Category: Weblog

Today is the last day of Movember. The Mo is in full bloom.

Please consider donating to help fight prostate cancer.

These things are worth your time to read:
Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving – This literally brought tears to my eyes as I read it and laughed so hard I snorted. Be sure to catch this one about Simple Dog as well.
20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web – An amazing example of HTML5 and good explanations of the current internet to less tech savvy people. If only the whole web worked this way…
Color names if you are a man or a woman – Even made Michele laugh.
Two Hipsters and a Bong – Youtube clip 1:46 long, worth it
I made a fun poster.
The Great Cyberheist – A superb NY Times article on criminal hacking.

Why is November a hard month at Cruft Manor? Because it’s Movember, the month when I grow a mustache for charity.
This is the third year I’ve grow a mustache to help raise money to fight prostate cancer. Prostate cancer hits 1 on 3 men. Most people know a man in their family that’s been affected by this terrible disease. The Prostate Cancer Foundation and LIVESTRONG use the money to help men with cancer and fund research.
I’m asking you to donate to the cause.
As you can see from the pictures on the Movember site and below, facial hair comes on strong with me. As my brother Matt says “Pusateri facial hair is an relentless force of nature. You can’t stop it; you can only hope to contain it.”

So far I’ve been asked if I’m an Air Marshal when checking into a flight at the airport, and as you can see above, I’m rocking the school principal look now. As usual, Michele and the girls eagerly await the end of the month when they can shave it off, like in previous years: 2009 & 2008.
I know money’s tighter for many than it’s been in the past, but if you can spare a donation, I’d be grateful. Thanks in advance.

For the month of October, I’ve been playing Healthmonth, a site set up to help you meet health goals in a game like way. I learned of Healthmonth from Matt Haughey’s post about it. Matt’s right, it’s a good site.
I’ve really enjoyed playing Healthmonth, even though it adds a little stress to my life. Amazingly, I am quite motivated to meet my Healthmonth goals even though all failure means is losing virtual points. I’ve found myself out for a run or eating fruit at 9PM just to meet my Healthmonth goals.

You can view my profile here and see what I was trying to do. I learned that I needed to think out my month before setting goals. Initially I had put in riding my bike 80 miles a week. This means 3 good rides, at least, to meet this per week. In reality, rain, triathlon training, travel factored in and I could only meet this goal one week out of the month. For November, I’m going to make my goals a bit more flexible to match up with the fact that I’ll be traveling and the holidays.
If you want to improve your health or even just do more blogging, you might consider playing Healthmonth. It might just be the small push you need to stick with it during the week and make the changes you want. You can make any kind of custom goal you want and the site will track it for you. Since I paid for a membership, I think I can sponsor people if they want to play.
The guy behind the site, Buster Benson is sharp and always improving the way things work in response to that players want. I’d love to see more interaction between players the idea of group & team challenges beyond personal goals. Imagine a team goal to run 200 miles as a group or have 30 vegan days per month. Accountability to a group is a strong motivator. So go sign up for Healthmonth now.

This is an update on what happened at the triathlon I mentioned in my last post.
I got up early Saturday morning to the sound of rain drops. Not really processing this, I got up, ate some oatmeal, got dressed in my laid out kit, grabbed my gear bag, and headed out the door. My bike was already in the car. The car was covered in dew and there was a light mist in the air, but I didn’t think much of this.
As I got onto the freeway headed to Carson, I noticed more and more rain and by the time I got to Downtown, the wipers were needed to keep the windshield clear. Upon arrival in Carson, it was full on raining on me. Besides a few empty tents I cold see no organization and had no idea where the transition area was. Sitting in the car for a half hour, I wondered what was going to happened. More cars arrived and I wandered out to figure out the situation. It was light enough to see the transition area in a grassy area off the road.
Grabbing my bike and gear bag, I headed up to get ready. Stepping onto the grass in transition, I sank a good three inches into the mud due to rain. This was the point I said to myself, “What the fuck are you doing here?” The feeling passed and I racked my bike.
A few minutes later I heard a voice call out to me. I turned around and saw it was Michael Pajaro aka Mr. P aka NeopreneWedgie, my coworker who had just completed the Kona Ironman a few weeks ago. He was holding a sign for me and there to root me on. I was touched that he made it out into the rain to cheer me on in the tiny triathlon I was about to run.

