What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Cultural Creative Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational. Cultural Creative 88% Existentialist 63% Postmodernist 63% Modernist 56% Idealist 56% Materialist 50% Romanticist 31% Fundamentalist 25%

Blogged with Flock

I'm just going to update last year's Thanksgiving post, because, thankfully, a lot of the same things I was grateful for last year are still around, but I do have some notable new additions, of course.

In my family, Thanksgiving is pretty much about eating...    but we're Italian, so that's to be expected.  Still, it's nice to actually stop stuffing your face for a second and think about what you're thankful for.   Here's my list.   If you blog a list of what you're thankful for, tag it "thanksgivinglist" on del.icio.us...    I'd love to see what everyone else appreciates...  and when you write the list, don't forget to tell others to tag it as well.

1. Most importantly, I'm thankful for my family...  My parents, my grandmothers (both 90 in February), and my brothers and nieces.  It hasn't been an easy year for everyone, but we're all still here and getting by.



2. I'm thankful that Shri introduced me to Mere (@ptrain)--the needle in the proverbial haystack.  I wish she was closer, but what can ya' do?  I look forward to her entry into the blog world come winter break and her entry into my world at some undetermined point in the future.  :)
   
3. I'm thankful to be working on Path 101-- a project I am incredibly passionate about.  I had no idea this was what I'd be doing a year ago, which shows you how unpredictable life can be, but I'm very fortunate to have the support of enough people who believe in me to help me and Alex get this off the ground.  I'm also very thankful for having convinced found Alex and convinced him to join in the first place--we make a great team.
   
4. I'm thankful for great friends--some really special people in my life.  My schedule is always crazy, but a handful of people have managed to hold on for the ride...   some are new and some are old, and some are old friends that have become new in a way... coming back from college or grad school to continue and strengthen friendships from the past...     To Brian, Suzie, Allison, Deirdre, Pastore, Ryan, Tommy, MaryAnn... thanks for sticking around.  I'm also thankful for my friend Amy and her new little girl.
   




 


5. I'm thankful for my health...  no major softball, kayaking, dodgeball, football, biking, skiing, or driving injuries quite yet...    *knocks on wood*.  Speaking of which, I'm thankful for my various dodgeball and softball teams...  Dodge This! is moving on to its seventh or eight season, I lost count, and although we had a Mets-like slide this year, Four of Us Had Lyme Disease is still together after five seasons of its own.
6. I'm thankful for the Downtown Boathouse... not just the buildings
   or the activities, but for the community.  It's my second home five
   months out of the year and I've made some terriffic friends through
   it.  More importantly, it's given me a new appreciation for the
   conservation of nature in this city and a new perspective on New York.





7. I'm thankful for this city...   the only place I've ever really wanted to live and ever have.  There's no place like it anywhere else, and I couldn't ask for anything more than to always be able to put a roof over my head here and to be happy with my life here.





8. I'm thankful for the success of nextNY....  or rather...  I'm thankful that it's success has enabled me to meet so many fantastic people that I can relate to and who have a vested interested in developing the NYC technology community.  That's really what has been the most fun for me...    the people are great and my new geek friends are too many to name.
   
9. And lastly...  I'm thankful for this blog.  Seriously.  Blogging has led me to three jobs (because I'm pretty sure I'd still be looking for a tech partner if I wasn't a blogger), two relationships (directly or indirectly), an adjunct gig, countless connections with really interesting people, on time furniture delivery and an elementary school reunion.  It's been a great sounding board for my ideas and a lightning rod for people with similar interests.  Thanks for reading... thanks for commenting, thanks for sharing on your own blogs and linking over...    Your attention is much appreciated.

Blogged with Flock

Her name is... either Lola Violet or Amelia Violet.  It's still up in the air.

Blogged with Flock

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon answering e-mails, managing the sending of documents around back and forth to our lawyer about our financing, and speaking with some folks from a university career office.

I did this all from my car, on my phone, parked, engine off, in the middle of I-95, miles behind an accident that blocked traffic in all directions and stuffed up a good portion of the roads in Connecticut.  It was one of the most utterly ridiculous driving experiences of my life.  Wherever you went, there were cars, cars, and more cars, and backwoods Connecticut roads that couldn't handle the backup.  Eventually, I made my way up Rt. 85 up to I-84 and over to Boston, but stop and go most of the way.  I'm finally glad that's over.

