Stuck in Rock City
Liz and I are on our way home for a vacation and visit with family. We haven't had a length of time back east since Christmas, so we've been looking forward to this for quite some time. It'd be a lie to say were haven't been counting down the days for the past two weeks or so.
So you can imagine we were excited to finally be in the air and on our way this morning. We caught a cab at the crack of dawn (or just before ~5:30) this morning and were waiting for takeoff by five after seven. Certainly an early start for both of us. Well, to be accurate a late night for me, since I hadn't (and still as of yet have not) slept. I got a new computer and was otherwise wired, so after packing I played on the computer until the wee hours of cab-time.
The flight was terrible. And that's even before I consider that the flight didn't even take us where we were supposed to go! I'm typing this entry from a terminal in a Detroit waiting to figure out when we'll be back on our way to New Jersey. Sure, there's some prickly weather out there, but it's sunny here as I type this.
This is my first time in Detroit. I must say, Gate B5 is a charming site. And the moving walkway to my right is pretty exciting. All-in-all, there's a lot to see in Detroit even within the fifty foot radius I'm allowed to stay while I wait for boarding updates.
Sigh.
Rumor has it they're getting things together for us. Maybe we *will* eventually get home, after all!
Until next time, Detroit!
Dogs
I love dogs. They are both special and awesome. Now, I hate most email forwards, but my aunt sent me a particularly nice one that made me happy, so I figured I'd post it here:
A Dog's Purpose
Being a veterinarian, I had been called to examine a ten-year-old Irish Wolfhound named Belker. The dog's owners, Ron, his wife Lisa, and their little boy Shane, were all very attached to Belker, and they were hoping for a miracle.
I examined Belker and found he was dying of cancer. I told the family we couldn't do anything for Belker, and offered to perform the euthanasia procedure for the old dog in their home.
As we made arrangements, Ron and Lisa told me they thought it would be good for six-year-old Shane to observe the procedure. They felt as though Shane might learn something from the experience.
The next day, I felt the familiar catch in my throat as Belker 's family surrounded him. Shane seemed so calm, petting the old dog for the last time, that I wondered if he understood what was going on. Within a few minutes, Belker slipped peacefully away.
The little boy seemed to accept Belker's transition without any difficulty or confusion. We sat together for a while after Belker's Death, wondering aloud about the sad fact that animal lives are shorter than human lives. Shane, who had been listening quietly, piped up, 'I know why.'
Startled, we all turned to him. What came out of his mouth next stunned me. I'd never heard a more comforting explanation.
He said, 'People are born so that they can learn how to live a good Life -- like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?' The Six-year-old continued, 'Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don't have to stay as long.
Live simply.
Love generously.
Care deeply.
Speak kindly.
Remember, if a dog was the teacher you would learn things like:
When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.
Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure Ecstasy.
Take naps.
Stretch before rising.
Run, romp, and play daily.
Thrive on attention and let people touch you.
Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.
On warm days, stop to lie on your back on the grass.
On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.
When you're happy, dance around and wag your entire body.
Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.
Be loyal.
Never pretend to be something you're not.
If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.
When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by, and nuzzle them gently.
Aww. Cuuute.
Plan It All Out?
My goal is to be inspired. I have some ideas. They're not quite fleshed out perfectly. This often keeps me from proceeding. It shouldn't:
You're Idea Sucks, Now Go Do It Anyway!
Article by Jason Cohen, referenced in a tweet by Tony Bacigalupo.
Terrible Ideas I’ve Had: Sour Cream and Onion Cereal
There was a time in my life when I wanted all of my breakfasts to be tasty treats. I went through the Lucky Charms phase (on several different occasions, actually), the Frosted Mini Wheats phase (during which I once exploded in anger like a brat to my Mom because she'd accidentally bought Frosted Wheat, not Frosted Mini Wheats), the many different varieties of Cheerios phase (including regular Cheerios covered in sugar I'd add every morning), and more. I was never into the over-the-top, clearly-only-candy-in-disguise cereals (though Cookie Crisp often mesmorized me with that awesome dog in all of their commercials), but I wanted the sweetness.
This love of sweet breakfast foods was combined during early high school years with a desire to combine things I liked into things I thought I'd really like. That's when the madness was born. I wanted, once (just once, I swear) to figure out how to combine oat, potato, sour cream, and onion into a delicious cereal you could enjoy with milk.
Potato Chips? Good! Sour Cream and Onion Potato Chips? Even better! For breakfast!? Oh my god!
It was going to be like a Super Bowl party in your mouth every morning! Or at least that was what the commercials were going to say.
Truth be told, I never investigated the process or the combination of oats and flavorings, so there was never a prototype. Sometimes my mind wanders back to this potential invention and I want to try it... but then I think better of it.
But be warned if I ever ask you to try "this awesome new thing" for breakfast.
I’d Like to Think in Heaven… (#2)
I'd like to think that heaven is a place where you have as much time to finish projects you start as you need. There, you feel the adequate amount of pressure required to pull off your projects: never so much as to drive you away and never so little as to let you take forever to finish.
You'd be free to try new things without feeling silly, unless - of course - you like feeling silly when you try new things.
