Talking Pengwin

Lying by Sam Harris

Sam Harris has written an essay called "Lying". It is brilliant. I highly recommend reading this.

You can get the Kindle Single here.

Steve Jobs

What an amazing life. I feel incredibaly sad for him and his family. Family is the most important thing, and it's a shame that cancer ruins it for so many.

He is and always will be a huge inspiration in my life.

I don't know

If someone asks me a question and I don't know the answer, I say I don't know.

I've noticed that a lot of people will just make something up. I don't know if it's because they are scared of looking stupid or they just like to talk.

It doesn't make anyone look stupid. No one expects you to know everything. If you don't know, then just say it.

Blogging Platforms

Which blogging platform should you use? I always tell people it doesn't matter, pick the easiest one and start writing.

Personally, I have more trouble with that. Maybe it's because I know about all of the options out there, but I go back an forth on Posterous, Tumblr, Squarespace, etc.

I have to train my brain to ignore the things that don't matters. It's difficult.

Sophomore Year

Sophomore year, my high school started a computer science course. It was going to be during 8th period and only 3 times a week. I was heavy into sports at the time, but thought that it sounded pretty cool so I gave it a shot.

I loved it.

It was a small class of about 10 people and the very first day we built a computer. I can still remember how excited I was. The next few classes were great. I was learning more about how a computer worked and we even started learning about network setup. The one class we ran ethernet cables through the ceiling. The best part is we weren’t just reading from a book, we were actually gettings our hands dirty.

Then out of no where they cancelled the class. They didn’t give us any reason. They just killed it and told us we would not be getting credit for the classes we already attended.

I was pissed. Here I was in a catholic school finally learning something and they decide to stop it. It wouldn’t be for another 5 years or so until I got back into computers.They are now a huge part of my life, but I always feel like I’m a little behind. What if I had kept learning more about computers in that 5 year gap? I would certainly know much more than I know today.

Threats

You are my boss.

You threaten me to do my job or something bad is going to happen to either me or you. You tell me it’s not a threat, it’s just reality.

Call it what you want. It’s a threat.

So what now? Do I get scared and do exactly what you tell me? Do I try and make you happy even if I become unhappy?

Nope.

You obviously know nothing about me or the people who work for you. Threats don’t make me respect you, they make me hate you. You would have done much better by first not being an asshole and treated me and the other employees like real people, not workers.

Remember, if we didn’t work there you would have no one to manage.

Employee Service

Companies talk about how much customer service means to them. It’s all about serving the customer. The people who are usually saying that are not the ones actually serving the customer. They are sitting in their office while their employees service the customer.

What about servicing the employee? Isn’t that just as or more important than servicing the customer? If the employee is unhappy and not treated well, then how do you expect them to give great customer service?

I think companies should spend more time making their employees as happy as possible, and that happiness will transfer through to the customers.

The difference between Android and iOS fans [Updated]

Android fans don’t want to pay for apps, music, movies, etc.

iOS fans will gladly pay for for apps, music, movies, etc.

If you are a developer, where would you prefer to be?

[Update - 6/7/11]

I’ve thought of a better analogy:

Android fans are looking for free shit

iOS fans are looking for good shit

Punctuation doesn’t matter

Does the comma go before or after the quotations? How long is a run on sentence? Who or Whom? Can’t or Cannot? does every sentence have to begin with a capital letter?

If the reader understands the message I am trying to communicate then does the punctuation really matter?

We seem to understand all the txt msgs being sent around all day. It seems to be only the grammer nerds that really care about punctuation.

I hope they are glad that I didn’t call them grammer nazis.

Apple will make a TV

Marco wrote a post about why apple will not make a TV.

"A bigger problem is that Apple prefers to offer fully integrated products, but a modern TV is just one component in a mess of electronics and service providers, most of which suck. Apple doesn’t want their beautiful, it-just-works TV to need to interact with Onkyo’s 7.1 HDMI-switching receiver, Sony’s 3D Blu-ray player, Microsoft’s game system, Comcast’s awful Scientific Atlanta HD DVR, Canon’s newest camcorder, the photos on your point-and-shoot’s SDHC card, and your Logitech universal remote. (The need for TVs to have a more complex remote than the Apple TV might be fatal alone.)"

http://www.marco.org/2011/04/16/rumored-apple-hdtv