Epiphany

Tonight I found two like Dom used to be, the first at the Shark Club. I thought she was playing pool alone, but she was waiting on her boyfriend to finish his losing streak and pay the winner a round of drinks. I told her to play for higher stakes, perhaps a round of oral gratification.

We laughed and we shared that private joke as they continued playing. She'd look at me, or I'd look at her, and we'd smile or nod. We could barely contain our laughter when she won the next two games and he threw down his cue in defeat and disgust.

And then I realized that the key is not to look for who someone is, but to look for who they can be. Look for potential and probability, not reality.

One advantage of a dysfunctional society is that potential value lays around on the ground as common as quartz.

---

Nice traffic for a Sunday, almost 700 hits.

It's too bad that half of them came from South Korea, mostly likely because 2000 hits had come from Beijing. Now if I could get the Russians and Pentagon to pay attention.

Averted Laptop Theft

So I'm sitting in the Crossroads Mall library downloading some software. A buxom Blondie in her early forties walks by, wearing low-cut blue jeans and a Harley-Davidson-looking tattoo across her lower back. She sits down at a table and unloads a shiny laptop, dead-square in the middle of the busy mall. She's sexy enough and the right age so I take note of her. Maybe I should practice some rejection-handling on her, but it's just a passing thought.

A few minutes pass and then she walks into the library, leaving the laptop alone in the mall. Every minute or so I check it or whenever someone passes by. The minutes pass. No Blondie. More people pass, more minutes pass. Finally, a teenage kid notices the laptop, ponders the deed but sees me and moves on.

The clock keeps ticking.

Where the HELL is this woman?
What is she thinking, leaving a $1000 in the middle of a busy mall?
Why the heck am I involved in this?
WHAT is my moral obligation here?

Another teenager comes by, a redheaded guy in a slouchy baseball cap. He spots the prize but walks on to buy a coke. Then he saunters back, real slow, real casual, careful to keep his eyes on everything EXCEPT that laptop. He sits down at the next table and sips his coke slowly, thinking and looking at everything except that shiny new laptop within ten feet of his sticky hands.

Oh, you know what?? I'm not going to do this. I'm not gonna chase this fricking kid through the mall for somebody else's dumb mistake, I'm gona circumvent this RIGHT NOW and create an alternative branch of history. I stand up, walk to the laptop and make sure the kid sees me. I make sure he sees me seeing HIM seeing the laptop. He looks away. But the snake sips his coke and waits.

I walk back inside, hunt down Blondie and inform her of the impending theft, then walk back to my seat. Blondie finally flutters out and packs the laptop, not even noticing the red-headed, red-handed kid. As she passes by me, I tell her, "Thanks, your laptop was about two minutes from disappearing."

And now she thinks I'm using a pickup line on her!
I can't FRICKING BELIEVE this!
She brushes her hand at me and says, "yeah, whatever", doesn't even bother to thank me or make eye contact.

What the hell is wrong with people?
Did she really believe that she could leave ONE THOUSAND dollars sitting in the middle of mall full of kids?
Damn, I've got BETTER pickup lines now, I don't need that one.

Although... I have to admit, I may add it to my arsenal now.

Online Dating Paranoia, The Movie

I created a four-part strategy for meeting and dating women over this past two months -

1) I signed up for four online personal ad sites(yahoo, match.com, alt.com, plentyoffish.com)
2) After many conversations, I identified three or four bars which cater to women in my age range
3) I signed up for EventsAndAdventures.com
4) I signed up for ItsJustLunch.com

Each has a strength and weakness, although I didn't identify them well at first. They target four different social groups and require different contributions of time, money, machismo and compromise from me. Consider them as a spread of photon torpedoes. I only need a direct hit from one. Well, not quite. I'd like to build up a portfolio of six or seven women to date for one year. My goal is to meet at least 100 women in the next 18 months, date at least 50 of them, and have sex with at least 10 of those.

My lack of dating or sexual experience during college led me to accept the "easiest path" in romantic relationships because I lacked the experience and confidence to do otherwise. Which led me to where I am today.

