Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging

Independent, original, analytical, and determined. Have an exceptional ability to turn theories into solid plans of action. Highly value knowledge, competence, and structure. Driven to derive meaning from their visions. Long-range thinkers. Have very high standards for their performance, and the performance of others. Natural leaders, but will follow if they trust existing leaders.

This just in via Brad from MSN Money Central.

Make $32K? You're in the richer 50%

Other new IRS data: While the top 1% of US earners, collectively, make nearly twice that of the bottom 50%, those at the top also pay 13 times more in individual income taxes combined.

Full article >>

As a former longtime AOL subscriber, I was sad to hear that AOL is pulling the plug on AOL Hometown.

Back in the mid-90s, when I started investigating this Web stuff, AOL Hometown was a playgroud where I could experiment with posting Web pages and storing images I wanted to share with other people.

Just to be sure I didn't have anything stored that I wanted to keep, earlier in the week I went through all my Hometown directories, which still exist, and found some interesting discoveries.

Speedo Dan
http://hometown.aol.com/treehouser/speedodan.html

Speedo Dan was still there. This page I created for a friend who was playing a prank on her friend (pictured). Notice the "Last Edited" date of 4/5/96! (Remember having to post "last edited" dates on pages to prove they were current?)

Photos from my 2000 trip to Denver, Colorado

I had thought these had been lost in a hard drive crash a few yesrs ago, but at least I still have these smaller versions.

Photos of me with my puppies

I also thought these had been lost in the same hard drive crash mentioned above. I still have the black and brown dog, but her white and brown sister was stolen by a former roommate several years ago. I never was able to track down where he took her or where she might be now.

So it is with these memories recollected onto my hard drives that I bid farewell to AOL Hometown, my old friend.

I am a huge fan of the National Constitution Center, and this was the latest podcast to appear on my iTunes feed. (Subscribe to the National Constitution Center's podcast, We the People Stories, here using iTunes.) Thanks to Odeo.com for this embed.

Over the weekend, I installed a new WordPress blog for Brooks Belhumeur. I took the Plain Box 2.0 theme together with a couple of plug-ins and viola, website.

Since Brooks is between a career in restaurant management and a new career in ... something else ... I put together a business card with the same look and feel.

The photo of Brooks is one I took back in the summer of 2006 in the back of the Memphis B.B. King's Blues Club on Beale Street. You can see the original image here.

You can visit Brooks' new site at www.brooksbelhumeur.com

ReadWriteWeb has this item today titled Pandora Issues "Call to Arms" to its Listeners.

I'm a big fan of Pandora. If you love Pandora too, join the effort to keep this unique service alive.

Original Pandora blog post
Digg item

...and the Iraq and such as...

Her lack of substance is stunning. She isn't qualified to be Mayor of Wasilla, how could she be qualified to be Vice President, or God forbid, President?

Liz Phair is still amazing and like a breath of fresh air, even 15 years after the release of her landmark album, Exile in Guyville.

I'm not in a panic over the recent drop of the DOW below 11k... This is the market absorbing the fallout from rampant greed and deregulation gone too far.

The chickens are coming home to roost following the real estate bubble burst. The rest of the economy is doing fine.

And the trend of the last 5 years is still in positive territory. Slower growth, perhaps, but growth nonetheless.

Here is a blog post from August 26, 2004.

Life under Bush Presidency -- a good deal for me?

Under Bush's presidency, I have...

1. Seen a president appointed by the courts, not elected by the people
2. Seen the World Trade Towers get destroyed by terrorists
3. Been laid off a job of 8 years
4. Took a new job making less than half the salary I had made before
5. Had my new employer discontinue health care insurance which I began paying myself to the tune of $175 $250 a month
6. Been unable to make any contributions to my IRAs or to save any money at all
7. Withdrawn 10,000 dollars from my IRA account to pay off credit card debt that was over 72 days overdue
8. Struggled to pay basic bills
9. Seen the national debt skyrocket due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
10. Seen Osama get away and no WMD found in Iraq
11. Learned Bush lied to the people about the presence of WMD and the basic premise of the war
12. Seen more American deaths in Iraq following the declaration of peace than before
13. Seen gasoline prices skyrocket to a national average of $2 $3.50 a gallon
14. Seen Bush attempt to "defend marriage" by proposing a Constitutional amendment of discrimination

And those are just the top-of-mind items. Would you say the Bush presidency has been a good deal for me?

Four years later, after a second "W" term, I'm still unhappy with so many aspects of our current government that I don't really know where to even begin listing them all...

