SIFURI

Views Of A Modern World

Everything else Rick writes

Category: Uncategorized

That Stupid FB Notice

By rickColosimo / June 16, 2020
Someone I know posted this on FB. Just in case Notice:..An attorney advised us to post this. The violation of privacy can be punished by law. NOTE: Facebook is now a public entity. All members must...
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Memorial Day 2020

By rickColosimo / May 22, 2020
Memorial Day Celebration Playlist I’ve gotten to the point where I no longer feel bad for gently correcting people who want to say “thanks for your service” to me on Memorial Day. I remind them tha...
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House Rules

By rickColosimo / May 21, 2020
This post on Slate has an effective clickbaity title. I’m just going to comment that I think it was instigated by people who don’t let you win all the money in the middle on Monopoly when you land ...
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Lost Spring

By rickColosimo / April 11, 2020
This is something I came up with to express one aspect of how we’ve all put lives on hold in different ways. Hey, let’s get together; let’s get a drink and meet; Hey, let’s get together; I really t...
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Did not find

By rickColosimo / March 11, 2020
NB: Now that some time has passed and we’ve moved from the Mueller Report to the House Investigation to the Impeachment to the vote, this is not a “hot” topic but one just about the nature of proof...
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iPhone App ideas

By rickColosimo / March 9, 2020
So I’ve had this idea for an iPhone seismograph app that a person could use on a rollercoaster or taxi ride on the FDR or regional jet flight. Here are a couple apps I’ve come across that are in th...
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Collar stay punch

By rickColosimo / March 2, 2020
I saw this guitar pick tool in the Uncommon Goods website some time ago. Around that time, I had the idea (since I don’t play guitar) of a similar tool that would punch out collar stays for dress s...
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Occam’s Safety Razor

By rickColosimo / February 27, 2020
Occam’s Safety Razor Occam’s Safety Razor: when you don’t know what the answer is, start with something that almost certainly can’t hurt. Everyone talks about Occam’s Razor, usually getting it wron...
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Library v Amazon

By rickColosimo / February 24, 2020
At some point I looked over my Amazon wish list and saw a lot of books that I wanted to read but wasn’t sure I really wanted to keep for a long time. So I wondered if there was a tool that would tr...
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Personalized amusement park video

By rickColosimo / February 16, 2020
This idea falls into my “Orphans” category: projects or ideas that I find interesting but that I know are really low on my priority list. I figure it’s more fun and helpful to write about them and ...
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Cruel World

By rickColosimo / August 4, 2019
The publish date on this article describing this video is September 2017. I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it until now, August 2019. It was a bad idea. I made it 45 seconds in, about 1...
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Slight compliment

By rickColosimo / July 20, 2019
Understated compliment of the day – He was no knucklehead: he actually won the Nobel prize for physics.” At about 26:10 of this interview.
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Blue Horseshoe Loves Bloomberg

By rickColosimo / July 16, 2019
I’m impressed by the restraint over at Bloomberg. Justin Bachman wrote this entire article about tracking private jets to unearth pending deals, and no one mentioned Bud Fox. If you can’t place the...
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Letters

By rickColosimo / July 1, 2019
Constant stream of good ideas Is there anything this guy does that isn’t a stellar idea? When I grow up, I want to put ideas out into the world at his pace.
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QOTD – 11-Aug-2017

By rickColosimo / August 11, 2017
A lot of pharmaceuticals were invented using some process that on first hearing sounded pretty stupid. Trouble is, a lot of stupid things start out pretty stupid, too. Straight Dope
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Leading from the front

By rickColosimo / July 27, 2017
Saw a law school friend’s post on why trans soldiers should be serving, and some idiot friend of his was complaining about it. I was tempted: Okay, as likely one of the few straight male [disclosur...
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Respect is earned

By rickColosimo / July 19, 2017
The first rule of leadership is lead by example. I heard it in so many forms during my 5 year in the Army, I can’t possibly footnote it. Recently, Kellyanne Conway said she was suprised at the disr...
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Supreme Court nominee

By rickColosimo / July 17, 2017
Yep, this is an old post. The world has moved on. Supreme Court nominee President Trump has nominated Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. I’d like to read some of his opinions before I decide. Does...
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The road less traveled

By rickColosimo / February 3, 2017
ca. 2010: In his “Four Roads” post, Seth Godin outlines four possible models of thinking about your career/job progression and experiences. Unstated, but this leitmotif of experience, value, and ar...
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Singing songs and carrying signs

By rickColosimo / August 29, 2016
Evidently some dude’s protesting the national anthem. Don’t know who he is, don’t care, and doesn’t matter whether he’s protesting poverty, race-based policing, gay marriage, immigration, or the la...
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A happy moment

By rickColosimo / June 11, 2016
A happy moment My happy place looks like Waimea Bay, on the north shore of Oahu, running around the bay in the middle of the evening, with a full moon over the water and just the sound of the waves...
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Adolf’s downfall

By rickColosimo / May 26, 2016
Sometimes, the solution is right in front of you. I’m a science fiction fan; I can still recall the set of four or five vertical rotating racks of paperbacks at the Paddy Hill Library. I read most ...
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Autism in my life

By rickColosimo / May 19, 2016
For those of you who didn’t know: My older son has what I describe as mild to moderate autism. He’s happy; he smiles; he talks; he reads; he does math – add, subtract, multiply, and learning to div...
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How much should I save?

By rickColosimo / May 12, 2016
How much should you save? That’s a very good question, to which the easy answer is simply “as much as you can and then a little bit more.” As I’ve written over on the page for this new tool, the sa...
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Which partners in what crime

By rickColosimo / March 9, 2016
What’s the deal with the phrase “partners in crime?” I am a single dad who works in a small law firm and lives in a family-laden suburb of NYC, so my dating interactions mostly come from online int...
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Dating-quiz

By rickColosimo / February 23, 2016
Do you like cats? Do you love kids? Do you have a personal relationship with god? Are you smarter than me? Yes, that third one’s a bit of a trick question. The fourth one excludes the middle part o...
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Data is and are plural

By rickColosimo / February 11, 2016
Data is inherently plural, even as I use “is” as the verb. This short post is about the most radioactive place in NY state. I find these explorations of the edges and outliers interesting. It remin...
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What is dirt?

By rickColosimo / December 22, 2015
What is dirt? From this article on kitty litter, we learn that: it’s strip-mined dirt that is transported overland via combustion engines and ends up in landfill where it never biodegrades. But isn...
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JFK v ISIS

By rickColosimo / November 18, 2015
The article “What ISIS Really Wants” was good; it was also long, which makes me wonder whether enough people will read it. I’m not sure that ISIS will choose any path that doesn’t force us to kill ...
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Small features

By rickColosimo / November 5, 2015
Building a big Internet company is hard, and I guess not everything can be earth-shattering. Sometimes, developments underwhelm: who at twitter thought that “hearts and likes” vs. “stars and favori...
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Bravery is for you

By rickColosimo / November 2, 2015
“Bravery is for other people,” Seth Godin writes. He talks about how that just ain’t true. We’re supposed to make the choices that don’t require our kids, or someone else’s, to grow up to be Audie ...
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Do the math.

By rickColosimo / June 12, 2015
Some interesting math to note in this article comparing the cost of saving vs. borrowing for college. Gotta love math. Save for your kids, or they’ll be even more broke than you might fear you’ll b...
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Places to grow up

By rickColosimo / May 5, 2015
Okay, so I haven’t read through the methodology yet, but the data from this visualization and article in the NYT sure do look interesting. Basically, I should either stay in Bergen County or move t...
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Where the bad moods went

By rickColosimo / April 24, 2013
Someone once told me that she hadn’t seen me in a bad mood. (It was after only four weeks of knowing me, so maybe there’s a sample size problem.) I said that something had annoyed me the week befor...
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World Autism Awareness Day 2013

By rickColosimo / April 2, 2013
Today is World Autism Awareness day. My Facebook profile picture is my 8yo son Dylan, showing you, and me, what he thinks of autism. I imagine it’s something along the lines of “I just want to do w...
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Bouncing off the bottom

By rickColosimo / July 24, 2012
Seth Godin notes that when the first thing you do is measure a new opportunity against the list of why you can’t, then the list is the most important thing in your life. An economist would call thi...
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Rooney’s Law

By rickColosimo / June 28, 2012
I foresee another tribute to Clarke’s Law coming…. Sufficiently extensive experience is indistinguishable from cynicism. No, Andy Rooney didn’t make that up; I did. He was the most curmudgeonly nam...
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Can I spot fake smiles?

