Author Archives: Devin Reams

About Devin Reams

My name is Devin Reams and I founded this site to provide a useful news and review resource for Colorado skiers and snowboarders (and mountain enthusiasts). I've been skiing since I was a little kid (we moved out here when I was five years old) and I plan to ski for years beyond that. Although cosnow is not my full-time job it is my full-time winter hobby. I've been an "Epic Local" passholder since 2006 (when it was called a "Colorado Pass" or "Five Mountain Pass"). My favorite resorts are Beaver Creek and Breckenridge.

Political Quiz

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If you haven’t seen this political quiz yet I think you should give it a try. Put simply, 5 personal questions and 5 economic questions can determine your political orientation. Though, it’s not merely determining Red State/Blue State as many would love to think.

(Side Note: That’s the problem with the masses and politics. Things start turning into teams. Teams are great but teams also act irrationally. For example, I live in Colorado so I’m a huge Bronco’s fan. It doesn’t matter who plays, how they play, etc., Broncos will always be the best. I’m pretty sure I love them becuase I have that team pride having lived in the state. I’m not alone, everyone does it. CU is the best at being as un-classy at demonstrating this. Frankly, breaking people into white vs. black is an American thing. Americans think there’s the good and the bad side. Why did we go to Iraq? We were good, they were bad. Putting things into context like that means less thought. I’m sorry, but there is a middle ground. I’m convinced Americans don’t like to think).

Anyway, I’m a Centrist. I’ve never associated myself with one “side”… I can support different ideas in different situations. So then… what are you? Was it much more different than you thought it would be? Some people have been surprised…

[tags]politics, teams, sports, quiz[/tags]

First Glance: Google Calendar

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I saw the WSJ mention ‘Google’ and ‘Calendar’ in the same headline so I quickly ran to InsideGoogle. Yes! Solution Watch has a nice review too.

I’m planning on importing all my Outlook information a bit later. It might not work, though. Google divides different activity types into different calendars. So all my blue and red labeled events in Outlook will need to be split into seperate calendars (which can also be blue and red). In any case, I’m excited. The interface is the best I’ve seen. If you click and drag across a few dates on the mini-calendar it’ll show those dates in the foreground view. In other words, I can select April 15-29 and it’ll fit them into a nice calendar view (the selection has to be either less than a week or a full week, doesn’t matter where in the week though, Mon-Wed, Sun-Fri, etc). I also appreciate the SMS and Gmail features. Heck, I may switch away from Outlook entirely… no joke.

As a hint: if you have a Google Hosted email account (ie, my domain, devinreams.com) then you need to be sure you create a Google Account with your email address.

[tags]google, gmail calendar, outlook[/tags]

Carnival of Marketing

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I apologize for my absence. I was gone for 4 days, had work, school (midterm, presentation), and tonight I had a concert. In short, I’ve been oh-so-busy lately.

But that’s not why I’m writing. I’m here to remind everyone that the Carnival of Marketing will be hosted by yours truly next week. At first, I didn’t even understand what a Carnival was but it’s quite simple: write something insightful, new, and/or interesting and I will gladly spotlight your post right here. The point is, I host the carnival and you’re one of the rides. People stop by here because they know I’ve collected the best rides the internet has to offer.
For example, a few weeks ago I wrote Market to College Students. I was in the Carnival and I received a bunch of traffic/subscribers.

So, if you have something you’d like for me to mention just shoot me an email ([email protected]). It’s really that simple. I look forward to the submissions!

[tags]carnival, marketing[/tags]

Carbon Dioxide

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Two ski patrol members died of asphyixation. They fell into a volcanic fissure and the deadly gasses killed them. As I read the sad news I realize it just confused me. “…authorities on Friday identified the deadly gas as carbon dioxide… emissions from the ground have previously been linked to die-offs of trees in the region”. You’re trying to tell me carbon dioxide has started killing off trees?

