This was my Tuesday...  I was too tired to blog about it yesterday.

5AM Wake up.

5:40AM Get in car in Bay Ridge.

6:05AM Enter LaGuardia Airport parking lot.

6:13AM Check in to 7AM flight, which has now been pushed back to 7:25.

7:10AM Board plane.

8:48AM Land in Dulles, VA.

9:30AM Finish Cosi parfait.  Get cab. 

9:54AM Arrive at biz dev meeting.

11:45AM Leave campus for lunch with fun potential partner team.

12:15PM Get seated for lunch at local microbrewery/grill.

12:26PM  Chicken sandwich arrives.

1:26PM Return from lunch to continue meetings.

3:33PM Leave for airport with chatty cab driver.

3:56PM Arrive at airport and check in for 5:35 flight.

3:57PM Black cat crosses path.  Cat cannot get wifi connection either.

4:49PM Flight pushed back to 6PM.

5:30PM Flight pushed back to 6:30PM.

6:01PM Flight pushed back to 7:05PM.

6:39PM Flight pushed back to 7:35PM.

6:58PM Announcement that LaGuardia Airport has been closed due to visability.

6:59PM Check NYC weather on phone...  66.  Rain.  Yes, seems like that should close an airport.

7:30PM Flight cancelled.  9PM flight full.  Please go to the customer service line.

7:31PM Customer service line has 6,000 people on it.  Break for Avis.

7:55PM Arrive at Avis. 

"Carkeep, give me the world handling car you have...something that corners like a whitewater raft.  An Impala?  Oh yes, that will do fine."

8:08PM

"Its 250 miles to LaGuardia.  I've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of overpriced airport trailmix.  Its dark, and I'm wearing khakis.

Hit it."

12:38AM Arrive at LaGuardia Avis, located close to the airport in downtown Saskachawan by the Marine Aviation Terminal.

12:52AM Start waiting for the Avis Shuttle, which comes every five minutes, to get back to the parking lot.

1:15AM Avis shuttle arrives.

1:33AM Exit Laguardia parking lot, peeling out in Mustang, because I was used to Impala's pickup, or lack thereof.

1:52AM Park in Bay Ridge.

2:01AM Sleep in my own bed...zzzzzzz

I remember hearing Basketcase for the first time.  My mom and I were on our way back from visiting my grandparents in Staten Island. She had to stop at the Staten Island Mall to exchange an item and I was waiting in the car.  I was 14 and too cool to walk around the mall with my mom if I didn't have to.  I remember how cool I thought the song was, and remember thinking (maybe not at that exact moment, but not long after) that I hoped Green Day wouldn't be one of those one-hit wonder bands.  Eleven years later, I'm eating breakfast, watching the video for Boulevard of Broken Dreams.  Its so great to see them still going and I had this sudden urge to go see them in concert.  I checked their website and they don't have any NYC dates left, but they do have dates in April in Atlantic City, Albany, Norfolk (could take a DC trip to go see friends from college...).  Boy, do I wish I had a car.  Maybe I'd make a real trip out of it and go somewhere interesting.  July 1st...  Belgium?  Now that would be interest.  Werchter festival anyone?  Is it hot in the summer in Belgium?  Atlantic City or Belgium?   hmm.

In the last... hmm...   ten years, my work environments have never been stable and its been difficult to optimize for best results, but I've learned a little something along the way.

In high school, I used to hole up in my room after coming home from play practice (little known fact in the blog world, I did four musicals in high school...).   Doing work in your bedroom is probably the most distracting thing you'll ever do.  I was unlucky enough to have my own phone line, too (well, the other extension on that line was my dad's fax machine), so that didn't help.   Still, I only had a few hours a night to work and so time pressure helped.  I work much better under time pressure.

