Monday, February 3, 2025

Five Tips for Improving Your LinkedIn Profile

Introduction

“There is no better way than LinkedIn to curate your personal brand,” says the blogger Dana Albert, “though I can’t tell you how tired I am of the word ‘curate’ and the phrase ‘personal brand.’” Do you like how I referred to myself in the third person just now? That was to sound more important. Speaking of which, here are five surefire tips to improve your LinkedIn profile, whether you’re looking to change jobs or just want to impress people.


Tip #1: Post a better profile photo

Ageism is real, and unless you’re literally a twelve-year-old who has somehow infiltrated corporate America, it’s time you started looking younger. No, I’m not hawking lotion or plastic surgery; you only need to look younger on your LinkedIn profile. The easy way to do this is with a really outdated photo, but that’s bound to backfire. Either your hairstyle will be outdated, or you’ll be wearing an “Alf” t-shirt or something. As with every problem these days, the real solution is A.I. Just take your existing profile picture and have ChatGPT enhance it for you.

Case in point: I did this myself today. And while I was at it, I modernized the picture to bring it in line with our new, angry, ultra-masculine America, following the lead of major league rabble-rousers like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Here’s how I did it. First, I uploaded this photo to ChatGPT today as the baseline to work from:


I told the chatbot, “The attached photo above is not right for my profile photo because it’s too friendly and nerdy. I need a photo that shows me as a strong man who can handle tough decisions, and who maybe isn’t too happy about how things are going in corporate America and wants to fix it. Kind of a bad boy who moves fast and breaks stuff.” Note that I didn’t even have to ask ChatGPT to make me look younger. As detailed here, it always does that.

The chatbot (version ChatGPT-4 Turbo, and no, I am not making that up) replied, “Got it! I’ll generate an enhanced version of your photo with a stronger, more decisive expression, giving off a ‘moves fast and breaks things’ energy while keeping it professional.” To be clear, ChatGPT didn’t produce the perfect picture right off the bat, and I had to coach it a bit, but eventually it announced, “Here’s the latest version—lighter blond hair, a thick goatee with no sideburns, and a much angrier, more intense expression,” and served up this excellent picture:


Granted, it still needs a bit more work, such as making me look even younger, but you get the idea. One more thing: if you’re a woman you obviously don’t want to look more masculine, and you certainly don’t want to look angry. Instead, ask for something like a mashup of yourself, the girl next door, and a younger Lauren Boebert.

Tip #2: Rework your “Headline” section

It is now considered a rookie move to put only your job title in the LinkedIn “Headline” section. A brief description of your current and past roles frankly isn’t much better. Nowadays, LinkedIn CVs are almost never seen by a human; instead they’re scanned by A.I. bots on behalf of the hiring companies. Thus, it’s not enough to highlight your skills—you need to present the kind of idealized employee that recruiters are actually looking for, and basically graft that description to your own profile. Pro tip: use the “pipe” symbol (|) in between items because it looks really cool. Here is an example of a good Headline:

Growth | Digital | Generative AI | Culture Cultivator | Mentor | Advocate |Outside the Box | Clarity Bringer | AI/ML | Driving Innovation | Flawless Executation| Podcaster | Olympian | Frontends | Evangelist | Stakeholdering | C++ | pDOOH | Rainmaker |Delivering Scalability| Solutionist

I’m not just supplying that as an example of what a tech worker would list; I’m telling you to literally copy and paste the above into your Headline (except “Executation” which was to make sure you’re paying attention). What’s that, you say? You don’t do anything with Generative AI? You don’t even work in tech? Look, you’re missing the point. Nobody is hiring outside of tech, and if you don’t have “Generative AI” in your Headline, your CV will never get past the bots. It doesn’t matter if your Headline entirely misrepresents you. You can clear that up during the interview.

Still skeptical? Let me explain how this works. The bot reads all the LinkedIn profiles in existence—which is over a billion of them—and when it finds a profile with all the right keywords, etc. it forwards it to the human who launched the query. That human will then read your entire CV and—so long as you’ve acted on all five tips presented here—will be totally impressed and invite you in for an interview! On the other hand, if the bot doesn’t find what it’s looking for, no human will ever see your CV. True story: none other than Albert Einstein filled out a LinkedIn profile and for his Headline put, “Creator, General Theory of Relativity” and yet never got a job. The bot didn’t know to look for “General Theory of Relativity,” because that obviously didn’t exist yet. (This was in 1914.)

I have my own experience with these keyword triggers. As you can well imagine, I get far too many comments on this blog to read them all, but of course I want to be made aware of the important ones. Some time ago, the Blogger platform zeroed in on a particular comment and emailed it directly to me. It was from jianbino311 and read, “nike air max michael kors outlet 2024 rolex watches camisetas futbol baratas giuseppe zanotti outlet wallet sale kobi 9 tods outlet.” Even though this comment was obviously generated by a bot, I was duly impressed and hired the bot on the spot. It’s been my albertnet fact checker ever since!

Tip #3: Create an entrepreneurial vibe

Let’s face it: rank-and-file employees, be they wretched “individual contributors” or pathetic “middle managers,” just don’t get any respect. They’re as despised as tourists. But people love entrepreneurs. The trouble is, we can’t all be entrepreneurs, and if we were, we probably wouldn’t bother to fine-tune our LinkedIn profiles … we’d be whispering right into the ears of angel investors. But there’s another way forward: figure out what other type of –preneur you might be. Choose from the following or invent your own:

  • Intrapreneur – has the attitude of an entrepreneur but works for an established company (i.e., is basically in denial)
  • Solopreneur – entrepreneurial, yes, but apparently never dreams bigger than a sole proprietorship; still, has that -preneur cachet
  • Hellapreneur – like an entrepreneur but better
  • Contrapreneur – has a startup that bucks current trends; for example, launches a new flip phone to corner the digital detox market
  • Epipeneur – this person is launching a startup despite having a severe peanut allergy
  • Codependepreneur – spins his wheels on yet another doomed startup because between him and his partner they’ve convinced themselves this thing is viable
  • Omnipreneur – has a startup specializing in EVERYTHING
  • Retropreneur – has bold idea for a startup manufacturing fax machines
  • Saagpaneur – wants to open an Indian restaurant

Just add your –preneur to the Headline section, and watch your inbox fill up with interview requests!

