I’ll be the first guy on this blog to admit that I succumbed to the perceived hype about the last edition of the Rocky Mountain News. I had actually forgotten that the paper was printing it’s final edition until I happened into a gas station and noticed people buying news papers. This struck me as odd, because I hadn’t seen anyone buy a newspaper in years. This may be why they went out of business. I bought two, just in case.
 

Once I take these out of the back seat of my car, I will store them next to the one comic book I own – the one where Superman dies – and my one copy of Sports Illustrated, which I think is related to the Avalanche winning something, but I can’t remember. But, though my knowledge of collecting things is limited, I am pretty sure that part of the value of collectibles is their scarcity. Based on increased demand for their last issue, the Rocky Mountain News decided to print an additional 100,000 copies. This should ensure that anyone who was even remotely interested in having one of these keepsakes would be able to find one easily and without much effort, and also ensure that a single copy had absolutely no intrinsic value.
 

This morning, almost a week later, I was in the grocery store and noticed a gigantic stack of newspapers, which I actually hoped were not what I thought they were. My hope was in vain. Stacks of the last edition of The Rocky Mountain News sat ignored as they spilled over the top of their little rack. I’m not sure if these are part of the second printing, or if there was a third or fourth printing. Either way, it is quite evident that, once again, the newspaper folks overestimated the demand for their product.
 

If it wasn’t so sad, it would be almost comical.

Two years ago I went on a quest to find some old friends. I searched internet sites where I thought I was likely to find people – MySpace, Classmates, Amateur Porn Sites, etc. I found one or two old friends, but for the most part the experiment was a huge failure. What I discovered was that I was the only guy on the internet.
 

Well, not the only guy – I had plenty of online friends who were also, obviously, on the internet – but no one I knew in real life had a presence on the internet. But, I figured, no big deal. Not everyone was a computer guy, not everyone was a blogger, and not everyone had high-speed internet at home. I would wait, I thought, though I didn’t know for what I was waiting.
 

It has recently become clear that I was waiting for Facebook. Holy Crap, the entire world has embraced Facebook. I have friended so many people in just the last couple of weeks that I think I now have a Facebook friend from every stage of my life, starting before grade school and continuing all the way to my current co-workers. What I’ve realized is that, while I’ve often dreamt of the moment when I would have everyone I’ve ever known all in one place, the dream was never what I would call “pleasant” and I’d often wake from it screaming.
 

When I first started writing in a public forum, I was young and still struggled with the reality that my mom was going to read everything I wrote. For a while this kept some of my thoughts in check – like I’d never write about my feelings toward semi-hot female celebrities, even if most of the time it was all in fun. As I matured, and my relationship with my mom matured, I eased the reins on my imagination and eventually just let the horses run where they would. This was a positive step in my writing, and I was glad to be over the hurdle.
 

I fear that with the Facebook floodgates open, I have just turned the last corner of my race and discovered not two or three evenly spaced hurdles, but a gigantic mess of hurdles of all shapes and sized piled haphazardly atop each other and stretching all the way to the finish line.
 

I’ve got some stuff to work out, I mean.
 

This time, however, it is not just about the careful inclusion and exclusion of topics. I’ve never been super-raw anyway, so the occasional check is all that’s needed to keep it all-ages. My real concern is that I won’t be on all the time, and with more and more people watching, being on all the time is a must.
 

What I think I mean is that it’s cool, even somewhat edgy, to suck when only people you don’t know are reading. Negative comments from strangers just add fuel to the creative fire and responding to these comments is a great way to pass time. But, when your neighbor comes over and says, “hey, I read your blog the other day and it was sort of boring,” it gets personal, and a bit uncomfortable.
 

That’s how it boils down – I find myself over-thinking everything I want to write and realize that without some new angle or some actual research, it’s just me talking about stuff, and no one wants to read that. It’s a bit like Eminem says – “If you had one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted. Would you capture it, or just let it slip?” I feel like every post is an opportunity to convince someone other than myself that the post is worthy of something. But, more often than not, this puts so much pressure on the post to be balls-out perfect that I end up falling short because I can’t quite find that universal truth that brings it around and makes it worthy of attention.
 

