Recent Journeys

I recently returned from a journey which yielded a vast number of new experiences and enlightenments.

In the days and weeks leading up to my departure, I immersed myself in financial news, succumbing to ever-present talking pundits and info feeds of cable news and the internet.  

My recent journey served as a wonderful release from these info dependency and allowed me to see first hand some of the financial environments of various places around the country.

I traveled to the poorest place I've ever been in the United States (Jackson, MS) and some of the richest (Beverly Hills, Bel Air, etc.).  

Jackson is an interesting place in that the city is absolutely decimated by poverty, yet has wealthy areas.  Instead of pursuing legitimate economic growth to alleviate this blight, the young demographics with opportunity pursue careers of either medicine or law.  It is a place which epitomizes the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Why do our current economic systems seem to always yield this result?  Poverty is very real, and yields destruction upon everyone.  Why do the people with opportunity simply pursue their own prosperity, rather than the prosperity of society?

Final Jeopardy

Category: The Emmy Awards

Answer: A former screen actors guild president, he's the only actor to win both comedy and drama emmys for playing the same character.

My Guess: Grammar

Response: Ed Asner

Running

I'm a Yelper

In exploring new ways to use my iPhone, I've started to become an avid business reviewer on Yelp.com

Here is a map of the reviews I've done.

Recent reviews by Austin J.

What's this?

Running

I downloaded a cool new app on my iPhone called iMapMyRun which will keep run logs and analytics for me.

Here is map of the first run I did with it.

Jessica and I ran around a lake in San Diego.

Final Jeopardy

Category: Award Namesakes

Answer: His "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book" of 1744 was one of the 1st books published specifically for children.

My Response:  Franklin (wrong)

Correct Response: Newberry

The Immediacy of Bad Decision

Have you ever made a decision, acted upon it, only to immediately realize it was a bad decision?

I've done this a few times.  Here are a couple examples of what I mean - 

• I recently made the decision to purchase "Meet the Spartans" on demand.  As soon as it was too late to change my mind, I realized I would be wasting the next 90 minutes of life.
• I went on a date with a girl I met online once.  She seemed eager to meet me, so I didn't vet her through rigorous IM conversations and text messages.  Immediately upon seeing her, I realized she had egregiously misrepresented herself.  I sought a dating exit strategy for the next hour.

I think our economy had one of those moments today.  Despite unprecedented public resistance, the Bush Administration and Congress passed a bailout measure that was supposed to save the day.  However, immediately after the applause ceased, the sell orders started pouring in on Wall Street.  On the Dow, a 250 point gain turned into a 160 point loss, after the bailout decision.

It is peculiar how once faced with the immediate reality of a decision, its true repercussions become infinitely clearer.  

Our economic situation is now as dire as ever.  As soon as Wall Street street was appeased, they were making more bailout demands.  The black hole of debt our society is built around was just fed $800 billion.

Perhaps the smartest thing I heard today is that the economy needs to bottom out, as fast as possible.

Entrepreneurial Objective

Boulder has a very strong tech entrepreneurial scene.  Through my connection into this tech savvy culture, I come across a myriad of neat new widgets, web applications, effectiveness tools, and such. 

This stream of information creates a stark contrast to another culture I am well connected in.  Having attended a southern liberal arts university, I have many future success-story friends who couldn't be less connected to the emerging web application scene.  These are lawyers, doctors, financiers, etc. who don't read any blogs, have one email account, are just getting used to texting, and are very reluctant to adopt new technologies.

I am realizing that as a young entrepreneur, a significant factor in determining my own success will be my ability to take the new technology from the tech-savvy crowd, and implement it for the success-story crowd.  

The vast majority of the concepts that I see are ways to make the tech-savvy guy "techier".  My objective is to create technology which makes the success-story guy more successful.