Not totally unsurprising, but good validation nonetheless for my fellow coffee-obsessed Seattleites. Ever wonder how the people of Seattle have time to juggle their day jobs with all the hiking and spelunking? Well, that’s where the $36 latte budget comes in.
Perhaps most interesting, though, is the data that Mint.com is collecting about buyer preference and spending habbits through their free personal money management service. Very smart, guys.
In an effort to build our rockstar lifestyle cred, Andrew and I hopped a plane to Chicago yesterday morning. We were in town for the KIN sponsored show with The Dead Weather down on W Monroe.
This was the first time I had traveled with Andrew, which was as fun as you’d expect. For instance, running through the Minnesota airport on a tight connection with someone that runs 75+ miles a week really puts on the pressure. I managed to hold back my quasi-Asthmatic deep hyperventilation sesh until I could get in the postage stamp-sized airplane bathroom. As far as I know, Andrew would still rate me as “below average” on the President’s Fitness Challenge scale.
Anywho, a funny moment occurred as we were walking toward the cab line at O’Hare Airport. Andrew remarked, “Wouldn’t be great if someone was here waiting for us?”. Without hesitation I retorted, “You mean, like a driver?”
This is what Andrew pictured.
This is what I pictured.
Sign #27192 that life in Seat 1B may be slowly killing me.
Tonight I landed in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been here a couple times before, but never had a chance to feel the vibe of the city. All of my past trips were day trips, on the plane in the morning and back that evening. My days were spent in whichever agency’s natural wood infused, sushi laiden boardroom happen to be popular at the time. My excursions outside those 4 walls was never more than for a trip to the local Stumptown Coffee Roasters (which is delicious, by the way).
But tonight was different. Since I have an early start tomorrow, I’m actually in town the night before and planned to get the full Portland experience. And that I did.
I checked into the Ace Hotel, which is a combination hipster haven and deer lodge – not quite what to make of it. I elected for the “upgraded room” – which later I found out meant the bathtub was actually inside the room rather than down the hall. An upgrade an indeed!
The room was filled with irony – right down to the turntable used for spinning vinyl. Hysterically, the record player was hooked into an iPod dock. Steve Jobs is rolling with laughter from inside his aircraft grade titanium walled bedroom right now, I’m sure. After popping on the latest Shins album – I was ready to get my Portland on.
Suddenly I wondered why I had forgotten to buy any flannel in my life – and for the first time I also felt compelled to get tattoo sleeves. Ok, perhaps not.
Walking out of the very slow, pull cable, elevator I passed the basket-bicycle rental and head out the door. Walking amongst Portland people was an interesting experience. Before today, I’d swear Seattle would get top billing as the city which is most unlike New York. Today, Portland has stolen that title. Not only do people dress casually, they are downright ready to hit the bike trail. Women can’t be bothered with makeup or with a leg shave, they have mountains to climb and caves to explore. Get your spelunk on early, ladies, because this east coast guy is not going to take you out to dinner.
I ended up at a steak house for dinner, and did the classic single-guy business traveler thing and ate at the bar. Having a good rapport with the server at the bar is key. He always has an interesting story to tell. This guy came straight out of a western, or at least the way Back to the Future III depicted the old west. He had a ruffled tuxedo shirt, bow tie, vest, and the little garder arm band thing. I’m still wondering where that garder came from – my mind wandered to what this guy’s home life might be like until I realized there’s really no way for him to have one. This guy is a fixture. He knows everyone, and they know him. This is his social network.
Well it’s time for me to retire to my beaver lodge-inspired comforter. Actually I’m not even sure it is a comforter. Is this the right time to go down the hall to the common phone and ask the front desk what the thread count is?
I spent this past weekend catching up with the family in Syracuse. I visit relatively infrequently these days, usually around three to four times a year. It’s interesting, the less frequently I visit, the more accutely aware I become of change… or lack thereof.
Syracuse is absolutely timeless. Nothing ever changes. Sure, the chain restaurants on Erie Blvd will come and go, and there will be a new best car wash to use (“we promise, this one is really touch free”) – but the people, sights, and happenings remain largely unchanged.
I arrived in late on a Friday night from Seattle. After a much needed Taco Bell run for some fuel, I found myself plopped back on the couch watching TV with my parents, just like a Friday night would have gone when I was fourteen. Funny how things come full circle like that.
