MetaMuse

Self-Diagnose Peter Pan Syndrome!

"Peter Pan Syndrome", as I learned just now, is the urge to stretch adolescence into mid-life. (Scientists call it psychological neoteny.) Hmmm ... I can identify with that. So it was with great interest that I saw the formula for diagnosing Peter Pan Syndrome in the new Outside issue. Diagnose yourself!

((annual salary in thousands) /(age - career changes))

                                                        X

(years in current profession + mortgages + marriages + children)

The answer is the age you're acting like. Seems to be around right for me -- my answer was 34, and that feels about the age I'm acting! So it appears I've got a little Peter Pan Syndrome. No surprise there ...

Track Links to your Blog

Catching up on blog posts and saw that Jason Cohen has created a new free service called LinksFor.Us. Plug in a URL and it gives you link-sharing stats such as:

• Every time posted on Reddit, votes up and down, the subreddit, number of comments
• Every time posted to Digg: votes, comments, categories, titles, descriptions
• Del.icio.us bookmark count, with tag list
• Mixx and Sphinn stats
• Twitters of the link plus the TinyURL and several other shortened forms.

So of course I check the stats for my blog and while completely unimpressive (as expected), I was pleasantly surprised to see that 3 of the last 10 posts have been bookmarked on Delicio.us. Huh -- had no idea!

Suggested New Flavors for Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Made with Breast Milk!

Claiming the "Breast is Best", PETA (people for the ethical treatment of animals) asks Ben & Jerry's to "dump dairy and go with human milk instead". Inspired by Danny Sullivan, I began to think of some new flavors:

• Udder Mudder
• Mountain Mama
• Be My Breast
• Dolly Carton
• Mammary Jamboree
• Nipple Ripple
• Colostrum Express-o
• Granola Aerola
• Someone already suggested Yummy Mummy  ...

Little help, people?

Anniversary - Jerry Garcia's Death

Thirteen years ago this morning I was extremely saddened to hear of the death of Jerry Garcia. I hadn't been into Jerry and the Grateful Dead long -- only since about 1989. My wife and I had moved out to San Francisco in the summer of 1990 and started going to shows regularly, even traveling to new places to see the Grateful Dead play. We also saw many performances of Jerry Garcia at the Warfield on Market street -- both with his acoustic band (with Dave Grisman) and electric band. All incredible music, good times, and wonderful memories of my twenty-something years. He is still very missed.

Airsoft Camo (Spot the Dork and Win)

Hugh and I played airsoft again today. Since no one else showed up, we each took turns hiding while the other tried to find find/shoot. The one hiding has such the advantage -- Hugh especially -- given that the camouflage blends so well in with the environment.

Take a look -- click on the pictures here to get a bigger view. The top picture is me from about 40 feet away (that's close -- lethal aim from there actually). Can you see me? (It's a tad blurry.) The one below it is Hugh from about 30 feet away. Can you tell he's aiming his sniper airsoft rifle right at me?

Clearly we're both "outliers" in society (dorks really) for sneaking around in the woods and shooting each other. But I think Hugh is moreso -- he hand-painted his  shoes, face guard, handgun and sniper rifle in digital camo!

Seattle's Most Influential Startup Bloggers

Yup, that's me! Check out the official list.

I've heard this honor is not unlike being in the American Idol top 12 -- it's that rigorous of a process.

NOT!

Ready for War Again with Airsoft

When I was a kid, we always used to play war in the woods. We'd just use cap guns or whatever, and I don't even remember capturing a flag or anything. It was just running and sneaking around and pretending to be at war.

Since becoming an adult, I've greatly enjoyed playing paint ball here and there. It's hard to get together a bunch of people, find a field, rent the equipment, etc.  Lately I've been hearing about airsoft. I've seen the guns, which are in many cases exact replicas of real guns, but hadn't evern shot one until last weekend. My buddy Hugh recently bought three guns (handgun, sniper rifle and MP5), so Hunter and I met him in the woods to shoot a bit. It's just like a BB gun but better, since the guns are cooler -- on automatic mode, the machine guns can shoot over 600 rounds per minute! Hugh shot me in the ass from about 100 feet away (I was hiding behind a tree but I guess my ass was sticking out!), and it stung! Since my Crossman 760 BB gun just died on me, I figured an airsoft gun would be an outstanding replacement.