We chatted a bit and then I laid out my gear on my towel. With nothing else to do, I walked around with Mike waiting for the start. He did his best to keep me positive and gave me good tips like wear as little as possible on the run, even though it’s raining.
Soon enough the race began and I was running. The run was good. I met up with a woman from the company tri team and we ran together the last half or so. I felt good the whole way through.

Mr. P cheered me through transition and I was on the bike quickly. Everyone told me not to wear gloves ont eh bike, but to be honest, I wish I had put them in the bento box on my bike to put on once I was rolling. After thousands of miles wearing gloves, it felt weird to be bare handed.
Since the cycling part was the easiest for me, I didn’t look much into the route. I knew we did a few laps to get to 12 miles and then into transition. I whipped around the course three times and heard the guy at the lap turn point say “3 this way, 4 this way” I said “I’ve done 3 laps.” and he pointed me up the road, not toward another lap. I looked down at my bike computer and saw it was only at 9 miles. Soon I was almost at T2 and I said to the rade officials that I was only at 9 miles and they said I was supposed to do 4 laps. They told me to head in anyways. I wasn’t going to knowingly bail on part of the triathlon, so I turned around and went out to do another lap. You can hit the player on my Garmin track and see the silliness.

After lap 4 I got to T2 and headed toward the swim. This is the hard part for me. I had only started swimming on October 1st, so that meant only 3 weeks of training. I walked into the pool area to a wall of sound with tons of people and the announcer on PA yelling “Six times across and you’re done!” I rinsed out my goggles and slipped into the water and swam. It was not the most beautiful swim stroke nor the fastest, as many passed me, but I did not drown. I kept hearing Coach Steve’s voice saying, “Head down, legs up, glide!” the whole time.

And it was over. I was now a triathlete. Greeting me at the finish was my Dad and Mr. P.

I am thankful to my wife Michele, who inspired me to start cycling and was nothing but positive about the tri, to Coach Steve Mackel who taught me the proper way to run and swim, and to Mike Pajaro, who answered all my tri questions at work, was there on race day, and took all these wonderful photos.
Of course I am keeping this in perspective. I did a sprint triathlon. Compared to the Ironman level completions (Mr. P’s Kona medal shown for scale), it was a light workout. I plan to do more triathlons in the future. Hopefully they will go smoother in better weather.

A quick catch up on my travels and my hotel rooms.

My Hotel Room in Palo Alto from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

I was up in Palo Alto for some business meetings. Joy…

My Hotel Room in Las Vegas from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

Michele and I took a mini-vacation to ride the Viva Bike Vegas ride. We hada great ride. Hard but fun.

Bike Riding in the Hotel Hallway from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

Riding in places you aren’t supposed to ride gives an amazing sense of freedom.

And lastly, my brother emails me with his concerns over my web site design. Loyal Cruft Readers, you don’t think my page design is dated, do you?

My day job involves managing a wide variety of technology for a large media company. People want to present their products and services to me all the time. Many times I get so frustrated at the presentation and presenter, that I ignore what they are saying and just want the whole thing over.
I mentioned this at a recent conference to another attendee after we watched one person after another read their slides word for word. As a result I wrote up these helpful guidelines for those that present to people like me that buy things.

