Mr. X

Mr X-aggeration, late forties, dressed as an African explorer, outlandish in the crowded pool hall. I was the only soul that talked with him.

He was back from South America where he'd been training mercenaries. I was considering a gig in Saudi and yes, he'd just been there, too.

But he was also an inventor, robbed by Micron and Nike of his greatest invention - the lighted shoe. He owned mining properties around the State, multiple houses across the Pacific Northwest, drove exotic cars and always carried "large quantities of kuggerands" in them, dated an olympic swimming champion...

but the best came last... his combat days as a Navy Seal.

He'd lost credibility since the Micron theft but I had fun with the conversation. We talked about women, how they coveted possessions and income (that part sounded true!) and he asked me how I handled that situation.

"I tell them the truth," I said.

"Which is?"

"I drive an Echo, I'm unemployed and I live with my parents!"

"Ahhhhh", he grinned, "I bet that sends them packing."

"Yup, except for crazier young ones!

"And aren't those the ones you really want, anyway?!!!"

We had a good chuckle over that.

Trish

Small and slim isn't your average stripteaser's body. Perhaps her face and personality made up for it. I won six of our eight pool games but Trish destroyed me in Game 7 and I wondered if she'd thrown shots to build my ego. But to be fair, she was constantly distracted by calls and friends snapping phone cameras. We're probably digitized together now, forever surfing the Internet.

She was playing alone; small, determined, in a drab, unflattering t-shirt and jeans.

So drab that I wasn't sure she was female.
After all, it is a weird club full of strange sexual styles.

Then I noticed her familiarity with the club staff. Suspicions rose. I played this table last night. I've chatted with the staff, maybe too much. Perhaps she was laying in wait for me? Ten minutes passed before I suggested a game and the phone cameras started snapping during our second round.

My full name was googled from Boise addresses this week. Twice. I keep fairly tight hold of my identity, I rarely use credit cards. The number of Boise residents would even know to query my name is... very small. One recruiter, perhaps two HR reps, an Indian developer with my business card, a pharmacist.

I've been carded at four clubs, but two were cursory glances.. But this club wasn't one of them and the doorkeeper went over my license, thinking it was fake or expired. It seemed curious at the time.

It's easy to be paranoid in the Information Age, especially if you're one of the instigators.

I do wonder.

But I don't care, I like the place and I'll be back tonight and Saturday, too.
If a scheme is afoot, so be it.
I'd be more flattered than worried.

Teresa

Some people bring out your best game.
Some people give you quagmires.

I won six of six games against a large ex-marine. But it wasn't so one-sided, each game was clean and close. Jason had me stone cold in Game 5, but I ran the table with two low-percentage shots and he flexed his big fists in frustration.

"DAMN. I just can't beat you!"

Jason brought out my six best games.

After Jason came "The Dancer".
Did I imagine her interest?
Her hair masked her face, but the skin-tight pants revealed enough.
Did we make eye contact?
Did she dance too close to my chair?
Did she face me too often?

Then Teresa. What do you say when a young, attractive chick makes an unsolicited introduction while her boyfriend waits nearby? Maybe the relationship was more casual than I'd thought. She wanted to know too much too soon and afterwards, she watched me too closely and too often.

The dancer was a mystery but Teresa was not.

Zune Meme - Successful Prediction (so far)

My prediction (originally from July, 2006): "Microsoft's iPod competitor, Zune, is still not picking up mindshare or buzz traction"

From Yahoo News: "Zune music player's slow first day no surprise...the Zune investment may take years to bear fruit"

My original prediction mentioned deliberate memetic manipulation as a possible marketing tool and behold...

"What the pro-Zune cabal that runs Digg's censorship committee doesn't want you to know is that the Zune is in serious sales trouble. That's a problem that no amount of fake and anonymous blogs can cover up, no matter how much disinformation they spew."

Replicant Meme Analysis

Deckard: "I have had people walk out on me before, but not when I was being so charming."

TheHousingBubbleBlog Meme & Analysis

S-curve Methodology
Three-source Sampling Theory

I worked Casey Serin over so I thought I'd search the opposite case for differences; perhaps for a psychological indicator of where we are in the housing market crash cycle.