So I went over to Sir Plus in Woodinville where I knew they had an amazing selection, and ended up buying an Echo 1 X733 commando, plus some camo and safety gear. This gun rocks, and it's also one f the more inexpensive models.  It holds 300 rounds and the tests showed a consistent 365 feet per second velocity, in automatic mode.  It's driven by a rechargeable battery that I guess pulls back the spring. I understand you can replace the spring and get 400-700 fps, but most organized airsoft fields require less than 400 fps.

It's also got an adjustable hop-up system which allows you to apply backspin to the BB as it leaves the chamber, thereby allowing the BB to fly straighter. The only thing I had against airsoft is the plastic BBs, but you can buy biodegradable BBs -- they're a little more money, but a necessity from my perspective!

Anyway, Hugh and I will be coordinating some airsoft wars here soon, and will no doubt come back with smiles on our faces and welts everywhere else!

Playing Hooky for Fresh Tracks

I'm a powder hound, which means I don't just "ski" -- I wait for the conditions to be right. I watch out for powder alerts, read detailed mountain weather forecasts, look at pass conditions, and check hourly mountain weather reports (temps, precipitation, wind speed, snow accumulation, etc.). I usually wait until the last minute to decide whether I'm going to ski, and where. It doesn't bother me at all to go alone because as we say (in my powder hound posse): "on a powder day you have no friends". Hey, my time is valuable and I don't get to ski much -- so I want to optimize each hour on the slopes!

Yesterday I allowed myself the luxury of playing a few hours of hooky in favor of hitting Alpental first thing in the morning. I knew the low freezing levels combined with lots of precipitation, on a weekday, would make for a very strong "quality vertical skiing per hour" score (which translates to how much kickass skiing you can get per hour, measured in feet of vertical drop).

The snow was outstanding, the lift lines were almost nonexistent, the temperature remained cold and I was getting fresh tracks on every run! I only needed 3 hours of continuous skiing to get a ton of vertical and be absolutely wiped, then it was back to the office.

MetaMuse Exclusive: Mindfreak Criss Angel Plots Mind Control via the Blogosphere

In what can only be described as a ruthless attack on the world, mindfreak Criss Angel has hatched a plan to move to Canada and control the minds of millions of thought leaders across the blogosphere.

It first started with an innocent announcement of a Criss Angel Look-a-Like contest at the Luxor. This was enough to unconsciously lure the host victim in this heinous crime -- Jeremy Wright, CEO of blog network b5media, hailing from Toronto and whose resemblance to the dark lord is uncanny. Jeremy experienced an awkward stare-down with the evil magician late Friday night, leaving Jeremy unusually disoriented and ill and his passport missing!

Today, while Jeremy tries desperately to return to his homeland, sources indicate Criss Angel has already entered b5media's offices in Toronto, from where he's tapped into the core publishing platform in order to control the minds of >10M influential Web users, through popular blogs such as Deep Jive Interests and ProBlogger.

Using my own mind control prowess, I've been able to intercept the signals and redirect most of them to Michael Arrington as penance for his no-show at BlogWorld. (Expect very odd behavior from him for a while.) However, if you feel abnormally prone to drama-blogging or twittering, you have been affected by Criss Angel's mind control! Your only remedy to breaking this wretched curse is to link to MetaMuse -- I'll take it from there!

This post is satirical and uses real names to embellish the story for entertainment purposes. I really don't have mind control prowess. Very little of this story is true.

Deep Powder at Crystal Mountain

On Friday after Thanksgiving I had THE best day of skiing at Crystal Mountain I've ever had. I don't normally frequent Crystal because I've just not had good days there before. I know it's a good mountain, with great terrain, and the High Campbell chair takes you to some killer steeps, but I just haven't had good luck there before. Well we hit some incredible powder -- they had had 24" of fresh in the past 24 hours, and something like 50" that week. Went with Justin, Tom and Doug and we were hitting thigh deep powder all day! The evidence is in the pictures (courtesy of Justin), which shows me busting thru (above right), and Tom to the left.