I always knew Calvin Ayre was a badass. Ever since I heard that he essentially couldn’t set foot on US soil because of Bodog I knew he was a hardcore badass. Today he made this post which confirms it. Calvin Ayre is officially one of my heroes. Here’s a quote, one of Calvins ideas for being more “green”:

Ensure my maid service turns off the A/C in my Antigua pad when I’m away.

You know what that says? Fuck You. Thats what that says. How about this:

Make sure that I’ve always got at least two Bodog Girls in the car with me at all times. (Ha! That puts me in the carpool lane.)

The best part is, I’m sure that other than his Hummer, none of his cars have more than TWO seats. What does that mean?

Or how about this exchange on ABC News:

MARTIN BASHIR: Do you pay personal tax in Costa Rica?

CALVIN AYRE: In Costa Rica? Personal income tax? We’re going to not talk about my personal tax structure. That’s another area that –

MARTIN BASHIR: So I’ll assume you don’t.

CALVIN AYRE: Pardon?

MARTIN BASHIR: I’ll assume you don’t.

CALVIN AYRE: We’re just not going to talk about my personal financial situation. I will talk about what I do from a corporate perspective, though.

How fucking fantastic is that?

So Calvin, lets meets up in Rome some time, I’ll show you around.

As of Monday, our friends at SEOmoz have officially gone carbon neutral.. I’m so impressed by this and relieved to know that companies in the SEO community are doing good too!

Let’s see some fun facts from the SEOmoz blog:

* 73.7% of SEOmoz’ carbon emissions are the result of air travel! Jeez, all of those conferences add up!
* Our office energy consumption is surprisingly low. We’re virtually paperless around here and try to be really good about turning off lights and monitors at night (also, almost all of our light bulbs are compact fluorescents).

That’s cute!

The comments over on the thread are fantastic too. While “pro-carbon-neutral” comments are “based in scientific fact” any comment that is anti-global warming or anti-carbon-neutral are “political in nature” and are deleted as such. “Stow the negativity mannnn.”

Carbon neutrality companies are the biggest scam since Amway. They are convincing people to GIVE money to absolve their carbon-producing sins. Like SEOmoz’s enormous donation of $340 is going to do anything to offset the amount of pollution their whole company produces. I’m sure they produce enough pollution just making their lattes. In case it wasn’t clear I want to repeat. With carbon offsetting, you can produce as much carbon pollution as you want (Rand flying to a minimum of 7 conferences by my count) but since you’ve made a token donation that MIGHT have some indirect effect on pollution somewhere, you are free from any guilt. As soon as I finish this post I am going to make a $48.99 donation to cover the pollution my behemoth H2 produces. That way next time someone says something to me about it, I can smartly tell them that I produce less pollution than they do because my H2 Hummer is carbon neutral.

P.S. I’m going to use TerraPass so that I can get the “Fun!” recycled plastic bag dispenser. Reuse is fun now! I wonder how much carbon UPS will dump into the atmosphere to deliver my package of my “Carbon Free” certificate, CFL, and Fun! plastic bag dispenser.

A lot of people have asked Shoemoney and I what our process is for building things. Usually these are the same people who have been in the planning stages of their idea for the past 2-3 years. They wonder if we draw up a sketch of how things are going to look, or if we write a specification out before starting development. This is how a recent site build came together.

9/27/07 11:00pm:

Shoemoney
ok so i got a idea its a 30 second idea
10:54
» belowabuck.com
10:54
» people can search and it returns ebay auctions under $1
10:54
» from time ending
10:54
David
hehe thats kinda cool
10:54
Shoemoney
so u go there and are like “headphones”
10:55
» boom results for headphones under 1$
10:55
David
an ebay affil site
10:55
Shoemoney
yea

9/27/07 11:14pm:

Grab a similar piece of code and start retrieving eBay items that are <$1. First concern is to see how many get turned out. Things have to take a different direction if its 30 or 3M.

9/27/07 11:23pm:

OK, getting good data now lets refine it a little more. Since the eBay API won’t allow a search on only criteria, without a keyword, we’ll need to grab a bunch of different result sets and then group them together.

9/27/07 11:40pm:

Got enough data to produce good results. Pause to go out for drinks.

9/28/07 1:30pm:

Registered domain, configured apache, moved code from development site to live area.

9/28/07 2:00pm:

Send off Skitch layout to designers and wait patiently.

10/15/07 11:30am:

Finally have design/layout/CSS in hand. Integrate code into design.

10/15/07 1:00pm:

Finishing touches. Site is done.

So as you can see, we spend most of our time waiting around for other people. Its not uncommon for us to have 2-3 projects waiting for someone to finish a bit we need. And there you have BelowaBuck.com.

My friend Todd made a post about his rockstar lifestyle. I’m sorry buddy, but that’s what happens when you get married.

This was my weekend:

• Friday afternoon fly in to Minneapolis on the Shoemoney jet.
• Happy-hour with potential client. Have a few drinks.
• Friend calls, in the unenviable predicament of having a date who was bringing a friend and no wingman.
• Dinner with friend in need of wingman, and ladies. Hardly a chore.
• Time to hit the bars.
• What’s this? An after-bar? Can I make it? Damn right, I’ll be on the next flight.
• After-bar goes to 5am. Find ride home. Crash hard.
• Wake up around noon, watch some college football.
• Minnesota Gophers succeed in giving up a sure-win.
• Make quick run to mall for essentials.
• Disco nap.
• Dinner with friends.
• First stop is a bar to see a friend who’s bartending.
• Next stop another bar for a friend’s birthday.
• Another bar.
• Back to first bar
• After-bar at my house. No idea when this ended.
• Sleep.
• Wake up around 12:30 to see the Vikings actually keeping up with the bears.
• Head to Uptown to meet some friends to watch the rest of the game and get some brunch.
• Home to watch the Wild beat Anaheim.
• Sit around with friends and smoke hookah (tobacco, you criminals) that my buddy brought back from Iraq.
• Wild win, watch the rest of Seattle crumble before the Saints.
• Make a quick blog post pointing out how great it is to be 23 and NOT married.

So, thats how we roll.

I’ve talked to IncrediBILL at a few conferences and he’s always raving about his anti-scraper tools. He’s been talking about about his ultra-anti-scraper technology. I was always skeptical of something scraper-proof. I finally found a site using his technology, and I have to say it is definitely scraper proof. Check out this screenshot in Firefox with Outline All Images enabled: