Monday, August 17, 2009

What is random

This morning, I realized that not keeping up with posts every 2-3 days is counter-productive towards my growth objectives. Because if I don't post regularly, it will be tough to keep people coming back. Plus, if I only post once a week, I better lay down some really interesting stuff on the old globby, or people will lose interest. Also, as many of you know, I had the goal of growing my glob to worldwide exposure by next October. To stay on pace, I would have needed 7 new followers last week, but I only got one. So my new goal is 100 people by the year 2022. That seems more realistic. Or, if I can get 7 people this week, I'll be back on track and will only have to delay my 7 Billion followers goal by one week. I'll be happy either way.

Here's a little The Tef proverb for you.
"An argument rooted on an emotional premise, has no sound base."

Not based on that quote in any way, did you know that Google has only been a public company for 5 years? Think about that. They went from nothing to both a noun and a verb in just a few years. It's true, you can Google it on Google. A verb that you have to capitalize. What a pain in the ass. Google now has huge search market share; they host free globs; they have an Internet browser; they run the Internet advertising show; and they even have a smart phone. I wonder what is next?

Also, would you believe me if I told you that the wholesale club concept has only been around for 25 years? An entire retail segment that has shaped the way that many people buy everyday goods, did not exist when I was 11 years old. BJ's Club was the trend-setter here. They reported solid earnings today. And they continue to do well in this penny-pinching environment.

It's crazily crazy how quickly things happen. No? Google was not a household name 5 years ago.

Sticking with the "how fast things happen and what is next" theme of today's glob. Watching Bloomberg this AM, Chinese stock markets have fallen 20% in two weeks. But before that, they were up 50% so far this year. They are now calling it a "Bear Market" there. I call it a correction. Regardless, it's a big swing both ways in a short period of time. I think it will bounce back nicely in the next few months.

I wonder what the next big thing will be? I am going to go work on it after this upcoming "lastly" section.

Lastly. I was thinking about whether randomness makes sense and whether or not there was a big philosophical tie between the way that we look at the world and randomness. I think there is. In fact, randomness or the lack thereof may be all that matters. Here's my take:

If you believe in chance, then everything is random.
If you believe in fate, then nothing is random.

In between is karma. You get what you give.

Good day my peeps.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Truly Random

[Just wanted to get a few things off my mind. {Since the whole note today is random, it is all in brackets. These are just sub-brackets to explain the overall bracket usage.}

If you have not done so, please vote to the right regarding my 15,000th day alive party. See my 7/27 glob for more info.

My topical glob schedule by self-titled days of the week have not been working out. Mostly because I ignore them. But today I have a new topic that will just come up randomly: "Things that I did today that I did not mean to do." From now on, when one of these items arises, I will denote the item with a double asterisk and the word "honk" followed by a colon. If the items warrants further explanation, I will do that in a sentence or paragraph immediately following the item.

**honk: Today, I washed the outside shell of an egg before I broke it. I am not sure why I did that. But I guarantee it was one of the cleanest eggs that I have broken this week. I think I eat a lot of eggs.

Also, I have a new e-mail address that I may use in the future. I wonder who will be my first e-mail sender? It's a g-mail address, so I can send bigger files when necessary, but I still hate Google because of their imminent world domination. The address is:
coffeeawesomeness@gmail.com
Send a message to me there. I have never used it and I may never, but if I do and you send a message to me, I will likely read it or at least "preview pane" review it. Only my glob followers even know that this e-mail exists. Please don't tell anyone else.

Did you see any meteors last night? I saw 10 or so. Kinda cloudy but more like hazy, so I only saw the bright ones. Not nearly as cool as the ones I watched with Hathaway on his townhouse garage roof back in 2000 or 2001 or 2002? Those were awesome. Because of the sky that night, most of them looked green and they were very huge. They looked like someone was taking Yoda light sabres that kids play with and throwing them backwards (i.e. handle first) over your head from a tall ladder. Yeah, they were that big.

This is my 22nd glob.

This is the fifth to last sentence of my 22nd glob.

Sloane makes a lot of sounds when she is sleeping. Just a simple move of her foot or her holder sitting up will get her squeaking. We would like to come up with a nickname for her as a result. Please select one from the list and comment or choose your own:
- Squeaky
- Mini (after Minnie Mouse but more like mini-me)
- Beeker (i.e. The Muppet professor's assistant)
- Peeper (like Mr. Peeps from SNL)
- Terry (because many of her sounds sound like a baby teradactyl)

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Global Warming

My apologies again for a semi-backslide. I have not been on my glob in a few days. I guess I will throw a couple of hail mary's and do some sit ups.

Here's what I am thinking today. I am not an environmentalist. Not sure where I stand on the whole "the earth is going to warm up and melt into itself in a few years" theory. But I do think that a lot of what we do is wasteful - unnecessarily so.

For example, do you know that refrigerators in the US are significantly, significantly larger than ones in Europe? Like more than twice the size. What a waste of resources and power by us. How do they do it? How do Swiss and Polish people get by with 7-10 fewer cubic feet...that's like 1,000 cubic centimeters. I'm really not sure why the heck we still refuse to convert to the metric system. It's based on light waves. Come on people! What's makes more sense than that? Back when we were provided with measuring system choices, we chose the one based on king's stinky feet (hence a "foot") rather than light waves (I.e. The source of all of our warmth and the reason we have a planet). Yeah, stinky feet sounds like a better choice. Stupid.

And, and... the Europeans arguably have better food. It's just crazy that we feel the need to jam so much into our iceboxes. I'll bet 1/3 of all food purchased in the US is thrown away because it gets lost in the bottom of the 8th shelf in the fridge or behind the 3rd door next to the purified water tap. So here are a few things that I do to try and help save the world.

1) If I buy something at a store and I can carry it, I never take a bag. Paper or plastic? No matter. I don't need a freakin' bag. When I hand it back to the cashier, I kindly sy - "No thanks. Let's save the planet...one bag at a time." They usually are a little surprised. Especially when I just bought breast pads and I end up carrying them proudly out of Target on my shoulder like a 1985 boom box. Those things rock. If you have more items than you can carry out of the store, try juggling. This will not only save bags but it will also will improve your hand-eye coordination. Which may come in useful when carrying recycling bins.
2) Yeah, #2 is simply recycling. Plastic and other stuff does not need to sit in a landfill for a bajillion years. Just recycle. It's easy and it feels good.
3) Use your towels more than once. I figure if hotels think it is a good idea and they don't charge you for it, then it must be a good idea. How many times can you use a towel you might ask? I think up to 100 times. But my benchmark is that I use it until it starts to smell a little bit. If your towel smells after one use, you are not washing yourself properly. In this case, you should use more soap.
4) Go to your A/C thermostat right now and turn it up one degree. Do this every three or four days for regular small incremental temperature changes. And in two months you will not need A/C at all because your body will slowly adjust. Plus it will be October.
5) Run water through your coffee filter more than once. E.g. If you use five scoops of coffee in a filter to make one pot, make a second pot using the same grounds. If that is too watery, try adding one or two new scoops to the filter to give it a little boost. You'll use a lot less coffee and it will taste just fine.
6) Recycle your sneakers. Many sports sporting goods stores will take your busted running shoes back to chop them up and make other things. I am not sure what they make but if they use my sneakers, the byproduct will likely still smell. Hint - don't buy any new items in a store that smell like dirty sneakers.
7) Recycle. It's easy. And worth mentioning twice.
8) Guys...instead of running water while you shave and using a bunch of shaving cream, try this. Put one pump of liquid soap on the counter or a small dish or something else non-porous. Just wet your face enough that it's wet. Dip razor into soap splash. Shave. When necessary, rinse the razor quickly with a splash of water. Dip into soap...repeat. I find it's a much smoother shave than foamy cream and such. And it uses very little water.

That's about all I got for today. Tomorrow's post will be about history and the cycle that all leading civilizations have gone through over long periods of time. We are at a pivotal point in the history of our relatively young country... what are you doing to get it going again?

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Pump it up and vote in 2012...

So, sometimes the blogger.com site shows people that follow my glob as "followers" and other times as "members." No matter, thanks for joining. And welcome to Bernie. Glad to see you aboard. Your click as a member keeps the 38% growth for this week on track. One more per day this week and we'll hit the 25 mark by end of the week.

To assist with my unrealistic growth prospects, please invite random friends to join. They don't have to know me to enjoy randomness. Only prerequisites are a sense of humor and a little bit of concern for human well-being. I say that because sometimes I post human interest items and also because they should most likely be concerned about my sanity because many of you have already commented on such a topic.

