Manlio Rules

MikeLivesinTrees: we should start a things to do when your Web 2.0 startup gets funded site

manlio27: 1. your hooker count doubles

MikeLivesinTrees: 2. your weekends are suddenly all spent on the slopes

manlio27: 3. suddenly you have more random mirrors lying around

MikeLivesinTrees: 4. you invent a tagline that involves being the “flickr of” something

manlio27: 5. you dig up all your old javascript books from 1998

MikeLivesinTrees: 6. you spend 3 weeks trying to think up a better name that sounds like a starwars character and will rhyme with jelly-o

manlio27: 7. your vision statement harnesses synergetic technologies to facilitate social interaction. and that’s just your vision statement!

MikeLivesinTrees: 8. Your business plan transforms into a community-evangelized model relying on aggregating RSS feeds from the long tail of open services into a single sticky super social site (with added alliteration)

manlio27: 9. you hire a head of User Experience Design, who mostly seems to sit around berating your Creative Director and dreaming up plausible but highly unlikely use case scenarios to work against.

MikeLivesinTrees: dude – #7 is pure genius

manlio27: come on, come up with #10!

manlio27: then i’ll post it

MikeLivesinTrees: 10. Your marketing plan consists of three steps 1. Send to Michael Arrington 2. Send to that VC guy 3. Post it on MySpace

MikeLivesinTrees: weak..

MikeLivesinTrees: anyway

MikeLivesinTrees: i’m headed home

manlio27: yeah, me too

manlio27: stylesheets are really like a dysfunctional relationship
manlio27: when they’re working you think that you could be with them for the rest of your life
manlio27: and then something small happens, and it turns into something huge, and you just sit there, not believing that something so insignificant could be breaking things the way it is
shfsmells: and when they aren’t, a 3am (EDIT …”fun”…) binge seems like the only thing that will make things better

so… this was my week last week

monday i find out that i potentially have an interview on thursday in san francisco with company Xcorp. it’s a hellacious week between my freelance work and assorted other commitments, but i manage to get the time off from my freelance gig. the plan is to fly out to SF wed night, and fly back thursday on the redeye.

tuesday i get an email from my contact at Xcorp, who tells me: “To the extent that you can provide some evidence as having thought about some of the above(the above being my potential job responsibilities) during your talk, it will make my case stronger. I think you know this already.” I interpret that as: “try to take what you’ve done and show how it will make you a good candidate for this job. ok…

tuesday night i migrate a client over from development to production, and in the process wipe… out… the… database… argh. i spend another 3 hours tuesday night rebuilding the damn thing.

wednesday i pack in the morning, go into work, and head right to the airport from there. I plug into jet blue’s wifi at the airport and download a ton of theoretical stuff about interactive television to brush up on the plane. i’ve prepared a presentation a few weeks back, and i go through and make some changes and some edits. i make it to San Jose without incident, and i’m in the hotel and checked in by 9:30. i hit the in and out burger (not as good as i’ve heard), and watch some tv before turning in.

Thursday morning is the presentation. I present my pieces, and it seems to go ok, but i know that i’m forgetting to do something important, and the look on my contact’s face as the hour progresses gets worse and worse.

I have meet with 4 people after the presentation before my contact. this is the guy who i talked to at ITP who really liked me. he walks in and basically says: “well, you didn’t really give me waht i wanted with that presentation. why didn’t you prepare a demo that was relevant to TV?”. now, i DISTINCTLY remember him saying at my initial interview: “the last woman who i hired who didn’t have experience prepared a tv demo, but you don’t necessarily have to do that”. apparently that was code for: “you should do that”. i responded with: “well, i thought i woudl go through my presentation and explain how each project gave me skillsets relevant to the job”. he replied: “well, ok, but you didn’t do that either.” I almost asked if i could leave right there, or at least go to the Xcorp bar and knock back a few.

but no, i had to sit through 3 more interviews, on with a product manager whose game seemed to be: “i know more than you, so i’m going to ask you a question, listen to your answer, and then tell you why you’re wrong.” good times!

