I was perusing Hacker News and came across an incredible article: “How to Hire Fake Friends and Family”.

It’s a captivating interview with the CEO of Family Romance, an 8 year old company with a staff of 800 actors (infant to elderly) who play roles in their clients lives. I clicked, expecting a streamlined escort type service using AI and a slick mobile app. I thought, maybe they have an innovative way to do matchmaking in a mobile app. After all, I did find the story on Hacker News.

The CEO, 36 year old Ishii Yuichi, goes on to describe many examples of the roles he and his actors have filled over the years. Instead of tech knowledge, I left with a moral dilemma swirling around in my head.

Ishii formed the company after his friend, a single mom, asked him to pose as her child’s father to get him into an exclusive private school. To me, no big deal… I could see myself doing this for a friend.

His first major success was a doozy. A single mother hired Ishii to play father to her 12 year old daughter. 8 years later, Ishii is the only father the daughter has ever known. He is paid around $50/hour to spend time with her. He is to be very kind and never yells, per mother’s instruction. He uses the first and last name of her real father. He takes her out to dinner and sometimes amusement parks. He is prepared to walk her down the aisle at her wedding and act as grandfather to her children.

“More than Real” - Family Romance’s Motto

Check your pulse if that story doesn’t give you mixed feelings. So much deceit. He plays a role, it’s a job, it’s a lie. But he is there, taking her on outings. Kind, never yelling. Seriously, it’s better than many parents out there. Is it better/worse than having no father?

All the deceit makes the daughter seem like a fool. The lie seems bound to be revealed at some point. If the daughter grows up to be a happy individual, maybe she would understand if she ever found out the truth. Although her father was fake, he was truly there for emotional support. That matters, right?

There are several other stories mentioned. A man on his deathbed wants to live to see his grandchild be born, but he won’t make it. His daughter rented an infant for a day, presumably giving him immeasurable joy before passing.

It’s hard for me to say these behaviors are immoral. They seem to be providing such a valuable experience to their targets, I can’t call it wrong. Maybe, just maybe, it provides some insight into human nature and the world’s truth. Maybe it explains the fake news phenomena, and why we create echo chambers of like minded individuals and publications. Maybe it explains how social media will never be the truth, but a version of it, edited for our pleasure.

Do we really want to know the truth? Are we better off knowing it?

I’m a big NFL fan. I love getting together with friends on Sundays to cheer for the Bengals. Naturally, I love fantasy football.

The thing with fantasy football is that you really have to nerd out to be successful: You have to study your players, teams, injury reports, depth charts. Every week. For the entire 17-week season.

A few years back I came up with an NFL fantasy game that is exponentially less time consuming, and requires much less specific knowledge. Since the NFL is kicking off in T-minus two days, I thought I’d share how to do a Super Bowl Auction Draft!

The whole point of this game is to own the team that wins the Super Bowl. So instead of drafting individual players, you are drafting entire NFL teams! Because there are always a couple massive favorites (cough cough Patriots, cough), you can’t just take turns picking teams. Instead, it’s an auction draft… which is most fair and adds an interesting dynamic to the game.

Basic Rules

• 4 or 5 players, maximum
• Each player brings $50 to the table.
• $50 is the player’s budget and goes into the pot.
• Players take turns nominating a team.
• Each nomination requires an opening bid.
• Min bid increment of $0.25.
• Super bowl winner, runner up split the pot 80/20

That’s really it! The draft takes about 1 hour to complete, less if you don’t dilly dally.

Vegas Odds

In normal fantasy football, you look for “cheat sheets” that list players in order of how good they are expected to be. In this game the closest thing you’ll get to a cheat sheet are the Las Vegas gambling odds on each team to win the super bowl. From here, you have to manually decide how much you would spend on each team. But thats why this game is fun… you have to create your own custom system.

Favorites vs Value Buys

There are a handful of teams that are top tier each year. This year the favorite New England Patriots are around 7/2 to win it all, which is absolutely crazy. The other usual suspects are Packers, Seahawks, Falcons, Steelers, etc. They are basically the teams that everyone has extremely high hopes on, and wouldn’t surprise anyone if they brought home the Lombardi trophy.

Then there is everybody else. There are a lot of teams that are solid contenders, probably playoffs bound, but it’d be somewhat miraculous for them to win it all (AKA Bengals… WHODEY!). Will they win the Super Bowl? Almost certainly not. But, if you can buy several of these teams, who knows what will happen.

In our draft, an owner spent $44 on the Patriots, leaving him a measly $6 to buy other teams. He ended up with 3 teams total.

I went the other way. I bought 13 teams, and actually have 1 team in every single division. Sure there are some stinkers in there, but I think I bought them at a bargain. For example, I bought the Panthers for $2.

