Matt Bernier’s Personal Blog > A Denver entrepreneur, trying to get a project to stick, and talking about people

The soda bet

June 19th, 2010 § 0

Soda is a weakness for both Melissa and I. For her it’s pepsi, fountain coke, or ice cold coke in 8oz glass bottles. For me, it’s Cherry Coke, Apple Soda, fountain coke from McDonalds, and fountain coke in movie theaters. Yeah, I know…pretty silly, but it’s the truth.

We have both quite drinking soda for extended periods of time, but mostly for bragging rights. This time we’re a little more serious about it because there are higher stakes on the table.

I have been fighting with GERD for far too long, to the point where on doctor’s recommendations I am taking twice the recommended daily dosage of Prilosec. Recently there have been studies that indicate that taking certain hearburn drugs can aide in causing weaker bones in elderly people. While I am not elderly, I cannot afford to go around breaking bones anytime soon. If I break an arm I am shit out of luck with work since I sit at a keyboard everyday and have to be able to reach it and type on it. It has been brought to my attention that drinking soda is more than likely what caused my condition.

In order to make the stakes interesting, get healthier, and have a partner in this task I made a bet with Melissa. The bet is for $100 from the personal account of to the person who fails to make it to Thanksgiving without drinking any soda. However we put in a couple twists. The first is that we are going to put in $75 of the money we would save from buying soda at the store, in restaurants, and at movies. The second is that the winner has to make it to Thanksgiving to collect any of the money.

This is going to be extremely difficult for me because I have really strong cravings for soda. There is nothing like an ice cold Cherry Coke. Nothing.

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Estes Park Trip

May 29th, 2010 § 0

Melissa and I did some recon work in Estes Park, CO to determine if cellular signal was available up at a friend’s cabin. Turns out it is!

While we were there, we took the opportunity to roll through RMNP and look at the Elk. Most of them were still fluffy with their winter coats, and the males were in velvet. Overall it was a beautiful day!

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Beijing Trip, Day 1

April 7th, 2010 § 0

: Hotel Living Room

: Driving down the highway, the drivers were a little crazy

: The sky is hazy at best

: There were 2 giant scrolls like this just outside the customs counters

: Customs

: Yes, KFC delivery Bicycles. They also deliver McDonalds

: This was squid. It was awesome!

: Flaming Kebobs.

: This was a really cool tree, my hotel is behind it.

: Google maps found me, my search was leftover from Denver.

: The Chinese Telcom is so cordial.

: My phone with Chinese Telcom name

: The CCTV building, it is not completed. Building next to it is burnt.

: Airport picture

: The ceiling in the Beijing Airport was really cool

: @JasonxRowland taking some pictures

: The airplane that we flew in, and an idea of the haze in the sky

: Russia Part 3 – Ice Flows

: Some more of Russian Ice Flows

: Russia, from above. Technically, I was a spy satellite for about 3 hours.

Google Ads and Your Favorite Website

March 29th, 2010 § 0

I was recently chatting with a friend about how some very topically slanted groups have been advertising on one of his favorite websites which actually leans the opposite way as the advertisements. I realized something very interesting, we talked about it, and I figured I would share it here.

First, a little background on how Google Ads work. Whenever an advertisement is clicked, the site that provides the link gets paid a small amount of money and the person who posted the advertisement is charged some amount of money. Also, most people who post advertisements set a specific daily budget for their ads because otherwise it is possible that through Google that advertisement could be seen by millions of people an hour and clicked as many times. This could create quite a high bill very quickly.

Another thing to know about Google is that they take their advertisers very seriously, this is their bread and butter so they do not mess around. It is very important for them to identify fraudulent clicks and nip the fraudsters in the bud and then go about their day. This means that Google for little to no reason will completely stop serving ads to a site, stop paying that site for hosting the ads, or at the very least send a nasty-gram to someone who is asking for ads to be clicked. As a website who hosts ads, you sign a strict agreement that allows all of this. I have personally met people who have made mistakes and tried to game the system and been shut off, losing all legitimately (and otherwise) earned money.

Keeping all of this in mind, if you were a reader of a site and could not take the injustice of the advertising you are seeing on a daily basis, you could potentially organize and find a way to game the system. This would be very difficult as you would have to be better, faster, and smarter than the guys in the Google Ads division and you would have to change your tactic in a way that was seemingly random on a day to day basis.

The following is a thought exercise ONLY. DO NOT DO THIS. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS. DO NOT BLAME ME if you get busted, get your favorite site busted, or someone involved gets in trouble. It is not my fault if you choose to take on Google, so please do not give me credit. Reading any further in this article means that you understand that I will not be held liable in any way for your actions or anyone else’s actions with regards to this article or any ideas derived from it that try to game the Google Advertising system (adwords or adsense).

Now that I feel a little bit better about sharing, the following is what I have to say.

Hypothetically, to game the system someone would have to be very organized and have a very large group of people who were dedicated to helping out.

The basic idea would be to seemingly naturally click the advertising on the site in a way that Google could not pinpoint as an organized front. This means that if the group were going up against another group with a huge budget you would need a ton of people.

The rules of engagement would be these:

Each person can only click ads once per 3 day period
Each ad that is clicked should be done at different times of the day
Ads that are clicked should be in different parts of the page, making sure that the main portions of the page are clicked more often than less significant parts of the page, but not clicked significantly more times.
Different ads would have to be clicked as well as the targeted ad groups, this way it is not specifically apparent why all the ads are being clicked in such a rapidly growing fashion.
Different numbers of natural page views should be encountered before clicking. This means that entering a page and clicking an ad would not always be ok, sometimes 3 pages in, sometimes 2, sometimes 10. Changing it up makes it look more natural. Time on pages where ads are not clicked is important. Make sure you read the article, or give enough time to scan it.
All clicks need to seem natural, so opening a page and clicking is probably not going to work.
There should be NO link between the people clicking and the owners of the site
The owners of the site should NEVER be made aware that this sort of movement is happening, in order to keep them out of the loop and out of trouble.
The group leader would have to find a way to ramp up the people clicking the ads, take them in and out of rotation for clicking the ads and manage the group as a whole all while keeping Google in the dark on the efforts of the group.

I imagine there would be some other things that should be taken into account, but these are the highlights. They would have the potential for making it seem like your favorite site is just getting more ad revenue instead of having an organized group of people who are trying to get rid of specific advertising.

This would effectively achieve three goals:

The unwanted advertising would be gone
The undesirable advertisers would be charged a boatload of money, causing their coffers to be lessened.
Your favorite site gets more money, which allows them to get bigger and stronger.

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Product Review: Ergotron Neo-Flex

March 11th, 2010 § 0

According to FTC rules, I have to disclose that I was given this product by Ergotron for the purpose of doing a product review.

When I was at CES in January I noticed a booth from a company called Ergotron, who I had never heard of (this is actually not true, as you will find out), so I jumped into the booth and started looking around. Immediately, my eyes were drawn to a poster talking about the possibility of winning an Ergotron product for tweeting a picture of myself in their booth. The result:

A couple weeks later, I was contacted by Ergotron announcing that I had won! They gave an email detailing the items that I could choose from.

Immediately, I looked around their site and started eyeballing the other products they had available that I had not seen in their booth. What was funny was that the third thing I clicked on, was the exact stand that was holding up my monitor at work. I DID know who Ergotron was! I was a little embarrassed.

Being the straightforward type of person that I am, and to counteract my embarrassment, I asked the representative if it was possible for me to get one of the stands like I had at work instead of the free prize. She said she would see what she could do.

Within two days I had my response, which was that they would not be able to switch out the prizes. Due to the fact that I liked the monitor stand I had at work so much and that the representative at Ergotron liked my blog, they offered to let me do a product review on the Ergotron Neo-Flex monitor stand I had at work. So, here we are!

I actually really like the monitor stand at work, the reason is that it reliably holds up my monitor, but it does so without taking up more than a couple of inches of desk space. In the past, I have always had monitors that sat right on top of my desk taking up a ton of space. As well, I can adjust the stand in a ton of different positions, which is useful for when I am sharing my screen with one of the guys in the office, or feel like low-riding in my chair.