Declining traffic for TheHousingBubbleBlog.com implies that the public is getting bored with housing crash details (or entering a new state of denial). Blogpulse.com confirms the trend -

But Google Trends shows there's still strong interest in a "housing bubble".

So I dreamed up the brilliant idea of comparing "housing bubble" queries against "housing crash" queries.
In theory, they should be a matched set, right?
For every bubble, there's a crash.
But human psychology is in play here -

A period of denial seems to take place in the second half of 2005, just prior to crash. For comparison, I ran Dejanews.com graphs on "housing bubble" versus "housing crash" and these bandwidths have better synchronicity -

This entry is already too complicated.
I'll make a second entry with additional graphs but my best guess is that -

• IAmFacingForeclosure.com and TheHousingBubbleBlog.com have peaked in traffic


• Crash expectations peaked several months (perhaps even a year) prior to the crash itself


• There is a state of denial about the housing crash, even though it's tenatively acknowledged


• The still-strong searchs for "housing crash" indicates the crash hasn't bottomed yet

New Daily Hit Count High

Thanks mostly to China but Casey Serin and TheHousingBubbleBlog put me over the top!

No, wait!
I was already over the top!

I blew it on Thursday night. A coed approached me on the dance floor, asked my name and began complimenting me. She'd noticed me from a few days ago (not hard to do consider how out-of-place I must be in a college dance club, ho ho!). But my mind was elsewhere, it was almost closing and I didn't follow through.

But I re-iterate my prediction that I will end up with a woman that's half my age!
Maybe TWO of them!

Creepy, I know.
But it seems to be the cards.

So I'm off, maybe I'll get another chance at her, yo ho ho.

Rumsfeld Meme

Methodology
Other Examples of "Cool vs Evil"

For entertainment purposes only!
Maybe his resignation was predictable!

Comparison of blog sites which contain "Rumsfeld" and "good" against sites which contain "Rumsfeld" and "evil" -

The Shape Of Memes To Come

Indiana Casey And The Missing Meme
Indiana Casey And The Search For Rich Dad!

Read them all, amaze your friends!

Casey's (IAmFacingForeclosure.com) new videoblogging is interesting, but I doubt it will change his site's growth curve. His plight appeals to a limited number of people and for a limited time. I learned that about my own site two years ago.

This is the beginner's course in Meme Theory, tailored especially for Casey Serin.

People have a finite attention span because they have finite time.
The sum of all people is a finite pool of attention span.
The great majority of attention span is already assigned to things that people care about -

• Their kids


• Their jobs


• Eating


• Sex

But it's pointless to overdrive a meme for long-term purposes. Here are two examples of suspicious growth curves - Breitbart and RocketBoom. Please notice how they've turned out so far.

I tried to "overdrive" my own site.
Compare the traffic patterns of my site to IAmFacingForeclosure.com.

(disclaimer: I've picked up some nice traffic from Casey's plight and you might guess that I consider it a short-term spike which doesn't mean much. But Casey's case (yuk yuk) is an interesting re-mix of meme ideas and graphs, and the crosscut of traffic is a different mix of companies & people than what I usually get).

Ideospheric Saturation

Using computer networks as a model, we can theorize that the Ideosphere has finite bandwidth and quality of service for memes like "sex", "drugs" and "rock and rock". People allocate a certain degree of thought towards those things. And some memes take precedence over others -

Modern economics assumes that the bandwidth which calculates "supply and demand" is guaranteed. And make no mistake, it takes mental bandwidth to remember daily prices, changes in income and costs, to seek out alternatives or different price structures, and then jam the whole mess into a mental wheat thresher which pumps out pricing and purchasing decisions.

But suppose the Ideosphere is reaching saturation. Suppose the attention crisis" is real, that the cost of cheap information is loss of attention span. Ponder the impact to "supply and demand" economics if it's running on ever-decreasing brainpower bandwidth and losing a lot of packets.

How would you know that you're making bad pricing decisions, if everyone else is making bad decisions because their mental bandwidth is saturated?

