Author: Joel Gross

Joel Gross is the CEO of Coalition Technologies.

The Acting Fallacy

People who are born in Los Angeles have a funny joke whenever they hear someone is an actor here. The conversation goes like this:

Native: So what do you do for a living?

Actor: I am an actor.

Native: Ah, so you wait tables.

This is a very true statement. I know a lot of actors in Los Angeles and almost universally they have made a few bucks acting, but mostly make their money doing entry level jobs.… read more “The Acting Fallacy”

Dynamic Number Insertion

I am having a really hard time finding good call platforms that offer dynamic number insertion into websites. Dynamic number insertion is javascript code that automatically swaps out phone numbers based on referrer. I have only seen a couple of sites that offer this and those are both too expensive and have too little features. I would really like a virtual call center that offers this sort of tracking… might be too much to hope for though.

Stopping Crossfit for Rock Climbing

I am thinking about stopping my Crossfit membership now to focus on rock climbing. I feel like Crossfit and rock climbing are a bit incompatible: Crossfit focuses on building big muscles in the back and legs, which just weigh you down when it comes to rock climbing. I currently weigh about 215 pounds and I want to lean down to around 185 pounds as I think this will help me become a significantly better climber.… read more “Stopping Crossfit for Rock Climbing”

Thank You Google!

My stock portfolio had a nice win yesterday thanks to Google’s increase in stock price of 12% yesterday after their earnings call. I am going to hold onto it as I think Google has some awesome product announcements coming up, including:

  • Self driving car technology being licensed to auto manufacturers
  • Wearable tech devices being taken to market (Google Glass, watch)

And of course they have several highly successful business units including:

  • Search
  • AdWords
  • Apps

American People Scammed

Governments usually extort money from their populace as a standard practice. However, the US government is now getting extreme about the practice. The federal government shut down for over two weeks and all employees stayed at home relaxing, watching TV, playing XBox, going on vacations, etc. Now that the shutdown is over, all of those employees are going to be paid JUST AS IF THEY WORKED THE ENTIRE TIME.… read more “American People Scammed”

Online Education

I love online education! Even the informal education. For example, right now I am working on a script that will set a cookie based on a visitor’s referrer and then switch phone numbers that appear on the page based on that. I am referencing about 30 different websites each with slightly different views into various topics and patching together my code.… read more “Online Education”