Tip #4: Refine your Experience section and make it data-driven

All too often, the Experience section of a LinkedIn profile simply lists the duties you carried out at this or that job, without emphasizing the achievements you can rightly claim credit for. Just listing duties isn’t nearly as impactful. (By the way, you should try to use the word “impactful” in your profile. It’s perfectly attuned to our modern business zeitgeist.) Whenever possible, make your achievement descriptions data-driven. There’s no room for subjective opinions on how you did; you need to be extremely specific.

For example, instead of just saying, “Performed software QA testing,” put, “Via disruptive and visionary software QA testing, reduced operating costs by 37%, saving $2.3 million in one year while improving CSAT scores by 24%.” The recruiter reading this, whose BS detectors will be lighting up like crazy, will think, “Oh, good, he’s also a storyteller! We can always use more of those.”

Tip #5: Revise all the dates

I cannot emphasize it enough: ageism is real. Nobody wants to hire anyone over the age of, like, thirty. It’s widely known that anyone over that age is basically falling apart completely—physically, mentally, and emotionally—not to mention is totally out of touch with every industry. Never mind that the person who would be your boss is oven older than you are … that person is grandfathered. (And why do you think they call it “grandfathered”? QED!)

Some career counselors therefore advise that you remove all the dates from your LinkedIn profile. Then nobody can tell your age, so they’ll automatically assume you’re really young … right? Of course not! They’ll figure you’re older than George Burns! Plus, there’s something inherently suspicious about simply removing dates.

Other counselors will say just jettison all mention of the first ten or twenty years of your career, and then delete the dates from your Education section. Alas, this is no silver bullet either. If there’s no date listed for your college, the recruiter will assume you dropped out … or worse, that you only went on campus to party and were never even enrolled. Besides, what if you did really impressive stuff long ago, like founding America Online? Who would want to leave that off?

The solution, my friend, is as simple as it is ingenious: just change the dates. There’s a basic formula you can apply: subtract 30 from your current age to produce the “required delta” (RD for short). For example, if you’re 50, your RD would be 20. Then, for the first role listed on your profile, add 20. As you approach the present day, adjust the dates more granularly, compressing the span of your various roles as needed. This will bring your chronology in line with what recruiters want.

Here’s a real life example. Steve Case is 66 years old. From a career standpoint he might as well be dead. He has the unusually high RD of 36. Applying that to his CV, he founded AoL in 2021. So he gets credit for launching one of the most important Internet companies in history, but still reads as young. (Would the recruiter remember that AoL was actually founded in the ‘80s? Not important. Mr. Case could clear that up during the interview.)

I know, this might sound like a drastic measure, but believe me, it’s important. Do you know how Daniel Craig got hired to be the new James Bond for “Casino Royale” at age 38? He lied! He said he was only 28! What’s more, his portfolio photo wasn’t even of him … it was of Jude Law’s head grafted onto Chris Hemsworth’s body! (It’s a good thing actors don’t use LinkedIn … so many movies just wouldn’t get made!)

A final thought…

I really, truly hope you understand that this post is 100% facetious. (Well … maybe 90% facetious.) I had a little fun here, and of course I would never recommend that you lie about anything on your LinkedIn profile (or anywhere else). Meanwhile, some of the information presented herein is just plain inaccurate. What can I say? My fact checker is a bot! (And that’s not even true … I fired my actual fact checker for lying on his LinkedIn profile! Which is also a lie! Stop reading this, I’ve gone completely off the rails! Besides, you’ve reached the end!)

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Old Yarn - The Enemy Coach

Vlog

Remember those old Ovaltine ads saying how kids will drink what they will not eat? Well, in case this post is discovered by a person who will watch what s/he will not read, I am making it available as a vlog. Watch this video on your laptop, tablet, phone, or in theaters everywhere! (Where available.) Share it with friends and family! And if you share it with a blind person, lie and say it’s a podcast ... s/he will never know the difference!

Introduction

This is the third “old yarn” installment on albertnet (inspired by my pioneering effort “The Cinelli Jumpsuit” and the subsequent post “Bike Crash on Golden Gate Bridge”). This is the kind of story that would normally be a “From the Archives” item, except I’ve never before written it down.

(Here’s what I looked like around the time this story takes place. You can see how scrawny, goofy, and yet somehow self-possessed I was.)


The Enemy Coach - Spring 1988

I realized the other day that I’m in my tenth year of coaching high school mountain bike racers. I had no idea, when I started out, that I would stick with it this long, but it’s been a blast so why stop? Something my student athletes don’t know (and there’s no real point in telling them) is that before becoming a NICA coach in NorCal, I already had experience coaching.

Decades ago, after high school, I took a gap year and moved to California to get residency, to lower my future college tuition costs. During that time I had several jobs, including a gig canning underwear, another answering phones at a radio station (yes, that was me taking the 9th caller who won the free passes), and a third working in a bike shop. On the side, I coached a team of junior road cyclists. There were eight or ten of them, and they were part of a larger team, the San Luis [Obispo] Cycling Club, SLCC, which also had something like forty adults. This was in fall of 1987 through the summer of 1988.

The coaching was supposed to be a paid gig, something like $7/hour, but I don’t think I ever got paid. That was fine … my love of the sport was enough incentive. In general my role was to ride with the juniors, show them the ropes, drive them to races, console them after the races, and try to keep them from quitting. That last bit might seem uncharitable but it was in fact a real struggle, because bike racing is a very, very hard sport and as you can read here, here, here, here, and here, it can take a long time to get good at it.

It was kind of hard for me to build cred with these juniors because (as you’ve probably already grasped) I was scarcely older than they were. I considered but rejected the strategy of briefing them on my own (albeit modest) success as a junior road cyclist, because it would have sounded like (and, well, would have been) bragging, and after all talk is cheap. So I just did my best to explain and model the right technique. To the extent I talked about my own racing it was to describe how frustrating the sport was for me starting out, to impress upon them how normal that is.