Still, I fared better than the folks involved in this terrible accident.

Blogged with Flock

One of my least favorite things in this whole world is a shower on a cold morning. It doesn't warm me up at all... it just makes me wish I stayed under the covers where I was protected, warm, and most importantly, dry.

Getting on the train this morning, I saw a kid with a Student Metrocard. Kids have it easy these days. If you went to high school in Manhattan, you'll remember trying to get the attention of the token booth clerk to buzz that special gate. She saw the long line of students, but it didn't matter. You still had to wait in line after all those people bought their metrocards.

I think I played my best game of dodgeball last night with the nextNY team.

Shoulda been Mets-Red Sox.

Angel financing is clearly an exercise in herding cats.

While I'll grant that I don't like showers in the morning, I will grant that a post workout morning shower makes me feel fantastic. I wish you all could feel like I do now, Frampton style.

These two girls next to me are whispering about my phone. The amount of hardware and accessories the average teenage girl from Brooklyn carries around is getting out of hand. Somewhere in late 2006, we hit a turning point where phones became so slim, while the size of big hoop earring stayed constant, allowing phones to actually pass through the earrings of their owners.

Its weird how text messages somehow pass through subway walls. I just learned that Brian Oberkirch read a book. Brian's going to hook me up at the Future of Web Apps conference in February, right Brian?

I'm wearing dark jeans and my black hoodie. When I put the hood up, where do you think the polls would wind up on the "Is this guy more likely to mug you or launch a startup?"

I think Facebook may be a bubble unto itself. Is that possible? Can you have a localized bubble? I'll write more on that later.

Mangoes are good eats, but picking mango strands out of your front teeth is a chore. We have seedless watermelons...can someone invent mangoes crumb up instead of shred?

There don't seem to be any movies out there that I want to see, nor have their been for a while.

I'm going applepicking tomorrow.

Don't blink...I'm live on this morning's Wallstrip!

The guy who just walked into the car has personal space issues...as in...he's in mine.  Push off a little, buddy.  Plenty of room in this car.  Ah, nice.  Today's the first day of normal express trains in Brooklyn.  If Chris Angel, Mindfreak, was Mexican, he'd be the guy behind me.  N train arriving.  Time to switch.  I'm not really into sitting on the train in.  I'll be sitting all day.  I don't need to be sedentary for another 45 minutes.  We havent left the station yet.  The train is silent.  No a/c, no motor noises.  No announcements.  Just the deep voice of the conductor, not over the PA system, but outside  the doors on the platform talking to a customor.  Its the last two weeks in August and the trains are showing it.  Pretty empty.  I could still sit if I wanted to.  I need to break today up into bite sized chunks, so I can be really efficient.  I have a Facebook app to finish the spec for (consulting project) and I need to finish up the syllabus for my class, which starts two weeks from Thursday actually.  I need to move to another car...or I'll be soaked by the time I get to work.  Perhaps that's why this car is so empty.  I wonder if it is every car. Yup. Every car.  Dammit.  What are Windorphins?  I guess this is effective advertising, because now I'm curious and I want to go to their site. Ok, I felt a little bead of sweat roll down my back.  Its hot in here. Its official.  There's now a guy lying down asleep on the floor of the car at the end.  I dont think he was there when I walked in.  No one around him seems the least bit troubled by it.  Some guy went over to him and nudged him.  He's awake.  This little girl sitting by me has an old school baby doll with a plastic head.  Someone has played tic tac toe on the baby's head in blue ball point pen, several times.  Man its hot in here.  When I commutted to high school, you could open up window vents on the B trains. This baby has a thumb sucking feature and eyes that roll back.  The kid has just discovered a hole in the back of the baby's pink onesie, which she conveys to her mom in spanish. Ah...there is a window vent.  I didnt notice that before.  I just went over to open it.  Funny enough, it requires two people to open it because of where the latches are.  This guy next to it was all to happy to oblidge, as if he'd been scoping aid for the last few minutes himself.  Finally,the car just got noticeably cooler.  Did I do that with the window?  If we elected a mayor of this car, I'm sure I'd win. Me and my Passenger of Action campaign would handily defeat the dude who kicked the sleeper.

I just got this note from Mere...

It's been confirmed:  A tornado touched down in Bay Ridge on 68th Street between 3rd and 4th avenues.

