Brad Wardell's Blog

Personal Pages on WinCustomize.com

Published on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 By Brad Wardell In Community

Here's a preliminary list of personal pages on WinCustomize.com. I am creating this article from my articles tab on WinCustomize.com (frogboy.wincustomize.com). Such articles also get syndicated over to JoeUser.com. And in fact, articles that are of the category "Politics" get syndicated to JoeUser.com and PoliticalMachine.com. Articles on gaming would get syndicated to JoeUser.com and TotalGaming.net.

Right now, only WinCustomize subscribers ($20 for 2 years) can get personal pages. That will soon change to be people who also have apprentice access and up. The WC2K5 personal pages are kind of like "super blogs" in that you get more than just a personal page for writing articles/journals/blogs but also several other tabs for uploading images, skins, themes, personal profiles, etc. You can see mine at http://frogboy.wincustomize.com.

Here's the full list:

To subscribe to WinCustomize.com, go to https://www.wincustomize.com and click on the store tab.

WinCustomize popularity over time

Published on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 By Brad Wardell In WindowBlinds

For fun I used Archive.org to look at the daily downloads of the top 5 WindowBlinds skins from 2002 and compared them with where they are today:

WindowBlinds	Sep-02	Sep-04
1st	1480	1876
2nd	1407	1592
3rd	815	1233
4th	466	865
5th	403	734
Total	4571	6300

So the good news is that WindowBlinds skins seem to be getting more and more popular over time showing that third party Windows customization continues to grow as a trend.

WinCustomize Personal Site List

Published on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 By Brad Wardell In WinCustomize News

Next Monday, those users with Master Apprentice access and up will be able to create their own personal pages here on WinCustomize along with subscribers. Here is a recent list of personal pages you can already check out:

Stardock positions available...

Published on Tuesday, September 28, 2004 By Brad Wardell In WinCustomize News

For a list of what jobs Stardock is hiring for click the link below...

Stardock Positions available

Published on Tuesday, September 28, 2004 By Brad Wardell In Work Reports

Stardock is a pretty fun place to work at. That's probably why our turnover is so low. In fact, I'd say much of our success rests on the fact that we have such low turn over. And our rapid growth has created all kinds of opportunities that we haven't had before.

Stardock is located on south eastern Michigan. The weather is very pleasant here in this part of the state most of the year with Winters being well..wintery but not brutally cold. It's pretty hard to compete with Michigan weather in the Spring/Summer/Fall where it's beautiful and not too hot or too cold most of the time. This Winter, we'll be moving to a brand new buiding that we're very excited about because it is in such a great location, very nice environment, and whose interior we have collectively, as a team, designed.

So what positions are available presently?

Position	Description	When
Media Relations Laison	Someone who will help write media guides, press releases, mini-releases, news items, and work with our PR people to help ensure they get out there. Also would help write documentation.	Now
Senior 3D Modeler	Someone with several years of serious industry experience in creating 3D models for use in games.	Now
Senior Game Developer	Someone with 5 years or more experience writing computer software that is very resourceful in being able to learn new things and enjoys playing and creating PC games	Now
Technical Advisor	Entry level position for young enthusiastic person who will help us support customers electronically or via phone. Room for rapid advancement	Now
Sales Executive	Someone interested in selling Stardock's solutions to companies.	Now

WindowBlinds reviews on CNET

Published on Tuesday, September 28, 2004 By Brad Wardell In WinCustomize Talk

With WindowBlinds 4.4 released, the reviews have been reset on Download.com.

If you'd like to review WindowBlinds (we'd appreciate it if you would - even if it's not a positive review) please go here:

http://www.download.com/WindowBlinds/3000-2326-10321098.html?tag=sptlt

WC2K5: Personal Sites viewable by all..

Published on Monday, September 27, 2004 By Brad Wardell In WinCustomize News

Users with WinCustomize subscriptions can create their own personal pages on WinCustomize that become sub-domains of WinCustomize.com (example: http://frogboy.wincustomize.com).

This week ALL users can view other people's personal sites. Moreover, those of you with personal sites can now promote your personal sites to others so that they can see your skins, themes, icons, wallpapers, articles, or whatever.

The site will track the most popular personal pages and let you know who is linking to your personal page and how many people have come from there.

If you want your own personal page, you can sign up for an account by clicking on the store link above.

Bloggers making "poor choices"

Published on Sunday, September 26, 2004 By Brad Wardell In Blogging

It never ceases to amaze me how quick some people are to spit on those that are giving them something for nothing.

Just so that others can be pre-warned, don't call me a "Nazi" or "Fascist" or any other hateful name. I don't have to put up with it. And I won't. I don't know what the deal is with the far left wing people on the Internet and their fixation with calling people "nazis" and such. Do they even realize that Nazi stands for National Socialist. They weren't right-wing in any way. They were socialist (by definition). And the vegetarian artist from Austria that helped found the Nazi party would in no way be considered "conservative" by anyone reasonable.

But regardless, I don't appreciate being called hateful names and the fact is, I own the site. I invite others to share this server with me for our mutual benefit. But I am not going to put up with nonsense from anyone.

Feeling something vs. Doing something

Published on Saturday, September 25, 2004 By Brad Wardell In Politics

In the real world, I don't care much about politics. Sure, I'll debate it with someone if they'd like but I'm not particularly motivated politically. On-line, I'll talk trash about politics taking a much stronger stance on positions than I would normally give since the point is to get energetic discussion going.

People who know me would describe me as a political "moderate" on most issues. But in reality, I'm all over the place. A left wing position here, a right wing position there. I cherry pick my ideology. I'm very conservative on business/tax issues and somewhat liberal on social issues. But like I said, in the real world, I'm not motivated very much by politics. I deal with the world as it is. And in that sense, I am a conservative.

