It doesn’t work.

Yes, the new Virgin Mobile Broadband in the United States using the Novatel MC760 USB EVDO dongle..doesn’t work.

Their web site says you have to activate on a PC but then you can use it on a Mac.  This is false.  Once installed on your Mac, the drivers DO NOT recognize the MC760 and therefore it is unusable.

What a massive total failure by Virgin Mobile.

Last night Sheena and I stayed at the Elephant Walk B&B in Stillwater, MN. I’m not a hotel reviewer so I’ll keep it short and sweet. I highly, highly, recommend this B&B to anyone, especially people in Minneapolis or St. Paul who need to get away from noise for a little while. Stillwater is only 30 minutes from Minneapolis, but as long as you shut your cell phones off (like we did) you feel like you’re much farther away. The Elephant walk was clean, comfortable, and quiet. Having eaten our faces off the day before we almost skipped breakfast, but when I told Rita, the owner, that we were going to skip breakfast she convinced me to stay. Had we skipped it, we would have missed out on the best part of the whole stay. First fresh pineapple, then stuffed french toast with fresh fruit and a fantastic spinach and asiago cheese sausage, then a baked pear in a carmelized sort of creme anglaise. The breakfast was absolutely fantastic. We also got to spend some time with Rita and another interesting couple and have some good conversation before heading out.

The house is beautiful and is chock full of treasures mainly from southeast Asia but other parts of the world as well. I will confess that from the web site I thought the house and the rooms would be very “kitchy”. I was actually completely wrong, everything is beautiful and unique.

From Minneapolis you could easily leave around 3 to beat the traffic, enjoy dinner in Stillwater, stay at the Elephant Walk, have a fantastic breakfast and be back the next day by noon at the latest. Life is short, if you’re not taking time to do things like this you’re Doing It Wrong.

Just in time for Sunday morning. Pancakes are one of the most deceptively complex things to get right. These are phenomenal.

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup sour cream
2 eggs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Whisk the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda together in a medium bowl.

2. In another medium bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, eggs, sour cream, butter, and vanilla extract.

3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Mix them just enough to combine completely, but not too much, and don’t whisk out all the lumps.

4. Let batter sit for 10-12 minutes before cooking.

5. Grill on a lightly oiled skillet for about 1 minute per side, flipping once.

You are stupid. And this is an open letter to you and all the stupid people on twitter who don’t understand the most fundamental aspect of it: you choose who you follow and don’t follow.

The other day, Heidi Golff (your picture is so witty and cute with your golff clubs), when you used TwitThis to tweet about an article, you elected to follow me because I was the suggested user at the time. You specifically chose to put a check mark next to my avatar to follow me.

The today, much to my suprise, I see this tweet from you:

@ddn I am so sick and tired of your spamming me; I can’t wait to unfollow you. What a pain!!

And going to your Twitter page I see:

ddn is a royal pain in the you-know-what. if you follow him you get spammed like crazy in your cell phone.

So let me get this straight. You follow me by choice. Then I go on my merry way tweeting about things that are interesting to me or going on in my life, and suddenly I am a spammer pain in your ass?

• You followed me.
• You can unfollow at ANY time. You don’t have to “wait”.
• I’m very real, and don’t spam anything.
• You choose to have your tweets sent to your cell phone.

What in your right mind possessed you to take the time out of your day to write TWO tweets about what a pain I am, when it would take you less than a click to unfollow me.

Congratulations on being incredibly stupid. Shouldn’t surprise me you’re in real estate.

On a hunch I went looking for some IRC stats:

Sure enough, IRC usage is on a downard trend. So where have people gone? Facebook? Twitter? Other networks? I don’t see any of the “new” things replacing IRC for instant mass-communication..but yet it does seem that people have gone away.

Everyone wants a guide to get rich online. Here is a 5-step guide, with approximately how much time you should spend on each.

• 1. Pick a topic or niche and create a site about it. It doesn’t matter what it is. - 1%
• 2. Create a little bit of content. - 5%
• 3. Use twitter, forums, link building, email and the telephone to connect with and build your community one user at a time. - 90%
• 4. Create a little more content, and leverage your community that you have built to create more. - 4%
• 5. Get rich.

You can thank me later.

I have been developing and testing the new 1-Click AdWords campaign builder for ShoeMoney Tools. I’ve created hundreds of test campaigns.

Oops. Got some clicks on my fake ads. Just goes to show how powerful AdWords can be with good keyword and ad grouping and targeting.

Over the past 3-4 years I’ve pretty much ordered a case of Illy coffee from Whole Latte Love every 6 months. They always send super nice email newsletters and sale notices and there is always, always some sort of discount code. Recently I found a Minneapolis coffee roaster that the Illy beans just can’t compete with.

Anyway, the steam wand on my espresso machine started leaking a bit a few days ago. Without taking it apart, I figured there was a gasket that just needed to be replaced. I called WLL. Their IVR system was quick and minimal, press 1 for sales, press 1 for residential. I was connected to a person in less than 10 seconds. Wow. The sales person wasn’t personally familiar with my Pasquini Livia machine so he transferred me to the technical team. I was put on hold for maybe 2 minutes, but the call system let me know exactly how many people were waiting (2) and when I moved up the line.

When the tech rep answered, he explained that it was probably a bushing and a spring, and there wasn’t a gasket. He suggested taking it apart and checking it, cleaning it, and tightening it up before ordering any replacement parts.

Wow.

This company GETS IT.

I have 63 username/password entries in info.xhead. How is one supposed to remember 50+ logins to different sites? And those are only the ones I have to write down because for whatever reason they wouldn’t let me use my usual username/password combinations.

Anyway I couldn’t live without info.xhead.

Since I got my Polar HRM I have been fascinated with HR during exercise and resting heart rate. Curious, I wore my HRM to bed last night.

The most interesting thing to me is the ramp up from 63bpm at 7:21am to 83bpm at 9:20am. Each step represents 1bpm over 5 minutes. Incidentally, I woke up at 9:20am. I really don’t know what it means, but I am fascinated by it and I will probably be doing more. I’m curious what HR during sleeping time looks like post-exercise.

Click for bigger version: