Prediction - OpenSocial API Beats Facebook

On Oct, 27, 2007, I predicted that Facebook's rapid growth would peak before Summer, 2008. In reality, Facebook's rate of growth topped out less than two months later.

To date, I haven't seen Facebook convert its tactical advantage of a developer community into a strategic advantage that can win against Google. Based on how rapidly their growth peaked, and lack of strategic action on Facebook's part, I predict that Google's OpenSocial API will be the final winner and that Facebook's fortunes will soon start to fade.

The Scene

Such intensive purpose to keep each journal entry private, yet now she publicly broadcasts her physical location each week. I know her traffic. Roughly. Why make location public? Why not keep it amongst your friends?

How many of me can there be?

Anonymous stalkers who check daily?

You swarmed my site with anonymous IPs.
I'm fairly sure it was purposeful behavior to attract attention.
In prior years you fretted over Valentine's day,
An intentionally lonely woman in emotional pain,
Unloved but in a public forum.

Now you're more mobile than I
sometimes you drive, sometimes you fly
NASA, New York, Mexico
Is it a contest between us?
To see who can go
the greatest distance?

Now Flagstaff via Joshua Tree
Does she know so much
Yet so little about herself?
Or do I imagine
My gnome and her elf
As they play the Game between she and me?

The house is so quiet. Deathly quiet. I never lived in a place so silent, so free of kids and dogs and cars passing by. No gunshots, no airplanes. I heard a single chirp; the house alarm startled me and I wondered who could it be?

A stealthy realtor stopping by to pee?
Or perhaps an insurance scheme to collect on me,
an unknown agent of my wife or former enemy?

I glanced out the window into the night, caught a brief glance of a bird in flight. Another chirp, then two. I smiled at my paranoia and then off he flew, again. What bird sings at night? A nightinggale, is that right? I never knew much about birds, one of the topics that doesn't interest me. Much.

Why did you tout your MySpace return?
Another taunt to make me burn?

And what of your reference to Rapunzel? I read the story, I figured it out. I always do, that is, when you hint about... some topic which might give me a clue, of how you work inside, your mind, why you do the things you do. Why won't you call? Is it a game, D? I can't see, what else it could be, except wishful thinking on my part. I saw your reference to social anxiety and it seemed to be...

another part
Of this charade.

You are the greatest mystery that I've ever stumbled across.
You have talent yet you push too hard, expect too much
But still you're X-girl lost.

I'm a fairly good troubleshooter.
Perhaps I could find you.
If you let me.

For some reason I'm at peace this week.
It's late and this week is busy for me.
A singles mixer, a date in Kirkland, and more wrenching changes to self-imagery.

Marri says I'm lucky.
Perhaps she's right in a way that's hard to see.

The House

I've spent perhaps seven weeks in The House so far. I didn't intend to rent it but the opportunity appeared, it helped out others and it was easy and low-risk. The House is quiet, safe and secluded. The hot tub is awesome and tonight I discovered subtle qualities about the water jets so that fizzy warm water flowed like champagne over my skin. A 10 square-foot skylight hangs over the tub and sometimes I sit in the dark as moonlight streams down, sometimes raindrops patter against the glass, and the water swirls around quietly. The House reminds me of better times, of my previous expectations, when the future seemed bright.

I keep the master suite warm but leave off heating and lights for everything else.

I wash clothes here.
I keep some cranberry juice in the rerigerator and sometimes a microwave pizza.

These pictures don't do it justice. I suspect I won't be here much longer but it's been a good place to rest and recover from stress of the past few years.

Success & Failure

For the most part, I was a failure up until my early thirties, an unmemorable nobody through high school and subsequent drifter. The ASPEN project was my first success in life. I thought my first ASPEN grant was a ridiculous concept but an interesting careerbuilder and I felt obligated to a good-faith effort. Then the grants got bigger, the technology more interesting and I was off on a four-year adrenalin rush. But ASPEN also led to my greatest failure - the ill-fated IT director's position at Boise State University - and subsequent successes and failures have been relatively small.

I never cared about skydiving or sailing, scuba diving or flying, hobbies or gardening, motorcycles or even playing pool. My dreams revolved around respect and sex. ASPEN produced respect for the first time in my life. Even now, at fifty, I'm still focused on respect and sex except the rules and reality changed. I expended enormous energy on work, surpassing my original goals but now I face declining marginal gains. More energy into work buys less and less.

I'd like to make up for my failure at sex and women but I'm stonewalled there, too. I never could make it work. I understand now why but it doesn't help me. The myths are true, it's mostly about money and projecting image and perception of security. That's not me. It's not going to be me, especially in my current state of life.

