My sister, Natalia, and her boyfriend, Ted, were in New York City for their first time this past week. Ted had bought a week vacation for both my sister’s birthday (Feb 20 - see I remembered!) and for Valentines Day.

On Friday, I get a frantic call from Natalia telling me that the weather in NYC had scuttled their travel plans, and did I mind if they came to Colorado for a couple of days before heading back to California. Without hesitation, I said “hell no!” (Seriously, would I do something like that?) So Friday night at midnight, Natalia and Ted landed at DIA, and have been hanging out all weekend.

It always great to see her, and even though we are 9 years apart in age, she is probably the one person that can 1) handle my “quirks”; 2) and tell me to shut up without fear of reprisal. Two skills that have taken her 27 years to perfect.

Also on Friday, I began my quest to be the #1 douche bag, according to Google. And with the help of a few friends, like Mike Bucks, David Cohen and Jim Halligan I have gone from being below #200 on Google, to now #39. Im getting there, but we need to keep plugging away!

In honor of this effort, I have added a unique icon to any comment I leave. Check it out!

On to the posts:

No, Having a Blog Does NOT Make You A Social Media Guru - I met Erica at StartupWeekend Boulder, and was amazed at her ability to get the word out through social media. I am still often amazed by Erica. This post reminded me of one of the reasons I quit the SEO game. Everyone is an SEO expert now. The noise has drowned out the signal (unless you are one of the major players like Michael Gray or Rand Fishkin). Are they inherently better SEO’s than a newer guy like Dave Winget? Well, except for Rand’s predilection for the fashionable yellow shoes, I would say not at all. So, now I am much happier helping others understand search engine optimization than actually doing it. I hope Erica doesnt follow my lead. She is one of the major Social Media Marketing players, and it would be shame to lose her.

“Say Instead” Part of CSS3 - My friend John spends a lot of time on web standards and access issues. He writes about a new CSS3 property called “say-instead” that can be used to allow screen readers to pronounce words or phrases correctly. Of course, being an SEO guy at heart I think about the potential SEO value of such a property given that most search engines will index and read inline CSS. Could be a much better way of describing images or adding keywords to a keyword less page. Interesting… (yes there is a slight <evil laugh> in there).

Remember, SEO folks, that anything that allows for an easy measure of abuse is easily removed as an important weight. But, given one SEO tactic is to do things that have short term gain with an expected long term reduction in value, I would jump on this now. But you didnt hear from me that there is a potential SEO value to the “say-instead” CSS property.

The power paradox - Seth writes about the perception of power, and that the real paradox is that the truly powerful give away most of their power. Its a bit of a diversion from The 48 Laws of Power whose author, Robert Greene, has a blog which is updated periodically and is extremely interesting.

Thank You, Social Media Club DC - I met Aaron on twitter through a friend, and have enjoyed getting to know Technosailor. Why? well this presentation is just the beginning (really smart, nice dude, and willing to share). His willingness to be on one of our SXSW bowling teams (one is sponsored by VCWear and the other one rocks) even though his company decided at the last minute to have a team as well is certainly awesome, but his interest in history seals it. Even if he lives in Baltimore. Yuck.

Got to get better at this blogging thing - Dave started at Lijit recently, and he and I finally grabbed some time and coffee. Little did we know that we followed much of the same path (I grew up in San Jose, he grew up in San Mateo. I lived in San Diego, so did he. I think he lived in DC as well, as did I), and both ended up in Colorado. Small world.

Strike A Match - Brian is one of the founders of SocialThing, and someone that I have really grown to respect. Ive wanted to include a post of his for awhile, and this one, which has my friend Heather Capri wearing a HamSwords tshirt sealed it. Nice picture Brian, and Happy Birthday!

Whither Entrepreneurship and Visas? - Jenn has written the type of post that I really love. Full of transparency and learnings from successes and mistakes. Yay Jenn! If you havent checked out her project, Yallery, I highly recommend it.

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I need your help. I recently read about how people are ranking for their names in Google, and telling folks that they are the #1 “insert name here.”

Well, I am #1 for Micah Baldwin, so its time to turn my focus on a much more important honor.

I want to be the #1 douchebag in the world.

I want to be the first result in Google when someone types in “douche bag.” When that happens, I will make tshirts and business cards that say “#1 Douchebag. Just Ask Google.”

Being the #1 Douchebag will be hard. It will be tough. I will not be able to do it alone. So, I am asking for your help. If you want to help me achieve my goal of being the #1 douche bag on Google, please link to this post or blog with the words “douche bag” or “micah baldwin is a douchebag” or “micah is a douche bag” or the more common, but incorrect spelled douchbag.

Help a young man achieve his dream of being the #1 douche bag in the world, according to Google. Its free and it will make you feel good.

It easy to help a douchebag out! Do it today!

You can also send me info [to micah at currentwisdom dot com] about douche bag companies or people, and I will try and write something nice. Like I did for that douche bag Andrew Hyde.

So late last week (or maybe early this one, I kinda dont really keep track when its Andrew Hyde. After all he is so bland, that its difficult to remember specific conversations) Andrew told me about his “awesome new idea.” How he and (whatever name he decided to drop) were doing StartupWeekend Kalamazoo and they were getting pitched ideas. After all, we all know that Andrew is really a top notch “entrepremanure” (empasis on the manure) and knows all about venture capital and raising money and whatever.

So, clearly in jest, but hoping to get someone to listen, Andrew continues to blab on and on about Startup Dodge Mini Van or some shit, and how he and (whatever other name he dropped) decided to start the companyVCWear.

Here is how he explained it: “It a tshirt company with overpriced tshirts that are poorly designed that only VCs would want to wear.”

Seriously.

So, being the worlds most helpful guy, I said “Cool. Now go buy me a cup of coffee.” But in a really friendly way. I didnt even call him a moron to his face.

I also gave him a couple of ideas for tshirts just so he thought I really cared about whatever he was talking about. After dropping another name, and saying something really not worth repeating, except I remember it started with StartupWeekend, the King of Community went on another ManDate, and I headed home.

Later that night, I see a tweet from Andrew. My first reaction was to throw up a little in my mouth.

The stupid motherfucker has put up a website and is trying to sell t-shirts so bad that companies like threadless started selling shoes. People decide to go back to wearing button ups. Out of pure pity, I buy one. Immediately I regret it. But, I know that Andrew doesnt work, that Startup Weekend makes less money than a $2 whore on 1/2 price night.

Then just as one would expect, the idiots follow the idiot, Andrew drops another name, and the stupid ass idea shows up on ValleyWag, Techmeme and Mashable. (I would link to the stories, but this post is already worse than Andrew’s sophomoric designs - I love that he says that he designed them “badly” on “purpose.” I guess he does that all the time. Have you seen his blog? Blind monkeys in Bangledash would do a better job.)

Now, I get invited to add a VCWear Facebook app.

Seriously?

Does this guy have any real work to do? What the hell does he do at Trident all day? Pick a different finger to shove up his ass and try to guess the smell of his previous meal?

The bubble is here if this social media douche bag makes a flipping penny on his crap-tastic site. Go buy a shirt from VCWear. Join Andrew Hyde, Douche Bag, in destroying the last piece of dignity in the world.

I really did just throw up in my mouth a little.

DISCLAIMER: If you think I wrote this seriously, then you win a prize. Yes, you guessed it. The I Am a Bigger Douche Bag Than Andrew Hyde Award.