Well, one early spring day, in March or April of 1988, our team director decided, as a treat, to bring in a big, fancy USCF-certified coach to run a one-day clinic. (The USCF was the United States Cycling Federation and was the governing body of road cycling; it’s now known as USA Cycling, or USAC.) We all met up at the bike shop that sponsored the team. I knew nothing about the USCF coach certification process but could only assume it was a complete joke, because from the very beginning this guy struck me as a clown.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking … of course I would have it in for this guy, since here he was stealing my thunder. And sure, that’s part of it, but it’s not like I was immune to being impressed myself, and of course I was interested in getting whatever knowledge and insight I could from the guy. But right off the bat he showed his true colors by showing up on a bike with upturned, sawed-off handlebars. This was a somewhat fashionable fad among douchebags of that period. It was supposed to be aerodynamic and tell the world how fast you were on the flats. Here’s what that setup looked like:


Of course it defeated the purpose of the drop handlebar, an excellent design that remains the standard today because it gives the rider so many different ways to hold the bars over varied terrain. I scoffed at sawed-off bars even at the time, and in fact doubted it was actually more aero, based on the result of the Colorado state time trial championship the previous year.

(Quick aside on that. In 1987 my friends P— and J— were both on the 7-Eleven junior team, which gave the riders all free road bikes but had only one time trial bike to go around. The TT bike had a smaller front wheel, a down-sloping top tube, and upturned “bullhorn” style handlebars—the non-DIY version of what you see above. There was a bit of a debate over who got to use the TT bike for the state championship time trial. J— pushed his case harder, P— shrugged it off, and guess who ended up winning the race? P—, on his bog-standard road bike, and by a significant margin. Years after this, wind tunnel tests confirmed that the bullhorn bars are no more aero; only the hoop-shaped “clip-on” bars give an advantage.)

The other thing about this fancy certified coach is that, despite the temperature being in the lower- to mid-50s, he had bare legs. I’d spent all winter trying to teach my juniors to wear leg warmers when it’s cool, and maybe half of them had actually listened, but now that was out the window. The coach’s goal in eschewing leg warmers was obvious: he was showing off his big, shaved thighs. He was a sprinter, in fact more of a track rider than a roadie, and it showed. Of course there were stars in the kids’ eyes, which the guy’s swagger only increased. He talked constantly, and so much of what came out of his mouth was malarkey.

For example, he told the riders not to try to do two races on consecutive days: “Your body needs to recover. Target just one of the weekend’s races.” This flew in the face of what I’d been saying, which is that if we’re attending a race weekend, and are at the venue both days anyway, everyone should do both races, and that’s the best way to improve your day-to-day recovery. This blowhard also instructed the kids to figure out what they’re good at and focus on that instead of trying to do everything well … which is ridiculous because stage races require the full range of capabilities, and it’s fun to ride in the mountains even if you’re better at sprinting. I feared that my juniors would note the discrepancies between what I, their almost-peer coach, was saying vs. this big-thighed, USCF-certified, grown-up coach, and systematically un-learn everything I had tried to teach them.

My own coaching style was (and remains) just to ride, not talk too much, answer questions, and only provide tips during an obvious teachable moment. But this dude just loved to hold forth, and during our training ride kept up a steady stream of do this, don’t do that, etc. At no point did he acknowledge that I was even a coach, much less ask me if he was teaching something (e.g., a rotating paceline) that I’d already covered (which I had). I was just another kid to him, which—I will freely confess—caused a quiet animosity to mount in me. But what could I do? I just silently went along, wondering if this one clinic could effectively end my coaching gig by stripping away all the scraps of cred I’d managed to stitch together over the preceding months.

At the far point of our ride, before heading back toward the bike shop, the coach stopped us at a city park and said, “We’re going to do a drill here. It’s very important, in bike racing, to be able to jostle with other riders and not be afraid of some contact, of bouncing off each other. You also need to know the proper way to fall.” (I’m quoting this as though verbatim; obviously I’m paraphrasing from memory as best I can, but you catch the drift.) So he instructed the riders to ride around on the grass and bump into each other, to get a feel for that. I wasn’t so sure this was a good idea, since several of these kids were pretty new to the sport and might be a little freaked out, but what could I say? I stayed on the sideline and watched.

To my horror, this big stupid thick coach started riding around among the juniors like a big cat selecting his prey, and then knocking over one rider after another. What a dick! Just a big freaking bully, showing off by terrorizing my poor juniors! That was one of the thoughts racing through my mind. The other thought was: oh, good. This is gonna be AWESOME. Because this coach didn’t know about Road Warrior.

Road Warrior was a game my brothers and friends and I had invented and played at since we were like 12 or 13. It consisted of biking around on residential streets and trying to run each other into curbs, parked cars, and/or each other. It was not so different from what this douchey coach was doing, except it was on asphalt and was a more level playing field, our skill levels being similar. For the most part it was a game of chicken, though we did occasionally hit a car or the ground. Minor scrapes suffered in the process were as natural and expected as messing up the kitchen when you cook. The most important thing I learned from Road Warrior is the importance of staying low and getting underneath your opponent’s body. I noted the effectiveness of this when playing against the neighbor kid, a pretty tough hard-knocks type who had lived with various foster families and kept all their names, such that we referred to him as J— L— R— R— H-N—. (By protecting his privacy with initials I’ve ruined the almost poetic sound of all those two-syllable names strung together, but so be it). J— L— R— R— H-N— had street cred because was almost the only kid in Boulder, it seemed, who wasn’t completely white (nobody, not even he, knew what all ethnicities he had), plus he’d cut off half his thumb in shop class. Still, I’d naturally assumed I’d get the better of him, being a) bigger, and b) already a somewhat seasoned cyclist … but he was really, really good at Road Warrior, despite being on a BMX bike which we assumed would somehow be a disadvantage. From him I learned about coming in low.

(I was also no slouch at jostling in an actual race. In Colorado they’d often mix the already large junior field with the senior Category 3s, resulting in a peloton of well over a hundred riders. This photo is from just such a race, the 1987 Rocky Mountain News Criterium in Denver, snapped not long before I was taken out in a massive pileup.)


I didn’t do anything right away. Instead I waited a bit, savoring my anticipation of this coach’s comeuppance, letting him bully my juniors some more until I was sure at least a couple of them were fighting back tears. Then I casually rode over to the douchebag and took him out. He was absolutely astonished. I’m quite sure he’d never even considered this possible, and probably wasn’t even expecting anyone to challenge him. His dominance was of the untested Mike Tyson variety: run roughshod over your opponent because he’s too terrified to respond. Well, now he was on the ground.