So, while I am super-psyched to connect with current friends and re-connect with old friends, the fact that all of these connections are happening online, a space I used to go to be, not a complete other person, but someone a little different than I am in real life, it makes it a little weird. It’s like your aunt coming into town on the same day as that girl you went out with a couple of times in college, and they both want to go to dinner with you. As those two worlds collide, the conversation becomes awkward, at best. My worlds are colliding, and it’s possible that in time it will become comfortable, but right now it feels like wool sheets on a straw mattress.

Over the years I’ve made a number of proclamations about my future and almost none of them have come even close to true. This is due, in large part, to my fear of failure, or aversion to change, or unwillingness to get off my duff and make things happen. And, while today I will make another (albeit more bold) announcement, I want you to know that this time – unlike the previous seventeen times –I will see this idea all the way through to fruition.
 

I have to, because this is gigantic.
 

If I were a better writer, I would be able to express the gravity of this pronouncement through language or pacing or whatever, but we all realized a long time ago that I am average at best, so let me just come right out and say that this is freaking big.
 

Steven Page is leaving The Barenaked Ladies. The band says that it will continue to record and tour without Mr. Page.What they have not announced, at least not yet, is that they will no doubt need a replacement for Steven. This replacement would obviously need to be able to sing, play guitar and be familiar with most if not all of their songs.
 

Sound like anyone you know?
 

As of today, March 1^st, 2009, I want the world to know that I will be putting all of my efforts for the next several months into becoming a member of The Barenaked Ladies. I know it must sound crazy to an outsider, but this move is years in the making, and from the inside, it totally makes sense.
 

It’s not unheard of for a regular Joe like me to join a band already in progress. The most famous cases of course are Arnel Pineda, who joined the band Journey after they saw him singing on YouTube, and Robert Trujillo, who joined Metallica after they saw him playing with smaller acts like Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Ozbourne.
 

I’m almost positive my kids have a YouTube account, so it wouldn’t even be that hard for me to post a few videos of myself playing some BNL songs.These are the songs that I play to warm up, so I know them pretty well and, with a little work, could make them sound great.
 

I’m sure there are some things that I’ve not yet thought of – like how will I raise a family while I’m on the road and stuff, but once I get in the band, I’ll work out the details.I’m sure the transition will be somewhat difficult for the band as well, as Steven has been such an integral part of the band since its inception. I want Jim, Ed, Tyler and Kevin to know that I bring to the table a strong sense of where they’ve been, both musically and personally, and it is not my style to come in and try to change things. I just want to help them continue to produce great music with a touch of humor, and more than a hint of genius.
 

Also, I’m not totally sure I mentioned this, but I can sing, so…
 

Even if this dream of mine goes nowhere because I forget about it a few minutes after posting this blog entry, I really just want to thank The Barenaked Ladies for the opportunity.It’s not everyday you get to daydream about what it would be like to join your favorite band and finally fulfill your dream of being a rock star at 37 ½ years old.

Dear Monetization News Daily,

I run a fairly popular social media site with 175 million registered users, a large percentage of who visit at least once a day. My users have filled out profiles, so I know who they are, demographically, and what they are interested in. But, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to monetize this site. Any ideas?

FB en masse

Dear FB en masse,
Holy crap. Pardon our Arabic, but if we at Monetization News Daily had 175 million users, we’d be too busy peeing ourselves in delight to worry about much of anything else. But, we appreciate you taking the time to write, and we do have some ideas that might help put a buck or seven in your pocket.
 

Ads
 

We have one word for you – ads.
 

Advertising has been a money-maker for a great many sites over the last few years. If you’re not running ads on your site, you probably should. You may have considered running contextual-based ads, like Google Adsense, but worry that your content is not focused enough to display relevant ads.
 

