Erich Stauffer

Author: Erich Stauffer

  • The Apple Tree

    I woke up this morning to a direct conversation with God. I was facing the window, which has no shades, and outside the window is the apple tree. It has not bared fruit for two years and I have been planning to cut it down to allow the sapling maples growing around it to thrive. When people would come over I would say, “I’m going to cut down that apple tree,” but I never would. I made excuses to myself about not having the right tools or the time. I don’t own a chainsaw and the resource I’ve used for one in the past moved out of town. This left me with a goal without execution.

    God told me to cut down the apple tree. I said, “I have stuff to do. I have an appointment this afternoon with a client and I can’t be out cutting down apple trees. I have to prepare!” God then said something about “obedience” and so I said, “Just to make sure I’m not talking to myself right now, I’d like you to confirm this conversation by having someone in my house repeat the word “apple” to me this morning. I made a commitment that if I heard the word apple, I would know that I had indeed had a conversation with God and would cut down that apple tree.

    Let me back up. The night before, as I laid down to go to sleep, I believe God spoke to me by simply saying, “Read my book.” I said, “I am tired. I’m already comfortable, all snuggly in my covers, the light is off, I don’t want to get up, be cold, and have to read. I know what it says.” God tugged on my heart that I didn’t really know what it said and spoke again, “Read my book.” I’ve been keeping my bible under my bed for easy access, so I sat up in bed and opened up to the beginning of the gospel of John (I had John 1:1 on my mind). Instead of starting at the beginning, I read this (John 1:19-:42 NIV):

    John the Baptist Denies Being the Christ
    19Now this was John’s testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Christ.”

    21They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”
    He said, “I am not.”
    “Are you the Prophet?”
    He answered, “No.”

    22Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

    23John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ ”

    24Now some Pharisees who had been sent 25questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

    26″I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

    28This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
    Jesus the Lamb of God
    29The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ 31I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

    32Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 34I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.”
    Jesus’ First Disciples
    35The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. 36When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

    37When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. 38Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”
    They said, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”

    39″Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”
    So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour.

    40Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. 41The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). 42And he brought him to Jesus.
    Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter).

    I had read this passage before, but what struck me this time were these lines:

    When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”

    Before, when I read these lines, I thought Jesus was being short with them for following him in the way that someone who is being followed eventually turns around and screams, “What do you want?!” But last night, I read it as a two-part function of Jesus’ personality:

    1. They followed Jesus.
    2. Jesus asked them what they wanted.

    When they responded to Jesus, they were praying in the literal sense, so lets look at what they prayed after Jesus asked them what they wanted:

    Where are you staying?

    The wanted information. They wanted to know where he would be in the future. Jesus’ response is just as interesting:

    Come and you will see.

    So it starts with following Jesus and it ends with following Jesus. It’s all about obedience to Him. And through obedience, Jesus wants to know what we want. When we pray to him we are asking for things we want, but what I am learning is that we also have to be obedient and follow Him. God had asked me to cut down an apple tree, but for now it was time for breakfast.

    My wife had surgery yesterday, but even if she wouldn’t have, I normally make breakfast on Saturday mornings. I grabbed the last four eggs, some butter, and some cheese and made scrambled eggs with cheese, plus toast with grape jelly, and orange juice. I called the girls down to eat and we sat down to pray. I thanked the Father for our home and our vehicles and the health of our children and my wife’s successful surgery. I then asked for guidance on how to spend my day. In the middle of my prayer, my oldest daughter yelled out, “Apple tree!” I was a little taken aback by it and had trouble praying, but continued, only to be interrupted again by another round of, “Apple tree!”. I finished praying, then asked why she was saying “apple tree.” She said she had found two apple seeds yesterday and wanted to plant them. I was going to cut down the apple tree.

    I went down to my shop and gathered up my largest whet stone and some honing oil in order to sharpen my axe. They were all my wife’s father’s tools that we inherited when we moved into their home after my wife’s mother got remarried. My wife’s father died when she was 12 and her mother planted a tree every year afterward to honor him. One of the trees was the apple tree I was about to cut down. While the tree had been planted in his honor, it would be his tools that would cut it down.

    I sharpened the blade.

