Step 1: Be bold and borderline offensive with your title. Just be sure to include the name Scoble in there.

Step 2: Back off the title a bit. Explain that by “world” you really meant “BlogoSphere.” Remember, you’re not really trying to offend Scoble. You’re just trying to get his attention. It might not hurt to say something like “it’s not really Scoble himself. It’s the concept of Scoble.”

Step 3: Spend the next few paragraphs explaining why “Scoble” isn’t a good thing.

Step 4: Include some sort of challenge to him like “I bet he won’t link to this!”

Step 5: Officially recognize that you’re part of the problem.

Perhaps “The world would be a better place without Scoble” sounds a bit over the top. I don’t really mean that, and, if the truth be told, I’ve got no problems with Scoble the man. In our correspondence (limited as it might be) he’s been nothing but a nice guy. It’s really the concept of Scoble that’s the problem.

The way I see it Scoble has helped to turn a portion of the BlogoSphere into a mob who (armed with their keyboards) hunt-and-peck others to death. “You must include RSS.” “Blogs are the new marketing.” “Companies that don’t blog are doomed to fail.” Blah Blah Blah. The beauty of the web and blogs is that every person has a voice. What they don’t tell you is that sooner or later all those individuals parade around with large cups of Kool-Aid.

Scoble would say that he’s shedding light on the BlogoSphere. What he wouldn’t tell you is that said light is coming from his torch. ”Come with me,” he screams to his villagers. It’s actually quite sad really. There was a time when Scoble wasn’t a parody of himself and that’s why people read him. He did a good job at finding interesting companies/concepts/etc. That just doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Now it’s a blog about blogging. Yawn! Yet, (and here’s the kicker) he’s never been more popular read. I fully admit that I’m part of the problem. I read him. I don’t want to be the person who misses what he said, and I’m not alone. I’m part of the mob.

I suppose that nature abhors a vacuum and, frankly, Scoble would exist even if Scoble didn’t exist. With that said, I miss the old Scoble. I’m not too fond of the Scoble parody that we have these days. It’s a waste of his talent.

I bet that he doesn’t have the chutzpah to link to this entry! Man, I *am* part of the problem.

(I apologize to those of my readers who have no idea of whom I speak. For the purposes of this post consider yourselves as playing the part of irony.)

By all accounts my wife is nearly perfect. She rips through technical issues with the same aplomb as she does literary analysis. She is one of the nicest people you will meet and, to top it off, she’s quite attractive.

If you need someone to write code to handle PTS stamps, she’s your girl. Do you need a rock-star coder to re-write MPEG codecs? Call her. If, on the other hand, your math requirements are slightly less involved, you could have a problem. The following code has seeming stymied her:

If (ply == 2){

Usehalf();

}

Ply? That’s right! Ply. My wife can’t handle either the math or the responsibility of two-ply toilet paper. Personally, I like the extra fluffiness. Alas, here in the Speicher household the stuff has been banned. I just don’t have the mental toughness to stay on top of the changing of the rolls. That little cardboard tube comes too quickly. Days? NO! Hours! It’s a tough life, but I’ll survive.

OK – to save time and energy I’ll also be including tomorrow’s post:

Title: Reason my wife is currently boycotting sex with me.
Content: See yesterday’s post.

This week's column is up (albeit slightly edited).

Today’s post comes to you in the form of a rant and you can thank Amazon for that.

Here’s the timeline of events:

On February 16 I ordered a Zen Micro from Amazon. Because it was over a certain price point I was offered FREE Super Savings shipping. This, to me, means ground shipping. Apparently to Amazon it means “You’ll get it when you get it and you’ll like it dammit!” I say this because they appear to be offering “here you can cut in front of me”s to everyone and their mother. Why do I say that? Well… since I’ve ordered it, I’ve checked daily to see what Amazon was claiming as a delivery timeframe to prospective customers and every day it has said both “Usually Ships within 24 hours” and has offered “get it next day if you order within the next x hours.” Meanwhile *my* order has yet to ship.

Yesterday I nearly hit the roof when they re-adjusted my expected delivery until March 2 – 11! Meanwhile those who are willing to pay for overnight still have that option.

I understand temporary differences between the “usually ships” timeframe and the actual timeframe. I’m not going to hold them accountable for situations where they “just ran out” and the system hasn’t been updated to show the delay. With that said, at some point it’s just downright lying!

Arrggg… I’m so mad! Am I alone or have others been screwed by Amazon’s lying?

“It’s time,” says the little counter, “to post.” Today you get a little sage wisdom from the kitchen, and, as is always the case, feel free to add your own.

Using Tupperware – My rule (and it has never failed) is to look at the leftover food and think “what is the absolute smallest container that I could ever dream of using to store this food (even if I could slightly bend the rules of physics)?” After you’ve determined the answer to your question, you take the container one size smaller than that.

Spices – Contrary to popular belief spices don’t last forever. The problem is that you rarely use nutmeg at the same rate as cinnamon. This quickly leads to a situation where you have no idea how old any particular spice is. The solution (albeit simple) is to write the date of purchase on the bottle. Go figure.

Little sponges – don’t use them. They’re disgusting and germ-filled. However, if you must, I heard that you can microwave them, but don’t quote me on that.

What are your little nuggets of wisdom?

Never can it be said that I don't listen to you people!

If you're like me (and once again ... God help you if you are), you do the following. You leave a comment on a blog and then for the next 12 hours you keep checking back to see if someone responded to your comment. This can get frustrating as people rarely seem to be on your schedule.

I've seen two ways of dealing with this:

1) Some sites allow you to sign up for notifications. This isn’t a great solution because it often involves registering and verifying that you are, in fact, who you say you are. It’s also often difficult to make the emails stop coming. Basically, it’s a pain.

2) Other sites have an RSS feed just for comments. For me, this isn’t much better. Comments start to come too quickly and your comments are often lost in the shuffle.

Here at The Evil Empire we strive to do better. After you’ve posted, look over to the right of your name. You’ll see an RSS logo. This is your personalized feed.

It’s an RSS feed of all the comments from all the threads on which you posted. Think of it like an auto-subscription via RSS to all the threads you care about.

If you don’t know what RSS is, ignore this whole post.

Please let me know if it works with your reader/service. I didn’t exactly write it with a spec in front of me. As such, it’s entirely possible that your reader could reject it. In any case, enjoy.

(a special thanks to Erin for unknowingly giving me the idea)

Apparently, according to my sister, once-peaceful nursing babies begin to develop teeth. This, according to my sister, can be the source of pain for many mothers.

While often a mother’s first reaction to her newly-carnivorous creature is to quickly remove the offending mouth from the food source, this isn’t the preferred solution. Much like a hungry fat man in danger of losing his Twinkie, babies quickly react. Lunge and chomp they do.

In an act of pure counter-intuitiveness the preferred solution is to push the baby’s head (specifically the nose) farther into the breast. This, in turn, causes the baby to seek air. Since the nose is covered, said baby unclamps the vice grips and gasps for air. The mother then removes the little biter.

The other day I encountered another counter-intuitive event. On Thursday my bagel shop’s bagel machine broke down. This left them without bagels. For those of you not aware of the economics of bagel shops, bagels are rather important. That day each patron was greeted with an “I’m sorry – no bagels today.”

When I entered the bagel shop the next day, I was happy to see freshly made bagels. I grabbed my standard and approached the counter to pay. The shop keep’s response was, “It’s on the house.” The previous day he lost a whole day’s sales and his response was (correctly) to lose another day’s sales. In theory, it’s easy to say it’s the right decision. In theory it’s easy to say that “relationships matter.” However, it’s much harder to do it in the real world. I say congrats to him!

So… what bits of counterintuitiveness do you have to offer? Did you punch a shark in the nose? Did you run in zig-zags away from the Alligator? Did you run straight at the bear only to figure out that that was the solution for a different animal?

There is a moment that every parent dreads. You see your young’un as being different. You picture your little one as sweet and innocent. You never even think to have the “drug talk” with your angel.

Then, one day, you realize that you waited too long.

With only a mere seven months of parenthood under our belts my wife and I thought that we were in the clear. We figured that we could wait. It’s an awkward talk, and frankly what seven-month old does drugs?

It wasn’t until I walked into the media room and found Malachi doing whip-its that I knew we had a problem. That’s right – whip-its. We had carelessly left a bottle of Reddi-whip out. He removed it from the counter. He placed it on its side. One foot kept the bottle in place while the other foot ever-so carefully worked the nozzle. His mouth was there to suck up the spewing gas. That’s right, baby – pure nitrous oxide!

