Troy Angrignon - Adventure Capitalist

Bugatti Veyron races an EF-2000 jet fighter - this is AWESOME

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 11:36:08 -0800

I found this stunning YouTube video on John Chow's blog here.

The Bugatti has to race a mile, turn around, and race back. The EF-2000 has to take off, race a mile into the air vertically and then turn around and fly towards the ground another mile and then cross the same finish line as the car.

VERY well done and hilarious that somebody bothered to do it at all!

Day 5 in Paris - a run around Ile Saint-Louis

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:21:44 -0800

I decided to get out for a run in the cold sunny weather today and ran around Ile Saint-Louis:

It was a crisp beautiful autumn day. I was the only runner in shorts, and one of the only runners out at ALL. There don't appear to be many runners in Paris. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.

On the way back home, I ran through a back alley and found this great cathedral.

And a few blocks from home there is a little shop with this sign. I liked the sign and thought that it was worth taking a photo.

There are a lot of tiny little shops near our place that have art in them. Wait what on earth is that in the window??

It's a bust of Michael Keaton's Batman. Creepy.

Day 3 in Paris - Bikram's yoga and a successful shopping trip

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 06:50:01 -0800

Aujourd'hui était le jour 3 ici à Paris. Olivier et moi réellement avons obtenu de prendre le petit déjeuner ensemble, alors il se dirige pour travailler, et je suis allé au loin au yoga de Bikram. Il y a un petit studio impressionnant juste près de notre endroit, droite autour du coin d'un magasin de Apple.

(photos courtesy of www.yogabikramparis.com)

Alors je suis allé de nouveau au au braver les bas-côtés de BHV pour trouver un fusible pour le transformateur que j'ai fait sauter, et pour acheter quelques dishtowels. Je suis parvenu à diriger ma voie par ces essais et tout le personnel était très utile aussi longtemps que j'ai souri. Beaucoup. C'est un fait que des humains sont câblés pour sourire sur la commande pour long car vous les rayonnez un sourire et puis leur demandez de vous aider à parler meilleur français, ils semblent répondre bien.

Maintenant de nouveau au travail sur mon timezone américain du nord !

Oh yes, a little promotion for Vonage. I brought my Vonage adapter here to Paris so that I could have all of my North American phone numbers ring here. And it's working perfectly. So my SF and Vancouver numbers all ring my phone here and I can call out just like when I'm at home in Vancouver. It's a bit surreal actually how well it works. When did VoIP actually start to work?? It used to be a nightmare.

Technorati Tags: paris, bikramyoga, puppy, travel

This video made me smile and laugh all the way through it: a crazy Friday night at Crossfit suffering with good friends and enjoying life

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 07 May 2007 23:22:25 -0700

I'll keep this short or I'll get all sappy. I love hanging out with this group and pushing our bodies and suffering together. It's the best thing I could possibly do with my time. Thanks guys (and girls).

Dilbert: How's your project? It's a steaming pile of failure

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 22:54:25 -0800

Every time I read this I go off into fits of laughter. Having spent fifteen years now doing project management on one thing or another, I can relate to this very deeply. Sometimes Scott Adams really nails it.

Quote of the day

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:58:08 -0800

"This is an A to B conversation, so C you later."

Club Fat Ass' Capilano Canyon Night run, no hot tub, murderball in the pool, and potluck party

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:10:45 -0800

Thanks to Ean and Sibylle for throwing a great Club Fat Ass party - the Capilano Canyon Night Run. About 40 30 of us gathered at the William Griffin Rec Center tonight to do the run.

Sibylle threw me out of the short distance group, so Blue and I joined the tail end of the long course team. Thankfully Doug was at the end doing sweep. Then I stopped to wait for Doug...and lost the group entirely. So I joined up with Ryan and Ellie...and we got lost. We backtracked and found Craig who led us....onto the short course.

