Friday, October 7, 2011

Thinking About Going Vegan

Copy of my facebook status, cuz I'm tired and going to bed: "Just finished watching "Forks Over Knives" documentary on Netflix. Strongly considering going mostly vegan. Main tenant of the movie: animal based food is screwing our health (not to mention the environmental destruction from beef industry), but you don't need crazy medicine, just whole grain plant diets. Thoughts?"
Will continue to research this tomorrow.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

How Facebook is Destroying Birthdays - Or on Defriending and The Art of Birthdays

I'll admit, I'm guilty of it. I open up Facebook, and on the right side notice that today is my "friend X's" birthday. Click, type type type, press Enter, and I've wished them "Happy Birthday". Back to looking at the latest posts. That's crap.

(Tangent Alert: About a year ago, a friend of mine suggested a brilliant idea. If I get an alert for someone's birthday, and I don't even want to wish them "Happy Birthday" on their wall, then I should de-friend them. I've been cleaning up my friend list every day since. Back to birthdays though.)

When I was little, I would get so excited about my birthday that I'd have trouble falling asleep, and when I did, I'd wake up super early. Somehow, magically, there'd be a pile of presents at my feet and I'd spend the rest of the morning opening and playing with new toys. Then relatives would come over, and I'd get more presents and cards. And then I'd have a birthday party, and my friends would come over and I'd get even more cards and presents. That was awesome!! However, after I graduated college Facebook had become the way to wish people Happy Birthday.

Now a days, on my birthday there's a flurry of wall posts, and if I'm lucky beers with my close friends. But what about the cards, what about the presents?

Hypothesis: One's birthday joy is directly related to the amount of effort the birthday gesture required.

Case 1: The Facebook wall post. This takes no effort. It's better than nothing, but it kinda sucks because you know the person probably forgot about your birthday anyways, and it took them two seconds.

Case 2: The birthday card. First, you have to buy a card. Then you have to hand-write a message. Finally you have to mail it. I gotta say, it's nice to get birthday cards.

Case 3: The surprise birthday party. This requires a lot of planning and effort. Someone has to pick a time and place, invite guests, make sure they don't spill the beans, get them all there early, trick me into thinking I'm going somewhere else, yell surprise, etc. A ton of effort, but I got to say, the one time I had a surprise birthday, it was an amazing feeling.

So there you have it, here are my findings:


Next time, send your real friends a birthday card, it'll make their day.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Does it make cents to pay full price?

Today I was wondering, is there gonna come a point where we won't be paying full price for anything anymore? We're living during a brief golden period where consumers can get away without paying full price for services. Just the other week I saved $15 at Pho. I would have eaten there anyways, but sure, I'll take not paying $15 more than I have to.

Which got me to thinking, do people buy Groupons/Living Socials/BuyWithMe/YouNameIts to places they already go or are businesses really attracting new customers? What do you do, leave me a comment below?

Have you checked out the Weekly Dig's DigDeals (not a paid endorsement)? I find that a lot of the group deals are to places that I don't want to go to, but Dig's selling giftcards to places that are awesome (and ok):

  • $15 for $30 at Stone Hearth Pizza
  • $25 for $50 at the OTHERSIDE Cafe
  • $25 for $50 at Lord Hobo's
These appear to be limited, because Union Street and Jacob Wirth's are sold out, so get yours, I've got mine.

http://digboston.com/deals/eats-drinks/

Monday, May 23, 2011

Very relevant article to our lives: "Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform"

I recently found the following article by Edward M. Hailowell called "Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform." While this article is from 2005, I found it extremely relevant to my day to day work. I associated with the feelings of those used as examples in the articles.

It was absolutely fascinating to learn about the physiological responses that are causing our underperformance and simple tips to overcome them.

Thanks to MIT for hosting this helpful resource:
http://web.mit.edu/mitpostdocs/documents/OverloadedCircuits.pdf

Let me know what you think of it,
Sam