Not only is this six blocks from my house, but that's the block I always park my car on when there's Thursday/Friday alternate side parking in effect on my street, because that's a Monday/Tuesday block.

The storm was so strong that it woke me up out of bed (I'm a very heavy sleeper) at about 5:45AM.  That's when I sent this twit:

"Crackle crackle KA-BOOM... Wow, that one was close...and loud.  Now that's some thunder and lightning! Woke me up."

Little did I know that a goddamn tornado would touch down about a half hour later just a few blocks away.

One doesn't usually expect this kind of behavior from the sky in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

I had a meeting with my friend Angela who runs Sarah Lawrence's career counseling office yesterday morning and decided to bike up to Bronxville.  Later on that day, I had to be back down to Fordham Lincoln Center, and then on the Upper East Side for dinner.  In total, I did about 60 miles.

The early morning bike up to Bronxville was quite nice, although Kimball Avenue in Yonkers is a steep uphill climb at parts.  There was one glitch, though.  I got another flat... this time at 8:15, before bike shops are open, around 14th and the East River.  Instead of twiddling my thumbs, I decided to hop on the subway with the bike up to the Upper East Side to the bike shop on 88th/Lex to make up for lost time and catch them right at opening.

I was leisurely taking photos on the way up, but cut that short when the flat held me up.  Still, I got some cool photos along the way:

Pugsley's is a Fordham favorite and I was dying for a chicken roll, but I forgot they were closed for the summer, so I headed out to Arthur Ave to Full Moon...

My best friend Brian, who I know since t-ball the summer before first grade, and I take each other out to steak for our respective birthdays and also job promotions and such--a tradition we've been doing for the last few years.   

So far, between us, we've been to the following places:

1. Del Frisco
2. Ben Benson
3. Ruth's Chris (Charlie)
4. Morton's (Charlie)
5. Sparks (Charlie)
6. Smith and Wollensky's (Brian)
7. Strip House
8. Gallaghers (Charlie)
9. Angelo and Maxie's (Charlie)
10. Peter Lugars
11. Palm
12. Old Homestead
13. Michael Jordan's (lunch)
14. Wolfgang's

We're looking to go somewhere Friday that we've both never been...  suggestions on short order?

... don't let coverage lapse because the companies use that as an excuse to jack up the already insane rates.

And health status has nothing to do with it, you WILL get hit with a softball ricocheting off a mustang while you're kayaking, approximately three days after you let coverage lapse.  All while a cat sits at Chelsea Piers saying "I HAS YOUR INSURANCE SIRTIFICAT RITE HERE".

--Hilarious e-mail from Ed Costello

On Monday, two people asked me what I *really* wanted to do, and both times what I can up with was to be the head of Career Services for Fordham.  (At Fordham just because that's my alma mater and the school I have the closest connection to... not because it needs the most help... seems that most schools are on par with each other in this area.)

That's not really realistic, though, for a number of reasons.  First, I don't want to run the current implementation of career services at any university... The whole thing needs to be completely reinvented and its unlikely any university would allow that without a serious change in its approach.  Too harsh?  Take a poll of current students and graduates...ask them how helpful career services has been to them.  Ask graduates how satisfied they are with their current job and whether or not career services even helped them get a job in the first place.  Find out how many graduates undergo a complete career change within the first three years of graduating.  It's just a broken model.  A career staff of 5 can't help 2000 graduates all find their dream jobs without seriously scalable educational structures.

I have no doubt that the numbers are sorrowful, but I also have no doubt that most schools don't even come close to keeping these statistics.  I teach.  I talk to students all the time and right now, especially right now, they're overwhelmed by the task of career fulfillment.  I'll write more later on this, but its not a quality issue in career services personnel.  They're dedicated, hardworking people.  Its a structural issue with the way these groups interact with students, employers, alumni, and information technology that creates serious inefficiencies. 

You've got alumni with a tremendous knowledge base that goes relatively untapped.  Counselors get tasked with the impossible task of helping a student get into book publishing one day and mortgage backed securities trading the next.  Plus, you've got all these fantastic information and networking resources online like blogs and social networks that the students aren't being taught how to use professionally because most schools don't actually have a career class.

