IAMTHEALPHAMALE

It’s been a long past few weeks. The building move at work has been completed, and I’m all set to move into my new apartment on July 1st, and I’m excited. As with most things, my blogging is probably about to start happening again in sharp bursts, and even a redesign, thanks to squarespace, if I decide to move over to that site. More to come later on that.

As Good As It Gets on Women

Receptionist: How do you write women so well?
Melvin Udall: Easy. I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.

As Good As It Gets on Me

Simon Bishop: The best thing you have going for you is your willingness to humiliate yourself.

Wow, ya know just when I think I have women in general figured out, something happens to completely trip me up.

I’m definitely learning to just take it all in stride. It’s some how ironic how some people take everything that happens at face value, and refuse to delve deeper into anything. Ah well, such is life.

I feel nice and relaxed now. Expect some posts soon about my escapades in the dating world from my first date back out in the wild from a few months ago through the awful dates, to this current situation.

I had an email come through rescheduling a meeting that was setup for about a week for a demonstration of something we have in the design phase. Now, it’s 4 hours early taking away from the time I had with someone i’m working with to try to get it done.

I will probably be up all night working on this to make it the best possible. Wish me luck!

So, I have been thinking about something, and I think I’ve realized something. I have been thinking about how I relate to others, how others relate to me, and the foundation for those trusts. It’s been something on my mind a lot because of so many reasons, but I thought I’d break down those things, and try to distill it as much as possible.

When I first meet someone, there is a small amount of implied trust that gets put out on the line. From that point going forward, that trust will either grow with the persons honesty, and ability to follow through, or fail based on manipulation and lack of follow through. Generally, I know if I can tell how much I can trust someone fairly quickly especially at work where it is easy to make excuses, and desire for follow through is very easily measured. For me, you can tell who is honest, and sincere, when they do it consistently, even on things that aren’t in there best interest because it’s right.

I’ve been going back and forth in my mind lately on why I trust the way I do, but also on how others trust. What I’m learning is that for some people, trust is a completely different matter, where long term actions consistently being there is the gauge. I don’t know, time will tell how right I am on this, I just never thought of trust based on things like this. I know I’m well guarded when it comes to those I let in, but maybe I’ve met my match or better.

Today I imported all of my blog posts from years ago. I will probably delete a lot of them, but here they are.

As many of you know it’s been an interesting year, with many things happening that have drastically changed my life, and the past few months have been me learning to adjust to things I have either haven’t had to deal with in years, or coping with mixed feelings that still to this day shake me to my core.

The past couple months, I’ve been out dating, and it seems like everybody I have known has had somebody to set me up with. I guess that bodes well for how my friends think of me. As that goes though, I am now seeing someone that a friend set me up with, and it’s been very refreshing. Along with that though, I’ve been trying to get someone to leave me alone that is completely mentally unstable in every sense of the word, who actually had the audacity to claim that I was crazy. I’m not going to go into any specifics on it, but I will say this. There was a day after I started seeing the girl I’m currently involved with, when I was having lunch with a friend from work. The crazy girl called me a total of 5 times during that lunch with me not answering. That, unfortunately, was the least of the problems.

Things with the new, mentally sound girl have been going well. We are taking things a day at a time. She is completely different then anyone else I’ve ever dated. There is a sweetness, and genuineness to her that is disarming. I’ll go into more details once there are more details that I’m willing to let out openly.

The main point of all of this post though isn’t about my so-called “Love Life” but to go on about the importance of integrity, and honesty. I don’t trust many people. There are very very few people I consider to be close friends, and those people I would trust with my life. I have one or two at work, and a few outside but they are few and far between. Different things that have happened over the course of this week make me appreciate those close friends I have. Whether it be the complete and utter lies of someone who won’t leave me alone, or it be the plagiarism that someone who is twice my age turned into me claiming it was original work that we need for the project. People who lack integrity come in many forms, whether they be executive level IT people in a major media company, or school teachers who are trusted with the educations of our kids.

At work, I knew the person who was holding us behind was going to be a problem from the get go. It was evident by his “power play” early on in the project for resources that weren’t needed for what he was being paid for. My hands were tied, but I accounted and planned for what he eventually did, and was able to manage the damage. In other cases though, like the lunatic who was causing me grief in my personal life, I was just completely blind sided. It’s those moments where I get blind sided by the people I trust too early on that further my trust issues. It’s so hard to discuss this on here without going into specifics, and thats the frustrating thing.

I guess my big question is why on earth is it that people behave this way? Are we so far gone that lies and manipulation are social norms? At what point did hard work and results get traded for empty words and a smile?

Very very soon I will be uploading pics from my New York trip, and some other things regarding the Obama win, Bailout #1, Bailout #2, and other things that may potentially blow your mind.

I haven’t written in so long that I feel like I’m trying to rediscovery my writing style again.

Stay tuned, I’m a work in progress.

I know I have a few posts that are needing some finishing touches, but I did just want to toss this out there.

My life has changed a lot over the course of the last few months. I will probably do a full post later regarding these changes, but they were to say the very least life changing. To that end though, I found myself in a situation that I hadn’t been in for years. Being single. During the course of this “journey” of mine, I realized that what is commonly accepted as normal behavior has changed, and yet some how I am still “crazy” as a result. To all of those concerned, I am not crazy, though if you think i am thats a pretty good indicator that you are in the wrong place then.

I’ll post more later.

Since Yahoo took the poison pill trying to avoid becoming another MSN for Microsoft, theres been a lot of buzz about possible buy outs that in many cases, actually make more sense. Yahoo and MIcrosoft didn’t make much sense to me because Yahoo was too powerful of a brand to be squandered as Microsoft’s MSN 2.0 hope. Any merger/buyout would have resulted in a minimum of a few years before anything useful formed out of the union, much like when HP and Compaq merged, or AOL and Time Warner. Two dominate companies like this should only merge in the face of absolute desperation, and diluted brand value. Yes, Yahoo isn’t in the best shape, but they are one of the most highly visited websites on the internet and dominate in free webmail. They are also the #2 search provider being the first site millions look at for search results, news, or email. What Yahoo has right now is something Microsoft wished they had, a perfectly viable untarnished web brand. Microsoft has invested hundreds of millions, if not billions refining their own search technology to make it more appealing to customers, problem is, without an audience, they can’t get an ROI. They’ve tried making MSN as big as AOL back in it’s hay-day with terrible marketing idea’s like the giant butterfly that harassed people in New York. Things have gotten to the point where nothing can really salvage the brand.

AOL on the other hand is in a very similar situation with Microsoft. AOL made the bulk of it’s revenue from Dial-Up internet access that was simple enough that anyone could setup. But in the day of instant on internet, people have slowly stopped using it. AOL has several things going for it. It has been smart enough to own several key web properties. AOL Instant Messenger is still the premier stand alone Instant Messaging system, probably taking up more time on average then Microsoft and Yahoo combined. They also have a salvageable brand. Unlike MIcrosoft that never had a true success, AOL at one point was the trail blazer on many things we use today, and quite frankly, with a little guidance, and enough marketing money, the entire thing can be revived in a big way. At this point AOL is not significantly more then a brand. Enough time has past from it’s dial-up days where it can be revived, and shimmer with the right backers and deep enough pockets. The merger of Microsoft and AOL would also bring forth the possibility of merging MIcrosoft Messenger with AOL Instant Messenger giving them essentially the entire market. With AOL having as many captive users from it’s past with AOL, and AIM, combined with Windows Live, MSN, and Hotmail, the sheer user volume would create an incredibly compelling ad network.

If Microsoft bought Yahoo, it would be nothing more then a land grab with no value being added to either company. Microsoft buying AOL would be a cheaper acquisition, and allow the two to collaborate to make a very strong #3 if not #2 competitor to Google.

Couple weeks ago, I went down to the Apple Store to pickup an iPhone. I went expecting the actually expecting the kind of mess I kept hearing about. Keep in mind I had a first generation iPhone, so I knew how easy this entire process really could be under the best case scenario. So a Mac Specialist got me when it was my turn. I told him I wanted a 16GB Black iPhone, that he ran to pick up for me. The entire upgrade process was simple as it could be. After I swiped my card, and signed the screen, I was taken down to a Mac to activate the phone. I plugged in the phone, and no time it was activated. After it was activated, I went ahead and plugged in my Exchange settings, and MobileMe account. With those two, I was completely up and running before I even left the store.

So onto my review:

The iPhone 3G feels very different the the first iPhone. It’s body is wider, and actually slightly thicker, but the edges are tapered in such a way that you can’t tell. Infact the 3G actually feels lighter and smaller then my other one. The back is a glossy black that I thought would have ended up getting scratched up easily. I’ve had the phone for over a week now, using it without a case, and so far the device seems great. The GPS on the device was something I had really low expectations for. The GPS on my old Razr was kinda slow, and not very accurate. Having read a few reviews on it, I was expecting more or less the same, so I didn’t bother to get my hopes up in using this as a true GPS. The surprising thing about Google Maps with the GPS though is how accurate it is, and how quick it is. Driving around in my car, it takes no effort to find myself on the screen, and it tracks me with more accuracy then my Verizon Razr ever did. The only conclusion that I can take from this is that many of us that have been using “GPS” on our phones have really been using pseudo triangulation from the Cell towers, and the fact that most people drive when using the GPS helps with it’s slow inaccuracies.