Wow.  Jaden’s now eight years old.

We had a great birthday weekend.  Instead of the typical invite-a-dozen-friends-and-host-a-party thing, Jaden thought it would be cool to just invite one person and then go do a bunch of stuff all day.  And stuff we did.  8 hours we spent at Austin’s Park and Pizza, where he and his friend rode go-karts, bumper boats, games, pizza, and all-out-fun.

I was able to work for most of this time, so that was an extra side benefit for me

He got an authentic Magic wand, some incredible Transformers toys (boy does he LOOOVE Transformers), Star Wars Wii Remote Converter thingies(boy does he LOOOVE Star Wars) and a few other special gifts from friends and family.  He even got some cards in the mail (boy does he LOOOVE getting mail!), and Mom is bringing cupcakes at school today for his class to celebrate (boy does he… wait, actually he’s not that hot on cupcakes).

However, I must brag a little.  The BEST gift he got was from me.  Jaden loves Iron Man (boy does he LOOOVE Iron Man). In honor of Iron Man 2 coming out (the trailer was released this weekend I believe), I contacted Tony Stark and was able to have him fund a surgical implant of a little Arc Reactor into Jaden’s chest.  That way, he could fire his repulsor transmitter at anyone who gets in his way.

It was a lot of fun, but I gotta say, the most excruciating part of it all was teaching Jaden not to fire the repulsor cannon at just anyone.  Save it for the real big bullies, I told him.  Save it for when someone is mugging an old lady.  Save it for when the machines rise up against us and need to be subdued.  Save it for the stupid counter clerk who can’t get off a personal call on her cell phone as she jabbers “am I coming over to your house tonight or what, oh my GAWD I can’t believe he said that to you and do you think this color looked good on me last night and oh hold on oh em gee these customers keep coming in and I swear I shouldn’t have to put up with this crap but my dad is being a total doofus by keeping my trust fund away from me. I know, right?”

You know the comic book saying: With great power comes great benefits, but if you overdo it, people will eventually get sick of you and come take your power away.

I love you, buddy boy!

Few things happen in the absence of incentive.

Why do we go to work?  So we can eat.

Why do we pay taxes? So we don’t go to jail.

Why do we brush our teeth?  So we can keep them.  (See “why do we go to work”)

A defining charactistic of individual humans is their tolerance level for pain.  This tolerance drives how much incentive is required to compel a response.  Every human, like everything else in nature, is shaped by stimulus and response.  Take away the stimulus, and the likelihood of response goes to almost nil.

The incentive granularity is almost infinite.  Take the work example – we want to do more than eat, of course.  We want to live in a nice place, have nice things, maybe save for retirement.  So, you work harder.  You strive for promotions.  The incentive? you want more stuff.  Different people have different incentives, and the variances in the tolerance for pain/discomfort also account for why some people strive harder than others.

So what happens when you remove the stimulus?

If our teeth were preserved whether we brushed them or not, we probably wouldn’t brush them.

If we didn’t go to jail for not paying taxes, we probably wouldn’t pay them.

If we got free food and housing , we probably wouldn’t go to work.

Unfortunately, the human race hasn’t evolved enough from our caveman days to act much different than, well, cavemen.  As a whole, we’re not “in it for the greater good.”  We don’t do something because “it’s the right thing to do” until we’re taught to do so. 

And by “taught”, I mean “incentivized.”

Chances are, you know someone affected by Diabetes.  I personally know a few people close to me who suffer with it, and the numbers of people who succumb to its grip are increasing every year.

Recently, the American Diabetes Association visited Jaden’s school and taught them all about Type 1, Type 2, foods, risks, the importance of exercise, and some great information to help the kids NOT be at risk.  In fact, evidence suggests that as much as 90% of certain forms of the disease are completely preventable, and are largely caused by lifestyle and behavioral choices.

Well, let me tell you – Jaden is super excited to raise money for the American Diabetes Association, with the School Walk for Diabetes fundraiser.  He’s walking and raising awareness for the disease and he’s hoping you can help him out.

There are three ways you can help

1. If you know me and trust me, you can send me the money directly via paypal, and then I will include that in my donation.  This will double your effective donation because my employer matches 100% of all donations to tax-exempt organizations.   Normally, employers require a minimum donation (usually $25) in order to qualify for the match, but because I’ll be combining multiple donations, we can all be twice as giving.  I’m happy to provide a receipt showing your portion for tax deduction purposes. (update: the deadline for the fundraiser is over as of Friday 3/5/2010, so I’m not accepting direct donations any more)
2. You can go straight to Jaden’s fundraising page.  You can donate anonymously or publicly and be listed on his page.  Be sure to check if your employer does matching (it’s part of the contribution form).
3. You can send people to this post to raise awareness.

Thank you!  Your participation is greatly appreciated.

Take a look at my inbox from this morning:

I mean, come on.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO SPAM ME, LEARN MY LANGUAGE.

How can spammers even sleep at nite, noing how bad they’re grammer and speling is?  its abhoarent and pisses me of. lolz its so bad I just wanna laugh at them cuz they so stoopid. OMG like i have received a new ipad. u didn’t even captalize Apple and every1 noes iPad has a capital P. luzer.  and in the body of the email you said “test apple ipad before it come out” hahaha luzer, it’s “comes out” stupid email person.  good thing you left unusbscribe instructions int he email because i did and you wont be sending me no more stupid emails. well see who the smart one is wont me.

laterz

Really, I did.

Yesterday I was thinking about it as I was taking Zina and Tigger for the first of their twice-daily walks.  I even thought to myself “This would make a pretty neat blog post.”

