YOU MAY ALREADY BE A WINNER...

Gas has fallen to $1.99/gallon today around the Twin Cities.  And not just at Crazy Roscoe's Gas-and-Shine, we're talking BP and Super America.

Holy crap - $1.99 gas, a black president, all that's missing is a free large order of McDonald's french fries and this would be the greatest day ever :)

This weekend, Jen, my Mother and I went through the gruesome task of getting Amelia to sleep in her crib. 

Why?  She's 8-weeks old now and she's been sleeping everywhere BUT her crib, so we decided it's the right time to start implementing some regular sleep rituals.  The other big change was to start putting her to bed at the first sign she's tired instead of waiting for meltdown mode.

Two days and lots of horrid crying later, she now goes to sleep in her crib with only about 5 minutes of minor fuss.  And, no, we didn't "Ferberize" her - where you leave the baby in the crib alone and let them cry it out for a set period of time.  We would simply calm her down and try to put her down in the crib.  If she cried, we'd pick her up and calm her down again.  And then repeat.  And repeat, and repeat, and repeat.

The first time was really hard, but each time after that got easier and easier.  Thank God :)

I came home from work today, I smelled tacos, and Amelia was having fun in her swing.  Dude, we haven't had an old-school "taco night" in a loooong time.  And I love taco night.  Amelia was totally chill during dinner, and I played with her afterwards and she was sooo calm and happy.  Jen and Mom were happy too - seems like the change has paid-off like crazy.

After playing with Amelia, I fed her a bottle and then put her to bed.  And she fell asleep in 5 minutes like a little lamb.  This is one super freakin' happy day :)

A couple years ago, I (along with a kabillion other people) was impressed and touched by the story of Matt, the deadbeat from Connecticut, who ditched his job as a computer programmer and decided to travel the world on-the-cheap.

And for anyone who isn't in the software/IT industry, suffice it to say, Matt's story is better than wet-dreams, mythology, enlightenment, Fight Club, and ultra-porn all wrapped together.  It shows that "yes, you can escape the crazy cubicle world, travel the world, meet interesting people, have a good time, and you won't die".

Like I said, better than ultra-porn.

This evening, I was reading the news and by way of an article about beach bars being bulldozed in Sierra Leone, I wound up looking for pictures of those beaches, and ultimately I wound up at a website by Manfred Schweda.  He ditched his job as a trader for Bank Austria, bought a beefed-up Land Rover, and drove around Europe and then around Africa, got married and had twin boys along the way, and is still driving around Africa. 

For how long?  Over three years now.


Granted, his story is a little less nifty in that this dude definitely has some $$ from his career in banking.  Still, you wouldn't know it from his mode of travel.  You'd know it from the pictures of his former girlfriends - the ones from before he gave up the finance jobs.  Not eating all day, bathing in a bucket, and then sleeping in the back of the Land Rover - that's the thrifty part.

And, like Matt, his experience shows that you really can just go out there, go to places where you obviously don't "fit in", and you will find people are generally kind, welcoming and helpful. 

You can read about his journeys at:

http://www.thisfabtrek.com/home/tfthome.php

He also takes a lot of photos.  And though I wouldn't say he's a great photographer, he still captured quite a few shots that I love.  Remember - good photographer or bad photographer, nobody can take a good shot if they leave their camera at home.

http://www.thisfabtrek.com/journey/africa/sierra-leone-liberia/20080525-monrovia-harper/buchanan-liberia-children-shipwreck-4.jpg

http://www.thisfabtrek.com/journey/africa/sierra-leone-liberia/20080525-monrovia-harper/harper-liberia-maryland-fishermen-pirogues-4.jpg

http://www.thisfabtrek.com/journey/africa/guinea/20071125-conakry-dobreka-soyon-camara/dobreka-soyon-camara-aziz-bass-fag2-4.jpg

http://www.thisfabtrek.com/journey/africa/guinea/20071114-conakry-kassa-ballet-sanke/koba-beach-piriguesp-4.jpg

So if the current financial crisis has you feeling blue, or you just can't stand another day in your cubicle farm, sell all your crap, get a passport, call the Foley brothers, and head over to Africa.  Maybe by the time you come back, your 401k will be higher than when you left :)

aka - a consultant

I finally landed a job.  Not a permanent jobby-job, but a gig as a consultant to work on a project at 3M.  The timing is really cool, and indicates that the universe smiles upon me:

• I lost my job back in May, when my wife's pregnancy was getting into the "hey, you're really pregnant" stage.  It wound up being a good opportunity to finish a bunch of projects around the house, help take care of my wife, and get more baby prep done.
• I got this new job about 3 weeks after Amelia was born.  My folks were visiting when I heard the job is a 99% sure-thing, so my Mom is staying with us to fill in when I start work.

