Dave Peters

yym:

And a star was born…

This Peterstein guy is brilliant, whoever he is. And what a devilishly handsome mustache.

“The Known Universe” — Takes you from the surface of the Earth to 13.7 billion light years away seeing everything from the Milky Way Galaxy to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Pretty amazing.

Watching Garbage Warrior really makes me want to live in an Earthship someday. On another note — here is the breakdown on what the US uses for our electrical infrastructure (2007 numbers).

If you are at all a fan of American-Chinese food, you should probably watch this. Very interesting TED talk.

A few choice tidbits:

- There are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, Wendys, and KFCs combined.

- Fortune cookies originated in Japan but were made famous by the Chinese because we locked up Japanese immigrants during World War II

- Chop Suey translates to Odds and Ends

- Broccoli is not a Chinese vegetable

Pretty cool idea, a website where you can view the political contributions of companies and which side of the political spectrum they tend to lean.

And yes, as you can see, Apple is more Democratic than Microsoft.

Link: http://www.goodguide.com/contributions#

Loving my new bike. This pretty much finishes up my transition to the good life of being free of expensive-non-exercise-enducing-earth-destroying automobiles.

(Excuse image quality, taken with iPhone)

Hilarious. Some choice quotes:

On Chrome OS initially targeting netbooks: “Frankly, if the entire netbook market caught fire, I wouldn’t piss on it to put it out. But that’s just me”

On competing directly with Microsoft: “…take it from someone who has spent the past 10 years selling a superior operating system and getting only 4 percent market share — as obsessions go, battling the Borg is waaay overrated”

On Google creating another product: “What the fuck is going on inside Google? How much more out of control and undisciplined can this place get? How many new goddamn operating systems are they going to create? […] Honestly, Google, is there anyone in charge over there? Is there anyone who knows how to criticize anything in that fucked up little Montessori preschool of yours?”

The Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala, teasing us all with the possibility of an At the Drive-In reunion (Drowned in Sound via Rolling Stone)

Oh my god!

Some guy found the phone numbers for the company doing the “Your car warranty is about to expire” calls. I’m not sure if any of you get these calls, but I get many every single week and know a lot of other people who do too. If you feel the need to return justice…

800-499-5711

I plan on harassing them all day. The reddit comments also detail how to get to the different employee’s voicemails and such.

I know this doesn’t actually make the situation any better but dammit I feel so much better.

yym:

Here’s why we need to change the “traditional” relationship between parents and children, bosses and employees, teachers and students:

I’ve found that the fewer masks I try to wear, the better. This means less division between the personality that’s talking to my close personal friends, socializing with my colleagues, and interacting with my hobby or business worlds.

I’ve made a shocking discovery in the last two years: People enjoy interacting with someone who has a real personality. The masks we wear in these situations are a facade, and we all know it. We also know our teachers sometimes have a drink, our parents enjoy lewd humor on occasion and our bosses go to rock ‘n’ roll shows.

When you Google my name, timhackbarth.com is listed #1. From there, you can find information about me at YYM, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.

After visiting these sites you’ll discover that I’ve defended Sarah Palin, I support gay marriage, I’ve been to Springer and sometimes my hair sticks up.

When I talk to clients, they don’t mind when I answer business calls in the car, in the park or at the coffee shop. And they don’t care if I play Public Enemy while we’re discussing online advertising as long as they can hear me. They’re also okay knowing that I don’t wear a suit every day…only when I’m relaxing. These things make me a human being…and people prefer to do business with human beings, not businesses.

My mom is a proud Facebook friend of mine, and I’m pretty sure she’s okay seeing the occasional “party photo” or reading the sometimes inappropriate comments made by friends. Because here’s the kicker: My mom is human, too! And she has friends who go to parties and say inappropriate things.

No, people don’t believe the same things, act the same way or have moral compasses that point in the same direction. But I guarantee this: we all have controversial thoughts, opinions and actions. Let’s get real and start showing them to the world.

This reminds me of a time last year when I was considering getting a haircut (I generally have a decently sized “jew-fro”) before a career fair. Tim took a direct stance against this and immediately asked me “why would you ever want to work for a company that cares that much about your hair?”

That response made a huge impact on my life. Thanks Tim.

Bill Watterson, your knowledge of the world knows no bounds.

I love the Internet.

Two weeks ago I experienced a party foul in the form of cosmopolitan being spilled onto my beloved Apple bluetooth keyboard. The poor struggling keyboard was then no longer able to consistently stay paired with my iMac, and even while it was paired every key that I pressed would either do nothing or act as if I was pressing enter. I was crushed.

So I decided to give the dishwasher urban legend a try. I took the batteries out of the keyboard and threw it in all by itself. I set the machine to medium and disabled the drying feature. Upon completion I pulled all the keys off the keyboard and let it dry for over a week. Today I reassembled the keys with little hope. Tears streaming down my face, I put the batteries back into the keyboard and flipped the on switch. 

And hallelujah it is working better than ever! This has been a true Christmas miracle. Hell yes.

And I finally finished two books I have been reading forever and am now well into another. Hmm.. surely this is just coincidence. It’s good to be back, internets.