Evanalyze

I can’t stand the phrase “do(ing) email.” It drives me borderline nuts (for admittedly no good reason).

It occurred to me tonight, while waiting impatiently at Fedex, that lots of communications tools use awful verbiage–actually, awful verbage, if only that was a word, since the offending terms are nearly always verbs.

“Do email.” “Make calls.” Ick!

One that seems to avoid the train wreck is IM’s, where we “chat.” Oh, maybe if we get the noun out of the sentence we can make some headway.

When we search we “Google.” Everyone likes that!

Of course we can “email,” or “call,” but I think those have already been spoiled (1) because of tradition (2) because they’re somewhat uniquely communications mediums that people try to pass off as real time commitments. “Can’t talk right now. I’m doing email.” Oh, sounds official.

I want someone to come along and introduce the “Google” (v.) of email. I don’t care so much about phone calls–I’m already brainwashed to not really mind when people “make” calls–but if you want to fix that one too, be my guest.

First, social media gurus/ninjas/consultants/etc are full of shit. I am not going to profess to be one.

One of the most common nuggets of crap I hear when people talk about using social media–especially companies using social media–is that you have to use every aspect of the service possible or you might as well not using it at all. This is retarded.

There’s nothing divinely right about any given service’s design that means that you need to use every feature they offer. If you run a corporate blog, you should probably enable comments, although not necessarily. It’s probably a good idea to have a blogroll or some kind of link group, but it’s not a game breaker if you don’t. It doesn’t really matter much if you install and wizbang plugin, but most of them won’t hurt. There’s nothing plutonic about any of these things though. Certainly none of them are worth investing in simply because the software you chose to use allows them.

On Twitter, it’s probably a good idea to reply to follow other users, but it’s plenty easy to get lots of value out of the service without doing that. There are even more proof points of this than you’d think, because many of the accounts that “follow” lots of users don’t actually follow anyone, in that they don’t pay attention to the incoming streams. That’s fine if that’s your strategy. It’s not what I’d recommend, in an ideal world, but who cares?

There’s nothing wrong with only using select features of a social media service just like there’s nothing wrong with only using select features of your word processor–except tables, for the love of God please use tables if you’re laying out anything that is remotely grid-like.

If Twitter (or WordPress or Digg or whatever) removes a feature tomorrow, were the people using it idiots or the people avoiding it geniuses? Nope.

With sweet potatoes pan fried in clarified butter and garlic (and steak bits left in the pan).

Steak cooking

Sweet potatoes cooking

Finished steak and sweet potatoes

Being hurried and being busy.

For some reason these two (totally different) things have become irrevocably associated. It bugs me to no end and not just for reasons of etymology.

The guy on the right.


if($sender = $_SESSION['my_name']){
$query = mysql_query("select * from sent_items where subject = $subject and body = $body");
if(mysql_num_rows($query) == 0)
this_email_is_obviously_spam_kthxbai();
}


After a run of crap weeks and not so great weekends, this weekend has been fantastic. Food, golf, football, booze–winner.

I played like absolute crap, but had one of the most fun rounds of golf ever this morning at Coyote Creek. It was brutally difficult but a really top notch course. Afterward I enjoyed a much better than expected super bowl with some awesome people in Palo Alto.

The highlights of the day were two lifetime great quotes. First, the outrageously dressed woman in our foursome screaming “THAT’S MINE” for absolutely no reason right as someone 10 feet from her was beginning to swing. It was epic. Second, the middle of the night online sports book voicemail (not mine) that began, “Hey, it’s Gabby,” followed by a half-hearted plea to bet money on the super bowl because “the lines are moving!”

All in all, just a really enjoyable weekend, even though I couldn’t break 90.