I agree with many of the things listed in Consumerist article about things you should do before and after your laptop is stolen. But there are some suggestions that are not only dumb, but just plain foolish.

Everyone should have backups and serial numbers of their gadgets on file. They should, if possible, have original purchase receipts stashed away somewhere. I'll even give credence to the value of having a lo-jack type software product on your machine, in spite of my personal misgivings about them with regards to privacy.

But many of the Consumerist's suggestions for what to do after your laptop is stolen seem more about vigilantism than about getting your stuff back. That's kind of silly. You might have your priorities mixed up if you're willing to install theft reporting software on your laptop but don't carry renter's insurance.

It's not really the Consumerist's fault. News Media particularly likes to laud vigilantes as heroes. And, in a way, they're right. There is something heroic about the Joe Workaday guy who stands up to injustice and fights for what's right. But here's the thing: To paraphrase Zoe Washburne: A hero is someone who gets people killed.

Before you take a walk into the seedy pawn shop in your neighborhood all hell bent on getting your laptop back, ask yourself if your laptop is worth being killed over. When you see news stories of hipsters chasing down iPhone thieves via the GPS unit mounted on their fixies, remember that these people are putting themselves in a perilous confrontation with a person who, by definition, already has at least a marginally questionable moral compass. A person willing to steal from you might well be willing to shoot you when you call them on it.

When my Macintosh Powerbook 145b was stolen from my 48th Street home in 1998, I went down to the local pawn shop and asked about it. They sent someone from the back up to talk to me, and she, seeing my glare and the twitch in my face (and certainly sensing my angry vibe) showed me one or two laptops and then asked me to leave. *I am so glad I did.*

Is your iPhone worth depriving your mother of ever seeing you again? Is your laptop more important to you than seeing your children grow up?

I'm not saying that you should just lay back and let the criminals win, I'm saying that you need not get so caught up in your feelings of loss, injustice and victimization that you lose sight of the bigger picture. You're more important to the world than your gadgets. Never lose sight of that.

I like this comment on Read-Write-Web.

400 million people now use Facebook, and they don't all have CS Master's degrees from Stanford. But if you work in the IT/tech/Internet/online media industries, they do manage to pay your bills. They're the ones who open emails, click ads, make purchases, sign up for subscriptions and generally take the majority of actions that make our whole ecosystem work.

And most of them have no idea what a web browser is or how it differs from a search engine or a social network. They've chosen to be smart about other things, like building cars or making art or raising families. I'll bet some of them are terrific dancers. We have to build the Web for them, too.

This pretty much sums up how I feel about Web414's future. Web414 is for the people who are working together to make The New Web(tm). It can't be monitized or productized. It's about people who want to build cars, make art, raise families and dance in new ways using the web as a platform.

Who is Web414 for? It's for me. Its for you. Its for the community. Its for who we are who chose to be part of Web414. Web414 is the music makers, and it is the dreamers of dreams. Don't spoil it by making it into just another pointless meetup. Web414 is the magic store. Web414's like a movie, write your own ending... keep believing, keep pretending ... We've done just what we set out to do, Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers, and you.

Web414 must remain dedicated to being more than the sum of its parts. Web414 must be a place where we are free to follow our passions and are unencumbered by "making it work." Web414 works because it does. It is a group of people in a single place making great creative things happen on, for, and about the Web.

I usually have a almost obsessive urge to download app updates as soon as I see them.
I guess I'll pass on this "update." Praise Stansa for at least being honest about it.

I try not to blog about blogging-- it's kind of a silly niche, filled with fatheads offering tips aimed at tricking readers into believing their bland writing has value, however, I recently had to write a "standards for blogging" document for work, and this morning I saw the need to amend it to include some things I thought were pretty obvious, but clearly need to be explained. And so:

Here are some things you may want to consider when picking out what links you want to use in the blog post that you're writing but don't really understand or care about.

1. It's probably better to go with a "impartial" source than one who has an axe to grind. You don't want to link to coverage of a news survey, for example, that is really an editorial condemning or questioning the value of the survey (Unless that's your point).
2. The link's relevancy to the topic at hand should be obvious. If you have to explain why a link is relevant, you don't need to make the link. Unless making that relevancy is why you're posting-- which is inherent in the link, right? Arg! Circular! Here's the thing: Don't just pass links on for the sake of passing links on. People know how to search now, so you don't need to do it for them.
3. Don't link directly to a PDF (or other downloadable) unless you have no other choice. And then, you should be sure to warn people that the link will cause them to download something, either in the narrative of your post or parenthetically. Although, the good news is that in today's day and age, you probably don't need to tell them they need to download a PDF reader.
4. Try to link to permanent links. That is, try to use a source that's not going to pull its link off the Internet because its confused about how the Interent works. I'm looking at you, newspapers. This is hard when you're commenting on news, since the news sites tend to take down links after a certain time because they think you are stealing from them by showing people that you are their customer and that you find value in their product. Dummies! For this reason, avoid linking to newspapers if a more direct source is available. (If you're talking about a study, for example, link to the original publication of the study, not the coverage of the study.)