Last week saw the launch of a new client website: http://www.southernfolklore.com/

Was have a problem with my Blackberry where calendar syncs wouldn't complete with a cryptic error:

Found the solution in the Missing Sync forum here:

Those of you having problems syncing calendars, have you tried resetting Sync History?

There are two ways to do this:

- From within Missing Sync
1) Choose "Reset Sync History" from the Help menu.
2) Select the calendars checkbox
3) Then click the "Reset Sync History" button

- From within iSync
1) Launch iSync
2) Open iSync Preferences from the iSync menu
3) Click the "Reset Sync History" button
4) Read the information about resetting the Sync services. Then choose the "Reset Sync Services" button.

Reset the Sync History and then connect your device and try to sync just Calendar for now. Choose "Show History" in Missing Sync and also enable "Verbose Logging" so you can send us the logs to help figure out what's going on.

Update

So the above steps didn't work for me after all. I posted the above, then started getting errors again.

So I gave up trying to track down the events in my calendar that were preventing the sync from completing.

I printed out my calendar for 2008, deleted all the calendars in iCal, and reentered the recurring events (mostly birthdays) and handful of other events coming up this year.

I didn't want to lose my calendar history, but at this point, it was more trouble than it was worth to keep it. I had already deleted events from very early such as meetings and other items from when I was still working at Archer/Malmo. But some of the birthdays were damaged recurring events from that far back, and no matter how many times I deleted and recreated those, I was still getting sync errors.

Keeping paper printouts for archive looks like the only real way to go, still. Yay, technology.

So Twitter has been having problems. Is the answer to leave and switch to Plurk?

I don't think so, but I set up http://www.plurk.com/user/waynehastings anyway...

I really like FriendFeed. FriendFeed is like a comprehensive record of all my online footprints.

Now I find SecondBrain. SecondBrain is also very cool. It aggregates, it allows you to organize and categorize. It has a better interface than FriendFeed, which is to say it HAS an interface.

Unfortunately it doesn't support all the services that FriendFeed supports.

I'm hoping SecondBrain will be adding more services, and if it hopes to survive in this highly competitive category, it had better do so quickly.

And can these social sites PLEASE support LinkedIn?

So here's my SecondBrain account -- check it out:
http://waynehastings.secondbrain.com/

When working on my Mac, I sometimes minimize windows to get them out of the way. I'll go work in another application, then want to command-tab back to that app. But with the window minimized, nothing much seems to happen. (The menubar change is usuallyl the only visible change.)

This video from Tekzilla shows how to switch apps and maximize a window at the same time. This is the coolest Mac keyboard shortcut I've found yet!

It’s funny to me that the two guys I work with were huge Palm fans and had Treos for a couple of years. When I upgraded from a flip phone to a smartphone, I choose a Blackberry. Both of them insinuated, if not outright stated, they thought I made a bad choice. One of the two used Documents to Go to edit Word files on his Treo. (I thought that was insane, since he’s older than I am and has worse eyesight. But hey, it blew his skirt up, so he was happy, right?) But I had used the Palm OS before and wanted something different. I liked that the Blackberry had a full keyboard and was NOT Palm OS — I was intending to use it for e-mail and SMS. Within just a few months, both had dropped their Treos for Blackberries. Who uses Palm? The people who prefer it. As for me, I love my iPod (for music and some video viewing) and MacBook Pro, and want the full integration with my MacBook Pro applications (Address Book, Tasks, iCal, etc.). Yes, I’m an Apple fanboi, but I’m also a pragmatist, and I like what works. My Mac just works. I like the interface design. So as I evaluate the features and benefits of my Blackberry vs the iPhone, I see a swtich to iPhone as soon as my Sprint contract is up for renewal.

This article I found via Digg points out a big difference in the expectations younger workers have regarding their workplace and personal access to the use of technology: Lack of Facebook Access Makes You Want to Quit? Grow up, Punks by Ann All.

Another article on the subject of younger workers in the IT field written by the same author states:

The not-so-good news: Many of them lack basic written and oral communication skills. A survey by placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found basic tech skills lacking in 5 percent of college grads, vs. a worrisome 27 percent with deficiencies in critical thinking skills and 50 percent whose writing abilities were not up to snuff.

From Kids and Work Culture: When I Was Your Age, I Worked 9-to-5

The values of Gen Y are different even from the Gen X crowd. Smart (and esp. older) managers would be wise to stay on top of this shift, and have a plan in place for how to recruit, train, and retain such employees.

My gut tells me that the concept of Results-only Workplace Environment (ROWE) is on the right track for businesses and careers (higher paid management, consulting, and knowledge worker type roles) that aren't as place and time dependent.

So be ware the Gen Y. They have a set of values that make them peculiar.

Personally, I find ROWE extremely attractive in this hyper connected universe.