Life of Buraian

BareBones WorkWear in the news!

My buddy Mason is the COO for a company in Sacramento called BareBones WorkWear.  He's been there for a number of years now, and his hard work is really paying off.  Despite the recession, the company continues to grow and expand and it's great to see people taking notice.  Here's a recent article in the Sacramento Business Journal about their recent success. (photo from article)

If you're shopping for anything from construction clothes to boots to medical clothes, their site has a great selection, and Mason is constantly tweaking the website to ensure it's working like a charm.  With Christmas coming up, it's worth taking a look!

BareBones WorkWear

Mint CEO teaches Start-up 101

I saw this article on TechCrunch today, and thought I'd better post the video here so I can find it again.  I use Mint to manage my personal finances now, after a couple years of using Quicken.  It doesn't have all the features Quicken has, but it has everything you need.  At least if you plan to eyeball your finances and not wring them for every last traumatized penny.

As testament to the company's success, Mint was just bought by Intuit (the makers of Quicken) for $170 million.  Not bad.  If you're like me and have considered throwing your hat in the ring with a start-up idea, this video will certainly be a great reference.

Mint CEO Aaron Patzer on Startups from Techcrunch on Vimeo.

Somebody had to say it

I'm so glad David Brooks finally just said it: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck simply aren't as powerful as everybody makes them out to be.  For all the attention they get, and all the headlines they generate, and all the energy people spend debating and worrying about them, in the end they are just entertainers.  Their effect is marginal.

I'm glad it was Brooks who called them out, because he's one of the few who really can.  He's got the conservative chops to do it, and he's brilliant at bordering that line between ripping someone apart and keeping it civil. 

Personally, I find most of what these blowhards say neither shocking nor all that insightful.  But perhaps that's because I simply refuse to allow myself to be shocked.  (I'd like to be think I'm still open to insight.)  I do think they are effectively poisoning the way in which issues of race and culture and history (and therefore politics, which is all race, culture and history) are discussed in this country, and they've contributed to much of the us vs them mentality we have in our political system.  But in the end, they aren't leading that shift so much as standing abreast the wave and beating their chests.  

Of course, the same goes for Michael Moore and his ilk.  Are they good at generating attention and polarizing a debate?  Absolutely.  Do they really make much of a difference at the polls?  I doubt it.

Finding the media sweet spot(s)

Seth Godin had an interesting post this morning about media, where he attempted to create a graph to illustrate different media on a scale of what he calls Bandwidth and Synchronicity.  Bandwidth is essentially the quality of the production, and Synchronicity applies to the interactivity of the media, from real-time (on the right) to what I would call time independent.

He's also highlighted the range in which the majority of media exist.  A couple of thoughts about this:

Now this is an HR policy

I saw this on TechCrunch and read through the whole thing.  Amazing, considering how painful it was to read through the whole thing every other place I've worked.  Reminds me some of Ricardo Semler's books, Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace and The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works.

Culture

View more presentations from reed2001.

My delicate American buttock didn't like this article...but I did

Say what?!  Best intro to a news article I've read in a long time.

"The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country's love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners."

There's a lot I don't know about toilet paper...  Read the full article here.

Nailed it.

So good I feel the need to make sure I can always find it again...

 

Planting Empowerment in the NY Times

 My friend Andrew is a co-founder of a very cool company called Planting Empowerment.  It has an innovative business model that allows it to be both for-profit and promote sustainable forestry in Panama.  They were recently covered in the NY Times.

I hope you'll take a moment to check out their site.  If you've got a spare $7k lying around, please check out investing in them, or if not, perhaps you'll consider the Forest Savings Bond, which can be purchased for as little as $50.

Recent Writings

As you may or may not follow my blog on running, Optimal Training, but you might be curious what I'm up to, I thought I'd cover one bit of my recent goings-on here.  I've been writing the Optimal Training blog for one and a half years now, and have a small group of consistent readers, as well as the usual traffic spikes when I write on a particularly timely article. 

One of the cool things about writing the blog, however, is that I've met (virtually) some other writers and fans of the sport who I've been able to interact with and who have opened up some other opportunities.  Some are famous, like Amby Burfoot, the former Boston marathon champ and current editor of Runners World.  Others are not famous...yet...but you never know. 

One person whom I've started collaborating with is Sam Burke at Runnerstribe.  Runnerstribe is a growing website based out of Australia.  He has given me the opportunity to write articles on whatever topics interest me, and publish them to a wider reading audience.  I've currently written four: The Workout, Comparing Debuts, Economic Crisis is an Olympic Opportunity?, and my most recent, which is going up today, Thoughts on Jordan Hasay and Footlocker.  I'm aiming for two per month, but with life and work the way it is, it may fluctuate.

(And now for something completely different!)

I also published my first business-oriented article through the Trianz blog.  It's titled Managing Costs for the Downturn...and the Upturn.  I don't expect to write many more, but I'll link to them here if I do.

McCain's career and Obama's taxes: exercises in manipulation?

I've been too busy to write much recently, but the article by Tim Dickinson (tip to Josh) called John McCain, Make Believe Maverick just blew me away.  I've never read an article so thoroughly scathing and counter to what the official story is of a man in John McCain's position.  I know I should be skeptical of who wrote it and what wasn't put in the article, but I still know it will be hard for me to ever look at McCain the same way again.  I feel manipulated.

For those of you who are interested, there's an interesting breakdown of Obama's "tax cuts" titled Obama's 95% Illusion at the Wall Street Journal as well.  Talk about a convoluted proposal.  Reading it made me realize I have no idea whether my taxes are going up or down based on his tax plan.