Of course, the trick to blogging, really, is that you need to care. I know, right? Crazy. But the Lack of Genuine Care (tm) is why blogging in a corporate setting is a loser's game. The main piece of advice I have to offer regarding blogging, and understand that this is, in many ways, crapping in the hand that feeds me, is that if you have something to say, say it. Don't make your marketing department say it-- they will not have the passion for your message that you have. They can help you sculpt your words into something that will perform and represent well... but they can't fake your passion. The internet can spot in-genuineness at 100 paces and will decry and disregard it before you've even submitted your link to Digg. Again, I go back to Uncle Merlin's masterpeice: "How to Blog". "Find your obsession. Every day, explain it to one person you respect. Edit everything, skip shortcuts, and try not to be a dick. Get better."

I can't say it better than that. Another post about blogging degrades into yet another love letter fueled by my raging boner for Merlin Mann. This is why I don't meta-blog, people!

Against the advice of smarter people than me, I went ahead and bought a Drobo along with Droboshare for use at my office. It seemed, at the time, to be a great way to eliminate to the escalating chain of USB and Firewire drives that was beginning to overwhelm my desk. And as a firewire device, as External Storage, the Drobo is as promised. It's a very nice alternative to having a handful of stupid little external drives cluttering up my desk. The idea of infinitely expandable, hot swappable, redundantly backed up external storage is sexy and alluring.

And if you're the kind of person who can stomach paying $1000 for a really big firewire drive, go for it. But if you're looking for networked storage, forget about it. It's garbage. Pure garbage. Lies heaped on half-truths, wrapped in a layer of near-uselessness.

I didn't think a product that was getting as much love as the Drobo-- a product that seemed so focused on usability, would dare release a product that is as Bad as the Droboshare. But they did. And it sucks. How much does it suck? This screenshot of my morning data transfer says at least 1,000 words;

Now I have a drobo on my desk _and_ a jumble of external storage devices that I can use when I need speedy access to drives. The Droboshare's ineptitude actually broke one of the most user-facing features of the Drobo-- that I'd be rid of that jumble of other external drives.

The Bottom Line: The Drobo is a consumer class product that should be considered only as a external storage device. THe Droboshare as it exists today has no business on a network. None. I am a disapointed man.

An aside: I'm told the DroboPro is a much less horrible network experience. Unfortunately, I just can't justify spending another $1,200 on a hope that the product won't suck as badly as the first $1,200 I just spent. If Data Robotics, the makers of the Drobo wanted to trade me up to a DroboPro (or DroboElite), I would happy try that out and report back.

G: Oh my god Delicious Orange Juice!
G: Mmmm!
*later*
G: My mouth hurts. I drank too much orange juice.
*later still*
G: Oh! I think I'm going to throw up from all that Orange Juice. And Garlic Bread.
*even later still*
J: What?
J: When?

For Ashe...

The Fancy Nancy Dress Up Stick-Ons Game makes me crazy. Super Crazy.

1. Colorforms are impossible to stick on something if you have cold little hands.
2. Colorforms are small and probably going to get lost.
3. The game shows you where the peices are supposed to go on the gameboard, but in some cases, especially with the wands, there is no way to stick the item in that location on the standee.Lame!
4. Fancy Nancy is plenty fancy without getting all gussied up with "accessories." But that's not really the game's fault. That's my prejudice about Fancy Nancy and her inattentive, Kings-Crown eatin' parents.

However, G. loves the game. And here are some ways that the game is good:

1. No dice. And the spinner is built into the box. (Look, there's nothing wrong with dice, but with little kids, dice are one spastic arm shake away from gone forever.
2. The game can be played to completion in about 15 minutes .
3. There is no board to move peices around.
4. Gaia loves it.

My friend Penny lamented thusly: "Is there some law of the universe that says government agencies may only operate in a completely ineffecient manner and, dare I say, with utter stupidity and lack of insight?"

To which my friend Marcus suggested: "[Government is] designed around covering the publics collective ass from the predators that continually try to circumvent the systems."

And I agree. I suppose, in a perfect world, that's the case. But, of course, in a perfect world, there wouldn't be predators trying to circumvent the system. In a perfect world, Government would be practiced in ugly buildings decorated with avocado tiling accents.

>

Turns out, the Jefferson County Courthouse has some amount of perfection afterall. Whoddathunkit?

From the Web414 site:

Spammers know this: If you put your crap on my websites, I'm just going to edit it, delete it, or use it to mock you. Stop. Just stop. You're doing it wrong. And everyone else: Stop reading spam. These people would stop spamming if you'd stop responding to it.

Yeah. I recognize the irony.

Non-embeddable You-Tube videos are weak sauce.