Finally we intercepted the Long Coursers, lost Ryan and Ellie to the LC team and Craig, Blue and I ran on through the night in relative solitude enveloped in fog. When Craig and I were almost done the course, I was attacked by a pack of coyotes that ripped at my flesh. One by one, I beat them off me, and ran to catch up with Craig. [Update: Apparently somebody at the party spread rumours that there were no coyotes and that in fact I tripped into a prickle bush that tore up my leg and hands after doing my business in the bush - the nerve of some people!]

The run ended about 1h 30 min later back at William Griffin, and was followed by a quick trip to soak in the hot tub at Harry Jerome. Lo and behold, the hot tub was out of order. Or they saw us coming all covered in mud and decided to put the sign up to stop us from muddying up their hot tub!

So, never a group to be daunted by such a thing, we created a game of six person, four ball murderball in the pool, much to the dismay of the lone swimmer in Lane 1 who we seemed to graze more often than he wanted.

Murderball was followed by a fantastic potluck at Ean and Sibylle's place. Unfortunately it looked like it was full swing when I had to hoof it back to get to bed so that I could get up early for a ride with a buddy.

Thanks for the great evening everybody!

Patriot Act abuse: couple being overtly sexual on a plane have been charged under the Patriot Act. WTF?

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:59:50 -0800

THIS is the reason you don't allow overly broad stupid legislation like the Patriot Acts I and II and the most recent Military Commission Act to pass. They are always unintended uses that far exceed the original intent of the law. In this case, a couple in their mid-forties were being overtly sexual on a Southwest Airlines flight and have been charged under the Patriot Act (which was designed as a tool to charge terrorists.)

What a joke. Why are Americans putting up with this? WAKE UP. Unbelievable.

I mean, don't get me wrong. They should have been hauled off the plane if he was threatening the staff, but charge them with mischief, not under the fracking terrorism act.

Craig Ferguson had a funny episode on this story: "When the other passengers saw these goings-on, they were surprised and thought....'What, entertainment on a Southwest Airlines flight?'" Funny. But not.

Technology companies that improve the world with grace and beauty, and others that make products that are just "F**king cool!" or "Kick Ass!"

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 08:00:59 -0800

Mark Morford has just written what can only be described as one of the most incredible customer testimonials I have ever read. Every company on the planet should aspire to create the kind of loyalty and lust and pure unadulterated joy that Apple seems to have successfully created in Mark's eyes.

Another writer recently posted a fantastic article over here at the Creating Passionate Users blog discussing how Tim Bray was chastised (and celebrated) in his own company for saying that one of their products was "F**king cool!" Every company should read that article.

In a related story, I was discussing with a colleague last night why he loved Confluence, the wiki software we're starting to use from Atlassian. He related the following story to me:

I was asked what the use case analysis of this product had been - what had we done to lead us to the conclusion that this was the product we should use for wikis. I said, "Well, I downloaded the product and ran the eval copy and thought to myself, 'this kicks ass!' Then I realized that they gave us the source code so we could modify it if we wanted to and I thought 'this kicks ASS!' Then I found a list of all the plug-ins that we could use and realized that I could even build our own plug-in and integrate our own product right into the wiki and thought, 'Man, this KICKS ASS!'.

THAT was one of the best analyses I have seen on software deployment in a long while. Atlassian should be proud that their product can generate that kind of response from people.

(*And yes, as a side note, just in case anybody asks, I did a full feature analysis on the top 10 wikis and found Confluence ahead by far. Is it perfect? No. It has been popularized by early adopters so they have a lot of work to do to make it palatable enough for it to "jump the chasm" and appeal to the broader mass market, but it is pretty simple and functional and beats the others hands-down as an enterprise wiki.)

