random neuron misfires

There is a local sushi place that I’ve frequented an average of 1-2 times a week for over 4 years. The staff there is great and has always treated me well. In exchange, I treat them well.

Friday I went there with my laptop in hand hoping to do a little work over lunch after visiting my daughter at daycare and sharing some story time with her.

When I sat down, I was almost immediately approached by the owner (we’ll call him “Tsai”; not his real name) of the sushi restaurant with an offer to join his “network” of friends and family who are in the process of selling a very specific product from a company called “Mona Vie”. He showed me a website that is the front-face of his “leg” of the network.

Disclaimer: I am not going to mention the sushi owner’s business name, his real name or link to any of the MLM websites involved, because I am not in any way promoting them, nor denigrating the sushi restaurant or their owners.

I still respect Tsai and his family and if they wish to pursue being successful with these business ventures, I’m not going to actively hurt their potential to so do in the process.

For the next hour or more, instead of allowing me to enjoy my lunch in peace (which he has always respected in the past), I was affronted by his pitch to join his MLM program buying and selling cases of this “energy juice” that contains extract of Açaí berries (along with other unlabeled, unknown concentrations of blended fruits and vegetables).

At first, I was patient as I am with everyone who has something to share, and let him talk. Then after several minutes, things went south… fast.

I’m a reasonably smart person, and I started asking questions about the “system”, about the earning potential, about the bonus allocation and so on. Apparently the system was not made for “smart people”, as I was told several times. Then his explanations got more and more confusing, so I started asking questions, and was met with comments like “Shut up and listen.” and “You’re so skeptical, just shut up and stop thinking.”

He showed me some of his earnings, using their online “Distributors Virtual Office” control panel. He said that they have weekly “tasting parties” where they invite people to come by and try the juice, and encourage them to join the network to start consuming and selling the juice themselves (herein likes the crux of the scam; more on this later in this post).

In response, I showed him the revenue I make from my Google and LinkXL banner ads that I run on very specific, targeted websites which more than surpassed his earnings from selling this juice at these “tasting parties”, and I didn’t have to spend a dime or any time on driving to the parties, organizing them or bringing any product or marketing materials to them. My websites stay running, I get paid an ever-increasing amount each month. Simple.

This is where it began to get personal. After his pitch, and my hesitance to join his “network”, he started to insult me, my friends, my family, my intelligence and my background (none of which he knows a single shred about).

“Are you crazy? It’s only $39.00 to join. Don’t you have the money? I can pay for it for you, if you’re low on cash.”

“You’re just afraid. You’ve never taken a risk or a chance in your life. You just sit back and live in fear.”

“Don’t you have any friends? Maybe you need to get some new friends who you can get to join your network.”

“You need to make time to make this work. Just forget your work and your daughter and focus on this.”

At that point, I told him to get up, out of my booth.

I won’t repeat some of the further comments he said, but it got ugly. True to form, I exercised restraint and didn’t stoop to his level. I packed up my things, thanked him for his time and the lunch through gritted teeth, and left.

Never to return again.

Later that night, I received a voicemail from “Tsai” with an apology for his behavior and that I should reconsider his offer to join his “network”.

This morning (Saturday), I recieved two VERY early morning phone calls from a number I didn’t recognize. The calls woke me up, but I ignored them and the caller didn’t leave any voicemail.

Later this morning, I called the number back. It was “Tsai” with another apology, but this time he added that he couldn’t sleep last night and it was bothering him at a very personal level. I listened to his apology, said thank you and hung up.

Later in the afternoon, the same number called again… again I ignored it, again no voicemail.

I’m going to separate the MLM and MonaVie details into a separate blog post, which I will be writing shortly after I publish this one.

I have 6 primary email accounts that I use every day; 5 of these are external and 1 is the one I use internally at work on the corporate LAN. I probably receive anywhere from 200-300 emails a day, about 80% of which require my personal attention and response.

I have GNOME Evolution configured to aggregate these accounts into one “view” in my mail. I also set up a “virtual folder” called “Unread Email” that all of the unread (i.e. new, incoming) email from all 5 external email accounts is visible from. Since I use this virtual folder as my primary “Inbox” folder for reading and responding to email, my “real” Inboxes have grown a bit cluttered over time because I never need to go into them directly.

I like to have my Inbox down to a total of 0 (yes, ZERO) emails at the end of every day in every account. With 5 separate mail accounts (IMAP) and 1 work account (Exchange), this can get challenging on busier days. If I have enough emails in my Inbox that I have to use a scrollbar to see them or they’ve gone “below the fold”, I’ve done something horribly wrong.

(If you’re interested in reading or hearing more about “Inbox Zero”, you might want to see this Google Talk by Merlin Mann for greater detail on the philosophy.)

