Just got back from visiting Western Michigan University. Next Spring will be the 10th year since I graduated. And here is one thing I learned from a day of walking campus: I AM WAY OUT OF SHAPE. I used to walk all over campus, every day, all day. No problem. My wife and I (we met there), were in bad shape after 2 hours. Just tired and achy. Ironically, next Sunday we're playing paint ball with friends (both my wife and I). That's for 4 hours. If walking at a leisurely pace on ...
This weekend my wife and I are going to WMU which is where we graduated from. It's always fun to check out the campus and see what's changed over the years.
What motivates bloggers? I can't speak for all but for me, I look at blogging as indie editorials. As such, I like being able to express my view on something or provide information to the public that traditionally only full time journalists were able to do. I suspect millions of other bloggers are of the same mind. It's a form of self-expression. If I had cats, I wouldn't talk about what Mittens did today. Rather, I like giving my two cents on pretty much everything. Not that my opinio...
It never fails. In between Summer and Fall I just get that inter-seasonal case of the blahs. I'm feeling tired, a little under the weather and down in the dumps. No particular reason, happens every year. I know that because, like the statistics geek I am, I've graphed it over the years and noticed that when the weather starts to change from warm summers to cool Fall that I just lose all sense of motivation. I don't write for the reasons many people do. I don't consider blogging to be so...
A user asks: > > However one minor thing missing I think. How did you come up with the > > name Stardock exactly? That's actually a funny story... So it's 1991 which is when I founded Stardock Systems (DBA, Not incorporated at this point). I got ahold of a whole sale PC parts catalog which, back then, was a pretty big deal. I called up the place to start ordering parts for a PC and the guy on the phone says "What company is this for?" Being a stupid 20 year old, I panic'd thinking ...
So tomorrow I'm heading out on a 2 day trip. Blech. I don't know why but I just hate to travel. Well actually, I do know why. I don't like the actual "Travel" portion. If I could just beam to wherever I was going that would be great. Gotta pack up and get ready to go. Over the past several years I've gotten packing down to a science: 2 days: light clothes. No suits. I won't wear a suit when I travel. If a suit is going to make or break a deal, then I don't want to do business with a com...
I'm so far behind on so many things. I also have a bunch of topics to cover. I have a fun article about Hydrogen fuel cells and the problems they have. Short answer: We're not going to have hydrogen fuel cells any time soon. Sorry. The Matrix Revolutions was spectacularly crappy. Shockingly bad. I have two huge projects in front of me to get working on that is on top of all our existing projects. One on the business unit and the other for the games unit. I need to find us a bigger buildin...
If you've been coming to JoeUser for long, you've hopefully seen a gradual progression in the quality and features of the site. We've been heavily evaluating the various blog features and technologies out there. Some are really good. But some are just dumb. Here are some of my newbie view points on these issues. Feel free to comment and tell me where you agree or disagree. Good Blog Technologies RSS The Good: RSS is a standard that takes headlines from news sites (particularly blog sites...
Is it me or is the Internet overall very slow today?
...and the #1 reason why Stardock is so successful: Because everyone thinks desktop enhancements are a tiny niche market. When I try to convince the press to cover our software, I am often met with "Do people really use this stuff?" By "stuff" they mean desktop enhancements. Do people really want to change the way Windows looks and feels? Surely, it's just a tiny group of geeks who do this right? Right?? In actuality, desktop enhancements are pretty huge. They jus...
Thoughts of the day... I updated my msstyles rant . It amazes me that someone out there would actually pay money to patch their uxtheme file. I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't busted "companies" that make a profit selling cracks to the gullible. Tomorrow I'm speaking to U of M on software development and about the game industry. Tuesday I'm off to LA on business and won't be back until late Wednesday. I really hate traveling. I mean I can't understate it. I REALLY hate tr...
I tell ya, I really wish I could go back exactly 2 weeks. Here's what I would do: a) Get all the WinCustomize.com skin libraries backed up. Get redundancy going on the sites c) Get THREE brand new machines to the server site. Right now, JoeUser.com, WinCustomize.com, Stardock.com, and all our other sites are running on TWO machines. Two PCs. It's ridiculous. But we've had two machines die in the past month. Not a shining time for Dell (nor their fault). One failed machine has ...
No matter where you are, have a merry Christmas!
Man, what a week it's been. It started well. Last week before Christmas and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King starting. But then things went down hill. One of our competitors on the desktop side, TGT Soft, apparently was feeling festive and decided to file a lawsuit. On Wednesday Stardock received a lawsuit from TGT Soft that was filed in Louisiana. It's largely about one of our programs, IconPackager. The world's first and most popular way to change all your icons on Wi...
A friend of mine sent me an email that showed the results of Google manipulation with regards to George W. Bush. In this case, a bunch of people go together and linked the words "miserable failure" to the biography of George W. Bush. So now if you go to Google and type in "Miserable Failure" the first link is George W. Bush. It's an amazingly petty thing to do and also very easy. I could do the same thing by using my access on several popular websites to link say Total Loser with http://www...