Ryan Jones Blog – dotCULT.com Ryan Jones Blogs About Internet Culture, Marketing, SEO, & Social Media

Last night’s debate was close. The polls have 40% of undecided voters saying Obama was the winner, 20% saying McCain, and the other 40% undecided still.

It was clear from the start that McCain didn’t want to be there. He refused to look at Obama, and appeared angry most of the night.

Obama also appeared mad later in the debate.

Obama’s anger was probably in relation to McCain sidestepping a lot of the questions. McCain would often rant about something that didn’t actually relate to the question he was being asked.

I’m shocked that Obama didn’t actually attack McCain at one of his weakest moments though. At one point McCain mentioned fighting pork barrel spending and used the bear program in Washington as an example. Perhaps Obama wasn’t aware, but McCain actually voted FOR this spending, and I’d have loved to see Obama call him out on it.

I would have liked to see some 3rd party candidates there, but I guess they’re just being realistic.

I knew McCain was going to pull his POW card too, I just thought he’d play it more.

John McCain’s decision to not participate in the debate has nothing to do with the current financial crisis or anything going on in congress. Given McCain’s voting record (least of anybody, ever) it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t give a shit about bills going on. Hell, he didn’t even vote on any of the bills that he’s using in his current TV commercials as examples of pork barrel spending that he stopped.

McCain knows that any debate he or Palin participate in can only hurt their campaign. Seriously.

The majority of McCain supporters fall into 2 categories: Republicans who always vote republican, and people who are only supporting McCain because he’s not Obama.

There’s no changing the minds of that first category. They’re going to vote republican because they’ve always done so and that’s that. McCain could fellate a puppy on national television and they’d still support him.

The second group however isn’t so tied to him. Some of them are racists, some of them have fallen for the lies of his TV campaign, and a large majority of them still think Obama is a Muslim. They just aren’t familiar with him.

It’s obvious from his past appearances that McCain isn’t as good of a debater as Obama. When faced with a tough question, McCain often goes back to his “when I was a POW” story and completely sidesteps it. When asked with a policy question, such as “should health care cover birth control?” he often answers with “I’ll have my people get back to you.”

That’s why the Republican party announced last month that all interviews had to be approved. They wanted to make sure they were lobbing softball questions that they had prepared for.

In a debate, you can ask anything, and saying “I’ll get back to you” just won’t fly.

McCain isn’t ready to debate. There’s no way he can win a debate with Obama and he knows that.

Sure, there will be public backlash against him for not debating, but that won’t steer voters away from him.

Looking like a stumbling fool on TV as he can’t answer any tough questions thrown at him – could cost him his campaign.

Look for him to find other reasons not to debate, or sidestep them all entirely.

Wow, It’s only 1:00 and it’s already been a great day.

Matt Millen was fired, Todd Jones retired, and Clay Aiken announced that he’s gay.

What’s next? John McCain announces that he’s giving up his presidential candidacy to Ron Paul?

My job is over 50% talking. Most of my day is spent talking to various people about websites, advertising, SEO, and all that fun stuff. I’m not complaining about it, but I’m starting to wonder why we keep using the phone.

Why not just email?

I’m about twice as productive via email as I am on the phone, and I think there’s a few reasons for that.

1.) I never attend to email when it would interrupt something productive (like a phone call often does)

2.) I don’t have to take notes when you email me something, nor do I have to remember it. It’s still in my inbox.

3.) When people send email they’re concise and stick to the topic. There’s no need for this “how was your weekend” crap. I can’t remember the last time somebody honestly cared about my weekend.

4.) You don’t hear my cat screaming in the background.

I like email, I don’t like the phone.

Strangely enough, I’d still prefer a phone call to texting – as all the productivity gain is sucked away by the time spent typing my message on my phone keypad.

Thanks to my cat not wanting to take her flea medicine, I now have a new piercing: in my finger.

Her two fangs actually touched inside my finger.

I think she hit a nerve or something, because I still can’t use the finger.

Here’s a picture:

I just wrote the next part of the installment, but it’s only on shoutwire for now – so if you want to read it you’ve got to go there.

Again, if you want to share your fast food stories, please post them in the comments of this post

Looking at the recent presidential polls, it looks like a very close race. Follow the betting odds and contributions though, and this race is swinging highly toward Obama.

How is that?

It’s the polls. Most polls are done via land line telephone. They simply don’t include mobile phone numbers.

That might sound all OK and fine, but according to the latest Nielsen study up to 17% of American households don’t have landline phones.

That number is up 8% from last year, and Nielsen expects it to rise to 20% by early 2009.

Looking at the wireless only families, one sees that they have an average income of around $40,000, live in one or 2 person families, and have recently moved or changed jobs.

Are they poor? Nope, they’re young people. This 17% is almost entirely made up of 18-25 year olds.

That’s a significant demographic of people that standard telephone polls just aren’t reaching, and it’s certainly something to keep in mind whenever looking at the next Harris poll.

Almost a year ago I wrote a post that was called the 10 minute interview in which I talked about my method of hiring fast food employees and how it can be adapted to other professions.

I realized that these 4 questions don’t only serve as a great interview guide, but they also remind me of some very interesting stories. So, I’d like to take some time and share those stories. We’re going to start with question 1: Tell me about the worst customer you’ve ever had to deal with.

It was Wednesday, and I was working the morning shift (7am to 5pm.) I had just finished collecting the money from the registers and was preparing a bank deposit when there was a knock at the office door. Opening the door I saw my cashier standing there with a crisp new $100 bill.

“Can you make change for the lady at the counter?” she said, handing me the bill.

I said “Sure, no problem” as I grabbed 5 20’s off of my desk and locked the door behind me.

As I got to the counter, I noticed my store was nearly empty. There was a family near the back sitting at a table, and one single lady busy holding down my counter.

I walked up to her and said “were you waiting on some change?” but she simply gave me a blank stare.

All of a sudden, the lady in the back of the restaurant came charging up to the counter saying “that’s my money, why did you assume it was hers?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I was told the lady at the counter, and this was the only lady at the counter. Here’s your change.” as I held out the stack of $20 bills.

She didn’t take it. Instead, her scowl embiggened and she repeated (only louder) “Why did you assume it was her $100 bill?”

Again, I repeated “I’m sorry, I was told to make change for the lady at the counter, and there was only one lady at the counter.”

“No, that’s not what you assumed,” she said. “You assumed that because I was black that I couldn’t have a $100 bill, so you thought it was the white lady’s. You’re just a racist.”

Somehow managing to restrain my laughter I once again said “No Ma’am, I simply thought that somebody waiting for $100 wouldn’t get up and walk away. Here’s your change” and I held it out for her again.

Still, she didn’t take it.

“I don’t need to sit here and be mistreated because of my skin color. You think that black people can’t have any money, that we’re all on welfare don’t you you little prick? I don’t have to take this shit from an ignorant racist like yourself.”

At this point her food was being placed on the tray in front of her and her kids were starting to pick at the food.

“You’re right, Ma’am” I said. “And I don’t have to sit here and be insulted by a customer either.”

“Here’s your $100 bill back,” I announced as I placed it on the counter and proceeded to dump her tray of food into the trash can. “We’re not going to serve you. Have a great day.”

This pissed her off even more. She started calling me every name in the book, at which point I simply told my cashier to help the next customer and went about my job without acknowledging her.

My non-responsiveness wasn’t enough, and she took out her cell phone and dialed 911. I couldn’t restrain my laughter this time as I heard her telling the officer that she was being racially discriminated against.

Shockingly, within the next 20 minutes two policemen actually showed up. When they walked into the door the lady flagged them down. Before heading over to them though, I noticed that the one officer whispered something to the other.

That’s when he went over to the lady and spoke to her. About 20 seconds later they were placing her in handcuffs and exiting the store.

Laughing hysterically I asked one of the officer’s what was going on.

“is she the one that called us?” he said.

“yup, why?”

“well, she’s got felony warrants out for her arrest. We recognized her as soon as we walked in. I can’t believe she actually called us.”

That was the end of that. At least she managed to take her $100 off the counter before going to jail. She probably needed it for bail.

I realized today that when it comes to programming, I’m a bit like a stick in the mud.

I remember when I first made the jump up to HTML4.01 from whatever cock eyed layout we were using back then. Then came learning CSS and I struggled but adapted.

I quickly forgot all the Perl I knew as soon as I found PHP. Then I just stopped.

I’m great when it comes to PHP, MySQL, HTML, and Javascript – it’s the new stuff that I’ve been reluctant to learn.

Give me a web server and the first thing I do is install cPanel and webalizer – even though they’re both very outdated. Even the tools I use are a bit outdated – opting for editplus and wsftp still.

The world is changing, people are using Ruby and postgresql now. Xhtml and Jquery have replaced html and regular old javascript. But I haven’t updated my ways.

To be honest, I just haven’t had the time. I still get to choose the structure of any site I work on, and it’s just way more productive for me to keep going LAMP than to learn something else.

What about you? What made you finally learn and use a new technology? Did you do it on your own or did you do it as part of your job? What are the trade offs of productivity vs learning a new language?

