Month: May 2007

LinkedIn: Ready, Set, Go!

/ Adam Nash / 9 Comments

This is a just a quick note to officially state that my first day at LinkedIn is tomorrow, May 29th.  I’ll be joining as Sr. Director of Product, working for the founder, Reid Hoffman.  I’m incredibly excited to join such a great team and to work on such a great product.

As with my previous role at eBay, I don’t plan on blogging about work here on Psychohistory – this is my personal blog.  However, I’ve always been open and honest about my background and my work, so this announcement is fair game.

If you aren’t familiar with the company, LinkedIn is a great new site that is based on the premise that the single most important asset of your professional career is your relationships with the people who you know and trust, and who know and trust you.  The site offers a suite of powerful tools that make it exceptionally easy to communicate & leverage your professional network in entirely new ways.  You can read more about the site and what it offers here.

Here are a few links you might find interesting, if you would like to learn more:

On a personal note, this means my 15-minute commute to San Jose has just become a 10-minute commute to Mountain View.  Such is life in Silicon Valley.

Garden 2007: Sweet 100, JetSetter, Banana & Green Grape Tomato Plants

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

I’ve been a bit surprised at the ongoing popularity of the one or two posts from last year on my tomato harvest, particularly the pictures of my Mr. Stripey tomato.

As a result, I thought I’d post an update for 2007 on my garden. I love working in the garden – my only regret is that I only have 3 garden boxes to work with. Of course, that’s about 10x the space I had a few years ago when I was growing plants on the balcony of my apartment.

This year, I’ve lined up what I think is an excellent crop:

Box 1: Peppers

I love medium-to-hot peppers, so this year I’m growing five varieties:

  • Banana
  • Serano
  • Jalapeño
  • Thai
  • Habañero

Here’s a shot of the 9 plants (2 of each except for the 1 Habañero)

Box 2: Cucumbers

I also grow cucumbers, using a trellis so I can get a large crop with very little space. This year, I’m growing four varieties of cucumber. Two years ago, my Japanese cucumbers reached almost 2 feet (24 inches) in length, so I’m trying to build on that success.

Here are the four varieties I planted this year:

  • Lemon
  • Japanese
  • Table (regular)
  • Armenian

I’m excited about the last one, because I’ve never grown Armenian cucumbers before. They apparently are light green skinned, and can grow to 3 feet long! Should be fun.

The plants in the bottom corner are herbs that I use to fill out the box – basil, oregano, thyme.

Box 3: Tomatoes

And finally, my prize plants, the tomatoes. This year, I’m trying to stretch a 3×6 box to handle 4 plants. I’m also trying out a much more robust 7mm steel support for the plants after last years disaster with my huge plants bending the smaller steel frames mid-August. I got them at Gardener Supply online.

The four varieties of tomato this year feature two hybrids for volume & eating, and two heirloom varieties for flavor & fun.

  • Sweet 100 (cherry)
  • JetSetter (large, red)
  • Banana Fingers (4″, orange/yellow)
  • Green Grape (small, green/stripe)

I’ve had them in the ground for four weeks, and they are really doing well. See below.

Should be a great year for the garden. Everything is really taking off. I feel like Brie from Desperate Housewives, but even my Hydrangeas are doing fantastically well.

   

Heroes Season 1 Finale: I Thought Peter Could Fly… (Spoilers)

/ Adam Nash / 9 Comments

Hopefully the fact that Peter Petrelli can learn the powers of other heroes is sufficiently old that I won’t get in trouble with the RSS Spoiler police. I’m still smarting from the flames about my Battlestar Galactica post about Starbuck…

Heroes finished off Season 1 this week with the big finale. “How to Stop an Exploding Man”

The question I had on my mind at the end was,

“Why does Nathan Petrelli have to fly Peter up to the sky so he can safely explode? Peter can fly also – he got the ability from Nathan.”

Well, I found this snippet on SyFy portal where the series creator comments on the issue:

“You know, theoretically, you’re not supposed to be thinking about that,” series creator Tim Kring told TV Guide’s Matt Webb Mitovich and Michael Logan. However, Kring did prove correct many theories following Monday’s airing that Peter was so distracted by the fact he was about to explode that he didn’t have the energy or the attention span to use an of his other abilities.

Of course, that’s trying to find a way to explain an action from a story standpoint. But from an entertainment factor, Kring admitted that he was much more interested in having Nathan — who had become somewhat of a bad guy on the show in recent weeks — to save the day.

