February, 2001. I watched my childhood hero slam in to a wall in Daytona, Florida. His name was Dale Earnhardt and he was a race car driver. Going three wide in to the final laps of the Daytona 500, the black #3 inexplicably veered off the embankment and then shot back up in to the retaining wall at 160mph. “Race car driver.” That Fall I embarked in pursuit of my bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.

As an adult, I am known somewhat by my Apple fanaticism. My first computer was a Mac. It was an Apple IIe passed on by a family friend on which I played Chess and occasionally used the word processor. After years of tinkering with custom built PCs, I returned to the fold with a black MacBook. I got sick of the finance world I ended up in, so I took a job as a professional web developer. iMac. And I love my job so much I do it in what most would consider their “spare time”. MacBook Air.

Today, I watched my Facebook feed fill with mourning, respect, and snide remarks for a man I deeply respected. Today, the world lost one of it’s most brilliant visionaries, innovators, personalities, and… salesmen. A one in a billion type of person that died of a one in a million type of disease.

In their lifetimes, my personal heroes both held a few things in common. They both wore black. All the time. Both of their spheres of influence loved to hate them, but still respected and revered who they were. They both earned notoriety for their fearless passion (or perhaps their passionate fearlessness). And ultimately, they both died… doing what they loved.

May we all be so lucky.

Thank you, Steve. Thank you for teaching us, in your death, what it means to live. And for reminding us, in the oft quoted words of Stewart Brand, to “stay hungry” and “stay foolish”.

But the internet giant seems to lack success in a key area of the internet: social media. First there was Google Wave. TechCrunch called it “part email, part Twitter, and part instant messaging.” Users called it completely confusing, as it seemed like no one really knew what the hell you were supposed to do with it.

Then there was/is Google Buzz. Buzz was supposed to a brilliant way with sharing things with people you actually wanted to share them with. But it’s launch was marred by privacy concerns, lawsuits, and an eventual drop off in “buzz” as people slowly disabled the feature as it added too much noise to their Inboxes.

Google+

So with Wave and Buzz lessons in hand, Google has rolled out +Pistevo to my Google menu bar. Think of it as Facebook, but done the Google way. It’s Buzz, except it has some added features like “Hangout” where you can awkwardly group video chat. Group management is handled by what Google+ calls “Circles”. It is pretty well thought-out, though Google had the advantage here of rolling this feature out at launch, unlike Facebook. So rest assured, you can happily block Aunt Sally from your drunken rampage last Saturday night. But unfortunately you have to add Aunt Sally individually and all your other 1000 Facebook friends because it currently doesn’t integrate other services. Overall Google+ looks a lot like Facebook, feels a lot like Facebook, and acts a lot like Facebook.

Google’s “Anti-Social” UI

So everyone wants to know… is it as good as Facebook? Kind of. Google+ is a clone of Facebook, except branded with Google’s “New” UI. Google has been letting their designers do a lot of the legwork the past few months. They added a new menu bar up top, gave Maps a makeover (NICE WORK EVELYN!!!!), reskinned Gmail, and made a bunch of other tidy visual touches to its flagship search.

Google has made a lot of money on one thing: search advertising. They are quite good at it. And I am quite certain they are good at designing for it. Get users to search quickly and get them off the page quickly to drive pageviews and click traffic. That is Google’s bread and butter, and if Google+ runs on the same Google mentality it is destined to fail.

Social networks have the inherent need to be social. You hang out on Facebook because your friends/ex-lovers/creepy co-workers are all on Facebook and you spend an inordinate amount of time stalking people, you creeper. You get in, and stay in. The problem with Google+ IS that it is Googley. It fits in completely with Google’s new branding. Developed by brilliant engineers and a brilliant designer who made it perfectly Google.  The more I use Google+ the more I find that I want to leave it. Get in, get out with a revenue-generating click. That’s the essence of Google. And that’s why Google just doesn’t get social.

So as not to pick on any church, I will pick on all, because your vision statement likely suffers from one, if not all three, of these points.

1. Your vision statement is too long: seriously, I’m not going to memorize point 2, subpoint 4.
2. Your vision is vague: it’s a nice idea, but what are we going to do exactly to see this through.
3. Your vision is fluffy: “devoted to”, “passion for”, “pursuit of”. Do you talk like that to your mother? Do you talk like that to your Dad? see item #2.

