This Is Not An Energy Converter

This makes hot, crispy bread. (Image, courtesy of Zalgon.)

Lurking on the Gnome marketing list, and seeing some of the silliness going on, I'm reminded of one of the things which people regularly seem to misapprehend about what they're doing. Maybe they're unclear on their goals.

I'd thought marketing was about "getting new people to at least try out what you're offering", but a lot of what I see still seems to be more about "getting the people already using what you're offering to feel validated about the choice they've made" ("Made of inspiration, made of easy"? Really?)

That, and the rant I witnessed this morning, about how the "i" in everything made by Apple stood for "idiot"—under completely mistaken circumstances, as it happened—encouraged me to write a posting about what Apple is really selling, and why they sell a bunch of it.

Got a "To Do" List? Actually Get Anything Done?

It's not unusual to spend a lot of time putting together a "To Do" list, and then going on to ignore it until it gets stale. Turns out that making a "To Do" list, in an of itself, doesn't actually help you in getting anything done, for several reasons.

I've put together the first of a series of articles on why the problem with getting your "To Do" list cleared may be your "To Do" list. See more here.

Lunatic Stalker Update

The lunatic stalker who's been harassing me for several years is still at it, now impersonating various people on Facebook. He started out impersonating me, but having had that ID removed, he's now—as of this morning—impersonating Richard Stallman. The ID of the profile—which is blocked from me, so I can neither view nor report it—is

I can't view it, but I believe this is "Richard Stallman's" profile:

http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001954412755