Joey’s BlogThoughts on Life, Work, Technology, and Society
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This is definitely a supped up Hot Wheels (24v power instead of 12v), as anything this much fun would be law suit fodder… See a forum post about making your powerwheels this much fun: http://forums.radiocontrolzone.com/showthread.php?t=134795
This is an awesome site. Have you misplaced your phone? Just go here, enter your number, and they call your phone for you (I’ve used it a few times, this morning, my phone was under my pillow, I never would have found it). It’s free, and fast.
Today, I spent the afternoon in Perry’s shop and we emerged with 3 complete supersized Jenga sets for big kids.
Supersized Jenga
We made two different sizes. Two sets with 2×4’s, and one set with 2×3’s. Total cost is about $15 – $20 per set for the wood.
The 2×3’s are the correct proportion for the blocks. We did sand the edges down (a nice bench top belt sander from Harbor Freight ($60) made quicker work of those steps).
The game is awesome. It plays a lot like the small version, only it is more obvious when the tower is falling. I think it is way more fun.
AND! The blocks are good for more than just Jenga…
A Simetrical Multi Story block building.
My beutiful wife behind our picaso of blocks.
Jenga consists of 18 rows of 3 blocks each. So, you need a total of 54 blocks. 2×4 dimensions vary slightly from state to state, so you will need to measure the width of 3 2×4’s to get the exact length you need, but for us, it was 10 1/2″. This meant we needed 7 8′ 2×4s. Cut all the 2×4’s to the same length. (You NEED a chop saw to do this) Set a stop on the saw so that you don’t have to mark or measure each cut. With the stop in place, you can cut all 7 2×4s in about 10 – 15 minutes. Once you have cut all the pieces, sand the edges to remove splinters and you’re done!
Repeat above procedure, our length came out to be 7 1/2″.
My Dad and I were talking last night, and he was excited to relate a customer service experience he had with GPI (Great Plains International) last week. GPI manufactures and sells fuel pumps and meters. Mostly industrial / farm use. My Dad has one of their hand operated fuel pumps on a diesel fuel tank he keeps around for his little Kubota tractor (It’s named yoda). The pump stopped working a few days ago, it’s not unusual, diesel fuel is dirty, and the tank was a few years old, and out in the sun, rarely used, etc… etc… All the factors that contribute to premature failure of mechanical things, no big deal.
He (my Dad) went to their website to purchase a rebuild kit for the hand pump on the tank for yoda. He says he spent 30 minutes. He had the part number for the pump, he knew exactly what he wanted, but their site had absolutely nothing of use to him. The site looked nice, it had lots of information about their pumps, and had ways to request more information, but it didn’t have anyway to buy anything, or any information about how to buy anything other than a “request more info” link.
So my Dad sent them an email. He said, (paraphrased) “Your site stinks. I was looking for a rebuild kit for one of your pumps (model 456xyp) and I couldn’t find anything on your website, or anywhere else on the internet for that matter. …”, and left the matter at that.
A few days later he received an unexpected phone call from a GTI rep. They said “Mr. Novak, I’m sorry you had a problem with our site, you’re right, it stinks. We’re working on it. Unfortunatly, we don’t have a rebuild kit for your pump, but we do have all the parts to fix it available separately. We’re going to send you all the parts complementary.”
Can you say “WOW!”? That, is customer service. My Dad’s not a big buyer. The hand pump on his tractor is probably the only thing he owns that is made by them. But people talk, and anytime this event can be fit into a conversation about something related, you can bet He’ll mention it, and in the matter of Fuel Pumps, he will probably never even consider anything but a gti product.
I work at Infusionsoft where we all have lots of PASSION towards our product. Yesterday I recevied a disheartening email from someone talking about how AWeber has far superior deliverability and open rates.
I was concerned, we track email deliverability very closely. I work very closely with the Support Reps and with our Email Deliverability expert Ryan Peterson. I’ve worked at an ISP where email deliverability was a problem and you hear about it, fast! We don’t have that problem. Occasionaly someone calls about a problem, but almost without exception the problem is not ours, but rather a slow MTA in someone else’s network, or an incorrect address, or sometimes a spammer whose account was disabled due to spamming. Occasionaly we get a rash of spammers and our value ip’s drop to below 96% deliverability but it’s not frequent.
So why do people believe AWeber has better deliverability? I heard a rumor that it was because if someone opens an email twice, AWeber’s front page open metric counts it as two opens instead of one… I thought “that is unlikely”. If it’s true, then Open Rates and Click rates are not a good comparison because we report them differently. Even though as a programmer, I thought it would be silly for them to report opens and clicks that way I decided to find out for myself. I signed up for a demo account. Prepared a list with three addresses, opted them in, and sent a message. I opened one of them. I closed it, and opened it again. I clicked the link a few times… The click definitely worked, but the open was still correct… Hmm… I thought… What if the tracking image is getting cached, and that’s why it isn’t working? So, I cleared my cache and tried again. VIOLA! I was able to rack up as many opens as I wanted. I now have a broadcast in my AWeber account with 12 Open, and 6 clicks, but that only went to three recipients. What does this mean? If someone opens the message on another computer, or through webmail, or webmail in two different browsers, or forwards the message to another email address. All of these scenarios will without a doubt be reported as multiple opens in AWeber.
I feel much better now, and more confident knowing for myself that our deliverability is still world class.
To satisfy the new FTC guidelines… I did this blog post of my own accord, after hours, at home, and not for any compensation , payment, or bonus (monetary or otherwise).
Edit: After reading Tom’s comment, apparently there is a way to view unique opens. However, since my account was canceled prematurely, I can’t go see how easy it is to find or use.
I recently finished “The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary” It was totally awesome. It provided a whole new perspecitve on making work fun. It was fabulous and I highly recommend it.
It starts with an example: Fred, a postman. Fred is the postman on the author’s street. The author talks about several situations where Fred did simple but extraordinary things that showed he cared about the author and performing his job well. The author further explains how you can create an atmosphere that fosters Fred’s and how to create Fred’s everyday.
Lightbulbs… A wonderful invention that’s been around for over a hundred years. Did you know how many different times Edison tried to make the lightbulb and learned how not to suceed? The numbers vary from 100 to 10000. I suspect it’s somewhere in the middle. Imagine, something as simple as the lightbulb we all know just waiting to be discovered.
A few years ago, I begin investigating different ways of overcoming a bad mood. I was in Salt Lake during a winter, and felt absolutely terrible. I did some reading and learned that the sun makes us happy. Amazing. Someone told me it is because the Sun creates Vitamin D, which affects seratonin uptake or something like that. Anyways, there is lots of supporting evidence that sunlight make people happy.
Enter… The sunlight lamp… Light is usually measured by it’s “temperature” see: Color Temperature. In a color temperature scale, you have incandescent lights at one end, and sunlight at the other. Incandescent light is yellow… (Because the light is generated by a glowing hot piece of wire, duh). Whereas sunlight bulbs are bright white light. They vary from 5000k to 6500k in color temperature.
Sunlight lamps are so good at re-producing sunlight, that when my wife and I first got one (A 200W huge desk lamp), we plugged it in and my brain said “Whoa! Where’s the window that all of this light is coming from?” And I turned my head to look out the “window” before I realized it was the lamp… Now, I feel my mood lessen when I walk from a room lit by sunlight lights and a room lit by regular lights.
So, how much does it cost?? Home Depot has a good selection of lights. Look on the box, and try to get ones that are 5500k, they have a lot of cheaper 5000k, these are good, but 5500k are better. It’s about $5 for a 60W equivilant 5000k light, but they are CFL’s, so they last forever anyways. If you buy one light a month you’ll have all the lights in your hose replaced before long! I suspect that as they get more popular (which they will) eventually they will be almost the same cost as regular CFL’s and the good 5500k ones will be just a few dollars each.
So, are you stressed? Wish you were a little happier? Or, just curious? However you feel, you’ll feel better with sunlight lamps, and you’ll never go back.
This is awesome:
I work at Infusionsoft, a company dedicated to helping Entrepreneurs become successful. While I’ve worked here, I’ve began to realize the importance of small businesses (as defined by some law). I know you hear it all the time. I used to not believe they were all that importance, but now I’ve learned that: 99.7% of employers are small businesses, 50% of private sector jobs are created by small businesses, and small businesses account for 75% of all new jobs. See: http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/businessfinance/a/sbatopten.htm
IMO Law makers need to be much more careful about making business more difficult for small businesses.
A quote that our CEO Clate Mask uses in his email signature sums it all up.
”The difference between the great and good societies and the regressing, deteriorating societies is largely in terms of the entrepreneurial opportunity and the number of such people in the society. I think everyone would agree that the most valuable 100 people to bring into a deteriorating society would be not 100 chemists, or politicians, or professors, or engineers, but rather 100 entrepreneurs.” –Abraham Maslow
