Too Good to Pass Up

Telegraph.co.uk has a great write up about what they expect to happen in 2008. I really like their predictions for Second Life:

[...]

February: The population of Second Life passes that of the entire continent of Africa. An independence movement argues that control of the servers should be handed over to participants in the game. Mobs of angry avatars besiege in-game branches of Gap and American Apparel.

Linden Lab, owners of the game, denounce the "cyber-terrorists" and cancel their accounts, impounding their imaginary assets. They are sued for restraint of trade, theft of intellectual property, and human rights breaches. The accounts are reinstated, and Linden Lab signs over control of the game to the rebels.

Their leader declares himself President of Second Life, and promises to hold free elections. Asked at an online press conference about the timing of the elections, President Dude-Mom-Later's avatar turns into a bee. Harold Pinter writes a poem denouncing him.

[...]

June: Based on its real-world GDP, its "soft power" and its popularity, Second Life is admitted to the G8, displacing Canada. The virtual world sends a purple woman with a narwhal horn, a leather basque and improbably large breasts to the summit.

Second Life joins the World Trade Organisation and Nato. "The EU is for pussies," its ambassador says in a curiously floaty voice.

[...]

November: Azeroth, imaginary setting of the online fantasy game World of Warcraft, declares war on Second Life. "Bring it, dwarf," says Second Life's ambassador. "You think you all that, with your red beard and your Mithril Meat-hammer, but you ain't. We bad nasty."

Treaty obligations signed in the summer oblige Nato forces to launch a tactical strike on World of Warcraft's Northern European servers. An estimated 100,000 people in Sweden are fatally irradiated. Azeroth is destroyed.

2008 Predictions

As 2007 comes to a close, my mind has wandered to make a few predictions for the year ahead. Some of these are unique to me and nearly guaranteed, and others not so much:

1. I'll move out of my place in San Francisco. My current lease converts to a month-to-month in May and I'm almost positive my rent will bump up 5- 10%. After a few months of pouting, I'll move out.
2. After nearly a year of utter bliss, I'll break my iPhone during a clumsy attempt at making a phone call while I'm drunk. It will most likely happen during the transition phase of pulling it out of my pocket or putting it back into my pocket.
   
3. The curtains in my living room will end up on my living room floor after the curtain rod is either (a) ripped form the wall in some drunk accident or (b) implodes on itself because it's a piece of shit. Either way, I'll tell people the curtains are a 'new age' rug.
   
4. After a year hiatus, I'll find myself back on the golf course consistently shooting below 90. Best score of the year: 81. Worst score of the year: 109. (drunk)
   
5. Mike Huckabee finds himself on the Republican ticket. (President or VP)
   
6. Mike Gravel confesses that it was his spaceship that Dennis Kucinich saw and apologizes to Dennis by telling him "to deal with it."
7. Michigan football surprises everybody by giving Florida a much closer game in the Capital One Bowl than anybody expected. But unfortunately, we still lose 109 - 2. (34-27)
   
8. I finally dump my position in Home Depot.
   
9. I lose $250 on black in Vegas. This will happen in January... and possibly again sometime later in the year.
   

After a little reflection, I noticed that most of these predictions are somewhat negative. But don't let that fool you - I expect 2008 to be the best year of my life thus far.

Booyah.

Secret Santa

Myself and a dozen other people I work with decided to do a secret Santa gift exchange this year. Here was the plan:

1. A $20 spending limit.
2. We would present our gift to the group with a poem (or song if you're bold) about the person and everyone had to guess who it was.

Obviously, I'm big into poetry (sarcasm!) - so I had a blast crafting this:

Without avail, and without much thought,
Let me tell you the story, of something I bought.

It's for a person who's tall with dark hair,
And approches their work with diligence and care.

His days are mysterious and his work is unknown,
To all of us FinRo's who are too drunk on Patron.

So who is this guy and what does he do?
"Who the hell cares?" is what he'll say to you.

"I want my present and I want it now."
"I hope it's a lady. Ruff, ruff, ow, ow."

Well, here my dear friend - kind of I guess.
I hope you enjoy it. I did my best.

Just remember my friend, that I have limited cash,
And I'm cheap, and lazy, and kind of an ass.

So what did I spend my $20 on? An offensively expensive pair of socks from Nordstrom. Practical. Useful.

Living Room 2.0

For the past 5 months my roommate and I have lived (and defended) a lifestyle without TV. When challenged about our decision to remove this societal standard from our home, we adamantly argued that TVs only encouraged procrastination and did not add very much value to life. Instead, we would find more value in literature or the internet and would avoid the offensive upfront cost inherent to TVs.