That same colleague also showed me the Customer Comments section of the Perforce website. This company makes change management tools. Overall, not a sexy business. But the customer comments are brilliant. Here are but a few examples:

"I reported a bad link in Perforce's online docs -- and received a response in 52 seconds (according to the mail headers). To properly measure the performance of perforce support you would need to account for clock skew!"
David Sanderson - Fringent Technologies
"Einstein said the speed of light is the highest in the universe. It looks like you are faster... "
Carmen Enachescu - Geac
"The quick response is very much appreciated! Of course, I should have known we'd get such exemplary service... we're talking about Perforce here."
Lori Lustig - Macromedia
"I am astounded by your response to my question. You did three things well:
You answered the question that I asked, not some other one;
You answered it thoroughly;
You answered it swiftly;
You answered it correctly.

"Wait -- that's four things that rarely happen! I feel like I've hit the tech support jackpot! AND It was not an accident that your product was the first item on our list of things to buy. Hmmm... You could make a sales campaign around that -- "What's the first thing to buy when starting a new company? Perforce, of course.""
Jeff Stearns - The Savage Beast

All I can say is WOW. There are some companies out there doing some amazing work and creating incredibly passionate, loyal fans. Sharing those stories gives us all something to aspire to!

Web 2.0 Summit 2006 - Day 2 / What GoDaddy Knows, with Bob Parsons, CEO

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:04:44 -0800

Day 2 notes from Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, CA:

[my analysis and notes are in these square brackets.]

"What GoDaddy Knows" by Bob Parson, CEO of Godaddy

You need to be careful about who to listen to - like analysts who don't understand basic business.
www.bobparsons.com - he talked about why they filed for and then withdrew their S1 application to become a public company. It cost him $3M to realize that once he went public he would have to listen to the advice of a lot of people who had no clue about his business.
"I met a lot of analysts who didn't know the basics and who focused on short-term financials rather than on good solid business basics."
Here's the lesson: "people love the convenience and speed of transacting business over the internet but when it comes to resolving problems and learning features, people much prefer to deal with other people." 920 of our people are in customer support. But analysts would ask: when are you going to move your customers to self-service? Ummm. Never.
Cashflow is WAY more important than paper profits.

[I agree wholeheartedly with Parsons here and this is one of the top lessons I drill into the startups I work with. For a small company, cashflow is life & breath!!]

We will have $340M revenue and cash of $50M (?) of cash flow ($1M free cashflow PER WEEK) so I think we're doing okay.
When it comes to promoting your company, everybody wants you to fall in line and offend nobody. That's just the wrong idea. To be different you have to be polarizing. Market analysts asked "when you go public, will you stop being so offensive?" Hah!!!!! So I found an offensive ad agency and forced them to make me an ad with a buxom brunette with Godaddy.com written across her chest. Their ads can be found here. We have been promoting our business with "GoDaddyesque ads" - which is now defined as: "somewhat tasteless and slightly inappropriate." The biggest mistake you can make is to please everyone - particularly investment analysts. It's much better to alienate 10% of your audience and have the other 90% pay attention.

[There have been multiple studies in the automotive industry that seem to show the same thing. Cars that polarized their audience into love/hate like the Beetle, the Mini, and other memorable cars, performed better than the average cars that people couldn't tell apart from each other. The summary lesson was: build interesting vehicles that people will either love or hate, don't try to please everybody.]

(graphic courtesy of this article from the Creating Passionate Users blog)

we let podcasters create their own ads for us - they're weird and crazy and even a bit "off" but they're specific to their audiences so in that way, they were perfect each and every time.
FINAL MESSAGE: Don't forget the fundamentals and be VERY careful who you listen to.

[Dan Pena uses the phrase - "Don't listen to the morons" where "moron" is defined as anybody who hasn't done what you're trying to do - which is most people. I tend to agree with Pena on that point so I appreciated Parson's talk and thought it was the most grounded back-to-basics talk of the day. Thanks Bob!]

Best business movie of the year: Kinky Boots

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 08:04:27 -0700

This is without a doubt the best business movie of the year for its content. And it is probably one of my favourite movies of the year for its film quality as well. This movie is BRILLIANT.