“Yes, I will admit that there’s a very tiny window of logic there, but what can I say?” Kring said. “It requires the proverbial suspension of disbelief.”

Well, it’s nice to see I’m not the only one who got caught in that “tiny window of logic.” Otherwise, that was really my only problem with the finale of Season 1.

Well, that and the cheesiness of Sylar apparently “not really dying”. Lame. Sylar & Peter are both too powerful, frankly, to hang around too long. A lot of comics have the concept of borrowing powers temporarily, but when you get to keep them forever, you eventually just become a god. Being invincible quickly becomes boring.

How to Mount NTFS Drives on Mac OS X with Read/Write Access

/ Adam Nash / 17 Comments

Elliot, this post is for you.

A couple of weeks ago, I got really irritated with the whole Mac/Windows thing.  I had purchased a USB hard drive with the intention of using it as a backup drive for both Mac & Windows machines.

Unfortunately, I discovered that Mac OS X cannot write to NTFS volumes – it can only read from them.  I then discovered that Windows XP has lost the ability to read or write to HFS+ drives (Windows 2000 had it).

Well, I am here to say that there is a pretty cool solution for mounting NTFS volumes on Mac OS X.  Interestingly, it comes from Google.

The MacFuse project on the Google Code site is a BSD-license open-source project that lets you use any FUSE-compatible file system on Mac OS X.  FUSE (File-system in USErspace) originated on Linux, but apparently the port to Mac OS X has been live for a while.

NTFS-3G is the open source project that implements NTFS support for FUSE.

This lovely site has packaged together DMG installer versions of each for easy installation on Mac OS X.  (Please note: only do this if you are running Mac OS 10.4 or later, and are somewhat technically savvy)

Amazing.  It just works.  In fact, I’ve only hit one glitch.  If you fail to put away your NTFS volume properly on Windows (using the Safely Remove Hardware command), NTFS can get itself all locked up, and unable to mount properly.

Now, let me give due credit to this blog post for helping me find this solution.

Also, it’s worth noting that the write performance isn’t speedy right now.   The teams contributing seem to know this, and are working the issues.  As a result, I wouldn’t use this solution to make NTFS your default volume format for files.  However, if you need simple read/write to the occassional NTFS volume, this looks like a good answer.

Why Apple can’t ship decent NTFS support for Mac OS X is beyond me.  And why Microsoft can’t support HFS+ is also beyond me.  Given that there are tens of millions of machines out there who create and use each of these volume formats, I would say that it clears the bar of “important enough” to support.

Update (6/3/2007):  A brief warning.  Apple just released a security update that is currently not fully compatible with the ntfs-3g files.  My PowerMac was unable to read UDF (video DVDs) until I removed these files.   I’m sure a fix will be out soon, but be careful.  This thread on Apple Discussions captures the solution.

Judge Judy Episode on eBay Trust & Safety

/ Adam Nash / 7 Comments

Sorry, I’ve been sitting on this one too long, and I just have to post it.

This is the Judge Judy episode where the eBay scammer gets her due… to the tune of a $5000 judgement. More importantly, she gets taken to task for even pretending that this was OK or justified.

Premise: The defendant sold two expensive cell phones to the plaintiff, but then only shipped them pictures of the cell phones, claiming the listing was only for the photo, not the cell phone. When the buyer complained, she left them negative feedback claiming they were the scam artists! Sleazy.

Look, I know Judge Judy is no Rob Chesnut, but then again, Rob Chesnut is no Judge Judy. 🙂

I admit to having a soft spot for these type of shows… call it a weakness. But I admit a strong desire to see the few bad actors out there who make the world a worse place get some public humiliation.

Of course, if these buyers had purchased the cell phones on eBay Express, they would have been covered by 100% buyer protection, and they would have gotten their money back quickly. Still, that wouldn’t have been as much fun as this TV clip.

Diamond is NOT the Hardest Material (Who Knew?)

/ Adam Nash / 12 Comments

News flash. Two years late. Diamond is not the hardest known material. There are at least three known substances that are harder: Rhenium Diboride, Ultrahard Fullerite and Aggregated Diamond Nanorods.

I’m a little worried. I think this is what happens when you grow older. Technology has just outdated one of those simple scientific truths I learned about in school. What’s worse is that it took me almost two years to find out about it.

But before I get into a self-pitying “science is for the young” groove, let me tell you what I’ve learned so far.