ItsJustLunch.com is expensive in "per woman" exposure, but it's a matchmaking service run primarily by women, so it could yield unexpected results. Judgement still pending

EventsAndAdventures.com was my largest capital outlay, but it should put me in contact with 50-100 women in the 35-45 age range each month. That's much higher than any other strategy. I'll have a better idea of its effectiveness in 48 hours.

The personals ads are cheap and easy, but I'm finding that they attract a certain type of person - timid and overly optimistic. Yesterday I realized that I'll never find someone like Dominique on Yahoo Personals (although she was on alt.com). My hit ratio is abysmal so far, less than a 2% response rate. Heck, I got more dates in high school when I was in the bottom 30% of desirable men. I'm easily in the top 50% now, probably the top 20% based on my income, temperament and physical condition. I suspect that personal ads have a skewed userbase or create a sense of false expectation. I'll probably give up on them soon.

I could be bad at writing the right ad or perhaps my photographs aren't attractive enough. I tried several different approaches and perhaps fifteen different photos. But a hit ratio of less than 2% is so poor that I can only believe that many other male ads are loaded with fraud or the female users are too specific in what they're searching for.

Many female ads specify "honesty and integrity" in a man, but as near as I can tell, women don't actually respond to it. I had dinner with a 71-year man this week and he trashed my conceptions of women with a personal demonstration. He successfully gamed them with false compliments and vague offers of money and gifts; not once, not twice, but FOUR times that night and walked out with a chick half his age. It was illuminating in a sad, sick way.

Bars - okay, my hit ratio is much higher here. I met six women at Daniel's this week and two at Hector's, and I passed up at least four or five clear openings. This requires boldness, perception and timing on my part, but my skill is much higher in only a few weeks.. It's definitely looking better than the personal ads.

Now that I've identified the problem with personal ads, I'm debating on alternative strategies. I'm attracted to bold, artistic women. I might trying hitting conventions, chamber of commerce mixers, the art walk shows, museum shows or book signings, based on a little research.

---

I crashed a private company party tonight, my second time. Last year I crashed one by accident in NYC. This time I just walked into the restaurant like I owned the place, nabbed somebody else's drink from a table, nabbed some chocolate cake and strawberries and walked around talking to people for fifteen minutes.

In other news, I had almost 2000 hits from Beijing today.
So's where the hits from the Pentagon already?
Not a positive sign.

Alt.com Versus EHarmony.com

A comparison of page view traffic from Alexa for ALT.COM and EHARMONY.COM.

During the past few weeks, I've seen personal ads from alt.com members cropping (yes, an S&M pun!) up on mainstream dating sites. Alt.com's peak page view traffic was back in mid-2002 while eHarmony.com peaked in late 2005.

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The Seduction Insider is poorly structured, the writing is often obtuse and sometimes it's just plain confusing. But the articles contain enough dating strategy that I've read most of them. Things that are working:

1) Lifting weights. I started lifting before I read the seductioninsider, though. It's made a difference in my posture and confidence. I was mercilessly teased and ostracized in elementary and grade school because my upbringing was so sincere and naive. I've always made an effort to disappear, to maintain a low profile. Over the past two months, I've tried reversing that strategy, attempting to occupy as much space and attention as possible.

2) Spend the same effort on your romantic life as your work life. I never did that, I haphazardly accepted whatever happened in love. I did NOT do that with my career, I went to college, I drafted out five-year plans, tracked trends, did numerous job interviews, changed jobs, changed locations, etc.

3) Be bold. I've always been afraid of rejection, but I was also afraid of hurting other people. I never wanted to lead them on or lie to them. It's a fine balance and I lacked the confidence to draw an honest and fair line. I always erred on the side of caution by staying timid.

4) Play numbers. The more women you meet, the more experience you have in relationships, the greater your chance of success and meeting your goals. This always seemd callous to me, but in retrospect, I wish I'd had the courage to do it twenty years ago.

Online Dating Paranoia, Part II

One of the nice things about having your own website is that you can MEASURE paranoia and suspicion.

For instance, I almost always get a Washington-based hit on my website just preceding the rejection email from a prospective woman.

