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The Wave

I love going to baseball games, especially if my beloved Cardinals are playing. One of the things that always amazes me about baseball games is the wave. I know a lot of people hate doing the wave, but there’s something about it that I love. I love to watch it go around a stadium, the thousands of people joining together for a few seconds to continue the awesome spectacle. Even though I love doing the wave at the games, I could never start one. I do not have the type of leadership (or drunkenness) that is required to make a stadium of 40k+ fans climb to their feet, sections upon sections in unison.

I remember I was at a game last year. It was about the 7th inning, which most fans of baseball know that the wave usually begins in the later innings, and the wave had not been started at that point. I look over to a man that was about 2 sections to my left and a guy stands up, looks around him, and starts yelling at his section to stand up. They do. It hits the next section and only about half of the people stood up this time. Then it hit my section. I make it a rule not to stand in the wave too early. There has to be just the right amount of people. The wave ended. He starts it back up, this time it goes another section before it dies. Not to be deterred, he starts it again and it goes even further. Excitement starts to build. This is when I decide to join in. He starts it again and now people on the other side of the stadium start to take notice. His section stands and sits rapidly. Then the next. Then my section. And it continues on. Will it continue? It does. It makes it all the way to the other side of the stadium. It jumps the gap! It continues on and reaches the origination section. The guy has accomplished his feat but that doesn’t make him stop. He continues the wave and it grows and grows with each turn around the stadium. Then almost instantly, the wave ends. The inning is over. For a brief moment, that guy controlled an entire stadium. People rise to their feet, but not for the wave. As Mike Shannon says, it’s time for a nice frosty cold one.

Obligatory Posse Cut

I’ve been wanting to write a post for a couple days but didn’t really know what to write about. Luckily, Plinky has plenty of prompts. There was one in particular that struck my fancy: If you were a famous rapper, who would be in your posse? If I’m gonna have a posse, I’m gonna go all out.

Posse Man #1: The Body Guard – I can think of only one person for such a role. He’s one of the meanest, and biggest, guys to ever walk the earth. I’m talking about Mr. Andre the Giant. This large brute dominated WWF wrestling (when it was still WWF) and even thrilled millions of kids in the wonderful movie The Princess Bride. No one would mess with Andre.

Posse Men #2 and #3: The Credibility Men – If I’m going to have a posse, I’m going to need some credibility so all the player haters know I’m fo’ real. I can think of 2 people in the hip hop world that would be perfect sponsors, Jay-Z and Russell Simmons. Jay-Z is one of the biggest rap stars in history. As he says, he’s not a business man, he’s a business, man! How would you not want him in your posse. Plus with him in the posse that automatically inducts Beyonce. As for Russell Simmons, he made hip hop what it is today. He marketed hip hop to the mainstream that wasn’t ready for it. He built hip hop’s most successful record label, Def Jam, from the ground up. You have to have respect for that.

Posse Men #4, #5, #6, and #7: The party guys – The 4-7 guys in my posse are the ones that every dude wants to hang out with. They are the ones you won’t to go out and get wasted with and the ones that will make you laugh non-stop. I’m talking about Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Jason Segel, and Seth Rogen.

Posse Man #8: The Tech Guy – I need someone to make sure I have all the hottest technology. Bill Gates? Hell no! I want good technology. Steve Jobs, come on down! You are now part of my posse. I’ll have the latest Apple gadget before anyone else with Steve Jobs in my posse. Envy me.

Posse Man #9: The Prez – Last, but certainly not least, in my posse would be President Obama. He’s smart, charismatic, the leader of the military, and has the Secret Service in case Andre the Giant has to hit the bathroom or needs a nap. He’s the ultimate posse man to have. Anything you need or want, he can get it. Plus he’s got that whole Air Force one thing going for him.

So there you have it, there’s my posse. I think I covered all the bases pretty well. I don’t think I could go wrong with this posse. Anyone know how to get in contact with them all and inform them they are now in my posse? Who would be in your posse?

In case you were wondering where the title of the post came from, it comes from the outstanding song of the same title by Extended Famm from their album Happy Fuck You Songs

Microsoft Just Doesn’t Get It

John Gruber at Daring Fireball recently posted a quote from Steve Ballmer of Microsoft.

“Apple gained about one point, but now I think the tide has really turned back the other direction. The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment — same piece of hardware — paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that’s a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be.”

What Ballmer doesn’t understand is that is not the only reason people buy Apple products. If you could (legally) buy any PC and run OSX on it flawlessly for the same price as a PC with Windows, I’d be willing to be that Microsoft would see Windows’ OS share drop dramatically. People aren’t buying Apple products for the logo. They aren’t spending more money on hardware. They are spending more money on a great OS, great support from the manufacturer, and an all-around great computing experience. That is what Microsoft doesn’t get.