If you want to invite them via e-mail, you can just copy and paste the below:
Subject line (do not copy this part or the part to the left):
Check Out My Friend's Blog, I Mean Glob

Body Text (do not copy these words or the "Body Text" text):
I follow a blog that I thought you might find amusing. The guy that writes it is all over the place and he actually calls his blog a "glob" to be ironic. Sometimes funny, sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes just totally random and sometimes funny. Did I say funny twice? Yeah. In fact, I just copied and pasted his words from his site to invite you. [hello new potential member - The Tef] Check it out at: randomtefel.blogspot.com
If you enjoy it, you can become a member or follower on the right hand side of the glob. Yeah, I said glob.

Moving beyond the membership drive, if you have any doubt about the current US President and his team's capability to run the country, just look at the "Cash for Clunkers" program. Not a bad idea in spirit. "Maybe a little rich per car" was my first inclination.

But how the heck can you estimate that a program will last for 3 months and end up being wrong by a multiple of 30!!! It lasted a few days. I didn't even hear about it until the stories hit that it was underfunded. Was any research done? Did anyone ask the average American as to whether or not they would take advantage of such an opportunity? I could have told you it was a great deal, that's why I said it looked rich. Seriously, these guys are running a multi-trillion effort to save the world's economy and they can't even get one program even close to right? UUUUGH!! (Proper use of double exclamation point)

We need a businessperson to run the country. Now and always. FYI, I voted for Perot when he ran. I wonder what things would be like if he actually won?

Regardless, it's raining outside and my glob is my only job, so here is one final thought:
Would you rather have $2,000,000 right now, or a penny doubled every day for a month?
***A penny will be mailed to every glob member who posts a comment with the correct answer and how much a penny gets you when doubled every day for a month. This will only be one penny, the growth for the rest of the month is up to you! [somewhat of a waste of an exclamation point but only digitally, unless you also print out these posts. Then some ink was wasted on the exclamation point and more on the explanation]

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Nothing Much

Welcome to my 5 new "globberees" this week. That's 38% growth in 7 days. At this pace, the entire world will be on board with The Tef by October 6th, 2010. Not bad. Unless of course there is a huge jump in worldwide population growth and we cross the 7.5 Billion people mark. Then it will take a week or so later. See the illustrative chart to the right. Compounding is pretty powerful, no?

If you have children not of age to use a computer yet, please establish a profile on their behalf in Google or Yahoo! (what's up with the exclamation point?) or the like and add them to the "Members" list below.

As mentioned, here is a paragraph from my executive summary page from my recent business plan:
"When I was 12 years old, I worked on a farm picking sweet corn. Hating the 4:30AM wake up call and the 50 cents per bag that I earned to the tune of around $10 per day, I decided to do something about it. Knowing that a bag of corn sold for nearly $20 when retailed, I asked my boss how much he would charge me per bag wholesale. The math worked out to a 50% margin for me and my door-to-door sweet corn sales business was launched. My first week, I made as much money as I had made picking corn during the entire previous month. And I was working from 4-7PM not 4-7AM. Now that's pretty sweet. I still picked corn from time to time and I kept my job on the farm but there was nothing like the feeling of being in business for myself. Since those days, I have always had the desire to branch off on my own again."

In conclusion, I can't stand left-lane drivers. Especially the ones that you know are hanging out in the left lane and driving exactly at the speed limit to be all goody-good. As if to say, "If you want to speed and break the law, you non-law abiding nut, you'll have to go around me and put a minor amount of strain on your tires and travel a tiny bit farther than you had anticipated on your little law-breaking trip." UUUUGH! [That is the appropriate use of an exclamation point]

Have a globbulous day.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Can't Sleep

Yep, it's 2AM.

I'm awake and the baby is sleeping. That's not smart. Less smart, I just closed my computer and am now typing on my iPhone again. Even lesser smarter, I think I type "noe" 70% of the time that I intend to type "now."
What's up with that?

Moving along. I think later today I will post some of my executive summary that was part of my recent franchise application. We're still waiting to hear, but they liked the plan. If you read the excerpt, you might be like..."Did he actually submit that to a company?". And the answer will be yes.

Crap, noe Sloane is up and I have to feed a bottle and I've been reduced to typing with one hand.

[ENR closed up over $66 Monday. Up over 20% since my non-recommendation mention. That's more than 2x the S&P rally in the last few weeks. I say it's time for me to sell. Though i think $80 is in sight, 20% is a nice three week move.]

Off to sleep.