When asked where he learned his behavior his response was “ruufff rrufff ruff” which translated is “You dad. I learned it from watching you, ok!”

Lately I’ve heard quite a bit of complaining begging for comments. While that’s not something that I would do, it did force me to think about the imbalance between this site’s traffic and the number of comments that are left. Well… I’ve decided to do something about it.

My solution is either going to help foster open communication or absolutely kill this website. It’s a bold move, but after two years (YES – none of you wished me a happy anniversary!) it’s time to mix things up a bit.

If you look to the upper left of the page, you will see a new countdown. This is tracking the number of comments that are needed before I post another entry. It subtracts the number of comments since the last post from a magic threshold number. We’ll be starting with 7.

The number is updated in real time. So, if you post a comment, you get the joy of seeing your comment in print AND you get to watch the number go down. Once that number reaches zero I’ll be obligated to post something!

It’s a new era. Let’s hope this isn’t the beginning of the end!

OK -- I lied. Here is this week's column.

Two years ago today I began this experiment. It all started with this post.

I'd like to say that we've come a long way. However, I fear that we're still putting out the same drivel. ;)

Let's see if I have another two years in me.

"The Clicker" is now a weekly column on Engadget.

If you're like me (and god help you if you are), you too have been followed around by a certain metaphysical question: "Where in the world are you?" Oh, I'm not talking about where in the spiritual sense. I'm talking about your actual longitude and latitude. Yes, I understand that I could have purchased a GPS unit and answered the question. However, thanks to Google that's no longer needed.

Step 1: Go to maps.google.com
Step 2: Enter your zip code
Step 3: Find your house and double-click on it.
Step 4: Click the "Link to this Page" URL.
Step 5: Extract the Longitude and Latitude from the URL. (between ll= and &spn)

Yes, I understand that this is the lamest "How To" in the history of the world. However, *I* thought that it was cool, and frankly it's my darn site -- so, chill!

Omar reviews another audio player. My big question is (as it always has been): “Can I sync playlists to it via WMP10?”

By that I mean "Will it sync the actual playlists and not just the songs on the playlist?"

I am constantly amazed that each and every player in the Microsoft world appears to eschew this feature. Do they think that it’s unnecessary or is it missing from the MTP spec?

As the capacity of these players goes up so too do the number of songs/artists/albums/etc. This leaves me with a mess of songs and only convoluted workarounds to my playlist problems.

I sit here in amazement as I dream of a high-capacity MP3 player with the simplicity of my, uh, PHONE. That’s right; I, being the owner of the wildly-popular SMT5600, enjoy WMP10Mobile. It’s just wrong that I often look down at my phone and think, “This is the best general MP3 player that the Microsoft world has to offer.”

I’m serious! Oh sure, it’s first and foremost a phone. However, it’s also a great MP3 player. I would LOVE to buy a (theoretical) version of this device that kept the OS (well… a slightly stripped down version) and non-phone-related hardware.

I figure that you could shorten the device by an inch, ditch the camera, replace the digits with dedicated music buttons, and go with a 5 gig hard drive. The result would be a fabulous little device.

Can you say PMC (Portable Media Center) light? You sure could with this device. Perhaps that’s part of the problem. I don’t pretend to have a firm handle on the COGS related to such a device (My phone was $119. However, cell subsidizes always make these things hard to gauge.)

What I do know is that I’ve been dying to buy a music player that fits into my eHome world and until I can sync playlists I just don’t see it happening. I also know that I shouldn’t be looking at my phone as what’s closest to my dream player…

For those of you who are interested, I thought that I would include a pointer to a little piece that I did for Engadget. It starts about half way down the page and, no, I didn't give myself that title. ;)

If you've been living under a rock for the past year, Engadget is the premier site for gadget and technology news. Peter Rojas (a co-founder of Gizmodo) left Gizmodo to form Engadget. Since his departure, Gizmodo has taken a slight turn to the sophomoric. Engadget, on the other hand, has continued Rojas’s tradition of excellence. It’s not a stretch to say that old Uncle Walt should watch his back.

It’s a great site and, if you’re into technology, you should be reading it.