I picked six items I would regularly buy at Walmart, and I compared their prices with Alice.com:

Granted, Alice gave me 4 coupons, which saved me $3.35 (which means I can’t get this same deal every day). But Walmart also had several sales–so their prices will fluctuate too.

CONCLUSION: In this study, Alice.com was cheaper. And you can’t argue with cheaper. Alice.com also saves you time (you set its schedule, and the items show up on your doorstep). And did I mention that there’s no shipping costs, ever? So, yes, Alice.com is a good deal.

If you want to streamline your life and save money and time, you should give Alice.com a try.

• You can’t sell all your junk and move to a foreign country because you’re afraid. Of what? Of not having to go to work from 8-5 every day to a job you don’t even like? Think about what you want in your life and get getting it!
• He says that if you’re working for work’s sake, you’re one of the living dead.
• Be a rebel. Don’t do what everyone else is doing.
• It’s easier to do the impossible than the mediocre. For one, it gives you excitement and endorphins. Plus, there’s less competition. (He tells of students contacting one of three celebrities and getting them to answer three questions.)
• The biggest fish are where there are the fewest people.
• Practice selective ignorance. Don’t read or watch the news (just ask your friends about what’s going on). Don’t watch TV. Avoid meetings (force people to email you instead). Keep phone calls short.
• The main thing I learned is the importance of challenging the status quo. Don’t just accept what is acceptable. Go for what you really want.

In iTunes I can share my music with anyone connected to my local network, and they can listen/stream all they want. (But they can’t download it or put in on their iPod.) What if I could share not just on my local network (local networks are so old fashioned), but with any of my friends online?

Legally speaking, this isn’t such a stretch, is it?

This means my music would be uploaded into the cloud—hopefully to a service that would store it for free. Maybe that’d be Google. They could call it Gtunes.

If someone like Google were taking care of this (maybe I’m putting too much faith in them), the system could be indexed and shrunk by eliminating redundancies. For example, Abe owns Michael Bublé’s “Crazy Love”, so it’s uploaded to his Gtunes. When I upload the same song, Gtunes realizes they’re matching files and stores only  one copy on the server. That way supporting a huge user base wouldn’t be a huge deal—80GB libraries would overlap and significantly reduce the cloudspace required.

* * *

I submitted this idea to Google Labs, and this was the reply:

Thanks for the note, Nate! A lot of us here are interested in music, but from a business perspective, it’s veeeery tricky. But I’ll pass your idea along to our Ideas forum.

-the Google Labs Guy

This morning the [client name] IT Director sent me a directive email with several paragraphs, bullet lists, and mud. Figuring out what he wanted me to do was like decrypting the DaVinci code. It may be clear in your head, but that doesn’t mean it’s clear outside of it.

I resolve to be a clearer communicator.

It was a big story in online news, but the writers used the words “were compromised” and “were leaked” and made it sound as if it were a flaw in the software. When you email a phisher your password, it’s not a leak; it’s an idiot. But “20,000 Idiots” would only fit as an Onion headline.

I read several stories and they all made it sound like this, as if Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and others were the ones to blame. It kind of makes me mad. I hate the news.

• Hyper intention can be a huge roadblock in getting what you want. For example, if you’re bent on going to sleep, you’ll never fall asleep. This can be the same with laughter and other things. It is countered by paradoxical intention: try to stay awake for example. Or forget about trying to sleep at least. In the same vein: happiness cannot be pursued, but must ensue.
• Boredom is strongly tied to having a lack of meaning or purpose in life. Humans were first robbed of instinct when they graduated from being animals. More recently, they have been robbed of tradition, which would normally have given them some direction in making decisions. Our modern society is now confronted with boredom and lack of meaning, which can have many negative consequences, including suicide. The way to counter this is to find meaning. Finding fulfillment through finding meaning is what Frankl’s logotherapy is all about.
• Another modern problem is lack of responsibility. Having responsibility, even for a crime, makes a person human. Having no responsibility makes him animal or less. He does not act, but only is acted upon. Today many blame their parents, their society, or their government. And by doing so, they dehumanize themselves, which removes meaning from life.
• Things determine each other. Whereas people determine themselves. People are self determining.
• There are three ways to find meaning: to act or work (which is external), to experience or love (which is emotional and internal), and to suffer (so long as it is unavoidable suffering).

I was surprised that Frankl was teaching “begin with the end in mind” (one of the Seven Habits). It is interesting how all this truth is connected.

The cover of Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22

Yossarian is a bombadier pilot. He has to fly 55 missions before he can go home. It used to be 45 missions, and then 35–it keeps changing as he approaches it. But there’s an alternate route: If a pilot is crazy, he can go home. “Well,” says Yossarian, “so-and-so is crazy. Why doesn’t he get out?” “Because he hasn’t asked.” “Well, what if he does?” “He won’t.” “Why not?” “Because he’d have to be sane to want to not fly through the air with people trying to kill him.” And that’s the catch. Catch-22, that is. Catch-22 says that if a pilot asks to get out, clearly he is not insane.

The book is full of these logical circles. (Another character thinks he has flies in his eyes. But, of course, if you have flies in your eyes, you can’t see clearly enough to tell whether you’ve got them or not. So nobody really knows.) It’s almost like it was written by someone who was crazy.

It reminds me of a peeve I had in the 10th grade. On the math tests, there would be a really hard problem at the end. And if you got it correct, you got extra credit. The funny thing though: the kids who were smart enough to solve the problem had high enough grades not to need extra credit. The kids who did need it were never smart enough to get it. Catch-22.