Long post ahead, beware.

And so there's that one moment when you're glad you're not a Harvard alum... HarvardSucks.org I left a few one letter posts.

In other news, ever since I can remember, and from what my parents have told me, when I was very young I've been a friendly and social guy. Like when I was 3-4 years old my parents and I were checking out BMWs at Chapman BMW on Camelback and (I don't remember this but my parents have told me this story multiple times so I'll believe it's true) this security guard came up and I boldly went up to the guy and asked him about his baton, his gun, his handcuffs and all kinds of stuff. I was 4 years old and not scared at all. I'm Nemo touching the damn boat!!

And so this progressed in high school where I became the school mascot and then college where I was always out and about with pockets full of sunshine and just handing it out wherever I went (this is not a metaphor for illegal substances). I've ALWAYS been very friendly and kind.

And today I get some news that maybe I'm a little TOO outwardly friendly... and that's ok - because everyone's different and some people may have lower levels of friendliness relative to my usual level of friendliness; but I'm wondering what kind of perception am I building by being my normal self who wants to hang out and be nice to people who I believe are equally cool?

Whatever the issue, the message has been recieved and changes are here. I'm a friendly guy and will continue to be friendly but there's a new boundary to that level of friendliness and that boundary starts today. For those of you who have been friends for more than a year, rock on, we're going to hang like we always have... for those of you who haven't been around that long... you're going to see a different Clifford whether you like it or not.

For those of you who read through that rant and feel you need compensation... buy XING on the nasdaq and you'll feel better. Up 20% today while the market was open and down slightly in after hours trading. Read the press releases, buy the stock, and be happy China has millions of cell phone users.

One more thing...

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The most annoying thing in the world has got to be spam e-mail. Has anyone in the entire world EVER bought anything from a site that they got spammed from?

Tonight I did a WHOIS lookup on a domain name that was spammed to me and just about called the phone number that was on file with the domain registrar.

If you're ever interested in who is sending you spam, just go to Freewho.com and paste the domain name into the search field and it will show the registration information for that domain name.

We need to fight back.

c.

Life is pretty weird when...
- the only tv in the house is installed in your car.

Brian took the tv to Meghan's house.

So my dad got back from Hong Kong yesterday and shared with me some of the things he saw and experienced while in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Apparently, in Shanghai and in Hong Kong, the telecommunications infrastructure is in place to support millions upon millions of cell phone users to the point that their retail price of cell phone minutes is $0.01US/minute.

Yeah. One penny a minute.

Do you realize the significance of this breakthrough? The mind begins to wonder about what possible business opportunities are available when communication is so cheap and what industries do the Chinese focus on in China. The first thought is China doesn't have to worry 'reaching out and touching someone'. The second thought is, with cell phone usage being so cheap, the prevalent use of it across the country must be increasing like crazy and it has for the past few years as illustrated by their ability to offer coverage at a penny a minute. Oh - and that penny/minute rate is for calls made within the country. If you want to call internationally, the price shoots up 300% to something like 3 cents a minute.

Haaaaaaahahahahhaahaha

If the country already has the cell phone market down pat, what do these people focus on in the business world? Supplying cell phones, cell phone ring tones, cell phone customization, personal digital assistants (my dad says they'd never use the Treo 600 since it's too big), mp3 players...

Everyone has heard the proverbial tale of the race between the rabbit and the turtle. Well, the United States had a good sprint during the 50s and 60s but I think we've been too lax and have been napping while China has passed us by with their economy and ability to increase the quality of living on a much larger scale for a much larger population.

Makes ya wonder.

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This past weekend was pretty hectic. I sold my G20 and it's kinda weird looking out on the driveway and not seeing the little red guy hanging out. There are so many memories in that G20. :) It was a fun car.

I started driving the car when it had about 50k miles and it had 143k up to this past weekend. Now the fun car is gone, I'm down to one ride and before when I had a 'back up car' I was thinking about putting shocks and springs on the nice car but now I'm not sure since it's a 'luxury' car. The shocks/springs would lower it a bit and make it more sporty but I think maybe just the shocks would be a good addition. It'll make it handle like a BMW with a less body roll and it would get rid of the floating feeling I get when I go over bumps at speed. The springs would just lower the car. Meh.

In other news... as President Bush gets elected for another 4 years and thinks "uno mas!"... the closest people to him think "no no muchacho!". IKEA has a deal on Cabinets!

I was so close to going to sleep at a normal time... and then the e-mails flowed in... and the IM's started going... and the phone calls started.

And there are those who just have to be there on the first day...

IKEA opened in Phoenix today. I gave it some thought and debated on going down there but decided not to face the crowds of people waiting to get into the big blue box of Tempe.

Some 24 year old guy was the first in line by sleeping 8 straight nights in front of the store and he took home all of the furniture from the cover of IKEA's most recent catalog.

Ummm, yeah- hey- you just spent 8 days of your life in front of a store. And you took time off of work to be there. The total value of the stuff you 'won' was like 1,600 bucks. Do some math buddy.

8x24 = 192 hours

$1,600/192 = $8.33/hour

Congratulations man. You just made $8.33 an hour and pissed away 8 days of your life. Oh - and you were in the paper. Good job man. I bet your parents are proud.

Don't get me wrong. In fact, I love IKEA. I took a photo of their SD store a couple of months back when I went on my road trip.



But c'mon man... $8.33 an hour????

Oh well... some people love different things. Thanks to my roommate Brian, I love my little hawaiian bobble-type girl.



Thank you Brian!!!

It's character building...
Today I was told that I would have to do something that I'm not really comfortable with doing. When my lack of enthusiasm was noticed my friend smiled and assured me that it was character building...

So I began to think about how I've always tried to build good characteristics and that I never really gave it much thought about building character through something unpleasant. Well, not on purpose anyway. So I was thinking about all the different facets of Clifford there could be and have realized that there are some good characteristics that I could build through unpleasant things.

Characteristics that I could improve on include:

1) Being more tolerable of the uncomfortable. Forditude. Holding steadfast during conflict negotiation and remediation.
2) Tactfully presenting "bad news".

I could probably list more but I can't think of anything else that's off the top of mind. I know, how modest right?

Well I think my learning of those two things will come in time and life experiences.

Wow... I'm super tired and I'm hanging out at the Biltmore just people watching. I should be reading but I always fall asleep when I read. Always.

Sometimes you can be too early...
Last night I conked out on the sofa at 10pm and woke back up at midnight.

And you guessed it, I'm still awake. I'm going to be a zombie for the fraternity golf tourney this year and on top of that, I have a dinner with old friends at 7:30.

I dunno if I'll be able to make it through the day!

Photo of the week.



What a happy boy!

Hahahahaha!!

I know this is the most unscientific study out there in the world but could the 'collegehumor.com' site be a predictor for the presidential election?

The site currently has 219 fans going for Kerry and 119 fans going for Bush. This naturally isn't an accurate nor fool proof method of measuring who may win however when you consider how much MTV has been pushing the youth of our country to vote... it may not be that crazy to consider a correlation.

Now, if you've seen the college humor site, you may think- 'sure clifford- you just want to see boobs.' But there's more to that! I think if every gal on the site went out and voted accordingly and brought some of their friends with, the election could very well lean favorably towards Kerry.

But - it seems that maybe the youth of the United States didn't really go out there to vote otherwise it probably would have been more of a landslide.

I dunno- this whole idea is based on markers, boobs, and a camera.