So in a way, it's like I got five months of pre/post-paternity leave.  And maybe it's not that the universe smiles on me, maybe I just know how to smile at the universe regardless of what's going on. 

The latter's probably better :)

Our first child, a beautiful little girl, was born yesterday :)

It's weird - it seems like it was a long time ago already, yet everything since then seems like it flew by.  The important thing is that we're all happy and healthy and doing fine.

Geez, on Friday I was going to write about the last day of the RNC and the pics I took, but since Jen went into labor Friday night, I've been a little distracted.  Oh well.  Besides, taking pictures of my daughter has been a lot more fun than taking pictures of bored riot police ;)

Dude, the weather was freakin' awesome today - blue skies and 71°F.  I know it's kind of lame to blog about the weather, but really, everyone up here takes advantage of good weather while it lasts. 

Anyway, Jen had the great idea of going to A&W.  She loves root beer floats, and I dig the classic cars that they have at some A&Ws during the summer.  Burgers and fried cheese curds don't hurt either.


Today, the A&W in St. Paul had classic Volkswagens.  Not quite the typical "classic car" night, but still pretty cool.  The old Westfalia vans are pretty sweet, especially the pop-up campers. 


Plus there was this sweet kit-car too.  Kinda reminds me of that stupid dune buggy in that old Hanna Barbera cartoon, but otherwise it's a sweet little car.  Complete with a baby carseat in the back along with a big pack of diapers.  Not sure how they keep bugs out of the kid's teeth...


And I had to get a shot of Jen+baby with the Great Root Bear.  Now we'll be able to show our kid that we had wild and exciting adventures.  You know, like hanging out with a big bear in an orange sweater and a beret.


Dude, come on, that's exciting...

Today was a flat-out gorgeous day in Minnesota.  Perfect weather, bright blue skies.  So what better than to spend our morning brewing beer?

Into the Carboy, Worts and All
Our friends, Mike and Amy, have been homebrewing for many years.  Or at least I should say Mike has and Amy has blessed Mike's hobby and all the gadgetry it entails.  And I've been wanting to try making homebrew for quite a while, but I know I just don't have room for the gadgetry right now.  So over drinks at a party on Friday, Mike and I got to talking and he decided he'd walk me through my first batch of homebrew at his place and we'd use his gear.

We Have Ignition
Besides Mike, my neighbor Mark is a homebrewer, and then of course there's my best friend Craig who's been brewing for years and years.  And then there's the fact that I live just a couple blocks from one the most well-known homebrew supply shops in the upper midwest.  Hmm, guess it was about time.

I'm not going to bother trying to explain the homebrewing process, because there's no shortage of website that can do that (and in much better detail).  But if you want to see some pics from our "day at the homebrewery", you can see 'em all here:


This batch of nut brown ale should be ready right after our baby's born, so I already know what I'll be drinking at the celebration :)

Just saw this article in the news headlines:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080804/ap_on_re_as/korea_us_refugee_killings;_ylt=AoTM.m2WogsPw.RmMXc7EnSs0NUE

It's about South Korea's Truth & Reconciliation Commission, and their charges that US forces had intentionally killed refugees during the Korean War. 

Lest anyone think this is some bogus commission that's on an anti-US witch-hunt, the TRC has a pretty broad scope and isn't just focused on these incidents.  It also investigates the myriad human rights abuses and other covered-up scandals of the South Korean government since the time of independence from Japan.  It's mentioned only briefly in the article, but at least that's mentioned at all.  If you know about the history of "modern" Korea, you know that it's been far from an ideal democracy for a long time.