It's been my experience that people who are conservative tend to be more effective in getting things done. Things that actually do something. It's the liberals who do things that are described as "trying to make a statement". Candle light vigils and showings of solidarity and other warm fuzzy activities make for good PR but ultimately are pointless. These activities are the hallmark of the left.

Go to a business conference of entrepreneurs and you won't find too many liberals there. In fact, the more successful someone is in the private sector, the more likely they are to be conservative. Outside entertainment and academia, you won't find that many wealthy successful liberals.

So why is that? I think it's because conservatives deal with the world as it is rather than how they wish it was. They are much more end result oriented. Liberals, by contrast, tend to be much more "wish really really hard that things were different".

Conservatives also tend to look at cause and effect. They have to because they end up being the ones who actually make decisions that deal with change in the real world.

Take the minimum wage or living wage advocates. They're the same people who also are against outsourcing of jobs. Well which is it? They aren't willing to accept the reality that if you increase low skill labor costs that you are increasing the incentive to move the business out of the country. Conservatives don't have that luxury. They're the ones running those businesses. Raise their costs and they have to make some tough choices -- ones they'll be demonized for by the very people who advocated the policies that caused the problem.

And reality is a messy thing. There are no perfect solutions. There are no perfectly elegant solutions either. Most solutions require substantial trade offs. Worse, those trade offs tend to get exponentially nasty as you near a "perfect" solution.

Want 100% health coverage instead of 90%? Fine, expect massive trade offs in exchange in the form of waiting periods, a slowing in innovation, and decrease in quality of care.

Want to reduce CO2 emissions substantially today? Fine, increase the required gas mileage on cars to 35MPH. But that will mean the end of SUVs, mini-vans, and the subsequent loss of millions of jobs. Which some guy like Michael Moore would then promptly blame on "greedy fat cat businesses".

Want to "save" a few hundred acres of tundra in the ANWR? Fine, but expect our dependence on foreign oil to increase at a faster rate which helps fuel the problems in the middle east.

Conservatives, by their nature, tend to be much more pragmatic. They look for solutions. Real solutions. A protest march isn't a solution. It's a hobby. This tends to make conservatives seem like the bad guys because they end up having to make the tough real world decisions that have negative consequences for some even as they try to benefit the many.

Where the liberal would go all out to save a single person in the village, even if that meant potentially sacrificing the entire village, the conservative would be more likely to take the "cruel" but pragmatic route of letting the individual villager suffer for the good of the entire village. That's not because they like to see people suffer but because they have to weigh the larger issues.

It's sad that millions of children live in poverty. A liberal would argue persuasively that a nation as wealthy as the United States should ensure that no child lives in poverty. A conservative would agree that it's a shame but that as a practical matter, unless you're willing to sacrifice the rest of the society for it, you're not likely to solve that problem. Virtually all children (statistically) that live in poverty do so because their parents made very bad and irresponsible choices. Every practical solution to solve this will end up seeming cruel (take the child away from the irresponsible parent looks cruel and adds more expense for instance).

Liberals are also the ones who push for more help for Africa. A land where the populations are simply far too high to be supported by the land they are on (with some notable exceptions where corrupt government is the cause). Do you send over food aid, artificially masking the underlying problem and creating generations of dependents living in misery? The liberal won't worry about that. They just want to show how much they care. The "cruel" conservative is more likely to look at the big picture. Consistent food aid creates extensive long term damage and can prop up corrupt and brutal regimes.

By the same token, liberals tend to be the ones who argue for AIDS treatments to be sent to Africa at low cost. Thus increasing the healthy life span of the millions of Africans who are HIV positive. Sounds wonderful doesn't it? Except that it also increases the length of time that the disease spreaders will be able to effectively spread the disease.

Then again, liberal groups also got DDT banned for export which was the world's most effective way of killing mosquitoes. Malaria now kills millions of Africans because there is no substitute for DDT that is remotely as cheap and effective. But some birds are safe. Well, maybe.

I could go on and on but I think the point is made. It's not that liberals are bad. They're not. They're just ineffectual in the real world. They are too busy trying to do emotionally satisfying deeds rather than deeds of practicality. Where they do have an impact is in stifling the ability of conservatives for doing what has to be done by constantly demonizing them.

Liberals decried the sanctions on Iraq that had allegedly killed 500,000 children. If you lift the sanctions, Saddam would have gone forward with his nuclear program (that, btw, is something that they did find ample evidence of in Iraq -- he was just waiting out the sancations). The other option is to remove Saddam and put someone in that isn't going to try to create nasty weapons, invade their neighbors, and aid terrorists. Those are your 3 choices and no matter which choice is made, the liberals will demonize the result.

Conservatives who try to put forth practical realistic solutions get demonized as being "hateful", "bigoted" and be called (of course) "Nazis" or "fascists" (even though Nazis and fascists were socialists and technically left wing -- Hitler was many things but the vegetarian artist from Austria was definitely not a conservative). It's demonization that liberals have any general real world impact and that's only because they're impacting the people who actually do things in the real world - conservatives.

I don't expect to change any minds here. You'll have the liberals who have excessive free time trying to nit-pick my examples with exceptions to a generalization as if that somehow disproves the generalization ("Hey Bush is trying to send AIDS help to Africa too!") but none of that changes the bottom line: That the people who run the companies, who actually create the "stuff" we use, are almost always conservative in nature because to accomplish things in the real world means dealing with the world as it actually is rather than as we wish it was.

ObjectDock Media Guide Released

Published on Thursday, September 23, 2004 By Brad Wardell In WinCustomize News

Want a detailed look at what ObjectDock Plus does? Check out this article at JoeUser.com.