So I took delivery of my new 335i sedan today, and “unbelievable” is the best way to describe this vehicle. The machine is the first that I’ve ever driven that has more power than I’ll use on a regular basis.

In my 325i I was always asking for power that simply wasn’t there — usually when passing. With this car I feel completely empowered; it’s as if it will do anything I ask of it, and I’ve yet to even push the vehicle (no opportunity + break-in period). I just couldn’t be happier.

Images via Flickr

Given my new watch I have been checking the time a lot lately (it’s an obsession). Normally I go to time.gov, but I grew tired of doing that and decided to make my own resource for doing this (much like my /ip page for checking my outgoing IP address). I’ve been wanting to mess with Ajax anyway, so I figured this was a good opportunity.

Since my main server for this site synchronizes via NTP it’s quite accurate, so I decided to employ a bit of Ajax to create a dynamically updating time display that uses my server as the source. I started with Justin’s nifty template, simplified it a bit, made it start upon page load instead of through a button, and used some CSS to format it — pretty simple stuff really.

The result is precisely what I was looking for:

1. A very accurate time display coming from my own site
2. Doesn’t require Java (yuk)
3. Allows you to watch the seconds tick by in real time (great for setting watches)

I love building things — no matter how simple.

dmiessler.com/time

So I made it to the front page of reddit today and my new server didn’t even blink. This brings me great joy.

From this NY Times article:

“Very rarely will an African-American woman work for an African-American boss,” said Pat Cascio, the owner of Morningside Nannies in Houston and the president of the International Nanny Association.

Many of the African-American nannies who make up 40 percent of her work force fear that people of their own color will be “uppity and demanding,” said Ms. Cascio, who is white. After interviews, she said, those nannies “will call us and say, ‘Why didn’t you tell me’ ” the family is black?

It’s interesting that those middle class families that are complaining about unfair treatment don’t realize that they’re being judged according to often accurate stereotypes, such as the one black nanny being worried about black neighborhoods being more dangerous. So while it may not be true of them, it is natural for humans to make associations that effect self-defense. This doesn’t make it pleasant, but they shouldn’t be surprised.

I’ve seen this black vs. black prejudice in other places as well — namely in the restaurant and taxi businesses. It’s really just simple human nature: both of these industries rely on tips, and if you ask 100 black waiters or 100 black taxi drivers if they prefer black or non-black patrons they’re likely to mostly prefer non-blacks. Why? Those I’ve asked say that blacks tend not to tip much, if at all.

Don’t be surprised about human behavior — look for the incentives.

Nothing is worse for systems like Digg and Reddit than repetitive, mediocre content. These networks are designed to magnify the efficiency of the Internet by taking excellent content — regardless of source — and promoting it through impartial democracy.

Ultimately, the goal is to minimize the time it takes someone to get up to speed on the most original/interesting content within a given area of focus, be it technology, politics, or whatever. When done correctly, the concept is quite beautiful.

Spamming vs. Contributing

The system breaks down horribly, however, when these communities fail to understand the difference between submitting original content and blogspamming. Many are confused about what blogspamming actually is: it’s not posting a link to something on your own blog or website (if it’s decent and original, that’s called “contributing”). Blogspamming is actually very specific (I had the Digg staff spell it out for me) — here are the requirements:

1. Find interesting content somewhere on the Internet
2. Post that content on your own website
3. Post the link to your website rather than the original source

This is blogspamming, and it’s every bit as evil as people make it out to be. But it should not be confused with people posting their own original content. That practice, i.e. sharing ideas, is what makes the Internet so wonderful.

The Idea Bazaar

When it comes to sharing ideas, the Internet should be viewed much like a traditional, open marketplace — where people bring the artwork, pottery, clothing, woodwork, etc. for public review. It’s like open-mic night in front of billions of people.

Hello, everyone. Here’s a short story I just finished. I hope you like it…

This is what the Internet is about, and I think Digg, Reddit, and their successors should be more open to this philosophy. We shouldn’t penalize people for offering their own original content to the world just because they submitted it themselves. It’s far more genuine to do that, after all, than to artificially manufacture a third-party submission (which so many people do).