Divisions & Conferences

Each conference has 6 teams in the playoffs, 1 from each division plus 2 wildcards. Step 1 is to own some playoffs teams. One year I bought the entire AFC North so I’d be guaranteed at least one playoff team. It didn’t work out in the long run, but I was at least in the runnings in the post season.

The Super Bowl is always AFC vs NFC. If you own both teams in the Super Bowl, you win the entire pot! So it might be smart to have both AFC and NFC representation. Let’s say you spend your budget on the Packers and the Seahawks. Realize that only one of those teams can even make it to the Big Dance.

Have fun!

I work at a company called Map Your Show, also known as MYS. Earlier this year the marketing department started a blog. Today I’ve been featured in a little segment called “Know Your Show-er”!

Without further ado, here’s the full text, or you can just click here.

When they’re not servicing your trade show software, they’re leading pretty interesting lives. A behind-the-scenes look at our Director of Mapping & Interactive Technology

Name: John Sullivan

Occupation: Director of Mapping & Interactive Technology

Years of Service: 6

Do you have a favorite MYS-specific story/memory?

There’s a lot of great memories. But the first one that comes to mind is seeing our fearless leader Don Kline crush a karaoke version of “I’m Too Sexy” at one of our Christmas parties.

Assuming you like Cincinnati, what are some of its best parts?

Here are some of my faves:

Sports Team: Bengals

Park: Devou Park

Restaurant: Sotto

Neighborhood: Riverside Drive Historic District in Covington

Fast Food: White Castle

Bar: Ludlow Bromley Yacht Club

What’s the coolest place you’ve traveled to and why?

We went to Bali for our honeymoon last year, truly unbelievable. World class surf, incredible massages, delicious fusion food, beautiful lounges/clubs, mind boggling cliffside Hindu temples. My wife will disagree, but my favorite memory was rinsing off in our open-air shower, turning around to see a dozen Macaque monkeys, eyes locked on ours, inching towards us. It was a man vs. beast battle… I was hurling rocks, monkeys were growling and scattering. Somehow, we lived to tell the tale.

What’s one of the most challenging aspects of technology in general?

There is always going to be something new in technology. And I think software specifically changes at an even faster pace. The most challenging part is knowing when and how to make the jump to the next big unfamiliar thing. What is a fad and what is the future?

You and your wife have a newborn baby; any stories or advice you’d share with soon-to-be parents?

I’ve only been a dad for 2 months, so my list of advice is pretty short:

1. Believe your wife when she says she is in labor. Don’t suggest that it was the flounder we had eaten for dinner.
2. If you’re taking a vacation later in pregnancy, buy trip insurance! Our son came 5 weeks early… trip insurance saved us a bunch of money.
3. Don’t dilly dally while changing diapers. There will be projectiles.
4. Feel free to disregard childrearing advice from strangers on the internet. Including me!

Have you ever met anyone famous?

By some strange twist of fate, my dad was Robert Redford’s stand-in for the filming of The Old Man and the Gun. A good chunk of it was shot in Greater Cincinnati. One day I stopped by the set after work to see my dad. I got to meet/see some of the cast like Robert Redford, Tom Waits. It was really cool to see how many people were involved in shooting a basic scene. Can’t wait to see the movie!

As the ringleader of the MYS volleyball and basketball teams, why are you so competitive?

I kind of hate exercising for health’s sake. So, I tend to trick myself into exercising through competitive sports. Winning feels good, everyone understands that. The kicker is that if you like your teammates, it’s fun even when you lose. I mean volleyball is the only sport I can think of where I can drink beer AND roll around the sand.

Who should be featured on the blog next?

Let’s hear from Lauren Zumbahlen!

I’m just over halfway through 2017, and I wanted to revisit my goals for the year. Let’s see how I’m doing.

Minimalize (now)#

COMPLETE

Got rid of a ton of stuff across the board, sending carloads of things to St. Vincent de Paul. Gave away my big desk and started using a drawer-less table, forcing me to only keep essentials. I sold my treasured foosball table. I cut my wardrobe down drastically.

There’s still work to do. I could definitely get rid of some shoes. There are some decorations and furniture in storage that I’ll probably never use. I need to get my motorcycle running and sell it… even though I swore to myself I never would. But even if I don’t do these things, I’m good with how far I made it.

Start a Business (soon)#

STRUGGLING

For months I’ve pursued buying a multi-family property in the Greater Cincinnati area pretty feverishly. Listened to TONS of Bigger Pockets Podcast episodes to learn the ropes. Came up with a system for property valuations. Seen plenty of properties on and off the market.

Heres the thing: Everything is too expensive right now.

So I can’t find properties that meet my investment standards. I thought I had found one, until the property inspection revealed that the home needed about $10K in serious repairs. The owner was unwilling to fix this stuff from his pocket, killing the deal for me. So I walked away.

