Stop Trying To Hit Me and HIT ME!

Looks like you might be new here. You can subscribe for free via RSS or Email to make sure you don't miss anything. I really appreciate your visit!

The battle rages. Each exchange of fists and kicks more vicious than the last. They attack and defend and defend and attack. Relentlessly searching for an opening or weakness. Suddenly, one pauses and screams, “Stop trying to hit me and HIT ME!” He is not so much the Master as he is the Motivator. He wants his pupil to give all that he has and hold nothing back. To realize that he can accomplish much more than he thinks he can.

Most of you will recognize this as a scene from The Matrix. Morpheus and Neo fight in a training simulator and Morpheus tries to push Neo to another level, believing that Neo is “The One.” This is not simply a scene from a movie, though. It is a battle that we all fight within ourselves. Read these questions carefully:

• Do you find yourself getting in your own way?
• Do you allow your fear to stop you before you start?
• Do you doubt your abilities?

Well? Do you? The easiest way to fail is to never try. It’s even acceptable in our society to some extent. But, we all have the power to become “The One.” We all have the ability to take control of our thoughts, turn them to the positive side, and ignore fear and doubt. It’s a simple mental exercise of will. You simply have to realize truth…there is no spoon.

Nike probably has one of the most successful ad slogans: “Just Do It.”
One of the reasons it works so well is because it tugs at something
deep inside of all of us. That action-driven, fearless and confident
part of us that yearns to come out and push us inevitably to success. Just do it! Take action!

You haven’t fallen short of your goals because you are a failure. You have fallen short because you quit before you were ahead. You have the talent and the skills. You have all the knowledge you need. Stop stalling and making excuses. There is nothing stopping you but you.

From this day forward, you have to seize opportunity and run with it until you feel like your lungs are filled with molten lava and the back of your throat tastes like you’ve been sucking on pennies. Learn to take action and never let another opportunity pass you by.

I can recall several occasions where I could have taken a relatively simple action and changed the course of my life ever-so-slightly. Maybe it was someone I should have called back, or some project I chose not to be a part of. All because I was afraid of what might happen. I stood bathed in the glow of the oncoming headlights of FAIL and I froze.

The worst thing you can ever do is not try. If you try and you fail, it’s a learning experience. You can look back fondly on failures once they have taken you to your success. If you fail and you never tried, it will haunt you forever.

Sponsorship Is How This Works, Stop Hating

I always try to see the best in people. I always want to give someone the benefit of the doubt. I mean, we all have the capacity for rational thought, right?

It’s very disheartening to me that so many people believe a blogger somehow loses their credibility once they become sponsored. Some of us just don’t have six-figure incomes behind our blogging efforts. Hell, some bloggers are barely working with five figures. Steven Hodson explains the situation pretty well in his post There’s Web 2.0 and Then There’s Reality:

One thing is more than apparent when you look in on Web 2.0 and the constant chatter about all the cool hardware, software and ideas. The majority involved in this space have no idea of what being on the other side of the technological divide is like or how it is limiting the adoption of the things they believe in. They talk about dropping a couple of grand on a new laptop in the same way they I would order breakfast or they line up to fork over a couple of hundred for a new cell phone without even blinking an eye. For them the connection is forever flowing whether through never ending broadband connectivity or wireless goodness. On the other side of the fence though real life has a habit of slapping you back to reality and your position in it.

In most other realms, being "sponsored" or advertising to gain revenue is readily accepted as a natural means to be able to do what you want in life:

• Girl Scouts sell cookies door-to-door
• Musicians seek deals with major labels
• Young athletes dream of being drafted
• Aspiring writers look to get published

Of course, there are those haters out there who think you have to sell your soul to the devil in order to get a sponsor, or get signed by a major label. These people that are leery of  anything that remotely looks like you might be taking a step up from obscurity. They are certain that you will have to bow to the Sponsorship Overlords and you can no longer be trusted. Those people should just cock those tin-foil hats to the side and take a long walk off a short pier.

It seems that if you run a relatively small blog, you are not allowed to step outside a certain realm of acceptable revenue methods. AdSense and other advertising networks are your place. Steven says it plainly here:

It seems that unless you are a part of a blog network or some big name blogger the idea that you would even think of stepping beyond the bounds of ad networks and god forbid go looking for deals of your own then you are stepping beyond your pay grade and need to be put back in your place. The most common method of slapping forward looking independent bloggers back into place is by calling their ethics into question. (full article)

Now, I am new to all this blogging stuff. Sure, LiveJournal says I’ve had a blog since 2004-05-13 08:24:15, but I only started blogging seriously within the past few months. Maybe there is something that I’m missing. Maybe this whole idea makes sense to all you veterans.

As far as I’m concerned, this whole attitude is bull. No matter what you’re doing in your life, you need a way to fund it. Some people have jobs, some have been successful as entrepreneurs, some are just spoiled.

There are others of us who simply have not been as fortunate. Those of us who haven’t even seen an iPhone in real life, who are tied to computers as old as the web itself, who look at gadgets on tech blogs and realize they will really be nothing more than eye-candy.

Why should the "little guy" get shafted? Why should I be restricted in seeking funding for the things I want to continue doing? Why can’t I be allowed to pull myself up by my bootstraps? Are you going to open up your own wallet to help me reach my goals? If not, who the hell are you to judge?

Please, I Can Has Firefox 3.0?

Firefox 3.0 was supposed to drop today. As you may recall, the Mozilla team wanted to break a download record with this release. I guess they promoted this contest a little too well because everybody and their Grandma decided to download it at the same time and the mozilla servers have yet to recover.

There are various convos on FriendFeed regarding this FAIL by Mozilla. (here is Scobel’s convo Firefox Down)

Thanks to Bwana Mcall, we have direct download links for Firefox 3.0 in another FriendFeed convo.

We also have a link to Watch the Mozilla guys live on Mogulus, which spurred this hilarious convo. Stefen Haden had me rolling with his comment.

Some people were not all happy with the communities heckling of Mozilla for their FAIL, but I think it’s all in good fun.

Update

Just got this email from “Firefox Download Day” and the link actually worked. Probably just a fluke:

Today you’ll make history with Firefox

Are you ready to make history? Are you ready to set a World Record? Today is Download Day. To become part of the official Guinness World Record you must download Firefox 3 by 17:00 UTC on June 18, 2008, or roughly 24 hours from now.