    By this time, my children had become involved, mostly as spectators. It was a brisk morning so my oldest daughter fetched me a coat. I swung the ax and began cutting into the tree. My children went and got cardboard boxes to play and sit in. I was not sure if I would be able to finish cutting down this tree. It was about 30 inches in circumference and my ax, although sharpened, was still making long-work of the process. I prayed for strength to finish it.

    I had cut a wedge about a quarter of the way through into the leaning side of the tree when I considered starting to cut the other side. At that moment, my oldest daughter yelled, “Do the other side now!” I asked her to pray for strength for me to finish and I began to work on the other side. I chipped into the tree, working about an eighth of the way in, then circled around the side, connecting the front and the back. I worked back to the front, then began hitting it as hard as I could, repeatedly. I was in a groove and I thought this would do the trick until a hit rocked my bones to the core. What I thought would work did not, but instead of giving up I decided to switch tools.

    I took the ax down to my shop and retrieved an antique hand saw instead. It was my grandfather’s and is made for cutting dried wood, but it was all I had and since I was mostly through the stickier exterior of the tree, I thought it would work. After choosing the thinnest spot, I began to saw. It was slow work. It reminded me of paying off a debt. With every stroke (or payment) I couldn’t see much progress and it was depressing, but continuing to saw, every once in a while, I saw a large chunk fall off. I was making progress, it was just slow progress – and it was almost all that I could take. I asked my oldest daughter to pray for strength. I continued to cut, my arms were burning. I was exhausted from axing and sawing, so I asked my other daughter to pray for strength too. They both began to pray and I heard God say, “Cut 40 more times and the tree will fall.” I didn’t know if I could cut 40 more times, but I continued to cut, 20, 30, the tree was starting to lean, 38, 39, “Move!”

    The Apple TreeThe tree fell towards the house and towards my daughters. They were safe, just outside the fall line in their card board boxes, but it scared them. I was exhausted, but God had delivered the tree to me. It had been a spiritual journey that I wanted to share. God is good and we can all learn to obey him more.

    By the way, when I went to write this story, my oldest daughter brought me the “apple seeds” she wanted to plant. They were sunflower seeds. We will plant them next spring and remember this day.

  • Why You Should Get LOST

    This is a guest post written by Zac Parsons.

    As someone who is laughably prone to hyperbole, it may may seem inconsequential that I laud it as the greatest television show of all time. You may be asking yourself: “What is so great about it?” or “How can a modern show compare to TV classics from other eras?” or “What kind of a weirdo, fanatical, booger eating, sci-fi dork would care so much about a TV show?” These are all fair questions. I am not sure if I will be able to suitably answer any of them for you (but I do not eat my boogers, I’ll have you know).

    It is my hope that this article piques your interest enough to watch the first episode for free online on abc.com.

    If you are not engrossed in the tale of Flight 815 after a handful of episodes, then I will ask your forgiveness for presuming your interest in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and sociology.  This is not a show designed merely to titillate and help to escape from “reality”.

    If you find your mind and heart constantly returning to the question of “What is the meaning of life?”, then prepare yourself for a vivid, elaborate, amplified discussion of that very question that IS the show: LOST.

    It is a show that gives color, clarity, and context to the questions of your conscience.

    Wondering when Twitter will fade.
    Wondering when Twitter will fade.

    If something on the show leads you to believe what you are watching is “unrealistic”, take comfort in the fact that you are experiencing a vivid, detailed, highly personal metaphor. The line between fiction and science fiction is fine, but don’t let crossing it ruin the truth that is being illustrated for you within the framework of the show.  What the uninitiated know or (don’t know) about the show will vary, of course. That framework simply is….

    A group of people are stranded on a remote island in the South Pacific.

    You’ve heard the hypothetical questions:  “What book would you read if you were stranded on a deserted island?” or “What would you do if you could start your life over in a new place?” or even “Would you sleep with _________ if he/she was the last person on earth?”  LOST tries to answer these questions (and more) by putting characters of the ilk of classic historical archetypes on the island:

    • A doctor with a knack for leadership and mind built up in the world of science, logic, and reason, Jack Shephard believes that all problems are solvable, and that he can help to solve them.  (His father’s name, Christian Shephard, may remind you of a certain religious metaphor)
    • Beautiful and innocent on the surface, Kate Austen struggles to define herself apart from the men in her life.  Her relationships with men are as varied and different as the characters in a book like…. hmmm I don’t know…. Sense And Sensibility?
    • As carefree man, with plenty of reasons to be bitter about life, John Locke believes that his past has made up his present and future.  He let’s destiny and fate drive him forward in life with little fear or trepidation.
    • With a name like “Sawyer”, you may immediately recognize the connection between this southern con man who lives by his own rules and the characters of Mark Twain’s stories.
    The REAL John Locke. Too bad Adrian Brody wasnt available.
    The REAL John Locke. Too bad Adrian Brody wasn't available.

