Well, hindsight is 20/20. I debated filing a complaint with ICANN, but I’ve got enough headaches already. In retrospect, the story is somewhat amusing. I hope this post helps at least one other person.

Here’s the story: it’s July 5th and I’m at a pool party with a bunch of people. Now I own a BUNCH of domains - not quite a ton - but a bunch. I’m in the pool with a guy who owns 5x more than me. He’s got more on his plate than he can handle. He says something to the effect of, “hey, I noticed there are a lot of people creating FaceBook profiles for their dogs. We should create a FaceBook.com for dogs.”

“Awesome idea!” I said. Admittedly, I don’t know much about FaceBook, but I do live with a bunch of dogs.

I’m up bright and early the next day and I start looking at domain names (yes, before doing any other research….) and I’m SEARCHING THE DOMAINS THROUGH GODADDY.COM domain search. I have hosting accounts with GoDaddy, 1and1, DigitalCityHosting, ENOM and DomainWong. And Yahoo (I always forget that one).

Anyway, I search “PawBook.com” through GoDaddy and it says it’s available. I mulled it over for about 30 seconds and decided to register it with my 1and1 account as I felt more comfortable installing ELGG into 1and1 than GoDaddy. I log into my 1and1 account, search the domain (and it’s available) and go through the registration process SUCCESSFULLY.

I then went on a jog contemplating how to go about setting up PawBook.com. I came back from a nice run and got all the normal emails about my new domain and the charges. I went to my control panel and it said it was setting it up.

To make a long story short - it got registered PRIVATELY (domains by proxy) via GoDaddy minutes before I SUCCESSFULLY registered it at 1and1.

Of course, after a little more due diligence, I found www.fuzzster.com (which I don’t like) and www.myDogSpace.com (which I do like) which are basically the same idea. In the long run, I would’ve abandoned the project anyway, but it still speaks volumes about GoDaddy. Needless to say, I’m phasing out my GoDaddy hosting and domains.

WiseMan Say, “Don’t GoDaddy.”

So I’m standing in line buying an enormous popup canopy thing the other day at Target and there is a father-son duo right ahead of me. The dad looks to be early forties. The son - 10ish. They are clean cut, well groomed, well dressed and are buying what appear to be odds and ends (tanning lotion, juice packets and gasoline additive that proclaims “better mileage” on it).

Anyway, they are engaged in a discussion on “the importance of fractions” as it relates to an impending school assignment.

The son asks, “why do I need to learn about fractions anyway? I mean why are they important?”

The father looks puzzled for a second and then responds, “Ah, they’re not really important. It’s just one of those things you have to learn for school.”

“That’s what I figured. It seems like that’s the way it is with everything at school.” The son responds.

The dad flips the gasoline additive a couple times catching it after it loops in a nice, slow ark.

As a father, I’m keenly interested in hearing people answer exactly these types of questions. My mind raced. How would I answer such a question? Fractions are HUGELY important – how can you say they’re not? Are you crazy? I felt like squeezing the goo out of the father’s eyes.

FRACTIONS ARE IMPORTANT FOR KIDS

I first thought of a recent gas tank dilemma: I checked a rental car out with 5/8 of a tank. When I was hotfooting it back to Enterprise Rent a car, I was at a quarter tank. Of course, ¼ is actually 2/8 so some basic math meant that I needed to insert 3/8 of a tank of gas. I guestimated the tank of my rented Ford Escape to be about 12 gallons (of course, I was wrong – by a lot – it is 16.5). I then did some ugly math in my head. If the gas tank were 8 gallons then my 3/8 problem would be easy, it would simply be 3 gallons, but assuming it is twelve means that it is actually 1.5 times bigger. So I broke it up into 1×3 (3 gallons) plus half of 3 (1.5 gallons) and rounded up to put in a little less than 5 gallons. (I always try to stop on an even dollar amount.) I’ll stop here and ignore gas prices, etc… But this is an example of a real world problem – with very real implications (money, time and a natural resource). Also, I would’ve explained my kludgy thought process to my son too. I didn’t mentally think of multiplying 3/8 x 12 as I didn’t want a “decimal” result. I thought of the problem in the context of fractions.

(3/8 x 8 = 3) + ½(3/8 x 8 = 3) = 4.5

Not an elegant thought process, but that’s the way my mind breaks up the problem.