He immediately leapt to his feet, climbed back on his stupid bike with its upturned bars, and came at me, certain that it was only the element of surprise that had allowed me to take him down. Wrong! I knocked him over like a damn bowling pin. Then I circled around to set up for the next bout, looking across my juniors to see their reaction. (You getting this, guys?) Another clash and the certified dumbass was on the ground again. He got angrier and angrier and his efforts got more forceful, but he just lacked the skill to accomplish anything. Eventually the juniors put their bikes down and just sat on the grass on the gentle hill at the edge of the park, watching and enjoying the spectacle. Finally, after I’d gone at least 8-0 in takedowns, the humiliated coach realized he wasn’t going to achieve anything except maybe a heart attack, and ended the drill.

The ride back to the shop was very quiet. And oddly, on my subsequent rides with the juniors, there was no trash talk about how badly I’d schooled the big bad USCF-certified coach (which trash talk I’ll confess I’d kind of been hoping to hear). In fact the enemy coach was never mentioned again; it was like he’d never existed. Which was, needless to say, totally fine with me.

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Saturday, January 18, 2025

A Scattershot Approach to New Year’s Resolutions

Introduction

Well, it’s that time of year again, when you start to wonder whether your neighbors are ever going to take down their holiday lights, your friends start cracking jokes about turning “dry January” into “moist January,” and you find yourself endlessly ignoring articles about New Year’s Resolutions. Well, don’t ignore this one, because, well, just don’t. I worked hard on it. I mean, I’m about to. I will have worked hard on it by the end, unless it comes easily, who knows … wish me luck.


The scattershot approach

If you’re a longtime reader, you may recall that I’ve taken a variety of approaches to the New Year’s Resolution topic, from beating around the bush to a one-size-fits-all blanket Resolution to the highly specific treatment to the “wide net” approach. Well, I’m taking this latter tack again this year: throwing out a bunch of suggestions in case one or two hit home with this or that random reader. It’s like speed-dating. So get ready … many of these won’t apply to you, a few might, and I hope most of them will give you a chuckle if nothing else.

Get out there

I think a lot of people developed bad habits during the COVID-19 pandemic. It became so easy to stay home, spend half the day in pajamas and the other half in sweats, amortize that pandemic-purchased treadmill or Peloton exercise bike, and basically embrace our inner troglodyte. Well, it’s time to unlearn that. Why? Because humans are social creatures. I have been getting out more myself—less indoor training, more errands on foot, and I’m even doing more window shopping—because seeing other people out and about is like a balm to me now after having been cooped up. I’m actually surprised by this, having been a lifelong introvert, but there you have it. Even when I’m stopped at this one endless traffic light in Orinda during my bike rides, I take pleasure in seeing the menagerie of motorists parading by. So resolving to get out there more isn’t just for yourself—it’s for everyone else, too.

Stop floss-shaming

I guess I should say floss-self-shaming, by which I mean feeling like an idiot because you find it such a struggle to throw away a strand of used dental floss. You try to ball it up (it won’t stay balled), maybe you twist it into a snake so it’ll be shorter (pointless), you try everything, but when you go to drop it into the wastebasket it never lands there. For me it’s particularly hard because the bathroom trash can is always sliding into the far corner behind the sink and when I stoop to drag it out I have to watch I don’t bonk my head on the medicine cabinet door, and then the can’s got that pedal-activated lid that’s tough to use when I’m all crouched over because my vision is so crappy that it’s hard to see if my floss made it all the way in, only part of the way, or none of the way. Disposing of floss at day’s end is such a discouraging task, it makes me wonder if life has just gotten too difficult to even stand.

But there’s hope! Last week I stumbled across a New Yorker cartoon on this very subject: a guy meets his gal at an outdoor coffee shop table and says, “Sorry I’m late—I was trying to throw a string of dental floss in the garbage.” So fear not, we are not alone. It’s not just you and me being lame … this floss difficulty is a known thing. So have some self-compassion around this. (And no, self-compassion will not make you a wuss.)

(Now, if you though this Resolution was about not needing to floss, that’s absurd. If you don’t already floss at least once a day, make that your Resolution. We only get one set of teeth, and we’re all living longer … I could write a whole post about dental hygiene. In fact I did.)

Get less takeout/delivery

It seems like we live in the golden era of takeout (unless that  era is still ahead of us, meaning one day nobody will ever cook or go out anymore). This needs to change. There are so many reasons to get less takeout. First of all—and I speak from experience here—it’s so often a capitulation. Not something festive or fun like going out, but an admission that you just don’t have the gumption to cook. Why pay money to indulge a sense of defeat?

Meanwhile, there’s the packaging. Just picture all those plastic and styrofoam containers, yours and everyone else’s, lining our landfills … doesn’t it fly in the face of last year’s Resolution to take better care of the planet? And don’t kid yourself about recycling. My trash company sent us this stern bulletin recently that said something like, “We’ve changed our policy around recyclables. Only cans and bottles will be accepted: no other form of plastic is allowed, and we will be watching your bin. You get only one warning and then we will fine you a gazillion dollars. And don’t even think about sneaking your plastic into a neighbor’s recycling … if you try that, rest assured, we will find you, and we will kill you.” (Yeah, I exaggerated a bit, but it really was a snotty bulletin.)

What’s more, you’re doing your local restaurant a disservice because the lovely food they create is severely compromised by the transportation delay. It’s less than piping hot, and it’s sweaty from being trapped with its steam, plus the presentation is ruined. So the restaurant you think is just-okay is probably actually great but you no longer know it. On top of that, you’re slowing down the restaurant’s kitchen and thus compromising the experience of their dine-in guests, all because you’re too lazy to put on a pair of pants, brush your hair, and go be out in the world. (Didn’t I just tell you, via my first suggested resolution, to get out more?)

Delivery is even worse … you have to pay extra, plus tip the driver, and you’re not even leaving the house. I was shocked to learn that people are now using DoorDash to get McDonald’s. As if a non-piping-hot French fry were even edible. And McDonald’s is actually calling this McDelivery®. Did you just throw up in your mouth? I did, too! The center cannot hold. The falcon cannot hear the falconer.

I know what you’re thinking right now: “Yeah, but who has the time to cook?” Well now wait a second. Haven’t you been going on and on, like everybody else, about how useful A.I. is, and how much time you’re saving using ChatGPT? For example, when your daughter needed help with her homework for art class, and instead of spending an hour or more counseling her you just outsourced it and got a finished artwork in under two minutes?


