Purely Random

I enjoy yogurt. Being a bit of a health geek (okay, a lot of a health geek), I’m partial to the plain yogurt—typically low fat. In fact, every morning, I start my day by enjoying a little plain yogurt with something crunchy sprinkled on top. Sometimes it’s Grape Nuts, sometimes that’s homemade granola, but there’s always yogurt involved. The point here is that I consume quite a bit of yogurt and have been for the past few years. That’s why it’s funny that I’ve only recently made the following discovery: stirring yogurt destroys the somewhat solid texture it’s supposed to have. It negatively impacts not only texture, but the flavor as well. (more…)

The more people that end up being invited to a dinner party, the less manageable that party becomes. It’s inevitable: as you invite more people, the amount of food required grows. Even the variety of food required expands as guests with what I’ll call “limited flavor tolerances” become involved. The result: lots of running around doing prep work and trying to please too many different people instead of bringing a close group of friends together for an enjoyable meal. I’m guilty of these sins, and they must stop. (more…)

I currently own two different private web sites that I own and operate. They’re both basically blogs, but I never seem to post new content. One is intended as a more professional summary of my research and essays on that topic; the other, which you are currently reading, is a dumping ground for whatever I want to post. Not a day goes by when I don’t have a huge number of ideas about what types of content I should post, but none of it ever gets posted. I plan on posting it a the time, but nothing actually comes of it. I write notes to myself summarizing the content and sometimes write out the whole thing. But still, nothing ever makes it to the site. Why? (more…)

I aquired the purelyrandom.com domain in 2000 when I was a sophomore in college and wanted to create a web site that people would actually read. Most of you will realize that this was right in the heart of the dot-com era, and most everyone was obsessed with this very same idea. In fact, I read a book on marketing for the web at some point and came out from it realizing that dynamic content was crucial to success. When people know a web site will change on a regular basis, they’ll make plans to come back. You need to provide a constant stream of new content, or your site becomes irrelevant. From the perspective of a nerdy college student who works too hard, the problem is actually producing the necessary stream of content. Who has time for that?

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I started reading Scott Berkun’s blog about a month ago after I started to really get into his book, The Art of Project Management. He has a very clear perspective on what it means to actually accomplish something (and even have a good plan for what that something is), and I’ve grown to really enjoy his insights (and stories). He recently posted the following to his blog: (more…)

I turned on my televisions for a few minutes this afternoon. Normally, I watch just about zero television, but I wasn’t really motivated to do much with myself this afternoon. I happened upon a channel that I hadn’t seen before: Style. This was surprising, because I have the most basic form of cable possible. I would never have watched it, but I thought I recognized Lisa Loeb in the foreground on some street corner in New York City. She was talking about meeting guys, which was intriguing given that it was Lisa Loeb. I’ve always been fascinated by her and typically enjoy her music, so I watched for a while. It was actually that “Number One Single” show she apparently has now. I think I had heard something about it at some point, but it seems to be focussed on cameras following her around as she meets guys in her quest for “the one.” I ended up watching the whole show, and sometime later I had a realization: there is no Mr. Right.

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