It tells me a lot about how much paranoia I'm dealing with.

It's a purposeful strategy.
Yup, that's me you see fighting fire with fire!
Online datamining paranoia to fight online dating paranoia!

Nucleus Of A Methodology

I watched a Service-Oriented Architecture project fail first-hand. Technically it's not failed yet, but it seems likely now. I don't have the background to know the true cause, but I posted the quagmire of SOA in January of this year -

"IBM carefully crafted a system design which attempts to span the range of all things to all people. This could be a possible failure point of SOA."

I believe that SOA's greatest weakness is at the operational level. The strategic level of SOA is well-defined with training, documents and templates. My experience at coding and low-level implmentation is that tactical level is sound, too.

What's left is the operational level - a methodology and structure to convert strategic goals into tactical constructs. So let's draw up the nucleus of an operational structure for SOA -

What do we know that's concrete?

1) There's a high-level SOA structure which should take priority over tactical requirements.

2) At any point in time, there's an optimum project complexity that's achievable by the latest toolset and a certain team size. As team size grows, risk of failure rises. As complexity grows, either the toolset or team size (or both) must increase to compensate.

3) The greatest component of complexity is class differentation.

4) Existing frameworks can reduce complexity if the project is defined in a standardized form.

to be continued...

Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD Meme - The Verdict

The previous graphs from Dec 2006 for Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD.

The updated graphs show a significant gradient change for Blu-Ray.
My tentative guess is that Blu-ray will be the dominant standard within a year.

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"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances. If there is any reaction, both are transformed." —Carl Gustav Jung

Skydiving

So I'm signed up for skydiving on the 18th.
Hopefully it's not already booked up.

Today's IM

Me: these women are totally paranoid.
Me: They're doing background checks, verifying marriages.
Me: Holy cow. I had one that verified that I have "an alt.com" account so we're not compatible.
Me: I'm a PLAYER!
Me: ME!
Me: I. am. a. player.
Me: is that nuts? Or is me? AM I a player?

JJ: Yow!

Me: it's unreal.

JJ: Yes, it's nuts. It's full-bore Zippy the Pinhead unreality levels. Steve Jobs would be jealous.

Me: I'm totally blown away. I may just cancel the account then.
Me: There's no point, I'm divorced yet and I'll get called a liar no matter what.
Me: I'm not divorced yet.

JJ: Do you still get alt.com nibbles?

Me: once in awhile. I don't work it.
Me: I'm going to Ohio, btw.

JJ: Yes, you mentioned it was possible. Anywhere pleasant in Ohio?

Me: I don't know. I get the official orders on Monday, but it's going to happen now.
Me: I knew the country was secretly paranoid.
Me: Now I got it confirmed.

JJ: Paranoid? Why? Because we're about to allow ISPs to record all of our activity, let telcos get away with helping install Naurus boxes, and let agencies to social network analysis that could be easily abused? They're not paranoid enough.

Me: that's on the other end. Nobody trusts anybody else in the whole country. It's amazing to watch.
Me: It's prime for disruption

JJ: I think they realize that -- but don't connect the increased surveillance with upping the paranoia level and potential disruptive effects. They already announce that one should "watch what you say".

Me: what's interesting is the countereffect.
Me: Just as companies now hire people who game the rules instead of good employees, people will come to trust people who game the system instead of honest people.
Me: I just got a ton of hits out of LA. I havent' had action like that since I got swarmed by Yahoo and Google. I wonder what's up.

JJ: I don't think they'll trust them -- they'll acquire more of them.
JJ: "Trust" is only an important metric if the manager's aren't gaming the system too.

Me: Ahh, well, that's the oligopy pattern, the centralized information hiding pattern.
Me: oligopoly.
Me: What it means that is that things devolve back to peer-to-peer.

Three Phone Calls

She called me three times while I was in Portland. I don't know how she got my number. For awhile I assumed that she pulled it off Monster.com somehow. But later I thought perhaps it was through a real estate connection... the loan company or perhaps the title company.

