned from above is not only making it to April 22nd, but making it past April 29th and beyond. So make sure you factor all of that information into your office pools as you create them. Wish me luck, as I after smoking for longer than I want to admit, it’s time I really kicked the habit this time!

Sacred as in Super Bowl week, I finally decided to catch up to the Jones/Robison’s – Rafer and Sawicki by starting my own Tumblr site. Quite addictive, and fun actually. You can follow the RSS, and see more opinions that I only have time to jot out really quick and not do a full blown post on.

Technically Speaking, Tumblr is quite cool.

While I clearly listed my aversion to associating the word “Rockstar” with describing a kick ass developer, person, someone you want at your startup company, I really need to explain why that word shouldn’t be used. It’s not that I have a hatred of the word, but more like I know what “Rockstar” means. It surely isn’t someone you want working at your startup.

Rockstar’s are rather self centered, picky, want what is best for them, and all the perks associated with that. Is this someone you really want as your lead developer? I would think not. A Rockstar in my mind is one of those hard to manage people with fragile ego’s to go along with it. If you aren’t stroking the person’s ego, he will bolt for the next company advertising for a “Rockstar”.

Now even though I may be alone in my quest to erase the word from future ads of startup companies looking for hardcore developers, there has to be a word that really means what you want. So I was thinking, what could replace that terminology and actually make sense as in what you really want? While standing outside in rather balmy 14 degree weather this morning, the word came down out of the sky just like the few snowflakes that are starting to fall here in the STL.

What you really want and need is a Kamikaze! Or rather a Samurai Warrior! Rockstar? Please, that only leads to mental issues as you try to sooth the person into getting things done. While a Rockstar will whine that he or she needs more a money, a Kamikaze or Samurai Warrior gets the J-O-B completed. This is the ad I would like to see some day soon.

Wanted: Samurai Warrior with PHP, MySQL, Python, Java, Erlang, Hadoop skills who has a Kamikaze attitude about getting the job done. We won’t treat you like a rockstar, as we know that you’ll be saying Banzai at every opportunity handed to you. As our lead developer, you’ll be leading others in the virtues of being a true Samurai coding Warrior who knows when to push their Kamikaze instincts to lead them to the companies promise land.

Now wouldn’t you rather have the Samurai Warrior over the Rockstar? Remember, all Rockstar’s ever want is the spotlight. A Samurai who will scream Banzai and pull a Kamikaze all nighter to reach a companies product deadline is far more valuable than a Rockstar who will only want to know if this all nighter will increase his percentage in the company. A Rockstar is about “ME” only, and could really deep down inside care less about the entire team. A Samurai Warrior has the ability to put his own personal agenda aside for the betterment of the entire team.

Technically Speaking, will we see ads such as the above? Time and money burned by startups on “Rockstars” will be the true gauge of what I’m saying here. Once startups realize that what they really need is that Samurai Warrior who will charge up that hill screaming Banzai at 2am in the morning to reach a 6am release will we see the dropping of the Rockstar off on the side of the road much like what Poison did to Richie Kotzen, or so the story goes.

Om responded to my post yesterday, and he didn’t know there was an issue. Well in a few minutes of his time, the issue was obvious. The issue was more likely operator error on my part, or more like me being an early adopter on new interesting things. That’s the price you pay I guess when you want to be the first on the block!

What happened was that his personal blog for some reason back on December 16th had this RSS URL located at the top right hand corner, which of course I just copied and pasted into my feed. Once I subscribe to a feed, rarely will I ever go back to check the main site to see if maybe I have the wrong feed URL.

Well Om is a stand up guy, and he took the few minutes of time to even cc: in his tech person that manages his blogging empire. When I checked his personal blog, guess what – yup, his feed URL was now this one. The correct feed URL will make a big difference!

Technically Speaking, Om Rocks, and Rex is an idiot! Thank you Om and Chancey for taking the few minutes of your time this morning, and my sincere apologies for being a moron!

I waited. And I have waited. When Om Malik said he was opening up his personal blog again, I immediately jumped on the feed. I figured that it would be cool to see the “real Om” and read stuff that he just wants to comment on – music, other tech stuff, etc….

where I will be blogging (occasionally) about all things non-tech. From baseball to new movies and of course, books I’m reading and recommending. Best of all, it will give me a place to blog about music, something I miss doing.

