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All morning I worked on the proof of one of my poems, and took out a comma; in the afternoon I put it back.
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Blog Posts for September 2010
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Yesterday morning, I made it possible for us to be able to view our page view stats from the Des Moines Amplified web site. Tonight, I clicked in to see how it was coming and saw that we were about to turn 11,000 page views in less than two days. Also, we had 32 viewers watching our channel. So I took a picture as it rolled over.  Click on the picture to see it in full size. There are newspapers that would love to see 11,000 page views in two days. Hell, they might be happy with that much activity in two weeks. And of course, these stats don't consider the content generated and uploaded by our hosts to YouTube, blip.tv, Podbean, etc. We don't track those stats. So let's compare that to some online newspapers.  Assuming Des Moines Amplified's rate of about 6,000 page views per day, that's 180,000 in a month, which translates into over 2 million page views in a year. And that number puts little old us squarely in league with some of the nation's largest newspaper outlets. Are we onto something? You betcha. And we're just getting started. |
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Pageviews, and Other Metrics |
Due to my business partner's pugnacious nature, I got roped into a discussion about pageviews vs. visitors. It's a dumb discussion. Here's why: Let's say that your place of business has 10 customers who each order from you 100 times a month. How many orders do you produce? 1,000. Let's say that you have 100 customers who each order from you 10 times a month. How many orders do you have? 1,000. What's the difference? Or, let's say that you're a newspaper... You could read the paper every day, along with 99 other people. At the end of 10 days, the paper was read 1,000 times. Or, you could have 1,000 people pick it up and only read it 1 day out of 10. Your paper was read 1,000 times. What's the difference? Subscription only counts when people are paying for subscription. Otherwise, it's views and saturation. If your product brings in a lot of people but relatively few repeats, then your business model, if it's smart, will take that into account and thrive. If your product brings in less people, but greater loyalty, then your business model, if it's smart, will take that into account and thrive. Both are winnable efforts. Apple, meet orange. You both taste great. |
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The Super Genius and his Merry Band "have few options on economy," the headline reads. Hey, I've been predicting this meltdown of business for two years. Wasn't hard. And I don't even have a college degree. All you need to understand this is to perform elementary math. Government can only hurt the economy. The only way it helps the economy is to remove itself from it. Since the Super Genius is loathe to do that (it goes against every fiber of his being), until we get new leadership in Washington that actually believes in freedom, and not in crafting solutions, we'll continue as we are. |
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Make Money by Talking to a Friend |
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Straight Out of the Acme Manual |
No jobs? Political seats to be lost? Never fear - the Super Genius has a plan! Propose $50 billion in more stimulus - even though it failed the first time it was tried. Here's the calculus: - Enough Republicans will vote for it because they'll be painted as obstructionists by the media if they don't, and because it allows them to throw some pork around.
- Use the money to hire as many people as possible to prop up the jobs figures.
- The media will go bonkers trying to cheerleader this thing into public euphoria.
- It will fail, but it will only be shown to fail after the November elections, so it's okay, see...