Think of all the time A.I. has freed up for you to cook! And hey, here is a link to some easy recipes even a time-strapped college kid could make. (No, they’re not perfectly salubrious but neither is the stuff restaurants produce.)

Get control of your dog

I am not a dog person, which gives me special insight into what’s it like to not be enthralled by dogs. If you are a dog person, it might come as a real surprise to you that what you consider either adorable or at least lovably rambunctious misbehavior is actually a drag for grouches like me. For example, I’m out for a walk and your dog comes bounding over to me and tries to run up my body, his front paws raking my legs and groin, and you call out, “Don’t worry, he’s friendly!” And I’m thinking, fine, you’re probably friendly too, but would you windmill me like this? Or, your dog terrorizes me with aggressive barking and instead of apologizing to me, you only bawl out the dog, as though I could get satisfaction from that. Look, I can enjoy dogs, if they politely come sniff me and wait patiently to be adored. Maybe you could, like, train your beloved pet better so that everyone can love her?

Stop using my hairbrush

This one really only applies to my younger daughter when she’s home from college. So, L—, to be clear, it’s actually okay if you use my hairbrush on the sly such that I don’t even know about it. But when I have to look for it, I get nervous … what if you took it to a slumber party and lost it? As you know, it’s my oldest possession so I’m inordinately fond of it. And to my other readers: if you routinely borrow a hairbrush (or anything else) that is somebody’s oldest possession, please stop, or at least be more discreet.

When in Rome, wear a mask

I am not suggesting that there is an outbreak of COVID or any other disease in Rome. I mean this figuratively, and what I’m saying is, if you enter a business where the staff are wearing COVID masks, maybe you should, too, just out of respect. It’s no real hardship, after all, and isn’t it nice getting sick less often than we used to? After those pandemic years it seems like every jacket I own has a mask in its pocket, along with every bag and backpack. So just put that mask on as you go through the door … don’t cost nothin’.

Stop wearing a mask alone in your car

Look, in the early days of the COVID lockdown when nobody know what was going on, we did all kinds of silly stuff, like forensic-grade wipe-downs of shopping cart handles and wearing a mask in the car. But it never made sense to wear a mask when driving alone, did it? Are you worried you’ll give your car COVID? This behavior makes even less sense now than at the height of the pandemic, but I still see people doing it. If that’s you, just stop. You’re making mask-wearers look like lunatics. Let’s not re-kindle that whole mask-ideology war, okay?

Entertain more

Remember when people hosted dinner parties, or cocktail parties, or birthday parties? Well, at least in my community, it seems like entertaining guests has become a lost art. Is it just me or are fewer people hosting than in years past? (That you can’t reply “It’s just you” is why albertnet is a blog, not a panel discussion.)

I think people have either gotten lazy, or out of practice, or they’ve just forgotten entertaining is a thing. Look, if you have social anxiety, don’t worry about it … blow this Resolution off. But if you used to host parties or dinners, how about reflecting on how fun that was, and getting back into it?

Lose the motion-activated stadium lights

Most nights, my wife and I take a walk after dinner (we call it our Post-Prandial Promenade) and it’s all very pleasant except the half-dozen or so houses that have installed motion-sensor-activated lights that are blindingly bright, like we’re suddenly being interrogated. What the hell? What ever happened to the 40-watt porch light? Trust me, that was enough to deter burglars, who a) can be spotted in very low light, and b) don’t tend to do their thing at 8 p.m. anyway. If you have one of these crazy-bright lights, you’re basically blinding your neighbors on a regular basis. What for? Are you worried we’ll veer off the sidewalk, trip on your lawn gnome, get injured, and sue? With this thoughtless technology you are being antisocial, and giving me—a conscientious, law-abiding citizen—a serious temptation to commit vandalism (e.g., bringing a slingshot on my walks to take out your light bulbs).

Stop holding your smartphone up to your mouth

I’ve seen this for years: an otherwise normal-looking person is using his or her smartphone in speakerphone mode, but has determined that the person on the other end of the call may be having trouble hearing, and thus holds the phone directly ahead of his or her mouth as if about to take a bite out of it:


This might seem like a victimless crime, but it’s really not. Not only does it look ridiculous, but it reminds the onlooker that this person is so lost in his phone call he’s lost awareness of being out in public—which is unnerving. Earbuds with microphones are so cheap and unobtrusive, not to mention they protect your caller’s privacy. Why not just use them? As a bonus, you might be mistaken for a crazy person talking to himself, which is amusing.

But seriously…

If you earnestly want some help with your Resolutions and are disappointed with the above suggestions, here are some less flippant ones:

 Further reading 

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Saturday, January 11, 2025

From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XVII

Introduction

This is the seventeenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, and Volume XVI is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another, and can be read in numerical order, reverse order, liturgical order, purchase order, mail order, and/or in good working order.)


July 24, 2007

I’m pretty sure I didn’t have any kids back when we were colleagues, but I have two daughters now, A— (age 5½) and L— (age 3½). Parenting has been both satisfying and exhausting. The girls always want me to “play Cassandra,” where I speak in this booming voice and pretend I’m an evil sea witch while acting out various scenarios they come up with. It’s really tedious, but they love it. Well, the other day I realized that playing Cassandra vaguely reminded me of some other wearying activity I’m routinely involved in, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. Then it hit me: conference calls. The dread I feel as I enter the passcode is identical to the dread I feel when I’m asked to play Cassandra. And yet both activities have to be done.

May 8, 2008

My back is seriously jacked up. For years I have lived in fear of my back suddenly going out: no apparent cause, no diagnosis, no treatment, no prognosis … just a purgatory of suffering that ideally will subside at some point. And now it’s upon me. The hardest thing for me is transitions (e.g., sitting-to-standing), and the hardest transition is from riding my bike to standing up and walking. So literally the most painful part of my morning ride today was carrying my bike up the short flight of steps to the porch. Then I had to maneuver the bike through the living room, around the landing by the stairs and through the kitchen, and then down the short flight to the office. A fresh stab of pain accompanied every change in direction, and one spasm caused me to catastrophically lose my grip on the bike when atop the steps down to the office. My poor bike fell and the top tube hit the arm of a chair, and now I have this huge dent in the top tube of my almost-new bike. It is absolutely heartbreaking.

The dent isn’t so bad that the ride would be affected, I don’t think. It’s just a really bumful blemish, like if Natalie Portman had a permanent whitehead the size of a pencil eraser on her forehead. Since this disaster I’ve twice had the bike up to a pretty good speed in a full tuck without any problem, so I reckon it’s good. It breaks my heart every time I look at it, though. Sometimes when I look down at that dent while riding I get so pissed off I can actually suffer more, so I guess that’s a silver lining. Man. I’ll still be whining about this on my deathbed, I’m sure.

February 9, 2009

Sorry it has taken me so long to reply to your simple inquiry. I’d forgotten all about it until I awoke at like 3 a.m., for no apparent reason, thinking, “pork shoulder recipe!” The recipe is below. E—’s handwriting is a bit hard to read, as she wrote this in a hurry. We were eating at Rivoli (on Solano Ave) and in a perfect storm of E—’s journalistic skill, our waitress’s helpfulness, and the amazing generosity of the chef, soon E— was being told the whole recipe, by the chef herself, right there at the table.


Let me decipher some of that for you. The pork gets half-covered in stock. (“Covered” gave me a lot of trouble in E—’s rendering, even though I know the recipe already.) Not given is how much chopped onion, carrots, and garlic to throw in. It probably doesn’t matter. The garlic should be chopped with a knife or razor blade (like in that movie), not put through a garlic press. (To hear Anthony Bourdain tell it, you should never put garlic through a press: “I don’t know what that junk is that squeezes out the end of those things, but it ain’t garlic.”) Real stock always helps but standard chicken broth is fine (except the Swanson “Unnatural Badness” style … you would want to pay the extra for “Natural Goodness,” which might be the same thing and they just added some margin to cover their substantial marketing costs, but you never know). Use the foil over the top even if you’re using a Dutch oven with a lid. The magic is that the pork just gets tougher and tougher and tougher as it cooks until it reaches some invisible threshold and then it just gives up, the proteins collapse (I might be making shit up here), and the whole thing becomes as tender as can be. I’m hoping that’ll happen to me eventually as well.

April 9, 2009

I agree, it’s pretty sad how many guys are running 27s [i.e., 27-tooth rear cogs on their racing bikes] and don’t even have the decency to be ashamed of it. They speak of this as though it were normal, inevitable even, and like it’s as acceptable as using, say, lightweight inner tubes or cork bar tape. “Oh, I love my 27,” T— has said on several occasions. This is as shocking to me as if he said, “Oh, I find that a feminine pad works so well as a chamois liner.” And don’t even get me started on the guys who advocate compact cranksets (as M— did on my blog post, eliciting what I hope was a sufficiently diplomatic response … my tongue is still bleeding).

Man, a pro racer using a giant rear cog? What’s gotten into these guys? It seems to me that if you have a larger rear cog than your competitors, you will either a) not use it, or b) get dropped in it. I remember before some collegiate race (in my Cuesta days) some guys gave me a hard time for having only a 19 rear cog. I predicted that nobody would be using anything bigger than that on the climb. As it turned out, I was dropped while still turning the 17 over pretty smoothly. These days I ride a 25. Sure, I’d rather have a 23 for aesthetics, and could probably handle this even on Lomas Cantadas in the summer on a good day, but I find I’m sometimes having to weave across the road even with the 25. Weaving of course isn’t the prettiest sight, but I’d rather see a guy weaving with a decent gear range than spinning along ineffectually in some really low gear facilitated by a triple, a compact, or a giant cog, or (worst of all) any combination of these.

April 19, 2009

[This pertains to the news that cyclist Tyler Hamilton had tested positive again after having totally denied doping before, but years before coming clean by writing The Secret Race, which is reviewed here.]

Yep, turn out the lights … the party’s over. Actually, for Tyler, the party should have been over in 2004. Since then he’s been like that one dude at the party who never went to bed and is still drinking the next morning.

May 11, 2009

Thanks for the feedback on my blog … that is a rare treat. Only occasionally do I get feedback and when I do it’s just verbal commentary from my biking buddies, such as on the corn cob post. Nobody actually said he liked it, per se. I think there’s some unspoken rule like “Don’t say anything nice to Dana.” Perhaps this is for fear my ego will get too bloated or something. One guy started off by saying, “You should write for the ‘New Yorker,’” which of course sounded like the highest praise I could imagine, but then he continued, “because your articles are so fricking long nobody could ever finish them.” Well excuuuuuse me! (My longest piece so far, on indoor training, took me half an hour to read aloud to E—; it would take less than that to read it silently to yourself, and I’m sure everybody on the ride watches stupid sitcoms that take that long. But as you said, reading is a chore.) Another guy, who I happen to know does read the “New Yorker,” agreed about the corn cob post … sort of. “Yeah, it was way too long. In fact, I even thought the poem itself was too long. I don’t have time.” I took this as a subtle dig at the first guy, but then that’s just the kind of total egomaniac I am.

July 4, 2009

Thanks for the copious feedback on my Father’s Day email. To answer your main question, perhaps the hardest thing for me to convey about my relationship to my dad is how it actually affects me: which is to say, not really that much. I think you are spot-on with your “arbitrary scale” concept, about a son living up to vs. rejecting his father’s example. My dad’s poor performance stands mainly as a cautionary tale, kind of a reverse how-to guide, rather than anything for me to be really bitter about. Certainly I’m disappointed in him, and when I bother to think about him I can get pretty irked, but I don’t feel I’m struggling to bear the emotional weight of my upbringing as I move through my life.

The ability to learn from a parent’s mistakes, even if you’re the victim of those mistakes, seems utterly obvious and straightforward to me (so long as substance and other abuse aren’t involved, of course). At least, that’s what I have traditionally told myself, but I’m gradually realizing that not everybody believes this. B—, for example, believes that my dad couldn’t have succeeded at being a good husband and father because my dad’s own dad, my paternal grandfather, was such a jerk and that family so dysfunctional. To my retort that as parents ourselves we can improve on the parenting we got, B— said, “These things take time.” He spoke as if this were an evolutionary process, one generation gradually improving on the one before it, to which I reply, bullshit! It’s revolutionary, not evolutionary—we make up our minds to not just repeat the cycle. As a metaphor, let’s say you watch a guy stick his hand in a fire and sizzle all the skin off and howl in pain. You think, “Note to self: do not stick hand in fire. Bad outcome there.” Now let’s say your father, and his father before him, and his father before him, all had this tradition of sticking their hands in fire. You’d think, “Note to self: dad and ancestors all idiots. Do not stick hand in fire.”