    It’s fun to have a new character introduced and to guess what argument or theory that person might represent.  LOST is a teleological journey to an end point that was decided before the show was even picked up.  Instead of sitting around a table and wondering where to take the story next, the writers are simply giving depth and detail to each episode, each of which is a tile to be placed on the board for the mosaic.

    What the final picture looks like, only the creators know, which is a lovely metaphor in itself.

    If you still don’t get LOST, then I won’t encourage you to get any further lost with me.  But if your interest is piqued, please join in the conversation and get LOST with the rest of us.

  • Man of Science, Man of Faith

    You may remember my articles on the evolution of Jack Shephard from earlier this year.  If not, you can find part 1 here and part 2 here.  If you are already initiated into LOST and won’t be spoiled by information from seasons 1-4, I highly recommend watching this compilation clip on Youtube about the dichotomy between Jack and John Locke.

    httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIgXEq0ue2Y&feature=related

    It will probably benefit from being updated at the end of the show to represent Jack’s full character arc, but it is a strong piece in its own right as it stands now.  What do you think?  Is Jack “there” yet?  Is he still on the journey?

  • Mirror Matter Moon

    lost_pilot_b276The Mirror Matter Moon theory is one of the most prominent theories on LOST to explain what the island is and why it might behave like it does. Essentially, the island is a moon made of mirror matter. There are two types of matter, the matter we know and love, and the opposite. We can exist in either habitat, but one can not see the other. This is why the island can not be seen until you cross into area around the island – into the mirror matter moon.

    LOST might be a multi-layered homage to yin-yang duality (where one side can’t exist without the other). The universe that we live in may have two sides, each invisible (or “dark”) to each the other. Matter operates in the same way on each side, but they are two different universes so stars and planets formed in two different ways. The sides are different according to “mirror reflection symmetry,” meaning that left and right are reversed on the very small scale of particle physics. The particles on our side (Portland) have “left-handed” interactions, and the particles on the other side (Starboardland) have “right-handed” interactions. This right-handed dark matter is known as mirror matter. In the words of Locke in Episode 1: “… Two sides… One is light… One is dark.” Note which hand each stone is in.

    Imagine a small, invisible world developed on a dark mirror matter asteroid that crashed into Earth long ago. The island would be a continent on a world “on the other side of Earth,” as the producers have hinted. But this chunk of dark matter also contains exotic material that allows the natural formation of wormholes between the two sides. Thus this dark island connects the two sides of the universe and is a place of epic duality. Mimicking the ebb and flow of yin and yang, dominance over the island continuously shifts between light, faith-based (see Manichaeism), and dark, science-based, factions. When one side becomes too dominant, its power wanes and the other gains strength. Furthermore, the conflict incorporates the yin-yang-like struggle for power between Jacob and Esau. As they can’t exist without each other, for the conflict to end, both sides must perish or the sides must merge.

    The light side faction is headed by someone who is born on Earth, moves to the island, and loses his or her father; and the dark side is led by someone who is born on the island and moves to Earth (e.g., Hanso, Aaron). These representatives are symbolic of the dots in the yin-yang. There also seems to be a supernatural force that ensures the balance between factions. That force achieves its ends by communicating through ghosts and ensuring the movement of certain people, like Aaron, back and forth. It’s probably meaningful that 815, the US Army, Juliet [thanks Christine], and possibly Desmond, may have all arrived on an equinox, when light and dark are most balanced.

  • LOST Pilot – Part 2

    Shannon has found her belongings and retrieved a bikini to take advantage of the sun. Boone arrives to tell her that he and the other survivors are going through the wreckage and salvaging everything they can. She makes it clear that she has no intention of helping. What’s the point, they’re going to be rescued any minute, right?