What I realized, though, is that the problems with this kind of education are not limited to the college career office.  In general, structures for industry specific learning, particularly when it comes from learning from the accumulated wisdom of successful and experienced professionals, is horribly inefficient.  This occurs to me when I compare the success of grassroots efforts like nextNY and BarCamp to the conference industry at large.  As nonprofit, community driven organizations, they are often able to attract better, or at least more passionate, participants than their pricey, more capital intensive counterparts in a more open and intimate setting.  Many times, conferences amount to members of a community paying hundreds of dollars to talk to themselves--a tax on poor self organization.  Plus, you often wind up with industry newcomers having the material go over their heads and veterans finding the content relatively pedestrian.  And don't even get me started on how hard it is to find the three people you absolutely should meet.

One of the issues with these grassroots organizations is that the second you turn on the money part, it needs structure, oversight, and it sort of loses its authenticity.

What of this all?  I dunno...  but what we have now in terms of how I connect with likeminded folks, or how someone learns about a career and makes contacts... is just poor.   The amount of work I need to do to accomplish anything the least bit efficient on this front is ridiculous.

One thing I'm going to really love about having a little bit of time is the opportunity to meet more people.  I'm a sponge for new people and their projects and being able to schedule things during the day is very exciting...  so these next two weeks before I go will be very busy.

However, I'm also making some time for play.   I spent a good chunk of this weekend dragging Mere around my life, which she was able to document.

Seems to me that any offspring would be genetically predisposed to large smiles...

Keeping a watchful eye over the kayakers...  and yes, that's my softball jersey.  No reason to change if I was just going to get it dirty later.

Concentration...

Samara almost got lapped...    but she did get on with a nice outfield single.

I think I can... I think I can...

Sweet action shots...  and yes, I totally popped the ball up to center, but it looked nice, no?

Four of Us Had Lyme Disease goes to 7-0, winning 21-12 even though we only had 8 people.

Softball is often a metaphor for life.

Seriously, hear me out.

I play on and manage two teams.  When it comes to writing up the lineups, I always pencil everyone else in at their positions first, and then play wherever we’re missing anyone.  Sometimes it means the outfield, sometimes first.  Last night, I found myself at shortstop for an inning.  I can pretty much hold my own almost anywhere in the field.

I’ve always been like that—playing where the team needed me.  I enjoy new challenges and try to take a very systematic and thoughtful approach.  I may not play the most graceful first base, for example, but I grew up watching my best friend playing it quite well and I’m always learning, taking notes…  studying the game.

So when I started at Oddcast about a year ago as Director of Consumer Products—Voki employee #1 (before it even had a name, and yes, the name is my doing, or my fault, depending on what you think of it)—I played the role of utility player for quite some time.  Sometimes it meant working on product specifications, other times consulting on design and UI, and then I also found myself in marketing and business meetings.  It was an exciting opportunity not only to cut my teeth on product work, but also participate in all of the various aspects of the operational side.

In time, we filled out the Voki team around me…  Business Development, Product, Marketing.  As we got closer to launch, internal folks started converging and helping to push things forward.  That was great for the product, but not as great for the larger opportunity that I wanted for my career.  Essentially, if we're keeping with my metaphor, I started to DH, since all of our positions in the field were being filled.  That may have been the most logical move for the team, but I knew deep down that I had the ability to make a bigger impact.

Was it a desired outcome?  To be honest, not really, but it’s also no one’s fault and there are no hard feelings.  I initiated the conversation about transition about a month and a half ago.  I thanked Adi, our founder, for believing in me enough to bring me here in the first place and providing a fantastic experience.  I talked about my desire to make the biggest impact possible in this social media/startup world we’re in and we came to the mutual conclusion that Voki was in good hands with the team we had put in place.  At that point, we set a timetable that would allow me to explore some other opportunities that came up without leaving the team shorthanded.  In fact, I will continue to work with Oddcast in a part time role over the next month or so and specifically focus on a couple of product and business development projects that I really want to see through to conclusion. 

In an organization moving from a service business to more of a product business, there are bound to be disagreements, changing roles, and tough decisions, but I have to say that, down to a person, I enjoyed working with and respect every single employee here at Oddcast. 

So, what’s next for me?   Well, I’m not completely done with the sports analogy.  Consider this my declaration of free agency.  There have been some very compelling opportunities that have come through the grapevine (it was hard to completely keep it a secret that I was leaving) and I’m going to explore those.  Frankly, I’m looking forward to having the time and the focus to give every opportunity I have its deserved attention.  Trying to think about the next job while still working is hard.  In the past, I took a weekend off before I started as an analyst at Union Square Ventures, and with Oddcast, I started working here on weekends even before I left USV.  I’m definitely not going to do that again! 