The more I’ve been thinking about the current presidential race, the more I’m realizing that Obama isn’t going to win. Come November, John McCain will win the white house and America will still not learn its lesson.

This was our year Dems. After the last 8 years of Bush, we democrats were licking our chops at the chance to retake the white house. The mid-term elections came and we re-took control of congress. America had had enough of this administration and they were exercising their voice. Things were looking great.

We’re still going to lose, and there’s really nothing we can do about it. As long as McCain and Palin are allowed to outright lie and change whatever facts they want, the Democrats can’t win.

But we’re winning you say. Recent polls show that Obama has a few point lead on McCain. That’s the problem. How can it only be a few points? I just don’t see it.

Looking at all the newspaper articles, senate voting records, and candidate speeches, how can this race even be close? It doesn’t make sense.

McCain is an echo of George Bush – the current president who has a measly 30% approval rating. That explains 30% of McCain’s votes, but what about the other 20%? What the hell are these people thinking? Do they want 4 more years of this crap?

Palin is a creationist who is against all forms of birth control, yet she’s being hailed as a step forward for women. Are you serious? A woman in the white house is great, but her views serve merely to further repress woman’s rights. The anti-abortionist Palin said it was her daughter’s choice to keep the baby. Bristol gets a choice, but the rest of America shouldn’t? Makes sense to me.

McCain is pro business and pro Bush. Put some tights on him and he’d be the perfect sidekick. One need only look at his voting record (when he managed to actually vote – McCain missed more senate votes than any other senator) to see that he voted with Bush over 90% of the time.

He calls himself a war hero, often touting that he’s more experienced to manage the Iraq war. I don’t see how he can even mention the Iraq war though, having only voted in 4 of the last 14 senate measures concerning it. How well do you think he’ll handle a war that he’s too busy campaigning to even vote on?

I’m also not too sure about the usage of “hero” here. A “hero” is somebody who saves lives. McCain got shot down and captured. It seems to me that all he did was endanger more lives by failing in his mission. Failure doesn’t make you a Hero. It just makes you a veteran like every other soldier. Either way, military service doesn’t really matter to me when it comes to being president.

What matters to me is technology, business, innovation, and the economy – all of which McCain fails to understand. He’s pro patents, pro DRM, anti net neutrality, hates economists, and is in favor of regulating the internet. This is the man who introduced a bill that would require websites to be held criminally responsible for the comments on their sites.

This is a man who voted against the GI bill, against social security, and against raising the minimum wage.

This is a man who completely changed his position on everything as soon as he was upgraded from senator McCain to candidate McCain. While the senator spoke out against drilling in America, the candidate urges that we do it. The Senator voted against the Bush tax cuts, but the Candidate wants to make them permanent. This is the senator who once responded to a letter I sent him with “We’re sorry but Senator McCain doesn’t have the time to address the concerns of those outside of his voting district.” Senator McCain only cared about Senator McCain, what do you think Candidate McCain’s main priority is?

You’ve probably seen the McCain ad where he bashes the bridge to nowhere, bear DNA program, and woodstock museum as “pork barrel spending”. Were you also aware that McCain actually voted in favor of the DNA program, and wasn’t even present for the votes on the bridge or Woodstock museum? Last time I checked, “doing nothing” didn’t count as “taking a stand against wasteful spending.”

Speaking of spending, if I have to hear Palin talk about putting the state plane on eBay one more time I’m going to start pulling out hair. WHy has this been in every one of her speeches? Sure, she put the plane on eBay, great. But guess what? It wasn’t her idea – it was state policy made almost a year before she took office. Furthermore, it didn’t sell on eBay. It sold through a broker after sitting on the auction site for 2 months and costing the state over $60,000 in payments on the plane and listing fees. The would have saved that money had they simply gone through a broker in the first place.

Sure, she fought against the bridge to nowhere project, but that didn’t stop her from requesting $453 million in other earmarks. That’s almost $800 per person living in Alaska.

That’s a lot of lies, but despite all those McCain will still win the election.

It has nothing to do with Obama being black, or Muslim (by the way, he’s actually Christian.)

It has nothing to do with any of that. When Americans go into the polls, they’re going to vote based on the lies they’ve heard on TV – and as long as McCain and Palin are allowed to say whatever they want, people will believe them.

Others will vote along the party line like they’ve been doing since they voted for Eisenhower – having never noticed the changes in the parties since Nixon.

Doing the research is more than most Americans can be bothered with.

After all, I could spend a few hours researching the actual facts about the election, but then I’d miss tonight’s episode of Prison Break on Fox.

America didn’t learn its lesson the last 4 years, and we’re not going to learn it the next four either.