After months and months of letting the “real” Inboxes for these accounts fill up, and dealing with ONLY the “Unread Email” virtual folder in Evolution, I finally went back and cleaned up the email in the main mail accounts, bringing me back to a total of 9 emails across all 5 accounts. The 9 emails which remain are there because I need to respond to them tomorrow, after doing a bit of research first.

Now my internal work email (Exchange + Outlook) is going to be even more challenging… because a large bulk of that email is research material, useful for referring back to later.

I’ve been slowly picking out the important bits and putting them into Microsoft OneNote, but I have to do that on a physically separate laptop because I do not have OneNote on my work machine (and installing any software is forbidden and locked down by very strict account policies).

Overall stress is dramatically reduced when you can log into your mail and see only THAT day’s emails in your Inbox, and nothing more. Ending the day with zero emails in your mail really does put some “completion” and accomplishment to the day’s tasks. You don’t have to be thinking about unanswered emails or “leftover” tasks from the previous day(s) or weeks ago.

If I can just keep on top of the emails in my main accounts, I’ll be well ahead of the game.

One of THE most-annoying features of Windows is the “Send To” menu that shows up when you right-click on anything on the desktop or in any folder. As with most things created by Microsoft, the idea was sound, but the implementation is absolutely horrible..

The problem with this “feature” is that when you run your mouse past that option to reach options in the right-click menu that are lower down (Delete, Properties and so on), your mouse will pass “Send To”, which then has to enumerate every single application that is registered with it for the various options provided there (Mail Recipient, Clipboard, Desktop, My Documents, 3½ Drive, and so on). This can take mere seconds to almost a full minute every single time you right-click and move past the option!

If you’re like me and are creating and moving around hundreds to thousands files per-day on Windows, this can be downright maddening. In fact, if you right-click an icon in your QuickLaunch menu and let “Send To” do its disk-thrashing dance, and then do it again seconds later, it STILL has to go enumerate all of those same applications again and thrash the disk again. The list of applications and providers registered with the “Send To” menu aren’t cached in any way.

But there is a solution: Get rid of the “Send To” menu completely!

To do that, use the following steps:

1. Launch “regedit” and find the following registry key:
   HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Send To

2. Double-click the string value named “Default” that you see there. The value you see there ({7BA4C740-9E81-11CF-99D3-00AA004AE837}) is the one that enables the “Send To” menu.
3. Delete the value and save the key. Poof! No more “Send To” menu.

This may seem drastic and brute-force, but I tried several other approaches, including removing all of the applications that were in the C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Send To\ folder.

Now at least the system isn’t hanging for 30-40 seconds every time I right-click something and roll my mouse past that menu option.

I received this in my email this morning, and found that it was legit, from his website. I’m reposting it here (hyperlinks added by me).

Friends,

Everyone said the bill would pass. The masters of the universe were already making celebratory dinner reservations at Manhattan’s finest restaurants. Personal shoppers in Dallas and Atlanta were dispatched to do the early Christmas gifting. Mad Men of Chicago and Miami were popping corks and toasting each other long before the morning latte run.

But what they didn’t know was that hundreds of thousands of Americans woke up yesterday morning and decided it was time for revolt. The politicians never saw it coming. Millions of phone calls and emails hit Congress so hard it was as if Marshall Dillon, Elliot Ness and Dog the Bounty Hunter had descended on D.C. to stop the looting and arrest the thieves.

The Corporate Crime of the Century was halted by a vote of 228 to 205. It was rare and historic; no one could remember a time when a bill supported by the president and the leadership of both parties went down in defeat. That just never happens.

A lot of people are wondering why the right wing of the Republican Party joined with the left wing of the Democratic Party in voting down the thievery. Forty percent of Democrats and two-thirds of Republicans voted against the bill.

Here’s what happened:

The presidential race may still be close in the polls, but the Congressional races are pointing toward a landslide for the Democrats. Few dispute the prediction that the Republicans are in for a whoopin’ on November 4th. Up to 30 Republican House seats could be lost in what would be a stunning repudiation of their agenda.

The Republican reps are so scared of losing their seats, when this “financial crisis” reared its head two weeks ago, they realized they had just been handed their one and only chance to separate themselves from Bush before the election, while doing something that would make them look like they were on the side of “the people.”

Watching C-Span yesterday morning was one of the best comedy shows I’d seen in ages. There they were, one Republican after another who had backed the war and sunk the country into record debt, who had voted to kill every regulation that would have kept Wall Street in check — there they were, now crying foul and standing up for the little guy! One after another, they stood at the microphone on the House floor and threw Bush under the bus, under the train (even though they had voted to kill off our nation’s trains, too), heck, they would’ve thrown him under the rising waters of the Lower Ninth Ward if they could’ve conjured up another hurricane. You know how your dog acts when sprayed by a skunk? He howls and runs around trying to shake it off, rubbing and rolling himself on every piece of your carpet, trying to get rid of the stench. That’s what it looked like on the Republican side of the aisle yesterday, and it was a sight to behold.