While I'm not going to utter an opinion one way about these incidents, the thing that bugs me the most is the "50 years" part.  These charges are coming up now because of documents that were classified for 50 years.  I'm sure that most of the higher-ups back then though that 50 years would be plenty of time for all involved to have died.  Glad to say that's not the case, and that there are still people alive on both sides who remember the incidents.  If there's even a shred of truth to the allegations, it's understandable why they would be really hard to forget.  Honestly, without survivors on both sides, any measure of justice will be hard to achieve.

In the big picture:  Justice does not exist.  But people need justice, so justice exists. 

In other words, I don't know what justice can be done in this situation, 50 years after the incidents occurred.  I don't know what justice could have been done 50 years ago either.  There is no perfect justice, but I do know that people will keep seeking some sort of justice until they achieve something to be at peace.  Who knows what "justice" that will be?  The people who were there will know best.  And it will be interesting to see...

Still unemployed.  Hence, I have more time than money.  And I found out my rear wheel bearings were shot, so instead of paying $500 to have them replaced, I decided to do it myself.

Unlike in older cars, the wheel bearings are now often in a non-serviceable assembly and you have to replace the whole thing.  For my car, a 2001 Hyundai Elantra, it's all part of the wheel hub assembly.
If you've run into the same problem, and want to see what's involved, I've got the pictures available here:

It's also my opportunity to show-off that this computer-guy still knows how to bust his knuckles on a driveway.  Actually, that's not an accomplishment, just another thing I haven't done in a while (and it sucks).

It was actually pretty cool to finish this job - been a while since I've worked on a car.  Probably because I don't drive $200 cars anymore.  Coincidentally, that's about how much this repair cost to do-it-myself.  And that doesn't include the three beers I had this afternoon to celebrate ;)

Was out for a run in my neighborhood yesterday and had to fart.

Problem was that I was listening to headphones - makes it hard to gauge how loud the fart is. 

So decision was not to fart.  After all, these are my neighbors.

Lesson learned - in order to fart while running, detour to another neighborhood.

The end.

Cloudy morning, so headed out to Lake Calhoun again.  A few bites, no fish.  However, I met a guy, Don, who's another regular at the lake.  Seems like all the regulars go for the big fish using big sucker minnows dangling just off the bottom from an oversize bobber.  And sure enough, it pays off.


It was fun watching Don land that sucker.  He let it take the bait for a long, slow walk, then once he set the hook, it put up a good fight.  It's exciting to see an aggressive game fish like a Muskie when it breaks through the water - lots of action.  Slightly more exciting than the man-eating bluegill I caught the other day.

Anyway, had to pack it in after we started to see lightning.  Good time though :)

Awake at dawn?  Check.

At the lake nice and early?  Check.

First one there?  Close - I was second.

It was beautiful on Lake Calhoun this morning: calm, glassy, and a comfortable 70 degrees.


Walking along the water to the fishing pier, I saw a couple big splashes in the weeds and I also spotted a couple of fish darting through the shallows - not sure if they were bass or really large crappies.  I just bought a popper last night, and seemed like a good time to give it a try.


Besides the good conditions, I had good company.  I met a fella named Bill, a retiree, who was kind enough to explain why my popper was sinking - I had it on a steel leader (duh).  A longtime resident and angler, Bill fishes around the Chain of Lakes during the week.  Used to go out in a canoe, but his shoulders can't manage hauling it on and off his truck as well as he'd like. 

He also noticed I had a Daredevle in my tacklebox (another new purchase from last night).  It's the classic red and white striped model, and it's good for a lot of different big fish in this area.  Bill told me his father used to fish with nothing but a Daredevle and a Hula Popper, and I believe it - those are two the of the most popular lures ever. 

We also talked about Muskies and Northerns, and I told him about Jen's grandfather and how he used to shoot 'em in the head with a .22 whenever he caught one.  Bill immediately guessed Jen's grandfather's from Wisconsin, as apparently that was legal there (shooting Northern since they're considered a nuisance) but not in Minnesota.  Gotta admit, I'd find it very un-relaxing if guys were poppin' caps into fish all day.

I tried my popper in the weeds, then a couple diving plugs along the drop-off, then my Daredevle spoon along the bottom of deeper waters - no luck.  Gotta end on a high note though, so with 30 mins left on the parking meter (this is a city lake), I switched to my light pack rod and reel and my best panfish lure.  Dropped it down just off the pier and sure enough, I landed this beast:


Be warned - I released him back into the lake, so that monster is still out there. 

