I'll try to briefly recap the last day of my thirties. I woke up a bit groggy, which is not at all unusual because my wife hops out of bed at 5:30 am every morning to work "East Coast hours" because her boss, the CEO, lives and works in Connecticut. She lets Blue Boy out… Continue reading So this is 40
Why it’s good to befriend your competitors
Here's a bit of contrarian advice: Be nice to your competitors. In fact, befriend them, because you just might make a pile of money as a result. I've always taken this road and it has never backfired. I'm going to describe a bunch of examples here and then generalize the approach for your own situation.… Continue reading Why it’s good to befriend your competitors
Business evaluation: Ahoy
Edit: Ahoy is now live so I've included links. I'm still working on the web3 project I previously wrote about. In November 2021 I wrote this description of a fundraising tool that I hoped could be used to influence votes on climate legislation. Rather than collecting signatures, this project would collect cash, real dollars, and… Continue reading Business evaluation: Ahoy
Business evaluation: Clime
I recently read this great short article about how to evaluate ideas by Jared Friedman, a partner at YC. In it he describes a recurring theme across the thousands and thousands of startup pitches they see. They call it SISP, or "a solution in search of a problem." It's an idea that has no practical… Continue reading Business evaluation: Clime
Exercising the writing muscle
Okay, here we go. I'll write as many mostly unedited words as I can before I give up and turn on Better Call Saul. These days I have a rule. I can watch my Netflix show if I've read a book for an hour during the day. This rule has led to a wonderful habit:… Continue reading Exercising the writing muscle
Hacking for climate sales
About a million years ago I wrote a blog post called "Hacking for Sales." I posted it on the Scripted blog and didn't think about it again until this guy Max Altschuler from Udemy contacted me about running a course on it. I demurred and ultimately declined, but he and I stayed in touch. Later,… Continue reading Hacking for climate sales
A summary of our first home projects
This is a prequel to the longer post about our last and final remodel. Look, our house wasn't that bad. Friends and family would come to visit and more or less say the same things: "Your place has such nice energy!" "Everything feels so calm..." "There are good vibes in this house." This, of course,… Continue reading A summary of our first home projects
How I wrote my children’s book
"Children's book author" is not something I aspired to put on my resume. It never crossed my mind. Not once. But then, one night, I wrote a poem. It was November 29, 2021. A Monday. We had just wrapped up a long holiday week. My wife's family visited us for several days, culminating in a… Continue reading How I wrote my children’s book
My first month of real teaching
I leave Diablo Valley College each Tuesday and Thursday exhausted but on the equivalent of a mental high. Teaching two Introduction to Business sections back-to-back is a full body+mind workout that I've never experienced before. My classroom I'm three weeks in with thirteen more to go until the end of the semester. I've learned a… Continue reading My first month of real teaching
My foray into web3
I'm writing this in web2. I own this domain (rbucks.com, although someday that might change) but I don't own the server hosting it. I don't have absolute control over the data that I'm saving to it. I can delete it (more accurately, I can request that the host delete it) but it's possible the host… Continue reading My foray into web3