The fam is good, I think. I mean, I’m finding more and more reading glasses spread throughout my parents’ house and cars these days, and Dad says he has problem hearing voices in large groups – but I think they too are otherwise unaffected by the passage of time.
In true Italian form, Mother found herself spending an equal amount of time doing household chores, laundry, and getting ready as she did spending time with Dad and me. Like I said, nothing ever changes and I think it’d be uncomfortable to have it any other way. Besides, when else would Dad find time to play Halo?
This trip was a surgical strike for me, in on Friday night and out on Sunday late afternoon. But before I went, of course, Grandma called everyone to order for a Sunday dinner. Sauce all around.
Which reminds me, what’s with the old Italians always pluralizing and non-pluralizing words in the wrong direction? Here are some examples:
But that’s the fam. You know how it goes, readers. You know how it goes.
Ugh. ABC’s The Bachelor. I have to admit… I’ve been drawn in. After weeks of resisting it, I’ve succumbed to one of the greatest traps a young professional will ever be faced with: the love of reality TV. Lock up your children, this isn’t going to be good for anyone.
Jake, Mr. Personality
I’ve started to assemble a small forum at my home on Monday evenings, made up of a mixture of women ranging from mild to wild on the cynicism scale. On one side, there’s Carrie – a girl who believes that love really can be found in 2 hours of commercially interrupted content once a week. Conversely, there’s Keira – who is muc
h more, shall we say, focused on reality. Keira spends most of the show laughing at the ridiculous things coming out of the contestant’s cast member’s mouths.
These “Ladies’ Nights” have proven effective in surfacing a major revelation. Jake… the bachelor himself, has no personality whatsoever. I’ll say it again.
Jake has no personality whatsoever.
And it comes down to him being so careful. He knows America is watching, and as such every word is scripted to the T. He makes sure to not tip his hand too much, but in the process never has an original thought. Let’s play a little game. Count how many times he uses adjectives in the place of nouns. It’s more than you can count, I assure you. This guy is living in a fantasy land – everything is amazing, and incredible, and amazing. He says “amazing” a lot. In fact, he says amazing almost as much as the contestants bachelorettes made corny aviation-related puns in the season premiere. And that’s a lot.
Ok, so yes, this is a bit of a rant – but with good reason. I’m calling on America to choose their next bachelor wisely. I want someone who is real, someone who all the guys can rally around because he actually both looks and acts like a dude. Here’s an example excerpt from the bachelor I’d like to see:
“I really liked Tenley, but she kept talking about her ex-husband. Like all the time. So then, I suddenly noticed that all the other girls are way hotter. Except Vienna of course, but the producers won’t let me get rid of her. And besides, I kind of like the trashy ones.”
Now that’s a bachelor I could get behind.
With it being Valentine’s Day and all, it only seemed fitting to post on a romantic topic. I want to caveat this entire post by saying that my Valentine’s Day consisted of eating my feelings at The Parlor with church friends. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m hardly Dr. Love.
That said, I have been making some observations lately about the way we interact as human beings. It’s incredibly interesting to watch the cycle of attraction, affection, and love. Couples (around here at least) move relatively quickly from attract to engage – most likely before that Manhattan wears off and the Seattle freeze sets in. People are on a hunt, it’s easy to see. Most recently, I’ve watched a close friend move incredibly fast in a relationship with her boyfriend. Just over Christmas she was debating what type of gift to get him – she wanted something that wouldn’t suggest too much. She netted out with cologne. Two months later, she’s engaged.
Now how do people move so quickly from attract to, in this case, engaged? Is there something in the water? Are these people simply type A folks who are goal oriented and see the relationship portion of their life no differently than a professional obstacle to overcome? Perhaps. But it sometimes drives them to extremes.
I’ve seen friends start to dabble in the online dating – eHarmony, Match.com, you name it. By and large, they’ve found these online tools to be eHarmful to their self-esteem. But they keep going back. Now what’s happening here? Is it just efficient dating? I must admit I was drawn to the idea of internet dating since its inception. It seems to me to just be the next frontier in which computing (and more specifically the internet) is simplifying life. Simply put, I’ve embraced technology everywhere else in my life, why not when it comes to finding a girlfriend?
