Holy Foursquare!

This little social application is sneaky as hell. I signed up for convenient way to keep track of what my pals are up to on the weekend, but it's become addicting! Foursquare has me hooked in ways Dodgeball never did because it keeps score! It's a competition, and I'm competitor! It quantifies everything I do and presents my social habits in neat graphics that I can analyze and share. Then it compares my habits to everyone else's on the network to see who's winning. WINNING!

I catch myself thinking 'hmm, well, yeah, I might take a bullet if I go out in Pioneer Square, but I might also get hella points and maybe a new badge for going places I haven't gone before'. It also encourages loyalty to a specific establishment. For example, I'm at Bauhaus right now instead of Stumptown because I know I'm going to be here tomorrow, too, and I have shot at becoming Mayor for checking in here more than anybody else.

Being able to quantify and evaluate my social behavior is useful for understanding other aspects of my life and morale. Have I really gone out more on Thursdays than on Saturdays? Is that why I sometimes feel more tired at work on Fridays? This stuff is tough to keep track of without keeping a log, and it's tough to keep a log without some serious incentive. Foursquare provides the incentive through competition and sense of social community. It's like a simplified version of the morale-o-meter, only participation is more inviting.

For now, it's a fun game, but it might eventually present an interesting look at long-term social trends.

Oh, and by tomorrow I'll definitely be the Mayor of Bauhaus... unless someone else is cheating.

Site Unseen

Now that I launched www.paperwalrus.com a few days ago, it's time to focus and refine. The site is definitely up, and it's functional, but I'm not satisfied with how it looks and operates.

Buster's recommendation of Google Analytics was great. It's an amazing resource that provides mind-blowing detail on site traffic. There's not much traffic, and there's not much to see yet, but those things could change.

Speaking of change, here are a few goals for the site:

- Narrow the content so the site doesn't seem completely pointless

- Ditch blogger.com and incorporate a wordpress.com blog into the site

- Find a better way to put Flickr photos on the site (and also take more pictures!)

- Improve the "Stalk Me" page by adding more interactivity

- Utilize the interconnectedness of different social sites. PING.

- Maybe abandon separate "Friends" page for a sidebar and each page

- Allow direct feedback

Alright!

Got the leak on the moto fixed with minimal effort. Minimal effort meaning 22 or so hours, including meals and trips to the store for parts. I learned a whole bunch about how an internal combustion engine works and best of all, oil doesn't leak onto my shoes at high speeds!

Total cost: $94.

Tea Bagged

Wait a second. Protesters in DC weren't allowed to dump a million teabags in the Potomac River? And then they weren't even allowed to dump them in Lafayette Park? And THEN they were kept from rallying in front of the Treasury Department?? Sounds like Socialist conspiracy to me. I'd say The Left is trying to repress America's finest and most articulate Americans.

And then there's the kids:

Maybe I'm giving the kids too little credit, but I wonder if the child protesters know what their signs mean. I wonder if their parents are even sure of what the signs mean. "No taxation without representation". Ok, good. Maybe your 3-year-old can elaborate on which specific tax policies are at issue, and what the underlying problems with those policies are. It would go something like this:

Q: What does your sign mean, 3-year-old kid?

A: I wanna go pee-pee in a big kid potty.

I have no problem with the kids. The kids are adorable and completely innocent. It's the parents, who use their children as an instrument for passionately representing their own incomplete understanding of these issues, who should be criticized.

It takes a lot of courage to write your ideas on a neon sign and make your toddlers hold it. Maybe I'm wrong - maybe the kids have advanced penmanship and early formation of fiscal policy priorities. Buuut I doubt it.

Time To Get Greeezy

One afternoon last summer, while out for a motorcycle ride, I rode 115+ miles per hour down a long country road. The next day I noticed oil leaking from the side of the bike's engine, soaking my right shoe. It seems I broke the seal on the main portion of the motor - probably the most expensive mistake you can make on a motorcycle (short of driving it off a cliff). So instead of paying somebody $2500 to fix it, I'm going to get my hands dirty and repair it myself for about $200. This could end up a very big mistake, or it could turn out really nice. We'll see. I'm looking forward to the challenge and learning things along the way.



Stay posted for updates.

Common Hoes (as in garden-variety)

It's spring and I want to plant a garden. Not because it's the cool thing everyone's doing this year, but because I miss those spring and summer days of my youth, out in the garden, in the dirt, being productive and a tiny bit self-sufficient.

The problem is that I live in a very densely populated urban area. There are community gardens and p-patches, and those are cool, but they're also pretty scarce. I noticed two guys planting a garden between the sidewalk and the street, right where the bums drink their 40's and probably piss. That's not healthy.

So I had an idea:

Old people have land, but weak bodies and questionable minds. Young people have able bodies and sharp minds, but no land. Why don't young people ask old people if they can tend their gardens? For free. This is a win-win: Old people's land will be maintained without them having to pay begrudging grandkids a fist-full of quarters to do it, and young people will have the satisfaction of working in the dirt to grow sustainable produce. They can even share it with the old people!

This would also bridge a social gap between otherwise unassociated generations!

I would start an online community in which able-bodied youngsters could pair up with decrepit oldies, if only old people used the internet (remember - questionable minds.)

So this pairing process needs work, but I think the overall idea is really great. Wanna help?

Pow!

I've had the sickness for a few solid days and now it's finally beginning to go away. Nothing exciting here - just my quarterly sinus infection and sore throat. But I'm really going to miss my nightly sick ritual of playing Game Boy Tetris while I wait for the Nyquil double-shot and two Pain-Aid tablets to kick in. Let me be the first to tell you the good news about that combo! They really do it, and they do it right!

Pow! Goodnight.

My liver, on the other hand, isn't as thrilled, but that's why we have two of them.