Also in high school, I took an architecture course.  Anyone who is building anything, be it a still life water color or a web serivce, will tell you that doing creative work is the most time consuming thing you'll ever do--because you can always put more time into it.  I spent every single moment of free time I had (and in senior year of high school, that was a lot) in the art room.  I had picked out the best drafting table.  It was tucked away in a corner behind a dividing wall and I had my back against very high windows... great light.  Most of the time, the room wasn't being used, so I had dead silence.   I got a lot done.

In freshmen year of college, I have to be honest...  after coming out of Regis, the work seemed sort of easy, so I didn't have a lot of time pressure.  I mean, I had class three times a day, no commute...  gobs of free time.  Again, I went with an enclosed space.  In my room, I built a "cubby".  I took the bookshelf from my the back of my desk and attached it to the end of my bed over in the corner of the room.  The cubby was great... I could go in there and people wouldn't even know I was in the room even if the door was open.  I miss the cubby.  I need some walls.

Sophomore year, I was in a huge room, but with three other guys.  The TV was always on, so doing any work whatsoever in my room was just a no go.  So, everyday in the first semester, I spent some amount of time at a cubby-like library desk with my laptop.  (That was 1998... first time I ever had broadband.)   I also used to go into the lounges in the dorm to work at random hours.   That was when I really started to learn how to wake up early.  I would wake up at 6AM and get two solid hours of work done before most people on campus even woke up.  That's one thing about the way I work...    I don't fare well on a normal daytime work hour schedule.  My best times are 6AM-9AM and 3PM to 8PM.   If I could basically work those hours, I'd be very happy.  All this forced quiet time let to my only 4.0 semester...  that was an abberation, but it was fun while it lasted.

Junior year was a disaster, relatively speaking.  I was an RA (stupidest thing I ever did) and so I had my own room.  I should have learned from high school that I can't work productively in my own room.   Lots of wasted effort there.... too many distractions.  I should have went to the library.

Senior year, I had mostly finance classes, so the amount of work I actually needed to do, after interning for a corporate pension fund for four years, was pretty minimal.

When I was at GM, I learned about my afternoon boost.  At about 3PM, I used to kick myself for not being as productive as I could be...  partly b/c of my own lack of concentration and partly because of all the co-worker interruptions I'd get in a day.   So I started pounding stuff out like a mad man for four hours or so and would leave at 7 or 8.  Funny how I can't get my mind to work exactly when I want it to.   

At USV, the work was really just so different.   When you're networking, researching, trying things out, its hard to figure out exactly where your work ends and just your overall interest in the area begins.  So, I'd sort of work a little bit 18 hours a day...  continuous partial attention.  If I was IMing some guy who worked at another venture firm about what verticals could benefit from aggregation, was that productive work?  I think so, but it sure felt different from writing 12 page papers in high school.  I don't remember networking much in high school.

So, here at Oddcast, I've been here a little over a month...    I'm a couple of weeks away from finishing all the design work that will go into our consumer product, and I'll tell you, its been like herding cats to get my brain working correctly.  Like, this morning, I woke up at 6AM, drove into the office to get work done, and was going very well for a few hours before this blog post.  Now, why I couldn't manage that on Friday morning, I have no idea.   I was going to go kayaking, but its raining again, so hopefully, I can get another spurt like that.   

One thing that is very helpful.... unplug once in a while.  Turn off your IM and e-mail while you're working.  I'm going to do that right after I click publish...

So DTUT has become a “they” company.   

