Julio’s Musings Around Columbia County, New York

As I rush headlong to a new chapter, I am spending even more time on all of these social networking sites which keep one connected in many different contexts (professional, Closest 1000 friends, etc).
Not like I am not already use to it as I am in the business of building web sites and large ones at that, Nevertheless, if one doesn’t exploit every avenue of connecting/decimating oneself on the web it’s like you don’t exist.
This time around as I update my resume, a soft Word Document file is not enough and actually quite nostalgic. Now I will have it stored and accessible on emurse.com , downloadable in various formats including Word Document, with built in analytics as to how many accesses/download and and on my own personalized url at juliomiyares.emurse.com
Does seem like self promotion has really taken off. No longer just for celebrities. Of course all the Social Networking sites has cute widgets that let you publish them as freely and broadly as possible.

It’s already been frequently repeated but what you put out about yourself is available to all with little effort. It’s like you have a slew of pavarazzi waiting for your every move. Of course these are not human pavarazzi but the potentially more dangerous automaton types. They don’t miss anything and They don’t forget either.

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[tags]Twitter, Emurse, Facebook, LinkedIn, jittr[/tags]

Back in the day, slightly before the advent of the Internet or World Wide Web, the best way to either anonymously take a dig at someone or laugh at their expense was writing/reading the graffiti on the bathroom stall.
Mind you, I was never a writer – just couldn’t remember to bring a pen with me for those moments and I thought it was somewhat lame anyway. But reading it was a great way to spend the time you had.

Most bathroom stalls had no room for any more scribbling and it was just scribbling on top of scribbling. Sometimes it was racist, actually during a part of my growing up in New York when race relations were not what they should have been, it seemed like 1/3 of the scribblings were taking shots at every race with all sides freely involved.

Now it has moved to the WWW where the likes of Silicon Alley Insider (I won’t put the link as I don’t want to confer “link juice” to them) have become the bathroom stall but with all the inherent power of vast distribution / SEO and a multitude of contributors who previously wouldn’t dare take a chance at defacing public property.

You have a gripe with someone? now you can anonymously thrash them and think you won’t be caught by writing a slanderous comment about them on a post hopefully related to where they work. Of course if there is the will there is the way to trace who the suspected anonymous commented are but it does require a lot of “bothering” and generally isn’t worth the trouble.

Anyway, the bathroom stall lives on as a metaphor on the Web and for those that are lame enough to slander anonymously, think about it- no one cares enough even in a negative way to write about you!

Pretty impressive on first view! If I am not listening to “What the Web is listening to now (music.aol.com) or Spinner’s Song of the Day, this is what I listen to for free music.

[tags]Pandora, Jittr,Julio Hernandez-Miyares[/tags]

Been thinking. What is the eventual fate of Google? Using myself as an example, of course I use it for 99.5% of my Search queries. It pretty much acts as a rudimentary “braincap”. Anything I don’t know but need or want to know , I start with Google.com. I use Gmail though admittedly it is not my primary address as I prefer a @mac.com address. But, I do use Google Mail to serve as the mail server for my company email @jittr.com. Though I have Dreamhost as my hosting provider, I have “outsourced” the mail service to Google for free and benefit from it’s high availabllity and excellent spam filtering. I use Google as my Content Distribution Network for static Javascript library files. In certain instances have used Google Docs and am actively considering it for future spreadsheet and word documents like activities as I am not inclined to continue to pay Microsoft the licensing fees for their services. I use Google Analytics for Web reporting and though it is related to Search, I use Google as a reference point for vanity (about me) communications.

At what point does the dependency on Google become so great it becomes a must have for the economy or for the national well-being?

Now , it were it were to become a government agency it would have to change it’s ranking algorithms to return results based on some Federal guideline for political correctness determined by whichever party held the reins of power at the moment. Creationism or Evolution, Pro-Choice or Anti Abortion, Public Health option or not, and on and on.
I don’t believe this is so far-fetched in the end.

[tags]Julio Hernandez-Miyares, jittr.com, google.com[/tags]

Changing course is easy when you are providing that advise to someone else especially when the course you are talking about is what you do for a living. That is considered a “life change” event if one looks at how benefit plans characterize when you can change benefits after the “election” period.