It is the true story of a men's brogue shoe factory in Northamptonshire, England that in order to survive, stopped making men's brogues, the market for which had been swamped by cheap Eastern European knock-offs, and found their "niche market" - kinky boots for drag queens and transvestites.

It is: a story of commtment; advice on how to be open and flexible to changes in your business environment; a treatise on finding opportunities in the strangest of places; a tale about how to be true to oneself; a lesson on respecting others even if they are different than you; and finally a lesson on leadership.

The other thing that I love about this movie is that it has a strong story, a lot of heart, it used fantastic venues (a one hundred year old factory), and it employed a bunch of the shoe factory employees in the movie. The writing was great, the scenes that were awkward and tense were intentionally written that way and it was not played up for laughs. There are a lot of moments in the film that you really want to end because they're uncomfortable. But that's the magic. Those uncomfortable moments are there in life!

Go rent this movie. And if you are a business school leader, show this to your class. Here are some great lessons that I found. Which ones will you find?

A company is a collection of individuals who have committed their time and energy to the enterprise. Respect them and respect their commitment. Show them your loyalty - they deserve it.
If disaster strikes and you have to lay people off, don't make excuses. Do it quickly and cleanly. It will suck and that's life.
Before you lay them off though, ask them for their ideas. They are close to the work. They will surprise you and may even save the company.
Look at your business environment for big changes. When they come, change your business, change your product, change your service. Adapt or die.
Look for new opportunities every where you go. Do this by finding somebody who is in pain from an unfulfilled need. Don't try to create a market - find one that is underserved or not at all served.
If you and your life partner don't want the same things, you'll never really reconcile it. You're better to move on and live out your lives apart.
Also, if your life partner can't support your 100% commitment to your business, your partnership will fail. It's hard enough to run a business. It's impossible to do it when your partner isn't there to support you, or worse, is acting against your effort.
Work with your customer to build rapid prototypes and get rapid feedback. If they tell you it's wrong, then go back and do it again.
Forget your old business so that you can learn your new business. The old assumptions and beliefs and goals are probably not true. (In this case, the factory went from selling "life-long comfort" to selling "Two and a half feet of tubular delicious SEX!")
You can push your people hard but only if they know that it's for them and not for you.
Sometimes the tide of attitude can shift away from you or towards you on the suggestion of just one person in your team who holds a lot of sway. Earn that person's respect and you have earned the respect of the group.
Aim high. Choose big hairy scary goals that are way beyond your comfort zone. (I disagree with the "S.M.A.R.T." goals approach in life.)
You can run from your childhood but you can't hide. You don't need to "deal with it" all first, unless it's getting in the way of your life. In which case, go figure it out and then get on with things.
Life, relationships, business, sex, gender, psychology - they're all messy and uncomfortable. And that's the way they're supposed to be.
Find something you want to do. Pursue it with all your heart. And share that adventure with people you care about.

Items to Avoid Aboard a Flight: Dell, Apple Laptops and...Penis Pumps

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 19:08:37 -0700

Zoli continues his brilliant writing by discussing exploding batteries, penis pumps, and why people should avoid them anyway since Small is the new Big.

Hiliarious writing Zoli.

Microsoft UK Values video with Brent Davis from The Office

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 08:48:30 -0700

This values video from Microsoft UK is getting lots of web-juju and deservedly so. It's hilarious even if you don't like "The Office."

Telus New Ventures 2006 updates

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 16:02:28 -0700

This was a fun week. I'm involved in the Telus New Ventures program which is a business plan competition sponsored by Telus each year. Up to 60 teams of entrepreneurs submit business plans and go through rounds of mentoring and judging, mentoring and judging, until one plan is chosen as the winner of $60,000 of cash and in-kind donations.

So I attended as a panel mentor on Wednesday July 26th which meant sitting in a room and watching five different companies present their "pitch" and then offering suggestions for improvement. The quality as always was variable. Some of the contestants were still missing the basics such as:

who is in pain?
how big is this market?
how fast is it growing?
who is your team and what makes you think you can pull it off?
what is your competitive analysis?
what is your go to market plan?
what is your financial plan?
what will you do with the capital raised?
what does your investor get in return

Obviously there is work to be done on just getting people to get through the competition with the basic checklist questions answered. But there was a lot of passion in those rooms!

And on Thursday July 27th, I had the pleasure of attending the Ernst & Young Bootcamp which was a session with Joe Timlin from Growthworks, Sean Wise from Wise Mentor Capital, and Lonny McLean of Layer7 Technologies.

I have seen a LOT of financing presentations. I started attending them back around 1999-2000. I would have to say that this was probably one of the simplest, clearest, and most frank venture finance presentations I have ever seen. It was dense, it was informative, it was funny, it was sad, it was personal, and despite the failed air-conditioning, everybody stuck it out because the material was just so damned good.

Sean and Lonny, thank you for sharing your horror stories alongside your successes. Unfortunately I didn't catch Joe's talk since I arrived at the session late.

I wish I had seen this presentation YEARS ago. It would have been a great shortcut in my learning.

IBM announces...wait for it.....Lotus Notes for Linux. Next up: VMS will be recompiled for Vista. And Visicalc will be released for Vista. Hold on folks - the universe may be folding in on itself in one of those weird mobius strips.

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 20:29:30 -0700

My last post was on IBM jumping into lightweight apps and wikis. This news story from CNN covers how IBM is releasing Lotus Notes for Linux. Who's using Lotus Notes anymore? Just the poor suckers who bought in and kept it as the world's most expensive Exchange replacement? Bizarre.

Thank you God for letting the World Cup end

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 22:17:59 -0700

I am happy to see that Vancouver has come alive in a competitive frenzy to enjoy soccer. But thankfully it's over. I have had to listen to honking horns of Italian fans for almost 12 hours now today as they drive up and down Denman Street hanging out of their cars and whooping and screaming and honking. Back to the binners, ambulances, and drunken tourists. It will be so quiet!

Today sponsored by Sola Sistim from the album "Music Feeds The Soul 6 - Sunday Morning" by Underworld

Ham Sandwich 2.0

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 20:56:36 -0700

This is brilliant. From the people over at Innovation Creators.

Includes the ever popular reflection at the bottom too!

Spam Poetry = "SPOETRY"

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 09:36:37 -0700

My friend Ross Waring coined a new word today. I was reading him some of the excellent poetry that I received in my spam and he said, "Spam Poetry? You mean SPOETRY?"

I had to immediately post that to the world just in case he was the first to coin it.

For your reading pleasure below, I have attached some fine spoetry that I received this morning:

It's a bit like listening to a language CD-ROM or an idiot savant artificial intelligence robot:

Did those students miss eating last winter?.
Is the scientist missing praying?.
I didn't love dancing for two hours..
Some store clerks like working in London..
Doesn't Sarah remember shouting slowly?.
Cathy hasn't practiced reading yet..
The politicians dislike playing all day long..
Doesn't Suzanne like skiing among the trees?.
The guards don't often love reading..
Joseph doesn't dislike praying carelessly..
That farmer is not missing reading..

In case anybody is interested, the reason for including spoetry in the spam is so that it will trick the spam filters that use statistical analysis to determine by word count whether or not spam is spam. Just part of the ongoing adaptation and mutation of the spam arms race.

You've got to love humans for their persistence and tenacity in creating arms races on all fronts: (weapons, viruses, spam, corporate battles)

Vijay, The World's Most Desperate Venture Capitalist funds a garage-based startup

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 19 May 2006 09:18:29 -0700

Okay, this is so true it's getting painful. I am hearing all sorts of crazy valuations for web 2.0 type startups that are pretty silly.