Weekly Schedule

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I was looking at David Seah‘s excellent tools the other day. I was inspired. I had been thinking about revising my daily schedule and I came up with the following tool in Excel: the Linear Week Schedule.

filled

I basically laid out the week in 30 minute blocks. Each row is 6 hours. Now you can see the entire week starting at midnight on Sunday. This seemed useful since our days run into one another (and I know my day doesn’t stop at midnight). This is what David did with his Compact Schedule. It shows the week along a line, not in seven seperate chunks. I found his idea to be pure genius…

withnote

As you can see there’s plenty of whitespace for leaving notes, a todo, etc. I figure I can use this space for all the extra notes and things I need to get done throughout the week. Plus, I can get into more detail if needed (meeting location, time, room number).

colored

I also tried using Excel to color-code my regular events (sleep, eat, school, etc). This way I can see at a glance when I’m planning on doing certain things. At the same time, there’s room to include written events if need be.

fullview

Obviously, this can be as detailed or as simple as you’d like. Be creative and let me know if you found this useful. I was just toying around and figured somebody else might be able to use it. Anyway, I’m off to start planning out my week…

Click here to download WeeklySchedule.xls

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Hypocritical Blogging

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As I sat here reading over 100 RSS feeds, I just had a realization: I’m a hypocritical blogger.

I post regularly and expect hundreds of people to read what I say.

Yet, I read (scan) hundreds of blogs thinking: “That’s crap. That’s stupid. Oh that’s very interesting! Why’d that person post that? Why do people think that’s so clever?” I’ve been going through blogs lately wondering: why do I do this when so much of it is of little value to me? I spend a lot of time reading and at this point I don’t even know how much of that will continue…

But, at the same time I want people to come back to my blog and read what I’m saying, find it useful, and leave insightful responses. How can I expect bloggers to read what I say if I refuse to read what they’re saying?

I think the simple answer is (for me, not everyone): quality over quantity. This simple rule applies to my subscribers, traffic, links and –most importantly– content.
With that in mind I’m thinking I’ll be shifting my writing style…

..and reading style.

Some of the first to leave my reader? Sad to say but it’s the A-listers, like Steve Rubel, Robert Scoble, and Jason Calacanis.
Why get rid of these guys? They’re clever, sure, but:

  • they largely point to content I can find elsewhere
  • there’s just way too much stuff
  • egos are a bitch and get in the way of a blog’s quality sometimes

You can tell the difference between those blogging for blogging and those blogging for an audience. Seth Godin is my favorite blogger becuase he’s short, sweet and his posts are full of greatness.

Guy has been dropped because, although he’s got good stuff:

  • you can find it all in his books
  • everyone else quotes his latest posts
  • it takes a long time to read everything he says

But, hey, he got his link like he asked…
[tags]blogging, blogs, communication[/tags]

25peeps

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I came across a neat site today, 25peeps.com. People get bored and like pictures, right? Well this site puts up a 5×5 grid of 25 people’s pictures and if you like what you see you click and visit their blog. I submitted my site.. I wonder how much traffic it’ll send.

Anti-Immigration?

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I found this to be extremely interesting: an article about stupid students protesting the anti-immigration legislation. Flying the flag upside down, ironically, demonstrates distress… not disrespect. As another reader pointed out, it’s also ironic that “…these young men and women are enjoying their educations on the back of the American taxpayer at a public school, while denigrating the country that provides these benefits to them.” I guess that’s fitting; our public schools don’t teach good sense. Sigh. One of my largest pet peeves has always been “people who make up for intelligence with volume.” Yell louder when that’s all you have going for you… Personally, I blame the French.

MSFT Dividend Math

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On it’s face a 9-cent dividend sounds pretty weak…

Quite the opposite is true in Microsoft’s case. We need to keep in mind how many shares will receive those 9-cents. So, if you don’t have the number of outstanding shares offhand that’s fine, we’ll do some quick math.

Looking at Google Finance tells me that Microsoft’s market cap is $279.21 billion. ‘Market cap’ means market capitalization… which means ‘how much the company is worth’. Naturally, public company’s worth is based on their stock.

So, since we have Microsoft’s market cap we know that it’s calculated by taking the number of outstanding shares and multiplying it by the stock price.

Market Cap = Number of Shares x Price Per Share

Since we have 2 of the 3 numbers (market cap and price per share) we can essentially solve for the number of shares:

279.21 = 27.02x, or279.21/27.02 = Number of Shares

So, Microsoft has over 10 billion shares outstanding. We can then multiply that by our dividend of .09 and we realize that a whopping $900,000,000 will be returned to shareholders. It’s all about how you present these things. Which headline is more captivating:

Microsoft announces 9-cent dividend, or

Microsoft returns nearly $1 billion to investors

As you can see, even a penny from Microsoft is certainly no minor thing. See kids? Accounting can be fun!

PS: Gates holds a little over a billion shares. He’ll be receiving a check for a mere $92,474,940.24.

[tags]accounting, microsoft, dividend, money[/tags]