First, a big thank you to Business Week. Yes, that’s right, Business Week. Not known for it’s scientific coverage, but the May 7, 2007 issue had a snippet on page 79 about the successful effort to create a substitute for industrial diamonds for slicing through steel. Apparently, the diamond reacts with the steel to form by-products that dull the blade. Scientists at UCLA have discovered a mixture of Boron and Rhenium that is hard enough to scratch diamond, and doesn’t react with steel. Press release dates to April 19, 2007, so it’s a pretty recent discovery.

In all fairness, Rhenium DiBoride is only harder than diamond in certain directions, due to its layered structure. But reading about it sent me to the web – what other substances have been discovered that are harder than diamond? Somehow, learning that diamond wasn’t the hardest material bar none made me realize that I last took Material Science coursework at Stanford in 1992.

Fortunately, in the 15 years since that coursework, a lot has happened to help me get up to speed in a matter of minutes. And I am glad I did, because new materials are just too cool.

First, let’s start with the simpler one: Ultrahard Fullerite. Fullerene is a form of carbon based on the C_{60} structure of buckyball-fame. From Wikipedia:

Ultrahard fullerite (C_{60}) is a form of carbon which has been found to be harder than diamond, and which can be used to create even harder materials, such as aggregated diamond nanorods.

Specifically, it is a unique version of fullerene (which is a class of spherical, ellipsoidal, or tubular carbon molecules) with three-dimensional polymer bonds. This should not be confused with P-SWNT fullerite, which is also a polymerized version of fullerene. It has been shown[1][2] that when testing diamond hardness with a scanning force microscope of specific construction, ultrahard fullerite can scratch diamond.

Very cool, but now, of course I’m thinking, “Tell me more about these aggregated diamond nanorods!” (I’m sure you were thinking the same thing.)

That, my friends, is a thing of beauty. According to this article at the European Synchotron Radiation Facility, Aggregated Diamond Nanorods are the least-compressible known material. To be specific, the density of ADNR is 0.2% to 0.4% greater than Diamond. ADNR is also 11% less compressible than diamond, and has an isothermal bulk modulus of 491 GPa (gigapascals) compared to just 442 for diamond.

Of course, I’m only reading about this now. PhysicsWeb.org had the coverage on this discovery in Germany back on August 26, 2005. (it’s actually a very clear & well written piece.) You can bet that the PhysicsWeb RSS feed is going into my reader tonight…

Wikipedia has a very nice summary here as well.

Oh well, better late than never. My guess is that one or two people out there also missed this, which is why I’m posting it tonight.

Now, I think we just need to find a way to start a luxury jewelry business that specializes in ADNR-based engagement rings. Why settle for diamond, which can get scratched so easily? We could make a fortune on this one on the high end…

Update (1/4/2010):  See the comment from January 2010 below, but it seems Rhenium DiBoride is no longer assessed as harder than diamond.

John Adams Dollar Coins: First Significant Mint Error Found (Double Edge Lettering)

/ Adam Nash / 6 Comments

Well, I guess it was inevitable.

With all the press coverage and excitement around the George Washington Presidential Dollar Coin errors, you just knew that people would be all over the next dollar coin looking for problems. However, even I am a little shocked at exactly how voracious the coin collecting community has been tearing apart this new issue looking for problems.

The Coin Collecting News has some great information on what looks like the most significant error to be found on the John Adams dollar coins to date: a coin with double edge lettering.

As a reference, this article on About.com has over a dozen possible errors documented already! I’m going to reproduce the list here, just to give you an idea of the incredible detail available already:

Adams Dollar Errors Listing (Obverse):

  • Die clash – Traces of reverse show on obverse
  • Over-abraded die – lost detail (probably to repair die clashes)
  • Over-abraded die – “Severed Head,” right side of Adams’ neck
  • Struck through grease filled die – lost numbers & words in lower legend
  • Struck through grease filled die – random spots & smears
  • Small die chips – “Warts” and “Infected President” types

Adams Dollar Errors Listing (Reverse)

  • Die clash – Traces of obverse show on reverse
  • Over-abraded die – “Severed Head,” left side of Liberty’s neck
  • Over-abraded die (New Type!) – “Blinded Liberty” shows Liberty’s right eye polished flat
  • Struck through grease filled die – random spots & smears
  • Die crack in torch (New Type!) – “Broken Torch” type has moderate die crack
  • Minor die break – “Filled S” type (One or the other S in STATES, both reported)
  • Minor die break – “Extra Curl” has small die break in Liberty’s hair between curls

Adams Dollar Edge Errors & Whole Coin Errors

  • Unburnished planchet – Planchet missed polishing & brightening step
  • Double edge lettering – Coin went through edge lettering machine twice
  • Shifted edge lettering – Edge lettering doesn’t line up properly with other coins
  • Embossed letters – Improperly called “dropped letters” – appearing on edge and surfaces

An unbelievable list for a coin that is four days old!

Hopefully I’ll be getting my first mint boxes of coin rolls soon. I’ll be selling them again on eBay, along with some unopened rolls of George Washington dollar coins.

Update (5/24/2007): For a limited time only, I am now carrying unopened, original John Adams Presidential Dollar coin rolls in my eBay Store. Click here to buy them on eBay Express. I also have a few more original bank rolls of the George Washington dollar coins.  Click here to buy them on eBay Express.

If you are interested in the other rolls I am carrying, click here for all the coins I am currently selling on eBay Express.

Do You Know the Rule of 72? Project Future Returns in Your Head.

/ Adam Nash

I haven’t posted a lot about personal finance lately, and I’ve been meeting to get back on the horse soon.  In the meantime, this is a fun one for those of you who may not have heard it before.

When investing for a long term goal, like college or retirement, it’s often very useful to be able to quickly determine how long it will take to double your money.

Enter the Rule of 72.

Now, the Rule of 72 is shorthand, and not completely accurate.  But it’s accurate enough to be immensely useful.

The Rule of 72 says that if you divide 72 by the rate of return on an investment, you’ll get the number of years required for that investment to double.

So, if you find an investment that returns 8%, 72 / 8 = 9, so the investment will take 9 years to double.

I learned this rule about 15 years ago from my grandmother, and I’ve been using it for quick shorthand ever since.

For example, let’s say I want to know how much a $50K 401K might be worth over time.  Assuming an 8% rate of return, I can quickly determine that it will double in 9 years, quadruple in 18 years, octuple in 27 years, and be worth $800K in 36 years.

This also works, unfortunately, for loans, but in reverse.  If you take a student loan out at 7.2% for 10 years, well, you can expect to end up paying double what you borrowed in total.

I’ve also used this rule in business environments, especially when you are looking at compounding growth rates for business metrics like sales, revenue and costs.

Once again, the rule is really a shorthand, and not completely accurate.  Obviously, a 72% return doesn’t double in 1 year.   And a 1% return doesn’t double in 72 years.  However, it’s surprisingly accurate in the middle ranges, which apply to most situations.

This article in Get Rich Slowly has some variants that are fun. But for me, the basic Rule of 72 lets me quickly an easily assess what a return will really mean to an investment, in those rare moments when I’m away from Excel.

So enjoy this tidbit, and I’ll get to some meatier topics this week.

Blizzard Demos Starcraft 2 in Korea

/ Adam Nash / 1 Comment

When you play video games, you always remember the ones that absorbed huge blocks of time from your life. Starcraft was one of those games for me.

Well, it looks like the next great game from the company that brought us World of Warcraft will not be another Warcraft title or massively multiplayer game. Instead, they have taken the wraps off of a Starcraft sequel. The Starcraft 2 website is live!

For those of you who don’t play these types of games, Starcraft is a strategy game where you control armies of one of three species: Human, Zerg, or Protoss, and it’s a basic “mine, build & fight” kind of game. This one, however, was so well executed that it became the basis for professional competition in Korea, and a world-wide phenomenon.

The Blizzard games have inspired hundreds of copycat titles, but it’s an extremely hard problem to balance the design of the different races, units, resources, economics, technology and gameplay. In fact, it’s almost an impossible problem. Blizzard, however, does it better than anyone.

Here is a good write-up on the debut and press conference Q&A on GameSpot. Here is another one on Inside Mac Games.

Better yet… here is the CGI announcement trailer for the game, as debuted in Korea, on YouTube:

Here is a great video of the actual gameplay… notice again. Three key races (Terran, Zerg, Protoss) and a much better model of air/ground interaction.

Going back over 15 years, Blizzard has repeatedly demonstrated their ability to develop games that are outstanding in design and execution. What Pixar is to computer-animated film, Blizzard is to modern video games. As another hallmark of an exemplary shop, they deliver their titles for launch on both the Mac & PC simultaneously. You don’t see them complaining about time to market or cost. They know that a game of sufficient quality will pay for itself many times over, and with Blizzard’s track record, they always do.

I’m very excited to play this game, although I realize that in the modern Battle.net era, I will be hopelessly outclassed by other players before I even get the DVD home and installed 🙂

Update (5/22/2007): Nate has a post on this as well, and he found more great YouTube videos of the gameplay presentation.  I felt like I was getting a 20 minute tutorial on Protoss unit deployment.  Colossus!