July 28, 2009

My kids did their first bike race, a criterium on residential streets in Albany. It was a “fun” race, meaning nobody was paying any attention to who finished where (supposedly). My kids were pretty excited about it. A— got ahold of my Blackberry the other day and started writing about her race. Here’s what she has so far:

I went to a race. It wasn’t just any old race. It was a kids race. I made the decision to inter. Though it looked hard it looked fun and I went with my dad to sign up. I was put in the 6-9 group and I was escorted to the start line. L—’s start line was closer to the finish. It wasn’t indicated where the finish

That’s as far as she got. The race was funny because A—’s group was only supposed to go about a quarter lap, but they just kept going after the finish line and did a whole lap of the crit course after that. I was announcing the race over the PA and got to say, “And ladies and gentlemen, crossing the line now is Albany’s A— Albert of the East Bay Velo Club!” I hope she was listening…

August 7, 2009

Yes, we’re in London! Compared to my previous vacation in France, this is very easy because I can speak the local language, having majored in English in college. There’s still a bit of challenge here (a “spot of bother, “ I guess I should say) regarding certain phrases and concepts. For example, at a pub last night I gave the barkeep a five-pound note and asked him to break it. He was nonplussed. “Break” seemed to mean nothing to him. “You know, give me singles,” I said. His confusion continued. Did he think “singles” was some kind of bar snack that costs under five pounds? Finally he grasped my meaning. Apparently England doesn’t have one-pound notes, which might explain why the term “singles” doesn’t carry any meaning for them. They’re all about the coins over here. It’s weird to think of spare change actually having value. I left a bunch of coins on the dresser last night without realizing they comprised most of my liquid net worth here. Three of the coins alone are worth like seven bucks!

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Friday, January 3, 2025

Overlooked Posts of 2024

Introduction

Last year, I enjoyed an article in the New York Times about overlooked stories—those their editors felt didn’t reach as many readers as they should have. Following the Times’ lead, I blogged about overlooked albertnet posts. Did it make a mark? Well, of the twelve 2023 posts I spotlighted (one per month), two subsequently moved from last place to second place, and four moved all the way into first place (i.e., have now reached the  most pageviews of any posts that month). That strikes me as a pretty good response, so I’m going do this again. Below are the 2024 posts that I think deserved more attention from my readers (I’m looking at you, Mom). Like last year, I’ll explain why they deserve your attention.


January

I thought “New Year’s Resignation” was a catchy title since readers’ brains would automatically think “Resolution” when they hit the first syllable of that third word, and then be surprised. If my readers had any such reaction (which I now doubt), it evidently wasn’t enough to get them to click the link; this post has the fewest pageviews of any I ran last January. Perhaps “resignation” is just too negative a word … I’ve received advice that negative words turn people away and we should always use positive ones. But how, then, would we explain the success of the heavy metal band Megadeth?

I feel the Resignation post should have done better. I mean, don’t we all get sick of the swirl around New Year’s Resolutions, and thus shouldn’t readers welcome a suggestion like improving their capacity for resignation? Wouldn’t they be interested in how this behavior, which we’re all trained to feel bad about, can actually be a superpower? Well, to get that message they’d have to actually open the post, duh! I guess it really is all about window dressing. If I decide to do a post this month on the theme of New Year’s Resolutions, I’m going to call it “Make $150K working from home,” or maybe “Megadeth.”

February

The loss leader for February was “Virtual Reality Killer App!” Any reader expecting a well-researched, informative article on VR technology apparently doesn’t know me very well. The more a topic requires actual research, the less I do, and the higher I rev my BS engine. In other words, it should have been obvious that was a humor piece. Doesn’t everyone deserve a good laugh? I guess it’s possible you identified it as a humor piece but didn’t click through because you don’t think I’m funny. If that’s the case, why are you here at all? Shoo! Shoo!

What? You’re still here? You do think I’m funny? Well then click here right away! I won’t say more about that post because there’s a plot twist I’d hate to give away. So go read it now. And then came back here for the rest of this post. Or not. Whatever.

March

If you consider my lowest-performing March post, “The Power of Loafing,” in the context of my earlier “New Year’s Resignation” post, you might conclude I was (and/or am) burned out and just going through the motions of my life, running out the clock. And you’d be right. Er, wrong. Maybe both. Look, this was a useful post in challenging the so-called “grind culture” of “performative workaholism” while introducing a new buzz-phrase that’s sure to take the workplace by storm: “clip out.” Give it a read!

April

I haven’t seen much response to my April post “Can We Unplug Our Kids?” despite it being a serious commentary on an important societal problem. Oh, wait a second … I just realized this is the last sort of thing anyone wants to read, and that moreover reading is the last thing anyone wants to do. I should have posted a video of myself doing a silly dance, or better yet, a video of a really attractive woman doing a sexy dance. In other words I should have just forwarded something from TikTok, like everybody else.

But wouldn’t earnest parents be naturally drawn to this topic? And aren’t parents among the most earnest type of people alive? Maybe parents didn’t read this because they don’t see that I’ve earned the right to pontificate. Don’t they realize I’m a tall male so I automatically have the right? Well, anyway, I do think I’ve earned that right because I raised my kids in a highly unorthodox fashion and reported on the remarkable results. I should have titled this post “Raised By Nutjobs: the Sad Story of a Cell-Phone-Free Childhood!” Or maybe “TikTok Twerk Tease!” or “Megadeth.”

May

Once again, a useful-looking how-to advice post was largely ignored: “Five Home Remodeling Mistakes to Avoid.” Would-be readers may have seen that title and thought, “So what, I’m not contemplating a home remodel anyway,” or “What does this unheralded bookworm cyclist blogger know about remodels that the helpful folks at Home Depot couldn’t tell me?” or “OMG, after my disastrous remodel I can’t bear to think about that topic ever again.” Evidently they weren’t thinking, “Oh, this is obviously another purely BS humor piece along the lines of ‘COVID-19: Helping Teens Cope’ or ‘Plumbing Emergencies for Dummies.’ I’ll bet it’s a scream!”