But I think that might be the distinction – and maybe where people are tripping up. They don’t seem to be looking for girlfriends and boyfriends – they are looking for wives and husbands. This puts tremendous pressure on both parties, long before they’ve even met. And by the way, the first meeting is where all the magic happens. Not the first phone call, not the first text, and certainly not the first match notification through some bit of web 2.0 magic.
In the past couple weeks, I’ve watched as a friend has begun virtually courting someone through an online dating site. It’s efficient to the T – they schedule their phone calls, they have banter, and then they go on with their lives. There was chemistry, plain and simple chemistry. Or was there?
When it came time for them to meet in person (they are GU = geographically undesirable) – something different and totally unexpected happened. They began to withdraw. The would-be couple no longer found themselves volunteering conversation, the engagement slowed to near non-existence. So what happened here? I’d suggest that online dating has reversed the pivotal order of things – that is attract and then engage. With the likes of eHarmony and Match.com, the engagement happens long before the attraction. Now granted, they may have exchanged photos but as we all know, we can be extremely discerning in what photos we share. Heck, creative camera angles even made Timothy Dalton look like a decent Bond with a full head of hair (and we all just know now that that wasn’t true).
Anyways, I might be rambling here, but I think there’s something to this. The online dating thing is efficient, yet – but I’d suggest it might be robbing us of the fundamental and core piece to any coupling… the chemistry that comes from an initial attraction. And besides, this is one area of my life where I’d take pride in being able to do it myself.
Feel free to challenge me here, curious what you think.
It was only a matter of time before I started using this blog as a forum by which to expose and exploit my inner nerd. So with profuse apologies and without further adieu, a few thoughts on Apple’s most recent unveiling – the iPad.
In short, I’m not sure I get it.
I was following a lot of the press coverage on the tech sites, and at one point I noticed that Steve put up the slide below.
According to Engadget (thanks for the image, guys), here was Steve’s talk track while showing this up on the screen: “If there’s gonna be a third category, it has to be better at these tasks — otherwise it has no reason for being.”
Basically Steve was pointing out that if you want to have a 3rd device in between the phone and the PC, it better do all of those things he listed there better than the other two. And therein lies the problem… I’m not sure it really does. Let’s take a few of them one by one.
Browsing. Well, I’ve found more and more that I’ve relegated to using my smartphone for casual internet browsing from the couch. The place where it falls short is not really the screen size so much as the lack of standards support. When I go to a page that needs flash or has to install a plug-in to be viewed, that’s when I go reaching for the laptop. But when I think about inserting the iPad into that scenario, I’m not really any better off. Sure it has about 3x the screen size and resolution, but it still doesn’t help me when I want to view that site that makes use of heavy flash, when I want to check out that band’s web site that has a built in player so that I can sample their songs – you get the idea.
Email. I have to admit, the email experience on the iPhone and iPod touch isn’t bad. But more often then not, email is just as much about authoring as it is reading. So when I think about inserting the iPad into my couch email reading, yet again it’s not really helping me beyond just showing me the mail on a much roomier screen. When it comes to pounding out some angry emails that I’ll regret in the morning, I’m still reaching for the laptop.
eBooks. Ok, they almost got me here. The eBook application on the iPad looks phenomenal – and as a Kindle owner I think they are really hitting on something that Amazon hasn’t delivered: the status involved with owning books. It’s the visual way in which Apple shows your bookshelf – complete with book cover art that helps reduce heartburn for people that may be feeling squeamish about making the transition from analog to digital for their literature. But this all falls down when I think about the ways Amazon has helped re-create the book reading experience in a digital format but with an analog feel. For instance, Amazon’s e-ink display isn’t backlit and therefore is much easier on the eyes. The battery life lasts 3 weeks, and any book I download costs about $9.99 and I can get them anywhere without any additional service fees. Many a time have I downloaded an entire book on a recommendation from a flight attendant mere minutes before taking off. Contrast that with the iPad, which has a burn-your-retinas off LED display (not ideal for a long read), only 10 hours of battery, and books priced at $12.99 or $14.99 with the addition of monthly service fees (in case you want to download anywhere). Not exactly the best in class experience for books either.