Thanks to Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert for this excellent series. Here is the most recent one in the set:

Scott Adam's Dilbert does it again: Vijay the world's most desperate venture capitalist funds a floating city

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 08:36:42 -0700

I LOVE this series. And it always kills me when Dogbert wags. Dilbert can be found here.

Best movie trailers of the year: Happy Feet

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 09:21:21 -0700

I hope the movie is half as funny as the trailers. Watch both Trailer 1 and Trailer 2. Brilliant.

Border wars: Plumbers union fights green building because the waterless no-flush urinals will "spread disease". Um, don't you mean they will spread "less work for plumbers?"

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 13:23:14 -0700

I'm intrigued by stories such as this one in the ABC News about the plumbers union in Philadelphia who claim that no-flush green urinals are a health threat. I wonder if the union sees them more as a health threat to the UNION DUES than to the USERS.

Does anybody have any information on negative health effects of waterless urinals??

Mark Morford strikes again: More communication and more technology equals more work equals more stress equals less sleep

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:02:08 -0800

Mark Morford strikes again. I have been having this very conversation with everybody I know. It seems that my entire circle of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances is in the midst of this overwhelming busy-ness right now. I have been questioning the value and the lack of stillness myself and then Mark, as usual, did it more justice than my half-formed thoughts could have:

Full reprint below but the source is here.

No one is getting enough sleep.

No one is getting enough sleep because everyone is so damned stressed.

Everyone is so damned stressed because everyone has way, way too much to do and far too little time in which to do it.

Everyone has way too much to do and far too little time in which to do it because modern technology has made us a thousandfold more accessible and more wired up and more media drenched and able to communicate in 157 different instant digitized ways, has given us entree to so much astounding information at so much faster and more unbearable rates that it has, in effect, compressed time into sweaty slippery little knots we are forever trying to untie as quickly as we possibly can even though we can't.

Slathered all over this is the fact that the Internet is a gorgeous wanton free-for-all of deliciously annoying distraction, porn and Instant Messenger and iTunes, eBay and Amazon and roughly one million blogs, RSS feeds and multimedia and movie trailers and the great time-sucking killer app of the 20th century, e-mail, and did I mention the porn and the music?

It's enough, verily, to give normally sane and balanced and disciplined people a serious case of attention deficit disorder, the inability to focus for any length of time on any one project at hand without the mind and the eye and the desire immediately jumping away to the umpteen other activities and ideas and fun bits your brain felt it was ignoring by trying to focus on one measly paltry thing.

Is this happening to you? Are you not multitasking right now, calculating your to-do lists, answering your cell, text messaging your sister, reading this column, burning a new CD, thinking about sex, programming your Bluetooth, ordering some Astroglide online, processing 50 items at once? No? Something is wrong with you.

In fact, I have no idea how I am getting through this column right now. It has taken me roughly 19 hours to complete the handful of paragraphs above because I keep checking e-mail and configuring my iTunes playlists and responding to my girlfriend's IM messages and reading my colleague David Lazarus' trilogy of columns on the mad increase in sleep disorders and sleeping-pill intake in America.

And the phenomenon is, as you might expect, disturbing and telling and just a little sad, but I didn't have all that much time to dwell on it because I also felt compelled to watch nine new movie trailers on Apple.com ("Mission: Impossible III" looks just god-awful and someone really should slap Tom Cruise) and check the status of two eBay bids and read up on a new Aneros sex toy over at Blowfish.com and satiate a nagging question I had about a quote from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and read up on BushCo's nefarious plans to bomb the crap out of Iran, and did you know the newly redesigned Audi TT is coming out in April?

This is why God invented coffee. Coffee is our national narcotic. Caffeine is time's Viagra. It is no coincidence that the rise of the godlike Starbucks Corp. coincided almost exactly with the rise of the Internet and the cell-phone explosion and the dot-com boom -- that is, with the insane rise in instant communication and multitasking. Caffeine helps up keep up with the mad onslaught, even as it destroys our ability to calm the hell down and get some deep rest.

