Manipulating people, if you want to get anything in life it requires more than for them to see your point of view, it requires them to believe in it enough to act upon it. In Neil Strauss's book, The Game, he talks about the society of pick-up artists. Sound ridiculous? It kind of is, that is, until you see it work, then it becomes very real.

This book is more a study of human behavior. In the end Niel states he comes to the conclusion that real long term relationships are not built off a 15 minute routine you use to gain someone's attention relationships are built over a real connection, learning more about each other, and sharing time with each other. This book is a fun read, but written for male readers.

What was my interest in the book, I'm married, how could this be practical to me? If you look one step further than the guise the book uses to deliver the message, Neil is teaching, through personal stories, how to understand human behavior. My goal was to look past the pick up artist study and try and understand how I can apply his social interaction to a work environment in order to achieve my project's goals in a larger company where you need other teams help, but they don't necessary have to help you. Here is where I am torn, if I simply tell you the great things I have gained from this book, then my coworkers see what I'm trying to accomplish which in turn means I have to change my plan altogether (Assuming they read this, this is a big assumption).

After writing the rest of my blog entry I erased it and decided it would be in my best interest in every way to simply encourage you to read the book and gain your own insight.

Phone rings, looking down I see it’s a number I don’t recognize. What the hell, I pick it up. “Ben, it’s Becky,” says a raspy voice on the other end of the line followed by a quick low smoker’s chuckle. A smile hits my face so fast, it’s as if someone slapped it on me. “I wrote a book, it’s called Road Schooled…”

I’ve been told in order to truly appreciate someone’s writing you have to know who they are as a person. I’ll do my best to put Becky into words. Imagine Janis Joplin’s voice and charm, Hell’s Angels attire (when she is on the road), and a drip of compassion that surely came from motherhood. Put them all together, blend and poor over a bike big enough to make your dad’s bike look like a moped, bam, you have Becky.

When first reading Becky’s book you will realize she’s a people’s writer. She’s writing this book for her, others like her, and to hell with everyone else. You could almost say she is writing a guide, maybe a bible, for all independent female souls. Women not afraid to live on their terms, women who might share a few moments in their lives with you, but deep down you know you are more or less the ketchup on the hamburger, understanding she will be doing what she does with or without you. As you get further into the book the better the picture is painted; you can almost hear Bob Seger’s Turn The Page playing against the imagery of the movie Easy Riders. You don’t hear the words on the pages, you hear the feelings and the moments she is sharing, making it easy to visualize a lone women rider on a dusty desert road, hair feverishly blowing backwards; internally speaking her thoughts to one person, herself….and now you.

The book Road Schooled, is a quick enjoyable read. I recommend getting a cold beer, sitting down and letting Becky share her words with you on a sunny Sunday afternoon. With this said I’m going to put an excerpt of one of my favorite scenes.

“We wandered through the parking lot for one more look at the bikes before we headed to bed. I was admiring one bike, obviously well loved and well ridden. It had a leather bound rod about 18 inches long, hanging from the throttle. I wondered what it was for, and thought it may be some kind of cool tool that I should have. The owner of the bike had ambled over, he was a grizzled, scary looking guy, but I have learned a long time ago that looks can be deceiving, so instead of being intimidated by him, I asked him what the cool leather thing was. He told me it was for smashing windshields when someone on the road pissed him off. I learned two things; sometimes looks are not deceiving; and I had no use for the cool tool. Someday, I’m going to have a patch embroidered and sewn to my riding jacket that reads 99 %er.”

I believe this could be the start of something good with her writing; I have high hopes she returns to put more of her life on paper for all of us to share.

I embarked on the journey of reading Andrew Carnegie’s (AC) autobiography. It was unquestionably one of the better I’ve read (Miles Davis, John Nash, Michael Milken, Jenna Jameson, Jack Welch). The first half of the book has him describing his life starting in Scotland, moving to America and his progression to wealth. You can see from the very beginning he was able to recognize a skill that would be marketable and not only master it, but let the opportunities this skill brought him be the segue into his next venture. The second half is him giving away his money and his interaction with American politics.

AC had no real skeletons in his closet, nothing entertaining from the perspective of drama, drugs or sex scandals. His biggest fault viewed by some may have been his labor practices to his employees. I view this as one sided. He was very generous for his time to his employees; he made more than 20 of them millionaires in the later 1800’s. Just to make this clear, these are people that had no financial risk in the company itself, but he valued their work so much he made them partners and gave them stock options in a time when doing that for employees was simply unheard of. He was one of the first to set up a grocery type store for his employees. He gave them the opportunity to run the store and set the prices ensuring the cheapest cost to the employee shoppers possible and he sold the store supplies at the same discounted prices he received for them when he bought them in bulk for his companies. An example of this was his ability to provide coal at a fraction of the rate the employees where paying outside of the company store. The coal was so cheap they could not only afford proper amounts now the employees were able to have it delivered to their homes. He was also one of the first to set up a type of credit union for his employees, in which he offered more secure backing of the money than the government at the time and he would loan out this money to employees so they could attain houses at interest rates they could afford.