All-in-all, a nice way to start the day, and I was home just after 9am. 

Crap.  Now I'm gonna think about fishing all day.

OK, no photographic evidence.

And didn't exactly rise at dawn.  More like 7:30am.

Still, went out to the fishing pier on Lake Calhoun and dropped my line in the water for a while.  Someone had gutted a Northern and left the head in the garbage can on the pier.  Must've been a big sucker cuz that was a big head.

Caught one little bluegill - about 4 or 5 inches - what a whale ;)  Saw some loons and listened to a couple other anglers exchange rehab stories.  Not a bad morning.

OK, tomorrow, up before dawn, going to Lake Calhoun...

Bought fishing license. 

Gonna march upstairs and put it in a ziploc in my tackle bag. 

Gonna try to fall asleep asap and wake before dawn.

Gonna try to get to Lake Calhoun.

I'll take photographic evidence if successful.

Our impending parenthood meant we couldn't travel for the 4th, so we stayed local and didn't do anything too dramatic.  Skipped the fireworks in St. Paul and Minneapolis too - not really in the mood to wade through crowds with a big baby bump.  And once again, I failed to really plan anything for the long holiday weekend.

Not to say that we didn't have a good weekend anyway.  On the Fourth (capitalized cuz it's special), Jen suddenly decided she missed the ocean a lot.  Being almost as far as you can possibly get from an ocean in the United States, there wasn't an easy way to solve that problem.  However, we decided that going lake or river swimming would be the next best thing. 

Fort Snelling State Park came to the rescue.  They have a pretty nice swimming beach with lifeguards and a bathhouse, and we packed a picnic lunch to make an afternoon of it.  Couldn't have asked for better weather and it turned out to be a really good day. 


Woke up on the fifth and went to the St. Paul Farmers Market with Jen, her sister Jill, and Jill's fiance Jared.  Jen goes pretty often, but it was my first visit so, yeah, I brought a camera.


Lot of good stuff there, and most of it was priced really cheap.  The only spendy stuff was the meat, but for good reason.  Some ranchers and farmers bring fresh meat to the market, and its usually organic, cage-free, grass-fed and anything else you can think of that means the animal has not been juiced like a baseball player.

My favorite part was when we walked by a vendor selling a stack of really big cucumbers.  Jared spotted them first and said, "Hey, look at them home-wreckers over there.  Damn, those are big."

I think he said he picked up that phrase from an uncle or something, but in any case, kind of hard not to think of it whenever I see cucumbers now.

Local color aside, we took home a small haul of lettuce, a parsley plant, and some sourdough bread.  Then we decided to head back to Fort Snelling - Jen wanted to go swimming again, and I wanted to go to a free naturalist session on tree identification.  Yeah, kinda nerdy, but I've been wanting to do that for a while.

But we couldn't spend all day swimming and staring at trees.  No, we were invited to an exclusive event that evening: Frankie's birthday party.

Who's Frankie?  He's our neighbor's cat.

Unnecessary?  Sure.  But I'll take any excuse to hang out with our neighbors, Martha and Bleem, and have a little nosh and vino.  Jen even decided to go formal - busted out a dress and pearls to boot.


As for the guest of honor, Frankie loves hanging out in boxes and bags.  At least it's easy to get him a gift.  Here's Frankie using one of his new abodes to launch a surprise attack on an unidentified Egyptian pharaoh.  (Martha loves ancient Egyptian stuff.)


Ahh, but all good things, including holiday weekends, must come to an end.  I'm pretty sure we spent the sixth cooking, doing laundry, and other non-exciting stuff, but ce la vie.  Can't have beaches and cat birthdays every day or else we'd get spoiled...

If you've seen his video from 2008, it's worth checking out his new video that just got released.  And if you've never seen or heard of this guy before, you definitely want to watch both the 2006 and 2008 videos - they're both really, really moving.

2006:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNF_P281Uu4

2008:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

And here's his site if you want to know more about how these videos were made and who the hell Matt is:

http://wherethehellismatt.com/about.shtml

No matter how many times I see them, those videos always make me smile :)

I'm reading the news today, and it says that Yahoo! is still pushing for a proposed deal with Google to show Google's ads on the Yahoo! Search site in the US.  Having lived in a neighborhood with crackheads, I can say with a reasonable amount of certainty that Jerry Yang (Yahoo!'s CEO) definitely has a problem laying off the pipe.