I’ve learned quite a few things, I’m just unsure if real estate is going to work out for me. I have some other things in the works, but I’m starting to feel skeptical I’ll achieve this goal.

Routine Reading (once a month)#

ON TRACK

Reading an actual book in bed is basically impossible now that I live with an infant. But since listening to national news is basically unbearable with Trump in The White House, I’ve been crushing audio books for the past month. I listen on my commute, which gives me about an hour a day of listening.

I’ve read/listened to 6 books in 6 months, so I’m on par. Click the image to track my progress at Goodreads.

Take Better Photos (once a week)#

FAILING

I signed up for the Dogwood52 Challenge, and I’m failing miserably.

If I average 1.6 photos a week I can catch up, but since I’m averaging about 0.5 photos a week, I’m not feeling good about this one.

Walk Oliver (once a day)

ON TRACK

Most nights after dinner I have a little alone time when Lauren goes to bed early. Finn finally got big enough to fit in the Baby Bjorn carrier, so I’ve been enjoying short walks around the neighborhood with him and Oliver.

Everyone’s happy, but it’ll get harder once it gets colder outside.

I’m a new dad, naturally I’ve been taking tons of photos of my son. They’ve been edited, texted, filtered, and uploaded for the world to see.

But I had a shocking realization this morning: My photos are seriously compromising my family’s privacy.

But How?

95% of the photos I take are from my phone. And I think you’re probably in the same boat. Guess what? Your phone is probably tagging your exact GPS location on every photo you are taking.

Check out this photo from our Bali Honeymoon:

At a glimpse, nothing really revealing. But there is a crazy amount of potentially invasive data in ‘Exif’, the Metadata of the photo.

Since I took this photo on my phone, my exact location is stored in the Exif. There are tons of Exif viewer websites, applications out there that can load your photo, read the Metadata, and display it.

Click here to see all the Exif data for my scooter photo.

What was Revealed?

Here’s the creepiest stuff:

• My Latitude/Longitude
• Timestamp
• My exact phone model

Other weird stuff:

• The direction I’m facing
• Whether or not I used a flash

What does this mean?

It means that anytime I’ve texted, emailed, or posted a photo, there is (potentially) some privacy killing information out in the wild. If I upload a photo of my son to my website, his location is public knowledge. If I post a picture of my favorite secret surf spot to Facebook, Zuckerberg might show up the next day with his entourage. If you text a fling a selfie from your couch, they can figure out your address.

If this stuff doesn’t concern you, good for you. Otherwise, keep reading if you want to know the strategies I’m using.

Remove Exif Metadata from Photos

I’m using an OSX tool called ImageOptim to strip all Exif data from my site photos.

There are tons of tools, websites, apps that do this for you, but I liked ImageOptim for a couple reasons:

1. I didn’t have to upload my photos to some random website
2. It can do entire directories at a time.
3. Added Bonus: Reduces image file size

Any image you’ll find posted at this site (besides the scooter above) will have no compromising Exif metadata.

Turn Off Photo Location Tagging

iOS offers a quick easy way to prevent my location from being tagged on each photo. Go to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> Camera then select ‘Never’.

Going forward, photos I take with my phone will not have GPS metadata. I wish I could strip out all the other Exif data by default (like timestamp, phone model, etc), but GPS is obviously the most important thing. And with Location Services off, I’ll probably save some battery life.

Click here to my scooter photo, stripped of all the Exif data.

Thanks for reading!

I stumbled upon a really cool website the other day: Photofeeler.

Heres how it works:

You upload a profile picture and collect feedback from people. It has three types of categories: Business (e.g. LinkedIn), Social (e.g. Facebook), and Dating (e.g. Tinder).

Each category has people rate you on different aspects, for example, Business photos are rated on how Competent, Likable, and Influential you are. Dating photos, on the other hand, are rated on how Smart, Trustworthy, and Attractive you are.

There is also some score normalization and fraud detection (using AI), which is no surprise when you find out it was built by CMU PhD’s. It’s also completely free to get rated, but you can expedite the process by rating others.

A couple months ago I decided to change my LinkedIn photo from a corporate headshot to a more artsy portrait from my wedding. I was a little unsure about it, because headshots are so common on LinkedIn. So I decided to see what Photofeeler had to say.

Here’s where I landed:

The Corporate Headshot

The Wedding Portrait

I think it’s pretty clear I made the right choice going with the wedding portrait! I lost 2% on likability, but influence and competency are arguably much more important. I should probably focus on improving that likable score, but I can live with it.

Try it out!

OH MY GOD… Casey is officially bringing back the daily VLOG!!!

Just like millions of others, I’m a huge fan of Casey Neistat. I was super sad when he abruptly decided to end in in November. I totally understood why he ended it. But it’s so awesome to have it back!