When I opened the box from Ergotron with the new stand in it, I was excited to have one of my own since they cost $79 on their site. Also, I am a big fan of recreating my desk at work and home so that I can comfortably slide back into productivity.

The packaging was simple, which I liked because I hate having to throw away a ton of trash because I bought something and had it shipped. It was literally a cardboard box, some plasticy protective wrap, instruction manual (in 3 languages), the monitor stand and some various parts in baggies.

You really can’t get more intuitive with this monitor stand. You unscrew the bottom part, slide the assembly onto a desk (or in this case my kitchen counter, because I am getting a new desk), and spin the tightening wheel around. Anyone, arthritis or not, could attach this monitor stand to a desk, or counter top.

To mount the monitor to the stand, all you have to do is pop in some easy to screw in bolts through the stand and into the back of your monitor.

This monitor stand is great because out of the box it is easy to use, easy to set up, completely adjustable and it takes up as little room on your desktop as it possibly could for a desktop monitor stand. To take up any less room, you would have to mount your monitor to the wall. (Yes, I did position this thing straight up pointed at the ceiling just to see if I could)

Thank you to Ergotron for letting me write a review this great monitor stand.

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iPhone: Listen to music while on a call

February 23rd, 2010 § 0

This is a weird “feature” in the iPhone, but a cool one and it is simple to do!

Start a call with someone
Navigate to your iPod app and start it up
Choose a song or podcast
Enjoy!

The other person will not be able to hear it, and you should still be able to hear them over the music!

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What is happening to my Google Calendar?

February 3rd, 2010 § 0

All of a sudden on Dec 15th I started seeing some really crazy events showing up on my Google Calendar:

All I could think was that one of two things had to be going on:

Some calendar software I am using had a “funny” developer
Someone was messing with me

I disregarded the first couple events, but here it is February and this stuff is still showing up on my calendar. Now, this would not be too much of a worry except that it was showing up on my work calendar and my boss started asking questions. There was an event that was nothing but the word “Fuck”, I quickly deleted it upon my boss discovering it.

Then my brain-switch kicked on (must have been the coffee) and I realized that not only have these crazy events been showing up in my calendar, but I have not been getting the SMS event reminders I should be getting. Ding! I went and checked my SMS settings on the Google Calendar and my old phone number was in there.

So, for 3 months some poor guy who got my old phone number has been getting the equivalent of a collections-agency-annoyance from his new number. Unfortunately, I had that number for 13 years, so he is probably also getting random phone calls from people looking for me. I tried to remember to switch everything over but there are some things you just forget.

Here’s to the guy who got my old number, and here’s to hopefully solving the problem so I don’t get some random dude showing up ready to kill me. If you know him, tell him I’m sorry and buy him a beer.

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The loss of the value of words

January 26th, 2010 § 2

“… You are a scholar and a gentleman, and there are damn few of us left.”

I often hear this saying from a friend who uses it to say thank you in a kitschy way. I believe that he is trying to let me know that he truly means thank you, but to me it seems like overkill and drastically demeans the value of these words. Let me explain.

Normally, when people say things, I ignore the fact that they are just using a phrase because they “heard it once” and think its cool to say. This happens every day, and in a commercial advertising driven society, things get brought into common parlance where all meaning and value is completely drained out of them.

For example, the song “Sweet Home Alabama” was a charged reaction song written by Lynyrd Skynyrd to make a point about politics and the racism and slavery Alabama. When KFC decided to make it their theme song, it completely ruined the value of the song, and made me think “I’m hungry for chicken” every time I hear the intro of the song. I honestly believe that the guys of Skynyrd did not originally intend to sell chicken for a franchised food factory when they wrote and performed this song.

The first time I heard “scholar and a gentleman”, I had spent the entire day with a very close friend’s father hiking Long’s Peak. As we walked, we talked about many things and learned quite a bit about each other. During the day, we had other friends with us, but they had decided to go on ahead as we were moving a little slower down through the trees. At the end o the day, and what felt like a marathon, we headed back to the cabin for dinner. At dinner, he looked me in the eyes and shook my hand. As he held my hand he gave me the speech, and it touched me because no one had ever said something so kind to me, and all for doing something as simple as hiking down a mountain and holding a conversation.