    Jin wades through the tide pools gathering sea urchin. Sun is watching from the beach when Michael arrives to ask her if she has seen his son, Walt. Jin overhears the conversation and chastises Sun for having the top button of her sweater open.

    While searching the woods for Vincent, Walt stumbles across something lying on the ground. Michael catches up with him and scolds him for running off without telling him. Walt shows his father, Michael, the handcuffs he found. Sawyer attacks Sayid, who he believes is an Iraqi terrorist who blew up the plane. They are soon stopped by Michael and the now returned Jack.

    Jack, Kate, and Charlie head back to the beach. Kate asks Charlie what he was doing in the bathroom, and he says he was sick, but in a flashback, it is revealed that Charlie had been doing drugs in the bathroom, and attempted to flush his stash but had been prevented by the sudden onset of turbulence.

    Elsewhere, Boone lays into Shannon for being incredibly selfish. She lashes back at him and tells her brother that she is going on the hike to find high ground with the others. Knowing she won’t change her mind, Boone goes along to look after his sister. Charlie and Sawyer decide to join the group at the last minute.

    Sayid manages to repair the transceiver, but it does not have a signal or much battery life. While working on it, he reveals to Hurley that he was a communications officer with the Iraqi Republican Guard in the Gulf War. While reading a letter sadly, Sawyer decides to go with Sayid and the group (Kate, Charlie, Shannon and Boone) to bring the transceiver inland in an attempt to reach higher ground and get a better signal.

    Along the way, they are attacked by a charging polar bear, which Sawyer shoots and kills. He then explains that he got the gun from the body of a dead U.S. marshal. Sayid accuses Sawyer of being the marshal’s prisoner. Kate takes the gun from Sawyer, and Sayid instructs her on how to dismantle it. At this point, Sawyer becomes relatively disliked by the other survivors.

    Shannon attempts to understand the signal. A flashback shows the final moments of the flight. Kate is talking to the marshal, the same injured man to whom Jack had been tending, on the beach. On the plane, it can be seen that Kate is wearing the handcuffs that Walt found in the jungle. As the turbulence hits, the marshal is knocked unconscious by a falling suitcase. Kate uncuffs herself, and puts the marshal’s oxygen mask on him before attaching her own, at which point the tail end of the plane suddenly breaks off and falls away.

    Back at the beach, the marshal wakes up during the operation and asks Jack, “Where is she?”. Inland, Sayid turns on the transceiver and it has a signal. However, it is being blocked by a transmission in French that has been repeating for over sixteen years. Shannon translates it: “I’m alone now, on the island alone. Please someone come. The others are dead. It killed them. It killed them all.” The group gives each other meaningful looks before Charlie says “Guys, where are we?”.

  • Reviewing LOST Again Before Season 6 in 2010

    My wife has decided to start watching LOST again from the very beginning. She’s seen all of the episodes once already and I’m not sure what started her on this quest, but she has been noticing a lot more this time around and delights in the character development that happens early on in the show. This is an example of the last email she sent me:

    Michael: “How does a huge place like this never get discovered?”

    Apparently, she thought this was either important, hilarious, or both. She commented to me about the compass scene in the first season where Sayid borrows Locke’s compass only to realize that something is not right. Sayid just figures the compass is not functioning correctly, but we now know that there is massive magnetic disturbances on this island (and that the sun’s position may be skewed if you believe the Mirror Matter Moon Theory).

    Jin is delivering a "message" and the guy points to his daughter. Look at what she's watching.

    My wife also sent me the picture of the little girl watching Hurley on the screen. I don’t remember if I noticed this the first time or not, but it made me wonder (and we have no way of knowing at the time) what people or things do we see that later on in our life become very important parts of our life? It also shows the creativity of LOST’s producers in weaving the characters story lines so deeply into each other.

    So last season we found out that Locke may really be dead and that his impersonator is probably the Smoke Monster, who is in a good versus evil battle with Jacob. This battle is similar to the other ying yangs we find on the island, such as Jack the healer and John the hunter in the first three seasons. Then of course there is Hurley, who sees dead people and Miles who can hear them. They now have teamed up to form a kind of dynamic-duo regarding dead people. This is far from the original Hurley, seen here relaxing on the beach in this humorous comparison between him and a pregnant Claire.

    lost-beach

    My wife sent me that picture too. She thought the picture was funny. There is a similar picture of her and I sitting on the couch. It’s not always funny, especially when you’re part of the comparison.