In the end, we've conceded - but only partially! In a somewhat hazy decision, our living room is now outfitted with an extremely slick projector (big-ups to my Dad for the rocking Christmas present), a 5 speaker stereo system compliments of Craigslist, and a 108" screen purchased from some guy in our building. While we still are totally opposed to any form of cable, we can now watch movies in serious style.

The biggest disaster/downfall of this upgrade? We unfortunately purchased curtains for our sliding doors that were ~ 1 foot too short. Damn it!

The World Without Us - Alan Weisman

"Let us try a creative experiment: Suppose that the worst has happened. Human extinction is a fait accompli. Not by nuclear calamity, asteroid collision, or anything ruinous enough to also wipe out most everything else, leaving whatever remained in some radically altered, reduced state. Nor by some grim eco-scenario in which we agonizingly fade, dragging many more species with us in the process. Instead, picture a world from which we all suddenly vanished. Tomorrow."

This is precisely the scenario that Weisman explores in his 324 page mind exercise that examines what our species has done with this planet at the macro level and how this planet would respond once we're gone. With each chapter written like a 20 page stand-alone essay, Weisman covers a variety of topics like man's ability to disrupt nature's status-quo and using that to extrapolate what would happen to man-made structures and elements once we're gone.

My favorite chapters:

• The Lost Menagerie: Weisman takes a close look at how we have hunted megafauna until their extinction and correlates their extinction rates with our development of weapons and a more sophisticated hunting strategy.
• The Petro Patch: An enlightening account of the petrochemical business (specifically in Texas) and the molecular consequences of our petro-addiction to the Earth that we'll leave behind.
  
• Hot Legacy: Weisman discusses the ever complicated effect of our trials (and errors) with sub-atomic reactions and what would happen to the nuclear waste and nuclear reactors that we have created thus far. His prediction? 441 inevitable instances of Chernobyl.
  

A few of my favorite passages and facts:

• "In the United States, an average of one tire per citizen is discarded annually - that's a third of a billion in just one year." Holy crap.
• "In a year, humans take [the lives] of 100 million sharks, while sharks attack maybe 15 people." Shark fin soup is a delicacy that commands up to $100/bowl.
• "In about AD 2450 the expanding sphere of radio waves bearing Lucy, Ricky, and their neighbors the Mertzes will emerge from the top and bottom of our galaxy and enter intergalactic space." That's the thing about first impressions - you only get one...
• "VHEMT proposes gently laying the human race to rest. Suppose we all agree to stop procreating. [...] The lot of all living children would improve as they became more valuable rather than more disposable. No orphan would go unadopted. [...] The last humans could enjoy their final sunsets peacefully, knowing they have returned the planet as close as possible to the Garden of Eden."
  
• TV towers and cellphone towers kill an estimated 500 million birds every year in the United States alone. - What?!?

Overall, this was a good read. But beware - you'll need to read each chapter in its entirety or you'll never make it through. The reading is a little thick, but it's interesting.

Recommended.

Christmas Season

'Tis the season. Many celebrate it, several grumble through it, and a few are just bad at it. I knowingly fall into the latter of those buckets. And it's not that I don't enjoy Christmas (even though I am a financial tight-wad), but rather that I suck at most things that make up the core of Christmas or the holiday season.

I am beat and tone deaf, so I'm not a very good caroler. I'm cheap, so I'm not a very good present buyer. And worst of all, I absolutely suck at receiving gifts. Here' s a little example:

Last night my neighbors, bless their hearts, knocked on our door around 9pm. After opening up, I was greeted with an impressive rendition of "We wish you a merry Christmas" along with a wide assortment of holiday cookies. They even took the time to meticulously craft an ornate Christmas card to attach to the cookie basket. It was a very nice gesture and I'm thrilled that they even thought of us.

What do you think my reaction was? I'll tell you this, it definitely did not display the actual sentiment I felt and am currently feeling now. The first few words out of my mouth were "Good lord." and "You guys are ridiculous." Granted, I said both with a smile - but why not a simple but effective "Thank you!" or a "That was great!"

Ugh.

One person that is a tremendous gift receiver is my mother. Every time anybody gets her anything, she has a huge smile and is bubbling with excitement. I could get her a bag of crap - and I literally mean a brown bag filled with fecal matter - and she would thank me and show excitement as if it were the keys to a new car.

I need to work on this.

