So I bought and have since listened to the book Rework by 37Signals a few days ago. I’m a huge fan. It’s probably my second favorite book directly under the Four Hour Work Week. Instead of giving some lame review of Rework (mostly because I’m too lazy) I thought I’d tell you where the authors came up with the name of their company – 37Signals.
I’ve been paying a lot of attention to 37Signals as of late. I just started using their project management portal, BaseCamp, and have really fallen in love with their product. Anywho, this morning I saw 37Signals tweet about an interview that Jason Fried, Co-Founder of 37Signals, did. He talks about some cool stuff. About how he started out young working lame jobs etc, etc… but the coolest thing of the whole interview can be found in the 7th paragraph where he talks about where they came up with the name, 37Signals, for their company.
“Back in 1999, Carlos was watching an episode of Nova on PBS about the SETI project, which involves the network of radio telescopes in New Mexico that is listening for signs of life in the universe. There are apparently billions of signals and sources of noise out there, but, according to the show, there are 37 signals that remain unexplained. When Carlos told us about that, we all thought it was a really cool idea, so we named the company after that. And, as it turns out, the domain name was also available.”
Sounds like I’m not the only somewhat sane, alien/UFO fan out there after all.
Awesome name. Awesome company. Awesome software. Awesome.
Follow 37Signals | Listen to Rework on Audible
credit: Stéfan
Update: This bad boy only lasted 2 full days. I woke up with a super bad headache on the second day and figured I’d better stop. Still want to go the full 5 days though.
I’ve been feeling really lazy, unproductive, and unhealthy lately. It doesn’t help that my job allows requires me (yeah, boo-hoo, I know) to sit down 100% of the time to be productive. But the fact that my office got a vending machine a month or so ago and I’ve been living off of a steady diet of Mountain Dew & Gardettos ever since does nothing to improve my chances of living a healthy life. So just to stick it to myself and to prove to myself that I’m not a worthless piece of fat, lazy junk, I’m going to go without food for 5 days in a row. I’ve been interested to see what going 20+ days would be like, so maybe I’ll end up going more. This (5 day fast) may seem like a big deal, but it’s really not going to be that bad.
I’ve gone 3 days without food before, and two of those days were without food and water. I did it just to prove a point to myself, and I guess that’s why I’m doing it again. On the third day I was no longer really even very hungry. Just felt a bit weak. Going without food is actually a real cool experience both physically and mentally. It’s funny to realize just how much time you spend thinking about food subconsciously. And cutting off that impulse to eat rabidly is, in a weird way, quite liberating.
Something interesting I’ve noticed about myself is that when I’m low on sleep, and perhaps even a bit hungry, my mind is more sharp and I react more quickly. It’s almost as if I don’t have the energy to be lazy. haha. Try to explain that one. Another possible explanation is because when I’m well fed and well rested, I have the energy to concern myself with stupid stuff such as what people think about me and it slows down my mental processes. Stupid anxiety. Having anxiety and self conscious thoughts subconsciously is like having some sort of malware or spyware running in the background of your computer that drains your system resources. Pisses me off, because I’ve realized that I’m a real anxious person.
My life feels super out of control for some reason right now and I guess fasting – controlling what I ingest physically – is one way of proving to myself that I have control over at least one aspect of my life.
Anyways, I’m a born skeptic and I commonly think of health weirdos and nutritionists as loony tunes; so if you think I’m up in the night for randomly doing this, I understand, but if you’re interested to learn more about fasting, this page is at least mildly interesting if you end up believing even 25% of it.
Cheers
Alright, so why did I just invest several thousands of dollars buying a car? What I really needed was one of these. I spend far more time sitting at a computer than I do in my car. Seriously though, I’m buying one. I’ll be the biggest nerd in all of Utah…and proud of it. This idea is so awesome.
You can build/customize your own EMPEROR chair at the Novel Quest site. I wish I could get in on an affiliate program for these guys. Commissions would be insane, I’m sure.
I seriously had an idea to build something like this a few months ago. It wasn’t nearly this cool though. Jonathan Volk, who runs a how to make money online blog tweeted about this company so I checked it out. Go follow him. He’s always tweeting good stuff like this. lol.
I’ve largely neglected this blog for the past couple of months just because I’ve been more focused on building up websites that are working well for me. But I’m going to try to start posting more regularly here and sharing some tips about stuff I’ve been learning.
To kick off my return, lets mention a few updates that I’ve done over the past couple of days. I mentioned yesterday that I added a Facebook “Like” button to my posts, but here’s some other stuff that I’ve done to make my blog a bit more fun and personal.
- Added a “Stuff I Recommend” Page
- Added a “Favorite Music” Page
- Added a “Favorite Books” Page
- Added the Facebook “Like” button. Click it dangit!
- Added an actual logo…sort of…I’m sure the logo is a work in progress but I’m happy with it for the moment.
- Updated my About Page to make it less cheesy.
- Added some good looking ad space in the sidebar and above the posts on the home page, which I’m sure you’ve noticed. I promise I’ll never promote any junky products.
- Updated my social media icons.
- Removed the post author byline. I figure I’ll be writing all of the posts here and it was just taking up space.
- Removed the comment counter. Now you have to click on the post to see if people are commenting on it. This just made things look better.
- Updated my sidebar widgets to be less spammy.
Do you like how my blog is looking better than it was before? Suggestions?
Mallard Clothing Company is a venture that my friend, my brother, and I have been pursuing for the last year or so. Mallard carries skate decks, skate shirts (girls, and guys), and we will continue to push our product line as far as the Universe allows. Considering the idea that the Universe is limitless, this Mallard thing could go on for quite some time. 
Mallard Men Skate Shirts | Mallard Girl Shirts | Mallard Skate Decks
Products in the works include Mallard Shorts, Mallard Swimwear, Mallard Snowboards and Mallard Winter Accessories and Wear. Stay tuned. This thing is going big.
Pound It Like A Mallard
So I ran this poll for about five days and I got a whopping 9 votes. WiredTree remains to be my favorite Magento Hosting Company to date. Simple Helix is also a very good Magento Web Host.
Who hosts your Magento store? Let me know in the comments below.
I’ve followed Famous Stars and Straps for the last few years. They have had tons of site re-designs. Most of the designs being beautiful, bandwidth-intensive clunkers that were developed in Flash. I think finally they made a user friendly, bandwidth friendly web store…and guess what? I bet it cost them next-to-nothing! Magento is a completely free software that allows you to create your very own web store. The only back-draw to Magento is that it takes a decent hosting company (and by decent I mean not Dreamhost, or Godaddy) to be able to host the store for you.
You can read about how I think WiredTree is the best Magento Hosting Company to date on this post.
Anywho, congrats to Famous Stars and Straps, and I hope your Magento store treats you well. 
Who hosts your Magento store?
I’m doing a little research project. Mostly for fun, partly for market research. If you use Magento, I’d like to know who hosts your Magento store. Participants will be rewarded blessings beyond comprehension.
My favorite Magento Web Hosts (That I’ve had experience with): Simple Helix & WiredTree
