From the Myers/Brigg's personality test:

"All Rationals are good at planning operations, but Masterminds are head and shoulders above all the rest in contingency planning. Complex operations involve many steps or stages, one following another in a necessary progression, and Masterminds are naturally able to grasp how each one leads to the next, and to prepare alternatives for difficulties that are likely to arise any step of the way. Trying to anticipate every contingency, Masterminds never set off on their current project without a Plan A firmly in mind, but they are always prepared to switch to Plan B or C or D if need be.Masterminds are rare, comprising no more than, say, one percent of the population, and they are rarely encountered outside their office, factory, school, or laboratory. Although they are highly capable leaders, Masterminds are not at all eager to take command, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead. Once they take charge, however, they are thoroughgoing pragmatists. Masterminds are certain that efficiency is indispensable in a well-run organization, and if they encounter inefficiency-any waste of human and material resources-they are quick to realign operations and reassign personnel. Masterminds do not feel bound by established rules and procedures, and traditional authority does not impress them, nor do slogans or catchwords. Only ideas that make sense to them are adopted; those that don't, aren't, no matter who thought of them. Remember, their aim is always maximum efficiency.

In their careers, Masterminds usually rise to positions of responsibility, for they work long and hard and are dedicated in their pursuit of goals, sparing neither their own time and effort nor that of their colleagues and employees. Problem-solving is highly stimulating to Masterminds, who love responding to tangled systems that require careful sorting out. Ordinarily, they verbalize the positive and avoid comments of a negative nature; they are more interested in moving an organization forward than dwelling on mistakes of the past.

Masterminds tend to be much more definite and self-confident than other Rationals, having usually developed a very strong will. Decisions come easily to them; in fact, they can hardly rest until they have things settled and decided. But before they decide anything, they must do the research. Masterminds are highly theoretical, but they insist on looking at all available data before they embrace an idea, and they are suspicious of any statement that is based on shoddy research, or that is not checked against reality.

Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Ulysses S. Grant, Frideriche Nietsche, Niels Bohr, Peter the Great, Stephen Hawking, John Maynard Keynes, Lise Meitner", Ayn Rand and Sir Isaac Newton are examples of Rational Masterminds."

My breakdown:

Introspective - 44%
iNtuitive - 88%
Thinking - 25%
Judger - 1%

You can take the test here: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=34042258076

UPDATE: It appears Posterous doesn't like the link format. You may have to copy paste it in.

UPDATE 2: I realized people who aren't my Facebook friends won't be able to se it, so I'll just post it here:

I'll rumble and grumble
Then the bubble will burst
And that'll be just the beginning

We walk up the creek
Every site is a treat
So we pause for a rest in the middle

A party we found
By a buzz in the ear
A group of intruders in the big feast

Onward we march
To our perch up above
To drink in the beauty around us

We talk and we laugh
Of colors and light
While the mountains march toward us

The light then grows dim
So we march out again
The world still open wide before us

Microsoft stands for nothing

A very well written article about Microsoft's issues with marketing themselves ( http://daringfireball.net/2008/09/theres_nothing_there ) :

The problem Microsoft faces today is that they have nothing to hang their brand on. Windows is Windows, so colossal it exists in its own orbit. (If anything, the problem Microsoft faces with Windows is the problem Apple faced a decade ago with the Mac, where the product seemed bigger and more important than the company that made it.) The consensus opinion regarding Vista is that it’s a massive six-years-in-the-making dud. Office is Office. Oh boy, spreadsheets and PowerPoint.

37signals at the Web 2.0 expo

Concise summaries of 37signals presence at the Web 2.0 expo. ( http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1250-summaries-of-37signals-presentations-... )

If you think of your product as a museum and your features as art then you’re in charge.

NO!SPEC vs. crowdSPRING

crowdSPRING steps up and speaks out about their stance on the Spec Design market.  The surprising part is the response from the designers who read 37signals. ( http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1253-the-nospec-campaign-vs-crowdspring )

The tension between the growing creative movement on the Internet and centuries of tradition will disrupt and define the creative industries for years to come. It’s a polarizing topic, but an important one because individuals and companies who ignore this creative movement will fail. Those who find ways to leverage this creative movement (iStockphoto, Threadless) will evolve and succeed.

Mollom (spam filtering for comment forms) is now offering their first product: commercial licensing for larger sites.  They'll be limiting filtered posts to 100/day on unlicensed sites, and letting the licensed sites have 10,000 posts a day.

http://mollom.com/

The organization of the site is brilliant.  First they split topics into major categories (ie settings, profile, home), and made each of those it's own page.  Then they split those pages into groups(ie feed, status updates, search), and turned those into their own content "sections".  Then, on top of each section they put an AJAX nav bar for further refinement and seperation.  The end result? On any given page you see only the information that you're looking for, and changing that information is a simple click, with minimal load times.

Facebook designers have always impressed me with their ability to organize and present information in a clear-cut, easy to read manner, and their new layout is no exception.  It's fresh, easy to navigate, intuitive and simple.

Anyone designing a site with lots of content can take a lesson from Facebook.  Every part of the page is meaningful.  There's no superfluous graphics or decorations.  Every color, line, gradient, background is there to show a clear seperation of content.  And it still looks pretty.  I've been using it for a couple weeks and have nothing bad to say about it.  Well done Facebook, well done.

I recently had a conversation with my new boss, Scott (I'm actually not sure how the structure works here... if Scott's my boss or if Brennan is... if it's B, then I had a conversation with my boss' boss. That's one of the things I love about Bookmans... it doesn't really matter who my boss is, we're all working to make Bookmans a better place...; but I digress) about work schedules. In particular, whether or not I need to be in the office during normal business hours.

He explained the situation to me in great detail (well, as great of detail as his pressing schedule allowed. I don't know that I've ever encountered such a busy individual before). The bottom line, I believe was, I should be "the master of my own ship".

This comes as a brand new concept for me. Previous employers have been very ridged in my schedule. I arrived at a certain time, left at a certain time. The number of hours I was to work on any given day was known weeks in advance. This... this is different.

At first I was as giddy as a school boy. I can come and go as I please... this means I can leave early to beat rush hour, arrive late to sleep in, take long lunches, the possibility's are endless! Then I started thinking about the other side to that coin. Scott mentioned "I'll know whether or not your work is getting done, the whole company will know." To be frank, that frightened me a little. In keeping with ridged schedules of previous employers, this wasn't a big issue. I got as much done as I could during the alloted hours, then I went home.

Now I have this ability to come and go, master my own ship as Scott says. The more I think about it, the more I'm realizing there's a very fine line here. This new freedom isn't something to be taken lightly. Using it too much could mean any number of unpleasantries. Dislike from co-workers. Unfinished work. A certain "disconnect" from the company.

I'm glad I've come to this realization sooner than later. It's something I'll be keeping in mind when I decide to work outside the office (which I'm still very excited about).

I feel like my adjusting to life at Bookmans draws a very close parallel to Feivel's adjustment to life in my room.