Living and dying by the billable hour. I tweeted this morning that I "was feeling very 'work, death and taxes,'" and that I needed "to get away from earning a living by the hour." That's pretty heavy for 140 characters, I guess. Still getting the hang of the whole Twitter vibe... I'm a blessed freelance nerd, for sure, with great clients and lots of work, but I'm getting antsy to move beyond living and dying by the billable hour. There is little different between freelance billable income and a fixed salary as far as the 'work, death and taxes' state of mind, but freelancing poses risks that a salary doesn't. I'm learning that living with risks as a freelancer prompts a guy to take even more risks. That has to be a good thing.
Best post title of the day. I guffawed aloud (sincerely) when I read this Wired post title, "Happy Birthday, Compact Disc. Now Go Away." I'll never forget my first CD player purchase in 1985. It was SEVERAL hundred dollars and I was really poor back then, so it was a big deal. My first three CDs were Sting's The Dream of the Blue Turtles, Fixx's Reach the Beach, and Dan Fogelberg's Souvenirs. It was an exciting time, in spite of the fact you probably think my first CD purchases were seriously lame.
Colonoscopy Cool. This is for a buddy of mine who tweeted about his Negative Colonoscopy results today, that it made him think "of the Seinfeld episode where George gets his results (negative) and screams 'Negative! Why God?!?!'" Whenever the topic of "colonoscopy" comes up, I like to re-read Mark Cuban's narrative of his first colonscopy. I always thought Cuban was a cool dude, but the fact that a gazillionaire could talk so intimately about his colonoscopy puts Cuban in my Super Cool Dude short list.
Not the world we were born into. Speaking of Super Cool Dude Mark Cuban, he posted an uncharacteristic short post recently, making an excellent point that the world we live in is not the world we were born into. "Compare the technology, political, social world we live in today, and you realize quickly. None of us are born in to the world we live in....."
Not that anyone is counting CS-to-BE.NET migrations. Seems there's a Baby Ruth in the pool somewhere, as this Everyman Link records two Community Server to BlogEngine.NET migrations, Adron Hall and Seth Webster post up beyond the Kuwaiti 3-point line.
Smashing Magazine Subscription Count Sidebar. I was going to mention the last point of Smashing Magazine's post on CSS Optimization, that is, compressing CSS, one of the studly performance points in BlogEngine.NET. Then I noticed the Smashing Magazine subscriber count: 91492. Wow! No, wait. That might seem like a good thing, but Smashing Magazine doesn't know all of their subscribers by name like I do.
The most remarkable Michael Phelps number: 12000. I only know what's happening in the Olympics by what's on the Yahoo News front page, but this number of Michael Phelps' amazing physical uniqueness is astounding: 12000, as in calories. The guy consumes 12000 calories a day! The average person his age consumes around 2000. What really struck me is that Phelps burns over 3000 calories during a normal workout. I spend an hour or more on the Nordic Track almost every day; I'm pouring sweat by the end of the workout and burn slightly over 400 calories. Phelps swims 5 hours a day, or seven miles, and burns 3000 calories per workout. Dang!