Author: cosmo

Two SAAS systems that I hate: Salesforce and Basecamp. Both of them are wildly popular and seem to be used by people and companies everywhere. Salesforce is so sluggish it makes me feel like I’m wading through molasses as I attempt to do something simple like search for and edit a single contact record. And today I’m reminded again of why Basecamp is on my short list. I’m typing a comment for a client who uses the system, and in the comment box I can’t type the number 6 or the letter X. Seriously.

I’m trying to write about a “1651px JPEG image” and it comes out as “151p JPEG image”. It’s not my keyboard. In the end, I had to write my comment in a text editor and then cut and paste it into the Basecamp widget. Wow.

I laughed out loud.

This is a story about a toe. Well, two toes.

Back in June, I was playing ultimate and wearing shoes. It was probably one of perhaps three times all summer I wore shoes to play… most of the time I’m barefoot, and I only get out the old cleats when the ground is too wet and slick, or if it’s just been aerated and those pesky chunks of sod are everywhere. In any case, I made a particularly sharp cut and hurt the toenail on my right big toe. It was pretty ugly after the game: most of the nail was black with blood beneath it.

For the past six months, that crusty blood has remained beneath the nail. There was really nothing to be done about it. It didn’t really hurt, but it looked kind of nasty. Well, earlier this week I noticed it looked a little different, and a bit of poking and prodding revealed that the nail was actually separated. A second nail had grown beneath it. I pulled off the old crusty top one, leaving a rather tender under-nail. Over the next few months I imagine everything will grow out and be fine again. This happened a few years ago as well– my right big toe takes a beating, apparently.

Today I was playing ultimate and since it’s fairly chilly (mid-40’s) the ground is getting cold and hard. So I put on cleats, ran around, made a cut, and… hurt my left big toe. Sure enough, there’s blood under the nail now. Sigh. I’m guessing it’ll linger for a few months while a second nail grows, and in the spring I’ll be able to yank the top layer.

I share this story not because I want to be gross, but rather because I find it amusing that people always ask me why I play barefoot. Isn’t it dangerous? Don’t people stomp on your foot? Can you really move and cut as well as you could with cleats? Well, my experience is that wearing shoes is actually more dangerous to my poor toes. I don’t get hurt when I’m barefoot, although I occasionally take a painful cleat to the top of my foot.

Bare feet rock.

Looking for new developers at Zing is a bit of a comical adventure at times. Today I received my first-ever image resume. Here’s what the candidate wrote:

And the sweet resume, complete with grammar and spelling errors:

I can’t help but wonder if these sorts of people ever score an interview. I mean, who teaches this sort of approach when applying for a job?

December 4, sunny and almost 60 degrees. What a gorgeous day for ultimate. Too bad I’ve missed the past few weeks due to meetings and stuff… I’m woefully out of shape. Why is it that if you don’t exercise for two weeks you end up tired and flabby? Sheesh.

Zing built a Facebook app for one of our clients, White Wave. It’s a recipe contest for Silk soymilk, and people are encouraged to submit their own recipes using Silk products. The winners receive a year of Silk or something, so it’s pretty serious. It’s been running for a couple of weeks, and we have a lot of fairly nice entries. And then we have Dean W.

This is awesome for three reasons:

1) It has nothing whatsoever to do with Silk. Bravo for entering a contest and not following the rules.

2) It involves bacon.

3) Hey, Statue of Liberty costume.

That’s 32 gigabytes of USB storage, packed into a little guy the size of my thumbtip.

Remember when hard drives were the size of washing machines? Okay, me either, but I do remember my first 40-megabyte hard drive which was the size of a VCR and cost $600.

You know it’s a great day when stuff like this shows up in the mail.

My first thought, upon seeing the packaging for this choice item, is the amazing model on the box. Here’s a woman who may someday become a famous movie star or politician. And when that day comes, she’ll be able to proudly point to the time when she got her big start… as a model for the SUPER AFRO WIG.

Kyra and I decided to make some chocolate-chip cookies today. I insisted on making them huge, so we ended up with a dozen enormous cookies the size of teacup platters. Awesome.

We just finished a game of Carcassone… Zack managed to eke out a win. He did a little victory dance after the score was tallied.