Elf Yourself

My friend Sarah sent me this the other day. We look good:

[You'll need to view the original post]


Update: I didn't realize this until my mother made a comment, but my friend Sarah apparently decided that I should be the elf that has breasts - instead of her boyfriend Dan. Thanks Sarah.

Update 2: I decided to remove the iFrame which played the flash presentation - it would play every time someone viewed the page. That would get annoying. You can still find it here though.

Woah. Seventh Grade.

Yesterday I had a very interesting experience on my bus ride home to San Francisco, so I thought I'd share...

My trip home started off just like any other. A dozen of us bunched up on the sidewalk - each causally making glances trying to determine who really got there first.

After settling in on the left side of the bus, I began my typical ride home routine: headphones on. laptop open, wireless card activated. A few minutes passed as I cleared out my inbox and checked in on a new member of our team. As a break, my focus slowly moved clockwise as I took a quick survey of the rest of the bus before it abruptly stopped at 3 o'clock. For a very brief moment, I was completely perplexed. What were my neighbors across the aisle doing? Oh - they were making out like it's seventh grade. Jackpot.

And I'm not talking about a few kisses or some above average PDA. I'm talking about a full-fledged, lips-bleed-the-next-day, aggressive groping make out. Let me put it this way: I'm in my young twenties. None of this is new. It's pretty tough to surprise me with stuff like this. But I didn't stop staring until I realized that a small pool of drool was accumulating at the edge of my lip.

Happy Tuesday Matt.

Google Holiday Party

This Saturday I'll be attending Google's swanky holiday party. Last year Google rented out one of the piers in San Francisco and from what I heard, it was quite the production. This year I expect nothing less - but it's in Mountain View... bummer :(.

Nevertheless! A few other Googlers and I decided to turn this holiday party into a quasi-Google-prom; everybody was going to find a date and we'd go out to dinner beforehand. We even aired the possibility of doing group pictures before dinner and having some sort of Sunday event, but that didn't receive as much enthusiasm as the dinner and party plan.

What's more is that only 3 of us out of the 7 are single - so we had to find dates. This is effectively what happened:

Male Googler 1: So are we going to do this?
Me: Hell yeah. And we need to find some dates pronto. Let's hit the bar this weekend!
Male Googler 2: Booyah!
[Brief moment of high-fives and chest bumps]
Female Googler 1: You guys are idiots. Why don't you just ask a friend? You'll have more fun.
Me: Psh - that's a cop out for guys that can't find a real date!

One week later....
Male Googler 2: I'm just bringing a friend of mine.
Female Googler 1: That's great Male Googler 2! I think you two will have a blast.
Me: Weak bro.
Male Googler 1: Yeah, that's weak.

One week later....
I decided to ask one of my neighbors. She said yes and we made plans to go to dinner that week as well.
Me: Alright! I've got a date. And we're going out to dinner tomorrow night!
Male Googler 1: Nice bro!
Male Googler 2: Yeah, way to go Hudson.
[Another series of high-fives and chest bumps]

Two days later...
[After realizing that my neighbor had near zero romantic interest in me]
Female Googler 2: So Matt, who are you bringing?
Me: Just a friend. She lives near me.
Male Googler 1: What? Didn't you go on a date with her yesterday?
Me: Yeah.... I don't think she's got me pegged as anything but a friend (shrugging shoulders).
[Laughter]

In the end, all three of us ended up with friends as dates. I'm starting to get the impression that mid high school male behavior doesn't get you very far with the ladies...

Better Politics

A few weeks ago I commented on Barack Obama's visit to Google and emphasized my belief that there is not enough transparency and accountability in US politics. Well, right now I'm listening to Tom Steinberg give a talk about mySociety - a tiny nonprofit which runs most of the well known democracy and transparency websites in the UK. They are doing some extremely interesting work there:

• They developed writetothem.com which allows any Briton to enter their zip code (equivalent) and it returns their political representatives across all political levels. From there you have the ability to quickly email your representative and better yet, the response rate from your representative is tied into.... (see next)
  
• They developed theyworkforyou.com which provides the MP's voting history & trends, committees, appearances in parliament, their financial expenditures, and a bunch of other interesting stats. I would love this for US politics.
  

They've got a bundle of other sites (local fix-its, a pledge bank for causes, a quasi-forum for political discussion with their MP, and several more), but those were the two that really stood out to me. Tom also made the following statement which resonated with me:

"If you can get people in during the easiest part of the democratic process [feedback]... then you can systematically get more people engaged and empowered in the democracy."

Word.