Category Archives: Family

Podcast Beta

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Okay, it might not be called Ironworks Gang when it’s done (even if it would be a nice nod to Steve Gillmor), but here it is, the inaugural podcast. In this week’s episode I was joined by ??Tom Wilkinson??, the soon-to-be-famous movie writer/director, and ??Darin Pesnell??, soon-to-be-famous pastor. The model is this: get a bunch of smart people that I like to talk to on a “free conference call”:http://freeconferencecall.com/, gab about stuff that’s interesting to us for an hour, and call it a podcast. Here’s this week’s topics:

* “Open Secrets”:http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/070108fa_fact by ??Malcolm Gladwell??
* the “iPhone”:http://www.apple.com/iphone
* the upcoming “IAM conference”:http://iamny.org/
* “Wal-Mart Puts Some Muscle Behind Power-Sipping Bulbs”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/business/02bulb.html?ex=1325394000&en=7cdfdd70524b7590&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss (if that doesn’t work you can “read it here”:http://www.wkkf.org/default.aspx?tabid=94&CID=294&ItemID=5000466&NID=85&LanguageID=0)

Enjoy, let us know what you think, and leave a comment if you want to be on the next one! Oh, and special thanks to “Vessel”:http://brinkofski.com/vessel/ for use of their music.

Full Circle

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We went to our first birthing class last night to, you know, figure out how to have a baby. It was hosted over at “realbirth”:http://realbirth.com, and taught by a good friend of ours at The Village Church.

While I’ve talked to Hallie quite a bit, it was _amazing_ to watch her teach a class on childbirth. She spoke with passion and a frankness that visibly relieved the worries of many of the parents-to-be in the room. Better, it was high-bandwidth communication: we sat there and absorbed every word, every gesture, and every silence she dealt out with the hope of getting a better handle on this wild and messy process.

Better still, I got the special privilege of seeing my work benefit countless couples in the city. A number of times throughout the class, Hallie pointed us back to “her site”:http://halliegreider.com for reference material and resources for expectant parents. Just tonight, I went back to flip through halliegreider.com and remember how “Scott”:http://greiders.blogspot.com/ and I put it together: the design was Scott’s, the Movable Type templates, PHP magic, markup and stylesheets were my responsibility. We shot for the moon when it came to extensibility — everything from the color schemes to the content to the photographs are changeable without writing a single line of code or modifying a stylesheet.

There have been a few times since we finished where Hallie mentioned how great the site has been for her, and it’s always a wonderful feeling to hear from a client two years after the fact that your work is _still valuable_ to them. But, being in that room full of young, scared, and hopeful New Yorkers and together dutifully jotting down her site address for future reference, it was apparent that all the effort from those nights and weekends had come full circle.

***

Sarah’s been feeling really good with the pregnancy, and we’ve been having fun getting together to talk about baby stuff: baby names, baby food, baby strollers, baby toys, “babies everywhere”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbjDj3G14YI. We’ve got mad, mad plans for the apt (which we’re staying in for now). The “office” will become half office, half nursery with crib, changing table, wardrobe, uh, desk and, er, filing cabinet. I’m hoping to introduce the geekdom early into our child’s education.

We never cease to be amused at the world of baby: the clever marketing tactic that Babies R Us uses to “highlight items”:http://www.toysrus.com/registry/truParentsCheckList.jsp you maybe “forgot” to register for, or the “$700 designer strollers”:http://www.bugaboostrollers.com/ you can buy, or the “endless”:http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/04/autos/car_seats/index.htm?postversion=2007010418, “fearful”:http://www.nichd.nih.gov/sids/ reminders to enforce Baby Rule #1: do not kill the baby.

Thankfully, Sarah’s been doing a ton of research and we’ve been reading some very level-headed books, so we feel as though we can transcend some of the baby madness. Russ & Sarah, Irene, Marla (our midwife — whose name I can’t help think of without adding “you _tourist_”), Hallie, and a dozen couples at the Village Church have all been really helpful with advice and insight so we can maybe move on to Baby Rule #2: do not screw up the baby’s life.

One day my son or daughter will look at me and say, “your blog was so boring before you were a dad.”

***

Steve Jobs speaks next week (Tuesday! 12PM EST!) at Macworld. The world waits with baited breath. Well, okay, maybe that’s just me. But with good reason as we’re considering adding a new Mac to our household. You know. For the baby.

***

The redesign of the site continues with Flickr photos up top. Jai’s right, the stylesheet needs some love so the site doesn’t look like an embarrassment for a 1997 web designer. I’ve still got to integrate some RSS feeds into the timeline to build out the “attention stream,” just as soon as I figure out how. I was considering using “Planet”:http://www.planetplanet.org/, but it’s kind of a kludgey solution given that I have no real love for the command-line. Why can’t someone just build this in PHP and slap a web-interface over top of it?