Things not to do in a presentation with me
1) Don’t read the slides – I can read and have skimmed your slide before you are into your second sentence. You should be explaining why you are showing me this information, not going over the information.
2) Don’t tell me stats on your company – I don’t care about your stock price, when you were founded, how much business your did, or who you clients are, or what deals you have on the table.
3) Don’t tell me my business – I know my business. You will get something wrong or explain something that doesn’t apply to me if you try to explain it. That just makes you look like you don’t know what you are talking about.
4) Don’t use my company’s logo in your presentation. It makes me want to call our attorneys.
5) Don’t run down your competition – Most likely I’ve bought from your competition in the past. Saying that they are terrible is basically telling me that I’m stupid for choosing them.
6) Don’t tell me my challenges – You have no idea what my real challenges are. Anything you bring up is what you read on the internet.
7) Don’t make me use your stupid remote desktop sharing/collaboration software that requires me to download a bunch of crap. If you can’t be in the room, just send the PowerPoint, Keynote, or PDF document.
8) Don’t mention Magic Quadrants/Analysts – I don’t care what a bunch of overpriced analysts decided about your company while they chatted over beer at the airport. Last time I checked, research companies are filled with people booted out of operational & executive roles into the land of consultancy.
9) Don’t Google me and then try to pretend like you didn’t Google me. It’s fine to Google me and talk about what you found, but don’t lie about it.
Things to do in a presentation
1) Be clear about your goal – If you want a sale, more introductions, a demo opportunity, then say so clearly. Beating around the bush gets you nowhere.
2) Ask me what my issues are and what problems I’m trying to solve – It’s astounding how few people actually take the time to ask what I’m looking for to help.
3) Explain what differentiates you from your competitors – Telling me how you have a way to help me that others don’t is a positive way to eliminate your competition.
4) Use a whiteboard to draw complex ideas and hand the pen to others in a collaborative discussion.
5) If you mention that you work with one of my customers or competitors, be sure you do. We’ll likely be calling them to compare notes.
6) Follow up with an email containing whatever you presented in the room and anything I asked for specifically. That does not mean attach 3 more case studies and copies of your last magazine ad.
7) Swag is great, but bring enough for my staff. As an exec, I get plenty of benefits, your tchotchkes don’t mean a lot to me, but they mean much more to my team. Bringing 12 small items for my team is much better than one of two nice things for me.
8) Be honest. Don’t make things up or shade the truth about features of your product or service. In the end, I will find out. Promising vaporware is a good way to never make the sale.

My daughter Mira has been building a series of dioramas inside the old iPhone boxes we had in the house. Here are some photos and a brief interview.

iPhone Diorama from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

Nine years ago I was awaken by a call from my mother-in-law asking “Did you see? Did you see?”.
Nine years ago I was driving to work, to send everyone home, when I heard on the radio that the Twin Towers had fallen.
In those nine years, I have seen the best and worst of America.
I have seen honest debate about the future of our country, and I have seen citizens call each other traitors simply because they don’t share the same politics.
I have seen America respect it’s military and our dead, but I have also seen America abuse other peoples and their dead.
I have seen America unite in joy and in grief together regardless of race, gender, or politics, and yet at other times question the foundational concept of America that “All men are created equal.”
America, we are a better country than this.
Our forefathers deserve a better legacy that an era of personal name calling and character assassination.
Our descendants deserve a better future than an era focused on fear.

That which unites us is stronger than that which divides us.

There is reason that most construction in office buildings is done at night, when office workers are not around. It has nothing to do with noise or cleanliness. It has to do with doorways to meeting rooms.
In the doorways of most company meeting rooms are coils of copper wire, wrapped in wool yarn, installed via a simple ritual involving a small amount of blood and dried avian bones. Workers walk through these coils as they pass into the meeting room. As they walk through the doorway, the coils absorb a small amount of their lifeforce, their third eye chakra to be exact.
Early attempts at energy collection were met with large scale side effects due to over harvesting, resulting in a depleted and uncreative workforce. This side effect, first seen in the Great Depression of the United States, were only resolved by the use of far stronger magic in World War II by the Allied and Axis powers. Modern collection techniques are subtle enough to allow sufficient individual restoration of energy over time, but with frequently harvested meeting goers, the effect on health and thought can be debilitating.
Modern chakra lifeforce removal systems route collected energy to the nearest living entity, most commonly a plant where it is stored for removal later. There is no sane reason that plants should be living in office buildings, yet they are found on every floor of every building. Gardeners visit the plants weekly and appear to be dusting off the leaves. In actuality the beeswax coated dusting cloths remove the energy from the plants, and the used cloths deposited into metal cans with concealed Leyden Jars as collection points.
The purpose of all this lifeforce energy collection is enable the performance of the Scalzi-Hunter Ritual of Success, first developed by Professors Scalzi and Hunter of Miskatonic University in 1925. Rite requires huge amounts energy to perform correctly, but does allow for the somewhat accurate prediction of the answer to a specific question spoken aloud at the height of the Ritual.
Corporate performers of the Scalzi-Hunter Ritual of Success typically ask specific questions about the marketplace or products. There is some risk involved, as that the Rite has been empirically found to give the correct answer only ~90% of the time. For many purposes this is an acceptable risk, but in obvious cases such as the Edsel, New Coke, and the Second Gulf War, the failures are spectacular in nature.
The only known countermeasure to the collection system is known as the Sculpin Defense in which a knowing person can take advantage of the direct sunlight to replenish their energy reserves directly. To avoid this possibility, many meeting rooms are designed without windows or with blinds to limit the amount of natural light entering the room.