Why the heck doesn't Slashdot have useful topics, like "Alcohol"?

So, for the first time in my life, I've decided to get drunk when no one else is around (at least in person), just to see what it feels like. You, my faithful Slashdot journal readers, will get a chance to see me like this. I think I am just going to write whatever comes into my head and then pass out and go to bed. Sounds like a good night to me! :D

For me, being drunk means I want to dance. I really think it's as simple as that. I love dance music and I love dancing. I just don't know how to dance, so I end up looking pretty stupid. That's why it's important to have alcohol involved, because then I don't care if I look stupid...I just get out there and do my thang and everyone else can laugh all they want.

There's this really cool song by The Ark called "It Takes A Fool To Remain Sane." I highly recommend it. I love the lyrics:

And if you think I'm corny
then it will not make me sorry
It's your right to laugh at me
and in turn that's my opportunity
to feel brave ...

So, take it to the stage in a multicoloured jacket
Take it jackpot, crackpot, strutting like a peacock
Nailvarnish Arkansas, shimmy-shammy featherboah
Crackpot, haircut, dye your hair in glowing red and blue

Do, do, do what you wanna do
Don't think twice, do what you have to do
Do, do, do, do, let your heart decide
what you have to do
That's all there is to find

Awesome song. Someone said Americans wouldn't like it because apparently we're all conservatives who love George W. Bush. Yeah, right! I'm an American and I love this song and how it speaks of individuality and going against the status quo. That is what I am all about.

Speaking of that, I would like to record for posterity the following things that I would like to do in the next year:

1) Take at least one exercise class. Karate, kickboxing, yoga...whatever... as long as it gets me out of the house and exercising on a regular basis.

2) Learn another language. I already know French pretty well, though my skills have gone down the tubes a bit since I haven't practiced in a while. I also know a bit of Mandarin, but it's not incredibly useful here as most Chinese here speak Cantonese. I think Spanish is next on my list.

3) Start another company. Yeah, another one. Just for the hell of it. Doesn't have to make a lot of money. I just want to enjoy it. ...

I never graduated college. I went to San Jose State for a year and a half and it just wasn't right for me. Sometimes I wonder how my life would have been different had I gone to Santa Clara Univ. instead... I was also accepted there. I definitely would have enjoyed school more, but I also enjoy having the head start on my business. A coin toss, really. I never really was one for school. I got whatever grade I needed to get to pass class, but for me it was always about the extracirricular activities (yeah, interpret that however you want...LOL!)

I smoked a lot of weed in college. (Hey, I'm in California. What, like 70% of the population has smoked weed? They can't throw you in jail for it here unless you're dealing, and I didn't deal.) I drank a lot and went to a lot of parties. I had boyfriends. I had a job. Really, it was a blast except for classes (most of which I was bored out of my skull in!) A more academically challenging college would have been better for me.

Right now I'm anxious to find activities to fill my free time. The exercise one is one goal. I'd love to go with friends to encourage me to stick with it, but I don't really know any friends close by. I suppose I could drive to it with a friend. Eh.

Another goal is to join at least one business-related club. Women business owners, young entrepreneurs, whatever... I think that's important. It's important to get your face recognized in the community. Believe it or not, the Bay Area is pretty small and most people know most other people. Getting into one of those clubs and sticking with it will be important for my future.

I can feel myself starting to yawn and lose track of time, so it's probably time to hit the bed. Thank God I only have one more project to do tonight. Hopefully I can finally get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep (haven't had that in 6 days or so.)

Goodnight! ~

First of all, thank you all for your comments. You've given me a lot of food for thought -- in particular, the idea to throw a dinner party (I think that one's a winner!) and the idea that maybe, possibly, I should be more considerate of other people's feelings. (I completely agree and will take that one to heart, as I should.)