Making up for December

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A dear friend whom we missed very much during the holidays poked me today: is this thing still on? Are we dead? I told her we were just busy, which is stupid: of course we’re busy — who isn’t busy?

The new year and holidays came and went mercifully well, though we honestly wondered if we were going to make it through this one. 2006, a year I thought couldn’t have come sooner on Dec 31, 2005, left as quietly as it arrived. The year was not without its heartaches, which often brought us to tears of grief and loss. But, it was also a year in which there were no murders on our street, no car accidents, no layoffs, no massive hurricanes cutting a swath through my mom’s backyard.

I took a new job, the city of Newark saw its first glimpse of hope in Cory Booker, and we saw Europe for the first time.

And, of course, we got knocked up.

***

Listening to back-episodes of the Gillmor Gang lately has got me wondering what this site would look like if it was more like an attention stream than a blog. There are a dozen web services that I use on a regular basis — all of which have RSS capability. Aggregating that content on this site, I think, would provide a more useful picture of what I’ve been paying attention to over the past several weeks.

I also wanted a web design that wouldn’t just look like I just cobbled together a bunch of text from disparate sites, and I wanted to use a metaphor that would fit in one screen, so you can literally see the stream of my diggs, pictures, blogs (here and elsewhere), and twittering in the context of time. Hence the timeline up top (a free AJAX widget provided by those bright guys at MIT). Ultimately, the timeline will show different colors for the varying web services, the current design is a start — what do you think?

***

I actually get paid to play with the web in my job. A large portion of my responsibilities lie with the team Intranet site, which our managing director wants to use as our main communication medium and platform for tools inside our organization. There’s a lot of room to breathe with this new gig, and I’ve been able to come up with some interesting and creative ideas, leveraging ajaxy web 2.0 goodness like MIT’s timeline. Did you know that the Yahoo Maps API lets you use their software inside a firewall? At a commercial organization? For FREE?

It also occurred to me the other day that we can use Microsoft Access as a content management system for the site — and not how you would think, either. We’re currently restricted by our web host to HTML, CSS and JavaScript (with some server side include capability), and /that’s it/: no ASP, no Java, and don’t even think about open-source. With daily pressure to get graphs, charts, figures, news, and documents on the intranet daily, what’s an overworked web-monkey to do?

Well, one might surmise that said monkey could build some tables inside of Access to accomodate news items; maybe design some sweet forms to do the data entry for the news “blog”. Writing code to export that content in the form of an SHTML include file in Visual Basic is trivial, and the monkey knows how to write a batch file that will FTP the exported file to the right location on the intranet. Done. Now any member of the team (technical or no), can log into this Access database, type in their stuff and click “Publish”. And the beautiful part is that it works just like Moveable Type. Sure, it’s not very web 2.0, but it’s agile, doesn’t require a bureaucratic change request process, and will be up and running by tomorrow (I started working on it today).

You can also import all sorts of data, analyze it with queries, and output HTML tables which, combined with the PlotKit JavaScript library, can be graphed and charted with ease, which I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.

***

Sarah got me a few books on fatherhood for Christmas this year, which I’ve just started plodding through (I figure they’re due by March 27th!). Aside from adding a number of to-dos to my list of things to talk about during our “Family Meeting Night”, it’s been a welcome sanity-check on just what we’re getting ourselves into. I told Schmoo tonight: “did you realize that that baby has to come /through/ your pelvis?” To which she replied, “well, how else did you expect it to come out?” And, of course I knew this had to be so. Only, it was only /too/ clear when I saw a drawing of an inverted baby floating through a skeletal pelvis on page 51 of The Birth Partner.

***

I mentioned the Gillmor Gang, which, if you check out my Digg profile, is one of my dugg podcasts (note in passing to the Digg crew: please make it easy to check for the latest podcasts in my digg profile, thanks). It’s actually defunct now as Steve’s funding or time or patience had run out with his podcast provider, the last “Thanksgiving Gang” having been recorded way back in November. Undaunted, I’ve been making my way through his past episodes, whiling away the hours hacking databases and spreadsheets at work, listening to the crew of marketers, journalists, and entrepreneurs talk about their work, their predictions for the industry, and generally b.s. about the personalities behind the press releases.

It’s a brilliant model for a podcast: six or seven industry insiders get on a conference line and talk about whatever they feel about talking about. I’d love to use it one day — it reminds me of the days back at Ironworks when we’d just hang out and talk about the world’s problems until the middle of the night.

“Jason Calacanis”:http://www.calacanis.com, one of the resident entrepreneurs on the show, has been downright inspiring. His narrative of growing up a poor kid in the Burroughs and covering the tech scene in New York during the bubble before he launched his own blog network resonates with me. Between him and web 2.0 wonder-boy Mike Arrington and totally random (emergent?) Christian cartoon ex-Silicon Valley blogger Hugh MacLeod, I sometimes find them grasping towards the intersection of art and business — that place you get to when you find you’re doing great work, what you later will consider your life’s work. These guys love what they do, and I think for many of them, the day-to-day job — of writing, of deal-making, of building, of whatever — has transcended getting a paycheck into a craft. It’s always encouraging to those of us in the trenches to hear that it doesn’t always have to be this way: that there’s more important and interesting work out there waiting to be found.

***

I discovered Wesabe the other day: it’s like Microsoft Money for the web, with half the features. If it hasn’t been said before, let me be the first: CONSUMER BANKS (ESPECIALLY THE BIG ONES) NEED TO PROVIDE THIS KIND OF SERVICE IN THE NEXT 18 MONTHS OR DIE OF IRRELEVANCE. It’s actually offensive to me now that my bank doesn’t automatically provide me with analysis tools to track my spending and investment habits.

I actually did receive a year-end statement from my Credit Union last year that attempted to break out my spending into various categories for the first time ever, which I very much appreciated. But the first thing I did when they asked me to fill out a survey was to tell them: great job with the year-end spending breakout, now please do it every month, and put it online within a year.

Microsoft Money is a tragedy of an accident of a failure of a software product. I’ve been using it since 1998 and, much like the rest of Office, have come to loathe it in the last two or three years. They’ve added features I don’t use, they’ve left reporting bugs that drive me crazy, they’ve attempted every bit of lock-in they could think of to prevent me from getting my own personal financial data, and they’ve screwed with the user interface — which once looked like I was logging into a sophisticated, stately banking application — so that it now looks like a bad imitation of a Fischer-Price toy.

Wesabe is the first salvo of web 2.0 coming to banking apps, and I fully expect this trend to continue as the privacy issues are hashed out. I’ve already switched completely: how could I pass on instant financial analysis available anywhere I have a secure web connection? Now I’m just trying to figure out how to get five years of data out of Money to load into Wesabe.

***

Well, if you made it this far through the brain-dump that is this blog, I wanted to thank you, dear readers, for sticking around through these past nearing-five years of Our Story. That some people with whom I’ve had passing encounters (such as “Nikkiana”:http://everytomorrow.org, “Sean”:http://semanticbible.org and “Dale”:http://wp.theoblogical.org/) continue to read this blog just amazes and humbles me. Thanks for reading.

***

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

– ??Steve Jobs??

Europe – Week 2: Frankfurt, day trips and the Alps

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Photos of our trip! “London”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594313249803/, “Berlin”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594329081504/, “Frankfurt Day Trips”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594322198201/, “Munich”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594329065327/, “Austrian Alps”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594329053756/, “Florence”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594346417126/, “Rome”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594346422642/, NEW: “Vernazza”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594371262145/, NEW:”Paris”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594370876680/. See also: “Europe – Week 1″:http://kennsarah.net/2006/10/15/europe-week-1-london-and-berlin/.

With only a few dollars left and our ATM card lost somewhere in London, we arrived in Frankfurt. We still had a couple of credit cards, and made sure to get the Eurail pass validated at the train station before we left. I had contacted the bank before leaving Berlin and was able to get them to overnight a new card, so it was just a matter of waiting a day or two.

We were also able to save some money by staying with friends. Sarah’s “adopted parents” out in Ohio were stationed with the U.S. Air Force base there in Frankfurt. Jeff and his kids met us at the station and brought us back to their home in a sleepy suburb. After traveling for a week, they were a really welcome sight, and it was great to speak English again! They were able to spot us some Euro until our ATM card arrived.

Barb and Jeff played tour guides as we explored the German Rhineland. As we cruised Germany’s thoughtfully-designed autobahn highway system, we enjoyed rolling green hills (with alternating views of wind turbines and farms). The Rhineland is home to castles and folksy little towns, most notably St. Goar’s Rheinfels Castle and the town of Bacharach. The Rheinfels Castle is a trip with kids around. While we spent our time admiring the massive ruins of the 13th century castle, the girls found ways to keep themselves entertained. We climbed the towers and descended into the tunnels, at one point, splitting up and getting completely lost. The castle, once much larger than it is now, is still a labyrinthine network of passages and tunnels that came in handy for soldiers holding off a siege.

We eventually found our way out of the castle to drive out to Bacharach for shopping, hiking through vineyards, wine tasting and looking at really, really old buildings. We ate inside of an 700-year-old building at a restaurant called Altes Haus (not recommended). After dinner, we headed back home to regroup and relax. I spent some time repairing their wi-fi connection, which had ceased working after they moved their computer. A couple of hours later, the DSL modem and router were talking to each other like old friends, and I documented the entire setup in case they ever needed to redo the whole thing again. I was glad, after all the kindness they had shown us, to at least help out somehow.

The next morning, we headed out to Worms (pronounced Voems), where Martin Luther was tried and declared a heretic. Today, there’s a monument to Luther, but when we went it was under construction. Continuing past the monument, we admired the stained-glass windows .and sculptures of the Worms Cathedral. Worms also was once a center of Jewish culture; we visited the thousand-year-old Jewish cemetery in town. Later that day, Sarah and I ducked to the Gutenberg Museum forty-five minutes before closing while Barb and Jeff spent some quality time at a nearby café. The museum celebrates the invention of movable type by Johannes Gutenburg — it’s like a shrine to typography. We sprinted through the exhibits with less than an hour to see everything, and really would have liked to linger. I was able to snap a quick photo before I was politely and forcefully informed that no photography was allowed in the museum.

Back at the Longs’, I got in touch with the credit union. We were set to leave for Munich the next day, and the ATM card, which should have shipped “overnight” on Saturday, still hadn’t arrived. The banker kindly informed me that my ATM card was in her hand, and she was ready to ship it today, just could we please confirm the PIN number we’d like to use. Panic quietly made its presence known somewhere at the edge of my cognitive space, and I realized that we had two options. We could play international mail whack-a-mole: give them our schedule and hope that they manage to get our card to the right hotel, while we were staying there. Or, we could get our money some other way. Not really excited about the prospect of the former, I told the banker that I wanted to explore some alternatives. We could get the money sent via Western Union (for a fee), or we could take a cash advance against the credit card and transfer the balance the same day for little or no interest. We opted for the cash advance option.

The next morning, we said our goodbyes, and hopped a train for Munich for lunch with Anika, an old coworker of Sarah’s. What was supposed to be an hour-long stopover while we had lunch turned into a full day of…waiting. Anika was crazy busy at the university vet clinic and couldn’t meet us at 12 PM, “so let’s try 1 PM.” One o’clock became four o’clock, and four o’clock became “after work.” We spent the afternoon sleeping and reading magazines in the university park which we had the totally unexpected surprise of sharing with nude sunbathers (only a few, mostly men, and all over 50). We finally did meet up with Anika, who took us to the nearby biergarten for pretzels and — what else? — beer. With only a few hours left in the day, we headed back to the train station for the last train to Innsbruck, Austria.

From Innsbruck, it was a 20-minute cab ride to the adorable Hotel Bär in Patsch. We had booked it online with no real recommendations, and were glad to see that it was a quaint hotel nestled into the mountains. We were greeted cheerily by the staff and headed up to the room. We were grateful to find it clean and inviting, and amazed when we peeked out the back door to find a stunning view of the Austrian Alps (it was even better in the morning). The next day, at Sarah’s prompting, the concierge gave us some tips on hiking and directed us to nearby Patscherkofel Mountain. She had just climbed it the day before and it took her about two hours to reach the top. “For you, maybe three or four hours,” she said. We gathered some cheese, bread, apples and Nutella from our breakfast buffet, and headed out.

There’s no other way to put it: the hike was long. We followed a road back and forth up the face of the mountain on an incline that just didn’t quit. At the start, we thought we would only need to go about four or five kilometers to reach the top, but by the time we reached Patscher Alm, we realized we were only maybe halfway. We considered turning back, but, in the end, decided we didn’t come to the Alps to climb halfway up a mountain, now did we? A few hours later, we made it to the peak. At the top, we found a little bit of snow, a broadcast antenna, a cross, and a breathtaking view of Innsbruck, a city that had twice hosted the Olympic Winter Games during the 20th century. We spent some time talking with a local Austrian — we had been passing each other all morning on the way up — who pointed out some of the highlights of the city and mountain range around us. When he was younger and living in Innsbruck, he told us, he would bike across town and up the mountain once a week, which sounded painful and fun.

While Sarah was totally fine on the way back down, I was really starting to feel the stress of a day’s worth of climbing (we later realized that this was actually signs of dehydration). Walking further really became pain management for me, but we were racing against the clock as the sun set behind the mountains. We had to move quickly: there weren’t any streetlights on the road, and visibility was dropping quickly. It took a couple of hours, but we made it to the hotel, just in time for dinner. Not wanting to have to leave our room once we got there, we decided to drag our weary bodies to dinner first. We actually met a couple that spoke English — he was from the States and she was from Australia. I did my best to be sociable despite wanting to just collapse over my salad.

The dehydration didn’t get much better (and, um, the beer I had with dinner didn’t exactly help), so we considered staying an extra night at the hotel. We weren’t excited about the prospect of losing a day, though, so I just drank water like it was going out of style and sat in a warm bath until the pain went away. Thankfully, by morning I was able to function again as a human being. We booked a hotel over wi-fi that morning and headed out for our next destination in Florence, Italy.

Europe – Week 1: London and Berlin

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Update: We’re back to the grind, but writing takes time. In the meantime: photos! “London”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594313249803/, “Berlin”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594329081504/, “Frankfurt Day Trips”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594322198201/, “Munich”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594329065327/, “Austrian Alps”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594329053756/, “Florence”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594346417126/, “Rome”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/sets/72157594346422642/.

Our first week in Europe has been harrowing and exhilirating. The first two stops — London and Berlin — were vibrant cities rich with history that Sarah and I can relate to and even remember.

London is a bustling center of fashion and high finance, and we found ourselves right at home with the pace of the city that was very much like New York. While the only Londoners we met were people trying to sell us stuff (again, not too unlike NYC), many of the people we interacted with were kind. Our favorite person by far was Alan, our double-decker bus tour guide. With his microtirades on the “Gherkin” building and the Fergie’s pop video “London Bridge”, he was like Ricky Gervais on a bus — his occasionally sarcastic Tour Guide role played very much like David from the BBC comedy, The Office.

I have to admit that it took a while for London’s charms to set in, but it finally happened while we were standing in Trafalgar Square at dusk. Standing in front of the National Gallery as Big Ben lit up in the distance — just breathtaking. That same afternoon, we’d had a delicious High Tea at the historically frou-frou Fortnam & Mason hotel. Even the photos of our food makes me hungry for scones and Earl Grey.

We left London after a break-neck tour of the National Museum, seeing _the_ Rosetta Stone — used by archeologists to translate hieroglyphs and unlock 4000 years of ancient written culture — Assyrian stone tablets and gates, and the greek Elgin Marbles, which the Apostle Paul likely saw in the Acropolis when he arrived in Rome.

We’d run out of cash on the last of our three days in London, so I went to use the ATM. I should have known there was a problem with our card when I had tried to download an album from iTunes just the night before and the transaction was rejected. Sure enough, the ATM gobbled up our card, with no way of getting it back. We had a whole 20 GBP left to make it through the day in crazy-expensive London while we waited for an opportune time to call the bank.

After the museum, we grabbed a cheap lunch from a nearby supermarket, caught the tube to the airport and took a flight to Berlin.

Getting to Berlin is a story in itself as we flew into town at 10:30 PM — apparently past closing time for the ticket counter. With our Eurail pass yet to be validated, we risked having the pass confiscated or facing a 40 Euro fine. With 92 pence left in my pocket, we prayed as we rode the S-Bahn into town that we would be able to avoid either of these dire consequences. No one ever checked our pass.

Berlin is an amazing city with a short and dramatic history. Once the home of Hitler’s totalitarian regime only to become the site of American/USSR tensions during the Cold War, the city is now rebounding under unified Germany. Our efforts to get a new ATM card sent to our next stop killed half a day, sending me trolling around the city for free Wi-Fi. Later that afternoon, though, we were able to take in the sights as we walked through Rick Steves’ do-it-yourself tour on Bus #100. The bombed-out Wilhelm Memorial Church near Bahnhof Zoo and the shelling damage in the marble Victory Column in Tiergarten were not-so-subtle reminders of Berlin’s recent past, and it was eerie to stand there and imagine the sounds of air raid sirens and tanks as American forces bombarded the city during World War II.

Stranger still were the sights of Nazi sculptures nestled in the trees around the Victory Column — which was moved to the “Central Park” of Berlin by Hitler himself in anticipation of the victory marches following the defeat of the Allied forces. Further uptown we found the impressively large Reichstag parlimentary building. The proud hulk of a building stands as reminder of the hope of a unified Germany. Outside the building is the memorial to the early senators who were persecuted and killed because they opposed Hitler as he rose to power. We walked south of the Reichstag to find Brandenburg Gate and, beyond it, Pariser Square. The Berlin Wall once cut right past this gate and, as we crossed into what used to be East Berlin, we were astonished to find a Starbucks. We sat and had a latté from one of the most capitalist of institutions inside of what, only 40 years ago, was one of the most fortified communist strongholds.

From there, we toured Unter den Linden and strolled past fancy car dealerships, embassies, and historic landmarks (including the Hotel Adlom, where Michael Jackson dangled his child from the balcony). We took in the sights and made our way to what used to be known as Checkpoint Charlie, where a replica of the original gate stands alongside a new and bewildering museum remembering the stories of those daring enough to escape into West Berlin.