Anyway, back to fractions. Gas tanks are obvious and boring when you are ten. Another way the importance of fractions could be explained could be in terms of music. Ten year olds can appreciate music. Music is full of fractions. Whole notes, half notes, quarter notes. Keeping time. I don’t claim to be a music guy, but even sharps are essentially a half step increment between notes. You could get a guitar and metronome and do some really cool explanations of how music is all about fractions. It might even help the child THINK differently about approaching problems. Then, of course, I longed to go buy an expensive guitar and metronome…… I digress.

It’s no secret that kids learn better if they can think in terms of the practical application of a concept. Luckily, I was beaten to death with explanations throughout my childhood. Even today, I receive lengthy discourses by my father and brother on “how things work” and I, in turn, torture those who will listen to me in the same fashion.

Ideas to make Fractions Fun for your kids

FOOD. Kids love food. They eat it every day…….if they are lucky. You could go to a pizza restaurant to explain fractions in terms of slices of pizza – or cake or pie.

SPORTS. Football is a great game of fractions. The field is 100 units long. If a team starts from their 20 yard line, they’ve got 4/5 of the field to go for a touchdown. If they pick up 5 yards on 1st and 10, they picked up half of the yardage required for a first down.

BATHTUB. Express the level of water in terms of fractions. “Oooh, the bathtub looks to be about five eighths full. Let’s put a little more in so that it reaches three quarters.”

TOOLS. Kids love tools. They lose them. Scatter them about. Torture animals with them. Tools are an integral part of a kid’s life. Grab a set of wrenches (not metric) and explain the differences: “See how nine-sixteenths is actually a little bigger than half inch?”

RULERS: Measure things. Kids love to quantify things. Measure the width of their foot explaining the incremental marks. Then measure something else. Compare the two.

If anyone else has a good idea, please share it in the comments or email me and I’ll attribute you if you desire.

Mexifornian Wise Man Says, “Fractions are MUY Importante!”

Ebay shares are down 15% today which I think is indicative of a steady decline in the overall Ebay experience.

The market is smart: analysts at Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs cut eBay to “Neutral” from “Buy,” while Lehman and Jefferies both lowered their price target.

Why eBay is Falling Apart at the Seams…

The internet has changed. In the late 90’s and early 00’s, the internet was still relatively new and there was a large degree of novelty. It’s good to understand the two demographics that sell on eBay: (1) legitimate businesses looking for a new avenue of sales, and (2) people attempting to sell their own out-of-favor items.

Ebay hasn’t managed either category well.

The business aspect of selling on eBay has simply become more expensive. Plus, as it’s grown, it is harder and harder to reach the exact right demographic. The web is moving toward smaller and smaller niche markets. Ebay also has trouble resolving conflicts. By now, most serious users have had a bad transaction and it has soured them on the experience somewhat.

As for the large number of people who used it to clear out their garage: they still use it, but they’re aware of other, cheaper alternatives as well - such as Craigslist. Early on, People flocked to eBay just to prove they “got it” and used it in place of traditional avenues - garage sales, donations and trash dumps…

Simply put, eBay is failing to respond to the changing face of the internet.

Ebay is Not Creatively managing their Business.

Okay, so you’re in charge of eBay - what do you do? Revenue is decreasing, you’re getting tons of bad press and the overall experience is suffering. The current answer: “Let’s raise prices!”

Here’s a quote from the stock’s message board:

I am a seller who has pulled back 75% of our sales and have told our account rep it would remain that way until the changed back. MANY SELLERS have pulled back or closed shop all together. Still time to short this as IT WILL go to $20 or less in my opinion.

Go to eBay and click on COMMUNITY and then NEWS. The go to JULY 10th and click on the Line “A Message from Lorrie Norrington: Updates on Feedback”

Two QUOTES from that News Release: (1) When we get something wrong, we want to make it right & (2) Finally, we’re working to resolve other important issues that eBay sellers have raised over the past several months.

Wise Man Say, “Losing customers not good way to make money.”

This is one of the most stylish videos I’ve ever seen. I loved this when I saw it - once - about 15 years ago. Thanks to someone who emailed me (sorry, forgot your name!) I’ve found it again thanks to the post on Grazin in the Grass.

VBA is a hammer. It’s crude, but wonderfully efficient at getting things done. I don’t do a lot of “dirty work” anymore, but part of working at a small company is rolling up your sleeves every once in awhile.

The situation at hand: we have 20,000 XML files that need to have information that is currently contained in an Excel spreadsheet inserted into them. Each file is uniquely named and sitting in the same directory. In fact, I had looped through the files originally to populate the spreadsheet and a co-worker matched the information to certain IDs that needed to be plugged back in…

My fundamental mistake was not thinking through it ahead of time. I looped through the files and inserted the data into the spreadsheet - a row for each file. I also included a guid from the file header (inside file!!!!!!!!) into the spreadsheet. I thought that would be the easiest way create the match when I got the spreadsheet back. (I’m sure those of you deal with data already recognize my mistake.)