By rickColosimo / June 6, 2012
Smiles popped into my head today. This paragraph (refs omitted): Autism and Asperger syndrome are diagnosable developmental disorders, but autistic-like personality traits are continuously distribu...
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Happy Valentine’s Day

By rickColosimo / February 14, 2012
Thinking about my day today…. Felt zero feelings for someone — where do those things go? I guess there’s no conservation of emotion (it hasn’t even all turned to hate, disgust, or sadness); Valenti...
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The past is a foreign country

By rickColosimo / August 25, 2011
It’s like I had an imaginary friend for the last 16 years and just found out she wasn’t real. All my memories are tainted, suspect. Who knows what was real and what wasn’t? And I could drive myself...
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Who comes up with this stuff?

By rickColosimo / June 8, 2011
Here’s the Netflix blurb for a movie called “The Switch:” Still single and increasingly attuned to the cacophony of her biological clock, 40-something Kassie (Jennifer Aniston) decides that if she ...
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Set people up for success

By rickColosimo / January 28, 2011
Ever feel like the deck was stacked against you, that your boss or wife or boyfriend had somehow made it impossible for you to succeed? In the Army, we called that being set up for failure. It spro...
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Three small words for 2011

By rickColosimo / January 24, 2011
Chris Brogan wrote a different sort of New Year’s resolution post, focusing on three words as major themes for the year. Everyone else seems torn between making resolutions and saying that resoluti...
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Acid test for the future Mrs C.

By rickColosimo / December 16, 2010
Are you truly committed – or just curious? Are you truly committed – or just involved? Are you truly committed – or just concerned? Are you truly committed – or just interested? Are you truly commi...
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First, think clearly

By rickColosimo / November 29, 2010
Quotation of the Day (HT Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day): As your first object is to make yourself understood, the worst mistake you can make is to be misunderstood. This can come about through igno...
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At least don’t fool yourself

By rickColosimo / November 15, 2010
A useful question came across my screen this morning, one that is important if not absolutely critical as I think about some of the decisions I have to make over the next several months. My odd sou...
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What is the “point of Rick?”

By rickColosimo / November 12, 2010
I just saw a little contest on Appstorm relating to mac/iphone/ipod skins. (If you didn’t know, these are essentially decals/decal sets that decorate or protect your device. But “skin” generally me...
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Happy Veterans’ Day

By rickColosimo / November 11, 2010
Today is a day I treat much like Memorial Day, with the difference that I’m not uncomfortable about receiving greetings today. (Memorial Day is for fallen servicemembers; I’m not in that category n...
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QuickSilver fix-it tip

By rickColosimo / November 9, 2010
I recently started with my new MacBook Air, aka the Airbook. I have long been hearing about mythical programs like QuickSilver and OmniFocus (both of which I use now) and even DevonThink (which I’m...
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More orphan ideas in the wild

By rickColosimo / November 7, 2010
Seth Godin recently reported on the shipping of two ipad apps triggered or inspired or at least encouraged by earlier posts of his. I’ve written before how my own growing lists of orphan ideas were...
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What networking isn’t

By rickColosimo / July 15, 2010
What networking isn’t: asking people for cards when they haven’t expressed interest in your services, or blowing an opportunity to showcase your talent. For example, a web/logo designer took my car...
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Awesome iPad app demo/mockup

By rickColosimo / May 28, 2010
So there’s been a lot of press on the iPad + Velcro ™ video. And it’s well done, insightful, and mildly amusing. The shame of it is that it is flanked by an absolutely awesome video from the same f...
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Followup: costs of poor sleep

By rickColosimo / May 21, 2010
A recent National Geographic article explored sleep and some of the problems associated with lack of sleep. Lack of sleep can be dangerous: … Harvard’s Charles Czeisler. He notes that going without...
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Email tips? Really?

