So, Wednesday was my last day as a full-time employee of Meritide. As of yesterday, I'm back to being the only employee of Pragmapool, Inc. with billable work to kick in again on Monday.

Even though the last 2 weeks on any contract or job are of far lower stress than those that immediately precede it, wrapping things up and transitioning stuff off to other people keeps things busy. On top of that, there's been a lot of offline stuff going on in the last week. Much of that is now either taken care of or delegated.

• The new dishwasher is delivered, installed and has done 2 loads of dishes already.
• I've got the neighbor kid to agree to keep our lawn mowed until it stops growing this fall.
• The knocked over tree in the front yard has been cut down and disassembled.
• The carpets have been steam-cleaned with the new and improved replacement steamer.
• My office is nearly clean enough to work in.
• Paperwork for the new contract has been signed.
• Financial and payroll setup for the new contract has been started.
• Bank of America interest rate extortion has been ended. Despite no missed payments, a credit score above 700 and no other cards causing a problem, my card with them suddenly had a 24% interest rate. Their "solution" was to drop it down to 20% when I called. My solution was to get a different card.
• UPS and TigerDirect have been straightened out about the replacement cellphone that was shipped to my old address and it should be arriving today.
• Because I'll be doing more user interface design in my new contract, I ordered a cheap tablet PC for doing wireframe meetings, notes, etc.
• The Geo Tracker is mostly cleaned out, washed and waxed to get it ready to be sold.
• I put an ad on Craigslist to get rid of my pickup topper.
• Somehow I managed to get a nice day of relaxation in yesterday, including watching the rest of the Black Books TV series that I've been going through.

Whew.

Photo: Fanch

At the moment, I'm inclined to pretty much put my DIY electric bike on hold. This first appeared to be a simple project.

1. Buy a cheap bike
2. Buy a hub motor kit
3. Install the wheel and connect the basic connectors.
4. Ride away.

First, the original bike didn't have enough room between the forks, so I bought a replacement bike after measuring quite a few.

Then, today, I finally had the time to put on the tire, install the motor, and hook it all together. My mom, Shelly and my sister headed out shopping for the day and the garage is mostly cleaned out after last weekend.

I got the wheel installed, and then wired the controller, the motor and the throttle together (they were just clip-together connectors) and went to hook the charged up batteries.

It was at that point that a bright flash of light blinded me. The smell of ozone filled the air and my fingers, newly scorched black and burned by the arc, dropped the connectors. Despite there really only being one way to hook this all together, something is apparently very wrong with one or more of the components.

Then, apparently proving which side of the scientific divide I'm on, I tried it again.

I think there was more ozone, but less scorching the second time.

This, combined with the fact that I nearly lit my pants on fire by casually tossing a couple of AA batteries into my pocket along with my keys a couple of weeks ago, thus shorting them out has me thinking it might be time for a refresher course in battery safety. Does anyone have some aloe vera?

Dave Slusher recently took on a topic that I've been bothered by as well. He pointed out how often people flatly state how long a podcast "should" be and how seldom that's based on anything other than their own interactions with podcasts.

Basically, people who have a 30 minute commute insist that they should all be about 30 minutes. Those who listen in short segments throughout the day often want them in 5-10 minute chunks.

This is something I see often and is pretty much arguing from anecdote. It drives me nuts. It happens whenever you use just yourself, a couple of people or a small subset of the population at large and act as though its representational of the entire group. Unfortunately, on the modern web, you can get what *seems* like a big group and think you're looking at a good sample. 10,000 people on the web is NOT necessarily representative of the whole.

I saw it again today when someone posted "the" 7 levels of site revenue.. He put Adsense as the lowest level. However, because he included his revenue per 1000 page views (CPM), lots of people reacted just like I did. See, he stated that Adsense only generates $1 per 1000 page views.

I actually had to read that twice because of how far off that is from the numbers I've seen. Of course, my numbers aren't representative either, but I'm not claiming they are. However, I've seen more than once where someone was told not to bother with Adsense because of those kinds of numbers.

