endurablegoods

LinkedIn Recommendations - Are You Allowed To Take Those Back? WTF?

UPDATE: I took down the guy's photo. That wasn't cool. Instead, I give you Dead Space Samurai with Palin.

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Over a year ago I was toiling for a nifty little start up in Boulder, Colorado. I was living in San Francisco at the time but was contributing news/insight to the fledgling operation through current Social Media Super-Scientist, Eric Elkins. After a couple good calls and meetings with the CEO, I moved out there to work for the company full-time. As standard in any start-up, I took an anemic salary (W-fucking-2) and threw my heart and brain into the mission.

Well, after a year the company took a turn for the worse and laid off anyone that couldn't program or hadn't negotiated a sweet, iron-clad deal ahead of time. As customary, I requested a Letter of Recommendation from the CEO. "It's been my policy not to write letter of recommendation and I'd prefer to stick to that," he said. Now, this is someone with whom I worked side-by-side in cramped offices and for whom I spent four months in the wilds of the god-awful Cincinnati - alone. This wasn't some distance email address that signed my checks.

After much haranguing and an eventual tense face-to-face demand, the CEO agreed to write me a recommendation on LinkedIn. I hadn't checked my LinkedIn profile in awhile and when I did, I noticed I was a recommendation short. This guy had withdrawn my recommendation. I didn't even know that that was possible.

What changed? Well, he resigned from the company and, as things were preettttty rocky, I'm guessing that it didn't go well. I wonder if he even had a choice.

But what kind of jerk withdraws a recommendation? What kind of petty bastard goes back through his profile and does that? Maybe there's a good reason - maybe he just wanted to step way, way away from the company.

I Am The New SF Film Examiner

I've started writing for the SF Examiner as their Film Examiner. Basically, Examiner.com is a nationwide network of city-specific websites that rely on user-generated content. So, you have your Boston Mass Transit Examiner, a Houston Music Examiner, and so on. I'll be covering film and film-related issues, topics, trends and lies for the San Francisco area. Neat!

I published my first piece today - a little something on the new "The Muslims Are Coming, The Muslims Are Coming!!" film entitled OBSESSION: Radical Islam's War Against The West. I'll be posting three or four times a week there and will chat up my current employer, San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking (SFSDF), and our production company, Fog City Pictures.

Obama - By Any Means Necessary

Those Who Know, Go Below

At the risk of seeming a bit out of the SF loop.

At the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival last weekend I spied this sticker on the back of an SUV. There was something both official and suspicious about it and I gave it another glance.

Click for the larger image and you'll see that it is a permit for the Golden Gate Tunnel. Of course, you are familiar with the Golden Gate Bridge. But, tunnel? The diagram on the sticker implies that there is a commuter tunnel running from Fort Mason (underwater and under the bridge) to somewhere up by the Visitor's Center on the Marin side. The sticker sports an official-looking bar code and a number that from the looks of it, has been assigned by an organization called the Department of Tunnels.

I may have only lived here for about five years, but I'm damned certain that there is no tunnel running under the Golden Gate Bridge. I did entertain the idea that it was a remnant of some ill-fated, hugely ambitious public works project fueled by dot com money that, like many a Bay Area start-up, made stickers before they nailed down a business model. I imagined it was a PR fiasco and career-ruining nightmare that people never spoke about anymore out of embarrassment and threat of lawsuits.

But what I hoped it was turned out to be true. I love a good hoax - the more elaborate, the better. Like 9/11 or my bronze medal (crossbow) in the 2000 Summer Olympics. The effort made Yahoo's Picks on September 3, 2001.

While the original website no longer exists, the trusty Wayback Machine has a decent grab. (It's worth noting that something like this was a bit more difficult and time-consuming in 2001) Check out the Press Release declaring war on the Golden Gate Bridge or get a look at Miss Golden Gate Tunnel 2001 Lynne Luggadip. (pictured to left)

Particularly visionary was the Tunnel's concept of "transportainment."

Imagine a place where there is no traffic, no fog, no way to fall three hundred feet to your death. Imagine a place where you can just as easily grab a quick donut and a Fresca, attend a friend's wedding, or get a shiatsu style massage.