Category Archives: rants

A criminal says trust is stupid but security “experts” trust

Posted on September 8, 2011 by patrick

Sam Antar, convicted white collar criminal, says trusting is stupid clearly and explicitly: President Ronald Reagan said: “Trust, but verify.” As a convicted felon, I say: “Don’t trust, just verify.” “Verify, verify, verify.” As a criminal, I considered people’s humanity … Continue reading →

Posted in broken, rants, technical | 1 Comment

Party like it’s 1611 aka living credit card and (dollar) bill-free

Posted on February 3, 2011 by patrick

Late last year I found out from a friend that the U.S. Mint is making a strong effort to get the $1 Coin into circulation. For no shipping and handling fees, the U.S. Mint will send to consumers $1 Coins … Continue reading →

Posted in political, random silliness, rants | Leave a comment

Internet businesses should pay sales tax

Posted on January 30, 2011 by patrick

Update (15 April 2011) : O.k. boy did I miss the boat on this one. As as been pointed out in a series of comments on techcrunch ( I would post the link to the techcrunch post except with facebook … Continue reading →

Posted in political, rants, social commentary | 5 Comments

Random notes about Google Doc Spreadsheet Web form lameness

Posted on January 9, 2011 by patrick

I set up a Google Docs webform to allow parents in my kid’s classroom to enter the books their kids are reading. Here are some lameness notes about Google Docs Spreadsheet Webform that I found: Connecting a webform to a … Continue reading →

Posted in broken, rants | 1 Comment

Pustulance, bile and falsehoods about online privacy from the WSJ

Posted on August 30, 2010 by patrick

The WSJ spewed forth this bit of online privacy pustulance from an alleged “professor of economics”, Paul Rubin Paul Rubin’s falsehoods: Paul Rubin’s First Falsehood 1) Privacy is free. Many privacy advocates believe it is a free lunch—that is, consumers … Continue reading →

Posted in political, privacy, rants | Leave a comment

Facebook has bigger problems than “like” and “fans”

Posted on March 30, 2010 by patrick

Recently Facebook has been making a series of “privacy” changes in order to better convert peoples relationships into Facebook’s money. Dennis Yu of blitzlocal made some very valid points about Facebook’s latest effort. Facebook is revisiting “like” and “fan pages”: … Continue reading →

Posted in facebook, political, rants | Leave a comment

Don’t let the lawyers run the business

Posted on August 17, 2009 by patrick

This past weekend, my sysadmin ( James Sparenberg ) and I, were figuring out which cloud hosting service to use. We had been pitched a number of times by GoGrid. I had been given a “try us out” credit by … Continue reading →

Posted in amplafi, broken, starting a company | Leave a comment

Mac OSX — the most insecure OS around

Posted on August 7, 2009 by patrick

A year ago, I gave up on Windows. I was tired of the nervous eggshell feeling with anti-virus software, security patches, and a machine that would mysteriously be slower and slower no matter what I did. Because of MacOSX Unix … Continue reading →

Posted in broken, how to, technical | 2 Comments

The 100-hour work week myth

Posted on July 5, 2009 by patrick

Chris Yeh calls out workaholism as the stupid choice it is: If you work 100-hour weeks, no one (investors, co-founders, employees) can blame you if things don’t work out, right? And I like to think I’ve worked a lot smarter … Continue reading →

Posted in amplafi, management, rants, starting a company | 4 Comments

Open Message to the anti-tax crowd: move

Posted on June 17, 2009 by patrick

Amazon’s definition of “unconstitutional” : “We don’t like it” I love all these people who whine about taxes. Don’t like taxes? Move to Somalia. No functioning government since Bush the First – a libertarian paradise. The anti-tax people complain about … Continue reading →

Posted in political, rants | 5 Comments