Back then I never checked incoming numbers, I'd just answer "Hello, this is Broward". Twice there was a long silence and I could hear her breath. Once, she said, "Hello" and stopped. There was dead silence for fifteen or twenty seconds and one of us finally hung up, I don't remember who.

I am a relentless son-of-a-bitch, aren't I?

The Lena Tweak was a two-fold mission. I did want to test out that level of guilt-driven fear, but I also wanted to test the community itself, to see how fast it would fold up on its "principles". Around December, an ex-community member said to me,

"They're just Mormons dressed in black"

Now, that phrases was clearly designed to tweak me, but I learned a lot from the Idaho "Do The Right Thing" Mormons, namely that "do the right thing" applies pretty much to other Mormons and not necessarily to anyone else.

And I don't like committing time and resources now without a serious acid test.
So I pushed a little and the "principles" folded up pretty damn easily.

Paranoid Woman

"You're still here?!
It's over!
Go home!" - Ferris Bueller

Online Dating Paranoia

Wow. I had no idea... well, that's not true. I did have an idea of the underlying paranoia that grips the country. It's so well hidden behind polite smiles and bland gazes that I tend to discount it. But I am amazed at the level of paranoia in the on-line dating sites. When even I have turned into "a player" because my divorce isn't finalized, the country has gone off the deep end.

I mean, damn.
At least let me "play" a few women before I get convicted!

Okay, I did play Lena, but not for sex and she was already convinced that I was a Supernatural Spirit of Revenge before I met her, so I don't see how that one can count!

"I am the Ghost of Poison Temple Past!"

---

I met three women last night and the first two were easy introductions and conversations. Another confirmation that my seventeen-year-old engrams are misleading, I'm not the same person I was then. But it's partly age, too. All the easy conversations were with women in their forties.

The strained conversations (and strange happenings) were with the younger ones.
They may not be worth the annoyance.

---

So I'm off to Ohio, I guess, probably for several weeks.
I'll fly back to Seattle for the June 10th weekend, but I'll probably just stay in Ohio otherwise.

I have an advance copy of The Parlor's new happy hour menu.
It's gonna have an impact on Rock Bottom, that's for sure.

So I'm a player.
That's fricking hilarious.
I WISH!

I'm trying to be, but come on...
I can still hardly stutter a greeting to a beautiful woman!

I am looking forward to the Shark Cage tonight, though.
I saw several women in my age group last weekend.

My Lovely Disease Vector

You know what the 10 Commandants are? They're a disease-control mechanism. I see it better now that I've seen how easy it is to disrupt the LJ community. Over the long-run, the only way to win is by playing percentage shots. In terms of biodiversity and cultural differentation, the percentage shot is to stay in the two-sigma band of the normal distribution curve. Data points in the fringe areas, the three-sigma+ points, are more susceptible to disruptive memes and disease.

I'm fairly sure that the cultural differentation is occurring. A vector that can infect most of the population means that the population lacks diversity. So the population differentiates to reduce the total impact of any particular disease vector. That's probably where we're headed, towards a continuous differentation until it's almost impossible to force a meme through anything larger than a small, specialized community.

This should be measurable. The power law distributions of the large websites should be flattening out. A trend towards more localized content would also be a confirmation signal.

The downside, culturally, is this creates a cultural quagmire. A common cultural context lets vectors spread quick and far, but it's also the mechanism behind widespread, altruistic trends and accomplishments. I'm not sure the U.S. could duplicate the reaction and response to a Pearl Harbor event anymore. The Iraqi War doesn't have the same scale, support or commitment. It's a smokescreen, a bluff.

Perhaps that's not a bad thing, except that the homogeneous cultures, like China and the other Asian countries, retain that capability. It could be a competitive advantage in certain environments.

The original government design of the U.S. concentrated resources at the local level, some resources at the State level and the least resources at the global or Federal level. Over the past fifty years, that triangle has been inverted. The bulk of resources are manipulated at the global level. In terms of diversity, that's a bad thing. A trend towards cultural differentation would focus attention on the local level and ignore the global.

So there's a possible conflict, a cultural dichotomy, a cognitive dissonance. People are tending inwards, towards smaller communities and local focus, but we've got a monolith that's been moving in the opposite direction for fifty years.

