My Northwest Life

It's Worth Looking Back to See How Far You've Come

2010-09-21T16:01:00.000-07:00

Where were you at 1 AM on August 15th, 1994?
I'll give you a minute to recall...

While you're thinking, let me tell you my story.

1AM, August 15th, 1994. I am lying on the floor of Suzanna's bedroom in her parents' house, her childhood bedroom. Suzanna is next to me. There is no bed in the room. But we've made a place to sleep by spreading a blanket across the carpet and pulling over us a comforter Suzanna borrowed from her mom. It's the summer between my first and second years in graduate school at Western Washington University and we're less than a month away from our wedding day. I've moved back to Kirkland from Bellingham to help with the wedding planning. After we're married, we'll both move back to Bellingham, into an apartment we found one week earlier.

In preparation for the shift in our lives, Suzanna has quit her job at the Eddie Bauer customer service call center. She did that on August 14th. And this is the night following that. The first night of the rest of her life.

When we get to Bellingham, Suzanna will have no job. I will resume my part-time job as a graduate teaching assistant teaching one section of English 101 each quarter. The small amount I make from that work will be our family income until Suzanna finds work.

1 AM. Dark.

"Are you awake?" Suzanna asks into the quiet room.
I am awake. But I'm surprised to find that she is, she usually sleeps long before I do.
"Yes. Are you?"
"I don't know how we're going to make this work." Suzanna says.
"Make what work?" Statements like that at 1 AM in a dark room always sound heavy. This sounds heavy. I think we're about to have a long conversation.
"Money. Our money. Are we going to be able to do this?" She says.
"Do what?" I ask. Sleep? Move? Get married?
"That apartment. I don't see how we can afford that apartment. If I don't find work, we don't have enough."
"You will find work."
"But if I don't."
"But you will. We can make it work." The truth is, in that moment I'm just saying that. I don't know how it will work, I just think it will. So I say so.

We talked a long time into the darkness, going around and around. Finally we got the idea to sketch it out on paper and see what our situation really looked like.

I turned on the light and got out my journal. I found that journal last weekend when I was cleaning out the garage. My accounting of our finances is still there. Here's what I wrote:

650.00 = My monthly salary
400.00 = Your monthly salary (we hope)
1050.00 = Total monthly salary

1050.00
-500.00 = Rent
550.00
-25.00 = Phone
525.00
-25.00 = Electricity
500.00
-35.00 = Cable
465.00
-65.00 = Car Insurance
400.00
-150.00 = Groceries
250.00
-40.00 = Gas
210.00
-50.00 = Entertainment
160.00
-83.00 = Visas
87.00

My tuition was paid for by the Veteran's Administration, so that wasn't a concern. And if everything went according to this plan, we'd have $87.00 at the end of the month. Not bad! $87.00 left over at the end of the month. Every month.

In reality, we ended up with less than $87.00 at the end of most months. Our accounting was a too-rosey scenario. I remember one month in particular when we found ourselves with about $7. I talked Suzanna into spending that $7 with me at the Starbucks in the grocery store down the street. It felt right to live like we had enough. It felt like if we believed we'd get by, we would get by. If we acted like we were successful, we would become successful. If we stayed stronger than the circumstances of our lives, we would overcome the circumstances of our lives.

And I can tell you it worked.

That night penciling out our best-case financial picture was one month from our wedding. It was 2 years from our decision to start our own business with two friends. It was only 4 years from the day we bought our first house. It was 7 years from our second house. It was 9 years from our first child. 11 from our second. It was not that long ago, really. And we have more than $87.00 at the end of the month now.

That night was before those accomplishments but one thing was already there that night for me and Suzanna: our partnership. Without ever talking about it, without ever planning it we each took on the right roles to make us successful together: I bring audacity and an exuberant belief that we can do anything, she brings belief in me and a pragmatic mind that is ready to come along for the ride as long as I can pencil out the barest bit of proof that there's a way to make it work. She keeps me honest that way.

There's a song by Tim Finn that I like to listen to sometimes. It's called "Couldn't Be Done." Here's the chorus:

"We had no idea that it couldn't be done.
And we needed to find a like-minded someone
Who had no idea that it couldn't be done."

I have no idea that what I want cannot be done. And Suzanna is my like-minded someone.

That night on the floor of my future in-law's house was the first night of the rest of both of our lives. Mine and Suzanna's. Our life together. Working on that life together, we've really gotten somewhere. And as long as we stay focused on what we want and don't waste time on fear that it cannot be done, I have no doubt that every day can be the first day of the next great thing we're going to accomplish together.

I'm Rich! Thank You Nigerian -- I Mean Swiss -- Lotto

2010-09-01T14:37:00.000-07:00

I just won 750,000 pounds!! Totally unexpected.

Turns out I won a Swiss Lottery that randomly picks an email address as a winner and associates that address with a global region and...oh, screw it; I don't know how it works. It's explained in the email they sent me. All I have to do is provide a bunch of personally identifying information and the money is mine!

What nice people!

Here's the email:

SWISS-LOTTOwww. swisslotto. ch NATIONAL LOTTERY E-MAIL BALLOT AWARD 2010

You have been awarded the sum of £750,000.00 GBP in the SWISS-LOTTOSatellite Software email lottery in which E-mail addresses are selectedrandomly by Software powered by the internet through the worldwidewebsite as categorized below:
"A" Asia
"B" Europe
"C" North America
"D" South America
"E" Africa
"F" Australian

Your email address was amongst those chosen this year for theSWISS-LOTTO Satellite lottery. And this promotional program is proudlysponsored by the SWISS-LOTTO organization.Your email address attachedto Ref number 5, 7, 14, 17, 18, 43 with Serial 10, and consequently wonthe lottery in the "E" Category.

You have therefore been approved the lump sum pay out of £750,000.00GBP.

Please note that your lucky winning number falls within our African Booklet representative as categorized above. In View of this, The African Fiduciary Bank will have your won prize of £750,000.00 GBP processed and then effect payment to you by approval of Financial Service Authority FSA. To file for your claim by simply contacting the below address:

STERLING BANK NIGERIA
E-mail: sterlingbank@stargatesg1.com

PLEASE INDICATE BELOW INFORMATIONS TO THE ABOVE ADDRESS.
1. FULL NAMES:
2. NATIONALITY:
3. DATE OF BIRTH:
4. SEX:
5. MARITAL STATUS:
6. CONTACT ADDRESS:
7. TELEPHONE NUMBER:
8. OCCUPATION:
9. PRESENT COUNTRY:
10.Draw Number above:

These details will facilitate processing of your of won prize to avoid unnecessary delays and complications. All Reply should be directed to the paying bank (sterlingbank@stargatesg1.com ) failure to send your info to the bank leads to disqualification

Van Norris
Online Games Director
SWISS-LOTTO

Man, what a stroke of luck this is! I could really use 750,000 pounds right about now.

Hey, but I noticed they asked for my name and address, but they didn't ask for my social security number. Good thing I caught that. I'll go ahead and include that too, just to avoid "unnecessary delays and complications." Nothing bad will happen, I'm sure.

Those Swiss Africans. Always surprising me.

This Wonderful Summer

2010-08-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Me-in-years-to-come,

Remember this time.

School starts on Wednesday.

C will be entering the first grade, R will move from his preschool to C's school and into Kindergarten.

My emotions are mixed as I think about that. I am proud of them, I am excited for them. But I have the sense of a page turning, of a time in our lives passing into memory. And so I feel a poignancy about this transition too.

What a summer we have had, my family and me. I don't remember us being closer. It was a period of such love, and fun and appreciation for one another. I will always remember it as a summer of accomplishment for my sons.

When did C learn to ride his bike on two wheels? In the summer of 2010. July 5th, to be exact. We were in Kingston, at the beach house. C was playing with A.L. on the pickle ball court. A.L. had brought his two-wheeled bike and C decided to try it. He got on, and he peddled around that court again and again on two wheels, no training wheels. A huge smile on his face. "Daddy, look at me!" When we got home, he asked me to take his training wheels off his bike and he got on and went. So proud and amazed that he could do that any time he wanted.

When did R learn to ride his bike on two wheels? In the summer of 2010. July 25th, to be exact. We took C to Gregg's Cycle to buy him his birthday present, a new bike. He test rode three of them in the parking lot while we watched. R stood beside me and Suzanna and studied his brother intently. When C finished his first ride, jumped onto the second bike and rode off without hesitation, R said aloud but fully to himself: "He can get on any two-wheeled bike and ride it whenever he wants!" C picked the bike he liked, we loaded it into the van and headed home. From the back of the car, R proclaimed: "When we get home I'm going to ride on two wheels." And when we got home, I took his training wheels off and that's exactly what he did. So proud of himself. That night, when I tucked him into his bed, he looked at me with a smile infusing his face, his whole spirit: "It's so cool I can ride on two wheels now," he said. Yes, so cool, buddy. You'll never look back.

The way they both learned to ride on two wheels has become a motivational tool for the boys. I simply need to remind them now whenever they're faced with something they can't do: "remember how once you couldn't ride your bike on two wheels and now you can? What does that show you?"

"That there's nothing we can't learn!"

Right answer. That's true for all of us. There's nothing we can't learn. No thing. We just have to remember it and it's helpful to have reminders to prove it to us. Like our bikes.

The other big focal point of the summer was fishing. The boys and I spent a lot of time together doing that. I won't tell the whole story here right now. But I do want to remember that this was the summer they really stopped being our babies and became boys in the fullest sense. Digging in the dirt, finding worms for the fishing trips, casting into the lake and yanking blue gills, perch, pike and bull heads from the water with a whoop of triumph.

This was the summer they both showed me they are able. Capable of anything they truly want to do. Capable of more than I would have given them credit for. They can lead me to new experiences, they can teach me as much as I can teach them.

This was the summer they showed me a glimpse of them growing up. I am grateful to see that they are poised to be remarkable people. I am proud to see them growing. And also a little sad. I want to see them grow, but "nothing's sadder, I know, than the passing of time."

Can't change time, though. Can only make the most of the time we have.

Thanks for listening. I hope you'll remember the days of this wonderful summer. I hope you'll see these days as the beginning of better and better things.

Signed,

The-Me-of-my-distant-past

Why I Don't Want to Be Seth Godin

2010-08-24T09:55:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin is an innovative guy. He's out in front on trends; he's a disruptive thinker; his blog is one of the most consistently inspiring things I have the pleasure of reading.

I like Seth Godin (at least Seth Godin the brand), but I wouldn't want to be Seth Godin.

Why? Precisely because now that Seth Godin the guy is Seth Godin the brand, Seth Godin always has to be Seth Godin. The guy always has to be the brand.

There's a bunch of buzz today because Seth Godin has decided he will no longer publish books in the traditional way -- no more publisher. As some of the tweets put it: "Seth Godin believes in his brand and he's betting everything on it."

Cool. I'm sure he'll succeed.

But how exhausting to be him. What if he did want to do something in the traditional way? Could he? Or is the expectation that he'll always be The Innovator?

"Dude, Seth. You eat Skippy peanut butter?"
"I do," says Seth, putting the finishing touches on his PB&J. A final swipe of the knife, then he presses the slices of white bread together, takes a bite and smiles a sticky smile.
"I would have thought you'd get yours hand pressed or flown in or something."
"I don't".
"But tell me you eat Amazon basin palm nut spread!"
"I like peanut butter."
And then the fan boy bursts into flame.

If you're Seth Godin the brand, do you ever get to relax and just be Seth Godin the guy?

Inspiration: 12/11/2009

2009-12-11T20:28:00.000-08:00

"Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” ~John Wooden

One Year Is Long Enough Between Posts

2009-12-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

I'm finally back! A freezing cold day here in the Seattle area (18 degrees when I set out this morning). I've come to the Kahili Coffee shop in downtown Kirkland because during the warmer months of the year it always seemed like they had an overzealous heating system, so I thought it would be nice and warm here. Not anymore, not today. I'm typing with numb fingertips!

Where have I been for the last year? Not really that far away, just got fired up working on my business blog (www.emergingwebmemo.com) and some great additional speaking and writing opportunities that grew out of my efforts there.

But in the process, I think my online presence grew a little one-dimensional: lots of professional expression, but there was less of my personal voice than I had originally set out to share. I guess I'm trying to get back to a more balanced approach now. The end of a year and the beginning of another seems a good time to try to re-calibrate and rededicate. I had the same thought yesterday when I went to the gym for the first time in 4 months. As I was running my two mile stint on the treadmill, I thought about how in about 3 weeks the place would be packed with people just like me who had made their new year's resolution to get back into exercise. I'd made the same resolution, just 3 weeks before the beginning of the new year.

What can I take from this? How about that, though I lack the discipline to remain unceasingly committed to a single course of action, I am not alone in the fluctuation of interest and, to my credit, I correct course one or two steps earlier than the majority of drifters. So it's not about how well you remain focused, it's about how fast you get your...stuff...together once you realize you've gone off course. It's OK.

One Smart Penguin

2008-12-05T14:03:00.000-08:00

Here's a video I came across. I'm saving it here because I'm sure my kids will love watching this. That's one smart penguin and the metaphor kind of writes itself. Enjoy.

Penguin Pro Evades Killer Whales - Watch more free videos

They Must, But Do They?

2008-11-26T12:04:00.000-08:00

I'm just saying: what's my guarantee here?

A Quick Thought Appropos of Nothing

2008-11-22T10:23:00.001-08:00

I don't go to sleep, sleep happens to me. I wake up and realize I've been asleep.

One Day

2008-11-18T10:40:00.001-08:00

One day you will be a wrist watch buried in a dresser drawer. One day you will be two loose coins in the pocket of a coat you once wore. Your son will slip it on and find them there and maybe think of you. Although you are, right now, electrically alive; although you feel, right now, the world requires your hands twisting its old rough axis, the coins know better and will say nothing of that when they are found. The wrist watch will have stopped at some pm or am and there will be no whisper of the wakefulness, no accounting of the post-midnight hours with open eyes. One day you will be a picture on a hallway wall beside pictures of new babies and old women. One person still to happen might then stop as they move to dinner, sip their drink and guess at your name.

This Is the Weekend That Was -- November 14, 2008

2008-11-17T15:23:00.000-08:00

How do children change you? They make you like puzzles when you never have liked them before. We spent the weekend building, destroying, building, destroying and building again a jigsaw puzzle one of the boys had gotten at some point as a birthday present. Their excitement, their pride in their accomplishment each time they finished it was contagious. To the point that I found myself at 6:30 PM on Sunday night making an impromptu dash to Fred Meyer to buy 10 additional puzzles.

Before puzzles, writing. The boys were telling us stories at Starbucks on Saturday morning, creating characters and narrating adventures for them. When we got home I sat with each of them and had them tell me their story while I typed it up and then printed it for them. Then they each sat and illustrated their own stories; we stapled the finished pages and they were authors and illustrators. Here's what they wrote:

Studento the Not Nice Student
by C.J.Y.

ONCE upon a time, there was a boy named Studento the Not Nice Student.
Studento never brought his own lunch to school. Instead he would take everybody else’s food when they weren’t looking and he would eat it. Everybody was sad about that and they would cry.
The people thought maybe if they went inside to eat, they could get away from Studento the Not Nice Student. But he opened the door and came inside and took their food way.
So they grabbed it back from him, pushed him outside and locked all the doors so he couldn’t get in. Then they could eat their lunches in peace.
After that, the police came and put Studento the Not Nice Student in jail.
While Studento was in jail, he had time to think about the bad things he had done.
Studento the Not Nice Student realized he should be nicer. He should not do bad things like stealing peoples’ food. Instead he thought he should make them tomato cookies, because everybody loves tomato cookies.
Then the police let Studento the Not Nice Student out of jail and he went home and baked tomato cookies for everyone at school. When he gave the cookies to everyone he said “Sorry.”
Everybody was happy and they said, “Thank you, Studento, for being nicer.” After that, everyone called him Studento the Nice Student. And he never stole their food again.

THE END

Helmet Hero
by R.O.Y.

ONCE upon a time, there was a boy named Helmet Hero.

There was a bad guy named Boodie who was not listening to a nice person.

Boodie should have been listening to the nice person so Helmet Hero had to fight him.

Then Helmet Hero and the police put Boodie in jail for being bad.

When he was in jail, Boodie thought about the bad things he had done.

He thought he should be nicer to people. So he asked Helmet Hero to let him out of jail so he could go home and make chocolate chip cookies with frosting on the chocolate chips for everybody he had been mean to.

Boodie brought the cookies to everyone and shared them. Boodie said “sorry, everybody.”

Everybody said “Thank you, Boodie” when they took a cookie.

The people all said “Thank you” to Helmet Hero for making Boodie be nice.

THE END

It is clear that both of my children believe in the redemptive power of incarceration and that the role of prison is to reform. And shouldn't every man know where his children stand on that debate?

And that is the weekend that was.

Business Trippin'

2008-11-17T11:40:00.001-08:00

I'll be in San Francisco this Wednesday - Friday at Microsoft's Strategic Architect Forum 2008. Two rock stars from my company will be presenting on technology strategies for extending the enterprise. Last time I went on a business trip I started this blog. I wonder what I'll start this time. My money's on international incident...

I Do Not Know Everything I Do Not Know

2008-11-15T15:36:00.001-08:00

But I know I do not know this:

This light switch is on our bedroom wall.

I have lived in this house for 7+ years and I still don't know what this light switch is for. I am making no effort to find out. I may never know. And I'm OK with that.

Good for You America

2008-11-05T07:59:00.000-08:00

It's been 12 years since I was happy with the outcome of a presidential election. Eight years since I was proud of our president. I believe in Hope; it's not a fanciful notion, it's an essential element to the advancement of all causes. It is the pilot light of the human spirit and it has been the missing element in America for too many years now.

If we're going to turn the situation around, we need intelligence, honesty, strength, perseverance, curiousity, collaboration, cooperation and guts. But without Hope, none of those other things will matter. For me Barack Obama represents the return of hope.

Update: Lincoln weighs in:

Second Update: Talking with a friend about the crowds of people that materialized in cities all over the country following the announcement that Obama had won. In D.C. a couple thousand people appeared in Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House chanting "Yes we can! Yes we can!" Here in Seattle people poured out of restaurants and bars and formed an impromptu celebratory marched that wound through downtown chanting and cheering. These people and those like them across the country were rejoicing. The country was rejoicing. And it occurred to me that, though I have heard of rejoicing, I have never experienced it before. I've seen the country happy, but I've never seen the country tumble out into the streets and spontaneously erupt in joy. What does that mean about what this moment means?

This Is the Weekend That Was -- October 31, 2008

2008-11-03T01:26:00.000-08:00

It was Halloween and there was a whole lot of Batman this year. C & R were both the caped crusader and their friend A was Bat Woman; the forces for Good were overwhelming. Other friends included Knight who's name was Knight; crazy Cat; made up costume that looked like Strawberry Shortcake dressed up like the lead singer of 4 Non Blondes; and Death. The Grim Reaper. When he walked in the room I had to ask everyone else if they saw him too. When they said yes, I was relieved. When they pointed out that he was wearing white socks, I relaxed.

Saturday, the boys spent the night at Grandma's house, so we had time to vote! We live in a mail-in voting only county, but the county does offer ballot drop off stations, so we decided to drop our ballots off at our neighborhood grocery store instead of putting them in the mail box. It just seemed more immediate and impactful that way. This is a year when you want to feel your vote happening.

Sunday, swimming lessons in a miserably cold pool. The boys did the best they could, but their teeth were chattering so we cut the lesson a little short and sank into the hot tub to warm up. As we floated among the jet-driven bubbles, C said, smiling:

"Daddy, I hope you don't die."
"I hope so too," I replied.
"But if you do die, you'll be in the cemetary and we'll come visit you there."
"That's nice." I said.
"Look," he said, "my suit is filling up with air."

And finally I must tell you that I witnessed, this weekend, that which I had previously thought impossible. R stretched his plastic slinkey to its limit so that he could tie it around his mother's leg. When he released it, the slinkey collapsed, but it became twisted, as slinkies always do. No slinkey ever escapes the twisted demise and no twisted slinkey ever gets untwisted. At least not in my experience.

The twisted slinkey is the great mind bender. It is the unsolvable riddle. It is like peanut butter on a dog's nose: impossible to ignore, impossible to solve. Or so I thought until this weekend. SY sat patiently with the busted slinkey and with the deftness of a knitting gymnast twisted it back against itself and restored it to it's slinkey prime. I knew at that moment I was in the presence of one of this world's great thinkers.

And that is the weekend that was.

I Kid You Not -- Halloween Edition 2008

2008-11-02T12:22:00.001-08:00

This really happened in C's class on Friday. It was their Halloween celebration (although, annoyingly, they referred to it as "Harvest Parade Day", because somewhere along the line "Halloween" became offensive). All the kids get in their costumes and march around to the businesses near the school to trick or treat.

What some parents dress their kids in for...harvest.

What is this kid dressed as?

If the letter K came to your mind, and, more specifically, if 3 of them in sequence came to mind, you are not alone. In fact he was dressed as the Concorde and that Grand Wizard hat he's wearing is actually his super sonic nose cone. But if you saw him from the front, you couldn't help but think it was the deep south circa 1912.

Now before you get on my case for being mean to this kid let me tell you that I spent Halloween 1977 thinking I was dressed as C3PO from Star Wars only to look back years later and realize I was in fact walking around the neighborhood in gold-spray-painted jeans and sweatshirt with a gold-spray-painted empty Baskin Robbins ice cream bucket on my head. So I know it's not this kid's fault, but the costume looks how the costume looks.

And here's the best part. This kid has a brother. The brother was dressed as one of the Power Rangers (the one who wears white). Kid Triple K couldn't find his brother in the crowd, so he began running around the room calling out for him, raising his voice high above the din of mingling children: "WHITE POWER ranger, WHITE POWER ranger, WHITE POWER ranger."

I kid you not.

Who Made All That History?

2008-10-28T16:49:00.001-07:00

Look, we’ve all sat through high school history classes and learned about the remarkable people who fill the history books. They were so much better than us, imbued with qualities so much more worthy of respect than any of our qualities. They built the world that we simply live in.

Only, I’ve come to realize that’s not true. I’m not saying we’re all as great as anyone in the history books. I’m saying they weren’t as great as that either. Neither were they bad. The truth is they were just like us and they managed to make our history.

I’m thinking this because last week I went to yet another public hearing in Kirkland about the proposed redevelopment of Kirkland Park Place. This was the third one I’d attended and I learned that it was the 27th hearing on this topic to date. No one can say the planning commission isn’t thoroughly vetting public opinion on this one. The public hearing room is not large – about 100 seats, I would say. It was full on Thursday evening, as it has been in the past, but still 100 people is not many and not everyone spoke at the hearing. Those who did speak each got 3 minutes to make their case for or against the proposal before the planning commission and, at some point, based on that input the planning commission will make its recommendation to the city council on whether to go forward with the proposal. Already, though, the public input has had an impact on the project. The scale model the architect presented at last week’s hearing incorporates many of the changes citizens have requested at past meetings. And so, assuming the development goes forward, what gets built will reflect the input of ordinary citizens.

This whole experience with Kirkland Park Place has led me to one major realization: history is made by those who show up.

The bar really isn’t set all that high. You show up, you participate in the conversation, you stick your neck out a little bit, voice an opinion and the world changes shape.

It’s easy to get the impression from reading the high school history books that history is made by some class of people who are almost professional “history makers” – History Making Remarkable Person is their whole identity as they’ve been passed down to us and, therefore, history making must have been their full time occupation. Not so, I’ve come to believe. History is made by those who show up. And those who show up do so in time they’ve carved away from the primary aspects of their lives: they’re business people, parents, artists, retirees, high school kids. Being at the public hearing, raising their voice is not their primary occupation and most of them feel and act a bit nervous and awkward about it. But they step away from their lives for a short time and they do show up and they do speak and then the world reacts and history is different from then on.

This Is the Weekend That Was -- October 24, 2008

2008-10-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

Don't believe everything you read on a blog (except this one). See that "Next Blog" link up there at the top of the screen? I was clicking that on Friday when I came across a blog called "Backporchmusings" on which I saw a recipe for a dessert called Pumpkin Pie Cake. The blogger raved about it and posted the recipe. I saw an opportunity for some good father/son time, so I copied the recipe and on Friday night the boys and I worked together on making our own Pumpkin Pie Cake. Great anticipation led to great disappointment. Without a doubt one of the worst desserts I've ever had. My positive spin to the boys: "isn't it fun to experiment and see what happens?" Later in the weekend we went back to the safety of known quantities and made a Duncan Hines yellow cake with chocolate frosting. That one was a hit.

Saturday we met Grandma at the Seattle Acquarium:

And, thanks to Netflix, I got to see another movie this weekend. This time:

Iron Man -- This is a surprisingly good super hero movie. For one thing, Robert Downey, Jr. acts the hell out of the role. For another, there's actually a pretty good story here explaining the hero's motivations for becoming Iron Man. Maybe this is the Iron Man story, not something the screenwriter made up, but since I never read the comic books I don't know. Jon Favreau directed this movie; the same director who did "Elf" and "Swingers". He's really good. In the end, of course, this is just a super hero movie, so it's got the same annoying cliches that usually keep me away from these things: uber villains, bad guys who die but won't die, the hero who can't just win outright, but has to win by the skin of his teeth after it looks like all hope is lost. And this movie once again proves that if there's a character with a bald head, a beard and a fat cigar, he's evil, no matter how nice he appears to be in the beginning. Bald+Beard+Stogie = Evil every time.

And that is the weekend that was.

R Brings Home His Vocabulary List

2008-10-24T06:32:00.000-07:00

My son R is 3 1/2 years old. He brought home his vocabulary list from preschool. Words they are using frequently in class and discussing:

Big Bigger Biggest Large Larger Largest Enormous Gigantic Medium Small Smaller Smallest Little Tiny Beginning Middle End First Second Third Fourth Fifth Under Over Above Beside Behind Beneath Around Across October Gather Flock Migrate Flight Store Hibernate Den Environment Nest Acorn Pinecone Cool Cold Coat Jacket Boots Overcast Gloves Hat Scarf Mitten Season Change Flutter Soar Drift Shiver Stomp Trample Conserve Save Recycle Bridge Strong Strengthen Connect Arch Triangle Square Rectangle Circle

I know what all of these words mean.

I get to be witness to the beginning of R knowing them. How often are we able to pin point the moment in time when we moved from not knowing something to knowing it?

When you don't know something you may never know you don't know. Once you know a thing, is it yours forever or do you someday not know it again?

Trample. It strikes me funny they're focusing on "Trample".

Sooner or Later All Bloggers Must Explain Themselves

2008-10-22T15:28:00.001-07:00

The day may come when people blog unselfconsciously. When those of us who blog don't feel compelled by some perceived societal skepticism to explain at length our decision to start recording our thoughts, viewpoints, experiences, frustrations, humiliations, triumphs and tragedies publically. But that day is not yet here.

I've explained myself on this blog already here and here.

Christopher Buckley, late of The National Review, felt compelled to use finger quotes and verbal italics on The Daily Show last night when he said he had "just (pause) blogged today" about a hot campaign topic. When Jon Stewart reacted to his self-conscious delivery of the word "blogged", Buckley himself laughed and said he felt odd saying it and admitted he sounded like he was talking about some dread disease rather than a form of writting.

Now Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic has published an essay about why he blogs in which he traces the origins of Web logging back to the earliest forms of log keeping.

As you read a log, you have the curious sense of moving
backward in time as you move forward in pages—the opposite of a book. As you
piece together a narrative that was never intended as one, it seems—and is—more truthful.

More truthful because it is more immediate.

For bloggers, the deadline is always now. Blogging is therefore to
writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more
accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out
loud.

Interesting piece, worth reading. But I still wonder why we're all so driven to blog but so compelled to explain ourselves while we do it. In the end, I think it comes down to a fear people have of others thinking they take themselves too seriously.

Out the Back Window -- October 22, 2008

2008-10-22T15:10:00.001-07:00

On this date in 1962 President Kennedy announced the presence of offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba. And so began the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The view out my back window today:

One Lesson from the Bacon

2008-10-21T17:05:00.001-07:00

I worked at Henry Bacon Lumber Yard for one year after college. My job was to load the contractors' pickup trucks with the lumber, drywall, pvc pipes, etc. that they had paid for inside the store. So I was just the dumb muscle in the yard.

But one day, for reasons I don't remember now, I found myself on the phone in the delivery manager's office talking to a very angry customer. Seems our driver had delivered the wrong door to her house, her contractor was showing up the next morning to install it, she was pissed that now her project was going to be delayed, she wanted a refund so she could take her money to Lowes and get the right door from them. I apologized for our error, talked her down, arranged a special delivery for that evening and hung up.

When I turned away from the desk, my manager was there looking surprised. "That was great, man. The way you talked. You could end up as a manager some day."

I was a little taken aback by his reaction and also a little pleased. I didn't understand why he was so effusive. So I asked him.

"Most guys," he said. "They'd get mad at the customer if the customer was getting mad at them. They'd tell the customer it was their fault. But you kept your cool."

I don't think most people would act that way to an angry customer, but that was his experience. Bottom line, though, he was impressed that I hadn't gotten defensive. And that's the lesson I learned. I didn't get us off the hook for being wrong with that customer's order, but I did get the customer to stick with Henry Bacon. Nobody likes defensiveness; defensiveness never works.

It's not the crime, it's the cover up.

People will forgive you your mistake, but not if you won't admit the mistake.

This Is the Weekend That Was -- October 17, 2008

2008-10-20T11:20:00.001-07:00

Headed out to the Seattle Center on Saturday with the boys. I've criticized that place before as being kind of empty, sad, dirty and covered in asphalt, but I must have been experiencing a more upward-trending biorhythm on Saturday, 'cause it struck me as a pretty wonderful park. The sun was shining, lots of people, and the kids got a thrill from the giant fountain.

After the fountain, we went inside to the Children's Museum. We hadn't been there in almost a year and I think the boys had forgotten about it. They reacted to everything with so much excitement it was like they'd never seen it before. What a great place to spend the day -- so relaxing as a parent to be able to just turn your kids loose and let them go everywhere, touch everything, without having to run around behind them policing their every move.

Sunday was a quiet day of hanging around the house, and swim lessons in Bellevue. But it was not without it's moments of entertainment. The boys got into a bout of "dress-up" in the morning. No princess costumes; they discovered the closet with all the old halloween costumes in it. So we were visited by Batman, Spiderman, a couple of pirates and even a Super Doctor -- everything's got to be a superhero or it's not worth doing, you know.

I'm also happy to report that over the course of the weekend, I got to see three movies! The Happening, Smart People, and W. My reviews:

The Happening -- It's M. Night Shymalan. People start dying mysteriously. The beginning and ending of this movie are way too far apart.
Smart People -- A genuinely good, but not great comedy about a curmudgeon widower (Dennis Quaid) his estranged children (Ellen Page as the daughter) and doofus adopted brother (Thomas Hayden Church). There's great tension and emotion in the relationships between the father and daughter and if the movie had been about resolving that it would have been a whole lot more satisfying. Instead, it gets sidetracked in a really implausible relationship between Dennis Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker. C'mon! Who believes this crap? It was a good movie, despite the love story between Quaid and Parker, not because of it. There's a story between father and daughter, father and son, brother and brother, and old ugly dude and too-young-for-him chick. The screenwriter focused on the wrong story.
W. -- Very engrossing political drama, more like a greek tragedy than an American political history. But ultimately, I couldn't buy in to it. It's just not a believable story -- it's about this rich kid from Connecticut who screws up everything he ever tries to do -- can't keep a job, fails at business -- but gets saved every time by his rich, powerful dad who's a big wig in politics. Eventually his dad becomes president but loses his bid for re-election. To avenge his dad's defeat the screw-up kid decides to run for president, thinking, if he's successful, his dad might finally be proud of him instead of disappointed in him. He reinvents himself, pretends to be from Texas, and he wins, becomes president and then he screws that up too. Like I said, an interesting story, but hard to buy in to since something like that could never really happen.

And that is the weekend that was.

Thoughts After Another Cat Nap

2008-10-15T16:09:00.000-07:00

At work at the University, my dad would often close his office door in the afternoon and lean back in his chair for a 15 minute nap. He claimed it kept him sharp.

Lately I've been doing the same thing. I find myself limping along by 2:30 in the afternoon and only a few minutes with my eyes closed will get me back on track. It's a helpful practice, but it raises the question in my mind: have I just gotten wise, or have I just gotten a little older?

Improvement is not limitless. We can't always get better. At a certain point, we start getting worse. If everything that goes up must come down, and our lives (personal, professional, physical, intellectual) reach a zenith, will we know the moment when it arrives? Will we recognize it and say to ourselves "This is as good as I will ever be"? Or do we always believe we can get better and only once we're headed back down the other side of the mountain see behind us that moment when we were at our best?

In the end maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe you just always push yourself to do your absolute best and measure your output against what you feel you're capable of but don't measure what you're capable of today against what you did in the past.

This Is the Weekend That Was -- October 10, 2008

2008-10-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

On Friday there was no reason to have a party. And that was all the reason we needed to have a party. We invented No Reason Day. Went to the party store for balloons, streamers, party hats, cupcakes. Let the kids decorate however they wanted. Best party ever. Happy No Reason Day everyone.

Saturday, we were off to Craven Farms in Snohomish for pumpkins. I don't like pumpkins, but I like watching the kids like pumpkins.

After the pumpkins, friend Monica's in Issaquah for a Halloween Party.

Sunday, a day of rest at Qwest. Got a chance to go to the Seahawks-Packers game at Qwest field in Seattle thanks to Jeff. Great seats. Seahawks lost, but I was secretly pulling for the Packers anyway.

And that is the weekend that was.

If You Are a Fish, You Shouldn't Live at My House

2008-10-10T01:09:00.000-07:00

...If you want to live, that is.

Another gold fish has died, people. That's two in 2 months. At least this time it was R's since the last fish that died was C's. So they're even.

The fish came into the house 2 months ago greeted by great fanfare and excitement. We prepared a fish bowl with gravel and a plastic plant. The next day C's fish was belly up. He said kind words over the corpse and flushed it down the toilet with tears in his eyes and cried all the way to Wal-Mart as we rushed to get a replacement.

Over time -- very little time -- R's original fish and C's replacement fish shed their novelty and became just two more things on the kitchen counter. But annoying stinky things in a bowl of water that turned green every couple of days.

This time when the fish died Suzanna was the first to notice it when she got out of bed to make coffee in the morning. I identified it as R's, we sighed with relief that now C would be spared the complex of being a reverse King Midas of gold fish (I wouldn't want him burdened with the belief that every gold fish he touches turns to dead). Then we dispatched it quickly down the crapper, poured some coffee and turned on the Today show.

We should not be entrusted with the care of anything that can not ask for food.

It took the boys three days to notice the fish was gone. When they did, they paused briefly to take in its absence and then went on with their business, but not before asking us "Why do fish die so fast?"

Good question, son. A mystery. I wish I knew.

Post Turtle

2008-10-06T00:02:00.000-07:00

These are momentous times we live in. I have resisted saying anything here about the presidential election simply because I talk about it everywhere else I go and I thought I would keep this forum for discussing other things.

But if it's true that one purpose of a blog is to record your thoughts in a particular moment in history so that you can look back at them in the future and be reminded of what you were thinking, then I probably should say something about this election.

The truth is I am fervently pro-Obama for his grace under pressure; for his focus on restoring the middle class because he recognizes it as the backbone of the American econmy; for his emphasis on demonstrating to the world the power of the American example not the example of American power.

And the truth is, I believe John McCain and Sarah Palin are a dangerous combination for this country. I think they're shallow and/or wrong on the issues -- deregulating banking, taxing health care benefits, saber rattling instead of the face-to-face diplomacy that was good enough for Ronald Reagan (whom they claim to admire, who scared me in 1980, but who looks like a graceful throwback to an age of reason compared to these two); I think they've run a cynical and duplicitous campaign; I think they talk about honor while acting dishonorably. And with regard to John McCain specifically, whatever remaining respect I had for him evaporated the moment he picked Sarah Palin, so obviously a political choice designed for momentary gain and so obviously a compromise of his values of putting country first, because she is not ready for the job and he knows it. His ambition got the better of his judgement in the case of picking his VP, what does that say about his ability to make the right judgement as president? Rhetorical question there.

Rolling Stone has just published an amazing investigation of John McCain's history, showing that what is true of him is universally 180 degrees different from what he says of himself.

And what of Sarah Palin? This just came to me in an email from a family member, and I think it's the perfect assessment of Palin (and, by extension, McCain), so I'll let it speak for itself:

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old rancher, who's hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Palin and her bid.

The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a Post Turtle'".

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was.
The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle".

The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he
continued to explain. "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, and she doesn't know what to do while she's up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with".

This Is My Paul Newman Story

2008-09-30T00:23:00.000-07:00

Our company, Allyis, donates time to maintain and host the Web site of Camp Korey , the newest camp in Paul Newman’s network of Hole in the Wall Camps. Because of that, in June 2007 I was invited to attend a grand opening event at the camp that Paul Newman himself was going to attend.

I was excited by the prospect of being in the same room with acting legend Paul Newman – Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy, Henry Gondorff from “The Sting”. I was a Paul Newman fan and I’ll admit, though by doing so I’ll reveal just how shallow I can be, it was the prospect of meeting Paul Newman more than the camp opening that had me excited that morning as I drove out to Carnation, WA.

The truth is I had imagined that Paul Newman was going to spend time with us personally to thank us for the work on the Web site. I’d have a chance to shake his hand and tell him I admired his films and then act really cool and nonplussed by his celebrity which would in turn make him admire me because, “Dammit, if there’s anything I hate its people who treat me like a celebrity and not the real person I am” he would think to himself.

When I got there the room was much bigger than I’d expected and there was a horde of media and a couple of hundred people taking seats on folding chairs in front of a stage. I was confused. How was Paul Newman going to grant a private audience to me and the rest of the group from Allyis in a setting like this?

The program got underway. Dignitaries and muckity mucks began filling the chairs on the stage – there was King County Executive Ron Sims, former Governor Gary Locke, the camp’s board officers, a couple of folks I didn’t recognize. And, sitting at one end of the stage, looking small, unassuming and, frankly, more like an old man than I’d expected, was Paul Newman. Others on the stage were wearing suits and ties, Newman was dressed in a white sweater and baseball cap, aviator sunglasses perched at the end of his nose.

Before Newman spoke, though, there were others. One, the father of Korey Rose, the boy after whom the camp is named. Korey died of cancer at age 16 and his father dedicated himself to making the camp a reality in his son’s memory. Then there was a man who, as a child, had attended a Hole in the Wall camp in California. He explained what a life changing experience it was, as a kid who spent most of his time in hospitals, to have the chance to go to camp like a “normal” kid. In a place where every kid was a sick kid, suddenly nobody was defined by their illness. They were just kids for that week, doing what kids do at camp.

I was beginning to realize by this time that this event was not about celebrity.

And then Paul Newman got up and walked to the podium. On this day that had started, in my mind, defined by Paul Newman, focused on seeing Paul Newman, all about Paul Newman, I now understood it wasn’t about Paul Newman at all. It was about the kids that would come to this camp. It was about kids who were suffering more pain and sadness than most of us ever encounter having a brief chance to experience joy. It was about a father seeing his dream come true and succeeding at something that perhaps healed some of his own pain, that perhaps made him feel connected to the boy he had held, had cherished, had worried over and had lost. It was about growing out of that pain and finding the strength to help others find their own strength.

The day wasn’t about Paul Newman at all. And Paul Newman knew that better than any of us. At the podium for no more than 3 minutes, I’m sure, he said “thanks for supporting Korey’s dad.” He said “every kid deserves the chance at least once to raise a little hell and just be a kid.” He said something about having “too many Budweiser suds” clouding his thinking. And then he said, with that Paul Newman gravel in his voice that sounded like every cantankerous character he ever played, and with a dismissive wave of his hand: “if I have any kind of legacy it won’t be for any movie I ever did. It’ll be for these camps.”

Then he nodded and he sat down.

Back from the Canyon

2008-08-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

What a fantastic trip. 8 days, 280 miles, rafting down the Colorado River, hiking the side canyons, swimming in river and creeks, sleeping under the stars. It's hard to re-enter the world of work. That's what photographs are for: to prove to yourself that you once did something amazing. And we got out before the dam burst. We did spend a day hiking up the very creek where the rafts got washed away in the flood.

On Vacation!

2008-08-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

I'll be away for two weeks on a Grand Canyon adventure. Rafting Lake Powell to Lake Mead (or Lake Mead to Lake Powell, I can never remember which one is north and which one south). I'll post some pics of the trip when I get back on the 14th. Also, remind me to tell you about a couple of the bike rides I've had around Bothell since my last post. I still think there's a lot of room for aesthetic improvements and better community design in Bothell, but I believe in giving credit where credit is due. So I'll do that when I get back. Later!

Hey, Oh, Way to Go Bothell

2008-07-30T17:19:00.000-07:00

I love my home, my house, my immediate neighborhood. But this post is about my frustrations with the complete lack of imagination the city of Bothell shows in the urban planning of the business center in my area. Good urban planning matches goals for economic development with the need for people-centered spaces. That's lacking in Bothell's Canyon Park where I live and that's what this post is about...

I’ve been thinking about the study that was reported on in the news yesterday about how your neighborhood -- when it was built and how much it encourages walking by giving you not only sidewalks, but also something to walk to -- contributes to your weight and overall health (here’s the report on MSNBC). The findings don’t surprise me, but it has got me thinking about my own neighborhood (which, by the way gets a pitifully low walkability score on WalkScore.com).

My own neighborhood reminds me of a wrong turn my wife and I once took when we were walking through London. We’d been told you could take a train from Heathrow airport to Wimbledon station, hop off there, get on a footpath beside the Thames and walk to Oxford. It would be a two week trip, but, again, we were told, we’d be able to find bed & breakfasts all along the way to stay in. That was not our experience. We got off the train at Wimbledon, eventually found the Thames and a trail and we walked, and walked and walked, and walked endlessly through the deepest reaches of industrial London – across freeways, under freeways, past warehouses, around breweries. It seemed we were the only people walking there. The only other people we saw were flying by in cars at 60 mph.

Every city has a part of it that defines it, that is the part of the city people think of and envision when they think of that city. In Seattle, of course, it’s the Space Needle and downtown. But every city is bigger than just the parts you think of when you hear its name. Every city also has those parts on the fringes that seem to exist just to make you feel lost – they’re strip malls and long stretches of wide, high speed roadway. They’re the parts of town where people pick up speed and lose touch with each other because they’re built not as places to bring people together, not as places to foster a sense of neighborhood or community or destination. They’re places that are obviously built to get you to other places that are more interesting. I live in that part of the greater Seattle metropolitan area.

I live off the Bothell-Everett Highway, and some days I really feel like I am perched right on the dash between those two place names. Downtown Bothell is a defined town – it has a main street, it has parks. Everett is a nice small city on the shores of Puget Sound with a performing arts center, a children’s museum and some genuine charm. Both Bothell and Everett are undergoing some resurgence in their downtown cores. But I live off the road that connects the two of them.

My neighborhood is strip malls, fast food, high tension power lines, the intermittent sidewalk of new housing developments and ever widening asphalt. In the 7 years I’ve lived in my house, hundreds of acres of pasture land and forest have been cleared and replaced with thousands of new houses and thousands of people have filled those houses. And yet our's remains a community without the amenities that really make a community: we have several strip malls but no center. We have two Subway sandwich shops, three Starbucks, three Teriyaki restaurants, five gas stations, a Walgreen’s, a Napa Auto Parts and a Shucks auto parts. But despite all the new families living in the area, there is no place in our neighborhood for families to congregate: we have no movie theater, no book store, no performing arts center, no park. We have the Bothell-Everett highway that gives us a way to get to other communities that have those things. Our neighborhood as it’s currently structured is built to ensure you don’t have to slow down much as you make your way to somewhere else.

The Lawn Mower, Man

2008-07-17T16:25:00.000-07:00

It has become my personal goal to reduce, as much as possible, my use of gasoline. I've been trying to drive less (as I've written about on this blog already) and now that ambition has spilled over into my yard care choices as well. Not long ago I bought a new power lawn mower only to find out shortly thereafter that lawn mower engines are worse than automobile engines in terms of their CO2 emissions -- they're not regulated and they can put out more CO2 than a car idling in traffic. Given that, I wanted to see if I could mow my lawn in a greener way -- gas free. This video documents my first experiment in pursuit of this goal. My conclusion in this case was that green mowing remains a worthwhile goal, but I don't think I've found the right solution for me yet.

So if you watch the video, you'll see that the bad news is I'm still going to be mowing my lawn with a gas-powered mower while I continue searching for a viable alternative. The good news, however, is that since all I care about is how long the grass is, not how pure it is, not how free of weeds -- clover, dandelions, etc -- it is, my lawn is completely pesticide free (I never treat it with anything, cause I don't really care about it that much). So that makes me a little bit green. Green by virtue of laissez-faire lawn care.

Library Thing: Kicking Off a Virtuous Cycle

2008-07-14T15:27:00.000-07:00

I know people who keep food journals (writing down everything they eat for a week or two). They tell me that they start the journal as a way of identifying the mistakes they're making in their nutrition ("see, here it shows I eat Twinkies every morning for breakfast") but pretty quickly the act of having to write down what they're eating makes them eat better things. They chose healthier options because they want to be able to write down healthier things in the journal. If you have to account for your actions, you start committing more honorable actions.

Now I understand that phenomenon because I've just spent the last hour working on my Library Thing profile. Library Thing lets you list the books in your home library or books you've read. Once you've added 10-20 books, the Library Thing algorithm starts giving you recommendations and matching you up to other users with similar tastes. So that way you can find the next great thing you ought to read. Suddenly I'm finding myself wanting to read more and read more widely-divergent things so I have more to add to my Library Thing list and so I can get more and more-interesting recommendations. Libray Thing is a tool that I think falls into the category of an online social networking tool -- you can share out your library to others as a way of networking with them. But it goes beyond just presenting you to others, it doubles back on you and makes you want to be a better, more interesting person.

Playing Tourist in Our Own Town

2008-07-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday R got the chance to go spend the night at grandma's house by himself for the first time in his 3+ years. And we got the chance to hang out with big brother C alone for the first time in a couple of years. I know R had a wonderful time being the center of attention and it was nice to be reminded what a sweet, fun kid C is and for Grandma to get a chance to enjoy R's humor and sweet charm one-on-one. When the two boys are together, they're fun to be with, but we interact with them as a pair instead of as individuals. I sometimes think their teachers know the individual boys better than we do, since they're in different classes at school and their unique personalities get a chance to hold center stage. In a couple of weeks C will get his chance at grandma's and we'll have our fun hanging out with R.

As a special treat to C we took him to the top of the Space Needle for the first time yesterday. We've driven past it a thousand times but have never gone up with the kids. I spent more time watching C watching the view than I did looking at the view myself. As we went up the elevator and the world fell away below us, C marveled at how things were getting smaller and smaller -- of they would look that way, and I take it for granted, but everyone becomes conscious of that phenomenon at some time during their lives and it was profound to be there witnessing C discover the world in a third dimension.

At the top, as we mingled among super-sized tourists, most of whom it seemed had come from the cruise ship docked in Elliot Bay, I put C on my shoulders and gave him my camera. He proceeded to shoot these pictures:

Not bad for a kid who won't be 5 for another week. I am going to get him a small digital camera for his birthday, was already planning on it before yesterday, but now I can see he might have a real eye for this, a real talent. He says he wants to grow up to be a photographer (when he's not saying he wants to be a fireman or spiderman), so who knows, maybe we'll look back at these pictures and understand that they were signs of great things to come.

Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness Up to But Not to Exceed $6.9 million

2008-07-11T16:09:00.000-07:00

We take these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life (or $6.9 million whichever comes first), liberty and the pursuit of happiness…

File this one under “You Learn Something New Everyday”. It turns out that the United States government had determined the monetary value of every life in America – it’s $6.9 million. And it further turns out that the value of each of our lives, as determined by the government, in this case the Environmental Protection Agency, is dropping. It’s down $900,000 this year.

Here’s the MSNBC article that discusses this.

The EPA denies it, but many believe that this devaluation of the American life is a way for the EPA to relax pollution control rules. If the aggregate value of the lives saved by a proposed environmental regulation is less than the cost of imposing the regulation, then it’s easier for the EPA to argue against the regulation. That is, if it costs more to save people than people are worth, then you shouldn’t save them.

I find this reprehensible in so many ways that I can’t even get my mind around it. A life should be measured in moral values, not financial ones. Do they not see the contradictions in this? Are these not the people who scare up votes every four years by banging the Right to Life drum? Of course it turns out they only value life as a means to get votes, once they have the vote they don’t feel compelled to protect any lives. Are these not the people who argue in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers? If a life is only worth $6.9 million, why execute a murderer? Why not just put a lien on his house or garner his wages? The brutality of the death penalty is rationalized by its supporters by pointing to the magnitude of what the murderer has destroyed. Yet this move, to place a monetary value on the life and now to devalue it as a way to make it easier to undercut the quality of that life, betrays their argument that there’s any justification for the death penalty.

You know, I could go on trying to make clever arguments about why this is an outrage and a dumb move. But I’m exhausted by the calculating disregard for the well being of individual Americans exhibited by the Bush administration. I’m not clever enough to make clever arguments. This is wrong, they know it’s wrong, but they do it anyway. Maybe that’s what they’re counting on, that we’ll all just get too tired to do anything about it.

Everything I learned today I learned from American Idol Winner David Cook

2008-07-09T06:29:00.000-07:00

The American Idol Winners Tour is coming to Seattle in August and to get us prepared for their arrival, the Seattle Times today printed an interview with last season’s winner, David Cook. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure I must tell you that I did watch Idol last season (you can see we’re even on a short hand, last name basis) and I did root for David Cook, though I didn’t vote at all. Again, full disclosure: I watch, but I don’t vote. I do vote in political elections for things like President of America and stuff; please don’t judge me too harshly.

Back to the topic I started on though. In a Q&A printed on the Seattle Times online, the conversation between Cook and the reporter turned briefly to his upcoming album:

Q: So what do you listen to?
A: (Singer-songwriter) Imogen Heap. Some Keith Urban. Trying not to stray too far, but get a bit of a fresh perspective.
I'd like this record to be palatable for sure, because I want to sustain a long career. But I don't feel I have to glue myself to the usual 1-4-5 (pop chord structure). I'm trying to write songs you may hear on the radio, but with interesting quirks that make them stand out.
Q: Isn't it the post-album era, where the big thing is single tracks?
A: Yeah, depressing, isn't it? I came from a time when records were records. I'll let the label worry about the singles, I'm into making a record.

I was interested in the statement about the album VS the single. I have thought many times since the beginning of the iPod era just how exciting it is as a consumer to be able to simply buy the one or two songs by an artist that I really enjoy without having to also buy the songs that aren’t so appealing. I grew up in the era of albums and, more often than not, the single you heard on the radio was, on the album, surrounded by filler that was only there to round out the song list to nine or 10 songs and to justify the album’s price. It’s interesting to me that the makers of the music express such dissatisfaction in the consumption habits of those of us who buy the music. It’s “depressing” that we’re in a post-album, single-ascendant era? Not to me.

(As an aside of sorts, David Cook may be assured of enough sales to warrant having an album of his own, but the vast majority of recording artists should thank their lucky stars they live in this era of the iTunes marketplace. Without it, they would never meet the economic bar necessary to justify recording their singles. Don’t take my word for it, read Chris Anderson's analysis of The Long Tail . It is currently blowing my ever-lovin’ mind!)

There’s an analogy to be drawn here to some of my recent experiences in business where I’ve been on the side of producing “products” based on an idealistic desire for how they would be consumed only to find that the “consumers” didn’t use them because the products didn’t match their use habits or needs. Both experiences have to do with the introduction of communication/collaboration platforms into two separate organizations.

Within Allyis I drove the introduction of what we called our Competency Community web sites – collaboration areas for employees we’d grouped by their core professional competency (project management, Web development or Business Analysis, for example). It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that nobody is using the sites. We’re going back to the drawing board having realized that, while people do want to connect with other professionals and do see the value in collaborating, they want more control over forming their own network. We imposed networks on people. Employees want to determine the criteria – the how and why – of their own connections; we were imposing criteria. At first I was upset that no one was adopting the competency community sites, but I finally realized (and David Cook has further confirmed) that I was asking employees to change their habits to match the product I wanted them to use. Instead I need to shape my product to match the real needs of the employees. And more accurately, I need to put the control in the employees’ hands and let them build the product that matches their habits. That’s the iPod lesson: consumers shape their own product. They want to. Let them. If you let them, they’ll keep buying.

The second experience has to do with the communication tool I set up for the Kirkland Business Roundtable. There was some desire (admittedly most of it from me) to have a means for members to stay actively connected between the quarterly meetings we hold. I believe close and regular communication contributes to stronger bonds of community and a strongly bonded community is a community with strength it can direct at ideas and causes on which it wants to have an effect. That thinking is sound, I’m confident in saying, but my method of connecting people within the roundtable has proven, so far, ineffective. We set up a simple collaboration environment online and gave all 60 members of the roundtable user accounts and full publishing rights. The tool was right there for people to start using to share their ideas with one another. We set up the tool 5 months ago and so far, I can tell from user logs, 13 people have logged in; the 47 other members of the group have never logged in. Of those who have logged in, none has logged in since early May.

Mea culpa, again. I built a space for people to get all activist about the issues facing Kirkland on which the Roundtable wanted to have some input. But I did that without properly gauging whether the Roundtable members wanted to go into activist mode about the issues facing Kirkland and Kirkland businesses. And – assuming for a moment there is broad desire within the Roundtable to be activist in nature -- I did it without knowing how people on the Roundtable want to communicate about the issues that matter to them.

I believe we have moved out of the time of the top-down communication models of the past. Newspapers are dying, people are blogging and Twittering and Digging and tagging. The editor-in-chief determining what content is fit to print is a thing of the past. I built the Roundtable collaboration site with a prescribed structure to where, how and why members would communicate with each other and I expected members to shape their communication with each other into that prescribed model. But what happens in that situation is that most people, rather than changing their communication habits to fit the prescribed model, simply choose not to communicate at all.

There’s also the issue to overcome that while the top-down communication model may be on the way out, there are still many people – especially those within a certain age demographic – who see themselves as consumers of content rather than creators of it. Most of the Roundtable members are within that particular demographic. The tool I set up asked people to be the creators of the content and that is probably not something most of them are comfortable doing.

In analyzing the fallowness of the Kirkland Roundtable collaboration site, it seems to me I have either created a tool to serve a need that may not have been broadly present in the group or I perceived a need but have not yet shaped the tool to serve that need properly. This is a mismatch of supply with demand. I supplied something without understanding the demand. Consumers today want to shape the supply to match their own demands. That goes for iPod listeners who want to hear one David Cook song along with one song from Imogen Heap and one from The Republic Tigers and one from Men at Work (this is what I have on my iPod) but don’t want to be burdened by the album structure and it goes for creating collaboration environments online.

Still to be determined in all of this is how the practice of User Interface Design fits into this new consumer-driven paradigm. UI Design delivers a structure within which to place the content you want users to consume. But if users are now to create their own content what place is there for a practice that exists to prescribe structure? That’s a topic for a future post, I suppose.

My goal with the Kirkland Roundtable, as it has been with Allyis’ competency communities, is to also go back to the drawing board and to find ways to tap into habits people already have for aggregating and sharing knowledge and to find a way to incorporate the group into those habits. For example, if most Roundtable members read news online – general business news, but also Kirkland-specific business news – could they bookmark what they read to a Digg account shared out to the group? Could they tag content for the group on delicious? Could members just pursue the habits that work for them, and indirectly create meaningful content around which the group could coalesce, come to know each other and, as a result, find its strength? I will go down this path a ways starting at today’s Roundtable meeting and I’ll let you know over time what I find out in answer to those questions.

Half a Tank In One Month

2008-07-08T18:01:00.000-07:00

Took a look at my gas log in the car today ("gas log" is a fancy name for the sheet of yellow legal pad paper I keep folded up in my glove box and on which I write down the date and price of gas purchases). I was happy to see that the last time I bought gas was on June 5th. I've still got half a tank left more than a month later. I wonder if I'll be able to make it through the rest of the month of July without buying gas...Well, that just became my goal!

Summer 2008 Gasoline Challenge: June Update

2008-07-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post, I announced my Summer 2008 Gasoline Challenge (read about it here). I can’t yet completely eliminate my fossil fuel use, but I’m trying to reduce my use. Reduce/Reuse/Recycle = sustainability, right?

So here’s my update for the month of June.

June 2008: Miles Budgeted – 200/Miles Used – 157.1/Challenge Miles Remaining – 782.6

Miles Budgeted May – June: 400
Miles Used May – June: 217.4
Miles Under Budget May – June: 182.6
Longest Single Drive in June: 57.1 miles (from home to the Totem Lake P&R Goodwill drop-off station, which is only nine miles. But then from there to the Downtown Seattle Goodwill store after the jerk at the P&R wouldn’t take the stuff I had to donate.)
Most Unnecessary Drive in June: 5 miles (From home to Yummy Teriyaki and back when I got a craving for spicy chicken and egg rolls. But, honestly if you tasted their egg rolls you’d understand.)

Those numbers look good, on paper. And I’m pleased that I’m still under budget. But I know I didn’t give it 100% in June. I know if I wasn’t sometimes lazy I’d be doing better. Giving up the car means I have to do more planning ahead of time now to figure out alternative modes of transportation. If I’m taking the bus, I need to know when the bus is coming and get myself to the bus stop on time. If I’m carpooling with someone I need be ready when they’re ready to take me. If I’m riding my bike, I need to leave my house an hour before I have to be at the office (and pack a change of clothes and figure in time to de-sweatify once I get to the office). I’m not very good at planning ahead, being organized. I leave the planning till the last minute every time and sometimes I don’t leave myself with enough time to take advantage of the alternatives to driving. There were a few trips in June that were just me being forced to take the car because – as my grandmother would have put it – I had “frittered away the minutes” until I had no other choice.

I’ve developed this general pattern for the week –

Monday: Carpool
Tuesday: Carpool
Wednesday: Work from home, bus or bike
Thursday: Bus
Friday: Work from home, bus or bike

The biggest challenge for me on the days I take the bus is getting from my house to the bus stop. I catch Sound Transit #532 from the Canyon Park Park & Ride. The Park & Ride is 3 miles from my house. I can walk there, I’ve done that several times, but it does take over 30 minutes and see above for why that doesn’t always work out. It’s not a big P&R and it fills up quickly – by 7am most days all the spots are taken. So I have Suzanna drop me off, but then after I’m out of the car she has to drive solo just so I don’t have to. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, so I don’t do that unless she’s going out to run errands anyway. I’ve found that riding my bike to the P&R is a pretty slick option – takes 10-15 minutes and there’s always a slot open on the bike rack (turns out there’s bike rack etiquette, too, interestingly enough. I’ll fill you in on that in a future post).

Once I catch the bus, it’s incredibly easy to get where I’m going: #532 goes straight down 405, stops only twice at freeway stations and is at the Bellevue Transit Center within 25 minutes. From there I hop on the Metro 230 that comes down to Kirkland and takes about 15 minutes. In 40 – 60 minutes I can be at the office.

Given how easy it is once I catch the bus at the P&R, it seems ridiculous to me that the hardest part of the whole journey should be the first three miles from my own front door. I don’t live in a remote wasteland; I live on a major North – South artery through Snohomish county, along with a couple thousand other Sno-Co residents. But the closest bus stop is two miles away. This inconvenience factor is what has always stopped me in the past from taking mass transit and I know it’s what stops a lot of other people from doing it too. I’m choosing to accept and overcome the inconvenience now because of this challenge, but realistically not everyone will or can make the choice to do what I’m doing. So if Community Transit, Sound Transit, and Metro are serious about trying to deal with traffic problems and greenhouse gas emissions by getting people out of their cars, they’d better be realistic about the fact that they still have some work to do to make it easy for people to do that. Things are good on the freeway routes and the urban routes – the main lines – but they have to make it easy for people to make it from the fringes to the main line.

More updates soon.

Two Ways to Use Twitter for Business

2008-07-02T16:00:00.000-07:00

My best thoughts usually occur when I'm in transit -- driving, riding the bus or riding my bike away from or to the offfice and invariably when I'm away from pen and paper. And so the brilliance of my thoughts goes wasted.

Last night, though, riding home on the bus, I used Twitter to record ideas as they occurred to me, texting them from my mobile phone. Next day when I sat down to work, I fired up Twitter and worked from the notes I'd jotted while on the bus. There's been some debate about what the real value of Twitter is -- is it social exhibitionism, is it a tool to build friendships, is it a business tool? I suppose it could be all three of those, but it most definitely has some useful business application. Using it as I did on the bus means interpreting your audience as yourself, primarily, but I've learned that's as legitimate an audience as any for a blog, even for a micro-blog like Twitter. In this context, it's like a Post-it Note, and yet it has the same benefit as a full-fledged blog, in that it's public and as such your notes to yourself may be enriched by others who are following you.

One other business application for Twitter occurs to me. We've all been in meetings, large and small, where the conversation may really only go on between a small subset of the people there. Maybe they're just the stronger personalities, maybe they're leading the meeting and there isn't time for group input. Whatever the cause, there are people in meetings who have ideas and thoughts to contribute but who either are reticent to say anything out of shyness or simply don't get the opportunity to contribute. But what if you set up a meeting so that everyone knew ahead of time that if they weren't comfortable speaking up during the meeting, or if you didn't have time to take questions or if people just needed more time to process ideas before contributing their thoughts they could post their ideas to Twitter? The meeting leaders could then review the Twitter posts afterward and probably would come across some good input that otherwise would have been unrecoverable. This, I think, would work best in a large presentation, but the idea that you could give a new channel for input to those who are perhaps less comfortable with the standard channel means you'd broaden the group contributing to the conversation and that makes an organization stronger.

This latter idea is similar to the "back channel" present at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. As presenters were speaking throughout the day, there were simultaneous conversations going on about the presentations on Twitter. People exchanging ideas about what they were hearing together, but also people in one breakout session sharing ideas with colleagues in other breakout sessions. It was a much richer engagement with presentations than I'd seen before -- I was taking notes with a pen in a notebook and couldn't share them with anybody until well after the presentation. And the beauty of doing the idea sharing in Twitter was that it was instantly preserved, thus allowing people to go back later and pick up conversations or take ideas and pursue them further.

Meanwhile Life and Death Continue as Always

2008-07-02T15:48:00.001-07:00

Outside to cut the grass this morning, I noticed a sudden commotion in the trees at the edge of my yard. I looked up just in time to see a hawk come thundering out of the leaves of a maple with a baby bird clutched in it's talons. As the hawk flew low through the neighbor's yard the baby bird began screaching a high-pitched, beseeching cry, the sound of it growing fainter as the hawk rose into the sky. A moment later two small birds -- the parents of the stolen baby -- shot out of the trees in frantic flight, calling to each other. They flew off after the hawk, but returned a few moments later having been unable to catch him. After that they perched in the cedar tree above the fence chirping and squeeking, agitated. I know what they were talking about.

Confessions of a Blogging Convert

2008-07-01T22:59:00.000-07:00

If you’re an avid blogger already you may find this post a reciting of the ridiculously obvious. But if you’re like me, new to the idea of blogging, maybe some of my thoughts on the value I’ve found in blogging will be useful to you. Maybe.

Until I attended the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston I was anti-blogger. I dismissed blogs out of hand because I believed bloggers were the online equivalent of the troubled souls who stand on street corners arguing with themselves. I had decided bloggers were people who believed no moment passed that wasn’t worth recording. Bloggers, I thought, lacked the filtering ability common in the rest of us.

I was a blog bigot.

Since the conference I’ve made such a complete and rapid 180 degree turn on the idea of blogging I think I may have slipped a disk.

Why the sudden turn around?

If this was a Hollywood movie, the answer would be that my daughter fell in love with -- and eloped in the arms of -- a blogger. That through her eyes I came to see bloggers in a new light, realized I had prejudged and that I thus underwent a transformation and became a better, more accepting person.

A “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner” for the online social networking age… “Guess Who’s Blogging About Dinner”.

But I don’t have a daughter.

No, the truth is the conference helped me relax my idea of who a blog’s audience can be. And that, in turn, helped me finally understand the purpose of them.

“Who is your audience?” was the first question addressed in the “What Blogging Brings to Business” breakout session and, to my surprise, many of those in the room, including the panelists, answered that, at least in part, they were their own audience.

“I keep a blog,” said one, “as a place to write down the things I’m learning so I won’t forget them.”

That resonated with me, a revolutionary idea (fitting that it happened in Boston).

“A place to write down the things I’ve learned so I won’t forget them.”

I have found that given the pace of my life these days – two small kids, running a business, trying to participate in professional organizations, trying to find time to stay in touch with friends and family, hoping to carve out some time for creative expression – I spend a lot of my time skating across the surface of ideas rather than really having the time to dig into them to any depth.

I may have ten minutes here or there to read an article, before I get pulled away to a meeting or to clean up spilled soup or break up a fight over a matchbox car, or show up at a city planning commission meeting, but if I don’t record what I’m thinking about that article in the moment it will evaporate and when I find my way back I’ll have to start at square one again. I hate square one! Honestly, If I’m going to find my way down a few levels into an idea it will happen over an extended period of time.

A blog is a way for me to lead myself back through the parts of an idea I’ve already secured. It’s the intellectual equivalent of shoring up the walls and roof of a mine as you tunnel deeper into the earth in search of gold. But what’s exciting about a blog from a personal perspective and even more so from a business perspective is that while it’s enough to write the blog for yourself, the fact that it’s public writing means that it also can lead others down the pathways of your discoveries and your ideas and can serve as an invitation to them to join in conversation with you – in person or through the blog itself, which adds even more value to the blog since it preserves all the different angles and aspects of the ideas and becomes a richer and richer discussion the longer it goes on and the more people join. If you introduce a blog into a professional setting then as you pursue ideas, build them out, shore them up with new discoveries, then other people in the organization can participate in that as well, adding their own voice and rounding out what can become an organizational understanding. That’s the gold at the heart of the mine. One person starts digging, others join in and that’s when you really get somewhere.

I used to think bloggers just liked to hear themselves talk. I was wrong. Bloggers like to talk, no doubt about that, but I think we do it hoping it will prompt others to speak too.

Yes, I said “we”, bloggers. I’ve become one of you. Forgive me my insensitivities of the past. It will never happen again. Probably.

Kirkland Planning Commission Follow-up

2008-06-27T17:05:00.000-07:00

Never underestimate the passion people feel for the place in which they live. That's the number one lesson I take away from last night's planning commission meeting.

There was a good turn-out of both supporters and opponents of the Kirkland Park Place redevelopment plan. I would say the numbers were about evenly divided. And there are strong passions on both sides of the issue, though my unscientific observation is that the people against the proposal generally seemed to be talking a little louder than those for the proposal. Does that mean that those for it are not as invested in the debate as those against? No, I don't think so at all. There were plenty of people supporting the idea who expressed a very hopeful and heartfelt vision of what this redevelopment could mean for Kirkland.

There was real passion in the Kirkland City Council chamber and I had to sit for nearly an hour and a half before it was my turn to speak. That was long enough for me to go through several fits of nervousness and one bought of flight instinct...confrontation over important issues can be a good thing, but nonetheless I'm sure I'll never be comfortable in those situations. "I live in Bothell. Who am I to tell Kirkland what they should do?" I thought to myself. "I'm a Kirkland business owner, that's who!" I chastized my internal monolouger. "My business is effected by what Kirkland does and that matters." And bottom line, I care about Kirkland and I want to see it thrive. I got up and said my piece, a variation on the comments I made in my blog post last night. Each speaker gets only 3 minutes to make their point, so it's hard to be eloquent and not feel rushed. I always wish I could step into situations like that and say the one "silver bullet" sentence that will cut to the heart and end the debate in favor of my side. But of course the silver bullet sentence is mostly just a myth and what it comes down to now is just numbers -- budget numbers for sure, but also just the pure numbers of people who showed up for or against.

There were a lot of interesting points made on both sides, but I think the comment that I'll remember most was made by one elderly, soft-spoken gent who got up in support of the plan shortly before I did and calmly built an entirely new perspective for everyone in the room. "Many people," he said, "have gotten up here and talked about how this plan would ruin the quiet, small town feel of Kirkland. They talk about living here for 20 or 30 years and how Kirkland has always been a bedroom community and they don't want to lose that. Well, I wasn't going to speak at all, but I've lived here a lot longer than that and I can tell you that 60 years ago Kirkland was anything but a quiet bedroom community. It might surprise you to know that 60 years ago Kirkland was considered the most vibrant city on the Eastside. It was called the hub of the Eastside in fact." He then went on to describe how Kirkland at that time employed several thousand people building ships at Carillon Point -- the largest single employer in Kirkland until Google moved in a couple of years ago. "Those were people who worked in Kirkland and lived in Kirkland. This plan would bring that back. That's good for Kirkland."

Kirkland Planning Commission Meeting Tonight

2008-06-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

On my way this evening to Kirkland City Hall to voice my support for the proposed redevelopment of Kirkland Park Place mall by Touchstone Corporation.

Anyone who's familiar with Park Place knows that it ain't what it used to be. I've lived in this area for 21 years now and in that time Park Place has gone from a thriving retail center with restaurants, a bookstore, a movie theater, a grocery store and some office to a run down shell of it's former self. The bookstore is out of business, the clothing stores are gone, the movie theater is old and outdated, the place is mostly empty parking lot. There's one good restaurant there, and a Starbucks and a 24Hr Fitness, but not much else.

The debate is around how it should be updated. The leading proposal is to turn Park Place into a mixed use, town square style facility. This would include expanding the main building to 8 stories of large floor plate office space (30,000 square foot floor plate). The alternative plan is to scrap the mixed use idea and just build a 5 story office building. There are citizen groups who are strongly opposed to this plan, and I need to be sensitive to their concerns. They don’t want to see the flavor of Kirkland change, the small-town quality they value disappear. They fear an 8 story building would signal the beginning of the end of the Kirkland they love.

While I am sensitive to their concerns, it’s my opinion that the plan Touchstone has proposed will enhance those qualities rather than detract from them. I support the redevelopment plan because a mixed use, dense, town square-style development with shops, restaurants and office all fronting on and incorporating Peter Kirk Park will revitalize downtown Kirkland and save it from sprawl and the slow death of downtown businesses that’s already occurring. Kirkland's goal is to use the large floor plates to entice large, high-paying tech firms to locate in Kirkland and bring with them their young, highly-paid, big spending employees. The city believes, rightly so, that large office spaces and vibrant, interesting environs around those offices are key to achieving that goal.

Because Allyis is one of the largest employers in Kirkland, and a tech company and recently relocated to Kirkland, the developer and the chamber of commerce have asked me to voice my support for the plan. I can tell them, and I will, that in our experience the atmosphere of the work environment matters a great deal to tech workers. We used to be located in downtown Bellevue, surrounded by great amenities, a great view, interesting restaurants for lunch, the transit center a block away. It was great, our employees loved it. We moved out because the landlord wanted to replace the building but that was the only reason. And when we were looking for new office space we tried very hard to avoid suburban office parks. Those dead spaces surrounded by parking lots. Where we've ended up is better than a suburban parking lot, but it could still use a little more "Kirkland Cool"; we're down at the south end of Kirkland and the cool hasn't spilled down this far yet. We do have Lake Washington and Lake Washington Blvd, which are nice (a great place to walk, bike, run), but restaurants are all a drive away. It would be nice not to have to use our cars just to go out to lunch. A mixed use space would solve that, and I'll be sure to voice that opinion to the city.

But there's an opportunity right now to turn Park Place into a gem, into the kind of space that could really add to the livability of Kirkland and really make it an exciting desirable place to locate your business. High tech companies are full of generation X and Millennial generation workers who want a work lifestyle not just a workplace. And they don’t gravitate to office parks.

What's the Right Way to Blog?

2008-06-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

Coming out of the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston my colleagues and I have been discussing the idea of blogging. Should one blog for personal reasons, for business reasons, for both? If for business, how formal should you be? Is it OK to talk about things unrelated to your business or should that be reserved for other forums? The shortest answer to those questions, I think, is "to each, his or her own." That is, do whatever the hell works for you. But, for the sake of discussion, here's a brief analysis of four blogs that were mentioned in the "What Blogging Brings to Business" session at the E2.0 conference. I've tried to outline the rhetorical strategy each is taking.

Examples:

http://www.netage.com/endlessknots/
This is Jessica Lipnack who was in the "What Blogs Bring to Business" session as a panelist. She describes her blog as being "about virtual teams, networks, networking, collaboration, Web 2.0, writing and even yoga, knitting, cooking, family and friends." If you read over her posts you'll see that most of the time she jumps around from topic to topic, but then during the period of the E2.0 conference several posts in a row dealt with that event before she then went back to the more ecclectic approach.

http://www.octavianworld.org/
Cesar Brea, another panelist at the E2.0 blogging session. His blog is about technology, advertising, media, online communities, Web 2.0. It seems to be more focused on business aspects than some, I think because he uses it as part of his marketing strategy for his two-person consulting firm Force Five Partners (http://forcefivepartners.com/). He's clearly positioning himself as a thought leader, but what's interesting to me is that even in the posts where he's taking the SME stance, he's not making definitive statements, he's speculating from the standpoint of experience -- educated guessing -- but it still comes off sounding credible because he's so clearly thoroughly immersed in the subject matter. As we refine our marketing approach and the idea of marrying culture with technology to the benefit of employees, this blog might be a good model to follow if we wanted to blog as a way of showing how we're remaining up to date on the thinking about how to treat employees, etc.

http://billives.typepad.com/
This is Bill Ives, also a panelist from the blogging session. Here's how he describes his blog: "This blog shares ideas and hopes to generate discussion on enterprise 2.0, business blogs, web 2.0 and knowledge management to provide value to organizations through practical applications. New trends and technologies are covered with a switch to art, music, travel, and food on the weekends." Like I said in the introductory comments to this post, here's an example of a blogger being his whole self: he's strutting his stuff from a business perspective, demonstrating his credentials, but he's being a complete person too, as evidenced by the several posts celebrating the Celtics championship (including a screen shot of the front page of the Boston Globe). So he comes off like a guy who knows a lot, but a guy you'd feel comfortable talking to. I'm pretty certain that's his strategy.

http://kmspace.blogspot.com/
Final example from an E2.0 blogging panelist. He's a lawyer who's heading up a knowledge management project at his law firm and his blog is entirely focused on that project, knowledge management software and Enterprise 2.0 within the practice of law. His blog is, at first blush, more conservative than the others because he's blogging as his professional self from within the strict and conservative confines of the law firm (he's got a legal disclaimer on his profile page). However, he has links to other sites he maintains that are quite a bit less formal -- Facebook, FriendFeed, Picasa and even Twitter where, among professionally related posts you'll also find this post: "George Carlin has died. S**t, F**k, etc". Not to sound like a broken record, but I do think it's interesting that even on this buttoned-down, formal blog, he finds ways to infuse his humanity and personality. There seems to be an expectation that such things will exist on a blog.

So my take away from all these is try to be truly who you are, speak in your truest voice. If you don't, you won't be able to maintain the conversation for long.

The Fugitive

2008-06-25T05:18:00.000-07:00

When I was 17 I stayed out all night with friends. Stolen beer and borrowed cigarettes. Inevitably nights would end and I would slide through the front door of my house, creep past dark furniture toward the safety of my bedroom upstairs. Tensing with each fugitive footstep lest a floorboard creak and wake my parents who would demand, with sleep in their eyes, that I explain myself when I was not ready to do so.

Now I am 39 and I don’t sleep all night. Thoughts of work I need to do and ambitions I have not met. Inevitably I cast the sheets aside and get out of bed, slide through the darkened house toward the stairs and the sanctity of my office downstairs. Tensing with each tired footstep lest a stair creak or my knees pop and wake my children who will demand, with sleep in their eyes, that I make them breakfast and watch Mr. Rogers when I am not ready to do so.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars -- I Want One

2008-06-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

Interesting event happening in California this week. Major car makers -- who all, it turns out, have been developing hydrogen fuel cell cars while our government slept with the oil companies -- are holding a 200 mile public relations road rally. They're showing off their vehicles to the public in an effort to raise awareness of the viability of this technology and to add impetus to the push to build the "Hydrogen Highway", a network of hydrogen stations running the length of California. They've already got my support. Is this going to be the technology that replaces internal combustion gasoline fueled engines and makes the US energy independent? It's still too early to say for certain, but it's clear that at the fringes and behind the scenes there's great technical innovation happening, it's clear that innovation is not happening among the oil companies and it's clear that if we could just get a network of people to support ideas like the Hydrogen Highway financially until it's proven, we could really move the world forward.

Twitter: More Powerful Than It May First Appear

2008-06-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

Last week I attended the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. Four full days of presentations and discussion about the use of social networking and collaboration tools -- like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs and wikis -- in a business context. I may report more on the conference in future posts, but right now I want to share my thoughts about just one of the tools I learned about: Twitter.

When I was a kid I would sometimes spend summers at my grandmother’s house on Mercer Island. The bedroom I slept in was on the other side of a thin wall from grandma’s room and a couple of mornings a week I would awake to the sound of her voice. I would listen as she made her way through her address book, calling each of her friends on the phone. Each call lasted only a minute or two – a couple of questions about what they had planned for the day, or how their families were doing, were they gardening, had they seen the article in the paper about thus and such. “Good, good. Well, goodbye,” she would say and move on to the next friend. As I got older and more cynical I would joke that she was just checking to see who was still alive and who could be crossed out of the address book. But I know there was more to it than that. She was maintaining her connection to her friends. Knowing them. And giving them something by which to know her. Actively. Proactively. She didn’t just have connections to her friends she cultivated them.

I do not do that with my friends.
They do not do that with me.

It is a myth that we really know each other.

In my experience, most people desire to be more connected to one another than they are.

And yet, as strong as our desire to connect is, our inhibition about reaching out across the distance that divides us is even stronger. The physical distance may be miniscule – the scant few inches that separate you from the person sitting in the seat next to you on the bus, the few feet that separate you from the other professionals at the after work networking event, the few minutes of driving that separate you from friends who may live in your same town, or even the socially-constructed barriers of hierarchical roles within the workplace. It is not the physical distance that stops us from moving to connect, it is the emotional distance.

In the absence of regular interaction with each other, we become rooted in the belief that there’s more that makes us different than makes us similar and so we back away from each other. I find it hard to bring myself to pick up the phone and call someone for a chat. I seldom see those I call my friends. Consequently I know less and less about them and about their lives and about what’s on their minds. And so I know them less and less.

To my great surprise, my experience with Twitter in the last week has had the effect of reversing that slide into emotional distance. Suddenly, with Twitter, my friends and I are sharing our lives and our thoughts a flash at a time. Each post is a single frame of a life. Like a film, each frame viewed by itself is only mildly interesting, if that. But when you tie the frames together, and move them past your eye sequentially, suddenly a story takes shape. A thousand frozen moments tied together make movement and that movement (in films and, it turns out, in Twitter) can be moving.

There’s something significant about knowing people’s’ small moments over the arc of time. When you don’t talk between meetings you get together and spend time catching up, but you don’t know the movements that brought them through time to be with you. You don’t know the changing shape of their lives beyond what they’re able to remember or explain to you in the few minutes you spend together. Those movements through time – those instances when you get on a ferry and react to the view, when you misplace your wallet on the way to Steamboat Springs and worry about it, when your three-year-old gets out of bed to go to the bathroom for the ninth time in an hour and you marvel at their ability to keep producing, when you ponder the metaphysical meaning of the fact that, following your youngest’s 6th grade graduation, you are now the parent of a jr higher and a high schooler – those moments build the real you, they are the real you.

Those moments typically burn off, escape like radiant heat. Twitter captures them.

And the result, in friendships and business relationships, is truer representations of ourselves. More open, more human, more revealing of personality, more welcoming. Twitter stands us before each other arms open in a welcoming embrace. The impact? In friendships, deeper connections. In business, the breakdown of perceived hierarchical barriers, more openness, honesty and effectiveness when people come together outside of Twitter.

Find me on Twitter.

Announcing Ethan's Summer 2008 Gasoline Challenge

2008-06-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

“The biggest single step we can take to cut global warming pollution is make our cars go farther on a gallon of gas -- and it'll also save you money at the pump!” -- Sierra Club

I can’t make my car go much farther on a gallon of gas than it already does – I keep my tires properly inflated, I keep my engine well-tuned, I don’t carry any excess weight (except for myself when I head home from the Pagliacci Pizza restaurant). Best I can calculate, I’m getting about 24 miles to the gallon. Good, not great. Not great, not acceptable. So I’m trying to make myself go farther without my car.

I’m taking drastic action and I hereby announce:

ETHAN’S SUMMER 2008 GASOLINE CHALLENGE

The Gasoline Challenge works like this:

Duration of challenge: 5 months (May, June, July, August, September of 2008)
Goal: To limit to 1,000 the number of solo-driving miles I amass during this time.
Rules: There’s only one rule; I can carpool or ride public transportation as much as I want to, but if I’m driving all by myself, I only have a budget of 1,000 miles for the 5 months of this challenge. That’s an average of 200 miles per month of solo driving. It’s about 20 miles from home to work, so just in commuting my miles can add up quickly.

Report: I’m a month and a half into the challenge now. So how am I doing? See below.

May 2008: Miles budgeted – 200/ Miles used – 60.3/Challenge Miles Remaining – 939.7
June 2008 (through 6/14): Miles budgeted – 200/Miles used – 97.1/Challenge Miles Remaining – 842.6

So far it’s been much easier to forego solo driving than I anticipated. I have long been a creature of comfort and I’ve resisted public transportation and carpooling because I liked being alone in my car with my radio on, coming and going whenever I chose. What I’ve discovered is that thanks to my iPod I can achieve the solitude I like so much (even on a crowded bus) and I get the effect of listening to the car radio. As for coming and going when I choose, I can’t do that when I ride the bus or carpool – I do have to bow to someone else’s schedule. But the payoff for giving up some schedule control is the satisfaction that I’m not shelling out huge bucks to the robber barons in OPEC and the oil companies. It costs me over $60 to fill my 2004 Honda Accord with regular unleaded and I’ve only had to fill up once since this challenge began.

And most important of all to me, is that I am reducing my individual carbon footprint by doing this. Each gallon of gasoline burned yields approximately 20 pounds of Carbon Dioxide. Therefore, if I’m getting 24 miles per gallon of gas and driving 40 miles round trip to work and back, then in one trip I produce over 33 pounds of CO2! If I drive that trip 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, that’s 660 pounds of CO2 every month! If there are 48.6 work weeks in a year and I drive solo every work day, I’m pumping out 8,019 pounds of CO2 every year just driving to work.

CO2 is the waste product of our chosen primary means of transport in modern America. The primary means of transport in previous eras also produced large quantities of waste. Those were horses and the waste product was horse poop. Imagine if we could see the waste our cars are making the way you would be able to see 8,000 pounds of horse poop. Our cars are squeezing out big heavy car turds every year all over the road. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

There's still 3 1/2 months left in the Gasoline challenge -- that's 650 miles of solo driving if you want to use the full 200 available per month. Anyone interested in joining the challenge? Email me and let me know. It would be great to have you and to know what your experience is.

Customer Service: Some Thoughts on the Bad Kind

2008-06-13T12:55:00.000-07:00

As one of the leaders of a service company I’m always tuned in to examples of good and bad service. Unfortunately, too often, it seems like businesses don’t give much of a damn anymore.

Case in point: I just returned from a business trip to Boston where I attended a conference at the Westin Boston Waterfront hotel .

277 bucks a night. To me, that’s a lot of dough for a bedroom and a toilet, but that’s where the conference was and they did advertise that the hotel was a very nice one – worth the $277 per night, they implied.

Outwardly, it’s a beautiful hotel, as you can see from the pictures on the web site. But the truth is there were a lot of little nagging service issues which ultimately turned me off to the place.
1. The in-room coffee maker had old, standing water in it – red water! House keeping didn’t clean the coffee maker in the 4 days I was there.
2. The in-room safe didn’t work: the door would not lock no matter how many times I went through the exact sequence of instructions provided
3. Wireless internet for the conference couldn’t handle the traffic and kept crashing.
4. To apologize for the crashing wireless, hotel management sent up a plate of strawberries, a cookie, a bottle of water and a glass. I acknowledge it was a nice gesture…but, dudes, the glass was dirty.
5. On the final morning of my stay, housekeeping knocked on the door at 7:30 am. When I opened it, the woman bluntly asked me “When are you leaving?” I asked her what time was check out. She said noon. I replied I’d be leaving at noon. “OK. That’s your choice,” she said and walked away.

Now, I know to some I come off sounding like a spoiled business snob here, and I am aware there are significantly bigger problems in the world than whether or not I have a clean glass. I have the luxury of being able to complain; I get that. But I’m speaking from the standpoint of how to run a business. I’m simply saying that if you base your business model on providing a particular experience for customers, and you use the implied promise of that experience as justification for what you charge, then as a business you have an obligation to make sure the experience delivered is the experience promised. You can’t have your marketing department describing one reality and your staff delivering another.

Though I’ve used this space to talk about service problems as delivered by the Westin staff, it’s my belief that the cause of the problem is not the staff but the management – the corporate management. Is the corporate management inspiring their hotel staff to want to deliver great, above-and-beyond service to guests by providing the staff excellent support, benefits and compensation? I would bet money that the answer is no. Where management fails to deliver beyond expectations for employees, employees stop short in delivering for customers.

Why My Northwest Life?

2008-06-11T11:57:00.000-07:00

As a first entry, maybe I should briefly explain why I titled this blog what I did: "My Northwest Life." The truth is it was harder than I expected to pick the name. I came here thinking I'd like to start blogging about my interest in the Green movement and the battle against global climate change and so I thought about naming this blog something related to green..."It's not easy being green" occurred to me. But I quickly realized I have too many thoughts swirling through my brain to limit myself to a single topic. I want to be free to write about any aspect of my life that is preeminent on any given day. I don't want to be constrained by the expectations created by a title -- even a title I've created. So, since I live in the Northwest corner of the United States (Seattle area) I thought to name the blog something relating to life here. "A life in the clouds" came to mind (clever I thought since it addresses the fact that the sun never shines here in Seattle and it incorporates the idea of cloud computing of which blogging is a signature element). But that title was too long for the URL, I thought and emphasizing the idea of clouds might give you the impression that I was depressed -- as though clouds were a metaphor for my outlook on the world. In truth, I tend to be quite optimistic and so I didn't want to imply a pessimism that isn't there. So, "My Northwest Life" is where I settled. It has a geographic specificity that I'm happy about (al beit a relative specificity given that my Northwest may be your Northeast, Southeast or Southwest, but be that as it may) and it's broad enough that I can write about whatever I want and not be accused of going off topic: I may talk about green issues, I may talk about bran muffins, I might lament the hole in my sock and it's all just part of the life that's unfolding for me here in the Northwest corner of the U.S.