Amusing Quote From Billy Beck

I have to repost this. I bust up laughing every time I read it.
Billy Beck on copyright disputes -

"I never want to have another *goddamned thing* thing in the world to do with you, you rat-fuck shitbag"

Rich Dad Meme, Housing Crash & Casey

S-curve Methodology
Three-source Sampling Theory

The Indiana Casey Series!
Indiana Casey And The Missing Meme
Indiana Casey And The Shape Of Memes To Come

I feel badly for Casey, but I'm sickened that the real estate hucksters are still chomping at the guy to stave off their own problems. I use Dejanews.com as a datasource because of its longevity. Here's the Rich Dad Poor Dad meme. Its peak is almost coincidental with the start of the housing inventory crash. Casey's market entry is few months past the peak, i.e. he bought in pretty close to the top.

With this much traffic, I should probably add a disclaimer - I own no real estate, I have no RE-related investments (short or long), I sell no ads, I receive no revenue from this site. I left California during the 1990 RE Crash and never went back. ).

Oh, and I'm looking for an IT architect job in the Pacific Northwest!!!
Plus a cute and kinky girlfriend!!!

An Anti-Meme : Casey Serin & IAmFacingForeclosure.com

S-curve Methodology
Three-source Sampling Theory

The Indiana Casey Series!
Indiana Casey And The Search For Rich Dad!
Indiana Casey And The Shape Of Memes To Come

I defined five types of memetic bandwidth. "In denial" bandwidth actively avoids a particular meme. Imagine you're at an elegant party and somebody drops a horse turd on the carpet. Many guests will look the other way and pretend to not notice. That's an "in denial" meme.

We probably can't prove that an "in denial meme" exists but we can generate empirical suspicion.

Let's try IAmFacingForeclosure.com as an example. Time-series graphs from Alexa.com and blogpulse.com imply that IAmFacingForeclosure.com's pageviews have peaked out. Notice the converging series. Each new high and low is converging towards a steady-state traffic level - (my annotations are in red)

Casey and his site show up in my own tool, too (barely) -

But Casey doesn't show up...

in Google's Trends AT ALL. Fascinating. Google is the most widely-used search tool on the Internet, but there's not much searching for "Casey Serin" or "IamFacingForeclosure.com".

What does this mean?

Is there a general aversion here?

We can see through blogpulse.com and dejanews.com that people ARE discussing Casey's plight but rarely search for him in Google. I'd class this as an "in denial" meme, it's the first example which has some level of (admittedly questionable) proof.

Election Speculation

S-curve Methodology
Three-source Sampling Theory

General hyperbole about why the Democrats recaptured the House and seats in the Senate. Was it the "Iraqi War", "the economy" or "price of gasoline"? A friend thought that it was "Iraqi War" but I disagreed, so I ran these memegraphs for my curiosity.

The concensus of all three graphs is "Iraqi war", although the last graph shows "economy" and "Iraqi war" almost even. I discount that, through, because "economy" is broad with a lot of bandwidth.

Compare these graphs from Google Trends, Blogpulse.com and my own Dejanews

The Dead Project

The architect sent me a change to add another parameter to the servlet. He always had a new requirement and we were in the eighteenth month of a nine-month schedule. He'd undermined my protests early on and I had stopped fighting him. No, this project was going to be perfect, zero defects, a monument to his ego. Meanwhile, layoffs were coming up and we'd produced nothing tangible but neither the architect or the manager seemed concerned.

I made the change and the manager came by an hour later to gloat.

"See?! You don't know everything! You missed that!". I pictured him dancing a gig that I wasn't perfect. I never claimed to be to perfect. I had just wanted to ship reasonably good software on time and stay employed, not engage in an ego battle.

The layoffs arrived three months later and he was the first to go. The team went into shock as cubicle after cubicle was emptied. I was the fifth. I had packed my stuff a month ago and I left quickly, happy to be free.

--

I sat in Boise drinking a beer, thinking back on that dead project, the wasted effort and I realized that... I could just hang out here with my parents. I mean, dang, I fought so many meaningless battles trying to establish a career and retirement.

Past a certain point some things become pointless.
I could coast along, drink a beer, flirt with coeds.

I asked the waitress her name. She pointed to a tattoo on her left arm. "Diamond?", I guessed. "No, Star", she said. I asked her about the black widow on her right arm. "That represents my fear of commitment", she said without a trace of humor. She was full-figured but cute, fun to watch with an easy smile and unself-conscious manner. I watched her dance by herself when she was out of sight behind the bar.

This could be okay.