As you probably know from this blog, I have an exciting cross country trip planned for the first two and a half weeks of July and will take that time to think about what’s next and where I can make the most out of what I have to offer.

So what do I have to offer?

I’ve been exposed to quite a lot in a very short amount of time…  getting more involved in venture capital from the LP side in 2004—the beginning of what people consider to be Web 2.0, jumping to a top tier venture firm in 2005 and seeing just about everything in the space for a year and a half, and then rolling up my sleeves and launching a social web application at a portfolio company that has thousands of users after just a few weeks of its Alpha launch.  I’m extremely interested in product work, but also how the social media world has left a very thin line between product, marketing, and business development (see Facebook apps).  I’ve been a technically savvy non-developer since 1987, when my dad first game home with our PS/2, and while I understand and believe in the power of “Web 2.0”.  But, that goes for a lot of folks my age.  What I think separates me is that I also have my feet firmly grounded in a Finance major and Economics/Accounting minors and can help companies take a very rational and effective approach to social media, versus just playing “follow the buzz”. 

What could I do with all that?  Well, I’m willing to have a conversation with just about anyone in the space and I’m considering everything from being employee #2, employee #8, working at ad agencies, venture firms, incubators, big media companies and maybe even just teaching fulltime.  So, if you know of anyone interesting that I should be talking to, please, by all means feel free to make an introduction.  My e-mail is charlie (dot) odonnell (at) gmail.com.

In the meantime, I do have a little bit of time on my hands, so if there are any interesting consulting projects or speaking engagements, I think it’s a great opportunity to get to know people I might want to work with and for others to get to know my capabilities.  I’ve had a unique opportunity to connect to so many great people… 3 great employers, 2,000 blog readers, 900+ nextNYers, 500+ LinkedIn connections… and I’ve learned such a great deal from them that I always enjoy sharing it, especially with relative newcomers to the social media space, which is why I teach at Fordham’s grad and undergrad programs as well.

In closing, I want to thank everyone at Oddcast for making my time here incredibly educational and helping to lay the groundwork to make Voki successful, particularly Oddcast’s founders Adi & Gil Sideman, Adam G., who Voki could not have come to fruition without and I learned a ton about the technical side of product management from, our tech “hat trick” in Sergey, Dave, and Jon, our VP of Biz Dev Shaival, Hannah the Instigator, Annette, Craig, Yuni, Daphne, James, Cory, Tony, Erez, Gally, Isak, Oren, and Riv. 

You ever just complete drop the ball with something in the worst possible scenario, have no legitimate excuse for it, and of course, you do it for the second time with the only other person or group you've done it to before.

Brain, why do you mock me?

Ugh.

I'm not much of a traveller, I'll admit that.  I can count the number of times I've been out of the country on one hand, and one of those times was Canada, so I'm not entirely sure that counts.  (Just a little good clean Canadian humor, eh... just kidding around.)

So, when the idea of a cross country road trip was proposed to me, I jumped at the idea.  Ok, so actually, I thought about it carefully, and created several maps and spreadsheets on it, but the jumping was there in spirit.

But, actually, the whole planning thing was not only a logistical pain in the butt, but I thought of lots of opportunities for web app to help me out.

So first off, here's the trip:  (PS... All these yellow markets aren't necessarily real stops... sometimes, I just had to make sure Google Maps put me on the right road so I had to enter somewhere random to force it.)

And here's a link to the real map...   

And then to our calendar.    It's quite ambitious...  and no, I'm not driving the 'Stang.  No interest in putting 4900 miles on it.  That's what rental cars are for.  Plus, we're only driving one way.

But what I really wanted was a great integration of a map and a calendar, one that took into consideration driving times.   On top of that, I wanted to layer on events and hotels... ones that took into consideration the time I was going to be there.  For example, by random chance, I stumbled upon a fair in St. Louis going on right around July 4th when I'm going to be there.  Also, it was a pretty manual process to match my driving and my calendar with the various baseball games that I wanted to see, because teams aren't always in town when you are.

Not only that, the group collaboration around this trip was very manual... mostly with passing links back and forth.   I wanted to give my co-pilot the opportunity to comment on various parts of the trip.   Plus, the collected wisdom of others came in handy.  We got advice from others to make sure we hit the South Dakota Badlands and exactly what time to hit them.  Now we know that, but what about others making that same trip.