I really think this past weekend was a turning point for me. For the first time in my life (with regards to Simpli), I realized that I could do this. I had 3 other people there helping me with the move and I led and directed them -- okay, not perfectly, but pretty darn well for someone who is still new at this whole leadership thing. These 3 people all listened and respected me, which, again, was new and vastly refreshing. I stayed up 30 straight hours without either falling asleep or becoming incredibly bitchy. I respected the members of my team and earned respect in return. It was an incredibly awesome feeling and really proved to me that an executive management role is where I want to be in my life.

Something I have learned from talking and listening to business leaders is how to deal with setbacks. Obviously, every setback is a new and exciting challenge. The key to overcoming obstacles is to see them as challenges, not roadblocks. They are mountains, but you can climb them! Running around them doesn't work because there are always more of them; you really have to be a person who can say "Alright, folks, here's what we have to do to climb this mountain," and then execute the plan well, to be a leader.

Another thing I'm quickly learning is that you don't have to be perfect to be a leader. Here's the infinitely cool thing: people intuitively understand that you are not perfect. When we had to move all of those servers, there were a few whiners in the bunch. "Oh, I can't be down then" or "This is going to hugely inconvenience me", etc. There were a couple things I said to the whiners that made them, by and large, happy customers:

1) This isn't our choice either. We're in this with you together. This isn't a cakewalk for anyone. But it has to get done, and we promise you we'll do whatever it takes to make sure the move is as smooth as possible for you.

2) What can we do for you to make this move go as smoothly as possible for you?

I ran backups for our customers. I moved some of them in the afternoon or on complete other days. I spent extra time and effort to make sure not only that we got everyone moved, but that we communicated with and accommodated our customers to the best degree possible. That really is the key.

If you spend your life making sure your customers are happy (while keeping in mind your own goals and making sure that their goals align with yours), you will always be successful.

And...

Keeping 100% of your customers happy 100% of the time is completely impossible. Just do the best you can, while bearing in mind the above.

And one more, that I just have to add because it made me much more sane...

Learn how to say NO!!!

---

I am incredibly proud of myself for this weekend. While it wasn't perfect, I did the absolute best I could under the circumstances, took the lessons learned to heart, and made it successful. We did not lose a SINGLE customer from this move. I grew (personally and professionally) this weekend. Sometime during my 30 hours with no sleep, I realized that my heart belonged right where it was now -- being a leader and being in control of my own destiny.

I am a risk-taker. No question about it. I run my bank account down to zero. I invest in risky stocks and I read, read, read (obsessively) about market trends, business trends, and customer trends. I firmly believe that things are more simple than most people want to admit.

I will tell you right now in this journal: I will make mistakes. No one is infallible. I will have climbed hundreds and thousands of mountains by the time I am finished with this life. Sometimes I'll fall down. My company will occasionally falter. But if I believe in the simple principles above -- namely, keep my customers happy, but not at the expense of myself -- I will succeed and my company will be successful. Believe it or not, it really is that simple, and it doesn't matter what kind of business you run -- from a gas station to a law firm to a web hosting company -- in the end, it boils down to your customers and how they feel. Are they happy? Then you're successful. If they're not, assess the situation and correct the problems, and you'll convert them. I believe that, in the end, that's all you really need to run a successful business.

Writes About It! (Thanks, Slashdot title limit.) :P

Well, we've moved 125 servers from one AboveNet datacenter in San Jose to another. This move was not our choice -- AboveNet leased out SJC3 (the datacenter we were in) to another company, and so we were forced to "move 'em out" (as they say) and head on down to SJC2 in downtown San Jose.

So I'd like to take this journal entry to (first) admonish myself for not writing recently, as I feel writing is therapeutic, especially for me, and secondly, to record in history not just the logistical, business aspects of the move, but my actual feelings about it.

My personal feelings don't come out often in my Slashdot journal. I'm often hesitant to write about myself since this is such a wide audience, but to hell with that convention. I've talked about my business the whole time. Time for all of you to know the real me. And after 30 hours with no sleep, experiencing the strange effects of food and sleep deprivation, and work-work-work constantly, I'm going to carve out a little space for myself here. The real me -- not Simpli, and not web developer Erica, but me.