They’ve killed the wireless internet after 7PM.  I asked the guy behind the counter what the reason was, and he said that it “ruined business”, because the laptop freeloaders would order the minimum amount or nothing at all.  I looked around.   I’ve never seen the place so empty on a Friday night.  I wanted to just reach across the counter and explain to him all about incremental profits and overhead, but, I realized that it would probably be to no avail.  Counter Guy doesn’t care.  Now, perhaps it’s true that the people using the wifi do order less, but the point is, they order something, and, there is incrementally no cost to keeping the wifi on all the time.  The only legitimate financial argument you could make is that, somehow, the overabundance of laptop freeloaders drives away higher paying customers—that the place is already at capacity and it ruins the mix.  Of course, that’s not the case.  People rarely walk out of the place because it’s too crowded.  I mean, sometimes its packed, but like right now, its pretty empty.  (I’m typing this on Word because I already bought my green tea without realizing the wifi deal.)  Do I usually only order a green tea while I’m here?  Sure.  But…  so what?  What’s the margin on a $2.25 green tea?  90%?   In other words, at eight visits a month, I pay for half the wifi myself.  Do I take up the space of an otherwise higher paying customer?  No, definitely not.  In fact, the wifi is really the only reason why I come here in the first place.   And, in fact, one thing they fail to take into consideration is that because I’m here all the time freeloading off the wifi, it becomes my central hangout place and I’m used to coming here.  So, when I’m looking for a place to go to with friends, this is also my number one stop.  Now, however, I’m annoyed, and their ridiculous retraction of the free wifi has created ill will.  I’m less likely to come here the next time.  In fact, I’m less likely to come here at all.  I have a feeling this won’t last.  Although, perhaps it will, because the downtown location of DTUT just closed, so perhaps they’ll run this place into the ground before they have a chance to change the policy.

This afternoon, I finally closed on my new co-op apartment...  and only nine days after I moved out of my old apartment.  :\ 

Thanks to Joy for letting me crash in her empty pad while she was away.

Apartment and neighborhood tour to come soon, but for now, I'm just glad to be in my own place.  So, over the next few weeks, I'll be getting another couch, a bedroom set, and some office furniture.  I may sit in reception at work, but in my own place, I have an office!!  Woooo.  I'll be painting, too.  I'd say it will be ready for a housewarming party by the end of the month. 

I didn't post too much this weekend, and I definitely have a backlog of things I'd like to post about in my head.  Hopefully, this week will be a slower week in terms of my after work activities and I'll be able to catch up.

My weekend was spent, as you can probably guess, mostly kayaking at the Downtown Boathouse.  Anyone who made it out had fantastic weather, aside from the occasional forboding storm cloud, but none of the threats came to post and 95% of the weekend was pretty sunfilled.  The Downtown Boathouse was a little quieter than last year, perhaps because the water hasn't quite warmed up yet and people aren't quite sure its summer yet.  Another week or two and I'm sure we'll be in full swing.  I got some great pictures in at the Boathouse as well as on the Circle Line Monday night, which I went to with my friend Joy who used to work at GM.  Speaking of Joy, that's the name we're going with for the family dog.  So, here's a little collection of my kayaking photos, NYC shots from the Circle Line and pictures of Joy (the dog).

First, the MTA cries poverty, telling us they're deep in the red and need to hike the fares.  Then, it turns out they were keeping two sets of books, so they actually have a big SURPLUS. 

Now they're striking??

Link: New York Daily News - Home - City war plan for transit walkout.

City war plan for transit walkout

BY MICHAEL SAUL and PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Commuters stream into city April 7, 1980, during last strike.
Workers rail for big raises

The city has begun preparing for a possible transit strike that would leave millions of New Yorkers stranded in the middle of the holiday season, the Daily News has learned.

If the MTA strikes, they're going to cripple the city during the important holiday shopping season, causing a lot of economic distress for hundreds of thousands of other workers.  Lots of babysitters, eldarly caregivers, etc. won't be able to make it to work either.  Its just very selfish, especially when you consider how much better the average transit worker's salary and benefits are then a lot of the other people in this city. 

Perhaps busboys, dishcleaners, and newsstand workers should go on strike...  the working poor with jobs nobody else wants.  But as for transit workers, they can strike without pay for as long as they want, for all I care, and I hope they get fined amounts equalling the economic hardship they cause the rest of the city.  In the meantime, I'm happy to bike to work.  Ridiculous.

One of the best things about blogging is that it can take your passions and interests, magnify their intensity, and act as a lightning rod for like minded people and a great network.