Remember that writers submit their work to publishers; they don’t wait for it to be found. Artisans have shows and invite lots of people. Academics submit to their respective journals. In short, submitting original content for peer review is an absolute must in any system that values intellectual progress.

Communities that rely on a constant flow of quality content need to adopt a mantra of judging offerings based on only two things: originality and merit. Any would-be resource that fails to grasp this concept (or later forgets it) is doing its users a disservice by discouraging would-be contributors from participating.:

Here’s another old post of mine from 1997:

The more questions you have floating around in your mind at any given time, the more answers you can glean from day to day experiences. You can see it like this: knowledge and truth are jumping out of every experience, yet unless you have the appropriate question or curiosity associated with that body of answers, you will not learn anything.

So basically, you need two things to be able to expand your mind. You need to have the questions and/or curiosity, and you need to have experiences that have the potential to be learned from. As one or both go down, you become limited. As one or both go up, you grow.

Nothing deep really, but I was only 23.

Susan bought me my watch today. We walked into Tourneau (57th Ave, NYC) to check out some watches and we spent most of our time looking at Seiko, Rado, and Tag pieces. I had been like a week ago and knew that they didn’t have my watch there, so we didn’t rush up to where the Rolex pieces were. Eventually we made our way up there, though, and sure enough — they had one.

It was quite amazing that a place with this sort of visibility would just happen to have my exact watch in stock when they didn’t just a few days earlier (and precisely on the day that Susan came with me no less). Naturally I was freaking out (but in a very controlled fashion that only Susan could see) and she simply asked me, “Do you want it?” I simply replied, “Yeah, I do.”, and around 20 minutes later I walked out with it. It’s been close to 15 years that I’ve wanted this watch and now it’s mine.

So this has been quite a trip: Susan got her ring on Thanksgiving, and I got my Rolex on Christmas Eve. The project went really well, and I go home to a new apartment and a new car. It’s a good feeling that I have right now.

[Edit: Here's my first post concerning this watch, transcribed from dead-tree format when I put this site up in 1999]

First of all, just to clarify, sushi isn’t raw fish. In fact, all it has to include is rice; from there it can have a number of different toppings (including vegetables, cooked or uncooked meat, etc.) Sashimi is the delicacy consisting of various raw seafoods. As it turns out, this means that my first sushi experience wasn’t actually my first, as I’ve had sushi many times in Korean restaurants. It was, however, my first sashimi (raw seafood) experience, and it was quite the way to get started.

So, my buddy took me to Sushi Sennin in Manhattan, which turns out to be the fourth best sushi restaurant in the world, and the best in New York. I had many foods that were firsts for me, including kobe beef, octopus, eel, caviar (beluga), and what I believed to be wasabi.

In what turned out to be yet another bit of interesting trivia, very few people in the world have ever had wasabi. The vast majority (if not all) restaurants in both the United States and Japan serve fake wasabi to those that order it. This is even true in the very best restaurants such as the one that I was in. The only way to get real wasabi to 1) be in a very high class sushi place, and 2) ask for “fresh wasabi”. If you haven’t satisfied those two requirements you’ve likely never had wasabi at all.

Anyway, we ordered two chef specials that included around a dozen pieces of sashimi, octopus, ginger slices, a couple of sushi rolls, a kobe beef appetizer, and a bottle of excellent saki. My buddy is doing quite well and picked up the bill for right under $600. It was a great way to get try sushi sashimi for the first time. Very cool indeed.

Those of you who visit the site often know that I can be a bit pedantic at times, and one’s use of English is one area that brings this out in me. Below is the simplest guide I can put together to help those that I think will listen.

I’m going to send it to friends when I see them commit the errors. I used to not do so for fear of offending them, but upon re-thinking it I think it’s more important to keep them from embarrassing themselves.

• Its vs. It’s If you can substitute the words “it is”, or “it has”, you need to use it’s, otherwise use its.
• There vs. Their vs. They’re Their is for possession only. They’re is a contraction for “they are”. All other places require there.