So all that to say, I’m just trying to understand the play here. It feels a whole lot like an overgrown, expensive iPod that sort of does a bunch of things pretty well. But at the end of the day, I’m having trouble summizing what the one piece of unique value is that makes this a valuable product in real-life application.
I had coffee today with Eric Lin, and he suggests this is Apple’s setup toward the slow replacement of the MacBook. Over time he believes this could become the home PC. It’s an interesting thought, and if he’s right it makes sense for Apple to be somewhat shy on that point in the mean time. Steve Jobs is a savvy guy, so if he’s hedging his bet he’s certainly not talking about it.
It’s really interesting how time can make something that was really serious into something really funny. It was 2003 – my junior year of college. Starting a week before all the other students, the resident advisers (aka the cool kids, right?) would assemble on campus to participate in a number of training and bonding activities.
During the course of this week, we got to hear from our industrious residence life staff (mostly made up of grad students looking to get their tuition and board paid while going through school) on the importance of maintaining an image of leadership and responsibility at all times. I was among these people. I was one of the resident advisers of the freshmen dorm Nelligan Hall.
Nelligan was a fascinating place. It was the only residence hall that employed 2 resident advisers per floor (as opposed to the usual 1). These RAs were highly skilled in the necessary competencies: playing Halo, ordering pizza, and busting up parties. The busting up parties varied from RA to RA, but in general the system worked.
Think back to my earlier point about leadership and responsibility. As RAs, the higher ups expected us to set the example for others (read: don’t be drunk in public, morons).
Then came Matt. Matt was younger (I think a sophomore), and thus underage. He was co-RA of the 3rd floor with my former roommate (and co-RA from the previous year), Jordan Patch. Jordan would be best described as our campus’ Tony Soprano. You want to do anything, you better talk to the boss.
So back to Matt. Matt must have read the phrase “don’t ever change” in his yearbook one too many times, because when he got the job as RA – he didn’t. You see, Matt was a really thirsty guy. But the kind of beverage he drank always made him do really stupid things – and worse, in front of his residents. But not to worry, the system has steps and a recovery program for this kind of behavior (read: he was fired).
At any rate, here we are 7 years later and I genuinely do believe the statute of limitations on the Department of Residence Life being mad at him has passed. It’s college, and this is what college life is like. But that alone is not the punchline of this story.
Matt was let go about 6-7 weeks into the year, and the residents were still learning who we were. In the lobby of the dorm, you could find a “Meet Your RAs” board. It was a corkboard with photos of the RAs, taken in pairs. Natrually, the 3rd floor RAs photo showcased Jordan and Matt, standing outside our school’s pristine chapel.
And there was the problem. The seasons started changing, and we didn’t want to go out and shoot new photos. Besides, we were in shirts/ties which was an annual event for most of us. So I was tasked with “removing Matt from existence”. Yeah, you heard that right, just like Marty McFly’s family photograph at the end of Back to the Future.
What better time to learn Photoshop? And this is where the funny came in. Imagine Matt’s surprise (and others), when he tried to comprehend how all traces of his being on staff were carefully (and with swift precision) eliminated.
Within 24 hours of his termination, the new picture was up in the lobby. Like I said, something that was serious ultimately became funny. At least I think it is.
It’s Monday. And Mondays are usually an interuption to my regularly scheduled train of weekends. By Monday morning, enough time has passed that I can’t remember what items were still open from Friday (or lately, Saturday) – and I’ve found that I’m rapidly moving toward a 2 coffee minimum just to get in the door. So when the bright sunny light of a Monday morning comes at you, why not add some extra stimulation for your rods and cones? I do this by wearing the brightest shirts known to man. And if you could see me right now, I’d be putting air quotes around the word “man”.
I find there’s no better way to break the Monday morning ice, as it were, than to wear a shirt that leaves every co-worker wondering. Wondering if I’m playing for a new team. Wondering if I’ve accepted a new job at Express Men. Wondering if this is a new strategy to meet women (they love to share clothes).
The finance guys don’t get it, the engineers squak at it… but in the end, only the product planners get me.
Makes sense, these are very forward looking folks. And I knew I had found my people when I discovered Suzanne was wearing a scarf of the same shade. Here’s to the Orchid Twinsies, Suzanne!
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