The 95 brave Dems who broke with Barney Frank (Wikipedia) and Chris Dodd (Wikipedia) were the real heroes, just like those few who stood up and voted against the war in October of 2002. Watch the remarks from yesterday of Reps. Marcy Kaptur (Wikipedia), Sheila Jackson Lee (Wikipedia), and Dennis Kucinich (Wikipedia). They spoke the truth.

The Dems who voted for the giveaway did so mostly because they were scared by the threats of Wall Street, that if the rich didn’t get their handout, the market would go nuts and then it’s bye-bye stock-based pension and retirement funds.

And guess what? That’s exactly what Wall Street did! The largest, single-day drop in the Dow in the history of the New York Stock exchange. The news anchors last night screamed it out: Americans just lost 1.2 trillion dollars in the stock market!! It’s a financial Pearl Harbor! The sky is falling! Bird flu! Killer Bees!

Of course, sane people know that nobody “lost” anything yesterday, that stocks go up and down and this too shall pass because the rich will now buy low, hold, then sell off, then buy low again.

But for now, Wall Street and its propaganda arm (the networks and media it owns) will continue to try and scare the bejesus out of you. It will be harder to get a loan. Some people will lose their jobs. A weak nation of wimps won’t last long under this torture. Or will we? Is this our line in the sand?

Here’s my guess: The Democratic leadership in the House secretly hoped all along that this lousy bill would go down. With Bush’s proposals shredded, the Dems knew they could then write their own bill that favors the average American, not the upper 10% who were hoping for another kegger of gold.

So the ball is in the Democrats’ hands. The gun from Wall Street remains at their head. Before they make their next move, let me tell you what the media kept silent about while this bill was being debated:

1. The bailout bill had NO enforcement provisions for the so-called oversight group that was going to monitor Wall Street’s spending of the $700 billion;

2. It had NO penalties, fines or imprisonment for any executive who might steal any of the people’s money;

3. It did NOTHING to force banks and lenders to rewrite people’s mortgages to avoid foreclosures — this bill would not have stopped ONE foreclosure!;

4. It had NO teeth anywhere in the entire piece of legislation, using words like “suggested” when referring to the government being paid back for the bailout;

5. Over 200 economists wrote to Congress and said this bill might actually WORSEN the “financial crisis” and cause even MORE of a meltdown.

Put a fork in this slab of pork. It’s over. Now it is time for our side to state very clearly the laws WE want passed. I will send you my proposals later today. We’ve bought ourselves less than 72 hours.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MichaelMoore.com

I was asked this question from one of the conductors on the departing train home late this afternoon… the same conductor who was on my arriving train early this morning;

“So how was YOUR day”?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s how my day went:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Stocks skidded Monday, with the Dow slumping nearly 778 points, in the biggest single-day point loss ever, after the House rejected the government’s $700 billion bank bailout plan.

The day’s loss knocked out approximately $1.2 trillion in market value, the first post-$1 trillion day ever, according to a drop in the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000, the broadest measure of the stock market.

Actually, I spent the majority of my day in back-to-back meetings with only 1 hour of my day free to schedule with my own work (which included inhaling a lunch in that 60 minutes somewhere), and then back to another 1-hour meeting with another project team.

If you haven’t already guessed, I work in Manhattan for one of the largest (remaining) financial services institutions downtown.

Tomorrow should be fun. Sigh.

“One often meets his destiny
on the road he takes to avoid it.”

Here was how my Saturday morning started when I was cooking us breakfast and some lunch for our picnic.

“Daddy?”

“Yes sweetheart?”

“You cook the best food in the whole world!”

“You like the way I cook for you?”

“Daddy. You’re not a cook, you’re a chef!”

Sigh. Her words could have melted titanium on that day. Seryn rocks my world.

It’s not too hard to see you left this inside me.
This new emotion that I didn’t know I needed.
Thank you for teaching me that I could never trust you.
The day will come when I can ask you why.

— “Heal In Time”, Dark New Day

For some reason, I’m wide awake at 2:30am, after getting up at 7am Sunday morning. I’ve been exhaustingly-busy all day today running around doing errands and exercise and cleaning up my living space… but I’m still wide awake.

19 hours awake and still going… and I have to be out the door by 7am to catch a train to NYC in just over 4 hours.

I just noticed the new WordPress v2.6.2 is out. I guess I’ll upgrade all of my blog sites to that version and kill some time before I have to begin another Monday morning in the office.

2:48am, and all 14 blog sites are now updated with the latest core version of WordPress.

Maybe my body will finally call it quits and I can get a little bit of sleep on the train.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from Ayn Rand, and very poignant given our current situation in the Middle East and in our own economy:

“The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

“I have come here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life…. It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.”

“There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns.”

“Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman’s tool is values; the bureaucrat’s tool is fear.”

“Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.”

“Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation’s troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.”

“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.”

Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.