BeforeProfit

Dear Nintendo,

We’ve been in a business relationship for quite a while now, and to be honest, I never used to have any complaints about my job. I mean sure, my line of work has never really been considered “easy” by any means, but in the early days it just felt so much more… rewarding.

Do you get what I’m saying guys? I wasn’t too fond of chasing a huge ape up a series of ladders, but with that fine-ass Pauline waiting for me, I didn’t mind. Same thing with running around Mushroom Kingdom, I don’t mind taking out a few Koopas since I know Peach is going to be waiting for me. (”At another castle”…God that joke gets so old)

But recently, you’ve been forcing me to do shit that just isn’t in my job description. I remember the first time Shigeru called me up. “Yo Mario, wanna go to a party? How about 8 of them?” And of course I said yes. That’s because my idea of a party is knockin back a few cold ones with some buds, some drinking games with the ladies, and maybe Superbad. But no, you twisted fucks’ idea of a party is to have me and all the assholes I hate run around in circles for twenty minutes. That’s not a party, that’s a track and field meet. Which brings me to my next point.

Have you seen my waistline in the last few years? I would assume not, because you’ve got me playing more sports than Michael Jordan. What on God’s green Earth gives you the slightest thought that I would make a good soccer player? Have you seen how long a fucking soccer field is? It’s rediculous. While we’re talking about rediculous things, whose bright idea was it for me to compete in Olympic events against Sonic of all people? He was about to retire anyways, but no Nintendo, you just had to bring him back and have him compete against me in track events. What were you thinking? He runs so fast you can’t see his fucking feet.

Finally, as I’m sure you’re all well aware, for most of my life, the enemies I have faced have all been relatively tame, being dispatched with a simple jump or three at the most. Now you want to take me and make me battle to the death against a man with a gun? I can punch him, he can shoot fucking bullets at me! You’re all assholes, I hate you.

Die in a Fire,
Mario

Via Seamantics.com (their site is currently down though.)

Since visiting Hawaii and going skydiving myself I can really appreciate the thrill of jumping out of a plane and freefalling for almost a minute. I guess that can get old though, and then you just need to step it up. And jump out of the plane without a parachute on. That’s what Travis Pastrana does anyway. It might be really dumb, but I’ll give him credit for having some huge balls.

What we saw today was the spark. The explosion will continue for twenty years. We will all feel the warmth.

What we saw today was the beginning of two-decades of mobile domination by Apple. What Microsoft and Windows was to the desktop, Apple and Touch will be to mobile.

And while mobile platforms have been around for a while, they never really gained passionate traction. Palm sorta had it for a while. Windows Mobile has been getting better. RIM is the current choice for business email on the go.

But just like there were a lot of players in the portable music space, there were no clear leaders. Until Apple came to town.

The same thing is happening today in the mobile space. Palm, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Symbian. They’ve been players, but no one has broken out big. No one has managed to grab both the business and consumer markets like Windows did on the desktop. Until Apple came to town. At least that’s my prediction.

Apple has the superior product, the big momentum, the cool, the lust, the business hooks, the consumer hooks, the customer experience, the interface, the design (interface and industrial), the smooth development environment, the vision.

And, maybe the secret key to it all, they have the commercial platform that makes it possible for a developer to actually sell, distribute, and update their software with the flip of a switch. And don’t forget the customer experience revolution — buying and it-just-works installation of iPhone software will be as one-click easy as buying music from the iTunes store. It’s all wrapped into one beautiful package. A package that only Apple can deliver.

This is brand new big shit. It all started today.

Via 37signals.

While I don’t quite agree with the 20 year part, I do feel like this is going to up the competition bar for a lot of other companies. With this SDK (Software Development Kit- Lets people make their own programs) release, Apple is now in the Business Enterprise market and will put even heavier competition on Blackberries. It dosn’t stop there though, Apple could now be a direct competitor for mobile gaming platforms. I feel like they could very easily turn into the wii of mobile gaming. Apple has a piece of hardware that has touchscreen, accelerometer, camera, microphone, stereo sound, hardware video acceleration, vibration and a keyboard - not much that you couldn’t make with that.

I’m very excited to see where this goes. And my regrets of going to the iPhone from my Blackberry Curve vanished back when they added IMAP e-mail support.

I need to get on a schedule and update this more often, as I know a few of you actually still check this site to see what’s been going on in my life.

As of late I’ve been busy. Very busy. The Photobooth Company has really been taking off, and I’m confident I can expand this into something really great. It has been far more work than I ever imagined. I even came into it with the idea that since it was just a weekend thing it would be cake to keep up with everything. I was wrong. Between figuring out taxes, keeping track of costs, developing a better booth, slowly building a website, researching how to go about bringing on extra help… It’s turned into way more of just a “weekend gig”. Which I think is good.

I’m also getting to the point where I’m starting to expand away from just doing weddings. I’ve got some really great ideas that can help nightclubs reach the prized myspace and facebook demographic. I’ll probably expand more on that idea in a later post, but I’m pretty excited about it.

It’s also a little funny to see people who thought a photobooth business was a weird idea that would never really turn into a full fledged serious company, start to realize I might have a pretty legit thing going after all.

Oh! And I recently jumped out of a plane in Hawaii… that was pretty fun.

“There’s only three things I’ve ever been afraid of: electricity, heights, and women. And I’m married, too.”

Basically this guy flies around on helicopters and repairs high voltage power lines!

Just read this article about a guy that has been buying and selling wii’s PS3’s and iPhones to make a profit. I really see no problem with it as he is doing nothing illegal, and is just taking advantage of the free market pricing. Others seem to disagree quite strongly.

I picked them up day of and listed them. By the end of the auctions I had made nearly 1000 dollar in excess of my own PS3 purchase. I ended up listing my own machine as well, as the demand was insane. All told, I cleared nearly 2000 dollars in profit. I still haven’t bought a PS3 actually.

I received death threats, e-mails from people saying I was “a monster” and someone claiming I was “selling her child’s Christmas away!” Someone even went so far as to contact Ebay and claim I was selling porn. People were livid at the profit being made.

Read the rest of the story here.

In other news, I’ve finally got my house re-arranged for the winter. The bed is once again coming back into the living room due to heating issues. I’ve got this wonderful heater in the floor that dosn’t do a very good job of distributing the mass amount of heat it puts out. It’s also incredibly difficult to re-light the pilot light on it.

Here’s some pictures of the new room setup.

The TV is over where the bed was last year. Also notice the sweet speaker stands that took forever to build.

Thought this was kinda cool… It’s neat to see when artists move into a genera that its totally different than what they normally do. In this case Travis Barker adding some drums to the stupidly popular Soulja Boy song.

So things here might be pretty quite for awhile…

Not to fear though! Just hop over to my new Photobooth Company website.. I’ve got a blog going over there as well. Might not be as outlandish at times as this blog, but I just don’t have much free time lately.

Maybe I’ll just set up cross posting.. maybe not…

Either way check out the other site and add it to your feed if that’s that sorta thing you’re into.

And I promise that the above picture will be the last or close to last picture of a cat posted on this site.

Also really into the new Jay-Z CD American Gangster….