psykotedy.com

I just finished reading The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton, and I was impressed. It is among the top ten business books I have ever read, and the only topic it covers is assholes. As funny as that sounds, it’s no laughing matter. It’s a dilemma faced by a number of people in life is that of dealing with assholes.

Dealing with assholes is not something anybody likes to do, but it’s something we all have to do. Much to my shame, I’m guilty of being one of those asshole with whom people have been forced to deal. It not only opened my eyes to how big an asshole I had been, but also taught me how to deal with other assholes when I face them. I highly recommend this book for all readers, be they assholes ready to realize the error of their ways or be they the victims or innocent bystanders of asshole attacks.

The one thing that struck me the most in the text was the phenomenon that Bob Sutton termed “asshole poisoning.” This is the contagion of asshole-ness, where exposure to assholes causes otherwise nice people to become assholes themselves. The reason this struck me so is because the book not only introduces asshole poisoning, but also goes over how to avoid it. That is especially important for anybody trying not to turn into what they despise.

All in all, I think that everybody should read The No Asshole Rule, whether they’re surrounded by assholes or not (because the people surrounding you might not be the problem). I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.

I’ve been waiting to send out notification of my blog going up because it’s not perfect. This is a trait I need to change am changing. In that vein, I’m going to let go of the wait-till-it’s-perfect mentality and send off notification of this place while acknowledging what is yet to be done (for all of the Paul Graham that I read, I should already have the iterative product mentality).

Without further babbling, the to-do list for this blog really only consists of two items at this point (though, I’m certain others will arise quickly): getting an RSS feed working, and getting a sidebar working

• Web-based catalog of my CDs (Pete’s been waiting for this one for a while…and the wait will soon be over)
• Get PARC up to Java 5 compliance and re-weave it with Spring (another one on my list of threats to Pete)
• Web-based catalog of my DVDs
• Web-based to-do software
• Gmail-like email client for the desktop (this is shooting way high, but what the hell, eh?)

Getting this blog up and running is really inspirational to me, and I see myself blowing through these projects (with the probable exception of the email client). The inspiration to finally get this blog running, though, came from Phil, and I can’t think him enough for helping me to make the time to do it.

Anyway, I think I’ve babbled enough for one post—maybe even enough for two!

I’ve finally gotten off of my lazy butt and got this site up. It’s not how I want it to look, nor does it function like I would like it to, but it functions. Getting off my ass was step one, and now that I’ve taken that step, it’s all downhill from here.

I am only committing to one post a week at this point, but I expect that to increase as I get better at writing posts.