Carl Setzer

Social media is a powerful marketing tool, but it's about engagement & connection. It is only as effective as the effort, as the amount and qualify of work you put in.

Joyously brutal Sinister satisfaction Crushing all delight

Laying upon my couch this lovely sick day, Twitter has been a dear friend (autocorrect changed "sick" to "suck"; might be something there). Yet, there's a tyranny present. I grab my tablet to look up self-publishing options (Kobo vs. Amazon). Then I came back to myself some time later, trying to remember what I was doing. Just one tweet popped up, and my mind was gone. So, exploring those options, I struggle. Amazon has a larger audience. However, do I want to align myself with them? What are my expectations of a company? I interviewed with Amazon a few years ago, plus I did several projects with them back in the mid-90s. So clearly I find then tolerable. Yet, they are getting gargantuan, which I suggested find concerning. Writing-wise, at this point I'm planning on assembling a collection of my poetry. It's been requested of me, and it sounds rewarding. Plus, I've been meaning to put side short-stories out, too. So I think this would be an interes...

I SO want to be able to do this: The amount of fitness growth needed is hard to imagine. But, hey, who knows? I think it's doable, just whether I have the gumption to pull it off. Still, I find it inspiring.

I consider myself a western Washingtonian, even though Mr. Ron Rudd might not. "If you weren’t born in Seattle or the Northwest, you’ll never be one of us." Though born in Rhode Island, my parents were born in Washington, as were all my grandparents. My father and his mother were  born in Seattle. Next: my parents met at UW. And I was supposed to be born in Seattle, but my timetable was a bit off-kilter. The family was in Rhode Island as my father attended the War College . So, I guess if I must be disqualified from "one of us" status, I'll accept the consequences of my father's service with pride. Deeper: why do I consider this place "home"? Well, the biggest reason was that we always called it home. Flying out to Seattle was always "going home to visit grandma" (sorry grandpa, but it was always "to visit grandma". Lastly, this is the place we moved when my dad decided to retire from the Navy. And where I've live...

I've noticed over the past few days that Chrome became boggy and SLOOOOW. There are things I love about Chrome, but it's propensity to hogging resources and, thus, degrading my machine's performance have long bugged me. Being deeply enmeshed within the Google ecosystem might play a big part in that. But, the more I think about things, the more I'm concerned about my personal trend towards the Chrome/Google system. I highly value the Open Source community and what they bring to the table. Even though I've worked for several large corporations, I really appreciate all that this community brings to the world. It's more than simply free software, but also open standards. To me, it's critical that corporations cannot lock out access to our data. So, utilizing open standards is critical. With that, though, I look at tools such as Gimp , Open Office , and Scibus and see so much potential. For, say, image editing, wouldn't it prove better to the world that ...

I just received an recruiting email, where the writer found me via my long neglected Indeed.com resume. It got me thinking about all the sites I've used over the years, that I've eventually abandoned, or at least dropped into neglect. Profiles on Monster, Indeed, NWJobs, MySpace...what do these say about me? To the recruiter emailing me about positions at Microsoft, what is there expectation of who I am, and would any elements of my current reality match? On a somewhat related note, Om Malik recently posted You've Go (No) Mail . He talks about the sense of loss accompanying the ending of his Gigaom email. I've felt these twinges in the past, with the suspending of my Starbucks and Microsoft emails. But those were different at an elemental level. Regardless of my emotional connections to those institutions, I didn't found them. They didn't hold my name, they never represented me at the same level. The closest I could imagine is with this site, and the email ass...

"Thought not found, neural pathway non-existent and/or corrupt. Rebooting to last known safe condition." One way I look at my migraines. It's not the pain that's the worst. For me, that would be the "grey fuzzies", the unfocused blurring of my mind. That blends with the ringing/hum that fills my senses. This inability to think is what distresses me the most. Fortunately, my life only dives into this realm on rare occasions. And this trip is about done. Time to drift of to sleep.

Is it spring back/fall forward? Something like that I guess. Anyway, it's time again for one of our great wastes of time: the semi-annual changing of the clocks around daylight savings time. So, my chums, do remember to adjust your clocks appropriately so that you're in sync (not the band) with everyone else. And think about the lost hour while your whiling away your Saturday evening. The wee hours of the morn are a bit more wee than last weekend.

Later today I'll be giving a lift to one of the teens at my taekwondo studio , and tomorrow to one of my son's friends for a rugby game. I'm often pinged for last minute rides, sometimes that involve a fair amount of driving. A few friends question why I make myself that accessible for such, "am I just being a sucker"? The short answer is "no". One of the things that I deeply value is helping people connect with their passions. The thought of someone not being able to participate in a passion out of a simple transportation issue bothers me greatly. Well, sometimes the easiest way to assist with that is simply facilitating presence. If my gift of a few minutes of driving helps connect someone to their passion, then it's a glorious investment in the communities that I love.

A few years ago, my weight crept past 220 lbs. With clothes tight, belts tighter to the point of needing replacement, I felt fear. In my mid-40s, all the diseases associated with obesity stared me coldly in the eye. Even more frightening, I noticed a few people, slightly older than me, with major mobility issues. All that lead to a call to get healthy. Now I didn't race for the nearest cross-fit course. I just added back some things I love: cycling and walking, also attacking some dietary "low hanging fruit" (limit soda, cut back on sweets, smaller portions) and ten pounds dropped quickly. But each additional drop presents challenges. So I adopted several smartphone tools, the main one now being MyFitnessPal. And I keep looking for better tools. About 6 months back, I noticed my wife's Fitbit laying unused and asked to try it out. I hated the thing! It displayed, in great detail, my sedentary life. So, I parked the thing. Then, around New Year's, my fallow accou...

Most of my life I've loathed shoes. Remembering Jeremy Irons' priest in The Mission walking barefoot into the jungle, something about his barefootedness struck me. Immense humility, a comfort with a deliberate choice of poverty, and, most powerful to me, a direct connection to the earth. Those comprise elements I've tried to interweave throughout my life, with varying success. Yet they reflect my deepest values. Consider the time I spent trying to minister to the needs of Seattle's street people, though my shoes remained on. I tried to adopt a life of focused poverty, to mixed success. The fact it was a choice, on my part, isolated me. I deeply felt myself to be a interloper, though not by any action of unwelcome. But my simple ignorance of their life, of the basics of survival within that world, eventually proved too strong a barrier. I still deeply believe in voluntary simplicity. The world cannot support all humanity with the West's level of affluence. Backing ...