It also has the unfortunate byproduct of being non-discriminating in this process, particularly with people like me who are still a bit rough around the edges.  I put myself out there and sometimes, it comes back to bite me... more often than I'd like to.

So if you're thinking about blogging, currently blogging, etc. just remember every post is something you feel reflects you and you don't mind being representative of who you are... pretty much forever.  Its generally not a good place to start yammering about things you really don't even care much about and let your mouth go where it will.  Blogs are better when you are thoughtful about stuff that really interests you, lest you find yourself in a bad place, taken there by a post not really worth it in the first place.

So I'm doing the round trip to my parents' house on my bike in a few minutes, which is about 32 miles round trip.  I made it a point of pulling my never-used helmet out of the closet. I promised myself I'd become a helmet wearer this year, given all the biking I plan to do.  Well, the helmet that I bought is a cheap one and waaaaaaaay too big.  It really is the dumbest looking thing I've ever seen.  If anyone can recommended a smaller, slimmer helmet (one that doesn't weigh my head down so much that it might actually cause me to get into an accident), I'd appreciate it.  Yes, I know, its completely ridiculous that I'm not wearing a helmet.  I'm fully aware of the risks, and yet, in the interest of not looking dorky, I'm still not on the helmet bandwagon. Show me a slim one, though, and I think I'm finally on it.  (Especially that now, it won't mess my hair.)

I think Seinfeld sums this helmlet stupidity up best:

"There are many things that we can point to as proof that the human being is not smart. The helmet, is my personal favourite. The fact that we had to invent the helmet. Now why did we invent the helmet ? Well, because we were participating in many activities that were cracking our heads. We looked at the situation, we chose not to avoid these activities, but to just make little plastic hats, so that we can continue our head-cracking life styles. The only thing dumber than the helmet is the helmet law, the point of which is to protect a brain that is functioning so poorly, it's not even trying to stop the cracking of the head that it's in.

I've been considering the "yoga" post from the other day.  I think I learn towards two paths in terms of what kind of "yoga" I reflect in my day to day life: jnana yoga, or the yoga of knowledge, and karma yoga, the yoga of selfless action.  I suppose this isn't surprising, really, given my Jesuit education.  Pursuit of knowledge and being a person for others are central themes in Jesuit education, and obviously, that's been a major influence on me.  While I may not be building huts for the poor in Botswana, I definately feel closer to my truest self when I help other people.  I really do live to see others succeed, and to help be a part of that success.  Sure, I take great pride in that, but that's not why I do it.  I like seeing other people learn to believe in themselves and its incredibly rewarding for me to help create a rewarding experience for others.  I'll never forget the Emmaus retreat that I led...   during the Mass afterwards, people were coming up one after another talking about how emotionally meaningful it was to them.  Being a part of that, I felt like I was in the right place doing the right thing... but more so than being the "right" thing.. it was MY right thing... what was right for me to be doing.  Thinks like that make me feel closer to doing what I was intended to be doing.

There's also a part of me that is thinking...  ALWAYS thinking and mentally discovering things about the world around me.  When the little mouse on the wheel gets going, I get excited... I feel focused and strong.  When I brainstorm and ponder, I feel full of life--but its not full of extrasensory stimulation, but full of a driving life force from the inside.  That is how I know that knowledge also brings me closer to my truest self.  Too often, people confuse a lot of sound and fury from outside of themselves with a full life experience...  music doesn't inspire the force of life, nor alcohol or drugs or sex or sports...   when I am truthful to myself, I recognize that it comes from inside me, perhaps sparked by these outside events, but definately not eminating from them. 

My parents are in the process of moving...   We're all slowing locating closer to Gino's.  They've got a lot of work to do over the next month, though, because not only did the people who lived in their new house not do much work on it during the 30 years that they lived there, but they probably had the worlds most god-awful taste.  You just have to see it to believe it:

The benches at Swift were really comfortable last night.  They weren't very high, but I felt like the seat to back ratio provided good back support.  I'm sitting on a folding patio chair at DTUT at the moment.  Its alright.  Accident prone Ruby just came in complaining that the deli next door carded her for cigarettes.  No ID, no cigarettes.  Who walks around without ID?  Who still smokes?  Could be worse.  She could be starving to death on national television 15 years after her husband's botched attempt to kill her while the whole country feigns interest as if they'll remember her when the next kidnapping or hostage standoff or sex scandal grabs the headlines.  Don't snicker.  Anyone ask about Elian lately?  You know that baby who fell down the well?  Jessica McClure.  Well, she's in college now.  Now there's someone who'd make a great blogger.  Watch out Wil Wheaton.  Obscurity definitely trumps mediocre celebrity.  The smoochy studying couple next to me is leaving and another couple is taking their place.  I swear everyone in this place looks like they're on an internet date.  The Battery Ventures guys need to come to this place to understand the inner workings of Friendster dating.  I like how CNN now puts people's positions on things right under their names.  Bob Jones.  Against socks and sandals.  Shelly Smith.  This socks and sandals are ok.  By the way, this whole Holy Thursday teachers strike is a crock.  If all of these teachers showed up on church on that day to actually observe Holy Thursday, that would be one thing, but it isn't even a Holy Day of Obligation.  Amazing how, in some schools, half the faculty was so strictly religious that they felt the need to take off.  If I was a teacher, regardless of whether or not I thought I should have off, I don't think I'd ever leave my kids alone for the sake of a union protest.  That's a good sign to the kids that you don't care about them.  They made it to school, you should, too.  Given the kind of music that plays here at night, I don't think this is really the kind of place you should take kids under 10 at 9:30, but yet, people insist on it.  No good will come of this girl walking around with an open smores related flame.  She's walking way too fast and its leaning back towards her, making her nervous and causing her to walk even faster.  Where's the fire extinguisher?  People, if you ever turn on CNN and the headline reads "O'DONNELL:  8th DAY WITHOUT FEEDING TUBE", someone please shoot me.  I'm serious.  I don't care if you're not sure whether or not I'm responsive or conscious.  I refuse to let my dwindling life deteriorate to the point where I'm little more than a ratings generator.  I think I'm one more post away from the first Google page for a "DTUT" search.  I'm the first two on the second page.  Someone link to me.  Push me over the top.  This post needs purpose.  And now I'll check spell, knowing full well I spelled "definitely" wrong again.  You know what's also weird?  "Blogger" is not in the Six Apart dictionary.  Can we fix that?

Download 4_to_86th.3g2

After meeting the guys from Vimeo, I've started playing around with my phone's video feature.  What I really need to do is to get my PowerShot fixed and get the video working on that.  I'm sure I'll eat up all my allowable bandwidth on this, but its a video clip of me waiting to arrive at 86th and Lex on the 4 train after a Fordham basketball game last night.  They lost, and I'll post more about that later, but for now, here's the clip.   (Jeff the Analyst has informed me that you need the latest version of Quicktime (6.5) to view it.)

I'm sitting right here...

Its a Starbucks not to far from the Bay.  I stopped here because there's a photo op right around here that I think I'm going to get some cool pics of in a few minutes.   Plus, I was hungry, so I had a rasberry almond scone and a green tea.  :)

So, my friend Carrie loves me enough to open her apartment to me for me to stay, but doesn't love me enough to take any time off for me, so I'm playing by myself today.  It should be interesting, because, to be honest, I don't usually do too much by myself... ever.  I could never sit in a restaurant or movie theater by myself.  I'm just a feedback guy and I like bouncing ideas off of other people while I'm experiencing things.

So here are some other pics that I took...

I'm waiting for the train to the rental car.  I got a convertible...  and of course, its raining and only about 55. 

I know I'm not a good photographer.  I'll admit it now.  But, I'm a good driver, which allows me to take pictures like this safely.  :)

New York does't have land formations like this...  I just think the landscape here is fascinating.  I know, its boring stuff, but for me, its different.

Oh, and I took these pictures on Tuesday...  I thought maybe you'd be curious what my work environment looks like.  I think it goes a long way to explaining why I needed a little vacation.  Not my Fordham banner, nametags from various conferences and annual meetings I've been to, and my thank you letters.  Each time I get a thank you letter for a student for the various mentoring activities I do or for running the internship program, I post it up on my desk.  I think I also have a little note up there from Bob Hellman and Nancy Katz from McCown DeLeeuw.  They're good people.   The chair behind me is where Jeff the Intern sits, but he only works Mondays and Tuesdays.

And finally, here are some Walnut Creek pictures from this morning on my way out...  its really quite quaint.  I can't figure California out...  its like the town council voted one day and decided to put up a state.  Nothing here just "happened" like New York... it was decided upon and planned and it all looks like it fits together nicely.  New York, which is visually more interesting, developed and grew and overgrew and now we're all living in Jenga.  More to come...    I'm going to lunch later with Valarie from CM Capital in Palo Alto.

We'll vote on Coat Idol next week...   I have too  much to do for now.

But, to update, I became a new kind of "cave man".

I caved on the clothing thing.  Why?

Because we were arguing about something really stupid... clothing.  And, its the fact that I think clothing is stupid that was the reason why I didn't want anyone putting any special effort into it in the first place.  Therefore, when I saw that it was all we were talking about, I just pulled the plug in it and quit.

Its just not worth it.

I haven't really talked too much about Adrianna here before, and to be honest, its been part of my unofficial blog policy not to talk about someone that I'm dating.  For a little while, I just kind of let her appear gradually.  Obviously, though, its pretty serious to me and I'm trying to look at the bigger picture.  I shouldn't let something like pleated pants cause an issue with someone if, in fact, I'm serious about the idea that I'm trying to foster a relationship to build something on.

I guess I'm maturing, "temper tantrum" blog posts aside.

Yeah, so we definitely had a blip on the grid just now.  91 degrees a few minutes before midnight and poof... my computer restarted and the streetlight went out.

Astoria II?   Damn... I better start eating the cheese in my fridge now.

Yesterday's trip to Skirmish with ZogSports was a blast, and I have the markings to prove it:

One thing I've noticed about myself...     within a given setting, whether it was school or a job or where I lived, I'm pretty resistant and uneffected by stress.  Nothing really bothers me much.

But that's when I'm pretty anchored into my surroundings--where I know the avenues for dealing with stress causes and can manage, avoid, reschedule, etc.  When I'm playing on my own mental turf, my batting average at home is very high.

Through me into a completely new surrounding and change the rules, and I have to say, I get a bit mentally unraveled.  I'm still able to complete all my tasks, but adjustment gives me quite a bit to deal with.  When I started working at my last two jobs, or when I moved, the same thing happened.  For a couple of weeks, I just tried to keep the deck chairs from sliding off the ship.

So if I'm a little slow with e-mail or on the blog, bear with me here.  I'm only on week two.

That being said, the people at Oddcast are great, and I can't wait for the momentum to build further on what we're working on, because then I'll be working directly with a lot more people within the organization.   We had a fun company outing on Friday and everyone was very warm and welcoming.   

Its very different working on independent projects when you're in a group of 10 or 4, but 38 people is the largest group I've worked with in quite a long time.  GM was 150, but I didn't work directly with most of those people.

In any case, I'm learning a lot about my own style of project work...    I really like the process of speccing something out.  Taking something enormous and breaking it down to its composite parts is something I'm good at and enjoy.  And, as it turns out, I'm not bad with designing screenshots either!

More details and observations to come...

After stopping at my parents on the way back from the Met game, I noticed the sky as I was parking, so I walked down to Shore Road today and snapped off a few pics...