Did you know caffeine has a half-life in the body of six hours? That if you drink a big cup around noon, half of its 80-100 milligrams of nefarious caffeine are still bouncing through your bloodstream by dinnertime, and by midnight you've still got a happy glob of the stuff slapping at your exhausted brain stem like an angry wife slaps her ex-husband? Do you wonder why we're taking more and more sleeping pills and screwing with the body's natural rhythms and entering a vicious cycle of artificially jacking up/calming down to the point of, well, exhaustion?

Reminds me of Joshua Foer's terrific piece over at Slate from May 2005 about his experience taking the prescrip amphetamine Adderall (normally prescribed for ADHD), just to see what it would do to him, just to see if he could, in fact, focus better and get more work done and imitate, to some pale degree, Jack Kerouac, who allegedly wrote "On the Road" in one insane brilliant nonstop stream-of-consciousness binge while jacked on so much Adderall-like amphetamines it would've choked a llama. The upshot: Except for the weird side effects and the numbing comedown and the various health hazards, Adderall worked, almost too well.

Of course, digging out the link to Foer's piece also enticed me to read Slate's review of alarm clocks, which also led to Will Saletan's thick science-over-morality piece on South Dakota's hideous new abortion law, which in turn somehow pointed to a mention of the New York Times story about the new rash of "sleep-driving," about all the zombie-like people who are now getting into their cars after taking the sleep drug Ambien, which led me to the original NYT Ambien piece on the subject, which in turn flicked me over to the NYT Book Review, where I drifted in a literary haze until the sun shifted in the sky and the morning turned to afternoon and I realized I really needed to get back to work because the paragraph you just read took me about one hour and 13 minutes to complete. See?

Adderall sounds perfect. Adderall is exactly what I need. I could write five columns in two days! I could get ahead and forget my rolling deadlines, for once! I could start my novel, make more progress on my essay collection, learn podcasting in Garageband, finally read that 400-page book on digital photography, get all the way through "From Dawn To Decadence" and still have time to learn about Japanese sake prefectures!

Is this our national affliction? Our collective destiny? A nation of willful ADD sufferers, wired up and jittery and increasing unfocused even as we have more and more crap demanding our attention and even as we are increasingly unable to pause the chaos and sink into a moment and find some peace and actually feel the world around us?

Because I have news: We have been misled. It is one massive lie, a great myth of modern American culture that the more you think, the more you multitask, the more you process and analyze and ponder and the more stuff whirling around your brain at any given moment, the smarter and more connected you are. It is, in short, a total crock.

We equate deranged, caffeinated busyness with smarts, with success, when in fact the exact opposite is true. Just ask the yogis, the gurus, the healers of the past 5,000 years: It is actually when you calm the mind, clear things out, breathe deep and sleep deeper and clean out the toxins and the caffeine and the Ambien, that's when real wisdom, real intuition comes your way. The rest is just, well, noise. Happy delicious annoying caffeinated sexy fun infuriating obnoxious unstoppable noise, but still noise.

But not to worry. They'll soon develop a pill to block that, too.

Scott Adams strikes again - Dilbert on software requirements gathering

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 07:32:13 -0800

During my time as a computer consultant, working with clients to clarify their software goals (or their website development goals for that matter), I had this conversation more often than I care to remember. This is very funny (or painful) to any of us who have ever worked in the field.

Humour: Yahoo now buying companies before they are founded...to beat the rush

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 04:41:38 -0800

In a stroke of brilliance, Yahoo is now buying companies before they are even founded. This definitely wins best parody of the month. Or is it even a parody?

Scott Adam's "Dilbert" examines venture capital

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 06:41:14 -0800

The last time I remember Scott Adams doing VC comics was in the boom. This must mean we're there again.

Dilbert comics can be found here.

My very own "long tail" searches

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 07:35:51 -0800

I swear I'm not making this up.