It is difficult choice whether the economy is booming or is somewhat moribund as the present climate gives all appearances.

Admittedly being in the technology field with prime focus on “The Web” puts me in a distinctly good position. It is where most of the action is and will be (though Social Networking is “passe” and thankfully so) for many years to come as it’s utility and novel ways to be utilitarian evolve.

I have tremendous appreciation for the opportunities I have been provided over the past few years to not only work with people who know Search and the Web and have been leaders in those fields but also to be allowed to build things that millions of people have used and hopefully have enjoyed.

I love watching the iron workers starting with nothing but a pit and piece by piece soaring into the Manhattan sky the framework of a majestic edifice. I feel that being in technology development, we are somewhat of the iron workers of the new economy. Somewhat of a stretch at a certain level as we don’t risk plummeting downward with a single mis-step but it feels about the same when things go awry which they often do.

In the end, I have chosen of my own accord to start fresh and take the “plunge” leaving the caccoon of a large safe company and depend on myself or a small group of others to “create meaning” (as Kawasaki states in Art of the Start) .

What that meaning is I don’t yet know as this is the first day but an exciting day it is.

[tags]Julio Hernandez-Miyares, Columbia County[/tags]

As I was raking leaves with my daughter this past autumn Saturday, a group of high school kids in all their glory passed by , jostling , joking and strutting. They seemed so carefree that I felt like dropping the rake and all my responsibilities and just tagging along. Well I didn’t. What I did was ask my 10th Grade daughter if she knew the kids? She said with a clear smirk she did and they were freshman. She went on to lambast them and say no one liked the freshmen , that they were wimps of some sort (it was getting cool outside and related to the cold). We got into it a little more and I asked her if she and her friends fraternized with them and she said “no way”. When I asked what she and her friends did when they came and sat on the same table in the cafeteria she said “we ignore them!”

Anyway, I just loved it. Though I am was not a girl it did bring some memories back from my own high school years. Mind you , I would and never did have the kind of attitude my daughter expressed as I would think it better to have a lively cafeteria table then a group of siloed cliques. Nevertheless there was just something raw about the whole thing and was wondering if I could bring the same approach to the work place. Well I am only kidding or day dreaming of course but that attitude if I don’t like you I am not going to deal with you even if you are in my face was something I had not thought about in a long time.

It has a certain power and finding something so trivial to differentiate as being in 9th or 10th grades
has a certain wonder to me as I contemplate the mind of a high schooler.

Over in Greenport , a Town adjacent to the city of Hudson in the boonies of New York, the next revision of Wal-Mart just recently opened replacing the long standing box store in the same town. The new Wal-Mart is the Super-Center variety and is already the toast of the town! You need a compass to navigate the store and all its aisles and it even has it’s own Dunkin Donuts store within alleviating the previous tradition of a separate stop for my favorite coffee brew.

I can’t say what it doesn’t carry at the moment as I have not been able to navigate it in it’s entirety yet
Given it’s complete variety of meats and produce it will definitely put pressure on the nearby Shop-Rite and who knows what assortment of mom and pop shops it hasn’t driven out of business yet.

It will also become a beacon for a larger part of the surrounding area which is basically rural and not adverse to going 50 miles to shop at the temple of retail (even if they can’t afford the gas guzzled by their SUV’s).

Though I make no apologies for shopping there, the latest store further sharpens the dysfunctional and destructive car oriented mentality of American Culture. It attracts people way out in the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere with the only possible mode of transport being the car.
It has no esthetic soul as even the previous one about 1/2 mile down the road had fitting in somewhat better with a slightly suburban community surrounded by an agricultural rural community. As is the bent in the architecture of the USA mass market, it looks like it can be anywhere and nowhere.

Photos to follow soon….
[tags]Julio Hernandez-Miyares,Wal-Mart, Columbia County[/tags]

Needing to escape the horror of a baby shower in Carroll Gardens , Brooklyn, my father and I took a quest to some of our old haunting grounds in Brooklyn. We took the look drive (long because any drive in Brooklyn is long) to Sheepshead Bay to visit a place from my youth call Roll-N-Roaster. It is just celebrating it’s 39th year in operation on Emmons Avenue.