    Long live LOST and bring on 2010!

  • LOST Pilot – Part 1

    Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) awakens in the jungle, disoriented, battered and bruised. He doesn’t know where he is, but notices a yellow Labrador retriever darting through the bamboo forest. As he forces himself up and winces in pain, he discovers a small bottle of vodka in his suit pocket. Finally able to stand, he crashes through the jungle vegetation, begins to hear sounds of people screaming, then emerges onto a beautiful beach, where he is confronted by the carnage of the airplane crash of Oceanic Flight 815.

    All is in chaos. People are screaming. Once out onto the beach Jack sees the plane crash and the survivors in shock. In the confusion, one survivor gets sucked into a still spinning turbine. Jack, a distinguished surgeon, darts from one survivor to the next, organizing them, giving orders and administering medical aid. In quick fashion, he rescues a man pinned under wreckage, assists the pregnant Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin) and enlists Hugo “Hurley” Reyes (Jorge Garcia) to watch her, and administers CPR to Rose Henderson (L. Scott Caldwell), saving her life.

    After the initial shock of the crash passes, Jack retreats to a quiet area beyond the beach to tend to his own minor injuries when he notices Kate Austen watching him. He asks for assistance, which she reluctantly gives by helping suture the wound on his back. During the procedure, Kate reveals that their plane had broken apart in mid-air. Hours later on the beach, while Kate curiously observes Jack tending to a critically-injured unconscious passenger, survivors Michael Dawson (Harold Perrineau) and his ten-year-old son, Walt Lloyd (Malcolm David Kelley), discuss what to do with the bodies in the wreckage, while an uninterested James “Sawyer” Ford (Josh Holloway) looks on. Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) organizes a clean-up crew, while Hurley salvages meals from the plane’s galley and distributes them to the survivors. Shannon Rutherford (Maggie Grace) refuses chocolate offered by her brother Boone Carlyle (Ian Somerhalder), believing that rescue is imminent.

    That night, the peacefulness of the camp is disturbed by loud roaring noises and crashing trees emanating from the nearby jungle. In the morning, Jack decides that the survivors need to send a distress signal to have any hope of rescue, and he believes the best solution is to use the plane’s transceiver, located in the cockpit of the plane. Kate claims to have seen smoke from somewhere within the jungle and asks to come with Jack to find what is hoped to be another part of the plane’s wreckage. With Kate and Charlie Pace, Jack sets off into the jungle to find the cockpit. As they move deeper into the jungle, they encounter a sudden rainstorm. When the trio finds the plane, resting against a tree, they are forced to climb through the rows of seats to reach the cabin. Inside, they find the pilot still in his seat. Charlie disappears into the bathroom while Jack and Kate find the pilot (Greg Grunberg) awaking with a start from a concussion. He tells them that the plane had lost radio contact six hours after take off, where it turned back for Fiji and hit turbulence. The plane was a thousand miles off course when it crashed.

    Meanwhile, on the beach during the rainstorm, a group of survivors takes refuge in the wreckage. While huddled there, a young Korean man, Jin-Soo Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim), tells his wife, Sun-Hwa Kwon (Yunjin Kim),in Korean that she should remain close to him at all times. Even though most of the survivors have taken shelter, John Locke (Terry O’Quinn) remains outside and sits alone in the rain on the beach with his arms outstretched and seems to enjoy the moment. Back in the plane’s cockpit, the conversation is interrupted when the strange roaring noise that the group heard from the jungle the previous night returns. When the pilot investigates, he is seized by something outside, which drags him through the cockpit window, prompting the trio to grab the transceiver and flee. During the escape, Charlie falls. Jack returns to help him, while a terrified Kate runs on. After the monster disappears, Kate, Charlie and Jack reunite and find the pilot, his bloodied corpse suspended in a tree top.