Work - mined out into low marginal gains
Women - my foundation is flawed
Other - I never cared much. Clearly, I'm not the retirement type.

Wow. This, then, is the source of my malaise. I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go. I stumble upon other guys like me... sometimes at Starbucks. Sometimes they're wearing new motorcycle jackets, riding new bikes. Sometimes they're at the Wilde Rover on a Sunday afternoon, talking quietly, watching sports.

I'm tried so many things in the past eighteen months.
I have no idea of what to do next.
For most part, I've scaled back on money and energy for girl-chasing.

I'm achieving little and as I've developed a better understanding of women and myself, I see that my expectations were too high. You'd think that would be an unusual condition for me. So I'm upgrading my clothes; upgrading my cell phone for work, upgrading my glasses. Small, relatively inexpensive changes over the next two or three weeks. I was naive for so long and I'd probably still be asleep except for Dominique. I could never spend much time reflecting in the mirror over how I looked. My clothes are ill-fitting. My glasses look ancient. My teeth aren't white enough.

This is much harder for me than it sounds.

Rules

There are three types of people. People without much will or perception who obey most rules without much thought, which is the vast majority. The second type obeys rules because they're forced to, but break them egocentrically whenever possible. The third type are people who make the rules, and they understand why rules exist, and why exceptions exist. Theoretically, this last type are court judges, arbitrators, some politicians.

I was in the first group for a very long time.
I was briefly in the second group as I passed onto the third.

I never cared much about projecting image. It seemed wasteful and egotistical but perhaps being in the third group means obeying foolish rules because the vast majority don't understand much else. I started revamping my wardrobe this week.

Fly Me To The Moon

Fill My Heart With Song
And Let Me Sing Forever More

You Are All I Long For
All I Worship
And Adore

Election

"whomever wins the presidential election may well demand a recount" - comment from CalculatedRisk.blogspot.com

"Folks are going to need dental records to identify their 401(k)s this summer" - comment from CalculatedRisk.blogspot.com

Great

It looks like I have some internal bleeding from my colonoscopy and associated polyp removal. It would be nice if I don't keel over dead during the night. OTOH, it wouldn't require much work on my part so there's an upside.

It doesn't look like much blood and I had serious bloating this weekend so maybe it's just the scabbing / healing of the polyp scar. I was okay from Tuesday night to Friday night.

Gold at 982 and rising.

Pool Run

I ran the table for the third time.
The second was barely a week ago.

She was perhaps 5'10", a bit heavy, an attractive face like her twin brother. She made quiet smiles and hand waves at first but she was talking with my opponent when I returned. About me, I discovered. We talked for thirty minutes and in the end, I told her the truth. "I'm not the guy you want", I said.

Why was she was stunned?
Perhaps she expected more ego from me.

SEAF seemed subdued during my ninety minute attendance.
Perhaps I left too early as the lineup of new arrivals looked promising.
I kept wondering, "Can variety substitute for intimacy?".
A question I never asked until last night.

And today I'll try to talk myself into buying new glasses.

Rambling

Even though it's grown, Boise State seems so small now. It was large to me in the early 90s but the Cisco campus seems bigger. I walked BSU's main circumference in about an hour.

I should have taken more pictures in San Jose.
I might be back before summer, though.

Last night I attended a party hosted by East Indians; they're so young and vibrant and it often seems like they're straight out of the 1950s. Most of the women know traditional choreographed dance moves, and watching their impromptu dance gave me a chill, they were quite attractive and interesting. Dinner was a bit spicy, and when was the last time YOU played charades or musical chairs? China owns the headlines today; it's the mainstream choice to displace the U.S. as hegemonic power but I predict it will be the East Indians.

A new three-month gig with a good possibility of an extension. With ninety days of stability, I might actually get some problems fixed. For unknown reasons, I re-entered a zone where people are helping me instead of cheating me.

I should do something today.
I hate these glasses, I've worn my old progressive lenses since I lost my new pair during skydiving. Almost two years ago.

Rachel

"Is this testing whether I'm a replicant or a lesbian, Mr. Deckard?"

Today's Mystery Guest

Actually, yesterday's mystery guest but who cares?

I didn't even know the Federal Reserve HAD an "IT division".
I bet it does lots of data-mining.

Toast

Well, it's a bit too early to call but my bet is that Citibank is toast.
They could be sitting on top of $200 billion in losses at this point.

Food prices are rising quickly, the UN is warning about food riots in Mexico and China. Meanwhile, house prices fell over 20% in CA year-to-year, which is approximately triple the peak drop in the 1990-1995 CA real estate crash.