If I started a church, it necessarily, would have a Vision Statement. I mean, you have to have content for the snazzy website, yeah?

Well here it is:

Jesus.

Concise. Focused. There is nothing you can add to that vision that would make it better. And if you really want to subtract something from it, can you call yourself a gospel-focused church?

This is not meant as complaining or even really critiquing, but a reminder.  We rightly think about what we are doing, we pray about where we are going, and we seek and run after God’s heart. But are we letting our vision get in the way of God’s vision?

“And this wise man asked me to stop. He said, Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing — because it’s already blessed.”
- Paul “Bono Vox” Hewitt, U2

Jesus, be Thou my vision. Peace.

I have come to the conclusion that my most productive hours are between 10 and 2. That’s between 10am and 2pm and between 10pm and 2am. Those are my sweet spots. You see it’s not that I am this anti-corporate hate-all-things-9-to-5 Four Hour Work Week reader. Ok, I kind of am. But it’s the way I’m wired… and could be the way you’re wired too.

I just don’t believe we were meant to be enclosed in our cubicles 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Luckily I work with a team that spans 4 countries, almost covers all 24-hours of the day between just 10 people, has part-timers, a full-time 4 day work week-er, and a fearless leader that has zero reservations about me working from home/remotely/in my pajamas until a client meeting.

My proposal is an exercise in flexibility. The split-day shift. 4 to 6 hours in the office followed by 4 to 6 hours at home. Think of the benefits.

• increased productivity – I know you’re all falling asleep after lunch just like me. If you’re working 12 hour days there’s a good chance 3 to 4 of them are wasted on trying to get moving. How about stopping during the day so you can tackle a problem with a clear head? How about just cutting the fluff time out and working only when you’re focused?
• less traffic – Everyones productive sweet spots vary. That means in a split-day shift not everyone is rushing to work at exactly the same times.
• healthier families – Imagine dropping your kids off at school and picking them up after your first shift and just hanging out for the afternoon. You can’t do that with your 14 hour solid work day, but you could accomplish it with a 7/7 split.

So I’m an idealist and as much as I would love to see the above things, I realize this won’t work for everyone. Not everyone works behind a computer where they can just pick up their work and go anywhere. It wouldn’t make sense for the financial markets to open and close and open and close. But here’s to hoping I will always have a job and that some day you’ll get a job where a split-day shift works…

Three-Two-Two. 322 was my pager code in high school. This led many to believe my birthday was on March 22nd. So 4 days before my birthday I’d get a plethora of well wishes. “Thanks in advance,” I’d say to their dismay. One of my close friends had the code 311. Her birthday actually is March 11th, but no weirdos, this was not some sort of awkward psychotic twisted crush to be coupled with Miss 311. (11 coupled = 22?!?!?, I still don’t get it).

Pictured here are Roces Chapter 322s. My codesake. WTF? Now you’re thinking one of two things. A) You were one of those lame inline skaters. LOL! or B) Shiet, mang. You named your code after 322s. Everyone knows the top of the line were the Majestic 12s. Your code should have been 12.

Well, A) I hate you, and B) I never ever got top of the line growing up. It seemed to be some sort of weird life lesson that my parents were teaching. In fact, it was one of the things my Dad always said to me. “Remember son, even when you think you’re the best there will always be someone better than you.” So when I got hockey skates I got Bauer H3′s instead of the then top-of-the-line H5′s. Civic Si. NO WAI. You get an EX. Never the worst. But never the best.

So here I am. 322 in 322. Coincidence? Yeah. But one worth reminiscing about.

So after much talk of quitting my job… I quit.

This may have been the single most life giving decision I have made. Life no longer sucks. I no longer feel like stabbing myself when I arrive at work. I don’t watch the clock tick by hoping it would move faster.

So now that I got my soul back… I will write again.

I will write random things and weighty things. But mostly I will write to compete with thesesocksdontmatch.com. Because blogging is a competitive sport. And I intend to win this fight. Bring it sock lady. Pistevo lives again.

Randomly unrelated things will still occur in this space if you’re not interested in the other link.

w00t.

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Cheers, Phil Gyford.