If we had 175 million users, we would approach Google and ask if they would set us up in a special “social media” channel that would display the most popular ads from around their network. This sort of channel does not exist today, that we know of, but you have a large user base, and should have enough pull to put something like this together. You need to start thinking like a business, and not like a website.
 

One thing to avoid is to try to build your own advertising system. For instance, another social media site, Facebook, built their own advertising system where they sell blocks of space to regular Joe’s trying to make a buck. The trouble with this set up is multi-fold

• a) All ads must be manually approved by a real person. This is extremely inefficient
• b) The space is filled with crappy products that no one wants, and links to crappy sites that no one wants to visit
• c) The ads feel amateurish, because they are, and this makes Facebook seem amateurish
• d) The average Facebook user is hesitant to click on ads from unknown sources. The bulk of Facebook advertisers are unknown sources (not nationally recognized products or brands). This leads to really low click-through, which turns away these advertisers. Result: No one wants to advertise on Facebook, because Facebook users won’t click. Pretty easy formula.

 
One thing you should realize is that your user base is larger than the average Super Bowl audience. What’s more, your users keep coming back, day after day after day. Your space is worth millions and millions of dollars. I imagine a nice 200 X 600 banner for a product like Swiffer would pull in a few thousand bucks an hour. With the demographic info that you have, with a little bit of elbow grease, you might be able to customize ads for your users and really bump up your numbers.
 

Bake Sale
 

If advertising leaves a sour taste in your mouth, why not use your site to raise money for good causes? No, we’re not suggesting you start selling chocolate cakes to your users, but surely someone somewhere in those 175 million has a cause that they feel pretty strongly about supporting. Maybe you could set up a “causes” module and allow your users to create and contribute to these charitable organizations. You could take a small percentage without feeling guilty.
 

Most non-profit organizations have an advertising budget and would gladly give up a percentage of their donations just to have the attention of so many people at once. And, if you think that non-profit is not about marketing, take a long, hard look at the be-pinked Susan G Komen campaign and ask yourself how they got so many people to get so jazzed about cancer.
 

Yes, during difficult times such as these, selling charity is tough. When people start cutting things from their budget, charitable contributions usually get cut first, followed closely by summer passes to Six Flags and subscriptions to beer-of-the-month clubs. But, if you can get people thinking about charity now, when things turn around, you should be golden.
 

Subscriptions
 

Let’s do some simple math. 175 million users at one dollar a year equates to 175 million dollars a year. We could live on that. If we were a staff of ten, instead of just one guy pretending to be a “we,” we could still live on 17.5 million dollars a year. Now, we’re sure that with that many users, you probably have some data and hardware costs. Also, you probably have a developer or two on staff to work out the bugs and develop new features.
 

(Although, if you are developing features that your users suggest – stop immediately. They came to your site because they liked it. Why would you change anything about a site that could attract 175 million people? Leave it alone.)
 

We have no way of estimating your overhead costs per year, but we do know that if it is approaching 75 million dollars, you are doing some horribly inefficient things. But, even if that is the number, this still leaves you with 100 million dollars a year. And, that is at one dollar a year per user – a number we feel few users would hesitate to pay.
 

Other quasi-social sites like Xanga and LiveJournal charge $25 a year for their “premium” model. Even if only 10% of your users chose to access your premium service – which would not display ads, and include some great features like customized profile pages – you would still have 17.5 million users paying you $25 a year – or 437 million dollars. That’s more money than we made last year, or for the previous 36 years combined.
 

Research
 

We hope we’ve offered you some ideas, FB en masse, but to be honest, none of these ideas is especially earth-shattering and could have been researched on Wikipedia during your lunch break. (Except for the “social media” channel on Adwords – that is pure genuis.) Further, this list is by no means exhaustive, as there are at least a half-dozen other ways you could monetize your gigantic user base.
 

