Advice for Teenage Boys

18 Dec 2009 / PE

There are three things you need to be careful about: drugs, alcohol and girls. Especially girls.

I have so many things I could say to my own son about girls but after preparing my whole speech I realized it all boiled down to two main points:

  1. Don’t be stupid.
  2. Manage your own time.

Let me say a few words about the second point.

Anyone who cares about you will want you to follow your dreams, follow your goals. Any girl who objects to the time you put in to do that because it takes away from the time you spend with her, stay away from her. HUGE red flag.

The first point is explained in this video:

If you’re not seeing the video, you can watch it on YouTube.


Where’s Montoya?

25 Oct 2009 / PE

Replying to colleague Chris Speilman’s inquiry regarding [Juan Pablo] Montoya’s absence from the top 5 rankings in NASCAR, [Bob] Griese promptly responded something along the lines of “he’s out getting a taco.”

Now, you don’t need me to tell you how stupid that comment is – Montoya isn’t even Mexican – obviously as a Colombian, Montoya was probably out dealing cocaine.

Deadspin

Insulting People as a Public Service

1 Feb 2009 / Hostile Witness

There was a troubled-looking guy in Petco this afternoon giving away packets of Natural Balance dog food. He looked like a meth addict or something.

As I walked past him, he mumbled, without making eye contact, “Want some free dog food?”

“My dog won’t eat that shit,” I said, which is not true, but it certainly took the wind out of his sails.

Now you might say I wasn’t very charming but by verbally assaulting him in that way, I was motivating him to rehabilitate himself and get a real job.

Tough love . . .


User Surveys on the Web

28 Jan 2009 / PE
Look me in the eye
Then tell me that I’m satisfied
Hey, are you satisfied?
— The Replacements, “Unsatisfied”

What is a reasonable target for user satisfaction with a web site?

We did a user satisfaction survey last year and found that 14 percent of respondents felt that our web site didn’t measure up to their expectations.

This year, we have an incentive goal of reducing that number to 8 percent, not based on evidence that any web site has ever achieved a number that low, but based on the opinion of the company that did the survey that anything over a 10 percent dissatisfaction rating is always bad.

Or to flip it around, we’re trying to achieve a 92 percent approval rating.

I wish we hadn’t set the bar quite that high. I don’t want to be a pessimist but not only is that considerably higher than, say, Google (at 78 percent — and what’s not to like about Google?), it’s also higher than Santa Claus, crack cocaine and oral sex . . .

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The Renaissance Man

29 Dec 2008 / PE

I’m looking at these last few posts where I’ve strung together W.H. Auden, John Dewey, Meat Loaf and Franz Kafka, not with any sense of purpose, just things I’ve read or listened to on my winter break.

What a renaissance man I am!

Why, if you were here, we could talk about poetry, education, philosophy, sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, existentialism . . . and we’d have a good time too, considering we’re all going to die . . .


A Business Model for Selling Crack

23 Aug 2008 / PE

My wife loves to keep bags from the grocery store. Why does she love to keep bags from the grocery store? Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better if you haven’t been drinking tequila all afternoon like I have.

My son walks into the kitchen . . .

He says, “We’ve got enough bags here to open our own store.”

“Good idea!” I reply. “You know what we’re going to sell? All the crap laying around in your room.”

“For a second,” he says, “I thought you said ‘crack.’”

“Crack . . . hey, that’s a good idea too! Ordinarily, you want to buy crack, you’ve got to go hang out on a street corner in some undesirable location. We’ll bring upscale ambiance to the crack business. ‘Paper or plastic?’ Who would suspect you’re toting crack around in that Trader Joe’s bag?”


79 More

26 Jan 2008 / PE

In memory of Heath Ledger, here’s a list of 79 more stars killed by drugs . . .