Here's a brief history of pay-per-click online advertising and how Yahoo! has gone from being the king to being the local chickenhead:

What's pay-per-click advertising?

Good question, grasshopper.  Pay-per-click (PPC) is a really simple business idea.  Company X sells bananas.  They want a way to reach customers online.  Problem is, of the millions of people surfing the web, how do you tell who wants to buy bananas?

Enter the search engines.  Every day, those millions of people also visit search engines - Google, Yahoo!, etc.  And if somebody searches for "banana", it's pretty likely they're interested in bananas and may even want to buy one.  But how do we connect Company X to all the people who search for "banana" online?

Enter the middle-man, Company Z, who connects the two.  How does Z do that?  They provide a service to both advertisers like Company X and search engines.

Company X tells Z "I want my ads to show up whenever someone searches for banana".  And here's the really cool part that made this advertising system take-off like crazy: X only has to pay Z if someone actually clicks on X's ad.  That's why the system is called "pay per click".  Unlike traditional ads which X would have to pay just to have them appear online, on TV, radio, or in print, X is only spending money when somebody actually responds to their ad. 

And how does that ad show up in the first place?  Let's say Google becomes a partner of Z and agrees to show ads from Z on their search page.  So when somebody searches for "banana", Google sends that request to Z who goes through their inventory of ads for "banana" and sends the ads back.  Google then takes those ads and places them on the same page as the search results for "banana" - the whole transaction occurs in less than a second.

What's in it for Google?  The partnership agreement between Google and Z specifies how the revenue is shared.  Let's say the agreement is for a 50/50 split:

1.  I go to Google and search for banana.
2.  Google sends a request for banana ads to Z.
3.  Z sends back a bunch of banana ads.
4.  Google shows those ads along with the search results for banana.
5.  I click on Company X's ad for banana.
6.  The URL in that ad first calls back to company Z so Z knows what ad was clicked and which partner showed the ad, then I get directed to Company X's website for their bananas.
7.  In the background, Z looks in their records and sees that X said they'd pay 50 cents per click.
8.  Z bills X for 50 cents, gives 25 cents to Google and keeps the other 25 cents.

There's one other bit of magic that makes this business so profitable - bidding.  Company X isn't the only one that wants their ads to appear for "banana" searches.  So Z lets advertisers set their PPC prices per keyword (banana in this case), and when Google asks for banana ads, Z is going to send the banana ad with the highest PPC first, then the next highest PPC shows up second, etc.  And statistics show that the top 3 ads get far more clicks than the lower ranked ads. 

Some keywords can drive seemingly ridiculously high bids.  For example, advertisers may bid $10 per-click for ads on the keyword "mortgage refinance".  Sounds nuts, but if 100 people click on that ad, and only 1 of them refinances their mortgage with that advertiser, the $1000 advertising cost is dwarfed by the $5000 profit the mortgage company made.

Wow, that's simple - I should start a company just like Z!

That would've been smart about 5+ years ago, but you're a little too late to jump in the game.  The thing is, Company Z is only going to grow if they attract more and more advertisers and more and more partners.

Why?  The more advertisers you have, the more keywords they bid on, and the more they drive up the PPC by competing with each other for certain keywords.  And having ads isn't enough - you need to show those ads so people will click on them.  So Z has to partner with high-traffic sites like Google to get their ads in front of as many people as possible.

If you tried to start your own company like Z today, you'd have to convince advertisers that you're worth doing business with.  The first thing they'll want to know is which sites you are partnered with - everybody wants their ads to show on Google and Yahoo! but they won't be impressed if your only partners are random websites that nobody's heard about.  And you're not going to be able to partner with a big site like Google or Yahoo! because they have exclusive partnerships - that's typically how those arrangements work.

So really, unless you're also going to launch the next great website that everybody wants to visit, you're too late to launch a PPC company. 

Well, in the US at least...

Plus, the big players have enhanced the technology is interesting ways.  From broadening their ability to match ads with consumers (ah-ha! people who search for "plantains" also like bananas), to the algorithms used to set prices, to the ability to show ads on regular web pages, not just search results.