LinkedIn: In the Black Party

/ Adam Nash / 3 Comments

In case you were wondering where I was last night, I had the chance to go up to San Francisco for the LinkedIn “In the Black” party, to help celebrate LinkedIn’s first year of profitability. The Web Strategist blog has some great coverage and photos.

What are the chances of a web startup making it? 5%? 2%? not very good for most? We should take a lesson from business networking tool LinkedIn.

LinkedIn celebrates over 14 months of profitability, which is an amazing feat for the thousands of web companies in Silicon Valley that sprout.

Check out the full post here.

For me, it was a chance to actually wear a suit and take Carolyn up the city – not something that happens every day with two little ones at home. There was a very warm feeling at the event – something about the LinkedIn culture is incredibly open, friendly and very human.

As a bonus we discovered several friends also at the event. The funniest introduction at the party was pre-school related – apparently being the father of Jacob Nash has its privileges. They were the parents of one of Jacob’s pre-school classmates, and I believe the direct quote was, “Jacob Nash is a really big deal in our household.” It’s possible that this is Jacob’s world, and I’m just living in it. 🙂

The food & wine was excellent, but my personal favorite of the evening was the chocolate. A wonderful table of extremely rich chocolates with exotic infusions like tea and grapefruit. Even a small exit gift of gorgeous truffles.

It was wonderful to be included, and a great night out. I can’t wait to get started next week.

Congratulations to the entire LinkedIn team.

Update (5/21/2007):  Two great posts on the event on the LinkedIn blog, and on Mario Sundar’s blog.  Check them out.

Nintendo Video Game History: For Sale on eBay This Week!

/ Adam Nash

Yes, I am shamelessly plugging my own listings. Deal with it.

I actually have 13 new listings up this week, and I thought it would be fun to highlight them because most of them are ghosts of video game consoles past like the mythic dungeons in world of warcraft! If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you can’t miss visiting this http://elitist-gaming.com/mythic-dungeons-boost/ and revive the old memories. Most were dug up by my father recently, who keeps discovering new things to sell in his endless supply of storage sheds.

This week, I have the following starting on Sunday at 5pm:

  • Nintendo 64, with Mario 64 & Rumble Pack
  • Lot of 10 Nintendo 64 Games
  • Super Nintendo, with two controllers (but no AC or Video Cable)
  • Original Nintendo, with Super Mario Bros.
  • … and other assorted goodies

Feel free to check out my new listings. And happy bidding! 🙂

The John Adams Presidential $1 Dollar Coin is Available

/ Adam Nash / 3 Comments

Big news today in the coin world… today, the Presidential $1 Dollar Coin series became, well, a series.

The US Mint is now selling rolls and bags of the new John Adams dollar coins.  I wrote a piece on the new coin a few weeks ago, if you’re interested in more detail.

There are already rolls of the new dollars available on eBay.  I personally am working to get a few boxes of the new coins, and will likely be selling them as well next week.  The US Mint is selling the rolls for $35.95 (25 coins), and the bags for $319.95 (100 coins). I’ll likely sell them for a few dollars less on eBay.  I’ve also come across some more George Washington dollar rolls – I’ll be selling those too.  Probably to people who didn’t realize that they’d only be available for a short time.

So far, there has been no report of any errors or issues with the John Adams dollar coins, but it’s still very early.  If there are legitimate errors, I’ll report them here on the blog.

The next big date in the Presidential Dollar Coin Program looks like June 19… that’s the date that the US Mint has given for announcing the different options for the 24K $5 gold pieces based on the “First Spouse” coins.

Update (5/24/2007): For a limited time only, I am now carrying unopened, original John Adams Presidential Dollar coin rolls in my eBay Store. Click here to buy them on eBay Express. If you are interested in the other rolls I am carrying, click here for all the coins I am currently selling.

StumbleUpon is a Real Traffic Driver

/ Adam Nash / 6 Comments

StumbleUpon is more powerful than I first thought.

In case you haven’t tried it, StumbleUpon is a fairly unique new tool to help browse the web. It’s a toolbar that you can easily download and install in your browser (IE or Firefox). With it, you can easily vote “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on any web page you go to, kind of like Tivo. As you vote for websites, StumbleUpon compares the sites you like to the sites that other people like. Then, when you click “Stumble!”, it automatically takes you to other websites, most likely ones you haven’t heard of, but that StumbleUpon thinks you’ll like.