The next day, still strapped for cash, we stopped short of entering the Pergamon museum to see the Gates of Ischtar — an ancient Assyrian structure which we’d seen pieces of in the Metropolitan Museum of Art just the week before. Not able to pay the 10 Euro admittance for each of us, we settled instead on buying a small cardboard cut-out for our pastor, who is now preaching through the Book of Daniel.

Afterwards, we boarded a train for our next stop, Frankfurt, with a handful of small bills and cheese sandwiches we’d created from our hotel’s breakfast buffet.

You, too, Tom

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Our friends, Tom and Alissa, are getting married next weekend! We couldn’t be more excited for them. They’ve even asked me to particpate in their celebration by being the best man.

Being best man is an honor that I don’t take lightly. Signing the witness statement, encouraging the groom, holding Alissa’s wedding ring, and making the best man speech are important responsibilities for the day to go smoothly.

But, the Bachelor Party: this is something we must ensure brings the greatest nobility and respect to our dear friend, who is about to embark upon a new milestone of adulthood. And, just for the record, I happen to have video evidence of just how my groomsmen — _including_ Tom — brought this same honor upon me. Tom has helped set the bar for the level of dignity which we might now, four years later, be privileged to bestow upon him.

==

==

I can’t wait. ;-)

On the Radar: Giving the blog some love again

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* ??Mark Glaser?? for ??PBS??: “Should Community-Edited News Sites Pay Top Editors?”:http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/07/digging_deepershould_community.html (via “Digg”:http://digg.com/tech_news/Kevin_Rose_Responds_to_Jason_Calacanis_Rant_from_Netscape → “Kevin”:http://krose.typepad.com/kevinrose/2006/07/calacanis.html → “Jason”:http://www.calacanis.com/2006/07/25/kevin-rose-cracks-or-how-to-know-when-youve-won-the-debate/). Aside from the Digg vs. Netscape drama that’s been erupting over the past couple of weeks, Calacanis raises some interesting questions about how people in the *attention economy* are compensated for their time and hard work. The next 18 months as these two players in community-driven news hash it out should be really interesting.
* ??John Gruber??: “Magic 8-Ball Answers Your Questions Regarding Microsoft’s ‘Zune’”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/07/magic_8ball_zune. That 8-ball. He sure knows a lot about the *digital music* industry.
* ??NPR??: “Avoiding the Housing Market ‘Dead Zone’”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5565128 and “Location, Location: What to Buy, and Where”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5565119. The nesting instinct kicks in: these interviews were pretty insightful about the state of the housing market right now. Of course, there are derivations for where you are, but the overall buyer’s recommendation is to wait until some of the *already-present market pressures* (housing surplus, higher interest rates, and exotic mortgages held by peers) bring prices down — perhaps even way down.
* ??Everything Newark??: “‘Newark is an Emerging Market””:http://blog.newarker.info/2006/07/19/newark-is-an-emerging-market/. The ??New York Post??, of all places, has a practically beaming article about Newark’s comeback. Booker’s enthusiasm, that Newark is a place of *untapped potential*, hangs on the very critical results of his stopping crime in the city.
* ??Washington Post??: “Religious Left Gears Up to Face Right Counterpart”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/25/AR2006072500437.html (“via Digg”:http://digg.com/politics/Religious_Left_Gears_Up_To_Face_Right_Counterpart). Favorite quote: ‘I’m an evangelical Christian who thinks that justice is a biblical imperative,’ said Wallis. ‘The *monologue of the religious right* is finally over and a new dialogue has just begun.’ I really hope Wallis is right.
* ??The Motley Fool??: “Opportunity Knocking for Citigroup”:http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2006/commentary06072514.htm. Citigroup may (or may not) be on the rise if the Fed stops raising interest rates to counteract inflation, which would be nice for shareholders given the “latest anxiety”:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aWJ3CLLNPUp4&refer=us over rising costs. A thought for Mr. Prince: consumer banking is sucking wind because *the customer experience is just awful*. The ATMs are nice, and the marketing is fun, but customer service just pales in comparison to banks like Wachovia.
* ??37signals??: “Writing Words vs. Writing Software”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/writing_words_vs_writing_software.php. I love these guys: Everyone and his cousin is working on a web app. But how many are actually finishing? That’s why we argue for biting off less. Write a short story/small app instead of a novel/massive app. *Shrinking scope means you actually finish*. And finishing is huge. When you finish something, you show up. And, like Woody Allen said, ‘Eighty percent of success is showing up.’
* ??Rosecrans Baldwin?? for ??The Morning News??: “The Maine Attraction”:http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/the_nonexpert/the_maine_attraction.php. Never been, but this sure was funny: Crystal Meth is easier to obtain in rural Maine than it is back home. So are crystals, and posters of *wolves kissing dolphins* in outer space.
* ??Paul Ford?? for ??43folders??: “Are there ‘good’ distractions?”:http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/24/paul-ford-distractions/ Paul’s struggle between accomplishing something with his life vs. “swimming in a sea of data” really touched a chord. I’ll have more thoughts on this later, but, if you read only one of these linky-things, make it this one. When I’m not getting enough done I get unhappy and depressed and think about the billions of years I’ll be dead before the heat death of the universe erases everything. I want to feel like *I did something during my brief life* besides check my email.
* LAUNCHED: Sarah goes independent with “Side by Side Dog Training”:http://sidebysidetraining.com/. The quick-and-not-so-dirty site brought to you by the wonders of “WordPress”:http://wordpress.org, “Quilm”:http://oriol.f2o.org/qwilm-a-wordpress-theme/ theme, and the “DreamHost”:http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?63570 “1-click install”:http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Goodies_Control_Panel#One-Click_Installs. Feel free to pass the site along to your friends with dogs — especially the ones that accessorize their dogs with *Louis Vuitton dog carriers and DKNY collars*.
* ??Jon Katz?? for ??Slate??: “The Loneliness of Rose”:http://www.slate.com/id/2146000/. Rose is not cute. She is a working dog, a farm dog. She herds sheep, keeps the donkeys apart from the other animals during graining, alerts me when lambs are born, watches my back when the ram is around. *She battles the donkeys*, the ewes who protect their lambs, and stray dogs who approach the farm. She and I take the sheep out to graze two or three times a day. On Sundays, we sometimes march the flock down to the Presbyterian Church to hear the organ music and present ourselves through the big windows. ‘Hey, Rose,’ the kids sometimes shout after the service is over. With Rose, we don’t need fences. As my friend Peter Hanks said, Rose is the fence.
* ??Washington Post??: “US waives sanctions on Saudi over religious rights”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071901178.html (“via Angela”:http://hereisangela.com/2006/07/25/galatians-221-turbans-teaching-and-temperance/) The United States has extended a waiver that avoids imposing sanctions on Saudi Arabia because it has made efforts to *improve religious tolerance* in the kingdom, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. The US ignores the religious freedoms of millions to suck up to one of its few allies in the Middle East.
* ??New York Times??: “What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/fashion/25love.html (via Angela over IM). If you read _two_ of these linky-things, make this the other one. :) It was only a matter of time before he was again tearing around the house searching for his keys, at which point I said nothing and kept at what I was doing. It took a lot of discipline to maintain my calm, but results were immediate and stunning. His temper fell far shy of its usual pitch and then waned like a fast-moving storm. I felt as if *I should throw him a mackerel*. Incidentally, this is how Sarah trains Dina (and maybe me).