If you are serious about monetizing your site, we suggest you type the term “monetization strategies” into Google, and just read the first few results. We think you’ll find that you are sitting on a gold mine, and that if you’d just pull your head out of your backside, you could own a good portion of the Eastern United States, plus Oklahoma.
 
All our best,
 
MND

I don’t often get depressed while reading The Onion, but today at lunch, while thumbing through the usually uplifting weekly commentary on pop culture, I happened upon an article written by a “humor columnist” Roger Dudek, that sort of made me rethink my entire existence.
 

The premise borders on offensive from the outset. Roger has been writing professionally for more than 20 years but has only been published intermittently. While reading his article you get the feeling that Roger thinks he’s pretty funny – after all he is a Professional Syndicated Humor Columnist and has written an as-yet-unpublished humor book, Memoirs of a Guy-sha – but there is absolutely nothing funny about anything the man says.
 

The humor is weak at best – “I don’t need the government taking money out of my wallet and deciding how to spend it…. That’s my wife’s job!”His structure is classic humor article style – ending every paragraph with a real hum-zinger and going off-topic just to work in the joke. (And, there are more than enough parenthetical references.) In a word, the writing is horrific, and honestly if I hadn’t internalized the experience and gone in a completely different direction, I probably would have felt bad for Roger.
 

Of course, Roger is not an actual columnist, but a construct dreamed up by The Onion to personify all the would-be humor columnists of the world. The Onion has always been elitist – they don’t accept contributions and they only hire the most inside of insiders – usually relatives of current staffers.If one were to look at it in a certain way, one might say that they were a humor paper monopoly. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they’ve “eliminated” writers that posed a threat to them, but I can’t say that it’s never happened.
 

When you read the article, you understand that, for all of Roger’s efforts, he sucks. When you go deeper, and envision an Onion staffer writing this piece as Roger, thinking to himself “what would a really bad writer who thinks he is funny say here,” you begin to see why this piece touched a nerve with me. The Onion has drawn a line in the sand and said “We, The Onion, are actual humor writers. The guys like Roger are just foolish and inconsequential. Anyone who attempts humor and is not associated with out paper is just so much wasted carbon.Making fun of them is how we stay relevant.”
 

I’m not saying I am like Roger, but at moments in my life I know that my attempts at writing humor have strayed dangerously close to the Roger realm. Further, I often have occasion to read writers who would think Roger was a laugh-riot.I’ve read humor writer who were lucky enough to gain some internet notoriety and have their articles appear on Digg, only to have some Digg lifer say “just another Onion wannabe.”If The Onion is the gold standard, but also completely untouchable, then where, as humor writers, are we supposed to go?
 

The reason it bothered me so was that the giant spotlight was blinding and a bit too warm. I too have been writing for close to 20 years with only a few publications to show for all the effort. I tend to change directions quite a bit, and subsequently lose my way more often than I’d prefer, but if you were to ask me what type of writer I am, my gut reaction would be “humor writer.”I could never write for The Onion because I am not crass enough, nor do I readily dismiss the thoughtfulness of a moment to go for the kill. But, in the end, I am some type of humor writer, so if we have The Onion in one corner, and Roger in the other, I suppose I’ll have to saunter over to Roger’s side and try to give him a few bits of magic.
 

Of course, The Onion wouldn’t be doing their job if they hadn’t nailed Roger, so in a way, my reaction to the piece actually justifies their work. When Roger says “My columns can’t be reduced to a snarky one-liner you can slap on a mousepad,” and then in the next line says “Besides, if I wanted to spend my time filling out T-shirts, I’d become Pamela Anderson,” you sort of have to admire the actual writer for being so damn talented.
 

Sigh.
 