Platinum is up close to 100% in less than a year.
Rhodium is almost $9K / oz.

Toast.

I stick by my prediction from September, 2006- the #1 issue in the 2008 presidential election will be the subprime / mortgage crash and bailout.

I stick by my other prediction from September, 2007 - major American cities will have riots which surpass the Rodney King riots of the early 1990s.

I don't see how the Feds can fix this level of hallucination.
Fiat money always fails.
2008 is going to be an awesome year.
In five years, people will look back at 2007 and wonder what everyone was smoking.

Fingerprints

All actions (and even some intentions) leave temporal fingerprings in the Real World. Deltas in the location and disposition of physical objects over time. On the Internet, temporal fingerprints are manifested as file access, IP address, routing path and timestamps. Detective work rarely shows a definitive picture of the past but it can show a range of images and their probability.

People are iterative. All actions are iterative in nature. I realized this while watching Scott test out a set of new pool-playing methodologies. You can't disguise that iterative nature, although you can mask it and displace it. If all actions are iterative, then all all actions broadcast a hint of their intent in each iteration.

It sounds simple.
It sounds reasonable and logical.
But it was an eye-opening concept for me when I boiled down the essential elements.

All actions are iterative.

Ergo, all actions leave temporal fingerprints, detectable traces of their intention.
Those fingerprints may be faint, they may be misleading but they exist.

The Meltdown evolves...

Inside Wall Street's Black Hole
Crisis of the World Financial System

I predicted a $1 trillion bailout in Sept, 2006.
Bank Of America has almost caught up to me with a $740 billion estimate.

----

Went to a bonfire in West Seattle.
Met four women.
M was about thirty, attractive and deliberately placed herself in my vicinity.
It was flattering and we talked for twenty minutes or so.

And for unknown reasons, two women at my local pool place were surprisingly friendly this weekend.
Well, three women.
I'm not sure what the third one's about, though.
But earlier I'd reluctantly purchased some condoms at Orlando Beth's insistence.
Wishful thinking, I told her.

And for the second time, I ran the table, all seven balls.

Proximity

Proximity breeds attraction.
Why didn't I figure that out until now?
Because I never wanted to?
I don't know.

I never felt a strong attraction to my wife. I didn't think I was capable of it. In retrospect, my attraction to women has been curious, but rarely deep or memorable. In reverse chronology...

I feel a real attraction towards Lisa at the Central. I'd have pursued her by now except she picked up a boyfriend in late summer. She's aggressive in some ways, vulnerable in others. She's a shade too tall but her hair is gorgeous. She sets something off in me.

Miami - No one stands out.

Bellevue - The two beauty queens stand out but not because of attraction. No one at work. The Vogue? Nope. Other places? Jodi at the Fenix Underground but in a crude, spur of the moment fashion. She was too young and her dance style was the attraction.

New York - Nobody.

New Jersey - I met a couple of interestng but unmemorable waitresses.

Portland - The waitress with the Russian literature degree; not a strong attraction.

Phoenix - Okay, there's Monica and Elissa but in retrospect it was probably more about my stock optios than about me. Elissa is a truly beautiful and sexy woman but... difficult.

Vegas - Nobody.

Denver - Well, Carol. I felt an alt lifestyle attraction. I can't be sure it was mutual but I suspect it was. Nothing ever came of it, though.

Boise - Wow. So much time there, and lots of proximity at the University but not much came of it. I suppose it's a violation of my "proximity theory". Kim at Hewlett Packard.

Tina at Teradyne, we went on a single date which led nowwhere. Not enough in common.

Lisa Marie, the kept woman at Universal Studios. Now this was an attraction. I was too young and shy to follow through but I realize now she wanted something to happen. She was looking for a permanent relationship, she was quite sexy but deeply troubled.

Man, that's not much for 20+ years. I was married for most of it, true, but still... I've just never had deep attractions. It's me, no doubt, but also partly my lifestyle, perhaps circumstances as well. I used to wonder what was wrong with me. These days I'm more accessible, I meet more women but I rarely feel a true attraction. For instance, I met several tonight. One invited me to sit down, another struck up a conversation with me, a third one recognized me from a previous encounter and kissed me. But... it's all surface chatter, nothing real. Nothing that moves me.

You'd think that at fifty, I'd have had a couple of true loves, memorable love affairs but it was never so. I was too wrong before. Now I'm more aware, more emotionally connected but... I seem to be in the wrong venues and I wonder if that's just a function of age. I've expended more effort, time and money on romance in the past two years than in my entire life. But it's been fruitless. I'm not sure why. It could be a flaw in me but it seems more pervasive than that.