Is It Me Or Is It YouTube?

Yesterday, a friend of ours e-mailed a link to a video of her new kitchen. I decided to send her back a video of our own kitchen. So I shot a quick video, uploaded it to YouTube, and sent out the link.

Then the weird thing happened. About 30 minutes after I uploaded the video, it disappeared off my YouTube account. Poof. Gone. No notice, no nothing. I have no idea why. The video is about 45 seconds of me talking as I walk through my kitchen; I didn’t add any music or graphics or do any editing at all, so there’s no possible copyright issues.

I don’t upload stuff to YouTube very often so maybe this is normal and I just don’t know it. Or maybe I’m the victim of some unfortunate glitch. Either way, it’s a little annoying.

At any rate, I signed up for a Vimeo account and re-uploaded the video there. If you’re really curious, you can see it (but I warn you, it’s kind of boring):

UPDATE 8:30PM: And now it’s back on YouTube. Go figure.

Randomness

Life’s funny sometimes. Earlier today, someone I thought was a nice person acted like a complete jerk and screwed over two people in the process (one of them being me). And then, this evening, someone that I barely know at all (but who seemed like a jerk on first impression) did something extremely generous and unselfish, and gave me something very valuable for no reason at all and asked nothing in return.

Karmic payback? Random chance? Who knows. We humans are great at pattern recognition, and we can see patterns where there aren’t any.

Either way, one thing is for sure. Today was a reminder to me — to judge people on what they do more than what they say.

Two Great Reads

Seth Godin is widely considered to be a must-read blogger, but like everyone else, he has his ups and downs. This winter I’ve found his blog to be a little less inspiring. Not bad, just … blah. On the bright side, whatever lull he might have been going through seems to be over, because within the last week he’s put up two excellent posts:

1) The Three Marketing Levers
Fear, Hope, Love, and brand associations.

2) Soggy
Another look at why it’s so hard to get things done in business.

Super Tuesday: PM Edition

It’s closing in on 10 PM and I’ve been watching the returns for almost 5 hours now. As I write this, Obama took 13 states to Clinton’s 8 (New Mexico has not yet been declared), and MSNBC has the two of them within 20 delegates of each other.

Of course, I would have liked to see Obama take California and/or New York in a resounding victory, but all in all, tonight was a good night. This race isn’t even close to being over.

Super Tuesday: AM Edition

In November of 2004, I donned a black zip-up hoodie and walked out into a grey, foggy San Francisco morning to go vote. I was scared, angry, and stressed out. We all know what happened.

Today, I’m wearing purple and the sun is shining after a week of rain. I’ll be leaving to go vote as soon as I finish this post.

I fear hope — it has let me down bitterly in the past — but right now, I’m cautiously hopeful about the outcome of today. Tonight, I could be looking at this post and wishing I’d never written it, but right now, I’m going to indulge in the luxury of hope for a better, brighter future. And now I’m going to go do something about it.

Get out there and vote today if you live in a primary state!