Heat Death

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We bowed low and entered the temple of driveling entertainment that is Blockbuster. After searching high and low, we discovered and blew the dust off of the indie flick, “The Squid and the Whale”:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/squid_and_the_whale/. We enjoyed it, it had this rubbernecking quality about it such that you _had_ to watch it — peeking out between your fingers as you covered your face with your hands.

Jeff Daniels’ and Laura Linney’s performances as the squabbling, separated parents (Bernard and Joan Berkman) were poignantly true-to-life, and writer/director Noah Baumbach teases out the rationalization and self-protection schemes that are all too common in divorce: “I’m hiding these books under your bed so your dad won’t take them — they’re my books, I paid for them.” It’s funny because it’s true.

In a cast interview on the DVD, Linney points out that the story is about a marriage that has reached the end of its lifecycle. Joan has found her voice as a writer, which Bernard, himself a failed writer and her bitter mentor, finds impossible to embrace. In short: she’s self-actualizing and he can’t handle it, so she’s outgrown him.

I thought Linney’s use of the word “lifecycle” was interesting, as if marriages were born into a sort of Hegelian framework: into each is sown the seeds of its own destruction. But, I don’t think that’s a particularly helpful way to think of marriage. Many achieve their highest level of intimacy and mutual respect just before they end in death rather than divorce. That Bernard couldn’t grow beyond himself and celebrate his wife’s achievements isn’t something we should come to expect as a cyclical process in marriage, it’s a dysfunction.

But the idea of a “shelf-life” or “half-life” of a marriage has merit. All marriages have some rate of decay if left unattended and uncultivated. “Entropy”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death is the inevitable result of what theologians call a “fallen world”:http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans%208:19-21;&version=31. None of us is very far from that point in our relationships where we disengage completely. The Squid and the Whale was an urgent reminder of the pain and suffering that comes when a marriage is run aground on the shoals of egotism and neglect.

