NYC June 2007

My first trip to New York City. My reaction: Wow! I had great hosts, great times, and I can’t wait to go back. Could one ask for any more? Well, maybe for more time to do all the things that I didn’t have time to do. I stayed most of the time with my friend Kemp, who made it her personal mission to show me all the greatest nooks and crannies of NYC. On the last night I stayed with my other gracious host, Heather, who cooks up some amazing cuisine even at 1am. I did so many little things that by day two I was already having trouble remembering what all we had done so far, so I started keeping a bulleted list of experiences. If you would care to peruse the list, click the link below and read on. If you want to see the photo gallery, click here or the photo on the left.

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In the recent CBS News article titled U.S. Working To Sabotage Iran Nuke Program, the author notes the following:

Sources familiar with the U.S. effort against Iran tell CBS News that U.S. intelligence agencies have run several programs in recent years, employing different techniques, including modifying components in hard-to-detect ways and making subtle changes to technical documents and drawings, rendering them useless.

as well as:

It’s impossible to say the extent to which Iran has discovered any industrial espionage. Any technical problems that Iran experiences in its program, some of which were the result of its own speed-up effort, Iran may attribute to foreign espionage.

Well, I guess it’s a good thing that Iranian Intelligence personnel don’t read CBS News or else, gosh, I guess they’d know what’s up. I am somewhat dumbfounded by the strange sense of — for lack of a better term — “observer disconnect” represented here, when in fact the observer is not disconnected. Does anyone else share my bewilderment at the paradox of an American news source saying point blank “America is sabotaging Iran’s nuclear program, but Iran doesn’t really know that yet.”?? It’s things like this that make me say, “dude, wtf?”

After giving it some thought I believe I would be misreading the video resume publicity success to think that I should start some business akin to a service aimed at helping people create better video resumes of their own. No, no, no. I believe said success is based on other things, besides fortunate timing, like apparently I did a decent job at acting on film. Evidently I have decent skills at creating a video that people find attractive. A movie star? Hardly. But, hey, maybe it would be fun and worthwhile to do some film acting on the side while I build my software empire. Mom has been suggesting for years that I should do it, and Mom has an uncanny track record for being right. Perhaps I should do commercial shoots that pay real, actual, non-Monopoly money… if anyone has any information (read: tips, advice, thumbs up, thumbs down) that would assist me in looking further into being America’s next top probably-not-quite-top model, please leave comments or send me an email.

…for every time my resume video was viewed, I’d be a millionaire! Okay, maybe not. But I do find a certain amount of comedy in how many people seem interested in it — simply because I never intended for the public to find it. I get a couple messages a week from people all over the world interested in posting it on their blog or featuring it on a website. Here’s an example of a very nice fellow from Australia who kindly asked to feature it on his site the other day. You would think that my entrepreneurial alarms would be going off, telling me to take this minor success and turn it into cashflow. I wonder what the success here is really attributed to.

The conversation was about pizza. It was a couple weeks ago that I was talking with my Grandpa Marty on the phone, and asking him if the pizza my parents brought to him at the hospital had pepperoni on it. After a long pause it was apparent to me that one of the most intelligent people I’ve known did not understand the word “pepperoni”. It was sobering. And it was at that point I knew this would likely be my last conversation with him. The lymphoma that he had miraculously beaten into remission so many times before had finally—— I told him how much I loved him… and said goodbye. It is a very strange and unique set of feelings when you say goodbye to someone, knowing the likelihood that it will be the last time—— he turned ninety-two on April 18th, the day before I turned thirty. I should only be so fortunate as to live to see myself in the mirror at ninety-two, and live a life as full and wonderful and upstanding and altruistic as his. He was a role model through and though. I’ll never forget how at age eighty-six he wanted to learn how to use a computer, so he purchased an old PC and taught himself how to use it from the ground up, starting with the MS-DOS command prompt. I’ve never known a person at that age to be so mentally sharp, and curious, as to pick up something so complex and difficult and foreign with such a determination and a want to understand it. That was just the man he was: curious, intelligent, loving, honest, kind, altruistic, peaceful, and humble. Grandpa Marty passed away yesterday morning, May 5th, 2007. God rest his soul. I love you, Grandpa.