This too, shall pass. I don’t think I’ll read the paper next week, out of protest, but in two weeks I will likely have forgotten why I was so ill at ease with The Onion and I’ll pick it up, laugh a little, and life will be back to normal.If I were Dave Barry, I would close here with a really strong tie-in to the first point I made. I am not Dave, so I failed to make a strong point near the beginning of this piece, so instead I think I’ll close with another quote from Roger. As long as I am rethinking my existence, why not lower my expectations as well. It would be much easier to attain Roger status than Dave status anyway, and easy is what I’m all about.
 

“There’s no point in splitting hairs here (it’d take too long to find one on this cue ball of mine anyway!), so I’m just going to give it to you straight: We’re in a recession. A deep one. Deeper than Dolly Parton’s cleavage. Deeper than a poetry reading at the bottom of the ocean. I’m telling you, we’re so deep in this recession, I just watched the dollar fall below a dinosaur fossil.
 

“One still buried underground!”

I spent my morning train ride listening to Tobias Wolff read Stephanie Vaughn’s short story “Dog Heaven,” which was – and this will come as no surprise to those familiar with the short story – not really about a dog going to heaven, though the dog did die at one point. It turns out that the message of the story was that you should never name your kid Sparky, though no one comes right out and says that.
 

You are probably wondering what I was doing on the train, and I have to admit that for a while, I was right there with you. But, the train is actually pretty cool. I have not seen anything extraordinary yet – no knife fights or bloody derailments where we all fall hundreds of feet to die in a twisted pile of metal and gore – but I know it’s only a matter of time. I do get this creepy sense of uniformity and sameness when I’m on the train, like we’re all headed to the central processing center to be processed or centralized, though this may be attributable in large part to my fifth grader’s class. They are reading – rather, we are reading – A Wrinkle in Time. This is my daughter’s first trip through, but I’ve read it so many times I wouldn’t even guess at a number. We’ve just arrived on the dark planet, where everyone does the same exact thing at every moment without thought. Swap out the grey suits for black North Face jackets, and you’ve got a pretty good idea what I’m seeing every morning.
 

This afternoon I rounded the corner of 19^th street and noted with some amusement that my fellow commuters, in an effort to ensure they did not have to stand for forty-five minutes, had begun, like French school children, to line up at the spots where the doors would be, once the train arrived. I realize that train seats are at a premium in the afternoon, but I hesitate to conform to the crowd mentality by lining up seven minutes before the train arrives. But then, I know if I don’t get in line, I’ll end up with my rear in someone’s face, staring down upon someone else’s scalp and wondering if they know about the bald spot that’s just beginning to show. So, of course, I get in line. It wouldn’t make any more sense to stand around all unordered and haphazard like, making a mad dash for the doors once the train had come to a full and complete stop, but to me, it would just feel a little less scripted.
 

From my window I can see the whole city, which is actually quite small, and not so entertaining from the 23^rd floor. The building just a couple of blocks away is adorned with a gigantic tapestry of Obama – the picture with the red and blue –and this is what I spend most of my window time thinking about. I cannot remember, nor can I imagine, a gigantic and proudly displayed banner depicting the likeness of any other president – Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter or Ford. I may be wrong, but I don’t think we’ve had any such thing in a very long time, if at all. When I think of gigantic banners hanging from city buildings and depicting political figures, I think of Stalin, Hitler, Castro, and that Korean guy. I’m in no way trying to draw parallels here; I’m just making an observation, and wondering aloud if maybe we should tread cautiously down this road.
 

This afternoon I was not so literary. I spent most of the ride watching humorous video podcasts and trying to keep my butt from falling asleep. It turns out, as much as we go out of our way to get a seat, they are hard and scrunched and really not worth it. Tomorrow I’ll listen to the new TAL, so hopefully that will be interesting and I’ll have more to talk about. Barring that, I am still holding out for the knife fight, or the derailment, which would shake things up a bit for sure. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Last week I had the pleasure of riding across town with one of the least intelligent people I know. You are thinking I am a brainy snob, and that is not the case. It wouldn’t bother me that the guy is dumber than a wash rag, if he weren’t so belligerent, and angry. It’s almost as if he is drunk all the time… wait a second, that’s exactly what it’s like.