This post takes five perfectly logical and reasonable rules of thumb and smashes them with a hammer. It is the perfect remedy for the dread that contemplating home improvement can generate. Here’s a teaser so you’ll understand what vein I was shooting up in:

Spring is in the air. Out in their driveways, your neighbors are beating on old Turkish rugs with broomsticks, maybe more enthusiastically than is really necessary. Birds are building nests in your trees, without asking. No matter where you look, spring cleaning and other restoration projects are underway. The warm breeze is whispering in your ear: “Time to start pulling your weight.” Or maybe that’s your spouse, and it’s proceeded from a whisper to plain speech to aggressive beseeching all the way up to a flat-out demand, which has become increasingly hard to ignore. So it’s time to bite the bullet and agree to a home remodel.

In summary, check this post out immediately!

June

I read an article yesterday about how a majority of the movies that Hollywood is working on this year are sequels, prequels, reboots, or remakes, because that’s the kind of crap that gets people into the theaters. The logic of this is not lost on me: I understand that people are lame and don’t like to gamble on new stuff. Thus, when a post does well, I often try to work my way around to a sequel. A post from 2009, “We Have a Winner,” has racked up about 1500 pageviews, and—get this—over 850 of them were in the last year alone. That’s not an albertnet blockbuster but it’s pretty solid. So in June I posted “We Have a Winner! – Part II” and it has done … very poorly.

This post concerns the winner of my second non-annual albertnet Amateur Product Review contest, and recaps the three consumer reviews I featured of various products, with one review each being a fake that I contrived. Then this post provides the correct answer and the winner’s brilliant commentary around how he came to his answer. Give it a read, it’s fun!

July

I am very disappointed with the performance of “What Are Men Extenders?” which concerns a term that (after harrowing Internet research) I traced etymologically to the movie “Barbie.” This post provides a very thorough definition of “men extender” and plumbs the fascinating topic of what products are the quintessential examples. This phrase is utterly useful, as is the examination of what it means to be a man—a man’s man, even—in our modern, enlightened times. This post is my finest on this theme since “The Sissy Syndrome” which I posted back in 2010, and which has been really popular. Read ‘em both!

August

Okay, the loss leader for August, “Ageing Focus – Make Balance a Habit!” is unabashedly earnest, helpful, useful, and understandably has been ignored. It’s really not very amusing and concerns the unpleasant reality of getting old and lame. I guess I could have titled it “Try This Weird Trick That Your Therapist Doesn’t Want You To Know About” or “Too Hot For TikTok!” but that would be a bait-and-switch. Look, there’s some helpful stuff in this post, okay? And if you want the punch line without having to read anything, just scroll down and watch a couple of the 20-second videos shot by my daughter. (In one of them you can hear her yawning, which is probably the highlight of the whole post.) Just do it. Do it for your future self, assuming you don’t want to be falling-and-you-can’t-get-up.

September

All of my posts did pretty well in September, but one had to be the loser, so I’ll draw your attention to “Major League Baseball FAQ – a Guide for Foreigners.” Given that a large percentage of albertnet viewers are overseas, I figured this would be popular (especially given the strong performance of “Super Bowl FAQ – A Guide for Foreigners”). But it hasn’t gone viral or anything (not really, not yet).

You should read it whether you’re foreign or not, whether you’re a baseball maven or a total newb. (My nephew, who played varsity baseball in college, says he learned a couple things.) It’s not because you need this knowledge, but because you need a laugh. Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite.

Cuba has won more Olympic medals for baseball than any other country but they have never played in the World Series. How can MLB baseball call it the “World” Series?

Because America.

What is the seventh inning stretch?

This is when all the fans in the stadium stand together and stretch, since they’ve been sitting so long on those uncomfortable bleachers.

So it’s like yoga or Tai Chi?

No, just stretching out your arms a bit, and singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

Is it always the same song, across the nation?

No, in Boston they sing “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond.

Why Boston? Why don’t they sing “Sweet Caroline” in North or South Carolina?

Nobody knows. That is to say, I don’t know.

October

It’s not often that the title of an albertnet post includes “Mea Culpa.” In case you’re not fluent in pig Latin, that roughly translates, “Just kill me.” I fell on my sword with this post (schadenfreude, anyone?) based on the myopia of my April loss-leader post, “Can We Unplug Our Kids?” My “Part II: Mea Culpa” post considers the social media conundrum afresh, letting parents somewhat off the hook and examining how the Internet industry is more to blame. I examine in particular how privilege and luck helped my family grapple with social media responsibly. Gosh, any time I tap into liberal guilt I ought to touch a nerve, right? With readers either commiserating or condemning me, possibly both? Well, not this time … people simply ignored it. Do you want to remedy that? Click here! (Note: reading the post will not actually help you save the world. But you might feel smug and/or indignant. Won’t that feel good?)

November

Frankly, November was a great month for albertnet. Its four posts have accumulated over 1,100 page views so far, and the count from those four is still climbing with well over 100 views in the last week. The least number of views is from “Bell’s Seasoning II – The Spawning” with only 180 views so far (38 in the past week). I already mentioned how sequels are supposed to be a slam-dunk, so what’s going on here? I even included “The Spawning” in the title, which strategy seems to have borne fruit in the past (e.g., “Tire Chains II – The Spawning,” “Keep Calm II – The Spawning”). And yet my Bell’s sequel hasn’t yet propelled me to international fame and stardom.

You should read it anyway, because it’s not just about a spice concoction that is the key to Thanksgiving, but also about a dogged blogger who is persistent beyond all reason. It’s almost like a cautionary tale, except there’s no moral (unless I missed it, in which case you could enjoy some first-rate dramatic irony). I know your next turkey dinner is over ten months away, but you should check this post out anyway.

December

Well, I posted only three times last month, and it’s probably not fair to pick on the most recent, lowest-performing post for December because it’s only been up for a week and a half. I’m talking about “A Mysterious Note” which is the strange, true story of a mysterious note, and includes as a bonus the even stranger, also true story of the time I terrorized a junkie during his heroin fix. At least, I think I terrorized him. I can only assume he experienced actual terror (since I’ve never tried heroin myself, obviously). Does any of this make you curious? Good, good. Click on through!

Here’s to 2025!

Thank you for visiting albertnet. I look forward to another year of writing about, well, anything that amuses me, and I hope you look forward to reading it.

Overlooked posts of 2023:

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.