By rickColosimo / April 27, 2010
One of my favorite authors, Seth Godin, recently posted another little list of email tips. Of course, they’re pretty much all useful and accurate. I mean, it’s hard to write a “tip” that is flat-ou...
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Fauxtivation

By rickColosimo / January 27, 2010
What is Fauxtivation? It’s hiding the ball from your customers to try to create a motivation to engage with your company that they wouldn’t naturally have, i.e., don’t need and don’t want. Example:...
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Definitions: gwitter

By rickColosimo / November 9, 2009
gwitter A Gwitter is someone who ghost-writes twitter updates for a celebrity who (A) can’t be bothered, (B) can’t be trusted not to go “off-message,” or (C) can’t type as many as 140 characters on...
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Memories on TV?

By rickColosimo / September 3, 2009
Quick note: watching an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay. He’s at Phil’s Fish Market in Monterey, CA (technically Moss Landing). Pam looked at it and said, “hey, isn’t that the place we used to...
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trendwatching.com: FOREVERISM

By rickColosimo / June 21, 2009
trendwatching.com’s June 2009 Trend Briefing covering FOREVERISM. I like the trendwatching briefings: they’re actually insightful rather than wishful thinking; they seek to recognize trends rather ...
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Way cool photos of NYC

By rickColosimo / April 27, 2009
NYC street photo with only children I really liked these très cool pictures, photoshop montages of NYC streetcorner photos. Not time lapse but time-space compression photography. It’s a technique I...
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Autism Awareness Day on CBS

By rickColosimo / April 10, 2009
Dylan was on CBS’s The Early Show last Thursday. Some additions: when he was in a home program, the total cost was $2k a week; now it’s $2k a month on top of what he gets at school. Dylan attends R...
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Logo contest on crowdSPRING

By rickColosimo / April 10, 2009
We’re running a logo contest on crowdSPRING for a social network-based site serving the ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) community. Besides wanting to see a greater variety of designs from differen...
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NYT sidesteps Godwin’s Law

By rickColosimo / April 10, 2009
Today’s NYT has a story about a former Capitol Hill staffer who is a “dissenter” and “skeptic” on climate change issues. He might even be a “misinformer.” Congratulations to the NYT for breaking ou...
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Eat ice cubes to lose weight

By rickColosimo / January 21, 2009
This article on the caloric math behind drinking ice water to lose weight reminded me of something I wrote a number of years ago. My friend John was at Comedy Central doing on-air promos at the tim...
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Evidence-based food preparation

By rickColosimo / November 14, 2008
After reading this post on Springwise (a site/feed I enjoy very much), I realized that I needed to post another orphaned idea. People have seen a number of “prepared food” offerings, where a compan...
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Allegheny College Gets WSJ Mention

By rickColosimo / November 7, 2008
In this article on lawyer/presidents (or president/lawyers, if you prefer), the WSJ‘s Law Blog notes that William McKinley, the 25th President, attended Allegheny College (“briefly attended,” accor...
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Applet wanted – $50 bounty

By rickColosimo / September 3, 2008
Wanted: a work-for-hire (so it can be released under a CC license for non-commercial use, exact license TBD) software applet, either for an iPhone or for a Fujitsu laptop (running Vista). Feature: ...
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Fighting H-bombs with C-notes

By rickColosimo / September 2, 2008
I read somewhere (here’s one reference and one that makes it both positive and negative, and another – any other favorites?) of someone referring to the not-so-casual, i.e., intentional, dropping o...
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Private recommendations?

By rickColosimo / August 24, 2008
Why don’t recommendation systems create, or allow for, a way to post recommendations that respects poster privacy? For example, I may want to post something about a doctor that I use but not want t...
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Refrigerator storage & planning

By rickColosimo / April 28, 2008
I like the Unclutterer blog because it’s short and to the point, reducing clutter in its posts as well as your life. This article describes the author’s approach to removing food clutter, in the fo...
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