When AC had reached a point he felt he had amassed enough wealth, roughly around 300 billion in today’s dollars he started on his journey of giving away around 95% of it. To put this in perspective, if Bill Gates and Warren Buffet gave away every last dollar they earned it still would not amount to half of what AC gave away.

One of my favorite points about this autobiography was how many iconic people he was casually friends with: Mr. Twain, Mr. Morgan (as in JP), Mr. Roosevelt among many others.

I was disappointed to finish the book. I had become accustom to hearing the nightly stories AC was offering. It felt as if he came back for a short bit to speak with me and upon finishing the book it was his time to leave again. Cheesy I know, but it really is how I felt.

On to my next book, it was going to be the Zappos guy’s book, but a good friend of mine Becky Collins wrote a book of her own, Road Schooled. It’s about her journeys of traveling around on a big fat honk’n Harley Davidson. I can’t wait. She’s got character and personality that is unique and fun, I’m confident she can let it shine through in her words.

A couple weeks ago I did a code binge to nearly finish creating a beer app for the iPhone. I seriously spent 12 hours one Sunday, eating (err drinking) only energy drinks. The bi-product of this was a nearly finished app, and me being burnt out on coding Objective-C...for a short bit :) , the collateral damage is I haven't been posting any code errors fixes I find while coding. These blog posts drive the bulk of my traffic mostly from Google and oddly enough Baidu (Google search engine for China).

Looking at my wife's blog I decided to do a what I like in technology today list just so I can keep posting content for my regular readers...all five of them 4 of which are my family members. :)

1. Google's self driving car. I honestly can't wait until this becomes a reality, don't get me wrong, on the odd Saturday, with perfect weather, I love to take my car out, roll the the windows down, open up the sunroof and just drive with the freedom of life blowing through my hair. Outside of these perfect Saturdays, I'm mostly driving to work with random trips here and there. Nothing excites me more than the ability to hop in my car pull out my laptop or book of the moment and just start reading until I arrive. Nevada has taken the first steps into making this a reality.

2. Grooveshark.com. A very not nerdy girl from my last job showed me this website about 2-3 years ago. When it comes to just listening to your favorite music the way you want it (no last.fm or Pandora business where you can't make your own playlists with the exact songs you want to listen to). It's a wonderful site, clean lay out, and unbeatable music selection. I do question it's legality...ah hell I don't care how it gets through the loopholes as long as I can choose the music I want to listen to when I want to listen to it.

3. Adafruit.com/blog. It's just nerds making fun, semi-practical things utilizing technology. It doesn't get much nerdier, but it certainly tickles the geek brain on potential projects. When I'm done with my beer app, I want to make something that responds to a twitter feed, maybe automatically shut off the lights when I twit lights-out to a specific twitter account. Who knows, the sky's the limit and that is the best part of what this site does for me.

4. Capital One's technology ambition. I've seen more than a few company's technology department, most of them stale with very little drive to step it up. These stale companies are the kind of companies where you sit at your desk over lunch and read about the cool stuff Google and Facebook are building and think, damn, I want to be a part of that. In the banking world of technology, Capital One, is that company. They are working very hard and fast to move to the top in technology offerings and they understand this starts with building a strong foundation. The technology ambition of this company is not just in their projects it's in their people. You can feel it, taste it in the air, and appreciate the passion everyone brings to the table. Expect to see big things from this company in the next 3-6 years. I fully believe they have the potential to be a game changer in the banking industry.

5. Scott Hanselman. This guy is a nerd. Not even a little bit of a nerd, we are talking hardcore drinking the cool aid nerd, BUT the passion, talent, and great presentation skills he has keeps me coming back. He regularly updates his blog with intriguing material (no easy feat coming from a guy who has his own) and is not afraid to express his true opinions even if it may not fall in line with his employers(Microsoft) believes 100% of the time. Which, I believe, in the end, gives him more credibility. He's a .Net guy, but chances are he probably knows more about nearly any other language than you would suspect. If you ever get a chance to see him speak about .Net stuff do it, even if you don't do .Net, you will enjoy yourself regardless.

I'll just put the first paragraph of the article (WSJ Blog Post).

"You’d have thought a 50% drop in Research in Motion’s share price between February and yesterday afternoon would have priced in a lot of bad news, yes? You’d have been wrong. It just keeps getting worse by the hour."  WSJ Link

I really can't see how this is a surprise to anyone. RIM's phones suck, they suck really really hard and I haven't met a single person who disagrees with this. This company had such a great lead on every other smart phone and then they just blew it. I'm certain this company will be used in business schools as examples of what not to do for many years to come.