Except, I know he’s not.

He does drink a lot, but I think he has to. He’s 45, lives in his parents basement, has no car, a pretty crappy job, and in general, probably does not charm the ladies as much as he would like.

I teeter between feeling bad for him, and not liking him at all. Usually the latter happens when he is around, and the former, when he is not.

But, as we rode through town, and he spewed his never-ending commentary on absolutely everything, repeating himself three times at every major point, then making another point, then reiterating the previous point before going on, I realized there was a gold mine of good material in him.

By the time we were back at the office, I already had an entire screenplay for a comedy movie written with him as sort of a goofball character. (He was born for the role.) I don’t normally write screenplays, especially not in my head, but there it was.

Maybe someday I will write it down. I’ll let you know if I do.

We have a new saying in our house – “it smells like balls in here.”We picked up this jaunty little phrase last night whilst at the dollar movies.We’ve been going to the same dollar theater for years and it has always been clean, if not high quality, or populated with folks of similar income levels and dental hygiene.
 

The nice, quiet, possibly homicidal guy that cleaned the theaters has been there every time we’ve gone and has, over the years, become comforting in his presence, if not in his demeanor.The last two times we’ve gone the nice, quiet, kill-you-with-a-cleaver guy that cleaned the theaters has been missing, and the theaters have been littered with cups and tubs and candy boxes.In a word, it’s become trashy.
 

It should have come as no surprise to us that the four tween girls that came in to the theater just as the movie was starting would also be trashy.One of them welcomed us into their world by uttering the now popular phrase “it smells like balls in here.”As young as the four girls were, I’d be surprised if they’d ever smelled balls.Still, they said it, my girls heard it, and now it’s a saying that we have – a phrase that we can use if ever we feel the need.
 

It didn’t stop there, of course.The four tween girls chose to sit in the aisle of the theater.If you can imagine the nastiest, stickiest, dirtiest movie theater in the world and then also imagine sitting on the floor of that theater, then you will get the feeling that I had in my stomach when I saw them sit there. Then the obnoxiousness began – laughing inappropriately, talking loudly and burping even louder.It was gross, and embodied everything that is wrong with the youth of today.After just a few minutes a fellow movie-goer hailed a theater employee who moved the girls into seats. After another twenty minutes of continued obnoxiousness, I went to get the same employee and by the time we’d returned, the tweens had left the building.
 

This brings up a lot of great questions that might never be answered.Where is the guy that cleans the theaters?He did not have the kind of personality that would cause him to seek other employment.Perhaps he’s part of a movie janitor exchange program, or in jail for the murder of thirty-four people whose bodies were discovered in his basement.Where did these girls learn their manners?Would it have helped if their parents knew of their rude behavior?My wife wanted to wait for their parents and tell them.I was of the opinion that it would not help them parent better, and the retribution might push the girls further down the path of deviant social behavior.
 

One thing is for sure, the dollar movies are on the short list of places we might not visit anymore.The air-conditioning does not work, the janitor guy is gone, and the locals have transitioned out of the realm of interesting and into the realm of creepy.Plus, and I don’t want to offend anyone, but it did sort of smell like balls in there.

I am aware that in some circles, talking about television is akin to discussing religion, politics, or natural hair color; some things you just don’t talk about. But, in this instance, it’s funny, so I ask that you leave your broom of judgment at the door, and come on in for a laugh or two.

That said, in our house we typically allow our children to watch one television show a night. It’s called The Disney Channel. I am currently writing a piece about one aspect of that endless show, Hillary Duff, which I think I’ve alluded to, but which is in no way ready for you to read. Watching only one show has it’s advantages; you don’t need a remote, a program guide, or a brain. You just sit, and the television does all the work for you.

