Kurt's blog

There are days when I have so much coffee I must look like a meth addict, all quick, barely controlled gestures and involuntary tics. This is one of those days.

I let my domain expire. Oops :-)

I believe I have hit the Flickr full house: a flower, a sunset, an adorable child, a cat and a self portrait all on the first page of my photostream. Alas, none are HDR, but it certainly appears inevitable.

"The sky broke like an egg into full sunset and the water caught fire." -- Pamela Hansford Johnson
Show us a self-taken picture of the sunset.
Submitted by Connie.

Sunset over South St. Louis

Arriving in Kunming, 1991

Wuzhen sunset

A few years back, I attended an offsite brainstorm with my (former) company. We were a relatively small interactive development shop within a larger PR agency and felt we were being held back. This was sometime in 1999 when tech was flying high -- the PR side of the business was just coming out of a slump, we were bringing some significant non-PR clients and felt our team was not reaping proportional benefits from our revenue. If I remember correctly, one of the flashpoints was not being able to get sufficient bandwith at the office, and how hard it was getting the PR side to understand why we even needed faster connections.

So the task at this offsite: how to better get the resources we needed to develop the business. The corporate big-wig/facilitator set us off and ideas were flying -- change accounting methods so we had more license to spend from our revenues, split from the company, nothing was off the table...

...until we presented to the facilitator, who in imploring us to be more realistic used these words to summarize our morning's work:

"Motion isn't always progress."

This wasn't what we expected to hear (particularly since the dude hadn't laid out any boundaries), but it's proved to be one of those lessons that stays with me.

So there are two relatively new things in my life: a rental house in Mountain View, California that features wall to wall carpeting, something I haven't had since I moved out of my parents' house in 1986 (and which they promptly pulled up in favor of the hardwood floors underneath) and a bagless vacuum, which I picked up on the cheap Friday night. Consequently, my weekend was filled with obsessive vacuuming. And by obsessive, I mean every room, a couple of times over, with uniform vacuum patterns. By the time I was done, my living room looked like a putting green or a major league infield. You can imagine what it did to me to leave footprints all over the place... but it only presents more opportunities to vacuum :-)

Just call me Martha.

Damn, I love me some Sharon Jones. You've never heard of Sharon Jones? Well, I'm sure you've heard her band backing up famous British crackhead/trainwreck Amy Winehouse. The New York Times has the lowdown...

"Meanwhile i have spoken with the bank,and have also discussed the possible transfer of the fund, my father left a clause that i must not invest in any where in africa that i have to introduce a trusted foreign partner who would be my trustee to help me invest this fund hence the need for your assistance."

I have to believe this 419er's heart just isn't in her job. That's the best you can come up with? Poor effort.