Although I run a successful business and, by all means, should be grinning 100% of the time, the reality is that I often find myself sitting at home alone mindlessly surfing the Internet. I tend to go through friends like some people change brands of cereal. My "friend lifespan" is approximately 6 months, and I've had very few friends (three, I think?) whom I'm still in touch with whom I've known longer than 1 year. I used to think that it was because I'm changing and growing so rapidly, and I believe part of that is true. The other part is deeper and much more subtle.

My problem is my personality has two very opposite sides. The one you meet at first (and the one you know if you've only met me a few times) is a very dynamic, engaging, fun personality. People have a hard time believing that I don't have many friends or that I'm anti-social. But there is a very different side to my personality -- a shy, quiet, bookworm-geeky side that only comes out when I'm really alone or with people I'm incredibly comfortable with.

Somehow these two personalities combine in strange (and often opposing) ways. One night I'll want to go to a concert or an event and the next night I'm absorbed in some bizarro Linux problem or programming dilemma and get irritated when someone asks me to take a break. I love good discussion, but often get intimidated by those who want to argue every point of mine: "Hey, I've made my decision. Leave me alone." For me, there is a very fine line between discussing different opinions and viewpoints (which I love) and arguing about them (which I quickly grow sick of.)

Which brings me back to the whole friends thing. My personality's two sides make it difficult to retain friends since half the time I'm "too busy" to go out and the other half of the time I'm not busy, but people have given up asking me since I'm "always busy." I don't really think I have an abrasive personality or anything that scares people off; they just sort of give up after a while since I'm so often not interested in doing anything.

I met a cool friend a few months ago who introduced me to a couple other people here in the Bay Area. A few weeks ago I was talking to him on AIM (yeah, I'm an AIM junkie) and he said that I should call up one of the other guys and see what he was doing since I was free and bored that night. "What do you mean?!" I said. A good talking-to (er, conversation ;) ensued when he realized I hadn't called up someone I didn't know that well just to see if that person was free and wanted to do something in approximately 2 years. Well, I finally gave in and called him, and go figure -- he was busy. (He must have "Erica syndrome." ;) I haven't called him since, even though I think we'd be good friends. Why? I guess I'm too busy. :)

I know a lot of people, but I can't say there are a lot of people out there who know me very well. Some nights (like tonight) I end up sitting at home alone, hoping something will happen. Most nights I just work my butt off until I go to bed. I have a good friend who is a quite obsessive PHP programmer, and I teased him one night about him living in New York City and never going outside to explore and have some fun. I commented that we were some of the only people in the world who look at life through a window in the room where the computer is.

Is it possible to be too busy looking down at your work to get up once in a while and really enjoy just getting to know other people? Sometimes I'm tempted to just go somewhere else for a while and completely forget work. I hope I remember what fun is by the time Simpli is a multi-million dollar company and I actually start having free time again. Or is it possible that I will schedule my life so that I will hold myself at a distance from people forever just so I can get more work done? These are the things that go on in my head...when I'm not too busy to think about them, that is. ;)

It is VERY obvious.

Yeah, do it soon or we'll change it for ya :)

Change it.

ObviousGuy is my new hero. And now I'm his friend!

Entirely too easy of a password to guess.

Got it on me first try!

Sometimes it's just too easy.

Hint for the rest of you, don't leave you account wide open for hacking.

My apologies for not updating this journal more often; I've been extremely busy with work (Simpli). Simpli is doing well, by the way, and we're set to introduce a new website soon, so stay tuned! ;)

I have a strange question. Upon pondering this question and realizing I knew nothing about it, I immediately wondered where I could find the answer. So I've decided to mine you guys -- the geekiest people I know -- for an answer.

I have a client who wants to rip 300 CDs to a hard drive. He'd like me to come up with a solution, so I've been studying various methods of ripping CDs. Obviously no one wants to sit there all day and feed CDs into a computer, so there needs to be a better solution.