then i flew back that night, on an absolutely full flight, sitting next to a guy who was dipping throughout the whole flight. DIPPING.. who the fuck dips on a plane? it was disgusting. luckily millers crossing was on the fox movie channel on the plane, or i would have throttled someone (dip guy, i’m looking at you)

so i get back on friday at like 6:30, and it takes an hour to get home, (cab, you were a $50 mistake). and i pass out till 4PM, at which point i go and drink a whole bottle of vodka. well, not really. but i had like 9 vodka tonics, so that’s gotta be close. good times.

on saturday, after a 3AM phone call about being, i decide to email the yahoo guy and ask him if there’s anything i can do. his email is a tricky mix of reprimanding and politeness… but i agree that i will try to make a tv interface demo sometime in the next few days. but honestly, if i’m already having problems figuring out what this guy wants before i work for him, i’m not sure how much i really want this job…

today i am working working working and trying not to eat more chicken wings from mr. wonton…

(edit… umm… i ate the chicken wings)

Site

If you haven’t seen this yet, i recommend taking it for a test drive. Basically you can enter an artist or song, and it searches for other songs that are similar in structure and style of music to the one that you’ve chosen. Some of the tracks are right on, others are a less so. The crap I got from putting in “don’t fear the reaper” is making me wonder if i even like that song.

i admit that having a fairly unusual name can be a problem from time to time. for one thing, it’s given me quite a complex about mispronounciations, and even after 28 years, i cannot correct someone from calling me MAN-leo without seeming like i’m a bit of an arrogant prick. and it’s awesome in crowded bars to yell my name several times to strangers who i could care less about talking to ever again. also, when most people meet me after hearing my name, they are dissappointed, probably because they were expecting some 6 foot 2 chiseled example of an italian man, and not a 5 foot 9 balding pudgy american.

but the plus is that there’s not a whole lot of competition on google. as of yesterday, my new portfolio pops in the top 5 when you search for “manlio”, “lo conte”, or “loconte”, and it’s number one for “manlio loconte” or “manlio lo conte”. which is all good stuff. also, women occasionally find the name to be sexy and overlook some/most of my physical shortcomings…

but when you google “manlio”, guess who pops up first?

thanks to mike for pointing this out. later we’ll ruminate on why mike is googling me.

if you don’t know about it, there’s a new friendster feature which allows you to see who’s viewed your portfolio recently. you can turn yourself to anonymous, but i think it still keeps a log. i can’t tell how far it goes back, i think it keeps track of people for a few months at least who have viewed you.

depressing things about this include that all the strangers who have viewed my portfolio are either men, women in relationships, or unnattractive.

also the thought of all the friendster bouncing I’ve done over the last few months now being public knowledge is super scary. my guess is that everyone will turn on their anonomyous settings and it’ll go back to being pretty much what it was before.

also, rocking song from the past = Breeders “Divine Hammer”. excellent song

i think this is a good route for line 6. the tone port is a computer audio interface, looking to compete in the same market as the edirol and m-audio 410 models. the large advantage i can see in the line 6 version is the inclusion of the gearBox software that allows you to model the sound of your guitar through software. it’s a similar idea to native instruments guitarRig, which my friend Phil swears by. If the lower end toneport is sub $300, this could be a great starter product for guitarists looking to get into home recording.

i’ve been wondering lately what it is about friendster that makes me want to look up all my old friends. like not even old high school chums or what not. i mean like girls i used to remember from 1st grade. some of whom by the way, are so drop dead hot that it makes me think i was never as much of a player as i was in elementary school. which of course isn’t true, cause i’ve never been a player and will probably continue to never be one. i’m not sure where i was going with this, other than looking up people on friendster is fun, and the ex girlfriend from college who i added has yet to confirm my request, which is more than i probably deserve…

oh, and tip to the wise: if you google someone to find out a little more about them, make sure you don’t accidentally bring up your findings while talking to them… gah.

gah. what a mess that was. i don’t think i’ve ever done quite as incompetent a job as i did with that tonight. but it all got done, which was nice. here are some photos: