If you live in New York City, you probably get asked for money on the street at least once a day, if not more.  Sometimes, its from the homeless, which is an unfortunate situation.  Other times, its from organized bands of young people all wearing the same t-shirt.

Well, I've been feeling very chatty the last few days and, when I went out to lunch, I decided I'd stop and let one of them give their pitch.  This young lady told me about all of the great things that CARE is doing.  She was so excited that I let her talk, she could hardly contain herself.  I didn't know anything about CARE, but apparently its a pretty big organization, with over a half billion dollars worth of donations received a year--92% of which go to their programs.  That seems pretty high, and they have a good list of companies and boardmembers behind them according to their site.

The young lady on the street was pitching the monthly donation plan, which I wasn't interested in, but I will give them $25 because she did such a good job.  More importantly, I told her I'd blog about it.  Coincidently, I was also looking for a charity to include in my sidebar to test out Word of Blog.

This is going to be big:   Doing due diligence, helping people, and having fun all at the same time.

I don't think this is going to make it to Fred's MP3 of the week list.  And yes, this is what it sounds like when I bike.

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Got texted early this morning, around 6AM...  it just said "London bombed".   I had no idea what I was going to see when I turned on the TV, but it gave me a flashback to going to CNN.com for the first time on 9/11 to see what all the fuss was about. 

I have one friend who is on my mind who doesn't really go in and out of the city too much, but I hope her and her friends are ok.   Aims...  drop me a line.

You've probably noticed that, while I've been moblogging, I haven't really been posting much of substance in the past week.  That's mostly because I've moved... well, sort of.  I'm staying at my friend Joy's apartment, who was on vacation for a week and is now consulting up in Hartford.  I needed to be out of my apartment last week, but I'm not closing on my new place until Thursday.  So, all my junk got moved into the new place, except for me and my clothes.  The owner was nice enough to let me keep stuff there before my close, but I can't move in until I actually own it.  So, I'm living this unfortunately temporary life that has really messed with my head.  This happened when I first moved into my place four years ago *wow* and I hadn't finished assembling all my Ikea stuff.  When I'm not settled at home, it really affects the rest of my life.  I have trouble thinking, trouble committing to decisions.  I could never be a salesguy on the road.  As much as I like my mobile/wifi lifestyle, I need a warm cozy hearth to return to at the end of the day.  It gives me somewhere to anchor my thoughts and frees up my mind to execute better.   

Here are some pics from last week's move... thanks to Pastore and Cory for helping out...

Its 1:13 AM.

I'm packing up all my stuff...  well, throwing a lot of it out and packing the minimum amount of what's worth holding onto.

I haven't closed yet, but I'm allowed to move my stuff in.  Just my stuff, not me.  Hopefully, I'll close this week.  I'm homeless as of Friday.

Should I throw out all my little league baseball trophies?  Perhaps just keep the few most important ones? 

What the hell is on all of these cassette tapes?

Why do I still have textbooks from high school?

What do I do with my laptop from freshman year of college with the busted touchpad?  I think I'll throw that out.

Shit...   all the framed pictures and prints I have on my walls...  jeez, I have to take all those down.

Didn't I ever dust?

What is dust anyway?  Is this my own skin I'm sweeping up?  I'm sure some of this is from kayaking in the Hudson.

Moving sucks.

So, now that the co-op thing is going smoothly, I've started thinking about the car.  I really want an '05 Mustang GT Convertable.  Its a V-8, and since I can't drive a stick, it needs to be automatic.  I'm flexible on the color, but would prefer black or grey. 

The problem is that there don't seem to be any V-8 Convertibles in stock....  and the inventory search tool on Ford's website sucks.  It forces me to search by zip code first, instead of just telling me where the damn car is.  If there was V-8 Convertable in Boston with an auto trans, I'd be there this weekend.  Florida?  Done... I'd make a little trip out of it.  I wanted the car for the summer, but now it looks like I either wait three months or settle for a V-6 with less horsepower than the Grand Prix I used to have.  That's garbage.  Oh, and I searched on eBay, but I couldn't find any automatics.  Nice job, Ford.  Create a buzz around a car that you can't find anywhere on the lot. 

Somehow I doubt that Ford subscribes to a Pubsub feed and will find this blog post.  Does it really take 3 months to build a car?

On Sunday, I went to my parents house to meet the new family dog.   You see, we had to put our dog, Puba, to sleep, after almost 15 years.  It was very upsetting for everyone and, at first, my parents said they weren't getting a new dog. 

That didn't last long.

So now they have Joy the dog.  I'm not such a fan of the name.  Check out this video clip of a conversation (You may need the latest version of Quicktime... its an Mpeg4 file.) between me and my mom regarding the name while we play with the dog.  Mom, at one point, suggests that we name the dog Cuba, after Cuba Gooding, Jr.  The thinking there being that the last dog was Puba, and I suppose there's some special significance to the "-uba" suffix.  Now, we don't really know much about this dog, because we've only had her since Friday, but, the few things we do know about her are that she's fuzzy, she's female, and her fur is white.  I like Cuba Gooding, Jr., and he was great in Men of Honor, but...   well, he just doesn't bear any resemblence whatsover to this dog.  Sorry, Cuba, we're probably not naming our dog after you.  :)

We have unconfirmed reports of a new dog in the O'Donnell household.  Apparently, my parents went to the pet store and broke down.  So they lasted all of a month and a half with an empty house.  Its another female bichon, and she's nameless.  My dad suggested that her personality be observed for a while to figure out a proper name for her.  I'll be putting up photos and probably a video as soon as I visit, which will probably be Sunday.  More as this story develops...

Tien posted about using Flickr to peek into the lives of other people's stomachs using Fresh Direct and I was all about it.  Now there's a "nycgroceries" tag on flickr.  Just upload a screenshot of what you ordered, or a photo of a receipt, and tag it "nycgroceries".  Its a way more interesting waste of time than taking pictures of the back of your computer and using the picture as your desktop, making it look like your computer is see-thru.  (Fresh Direct should give anyone who does this via Flickr $5 off their next order... anyone work there?)  Here's my latest order:

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Link: Gothamist: Dine In Brooklyn.

April 11-20 is Brooklyn's restaurant week -- Dine in Brooklyn. Close to 200 Brooklyn restaurants will offer three-course meals for a mere $19.55, in honor of the 1955 World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers.

And the answer to my first question...   Yes, Gino's will be participating.  Go check it out on 5th Avenue and 75th Street in Bay Ridge.  Tell Nick the Maitre D' that "Charlie and Carol's son Charlie" told you that this was the "Best Italian Restaurant" in Brooklyn.  He'll take care of you.  Try to sit in Seo (Say-oh)'s section, too.

Link: Curbed: Confirmed: Shake Shack Way Too F'ing Popular.

I went to the Shake Shack Monday afternoon with Brad and Fred.  In fact, I put it on our calendar as a "team outing."  Unfortunately, they didn't seem to have their process quite right on the first day, and the shakes were way too thin.  Given the lines, seems things are in order now.   We shall return.

Web 2.0 --  The next generation of procrastination.

Zack posted all the places he's lived.  Here are the places you are most likely to find me this year:

Union Square Ventures
The Downtown Boathouse
DTUT
Gino's
New York Sports Club (23rd and Park)
My Apartment
Fordham
Shea Stadium

I am in serious need of outside time...  March in New York has been awful.  It snowed several times, and on Monday, there was so much rain, they started loading sewer rats, muggers, and subway battery hawkers onto an Ark in Times Square two by two.

So this afternoon, since its going to be 57 degrees and sunny, I'm going to untether myself from the office and take my laptop to wireless enabled Bryant Park.  So, from 2-6, feel free to come say hello (but keep in mind I'll actually be working, too.)  I'll post again once I get there, so you don't wind up wandering around if, for some reason, I don't make it.

Puba still kicking at Easter with Dad.

After popping in at a few local tech/blogging events lately, something has become apparently obvious to me.  I need a wingblogger--someone my age as interested as I am in being a part of the more social side of this community that I can drag around to all these events.  For someone who works at a VC firm, I probably have the least tech savvy social network possible.  That makes it incredibly difficult, at least for me, to go to all these events and meet the people I'd like to meet--especially given that, because of my age, I have a natural advantage over a lot of other people in my industry.  I can relate a lot better to a lot of the very creative people that are disrupting some of the markets that USV has interest in.  Even though I may be outgoing, I really do hate doing much of anything alone.  I need to be able to go somewhere, run ideas by someone, recap the event, discuss, plan, etc. 

At the same time, I don't want to be too "networky", which, as a venture guy, is probably about the worst thing you can do, especially in New York.  In spite of the fact the NYC is the financial capital of the world, not everyone doing some kind of interesting project is in it to make it big.  Sometimes, like in the case of the Vimeo/Collegehumor guys, success seems more like an accidental byproduct of serious goofing off.  Not everyone wants their audienced monetized.

Ideally, I'd have a friend or two that worked in media/marketing/tech that was curious about new trends, interested in meeting people, and savvy enough to find some events that I missed.  The management is currently accepting applications for wingbloggers. 

You are the best litmus test you have for other people.  Don't hide yourself from others when you first meet them for fear of scaring them off.  Chances are, if they aren't ok with the reality of who you are the first time around, they aren't going to get any more comfortable as time marches on.  I never liked the idea of personality of something that needs to be leaked out in small doses as if you were trying to slowly poison the other person with it.  The big fear is that by putting yourself out there up front, you can get yourself hurt.  The truth of the matter is that the less time you take to get things out in the open, the less you'll have invested if its all too much for the other person to take.  That saves you getting hurt more than anything else.  Your experiences, sketchy or otherwise, are who you are and not to be apologized for.  Make no excuses for what got yourself to this moment.  Perhaps if we were all so comfortable with ourselves in the first place, we wouldn't do have the regrettable things that make opening up so uncomfortable.  I hate "excuse me" personalities.  I wish more people were "take me or leave me."  I can respect that immensely.

In the interest of full disclosure, here are the results of my trip to the doctor last Friday.  This way, you can all rest comfortably knowing that there is little chance of this blog prematurely ending because I'm not taking care of myself.   

Blood pressure:   110/70

Cholesterol:  130   HDL/LDL: 48/73

Triglycerides: 47

Liver: Normal

Kidneys: Normal

Iron:  Normal

Blood Count: Normal

So, apparently, I'm well on pace to make it to my Deathclock.com determined age of almost 86.  I'll be sure to keep you posted on how that goes.  In fact, at my current rate of .71 posts a day, I have 15,744 more posts left. 

In private equity, investors sign up for ten year funds, often with the possibility of being extended for another two or three after that.  Investments are made in the first four or five years and harvested in the latter years.  Since the investments do not trade, its often difficult to tell, even three or four years into the life of a fund, whether or not your initial decision was right. 

How does that compare to your own life?  How long before you know whether or not your decisions were right?  Can you ever really know?  Job decisions seem to have a somewhat short payback to them.  I think you often realize within the first few months whether or not you joined the right firm and its going to work out.  Decisions to go out and party?  Those have an even shorter feedback loop.  You know the next morning whether or not you should have gone out the night before. 

What about relationships?  My friend's grandparents got divorced last year after over 50 years of marriage.  Is that how long it takes to get viable results on a relationship decision?  I think the tough part is, you never really know, and if you think you know, you're missing a lot of deals and just glossing over a lot of the intricacies.  I used to have this idealistic conception that when you find the right person, you just know... and that was comforting, because then you didn't have to get caught in this gnawing uncertainty of whether you were with the right person.  Something would come along and be clear-cut--obvious through its completeness.  Sometimes, to further complicate things, you make the right decisions, but you're just not the right person to carry them out.  Did a relationship fail on its own or fail because of you?  Right decision, bad execution?   The worst part is, you never really get the answer to whether or not you made the right call.  You can become more or less certain about that decision, but there's no way to really ever be sure---too many variables.  And that's why I think we're so nostolgic about relationships.  We need to constantly sift through our past as not only a reference point, but as a study of our own behavior.  Are we messing things up or has chance not favored us?

I got to do a lot of thinking about this over the weekend, and I have to say, to be honest, I have the track record of a good train wreck.  I think perhaps it would be best for me not to invest in this part of the CEOCorp business because it may not be one of our core competencies and may be in need of a restructuring. 

Link: Branding Blog: Confidence - Where to Get it and How to Keep it.

I've been thinking about the subject of confidence, and its close cousins cockiness and brashness, so its fitting that I came upon this Branding Blog post.  This is an excellent post and I'm posting it on all my sites.  What makes it even better is that Baltasar Gracian was a Jesuit.  I'll add another quote from him here:

"Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed."

While I've often been noted for my confidence, I've just as often been called overconfident and cocky, but I never thought those descriptions were particularly fitting.   I think people have a tough time discerning between people who think they are great and people who earnestly desire to accomplish great things.   In all honesty, I don't believe that anyone can be great, existing in a state of greatness.  We are nothing save for the aggregate sums of our actions. Many people have contributed greatness in their deeds, on many different scales.  At the end of the day, we are all just people.   None of us is any better than the next guy (or girl).  That is why my blog is called "This is going to be big."  Its not "Charlie is going to be big."  That's a major distinction as far as I'm concerned.  While I may often promote the things I'm involved with, I never actually promote myself, and I don't plan on starting to either.  Its interesting how that line seems to get blurred sometimes.  It seems difficult for others to seperate the two when it comes to my activities, because I am indeed so passionate about them.  Perhaps there is something in my style that seems to elevate my persona over and above the activity or the content, but its by no means intentional.  In fact, I try to avoid it.  I've never liked being in the spotlight and would much rather have my accomplishments get into the spotlight turning myself into a small byline. 

The other aspect of this is that my blog is not entitled, "This is going to be bigger than you."  I am a vervent believer in the potential in every one of us to succeed on our own terms and positively affect the world around us, and in no way do I see life as a winner take all game.  It should be win-win all the way around, and just because I'd like my accomplishments to be great, doesn't mean that yours can't be as well, or that I don't want to see you succeed.  Everyone out there should make "This is going to be big" the tagline of their life.  I don't have a patent or copyright on it, and by no means do I want to live in a world where people don't believe themselves capabile of big things.  (And, for the record, by big things, I mean what is "big" to you... not big as defined by monetary gain.) 

But, to be fair, the blog is definately named "This is going to be BIG", which is a rather unapologetic tagline.  Why do I brand my contributions this way?  Its because of what I believe about how goals translate into accomplishments.  I don't believe success is accidental, and I certainly don't believe that people with small goals stumble into larger accomplishments.  I'm sure it probably happens once in a while, but for the most part, I think you never quite get where you want to be, so you need to try and overshoot.  This is me overshooting, and I'm also the one that needs to deal with the "disappointment" which equates to the distance between what I was shooting for and where I wound up.  Of course, I need to keep in mind that usually, where I wind up is a pretty good distance from where I started from in the first place--underscoring the need to put everything in perspective as you set and reach goals.  So I toss my hat in the ring, starting out with huge visions and winding up with reasonable deeds. 

Take my Success Blogging site, for example.  I definately want to be to career blogging to what Steve Rubel is to the blog marketing world.  I want someone to "discover" me and ask me to write a book.  I want my Learning Annex class to be packed...  maybe 100 people will show up.  Its all going to be very BIG.

But you know what will probably happen?   I'll make a handful of good contacts...  we'll probably have about 15-20 in the class and maybe I'll speak on an occasional panel now and then.  No book.  No 1000 people on my Feedburner. 

And, in all honesty, that's just fine with me, because I'm 25, and I've only been blogging about a year.  I've only been talking about career blogging for a few months and I already have three speaking engagements.  That's pretty darn good and I'm very pleased with that, and had I not aimed higher, I wouldn't have had what I got.

Why do I want the opportunity?  Its not to promote myself.  Its because I want to contribute and I believe I can.  I believe I have great accomplishments in me waiting to get out.  I feel the same way at work.  I want Brad and Fred to look back and what I've done and think that it helped make the firm better--something really special.  Isn't that the way we should all be approaching our efforts? 

I'm not special.  In fact, I probably have no more great accomplishments in me than anyone else.  I just don't want to waste mine and look back and wish I had done more.  You shouldn't either.