I've Googled and it appears that the best solution is a robotic arm that attaches to a computer. My basic idea is to have two spindles of CDs: one spindle which hasn't been ripped and one which has. The arm can pick up a CD from the spindle of "not yet ripped", drop the CD into the open drive, and, when the CD is done, it can pick it back up and place it on the "ripped" spindle.

Obviously this requires some communication between the computer and the robotic arm. The best solution would probably be to use Linux, a serial or parallel port for communication, and a script ("Arm, pick up CD from 'non-ripped' spindle. CD drive, close. Ripper program, rip. CD drive, open. Arm, pick up CD and put it into 'ripped' spindle. Repeat.") Okay, so that's kind of what this guy did. But I don't care about getting CDs out of cases or anything.

I'm willing to spend up to $300 for a complete solution (not including computer, which I'll buy separately.) So that's $300 for a robot and a script to guide it. What do you think? Is this doable or reasonable? Do some research and I might give you part or all of that money to build it. ;)

EDIT: To all you people who said "Just hire a teenager," well, that's just not nearly geeky enough for me. Plus, I may want to do this again in the future.

Just a thought about the new Hamas leader.

He has gone on record and stated plainly that the U.S. is not going to be a target of Hamas attacks. This is a very astute move.

The patience with Israel around the world is growing very thin. This is not mere anti-Semitism that many Jewish leaders automatically rail against every time the Jews are criticized. There is a growing disgust with the manner in which the Israeli government treats the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. This disgust is a direct result of our concepts of Western democracy and equal rights. Since the victory of Israel against its neighbors decades ago, the Jewish population has oppressed the Palestinian refugees in a system akin to apartheid in South Africa.

For a while here, since the beginning of the second intifada and significant increase in civilian bombings, the Palestinians were losing a lot of credibility. Of course the Israelis have the right to crack down on terrorists!

Even in the Yassin killing, Israel is fully justified in the eyes of many to have undertaken the operation.

But now the new leader of Hamas has done something very smart. He has focused his war onto a single opponent - Israel. This changes the dynamics of the war from one of Hamas vs. Israel/U.S. to only Hamas vs. Israel. The U.S. is now given the chance to disengage themselves from Israel. It also forces Israel to deal with Hamas as an opponent in a civil war rather than as part of an overarching War on Terrorism.

Bush has already taken the position that a Palestinian homeland is inevitable and desirable, and this is Hamas giving the U.S. the chance to push that position. If the U.S. is able to make Israel realize that they will lose American support unless the Jewish population stops treating the Palestinian refugees as interlopers, then we may see significant progress towards peace in Israel.

OTOH, we may see Israel lash out uninhibitedly against the Palestinians. However, the international backlash, including the possible invasion of Israel and arrest of Israeli leaders for violations of international human rights laws, would most likely put a damper on such a large Jewish offensive.

It doesn't look like the U.S. has any inclination to take the chance to disengage, if the public statements of American diplomats are any indication, though. It's too bad. This could have been a way of protecting the U.S. from increased terrorist attacks coming from opponents of Israel.

Gotta love the Japanese military

Republicans rejoice.

Aside from having my Karma stomped down to Terrible and being completely blocked from posting comments, I'm also being automatically logged out after viewing several pages.

If this is another problem, I'd like to begin the count of issues I've encountered so far.

1) Moderation weightings have been skewed such that a negative moderation affects karma significantly downward while positive moderation barely affects karma upward.

2) The new comment history page is completely fucked.

3) New cookie? New security? WTF?

4) Automatic logging out.

Anything else?

What is the weighting of Moderation to Karma?

It is common knowledge that a +1 Funny is worth 0 karma, but are there other values that are not commonly known?

I currently have Bad karma. However, looking over my recent posts, I have many +5 Insightful/Interesting posts and have a positive moderation balance despite several downmods.

However, my karma has steadily declined. Likewise, my karma barely moves at all from Positive to Good even though I have received a moderation balance of +20 as evidenced by the daily moderation totals.