On the Radar: Digg Dug Edition

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* ??Chris Welch??: “Misconception: Renting is for Suckers”:http://www.investorgeeks.com/articles/2006/05/23/renting-is-for-suckers (“via Matt”:http://photomatt.net/2006/06/25/renting-is-for-suckers/). Many of my friends are reaching that point in their lives where they’re considering buying a home. However it’s unfortunate that so many choose to buy over rent, especially in this expensive market, because many well-intentioned people are buying homes that are actually damaging their finances.
* ??Fresh Pursuits?? “Canvas”:http://www.freshpursuits.com/canvas/. Canvas brings the freedom to express yourself through design without needing to know CSS or PHP. With Canvas and Ink for WordPress, you can easily rearrange, reconfigure, and colorize your entire blog without ever touching a line of code.
* ??Michael Barrish??: “Hell Freezes Over”:http://lumino.us/weblog/hell_freezes_over. Revamped and redesigned, it uses haikus in place of business copy (I couldn’t bear to write business copy) and features a new weblog about making websites (you’re soaking in it). Wondering what “Michael”:http://oblivio.com is up to, I find his new, angsty, neurotic web design company website. Brilliant work.
* I’ve really begun to dig “digg”:http://digg.com lately. As usual, I’m behind the curve (“digg just launched version 3 of their site”:http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/06/22/digg-30-to-launch-monday-exclusive-screenshots-and-stats/), but I think I’m just one of those people that has to see something working well before I can grok it. For the uninitiated, digg is a news site that has its content submitted by users. I had initially dismissed it as another “mob rule by the masses” type app (you know, enhancing the “echo chamber”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/23/echo effect of blogs), but it regularly produces some interesting results. Check it out, and “add me as a friend”:.http://www.digg.com/users/kwalker411.
* ??Granite Consulting??: “Late Binding in Microsoft Access”:http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/latebinding.htm. In essence: if you’re exporting to Microsoft Excel from Access programmatically, just use late binding.
* ??Joshua Porter??: “The MySpace problem”:http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/the-myspace-problem. Joshua gives some thought to what aspect of “design” MySpace really excels at. Hint: it’s not the graphical type. Instead of wondering what MySpace could be, let’s learn from what it is. Let’s assume (forgetting visuals for a moment) that MySpace is well-designed instead of condemning it as a visual failure. Let’s ask the obvious questions: why is it so popular? What makes it so successful? The answers to these questions might make us rethink our basic assumptions, but will make our future designs stronger as a result.
* ??Jason Calacanis??: “The new publishing model”:http://www.calacanis.com/2006/06/28/the-new-publishing-model-or-on-rafat-om-federated-media-ad/ (“via Matt”:http://photomatt.net/2006/06/28/new-publishing-model/). Here is the new model: 1. Start a blog with adsense and make spare change. 2. Scale a blog to 250k to 1M pages a month and become big enough for Federated Media, AdBrite, and Blogads to care about you (i.e. sell you’re inventory)–now you’re making a living. 3. Scale over 1M pages a month and become big enough that you can afford your own sales group and fire Federated Media for taking 40% of your money because your cost of sales will be 15-20% as a stand alone business.
* YouTube: “Pirates of The Caribbean Ride”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTQ5eWBlApY (“via Mike”:http://overloadednoggin.com/2006/06/28/captain-jack-meets-captain-jack/). Johnny Depp meets an animatronic version of himself as Captain Jack on Disney’s new Pirates ride. Very cool.
* ??Lifehacker??: “Windows Vista Beta: A tour in screenshots”:http://lifehacker.com/software/windows-vista-beta/windows-vista-beta-a-tour-in-screenshots-183883.php. Wow, not bad, Microsoft. I mean, after some five years of development, you’d hope that Vista wouldn’t be incredibly atrocious. There’s quite a bit of OS X influence in the finder here (nudge–hey Apple: time to get past “brushed metal”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/01/brushed_metal in “the finder”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/finder/, by the way), and I’m glad they’re getting away from the “Fisher Price”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#User_interface_and_performance school of design.
* ??Angela Wu??: “So much rage”:http://hereisangela.com/2006/06/29/so-much-rage/. I’ll agree to this mission if I can be assured that your rage level (which was off the charts that unforgettable night which still haunts me) will stay at a reasonable level. It’s true: I’m hosting Anglela’s website because she strong-armed me into it. Fear the rage.
* ??Jen Poley??: “1966 Plymouth Fury II”:http://sojourn-of-grace.net/2006/06/30/1966-plymouth-fury-ii/. What can I say? Jode and Nathan wanted a car to work on….we found this in Lincoln, and bought it. We hope to restore it, but if you can believe it, for now we are just really enjoying driving it around town. I can just imagine how much Jode is enjoying this.

Dig-Dug

Update: if you loaded this page in the last hour or so and saw a bunch of garbage — yeah, that was me. I was trying to set up the “FlickrRSS”:eightface.com/wordpress/flickrrss/ cache so this site would load a little faster. I think I got it working; the the site is loading a lot faster!