So far, Om’s Personal blog has become nothing but a feed distraction. Why do I say that? Because all he does is cross post his posts from GigaOm dot com! At first I let it go. Than I was highly annoyed. Last week I was about to write this post. Today, I’m quite frustrated with the fact that all I see on his personal blog is cross posts from GigaOm. I haven’t seen the music that Om so love’s as quoted above, nor have I heard about any cool books he is reading. All I see is another RSS Syndicated blog. Not that I find that bad, preaching to the choir.

That in my mind would be like me cross posting everything from Lookery’s blog. How lame is that? I mean Om, if you are hurting for traffic, there are other ways to accomplish getting it back. Cross posting to your own personal blog is rather deceiving especially since you said your personal blog would not be like your GigaOm site. Doubt that Om’s GigaOm network is hurting for traffic.

Time to go way back and say this: “You can lie to yourself, you can even lie to your mother – but don’t lie to Rex Dixon!” Sorry to say this, but Om you lied to the world about your personal blog, and I’m very disappointed.

Technically Speaking, this is about as lame as #rockstar on twitter. See, at least I keep it real and personal here, and that is the way I would like to see Om’s personal blog become. One more thing, personally speaking – I hate the cold weather! Currently a balmy 11 degrees in the STL, up from 1 degree this morning, plus my furnace is out and in the repair shop today.

This song deserves a spin. This guy is telling it like it really is – talking about the bailout that is going on right now. Michael Adams is giving this song away. Lyrics are available there as well as on the embedded video below.

The new single by Michael Adams describes the economic hardship of ordinary Americans who are being financially bled while the wealthy elite are printing trillions of dollars that indirectly steal purchasing power from the working class. It characterizes Federal Reserve and Treasury officials as white-collar criminals and warns about an era of hyperinflation. It also emphasizes the racial disparity in the very recognition of economic crimes, saying that while black men are frequently imprisoned for small thefts of a few hundred dollars, the crimes of the rich white men in Washington who steal trillions of dollars go completely uninvestigated and are never prosecuted.

Read more about “I Want My Bailout Money“.

Technically Speaking, that is one American that isn’t afraid to speak the truth, and even if you are no fan of hip hop music, the song is pretty decent.

Syndication Experimentation, but all systems are normal once again here. I don’t know why I would experiment here, or even over on Embargo Zone. I guess I really didn’t want to open up another blog, but I did. I’d rather just experiment on my already in place WordPress blog I have.

Experimentation almost cost me a number of posts today over on ‘Da Zone, still need to come up with a cool slogan there, but at least RSS saved the day on that snafu!

My Nuclear Inbox – Syndication of all your tech news and even some non-tech news. I truly wonder how much data a full blast of tech news will eventually just bloat this to the point of full with the web host shutting me off? I guess we’ll see soon enough. I would give you a RSS feed for My Nuclear Inbox, but one of the feeds that I’m importing is causing it (the feed) to break. The usual RSS address – sometimes it works, and sometimes it’s blank! Weird. Feed on that RSS URL if you want to be overwhelmed or underwhelmed depending upon if it’s working or blank at the time you read your feed!

Technically Speaking, yeah it’s really just another splog, but it was fun setting one up that has all the cool tech sites in one spot, no different than my Google Reader feeds I read.

Well it just so happens to be 2009! While looking around this morning, out on the Embargo Zone which you can follow on twitter as well as put in your RSS feed reader, is about a company from the STL.

The first story of 2009 happens to be about a company from the STL that posted a PR item about launching. This site caters to children ages 3-11, which is an interesting niche, and is from the STL. Just want to make sure you know I have nothing to do with this company! Not everything from the STL is ME!

With regards to that, the other day I tweeted about a someone I have been following on our local news site – blogamanic. Again, this is NOT ME! It’s just someone that I do happen to know personally, who has some funny things to say. You can follow the adventures of the blogamaniac in your RSS reader also.

Of course you can always see the Google Reader addiction by reading all that I share on Google Reader pretty much daily. Or you can always put that mess in your RSS reader. For those that don’t have a feed addiction, it’s probably a good thing! Once you get hooked on RSS, you rarely browse the web like you use too. Than of course there is ReadBurner which started me on this road of really sharing what I look at!

Technically Speaking, I hope everyone had a great New Year celebration and just remember – if it’s from the STL this year 2009 – it doesn’t mean it necessarily has anything to do with ME!