Entries in "July, 2008"

Why Earthquakes Are Fun

So we just had a decent earthquake (5.8 downgraded to 5.4) here in Los Angeles area. I've lived in So. Cal for most of my life and as a result, I've been through plenty of quakes. The scariest one I can remember is the Northridge quake of 1994.

Normally I would say there is nothing "fun" about an earthquake, but since so many people move to LA every year, when a quake hits it's usually the first they've experienced. Watching them freak out can be pretty entertaining. I wish I had a video camera to catch some of this excitement for youtube.

Strange thing just happened.. As I was typing this post my 5 year daughter called me. She is out of state with her sister visiting grandparents. Well she was absolutely hysterical. After I calmed her down she explained to me that she really thought I was dead from the earthquake.

Maybe this isn't so fun after all. I can't help but laugh at all the "LA imports" but hearing her voice call for me and cry that she thought I was dead really shook me up...

Technorati Tags: earthquake, funny, LA, los angeles, not so funny

Amazon S3 Outages

I, like a lot of others, make use of the Amazon S3 service for data storage "in the cloud". The service is a huge success and normally behaves extremely stable.

Yesterday there was a very large S3 outage which caused many online companies to suffer outages as well. There was an interesting piece over at ReadWriteWeb asking "How Much Is To Much?".

I've been using S3 for nearly 2 years and have only experienced trouble twice. I wrote about the previous experience and that outage lasted about 3 hours. Yesterday however the outage was more than 6 hours!

Now I use S3 for the static media on many websites, including this site. Since it's my personal blog it's no big deal, but I also use it for many sites that are for profit, including my latest service: SmartJabber.

Yesterdays outage effected paying customers of mine. They have been understanding but I have to ask myself if a change may be needed to prevent future outages that last this long. The idea of using Amazon S3 is that, in theory, the service can't go down. It's a large cluster of servers whose purpose is to host their customers data securely and with a very high availability.

In the grand scheme of things, my data is probably safer more stable remaining with Amazon. Though I do hate the feeling of having my hands tied when the service is down.

Others out there seem to share my opinion of sticking with Amazon, and others don't.

Technorati Tags: amazon s3, business, outage, service

Peter For President - Help Me Get Elected

I was recently contacted by Channel 3 news.. Here is the story they put together.

I am seriously considering running.. Any input?

Technorati Tags: comedy, election, peter for president, president

I Can Control You With My Words

I've written in the past about Hypnotic Writing. Since I found the book by Joe Vitale I have been very interested in learning more about the science behind it and how I can increase my profit from it.

Today I stumbled across a very useful reference article. I suggest you read it if you are interested in this sort of writing technique. In fact the guys entire blog is one great big resource for this particular subject.

It's fairly obvious from my blog posts that I am no great writer. I'm not even a good one. The idea that I can write an amazing sales letter is what keeps me interested in the subject. I will continue to work on my writing style so that I naturally form a series of hypnotic statements and commands that can be fine tuned after the fact.

My biggest problem with writing is that I seem to have permanent writers block. The only "cure" that seems to work for me is to sit down and start writing something. Anything. After 5-10 minutes I'll get an idea and go with it. That's what we, in "the biz," call getting in "the zone." (Let's see if you catch that reference/joke)

One of the pieces of advice given by Joe Vitale is to not worry about your work being perfect. Test it, tweak it and then test/tweak it again. Once you are satisfied that it's as good as you can do, let it go. Give it to the world. Just let it go. This is another one of my biggest problems. I continue to think I can improve anything I am writing, whether it's a blog post, sales letter, email, software, etc. and I end up spending to much time editing on the fly.

Close your eyes and just write. Edit, format, etc. later. Just get the words on paper (you know what I mean) and you will have a solid foundation to build on.

Technorati Tags: joe vitale, hypnotic writing, hypnotic, writing, sales, sales letters

Wanna Know Why Defeat Is Your Friend?

It is damn near impossible to reach huge success without going through multiple set backs. Doesn't matter whether you come from a poor family or rich family. In the end, we are all human and all humans make mistakes. Aside from myself, there are no perfect human beings out there. Ahem.

Want to know how to turn defeat into a positive?

What happens when you hit some sort of defeat or setback? One of these three things happens:

You Quit - You are so defeated that you totally give up. You accept that you just aren't good enough and run away. Sissy!

You Accept - Again, you accept the defeat but you don't run away. Instead you just continue with the status quo and will probably continue to be defeated in your future plans. In other words: You live life on your knees!

You Fight - You accept this setback, but know it's not permanent. You get up, figure out what went wrong and try again, usually with huge success!

Study your defeat and try to learn what caused it. 99.9% of the time your setback is a direct result of one of your actions.

It's similar to scientists studying any illness. Find out the cause and stomp that out in some way.

So next time you fail at something, don't get down on yourself. At least you tried, which is more than most people do! Instead take the failure as a learning experience. Build off that to educate yourself so you don't make the same mistakes in the future.

When you're knocked to the floor, if you can't get yourself back up, how can you possibly move forward?

I just finished reading the book The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz. There is a chapter dedicated to this exact subject and it really hits the nail on the head. The book is an excellent read, although it can be a bit slow in some places. It was originally printed in the 50's and the style reflects that, but I still highly recommend it.

Technorati Tags: business, defeat, fight, life