Evidently video resumes are suddenly all the rage in the press, and they keep finding the one I posted last year and calling me for interviews. No complaints here. Francesca Di Meglio, a reporter for BusinessWeek magazine, is the latest to call and was even kind enough plug Real Nice Software. Here is a link to the online article for your reading pleasure, and an excerpt from the part where she mentions me:

One of the résumés on YouTube belongs to Allen Ulbricht, a 2003 graduate of Georgia Tech’s undergraduate management program, whose video has him dressed in business casual attire and responding—as naturally as possible—to likely questions for a Web 2.0 gig to which he was applying in December, 2006.

Now the owner of Real Nice Software, which creates custom software for small businesses, Ulbricht says he pulled himself out of the running for the job but is sure his video, an adjunct to his traditional online résumé, would have given him a leg up on the competition. Video will become an expected part of the job application, says Ulbricht, even if it will never replace traditional, written résumés.

…now if I could only find a way to make millions with my new found fame. What fame, you ask? I am featured in an article on video resumes which can be found in the Money section of today’s USA Today newspaper (Wednesday, April 25th, 2007). You can also find the article online by clicking on this link. I’ll be signing autographs after the show.

My first blog post, entitled “I’m famous!“, references an NPR story on video resumes, which listed mine in their top ten. I had posted a video resume to YouTube back in December ‘06 that was not meant for anyone to see except the employer I was trying to woo. But since then thousands of people have viewed it and several media reporters have contacted me for interviews about it, from UWire magazine to USA Today newspaper. The latest interview (and subsequent photo session!) was with the aforementioned USA Today, and it was quite enjoyable working with those folks. The author, Jim Hopkins, was even nice enough to plug Real Nice Software, LLC for me in the article. This whole video resume thing is really taking off! I should start a business with it… perhaps video resume consulting. “I will show *YOU* how to make a great video resume. Don’t wait! Call today!”

An article in the People’s Daily Online (note: Chinese news) ran the headline: Iranian official lashes out at Hollywood movie “300″ for insulting Persian civilization. I get a mental image of the scene in 300 where the Iranian Persian emissary with the big whip gets his hand lopped off (and then talks about arrows blotting out the sun, about one minute into the trailer). The article goes on to talk about the new movie as being “part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological war aimed at Iranian culture.” That makes me smirk for many reasons, namely:

1) Said Iranian official gives Hollywood waaaay too much credit if he thinks there is some conspiracy with the U.S. government to defame the Iranian culture. One would not exactly describe Hollywood’s relationship with our government leaders as a love affair. Besides, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is doing a way better job of defaming Iran than Hollywood ever possibly could.

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My friend David Felfoldi recently sent me a link to Ning, which, evidently, is the white board of social networking sites. This site serves to prove (as if there were any doubt) that the phenomenon of social networking sites (SNSs), as a genre, has reached the saturation point. No mas! As an investor, I would be steering my money away from SNSs in general. However, what does pique my entrepreneurial curiosity, and gets the old gears squeaking, is predicting what the next revolution of social networking on the Internet will look like. Thoughts?

I would love to hear what you think so far of a song I am writing and recording. Download the mp3 here and feel free to leave public comments or send me a private message – any constructive criticism is wanted and welcomed.

As you may or may not already know, I have been playing the guitar, writing & recording music for about twelve years now. Most of my work hitherto has been acoustic guitar stuff akin to Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket fame. I am also handy with an electric guitar and bass, and have more recently begun writing songs in the modern rock genre. My interest in audio engineering has been a long, slow progression – as I have come to find that the fine art of recording and mixing music is actually incredibly difficult to master (pun intended). Recently I’ve been working on writing and recording a new song that I have entitled Pwnd, stemming from my geek roots as a casual player of the game World of Warcraft. No vocals tracks have been recorded yet, so it’s just music as of now. Also, it has not been mixed yet so the sound is still raw. But please check out the “in progress” demo track, and give me your feedback on it.