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I need groceries August 31, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Personal , 3 comments

Since I spend every weekend in the city, it’s hard to motivate myself to go shopping.  In fact, this is my first night at home since last Wednesday.  (My landlord, who returned last Wednesday from a two month vacation, was rather confused that he never saw me.)  In short, I have no food, and since I’m leaving to visit my family on Friday, it hardly seems worth the time to procure any. 

So I fall back on my bachelor pad recipe book, finely tuned over three years of graduate school.  I got all the way to Option 6 today.  I don’t know what Option 7 is.  I hope I never find out.

  1. Stir fry spaghetti with a ton of vegetables.
  2. If out of vegetables, fry up veggieburger.
  3. If out of veggieburgers, prepare spaghetti with tomato sauce.
  4. If tomato sauce is moldy, turn to olive oil.
  5. If no olive oil available, try canned tuna.
  6. If out of can openers, throw cheddar cheese on spaghetti.  Place in microwave.  Cheddar does make it better.  Though not actually good.
Your thoughts?

#@^% it all! August 30, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Personal , 1 comment so far

I recently had to change my cell phone service plan to include nearly unlimited text messaging.  I used to hate texting.  I still kinda do.  But when you’re running around in noisy bars in New York, you use up a lot of text messages.

I didn’t realize how repressed I was until now.  Fleshpopsicle! Genital!  Rubyredbag!

Fight the power!

83 words you can’t say on Verizon Wireless

Your thoughts?

Paris Hilton has 733t H4xx0r skillz August 25, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Links , 1 comment so far

A friend told me a while ago about the rumors that Paris Hilton hacked Lindsay Lohan’s cell phone.  “No way,” I said.  “Paris Hilton?  A monkey with a soup spoon would stand a better chance.”

 But now there’s this press release from SpoofCard.com:

SpoofCard.com confirmed that Paris Hilton was among the terminated customers, and that Lindsay Lohan was among those whose voicemail accounts were broken into.

Well, damn.  Maybe Paris is smarter than she looks.

paris

Maybe not.

Your thoughts?

Magazine startups are expensive August 23, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Magazine , 1 comment so far

As I do more research into the launch procedure for a startup magazine, it has become more and more apparent that raising the capital to do this right is going to be difficult, if not impossible.  We have a few aces in a few holes that we can pull out, but we’re crafting Launch Scenario, Plan B just in case.

Ideally, we would have somewhere between $500,000 and $5 million to launch our magazine.  That would allow us to do things right, with focus groups and direct mail tests, and thousands of subscribers across the nation.

More realistically, we will likely have no money from venture capitalists, who aren’t willing to wait the five years it takes for a magazine to become profitable.  Hence, Plan B.

Plan B involves a lot of hard work and a lot of risk.  We can’t afford to test on focus groups, so we’ll have to trust our gut instincts.  We can’t afford to hire a magazine designer, so I’ll be learning Quark.  We can’t afford to hire a circulation consultant, so we’ll have to learn the intricacies of direct mail marketing ourselves.  If all this flies, we can get by on a shoe string until the very last minute when we’ll need a few hundred thousand dollars for the direct mail subscription campaign.

It’s going to be exciting.

Your thoughts?

A long day August 20, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Personal , add a comment Your thoughts?