So, when I hear this quote on a daily or weekly basis, it kind of perturbs me because it takes away the value of what the words mean and the situations in which someone would or should use these words. I will not let it drain the value out of what happened that day after Long’s Peak.

It all makes me think that we should think about the words that are coming out of our mouths, so that we use the correct words in the correct circumstances. Especially, when a simple “Thank You” would hold much more value and meaning.

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My 2010 goals

January 21st, 2010 § 0

Last year, I did not have any specific goals. I spent the year trying to figure out what I wanted and where I wanted to go. I am not sure that I have figured everything out, but from where I am standing right now I have been able to identify a few things that I am want to achieve.

Through my work as a programmer I have learned that having a defined set of goals, guidelines, or even a specification gives me the target so that all I have to do is break down the steps to reach that goal. Things change, targets start moving, but the steps will still get me close to achieving my goals.

The following are a list of the goals that I will accomplish this year.

Books

I have been finding great guidance in some of the books I have read this past year. They have been informative, teaching, and helped me to make decisions which have improved my work ethic and my ability to accomplish my goals. I know this sounds sappy, but its the truth.

Recently, I purchased the following books, which I hope to read. I will be finding and reading other books as well, just figured I would add these to the list since reading does take quite a bit of time.

The 4-Hour Workweek

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Rich Dad Poor Dad

Personal

Melissa and I renewed our current lease until November 2010. When our lease is up, we will move into a house. We have been saving and will continue to save anything extra past our bills (we have a well-defined budget) towards the down payment of a house.

As well as purchasing a house and making our mortgage payments without fail, we will also work hard to get rid of our student loans.

I am already started on my goal to lose 15 pounds. I have been lowering my food intake and eating smarter, this is hard for me to do as I really like food. I would prefer to eat something different at every meal and not repeat more than once a week.

Reinforce Media

My company is called Reinforce Media, LLC. Since I registered my company with the State of Colorado it has been in the red. My goal is to get Reinforce Media into the black. I will do this by finishing builds on my projects, posting on my blogs, and generally working my ass off.

FocusOfTheWeek.com – My goal is to have at least 5 active blogs including TwitterUserOfTheWeek, Tony On Business

MKBernier.com/ReinforceMedia.com – I will post to these sites more often, sharing quality information and how-tos. I already have a list of articles to write.

OddEmail.com – My goal is to achieve over 150 hits per post, currently this site averages 83. This site is just for fun, but it would be nice to see it get more popular.

ProbableFollow.com – I will continue to improve the current functionality, speed up the features, and add new features which will help draw more people to the site.

SendThemAShirt.com – My goal for this site is to sell an average of 3 boxes per month throughout the year. This site is all due to a joke that I heard in college, but people seem genuinely interested in what we are doing. At the very least it will be fun to work on and create some great blog posts on this domain.

SpammerOrNot.com – I will get a 1.0 version of this site up and running. The idea of this site is to help identify true spammers and remove them from Twitter as soon and as effectively as possible.

Twindicate.com – I will take Twindicate live and begin charging a monthly subscription fee for users of the site.

TwitterUserOfTheWeek.com – I will continue to write articles once a week about top-notch Twitter Users who deserve to have their name and story shared. My goal for this site is to improve the traffic of the site from an average of 470 hits per article to 1000.

Twitter

My goal is to continue to use Twitter to discover new friends, improve the relationships I currently have, to help unique twitter users discover each other, to provide information and help wherever possible, to share the ideas and projects that my friends and followers are working on, and to promote my current projects. If that isn’t enough, I will also do my best to discuss the merits of Cherry Coke as much as possible.

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Pictures and fun from CES!

January 12th, 2010 § 0

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to go to CES, and to go with my wife and family as well. We all had passes and were able to amble about the convention halls together grabbing up free stuff and selling our various wares. Needless to say it was a ton of fun.