My first impression of StumbleUpon as a user was positive – it very quickly started taking me to Mac-related sites, many of which I hadn’t heard of. It was neat, but since I rarely have time to just randomly browse the web, I didn’t use it much.

I didn’t give StumbleUpon much more thought, despite all of the eBay/StumbleUpon acquisition rumors, until today.

For the first time, this morning I decided to actually vote for my own blog, Psychohistory, with StumbleUpon. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Why not a little self-promotion?

Tonight, I checked my blog statistics, and the number one referring site to my blog today was… StumbleUpon. 29 hits out of 380 total. That might sound like a small number (it is), but I’m just shocked that a single vote could bring traffic to my blog.

Something real is going on here… reading the WordPress forums I see that a lot of blog authors are getting thousands of hits a day from StumbleUpon. If any of that is hitting my blog, then there must be a fairly significant flow sourcing from StumbleUpon users.

In any case, if you haven’t downloaded StumbleUpon yet, it’s worth checking out. And if you run a website, it’s worth thinking about how to best get people to vote for your site in StumbleUpon. This page on the StumbleUpon site helps you integrate their tags into your pages.

Click this link below to vote for this blog… 🙂

Stumble it!

The Time Has Come…

/ Adam Nash / 14 Comments

Friday, May 11th was my last day at eBay. I’ll be posting a bit more about my new role soon, but for now, I thought I’d just share the email that I sent out late Friday afternoon.

E veryone,
B efore I get into
A ll of the nitty-gritty details on how
Y ou can reach me, I just wanted to say a couple of things.

E bay has always been about people, and I feel
X tremely fortunate to have had four years here to learn and work with some of the best
P eople in the world. When I think back on everything I’ve done here, I
R ealize just how lucky I was to land that first product role on
E bay Verticals. Since then, I’ve had the chance to work with hundreds of passionate and
S mart people across dozens of teams and projects, and I’ve learned
S o much from every one of you. All I can say is thank you.

The time has come for me to take on a new role and a new adventure, but I have every confidence that you’re going to take eBay & eBay Express to incredible new levels in the coming months and years. You’ll find me actively cheering you on, as a shareholder and as an active community member, selling my way to that red star.

Please feel free to reach out to me and keep in touch. I truly believe that the most valuable things we create through our careers are relationships with people we respect & trust. In fact, that’s pretty much what I’m going to be focusing on. I will always have guilt-free M&Ms waiting.

My personal contact information:
Email: <…>
Skype: <…>
Cell: <…>
Web: http://www.adamnash.com
eBay: http://myworld.ebay.com/adamnash

And of course, if we haven’t already, please set up a profile and connect with me on LinkedIn.

Take care.
Adam

eBay is a wonderful company, filled with wonderful people, working to make life better for millions of people. I started selling on eBay in 1998, and joined the company in early 2003. I will truly miss it. However, I am also extremely excited about my new company, and the opportunity that lies ahead.

However, for the next two weeks, I am unemployed. A good time to reflect and enjoy time with family & friends before digging in on a new adventure.

Update (5/14/2007): I had no idea this post would be noticed by more than family & friends, but it has. Some very kind words from Randy Smythe can be found here.  It also was noticed on this thread on the eBay Stores board.

Update (5/15/2007): I am surprised at the attention, but Scot Wingo on eBay Strategies has also posted on the topic.

Fun With a Two Year Old

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

Being the parent of a two year old is a lot of fun. Jacob is extremely cute, and now that he has started talking, I find all sorts of simple pleasures in what he decides to say.

For example, my son is likely one of very few two year olds to clearly articulate when he wants to play Nintendo Wii, as he will say “Wii” and then run to the drawer where the Wii-motes are kept.

Jacob also is a huge fan of “Apple TV”, and will say so and then run to the bedroom waiting for us to play one of his favorite movies. We have about half of his favorites ripped to iTunes now, and he knows it.

Besides, it turns out that “Apple TV” is the combination of two things Jacob already knew how to say. “Apple” is his favorite snack and juice, and “TV” is unfortunately also a favorite of his.

Jacob’s vocabulary isn’t huge yet, although he does suprise us with full sentences now and again. Two year olds often love to repeat the same word or phrase over and over again. As a result, I’ve made up my own little game where I make up a joke around the phrase Jacob is repeating, and then he says the punchline.

Example:

Jacob: “Apple Juice. Apple Juice. Apple Juice.”

Adam: “Jacob, what do you call Mac-users who go to synagogue?”

Jacob: “Apple Jews”

🙂

Two year olds are fun!