As I've said, this election is not about the politicians. It's a massive test of the intelligence of the American people. |
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From the husband of Michelle Antoinette: Obama, who is taking a pounding in the polls, looked like a man who had a secret to the comeback. He sounded like a happy warrior, laughing at his jokes before he'd told them. He even did voices, embellishing his tale about Republicans who drove the economy into the ditch. "We're sweating, and these guys were watching us and sipping on a Slurpee," he said to crowd laughter before impersonating his uptight GOP opponents. "And they're pointing at us and saying 'How come you're not pushing harder?'" Um, yeah...I'm up until midnight working pretty much every night of the week. My Labor Day was immersed in, you know, labor. I haven't had a vacation this summer. He had several.  Words are cheap, champ. |
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Every once in a while you meet someone who goes through extraordinary and difficult times, and throughout the entire episode, they remain the person that you've always known them to be. They say that you can only measure integrity at the times when it will cost a person. I love Mike Sansone. I'm proud to call him my friend. I first met Mike through my daughter. She worked at Panera in the wee hours of the morning back then, and she would come home and tell me about this amazing guy I should get to know. When she would see him come through the door, she would ready his bear claw. She loved regulars like Mike, and she found that Mike was a deep guy. The more she got to know him, the more she got to like him. If you win my daughter over, you're good with me. My daughter's radar is tougher than my own. I met Mike and over the next two or three years, and we would have big conversations about life and technology, people and places. I learned things from these conversations. I trust that he did as well. I saw Mike interact with all kinds of folks, and I loved his consistency. He was the same sincere guy to everyone, always ready with a hug and a smile. Recently, he went through some pretty difficult times. But even through all of it, he didn't change. I'm proud of him. He could have lowered himself and ranted and raved. But that's not Mike. Instead, he cried a bit and shrugged his shoulders and kept on walking through it all. He's a good man, and my daughter, Bari, trusts him completely. Whatever his future holds, I know it will benefit those around him. Many people in Des Moines are better for knowing Mike. I'm glad to say that I'm one of them. Bari says that she is too. |
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Freedom Means Freedom for Everyone |
Darth Cheney, that vicious right-wing politician who would stop at nothing to enslave Americans, said this in the spring of 2009. "I think that freedom means freedom for everyone. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish." He said this in the context of gay marriage, but it captures a distinctly American principle."Freedom means freedom for everyone." That's the equality that was instilled by the founders of this country: an equality of freedom. Free to pursue your dreams and ambitions and work and love - so long as it doesn't rob anyone else of their freedom. The only way you preserve an equality of freedom for everyone is by ensuring that people can act according to their free will. You'll know that you've begun to rob people of their free will when you force them into an action against their will. Mandating how people spend their time, how they spend their money, the associations they make with other people, their beliefs, their speech... all of these force people to act against their will. Whenever the government robs a person of their free will, that's tyranny. And it's wrong. Which means that much of what government does these days is wrong. I'm with Dick Cheney: freedom means freedom for everyone, in every category of life. When Republicans and Democrats line up with that philosophy, they champion America. When they don't, they hasten its collapse. The natural instinct of people is self-determination. Everyone wants to make their own decisions. Unfortunately, while they want to safeguard their own self-determination, some want to mandate behavior for others - to make them act against their own free will, even if their actions cause no injury to others. Which gets back to Cheney's remarks. Ol' Dick caused quite a stir among Republicans when he stood up for individual freedom and spoke out in support of gay marriage. And if any other Republican truly believes in freedom for everyone, so would they. "Social issues," as they're called, were tried here in Iowa in the gubernatorial campaign of Bob Vander Plaats. And failed among Republican voters in the primary. If they're unpersuasive among Republicans as a central plank, perhaps "social issues" shouldn't be a plank at all. Which gets me back to freedom. Whichever party best embodies the preservation of freedom in America is the party most likely to win in elections. I say that neither party is popular at all because neither party seeks individual freedom for us in the cheap seats. Freedom means freedom for everyone. Do you believe that? |
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A couple of years ago, I invested money into people needing a loan through Prosper.com.  Two are paid in full, and the other two are current, as you can see. The government, which shut it down to any participation outside of the state of California due to concerns about "risk," is full of ninnies. Viva freedom and self-determination. |
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Who Cares about 30,000 People? |
For all the libs out there who seem to think that the government can just snap its fingers and everyone magically receives health care, read about McDonald's contention with the newly minted ObamaCare regs. If it remains law, ObamaCare will not only remove quality health care from the poor, it will bankrupt our children. I rode in an elevator not long ago and two building maintenance guys were talking politics. I walked into the middle of their conversation. "Yeah, I read about it happening in Detroit," one fella told his buddy. Then he leaned closer and cracked a big smile. "I'm gonna get my hands on some of that Obama money, yes I am." "And if he runs out, he'll just print more!" his buddy chimed in. "Yeah, man! He can do that!" Super genius.  ETC: Not to mention the coming shortage of doctors, as forecast by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Obviously a racist institution, to look askance on the president's health care law as they do... Of course, what financial incentive do folks have to enter medicine, when many of them expect their "workload will increase" and their "income to decrease." More work, less pay? Heck, you can manage that without the burden of hundreds of thousands in student loan debt. |
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