So what I'm looking for is a Google Maps, Gcal, Travelocity, Yelp, Gchat, Wiki, Blogs, Flickr mashup for roadtrips.   That doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do.  :)

I'm listening to Silversun Pickups on the N train home  my blogging class.  I would have biked home, its a beautiful night, but I seemed to strain an abdominal muscle last week and nicely aggrevated it at the gym on Sunday, so I won't push it...at least not until my two softball games at the end of the week.

The train is a bit empty now...it's 10PM.  Ther girl down at the other end of my bench seat has a tattoo on the back of her neck.  I don't mess with neck tats.  Neck tats always trump arm tats.  I think the order, from most to least hardcore is face, neck, arm, back, leg. The guy across from her has no distraction devices... No iPod, no book, no nothing.  He's just sitting there, looking around, reading subway ads.   Nineteen people in this car... Six have iPods. Apparently, market penetration is like 30 percent, so we're a pretty average bunch. 

I hate typing on this Treo.  My thumbs keep bumping into each other.  Pacific Street.  One iPod on, one iPod off.  Equillibrium is maintained.  I wonder where everyone gets their music.  The girl across from me has abandoned her SAT Test Prep book for a paperback of "Starter Wife".  For some reason, it's got Deborah Messing on the cover.  Is this a movie coming out?  This N train is a fancy new one...with easy to read electronic displays of the wrong station coming up next.   36 Street.  Dragula by Rob Zombie.  I thought of naming my car Dragula, but what's really the point of a car name other than to... Ok, speaking of idiocy, the guy over in the next car just walked off the train with his bike and just biked down to the end of the platform. A subway platform is like the last place I'd bike around.  That's got all sorts of dangerous written all over it.  It is freezing in this car.  I seem to be sitting right under a vent.  Getting up... Train traffic ahead of us...at this
  time??  Liars...unless it's the money train or the garbage train.  Switching at 59th Street....Depeche Mode...World in My Eyes. If I had a hernia, it would be a big painful protrusion, right?  I wouldn't be able to stand up straight, right?  On the R train.  I don't envy suit wearers.

I had an interesting encounter Saturday night.  I ran into friend of mine that I was once closer to, but  had long since told me that they didn't have enough time to still be my friend.  This person was at an alumni event.

When I saw her, I came up to her, gave her a big hug and asked about her life and what she was up to and shared my stories.  She had broken up with a boyfriend and I told her that she'd meet the right person someday. 

At one point, she stopped me and said, "Why are you being so nice to me?"

She knew she ditched me as a friend and she couldn't figure out why I was bothering to see how she was.  I just said simply, "What would be the point of being any other way?"

I wound up driving her and her friend back to Queens...  it was a beautiful night and I had the top down.   She was pretty worse for wear by the end of the night and I really didn't want our mutual friend to have to deal with dragging her around the subway.   Turns out that she lost her keys and I even had to turn around after driving 8 blocks away to help her look for them in the car and make sure she was ok.

Why bother?  Why not just ignore this person and let any negative feelings I had for them just fester...

And incredibly smart person summed this up better than I could:

"I just don't see the point in wasting time or energy on maintaining -- actively nurturing, in most cases -- sustained negativity toward someone or about something. It mostly harms YOU, makes YOU less happy, makes YOUR whole emotional world smaller, narrower, less enjoyable... and it definitely doesn't, as you point out, do anything to inspire better treatment from others either."

The fact that this former friend probably woke up maybe realizing that she had lost a good guy as a friend and probably didn't deserve the concern I showed her as a friend the night before is surely much more effective than whatever reaction she might have had to a dirty look or me telling her off.

And frankly, it felt very good to be the good person.  Not the bigger person, but just the good person all around.

Officewide e-mail from our office manager...

From: Deborah L. [mailto:name@oddcast.com]
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 12:05 PM
To: nyoffice@oddcast.com
Subject: Cookies in the kitchen :)

Response from our CFO re: someone on her staff...

From: Gally P. [mailto:name@oddcast.com]
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 12:24 PM
To: 'Deborah L.'; nyoffice@oddcast.com
Subject: RE: Cookies in the kitchen :)

Except for the Peanut Butter one, which is in Riv

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