“I even know what I’d title it,” I continued, forming the words in my head as to what the title would be, and how it might show up in the various alerting mechanisms.  Some would see New Blog Post: <something cool> in Twitter, or they might use Google Reader to find out the title.  Still others not so much into the blog reading but more into Facebook ease would see the post and be enticed into clicking over.

At the time, I was feeling pretty good for myself because I knew it’d been days, wait, no… weeks… WEEKS since I posted anything, and probably years since I wrote anything worthwhile.  More than that feeling, however… more than the satisfaction of actually writing something, I felt good about the post itself.  It contained goodness.  It contained symmetry.  The concepts I formulated in my head on that walk made me proud, and I knew just about everyone would like it.  I knew it would help ease the division between people.  Even my harshest critics would probably take a break on this post.  This post would reach people.  It was simple, it was good and it was right.

It’s hard to express the lightness I felt as I finished the walk.  I got back home, excited to type it all in, refine it and make the idea perfect.  I put away the leashes, then cleaned some carpet stains, hung up some decorations, played way too much time on the computer with video games, helped Jaden with his homework, watched the Super Bowl, and watched the 3rd episode of Torchwood off of Netflix/PS3.

The post idea was still there, although slightly faded.  I smiled a little at the thought of tomorrow.  Tomorrow – the day I would type it up.  I really looked forward to it.

But I’ve slept since then, as they say, and now I’m completely blank on what it was.

If you have any ideas, or can help me remember, please let me know.

Yesterday on the way home my daughter and I saw car with a customized Dallas Cowboy license plate with the phrase

WWJJD

Since I’m not a big Cowboys fan, it took me a while to realize what the extra “J” was doing in there.  Haha, clever.

But then I remembered something I heard in one of the videos I had posted earlier about innovation, and something the speaker said stuck in my head then, and that was WWCD.  WWCD stood for What Would Croeses (cresus) do?  Croeses was famous for his wealth.  In today’s terms, you might think Bill Gates, George Sorros or Donald Trump.  When posed with an intriguing problem, one way to generate ideas on how to solve the problem would think – What would someone with near unlimited resources do to solve the problem?  By going down that road, the act brainstorming can pick up tons of fodder that can be sorted out later on.

It didn’t take me long to turn the focus to where it belonged – on me, naturally – so I asked myself “how could I brand WWWD?”  What Would Wayne Do?  But then I figured – who cares about what *I’d* do? 

What people REALLY want to know is… what do I want?  The important thing is for what THEY can do for ME.

So now I bring you, WWWW – What Would Wayne Want?  A new series on ye olde blog of whall where you can stay in-the-know of things I want so you may do your duty to Whall and to country.

In the first installment, I want you to go wish Miss Britt a happy birthday.  She turned 30 this past week, and a select few of us took the time and submitted happy birthday videos and photos, and some random guy on the Internet went and made a video of it all.  And I made the cut!!!

PS: I think that guy should be strung up.  I mean, he made her cry.  CRY!  As if there isn’t enough pain in this world, he goes and makes the tears fall.  Horrible, horrible man.

I was reading one of the recent Geeks of Dune, er Geeks of Doom newsletters when I hit a quote from the new director of the upcoming new Dune movie translation.

From the article, quoting Pierre Morel:

Like many people, I was not fully satisfied with David Lynch’s movie in 1984. I do respect David, and I think his interpretation and vision was interesting, but not what we [fans] expected. And I thought I’d give it a chance, try to do this, make it faster and more modern. I think that now, in 2010, we have the technology to achieve much more than David could do twenty-five years ago. I think it will be cool to try something different.

Say what?

Who are these “many people” who were “not fully satisfied”?  What’s WRONG with them? Did they not see the same movie I did at 14 years old? 

I MEAN COME ON! LOOK AT THIS!

And that’s just how the movie started.  It proceeded to include awesome alien beings, huge-scale artwork, sound effects that blew my mind, spaceships, fighting (both technological and hand-to-hand), killer beasts in the desert, Ming the Merciless, flying fat bastards, STING!!!!, blue-within-blue eyes and was interwoven delicately with complex overarching concepts I wouldn’t come to understand for many years later.

To say Dune transformed my love of sci-fi cinema is an understatement of pre-folded-space proportions.  I didn’t read the books until after the movie, and I especially enjoyed the books that came later by Herbert’s son (some of them were enjoyed as audio books).

Now I feel like reading the whole thing again.

As if I needed another reason to love this song any more

This guy is great!  Makes me wanna learn sign language.  At least now I know what “Hey” is in ISN.  I’m no dancer, but I sure do move to this song.

PS: Yes, I really do like the song; no sarcasm here, like you might see on other people’s blogs.

PS#2: I didn’t mean the first PS to point at specific people, nor am I sour about it.  Not a bit.

PS#3: I’ll let you decide if I’m using sarcasm in #2.

I’m pretty sure when I show this video to my wife, she’s going to want me to commit Web 2.0 suicide as well.

While the video makes excellent points, I don’t buy into the all-or-nothingness of it all.  But maybe that’s the real point.  Showing how bad it CAN get by using extreme examples (like committing suicide) so you can recognize when your online life is getting a bit too much and infringing on the in-person-and-in-your-face life.

I for one don’t think I could ever give up my online friends, nor could I discount the myriad benefits I receive from facebook, twitter and linkedin. 

Moderation is the key. 

(I found out about W2SM – Web 2.0 Suicide Machine through NetworkWorld’s article about the legal fight they’re having with Facebook.)

That was definitely worth 5 mins of my time.

But I still don’t believe in man-caused global warming.