Put simply, being authentic is being the real you. It’s not that we ever lose who we really are, it’s just that through social conditioning and following cultural norms, we feel pressure to conform to the standards of others. Authenticity is when you are honest, genuine, and speak from your true self. It is not about compromising your values to be accepted by others and it is not about acting through a frame of fitting in with or impressing those around you.
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My family and I decided to take a trip to Vegas and Arizona. Which was awesome and a lot of fun. But the reason I’m writing this blog post is to tell a different story.
So we take our flight back to Buffalo, via Arizona. We land safely and happily. My dad decided to get our car which is about a 5 minute walk away from the airport, and I’m left with the rest of my family, taking our luggage off the conveyor belt.
We take all of our luggage, drag it out side, and wait for my dad to come back.
10 minutes, 15, 20… by the time it gets to around 30 minutes after he left, we start to see his car drive up. This is where it gets interesting (and crazy). He jumps out of the car, and suddenly an alarm siren from a car goes off. And when I mean car alarm, I mean the one that is loud as hell – the anti-theft one! My first reaction was that the car in front of us was going off. A couple seconds later my dad yells to us: “GET IN THE CAR!”
Now I’m getting completely worried, at the same time confused. He pops the trucks, throws our luggage in, and jumps in the car. Literally hundreds of peering eyes are watching us try and make our way out of the pick-up zone at the airport. We let a security guard know that we actually didn’t hot wire the car, and that we actually had a very low battery, which is why the the alarm is going off. We then drive off, and about two minutes of driving.. it finally stops.
Now for the reason the car alarm was going off: We had left our car near the airport, and by accident, someone left the light in the back seat on. So for the week and half that we were away. That light was on, sucking the battery out of our car. Supposedly, when the battery gets too low, it will start to make the car alarm sound when you open the door. And that’s exactly what happened to us.
Okay, so now that we are in the car safely, car alarm off. The problem is getting out. Doing that will just set off the anti-theft alarm for another 5 minutes (again).
We find a hotel on the road which has free Wi-Fi and instantly I crack open my Macbook and search for a 24-7 customer support number for Acura, on Google. We find the number and my dad decides to take the call. He talks to the guy for a solid 15 minutes and then hangs up the phone. The instructions from the guy was to get out of the car, through the window, take the keys, and insert them into the driver seat door, then unlock and lock the car 3 times.
My dad successfully did this!
Now he is outside of the car. This is the moment of truth. Opening the door without the anti-theft alarm going off.
SUCCESS 
Anyways, just thought I’d share this memorable experience with you.
Reddit is one of the top social media sites out there. Being my homepage for years now. And today I got a chance to talk to the co-founder of this awesome site, Alexis Ohanian. A part from reddit, he has also started another note-worthy website called Breadpig. Where, some of his side projects have gone on.
We’ve grown quite a bit since that little apartment in Medford, Mass. Not in company size, though, as there are only 5 of us working on the site these days, but we get around 4 million uniques a month.
We’ve still got a long way to go before social news becomes mainstream, but we’re aiming to get the alien at the front of the parade.
Yes, they’re going to have a parade to celebrate social news becoming mainstream.
The profits get reinvested into future products and donated to various non-profits I’ve become involved with over the years. I’d also been planning a small-scale “X-prize” for open source development, but some family matters tabled the breadpig prize — for now.
Then it dawned on me to take our act to the streets of DC and record people’s reactions. 60K views later, a reporter from the Washingtonian magazine was calling for an interview — about breadpig. The magic of the Internet.
We’ve got an album (When Will Then Be Now?), too, which we’re trying to get on iTunes. That will be a sad day for the music industry.
Trust me, the Internet will be there when you return.
My pleasure, Adam. Keep the great reddit submissions coming.
This is pretty crazy to think. We now have robots that can do just about anything. The robot I came across today, has never lost a game of air hockey (in 32-bit mode).
First, a supercomputer beats a chess master. Then, an artificial intelligence program deals defeat to a poker champion. Next: A robot takes on humans in air hockey. An upgraded robot designed by General Electric Fanuc can beat most human air hockey players, its developers claim.
Well, just thought this was worth sharing with you guys. Below is the 15 second video of this awesome machine in action.
Just thought I’d let you know what’s in store for the future of this blog.
So, in the coming weeks, there will be a couple more interviews with some pretty popular (internet) people. Not going to say who, just yet. I also plan to update this blog with a lot of my own articles. Productivity and technology would be the big two. Anyways, If you want to get updates from my blog, subscribe to the RSS feed, I’d appreciate it!