It could turn into an issue.
I wish I could get a clear measure of the trend.

The Fear Amplifier

Okay. I'll come clean. Once I realized that Lena had slandered me and that she was so prone to fear and paranoia, I decided to use her as an active device, a human transistor in a meme disruption experiment.

A community fear amplifier if you will.

I purposely tweaked her hot, then cold by letting her own fears run wild, to see how much paranoia and fear she would transmit into the community-at-large. I tried to create sympathetic emotional vibrations that built upon each other, raising the crest with each new wave, but I couldn't get the timing right. However, she was a damn good amplifier with just a single tweak. If you located four Lenas and tweaked them with an offset sequencing, you might potentially generate, oh say, eight times the pandemonium that a single Lena could create.

She acted as a fear mutator, too, I think. That is, she filtered the initial ambivalent message through her fears, then transmuted that into a personalized form for each person that she communicated with. That's far more powerful than my guesses at each person's possible fear permutations. I wish I could quantify it, which is why I focus mostly on Internet memes. They have a quantifiable quality that's hard to duplicate in real life.

As for the Fenix, I can't be sure what brought it down. I did do another meme experiment several months ago and it's possible that it took root and grew. But once again, it's hard to prove just what really happened in a real life situation.

This new disruption material might be good for Defcon in 2007. What can I say? I'm just a big bag of surprises, even Yahoo Personals says so!

---

On a positive note, I laid out two more seduction setups. They're both low percentage, but the two women tonight are the most interesting that I've seen in months. C'est la vie!

I've been using the Seduction Insider for over three weeks now. It works. I was sceptical at first, but I can't deny the recent results.

The Cultural Anti-Diffusion

Trends tend to be evolutionary. They are the result of forces and counter-forces which slowly shift over time. If the cultural diffusion theory is correct, the information revolution is a primary force. But what about counter-balancing forces?

Commerce is a counter-balancing force at the macro level. Economic transactions are more efficient with a common language, common currency and common legal system. This is why the Euro exists, why English is used worldwide, and why the dollar still reigns in global trade.

Assume that the cultural diffusion is an evolutionary process creating many differentiated communities from core communities. But it's a process of trial and error and most mutations fail because they lack that rare superiority to build and hold their own evolutionary niche.

Communities created through a process of trial-and-error lack a consistent philosophical base. My current experiment has an aggregation of many different philosophical bases. I wish I could quantify my conclusion. I've learned to distrust any single viewpoint in the community, each tends to be highly biased by personal beliefs and community standing, more than I've seen before. Is it a function of a lack of cohesive philosophical base? I think so but I can't prove it.

The Saleslogix disruption was a function of three factors -

1) Common context bound by stock options and a central point of communication.
2) A clear instance of operational mismanagement which fractured a solid team.
3) Strategic management had veered into deception several months before, eroding credibility

#1 set the transport, the conduit of attack.
#2 defined the object of attack, the damaged team.
#3 defined the method of attack, fading credibility can often be devasted by ridicule.

Centralized communication was a weak point at Saleslogix. In contrast to that, the current experiment suffers from distributed, disjointed communication with heavy personal bias. Think of the movie Needful Things and you can imagine the strategy and potential for disruption; a set of Mixed Messages that splinter factions and sow distrust and miscommunication.

I've had the notion of counter-balancing forces to the "cultural diffusion" for awhile but I hadn't pinned down concrete examples. I just knew that they had to exist because they exist for the biological counterparts in nature. The centralized disruption is simple and cost-effective, but requires unique events. The decentralized disruption is harder, it requires specialized, initimate knowledge to build mixed message patterns but it should be executable at will.

For future cryptic reference, the centralized attack could be labelled as the "Chinese disruption strategy" while the decentralized attack could be labelled the "United States disruption strategy".

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A gratifying number of logins from financial and investment institutions over the past few days. Somebody somewhere is actually taking the "social software" predictions seriously. Well, heck, man, it is classic MBA textbook material.

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Sigh.
Another anonymouse login right at 8:00 am, a percentage bet predicated on past punctual performance.
Why do you bother?