This is all a problem because of something I'm guilty of as well. It's a technique for commanding authority when you make statements. You just remove all of the indications of doubt. "I think X is the best way to do Y" becomes "X is the best way to do Y", "My results with program Z was to net 123" becomes "Program Z nets 123".

Basically, when you just state your opinion as fact, most people will just accept it. That's hugely powerful and terribly dangerous. However, if you just insert the disclaimers into those statements, you can take them with the appropriate grain of salt.

In the case of Adsense numbers, pretty much *everything* you hear is anecdote. Google prohibits sharing the exact numbers you earn and aren't sharing any aggregate data with the public. As a result, everyone who is making proclamations about how much money people are making is pretty much basing it off of the few people they've talked to. That's highly likely to be a group of people in a very similar target niche or similar demographic, etc.

On the podcasting side, the entire podcasting market consists of early adopters at the moment. Basing long term format decisions on anecdotes at this point is pure folly. Consider how different TV is today from what it looked like 20 or 30 years ago.

A topic came up a few weeks ago during my Sunday breakfast that entered my brain again yesterday. I was filling up my truck at a Holiday station that advertises their BluePlanet&tm; "Earth-friendly gasoline".

I paid at the pump like I always do and was asked to choose an octane, if I wanted a receipt and then was asked the question that prompted my greater question: do you want a $9 car wash?

I'm wondering why they're not also asking me if I want to buy a carbon offset and neutralize my gas consumption?

After all, PetSmart's little keypad asks me if I want to donate $1.50 to homeless pets every time I buy dog food.

I'm just surprised that all of these gasoline companies that are trying to appear more "green" aren't already doing this. They'd just have to pass it through to another program. And, the $9 car washes are proof-positive that, even when the filled gas tank is running $41 (and people are complaining about it), they'll *still* add on the car wash and make it an even $50.

Now, I know that many of the carbon offset programs are a scam. So are a lot of other charities. That doesn't make the *concept* invalid. There's got to be an organization that would *actually* sink the appropriate amount of carbon into trees or other methods in a verifiable way for a fee.

That's the fee I'd like to see on the pump. I've seen offset costs between $1 and $30 a ton tossed around. Whatever the actual cost, if it's between that range, a 20 gallon tank of gas puts the carbon offset at or below that $9 car wash. The PR win alone would be worth it for any one of those gas station chains and they'd get that credit just for making it *possible* for their customers to do the right thing.

A few months ago, I watched the first 2 seasons of the new Dr. Who straight through. There were definitely rough spots, but the show definitely started getting its legs toward the end of that 2nd season and now into the 3rd season, which is currently airing in the UK. That 3rd season is viewable to those of us in the US only through "creative" means, which I have to admit, I've been doing (I'll be buying each new season on DVD as well). I've also gotten hooked on Torchwood, the spin off of the new Dr. Who.

I never really watched Dr. Who much before this most recent incarnation. I'm not sure how I missed out on catching the bug, but I did. I'm looking to work through some of the back catalog when I get a chance because of how much I'm enjoying it.

That enjoyment has led me to seek out a way of putting something from the series into my home theater. So, when ThinkGeek sent me an email offering a Dr. Who Sonic Screwdriver for $15, I bought it. I'm not sure how I'll display it, because I'd like the sound and lights to be usable while its on display. However, I'm still excited about it more than any adult should be about a toy.

Most of the TV/movie prop replicas are REALLY expensive or really cheesy toys. This one is a nice compromise. From what I've read, they actually re-molded the TV version *from* this toy after it came out, making this a reverse replica.

At any rate, this also has me thinking about the role of "decorative" toys and geeks. It's similar to other forms of room decoration in that it expresses personality and taste, but definitely has a geeky bent. I suspect that being a geek and a movie fan, I'm just fated to be drawn to this stuff. And, while I thought the sonic screwdriver was plenty geeky, I think what I really need for my new office cubicle is The Face of Boe.