All Moved

After 2 long days of moving and unpacking I’m finally done. It was a tiring ordeal, but it could have been worse. It feels good to be done and have everything set up the way I want. My family was a huge help and I’m very grateful for all they did. Also, my sister Lisa was extremely nice for buying me things for my living room and bathroom. The things she bought look great! I’m just glad it’s all over. Yesterday was my recoup day (and AT&T U-Verse install day) so it’s back at work for me today. For any of my friends that want to know where my new place is, hit me up and I’ll send you the address.

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What Bugs Me About Twitter

I am not an “expert on all things web 2.0.” Nor am I a “social media expert.” Heck, I’m not even a “social media enthusiast.” I’m just a regular person who finds value in various things on the internet. One of them is Twitter. I fear it could fail because of certain things that bug me about the Twitter phenomenon. When I say they might fail I mean that users may stop using it, not because it doesn’t have a business model (although, that’s probably a problem as well).

There’s always going to be someone who will try to duplicate what Twitter did in a new way. Plurk tried, and last I checked they had quite a community but I don’t know anyone who actually uses it (at least not anymore). Even if something better comes along, that doesn’t mean users are going to jump ship. They’ve already invested time in Twitter. It will be hard to leave. How else do you explain how MySpace is still popular? I’m betting it’s because that’s where the cool kids were, then it became popular and that’s where people have set up homes. Twitter is the same way. That could change though. If you use Twitter you might have noticed that as each month passes the amount of spam followers seems to increase. Some days these spam bots follow you as soon as you post an update. Twitter needs to do something about this problem if they want to continue to grow. MySpace used to have the same problem. It has been several months since I deleted my MySpace profile so I don’t know if the problem is still as rampant as it once was. The point is, it may eventually drive users away, or make the move easier when something bigger and better does come along.

Another problem I have with Twitter is now that it’s popular it’s being inundated with another type of spam. The new spam are not pre-programmed robots, though one could argue differently when you look at their updates. I’m talking about the so-called social media experts, mavens, and enthusiasts. These are the people who do nothing but post links to their site/product/service and retweet other more famous people. They bring almost no value to Twitter and actually, in my opinion, lower people’s opinions about social media and what it can and should be. Social Media Experts are to today as SEO Experts were to a few years ago. Yeah, there might be a few people who honestly “get” it and can actually help you, but most are trying to peddle their goods and services that you don’t need. Just because you’re on LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter doesn’t mean you’re an expert. It means you use the internet. In fact, I’m betting there are 14 year olds that know more about social media than you. I’ve actually had many of these human spammers follow me then when I don’t follow them after a day or so they quit following me. 7 times out of 10 they are back following me the next day. Is that because my updates are so great? Not at all. It’s because they follow anyone and everyone to try to pump themselves up more.

Along with the so-called experts, you have real companies on Twitter. Some of the accounts are good. There are some that try to help customers out and provide valuable information. There are also some that will jump all over you because they are watching if anyone says something bad about their company or product. Then you have something else entirely. I think everyone remembers the Skittles mistake. Skittles decided to make Skittles.com pull in anything anyone was saying about Skittles from Twitter and display it. Of course obscenities were rampant once it launched. It was funny for a few minutes, then it got old. It also made Skittles abandon Twitter for their homepage to Youtube. I bet they will actually think before they implement something like that in the future.

The last thing that bugs me and might not cause Twitter to fail, but it’s not helping. These are users that use Twitter as a lifestream. Now, it is your account and I can’t tell you how to use it because Twitter is what you make of it, but do you really need to use it as a lifestream? Twitter wasn’t meant to be a lifestream. That’s what Friendfeed and other applications are for. I do not need to know where you are every 5 minutes, so stop posting your brightkite status. I also don’t need to know every time you’re listening to a new song, so please don’t update me with your blip.fm status. It’s cool if you want to post these things every once in a while, such as when you find a great new song or if you need other Twitter users to know where you are for a meetup or if you have a new blog post, but when that’s all your updates are then chances are you won’t have many followers for long.

To leave on a more positive note I’ll tell you one thing that I love since Twitter hit the mainstream. Celebrities. I’m not talking about Britney Spears or Barack Obama and I’m not talking about celebrity gossip. I’m talking about the celebrities that are actually fun to follow on Twitter. People like Michael Ian Black, Rob Corddry, Jimmy Fallon, ?uestlove (of The Roots), Demitri Martin, etc. are great because their real life personalities transform so well onto Twitter. Even Shaq has some of the funniest updates on Twitter.