But, something happened. I don’t know how, but one night I came home from the store, and The Disney Channel was gone. The family was watching Fear Factor, featuring Joe Rogan. If you have never seen Fear Factor, possibly because you can’t find the remote, it’s a show where people have to do stupid and/or gross things to win. I’m not sure what they win, but I’m guessing it’s a Sultanship in Brunia, because the contestants will do anything to win. “And now, in addition to the scorpions and tarantulas already climbing all over your body, we’re going to add a bunch of snakes, for fun.” You know how bad I want a Sultanship, but I don’t think I could do the snake thing.

Fear Factor is not really aimed at 7 to 9 year olds, especially the two shows that we have seen; Fear Factor: Playboy Playmates and Fear Factor: Other Women with Giant Boobs. But, the kids seemed genuinely interested in the women eating raw crab meat, so we watched. And, then we watched again. Our girls seem to love Fear Factor.

So much so, that recently our broken-legged six-year-old, in an effort to entertain herself, because she had already seen most of what was on The Disney Channel that day, tied the cord from the blinds to a piece of furniture, and then tied her new Barbie to that cord. “What are you doing, sweetie,” I asked. “Playing Fear Factor,” she replied. The blind cord was actually dangling the Barbie over a shark-infested ocean. Barbie had to zip down the cord, and smash into the piece of furniture, repeatedly, for several hours.

As an aside, the Barbie was naked, as are all Barbies in our house. Before becoming Fear Factor Barbie, she was California Barbie, and she was quite tan. I know seeing this naked tan Barbie tied to a zip line should have had no effect on me. And it didn’t, really. Sorry, where was I?

How she made the mental leap from Playboy Playmate to Barbie is, well I guess it’s not that big of a mystery. What she knows of Fear Factor, based on the two shows we have seen, is that women who are built like Barbie, and smart like Barbie, do incredibly dangerous or stupid things for fun. That’s the show, and Fear Factor Groovy Girl just doesn’t seem right.

Sadly, I don’t think Barbie won. At least, we didn’t have to give her anything for winning, since repeated ramming into furniture left her mentally impaired. But, only slightly more so than before she started. Just like real Fear Factor.

I’ve never been one that was short on ideas. I typically don’t follow through with any of them because I barely have time to keep a journal (as you all know pretty well.) I’m actually OK with this. It’s the having the ideas part – thinking about them and planning them and dreaming about how successful they would be – that is the fun part. I can’t imagine that following through on any of these ideas would be fun, because it would be too much like work.
 

But, I had a good one last night – a really really good one. This idea was so good that I thought this time I might really clear some time on my schedule and see it through. It was going to be a long road – twelve to eighteen months – but it would certainly pay off in the long run. (Note: for those of you thinking of starting a project or hare-brained scheme, you need to start talking about it in months, not years. Sixty months sounds like a walk in the park – five years sounds like a lifetime.)
 

This idea was so good that after I’d rolled it around upstairs for a day, I was still excited about it. So, I took the opportunity this evening to share the idea with my family.
 

I will pause here and say that this does not happen often. I get a lot of ideas, and if I bounced each one of them off of the wife and kiddos, they’d start to think I was a little off my rocker.
 

But, I knew this one was different – it had so much common sense and real-life application that it could have come from Bill Gates, or at least Melinda Gates. So, I figured the wife would say something like “That’s a great idea. Why don’t you quit your job and work on that. I love you honey – you are so brilliant.” (The kids would be too in awe of me to actually speak.)
 
That is not what happened. In fact, let me just quote my ten-and-a-half year old daughter.
 

“Daddy, that’s like saying ‘Hey, see that cloud? If you give me $20, I’ll name it after you.’ And then the cloud disappears. Daddy, it’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

So, yeah, I was a little crushed. But, I had to laugh at the analogy. How did she come up with that? Clearly she is exhibiting signs of her inherited brilliance. Plus, her mom is pretty smart too.
 

I still think it is a good idea. No, a great idea. But, I’m not going to share it here, obviously, because I’ve been belittled enough for one day, thank you very much.
 

Do you think people would pay to have a cloud named after them?