Nothing that should be difficult would be easy, but nothing that should be easy would be difficult. Unless there's still something to learn from it. Then it can be somewhat difficult.
In heaven, I don't think there are any heating bills.
Introducing new people to old things
When new people join an organization, company, or group of people, it is the job of the existing folks to bring that new person up-to-speed. During this process, the old-timer has a choice to make regarding their attitude in this indoctrination:
- "I love it here and everything is awesome"
- "Things here are cool, but here's some sour points"
- "This place sucks"
When I'm the old-timer in a scenario like this, I tend to always fall into the second group of people. Why!?
It doesn't seem to even matter how I actually feel. If I'm more honestly in the first or third category, I still pull myself into this category that has mastered the soft touch. I don't know if this is because I'm putting myself in the new person's shoes, because I'm reevaluating my own personal thinking, or something else.
In a job interview, if someone asks a question such as "what is the typical project life-cycle like around here?" -- a very excellent question for an interviewing developer -- I tend to answer at length rather than quickly. "Typically, the turnover is pretty quick. But some projects can run long because of client delays. It's like this one project I'm on.... or this other one I'm working through.... or this one we had a couple months back.... yadda yadda...." At a time when I should be upselling and singing the praises of our lifecycle I tend to fall back into this reality-stricken middleground.
This is even true of when I'm the new guy, too. I always straddle this in-between spot of not getting my expectations up or holding back in my degree of excitement. This has been very noticeable in the past few months as I've met new people and explore new things in San Francisco.
I want to be cordial and friendly and interested, and I temper my highs and lows in order to do this. Maybe this makes me more accurate on the overall. Or maybe this just makes me boring.
It’s A War Out There
If you're like me, you've had the pleasure recently of ticketing your friends, skirting the law, and earning new cars and badges in Parking Wars for a bit of time, now. For the record: I'm nearing $750,000 in the app and am fending off charges from friends of lesser value while trying to climb ever-closer to friends that have more bank. It's addictive, this game!
That's why it was fun to see this when I tried to park my cars a bit, just now:
It was maddening, to me, to not be able to move and shift fake cars around on fake streets run virtually by my real friends.
(All usage figures used below from Adonomics reports, April 2, 2008)
When a social networking application can become this addictive and enticing, it's a seriously great score. It's impressive. There have been studies that say an application -- game or otherwise useful utility -- has somewhere between 30 seconds and one minute to impress (or annoy!) the average Facebook user before they decide to uninstall the application. As most of these applications are attempting to leverage some sort of advertising angle, it's a very make-or-break medium.
While I can't confirm with numbers that A&E is seeing an uptick in website traffic or viewership for the television program the game is modeled after, I can confirm with numbers that the application itself is proving to be one of the most engaging and actively-used applications in the Facebook realm:
Over 90 thousand people use Parking Wars every day. That's nearly one-third of all of the 300 thousand plus people that currently have it installed. Somehow, in this realm of shortened attention spans, the folks behind Parking Wars have found a way to get one in every three of their users to return every day!
That's unheard of. Well, not entirely. Let me give you an idea of how Parking Wars compares to some of the other top applications on Facebook: it ranks #64 in daily engagement (that one-third of people come back every day makes for a very high ranking) and is #498 in total installed user base.
While being barely in the top 500 might seem unimpressive, you should realize that being #498 out of #21,848 is a big feat. It's right above "Are You A Bitch," right behind "Which Hollywood Superstar Are You?" and interestingly close to an application my company has developed - Smarty Pants (which sits at #518 with 285,000 total users, 8,550 of which come back every day).
As companies, advertising agencies, and marketing folk attempt to get a handle on how powerful social networking can be, they should observe applications like Parking Wars. There's interesting pulls that keep users checking daily, whether it be defending themselves from ticket-happy friends, attempting to get the most money for their actions (it's all virtual dollars, sadly), or just going in a punishing their friends for parking a black car in a yellow cars only zone.
If Parking Wars doesn't quite end up driving viewership to their television programming, it at least will go a great distance toward improving their brand image and introducing the A&E brand to the younger demographic available of Facebook. Perhaps in the near future they can find even better ways to pull people like me out of their daily routine to check a social networking application every so often. Good work if they manage it!
I’d Like to Think in Heaven… (#1)
I'd like to think that heaven is the place where your best dreams come true. If you want to sleep all day, you can. If you want to curl up and watch a movie on a cold, rainy day with your girlfriend and eat grilled cheese and tomato soup, you can. If you want to play Hungry Hungry Hippos or Candyland with your Mom and Dad, you can. If you want to meet some famous or amazing person or family member you never met in life and just hang out all day, you can.
You can do whatever you want. It doesn't have to be fancy or perfect. It just has to be comfortable.
Looking back through some old photos of my fabulous friend Leslie's, I realized I've catalogued thoughts like this, before. Case in point: Rockin' 305. From early 2006:
And my comment below it:
Dancin' it up in 305 with a hotdog in my mouth and friends by my side. A duplication of times like this would be a contender on my list of "things that occur with regularity in heaven."
I still believe what I said. And looking through those pictures gave me serious pangs of homesickness.