The long tail is all the rage these days. (See chart).

(courtesy of The Long Tail Blog)

These are some of the long-tail searches that people used on various search engines to get to my site

- bob the builder porn
- where can I find Dilbert's ultimate house? [I love these natural language queries. Do these people have no idea how search engines work? Or are they just hoping that Google is really the Star Trek ship computer?]
- disposable scrubber
- some photos for hairy females armpit
- universe collapse 80-100 billion years
- gold nanospheres Singapore
- how to test baby in womb for familial dysautonomia

My weekly report to the home planet just keeps getting better and better.

Advertising: "The big Ad" from Carlton Draught Beer in Australia. This is brilliantly funny.

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 07:10:02 -0800

Thanks to John Zagula for his post about The Big Ad. I like John's comments too. Lots of questions, few answers. And funny in any case.

Business Idea: Mark Morford's "Porncasting" is the funniest and best business idea I have heard for quite a while

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 06:00:00 -0700

Podcast + video iPod = Porncast. BRILLIANT.

Mark Morford strikes again with a brilliant and very likely insanely lucrative idea. Apple definitely won't take it on which means that somebody somewhere should.

Some choice quotes:

I am the first. At least, I am the first I know of to think of this idea at this very moment in time in this exact space which you are right now reading, given how I'm quite sure the very minute Apple announced their sexy delicious new video-capable iPod roughly five million people and most of them men simultaneously thought of it too.

No matter. I shall henceforth argue that I was one of the first to think of turning my genius iPod porn idea into an instant company, writing up a business plan and hiring a programmer and a team of lawyers and investing a wad of someone else's VC cash into renting out a stack of servers and outsourcing my tech support from Bangalore, India, because, oh my God, the idea is just right there, ripe and waiting and I could sure use the millions of dollars I would surely make in one single month.

IPod porn. The time has come. The idea is brilliantly, geniusly simple. [...] Porn is the answer. Porn will make it all happen. I only want my $50 mil finder's fee.

[...]

I know it will work. The precedents are all in place. You already know how sex and porn drove much of the innovation and evolution of the Internet itself, yes? The porn industry, more than Napster and more than online gaming and more than Amazon and more than AOL's gay NASCAR fan chat rooms, made the Internet what you lust after today.

[...]

Oh, do not mention screen size. Do not dare suggest men will balk at watching hot sex on such a tiny display. It has been proven over five million years of intensive study that men can become aroused at sexual images the size of a speck of dust from 50 feet away. You know it's true.

Men can produce lust for blurry black-and-white postage-stamp photos of seminaked females taken in 1966. Men can become aroused looking at a nipple-shaped amoeba through a microscope. Hell, we get turned on by cool hubcaps. Trust me when I say the iPod's screen will be more than sufficient. As for women, well, what the iPod screen lacks in scale, it makes up for in sensual, tactile design. After all, it's not size, it's how you use it. Right? Right?

So why am I telling you all this? Why share my Genius Idea with the world? Well, because I can't do it. I have not the means. What's more, despite my rampant and ongoing pro-sex attitude, I am not exactly eager to yoke my soul to the greasy lowbrow porn machine. What will my parents think? Who will save the children? What happens when I run for political office? Plus, I'm way too busy procrastinating on writing a novel.

So then, I am offering to give my Genius Idea away, to you, to anyone who wants it, as a boon to the world, as an offering to the pro-sex gods (I will, however, accept any sort of seven-figure finder's fee when you become a millionaire from my idea).

Porncasting is now. Porncasting is a must. After all, someone has to counter the scary prospect of all those video iPod religious sermons. Shudder.

HUMOUR: 30 minute power outage causes chaos in Hollywood juice shops and Starbucks. If you're tired of Katrina and kate, read this.

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 15:00:15 -0700

Here is a very funny letter that Rick Segal posted to his blog about the 26 minute power outage that was "our tsunami" in trendy L.A.