Jokes and Stuff « a day in the pit

20Jan/120

I hope you’re surfing

The Rush

I've been thinking about how thrilling life can be. One minute you're in a comfort zone without realizing it and then in a flash you're paddling your heart out head-on for a large body of water that's trying to crash down on you. And as you paddle into this wall of a wave your instinctual response, to the sheer amount of fear amongst other things, is to paddle, kick, and dive into the belly of the beast. Just barely scraping past the wave you and your board flop down onto the hard surface water only to keep paddling because you know there is another wave coming; the set had just begun.

A freezing chill runs down your spine but you realize it's just some of the water from that last wipe out. Fuck, it's freezing cold.

But you continue because the feeling of this challenge has never felt better. It's why you put yourself in situations you're never comfortable in, and why you know the devil in comfort intimately. These waves don't care about anything except providing you challenge after challenge with no end in site.

Ride a Wave

Surfing is a lot like entrepreneurship. It's fueled primarily by you and your own will, and encouraged by that group of people in the water with you. It's still somewhat of a dog-eat-dog world but that bond between soloists is stronger than one might think. It's incredibly rewarding. It takes an immense amount of time to do it well but you can start and feel empowered immediately.

Good luck. Have fun. And remember, the company you work for does not define you.

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Information, Jokes and Stuff No Comments

19Aug/090

That Was Mean

For the past few weeks I have been spending a few minutes here and there putting together a catalog web site. Now, you may be asking what kind of catalog system would Mike be working on? Let me fill you in....

It all started with a co-worker, an awesome guy, and a few tasteful jokes. One bad joke later I wanted to get him back in a way that no man can deny: publishing a public wronging on the Internet. And, with that, thatwasmean was born.

It started as a very simple logging of things said in the office.

The categories grew for different needs.

The color schemes changes as suggestions came in.

But what I have found most interesting so far is the cohesiveness between posts. They relate to each other, even spread across multiple days, and you can generally figure out what goes with what and the livelihood of that incident within our office.

So, with all that said, ThatWasMean.com launches to a little more of a public scale. It was developed in Ruby on Rails, hosted using Phusion Passenger and Apache, and is evolving slowly... Check it out and provide any feedback.

go to ThatWasMean

Tagged as: new web site, Ruby on Rails, start up company co workers, that was mean No Comments

28Mar/090

Unlimited + 50… In math class we were taught to ignore the constant

I was browsing the Internet, or as I like to call it the "InterWeb," and I found an interesting marketing ploy for shared web hosting. A company, which will remain nameless for legal reasons, advertises unlimited shared web hosting for the cheap price of about 6 US dollars per month if you purchase for 10 years in advance. What a deal right? Well, to further this awesome deal they felt the need to add 50 gigabytes of data to the already unlimited gigabytes of storage space that is included in the single package they offer customers. Interesting I thought. Does this kind of marketing strategy work? Who are these companies marketing to who think that their valued customers, and potential customers, do not understand that infinite is the greatest non-specific number attainable in math... And more importantly, why is the 50 GB of extra space the selling point? I laugh... But think it probably works; which is sad.