  • Strawberry Cake Pie and the Facebook Coefficient

    Strawberry-cake-pieLast night I had a dream that I went to a restaurant with a couple of friends and we all ordered a strawberry cake pie.  It was served in a “taco salad”-like pan with a friendship bread, cake-like base.  The topping was similar to a strawberry pie, but the kind with strawberry glaze mixed in.  That was our meal.

    In the morning I called my friend on the way to work and he thought the idea was fantastic, but then he took it to the next level.  He said, “Why not take strawberry cake mix, churn cold butter into it, and make that the crust instead.” BRILLIANT and DELICIOUS-sounding.  I’ve got another friend who makes exceptional deserts (such as the 7-layer bar) who is going to do the testing.

    Analyzing Facebook

    During our conversation I had mentioned that I was so excited about the strawberry cake pie that I had posted it to Facebook first thing in the morning.  This led to a discussion about a recent Facebook “analysis” I had done on this friend’s Facebook profile.  I had noticed that his wall posts were down compared to a month ago so I mentioned that his Facebook wall posts were down 83% compared to last month.  I hadn’t really done the analysis, but he thought I had, which made me think that Facebook is ripe for analysis.

    A while back a different friend of mine did a quick study to find out how many wall posts one of his friends made before and after a point in time. He was able to go back through all of his wall posts to discover that, even though they had been Facebook friends, before the event there were no wall posts, but after the event, the wall posts were near-spam levels.  The metric in that analysis was wall posts, which inspired me to use the same metric for what I call the Facebook Coefficient.

    facebook-coefficientThe Facebook Coefficient

    The Facebook Coefficient is the number of wall posts you make compared to the number of wall posts received.  This is a measure of your popularity on Facebook  (or how big of a jerk you are, which a friend of mine pointed out).  The coefficient takes into account the last time the user logged in, not counting incoming wall posts until after the user logs back in.

    The coefficient can be computed manually, but would best be done by a Facebook App.  I am a member of the Facebook Developers community, but I have yet to produce a Facebook app.  This is in part because I never had a need to or an idea of what Facebook app to write.  If you are a developer, feel free to use or adapt this idea.  I would be interested in using it.  For more ideas, check out this blog post about wanting Facebook Statistics.

    What Facebook apps would you like to see? On May 19th, 2009 I posted about using Twitter as a business research tool. If you are a Facebook developer I would consider doing something similar.  Here’s why: the following two wishes have been granted.

    WISH there was a way to permanently hide any news feed info relating to those “What kind of blah blah are you” quizzes on facebook.

    wish there was a way to opt out of getting messages from some people in facebook. Seems like whey need a spam filter.

    But this one still has not:

    wish there was a way to post PDFs in #Facebook messages…

    So if you are a developer who wishes to develop a popularity app like The Facebook Coefficient, then you may have already developed Popularity.  Popularity is a, “fun and rewarding ranking game that calculates how interactive people are with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr,” but when you try to use it on Facebook it errors out and says

    There are still a few kinks Facebook and the makers of Popularity are trying to iron out. We appreciate your patience as we try to fix these issues. Your problem has been logged – if it persists, please come back in a few days. Thanks!

    You may have heard the expression, “There is no such thing as competition.”  No matter how good of an idea you have, if you can’t execute it, then it is not worth much.  Execution is really the name of the game and whether you are baking a strawberry cake pie or a Facebook app, you must deliver the goods – otherwise, it’s just a half-baked idea.

  • Managing Forward

    screenshot-02-20-2009
    Managing Actions, February 2009

    We have gone through several changes in the last year including a major facelift, a name change, an identity crisis, and now a new way forward.  It’s time we stop managing our thoughts and start to manage our actions.

    From now on you can expect to find fresh content daily on subjects ranging from self-development to happiness, from management to marketing, and from pop-culture to programming.  Where else can you find out how to delete a Digg submission and how to live a purpose-filled life in the same blog?

    Zac and I are passionate about life and we want to help you become more of a success than you already are.  If you’re reading this article right now you have already chosen the first step in learning more about yourself, your purpose, and your life.

    We want to inspire you, motivate you, and lift you up so that you can go do whatever it is that makes you feel strong.  Be better tomorrow than you were today.  Move up in the world.  Get exited about life.  Find your spirit and develop it.

    Thank you for reading Managing Actions.  We are glad that you are a part of our life and look forward to bringing you great content for a long time.  Cheers.