Of course on the way there, something (who knows what) was going on the Belt Parkway and decided to take the side roads. 86th Street was the way to go , home of the soldiers of cosa nostra. Of course the West End elevated subway occupies the last few mile stretch which resulted in an obstacle driven, mayhem filled stop and go 3 miles to the vicinity of Sheepshead bay and the entrance to Emmons Avenue.

Nevertheless the long slow drive was worth the wait to get to the order line. A succulent roast beef sandwich, a dripping cheeseburger, some fries and french fries were ordered with the seltzer water as the drink of choice. The anticipation building, now the next wait behind all the other orders. It was 2:30pm on a Saturday but it may as well been the height of lunch time.

The wait squared did not disappoint though. It is still scrumptious just like I remember during my youth and just like my youth, dad paid which was an added benefit.
Oh, and it is not a chain. You have no choice but to visit Brooklyn to enjoy. That remains one of my favorite things about New York City. Oh yeah, of course most if not all chains including an Applebees no less on Emmons can be found but it is still a place for the entrepreneur to stake a claim as the best of something. Most fail of course but here is to Roll-N-Roaster and 39 Years of delighting New Yorkers and the few non-New Yorkers that know.

[tags]Julio Hernandez-Miyares, Brooklyn New York, Roll-N-Roaster]/tags]

I don’t usually repeat topics on my blog but will break the practice this time.

The simple thing in Life are the best , Happy Clown

When Easter came and went early spring 2009 and the anticipation of the spring opening of Happy Clown came and went with nary an opening soon, alarm ran through Columbia County or at least the Miyares Farm household. Alarm turned to distress and depression as the “For Sale” sign appeared by the smiling clown.
The spring came and went and then the summer (though this summer has felt like spring) and still nothing more then a lonely “For Sale” sign.
All hope seemed lost. The kids were gloomy (well actually not them but me) thinking a staple of Columbia County living was lost.
Then in late July as I was zooming on the 2 lane country road 82 throwing a quick glance to catch the sad looking Clown mascot, I saw the “Open” side and the Flag!
It had been saved, how I don’t know. A new owner?, the old geezers that own it deciding a recession was not the right time to sell? A public referendum to re-open post haste? I don’t care wish as I finish off my Butterscotch Vanilla sundae on a hazy lazy Saturday afternoon in the dog days of summer 2009.

Man, if I had a bonus this year, I may have bought it. Maybe next time it is up for sale.

[tags]Julio Hernandez-Miyares,Happy Clown, Columbia County New York[/tags]

I am now one of the slowly growing army of Kindle owners and users.

Dear Julio H Miyares,

Congratulations on your purchase and welcome to Amazon Kindle.

We built Kindle with the goal of creating an exceptional and hassle-free reading experience. As such, we wanted to point out a few details before you get started.

I put in an order recently as I had grown weary of lugging various books around on the subway easily weighing me down 10 pounds or more. Reading on the subway is another story and one none to easy especially during the crush which seems like all the time but that is beside the point.

Requesting 1 day delivery , I anxiously ripped the box to shreds when it arrived , waited the hour or two to have it charged and have not looked back.

I have already purchased and downloaded two Issac Asimov novels, just did the same for “Innovator’s Dilemma” who’s first chapter is great and who knows what tomorrow will bring.

There is something magical to me to go from wanting the book to having it delivered right to my fingertips in minutes. Well of course I could do the same thing if I went to the bookstore but it is not exactly the same. I mean at any time of the day as long as the book has been digitized and rights conferred (that is another story).

Well, just for the record, I do have to pay for these downloads. They do go for less then the hardcover versions but not by much and as usual, the technical references I like to buy from Amazon are still pricey in my estimation even though there is no inventory cost , or mailing cost.

A Little Kindle information at Love Network
[tags]Julio Hernandez-Miyares, Kindle, Love.com[/tags]