AI Time-Lapse of Your Life

I was scrolling through someone’s social media timeline and noticed they had a lot of selfies. The idea popped into my head that this is where actual AI (not NLP / Natural Language Processing, that people are CALLING AI) could be used – even if just for fun. Remember the videos of people who have taken a photo of themselves every day for the past “X” years? Actual AI could look at one (or all) of your social platform timelines, do face recognition to find you, then compare …

Why I moved to Marceline, Missouri

I grew up in Southern California, and spent a lot of time at Disneyland as a kid. After spending many years in software development at places like Microsoft and Sony, I started my own technical consulting business, which gave me the flexibility to work at Disneyland for fun as an adult. During my time at the Park, I was an attractions host, then I worked in Guest Relations, where I became a Tour Guide, giving the 3.5 hour “Walk in Walt’s Footsteps” history tour of Disneyland. I studied …

USAA Credit Card Fraud

When USAA doesn’t care about their customer’s credit cards being used for fraud, it concerns me. I’m not surprised anymore by bad customer service, but I AM surprised when a financial institution doesn’t care about fraud. In this case, I’ve got a customer (or fraudulent scammer) trying to use a credit card with a different name and city on their card, than what’s on their customer profile. On one hand, I want to provide a potentially real customer access to my service – but on the other hand, …

Dr. Ben Franklin or: How I Learned to Ignore Lazy Entrepreneurs and Love the Email Address

I’ve been searching for a local or regional marketing consultant to hire, to put together a marketing plan. To me, the most obvious place to me to find that person is LinkedIn – the social network for business. To my great disappointment, of the more than 60 profiles I opened for people listed as “Marketing Consultant” or “Independent Marketing Consulting” only THREE of them had contact information on their LinkedIn profile. It should be a giant red flag if a MARKETING CONSULTANT doesn’t know how to market themselves… …

Simple Twitter Feature – Show Number of Blocks

Here’s a very simple Twitter feature that could make a huge difference in the quality of Twitter. It’s unlikely Elon Musk will ever see this but here’s hoping that someone will pass it along. Over the years I found that way too many fake, spam, and fishing Twitter profiles follow my account. I assume they’re doing this with the hope of getting a ‘follow back’ so they can spam more profiles and get into more news feeds. Unlike many people, I don’t care how many followers I have …

eBay sucks again

Isn’t it sad that we EXPECT bad customer service these days? That we EXPECT companies to NOT stand behind their products? And we’re SHOCKED when they do a good job? Well, as usual, eBay did NOT do a good job. And (because I’m honest,) they’re going to (eventually) get 15%+ on a limited edition watch that I’m selling. Why? Because they have a popular marketplace that gets a lot of eyes – AND, they don’t care about customers. I created an eBay listing for a watch worth many …

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