I though you said this would be brief?

Trust me, now that the PPC business has been explained, the rest is a cakewalk.

So what's the brief history you alluded to?

It starts with Overture.  They pioneered the PPC market (e.g. they were Company Z in the above) and became the industry leader by a wide margin.  At one point, their partners included Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN Search, AOL Search, and many other search engines that have since gone extinct.

Overture made $$ hand over fist.  And if it weren't for their partnerships with Overture, Google and Yahoo! wouldn't have had the amazing profits of the last decade.  And once Overture reached a critical mass, it was really hard for anybody to compete with them.  However, they couldn't really expand beyond their man-in-the-middle business.  Overture's management had really been lucky - they had a business that succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and frankly, they didn't have the ability to take the business in new directions.

Yahoo! had the following bright idea - let's buy Overture and we'll have absolute domination (revenue-wise) over all the other Internet players, especially Google.  Plus, with the rapid growth of the PPC market, we'll turn a profit on the acquisition pretty quickly.

So it happened.  Even though Overture had much higher annual profits than Yahoo!, it was clear that Yahoo! had a much broader business capability and it made sense for Y! to buy Overture and not the other way around.

But what about other big guys like Google and MSN?  Obviously, they weren't keen on having their former rival suddenly being the partner they depend on for their lifeblood ad revenue.

Google made an easy decision - being the most-visited site on the Internet, they could create their own ad system and no longer rely on the formerly-Overture system.  And since they're the most visited site on the Internet, advertisers would flock to their ad system because everyone still wants to advertise on Google's site.

Being renowned for technical savvy (though not much business sense), Google had an advantage in building their ad system called AdWords.  Using their experience with Overture, they designed a system that improved on what Overture (now Yahoo!) offered - it was cheaper to operate and easier to use.  And cheaper operating costs are very important as we'll see in a minute.

Not content to just show ads on their own site, Google new they needed to woo partners away from Yahoo! to join AdWords.  And having lower operating costs, Google could afford to give more favorable revenue sharing terms to their partners - making deals that were profitable to them, but would've lost money for Yahoo!

MSN tried to pull the same trick, but they failed miserably.  MSN's ad system was widely panned in the industry as problematic and advertisers found it difficult to use and unreliable.  Besides, advertisers were already a little annoyed that the market evolved so that they had to advertise on two different systems (Yahoo! and Google) to reach most Internet users - they didn't have patience to deal with a yet another ad system, especially if they weren't seeing much benefit from it.

And then the crackheads moved in...

Yahoo! tried to re-invent their ad system to make it superior to Google's AdWords so they could lure back more advertisers and partners.  That effort, named Project Panama and which I worked on, failed to win back significant business and Google's lead continued to widen.

Shortly afterwards, Terry Semel left as CEO (with a fair amount of pushing), and Jerry Yang stepped back in.  Terry was a Hollywood studio exec who didn't know squat about technology but at least understood the media business enough to make Yahoo! extremely profitable.  Yang is one of the co-founders and otherwise has little distinction to his name. 

The PPC business is addictive like crack cocaine.  Once Yahoo! got a taste of that sweet PPC money, they developed a strong addiction to it.  Google's hooked too, but the difference is that Google continues to score more crack at Yahoo!'s expense, and now Yahoo! is worried they might run out.

Rather than join forces with Microsoft, a much more diverse software and Internet giant who never got hooked on the stuff, Yahoo! is knocking on Google's door, trying to score a few rocks, even it it means selling-out their ability to get crack any other way. 

Sounds stupid as hell, going from being the pioneer, to the also-ran competitor, and now trying to become a slave to the company that once depended on you.  But that's what crackheads are like - no self-respect, and they'll do anything for a hit.

To my homeys at Yahoo! who are still fighting the good fight - good luck and I hope it all works out.  Just remember to lock your desk drawers when Jerry's around - crackheads will steal anything that isn't nailed down.

Sometimes I come across things that make me love the Internet and all it's wonderful tubes.  This morning, I had one of those moments.

Long story short, while looking up lasagne recipes online, I came across this site and a nifty little craft project - Bacon of Hate:



If you bother checking out the page, click on the link for the description of project difficulty levels - they're pretty entertaining too ;)