Rob Lambert.com

Two ex-Onion writers started the e-card site someecards.com about a year ago. I’d never heard about it until I just saw it written up on TechCrunch today. Man, are these cards good. I talked with Mary several years ago about making a card company that made blunt, honest and sometimes crude greeting cards that said exactly what you were thinking but that most people would never say.

Well, someecards.com probably did a much funnier job than I would’ve ever pulled off. There are TONS of good ones.

Here are 11 of my favorite workplace cards

This one is totally the current situation at my work:

I am notorious for not turning my timesheets on time. I am sure that there are some folks in my company who would love to send me this one:

I tend to speak pretty freely at work. Sometimes, in trying to warn me to watch what I say, some folks say things that are ten times worse than anything that I would even think of saying in their effort of trying to warn me:

I’ve got one of the better cubicles in my workplace, but some other folks have got to feel like this:

Everybody’s run into this person before:

I never feel like this on my projects, but I have observed many projects from a distance that makes me appreciate this:

George Costanza would be proud of this guy we’ve all met:

I haven’t first hand experienced this, but Mary did way too many times at her previous job:

Two words at my office complex … “Deli Time”

It’s really funny to listen to all of the Blackberry scrolling/button punching in the bathroom stalls:

Some people, you’ve just got to wonder about:

Google announced Google App Engine tonight. At first I thought it was going to more directly compete with Amazon’s EC2, S3, etc. It really doesn’t. What it gives you is a somewhat limited Python development environment to work in. I quickly read through the getting started docs. I really love Python, but I was initially a little under-whelmed after reading the initial docs. But then I realized that you could deploy an entire Django application (with minimal tweeks to use Google’s datastore) and, hmmm, that might be compelling. I’ve got a little project that I started a year and a half ago that I put on the backburner that I might just finish developing in Django (check out my Django Quickstart) and deploy it to the Google Engine. You can host Google Engine apps on your own domain, but, by default, Google Engine apps are deployed to APPNAME.appspot.com (I’ve got the exciting domain for my super-secret project!).

Clearly the big thing here is hosting your stuff with Google who have proved that they can make things perform well and scale and all that. Hmmmmm …. where to focus my limited time and resources ….

Anyway, I’d bet that the Google App Engine will help push Django over the edge and more into the mainstream …

When Mary and I walk the dogs, I am nosey and like to pick up used lottery tickets, receipts and other random pieces of paper that we find on the ground. After studying the item, sometimes I just put it back where I found it. Mary always accuses me of littering. I say that I am not littering, it was already litter! Sure, it would be a nice thing to dispose of the item properly, and sometimes I do, but if I don’t, it’s still not littering. Can anybody back me up?

[BTW, I have cashed in $14 in instant lottery ticket winnings from fools who bought these things and didn't even know that they won a few bucks and threw them on the ground!]

Trent Rezor released his new Nine Inch Nails record, Ghosts, today under a Creative Commons License. Nice!

I honestly haven’t paid much attention to NIN since the early 90′s. I’ve got Pretty Hate Machine, Broken and The Downward Spiral which are each great in their own way, but haven’t bothered to pick up any NIN releases since. But I am downloading the new record as I write this.

Man, the old school record industry is screwed. I don’t think that ANY kids buy CDs anymore. Early adopting forward-thinking artists like Trent Reznor and Radiohead will probably become forever remembered for moves like this and 2007-2008 will go down as the end of the record industry as we’ve always known it.

Rock on.

photo credit: cinealoido

There’s a great story of Jonathan Coulton on Yahoo: How To Become a Rockstar.

Jonathan is a kindred spirit in that he’s a software geek … and he quit his job to be a rock star. He eventually self-made himself into an artist making more money as a musician than he did at his software job.

One of the keys to his success was that he forced himself to write and release one song every week for an entire year. It is amazing what can be produced with artificial deadlines like this. It’s the same power wielded by nanowrimo and rpmchallenge.

I gotta make me myself some creative artificial deadlines and goals …

Read and watch : Jonathan Coulton’s story on Yahoo’s “People of the Web”. It’s good stuff.

See Chicagoist.com:

Some dude Donnie Hoyle has just posted his fifth “You Suck at Photoshop” tutorial. Man, these are great. They are hilarious, but surprisingly, you can actually learn something too, especially if you are a Photoshop novice.

A few notes on these “tutorials”

1. These are not necessarily “safe for work” or kid friendly … watch at your discretion.
2. Note the images he scrolls by when starting new projects through Adobe Bridge, ha!
3. This guy is kind of a Dane Cook rip-off, who I don’t like so much, but oh well.
4. I love it when he starts a new task and he yells at the listener “Stop! I saw you reaching for the eraser tool (or magic wand or whatever).”
5. It is interesting that he is using a Mac for the first four tutorials, but on the fifth one, when he is “at work in the corporate world”, he is using Windows.

Okay, watch ‘em. Laugh and maybe learn something.

You Sucjk at Photoshop – Volume 1: Distort, Warp and Layer Effects

You Suck at Photoshop – Volume 2: Covering Your Mistakes

You Suck at Photardshop – Volume 3: Clone Stamp and Manual Cloning

You Suck It Photoshop – Volume 4: Paths and Masks

You Suck at Photoshops – Volume 5: Select Color Range

Sponsored by Photoshop for Windows and Photoshop for Mac

On the eve of Super Tuesday, if you are taking a Democratic ticket tomorrow and are considering voting for Hillary, please review Lawrence Lessig‘s video “20 minutes or so on why I am 4Barack”

I really found his exposure of Hillary’s “Rovean” tactics to be disturbing. Now, I don’t hate Hillary Clinton, and in fact I may even like her a little better today than I did a few months ago. But I am 100% behind Barack!

The last third of the video talks about Barack’s potential to “inspire towards peace”, and I couldn’t agree more.

Watch the video:

I was at Trader Joe’s today and was looking to pick up some orange juice. I didn’t want “no pulp” and I didn’t want “extra pulp”. I just wanted a regular amount of pulp, like we used to get in the old days when we didn’t worry about pulp. Well, all they had was lots of varieties of “extra pulp” and lots of varieties of “no pulp”. But there was no “regular pulp” or “some pulp”!

When did marketers decide that we were so pulp obsessed? I’m with Tony Soprano. In one episode, he complained to Carm that he likes his orange juice with some pulp.

Tony: (looks at orange juice) This says “with pulp.”
Carmela: You like it with pulp.
Tony: Not this much. I like the one that says “some pulp.”
(Carmela throws phone at him)
from The Sopranos Season Three