I got the file back, went back to reverse my loop and realized I now needed a second nested loop to go through each row of the spreadsheet looking to match the guid….

Because each file is uniquely named, I could’ve written the name of the file into a column and simply looped through the spreadsheet writing the guid to each file with name of Column X.

The worst part of this is that I completely berated a younger coleague a couple years ago for a nearly identical project. His response is the same that mine is now, “hey, it was just a one off project that I was doing on the side.”

Wise Man Say, “Pay Attention to Everything You Do. Little Stuff Matters Too. Otherwise You Will Suck.”

The iPhone is one cool gadget. (I’ve got an iTouch and I love it, but the developer in me has been trying to figure out a way to jump into iPhone development since I first laid eyes on it.)

Fortunately, this notion can now be a reality as the iphone sdk has been released. The implication of a freely available Software Development Kit for the iPhone means that casual developers can now develop cool, fun iPhone applicationss.

If you’ve got the desire to become a budding iPhone SDK Developer, you need to surf on over to http://planet-iphones.com/forums/index.php#10. It’s a great starting place for iPhone SDK Developers. You can download the SDK and discuss all topics about the SDK.

New users can acquaint themselves with the rules about the forums. Developers find it is a great site to work through difficult questions during the development process.It’s also a great site to find out what cool new apps may be coming. Ordinary iPhone users can sign up to the site and find all the new plugins and applications for your iPhone. This includes the latest wallpapers, games and must-have accessories.

My wife went to school in Dallas and I still have a ton of friends in the metro area. She got both her Bachelors in History at SMU and her Masters of Physical Therapy. We were just going through old pictures and I stumbled upon something that made me think of this. If you are looking for a dallas photographer, look no further than Mark Oristano.

He is the best photographer dallas in all of Texas. The cool thing you’ll notice about his photography is that he also caters to professionals. He is a prominent member of the community and he is involved/supports local theatre.

He primarily specializes in the headshot dallas. Mark studied at the New York Institute of Photography, and numerous seminars and workshops in Photoshop. He has also worked and studied with Michael Grecco, one of the country’s top portrait photographers. Michael Grecco works out of Los Angeles, California and specializes in dramatic lighting techniques.

Times are aggressive right now. House prices have tanked, so the corresponding amount of equity has dropped. The result is that the banks NEED to refinance people because - quite simply - they aren’t making their numbers. If you have a home refinance bad credit is easy.

It’s never been easier to do a bad credit home refinance than now. Despite all the doom and gloom on the news, banks are aggressively trying to squeeze people into these newly created government programs. With a couple hours of telephone investment, you should be able to get a much better deal and save yourself a boatload of money in the meantime.

Bad credit mortgage refinance is possible, but you’ll never know until you try. Refinance.com is a great site to get started. They have information specific to your individual state, information about FHA and VA options.

Interest rates are now at a 30 year low, if current interest rates have dropped since you secured your mortgage, you may be able to get a new loan (or ‘refinance’) with a lower interest rate. Refinancing would then reduce your interest costs (unless you plan on increasing the term of the loan) and possibly your monthly payment costs.

So, typically my new year’s resolution is to start the year off with some sort of diet. In recent years, I’ve tried them all - the Atkins revolution, the South Beach Diet, the all banana diet, the porn star diet, the beans and rice diet, the zen buddha diet, the cannibal diet (okay, maybe not that one). My point is - I’ve tried a lot of diets. I’ve also quit a lot diets because they just don’t seem to work. I lose enthusiasm.

The way to lose is weight is to increase output and decrease input. Simple, but easier said than done. Luckily, I found Wuyi tea which is a great way to accomplish both. The tea curbs my appetite so that I don’t find myself dieting and starving myself. It happens naturally. I also get a nice energy kick from the tea. It doesn’t make me jittery or cause my heart to flutter the way some of the other fad items do.

I can’t speak for you, but for me traditional diets just haven’t done the trick. Moreover, I feel like I’m doing something unhealthy - rather than healthy - whenever I embark on a diet. Check out Wuyi tea - it’s inexpensive and may just be the trick you need to shed a couple of those unwanted inches before it is time to take your shirt off at the beach.

Best of luck.

Wise Man Say, “Drink Wuyi before it drinks you.”