Link: CNN.com - World's oldest man dies in New York - Nov 20, 2004.

*Hale retired 50 years ago as a railroad postal worker and beekeeper

*watched his lifelong favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, win the World Series again after 86 years.

*At age 95, Hale flew to Japan to visit a grandson who was in the Navy. While en route back to the United States, he stopped in Hawaii and even gave boogie-boarding a try.

*At 103, Hale was still living on his own and shoveling the snow off his rooftop.

*Guinness record-holder for the oldest driver. At age 108, he still found slow drivers annoying

*Hale outlived his wife, who died in 1979 (69 years of marriage)

Now that's a life.

Fred Hale.  113.  I may just have to live that long to see the Mets win another championship.

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.

Apparently, they don't sell Newsday on the Upper East Side.  I may have to trek to Penn Station to get it.  If anyone knows a place on the UES that has copies, please let me know.   My mom said that I'm like the whole front page of the money and career section, but I haven't seen it yet.  So frustrating! 

Link: Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog.

Brian just started a blog about Slidell, Louisiana and the hurricane damage.  He'll be posting as much info as he can gather, which, at the moment, is pretty limited.

Cha-ra

1.    Noun. Means ‘shit’.
2.    Use in sentence: “Man, I feel like chara because I didn’t give Charlie a big good morning hello. I will try not to act like such a little chara in the future.”

Obviously, I called someone out on walking around the office with work blinders on...   :)

UPDATE: Before you embarrass yourself, I just found out that the "ch" sound in this is not like the "ch" in Charlie or cheer... its the flemy gurglely noise that you make when you want to hock something out.  I'm sure that's not a politically correct way of explaining that, but if you can come up with a better way to type out that noise, I'm all ears.

UPDATE: “The eight letter of the Hebrew alphabet is called “chet” (rhymes with mate) and has the (light scraping) sound ‘ch” as in “Bach”.   "Light scraping"...  ok, I guess that's a nicer way of putting it.   (From Hebrew4christians.com)

“The eight letter of the Hebrew alphabet is called “chet” (rhymes with mate) and has the (light scraping) sound ‘ch” as in “Bach”

When you work for an internet company that is mostly staffed with Israelis, you wind up with stuff like this in your inbox:


Hebrew Word of the Day - Mur'al

Mur·al (pronounced as written)

1. slang
2. deriving from the word “poison”
3. Used to describe someone who identifies with and who is deeply associated with a certain goal or mission; for example, many time used to describe a young soldier in the IDF J.
4. Use in sentence: “Wow, that Charlie sure is mur’al. He keeps coming to work with avatar t-shirts.”    

Sometimes, we feel like we have more control over the past than the future.

Weird, no?  Because its already happened.

But the past is somewhat maliable...   its all about perception.

"No, I didn't really mean it that way."

"That's not what I said."

"But you never saw the other thing that happened right before that..."

"You must be mistaken."

In a culture of stories--our own recollections of the past versus hardcoded truth, sweeping over tracks in the sand seems so easy.  Memories are so tenuous and open to interpretation, that we seem to spend more of our time trying to change the past or imagine what would happen if we did (because we know exactly what we things we need to change to make our lives better) than we actually spend trying to change our future.  And yet, the fact of the matter is that the future is unwritten--completely wide open--and the past can't changed.

We could all use a little more work on the future.  Where are you going versus where you think you could have been...   

From Jay Rand...

"When I'm playing on my own mental turf, my batting average at home is very high."

I guess you don't get booed at home, then, like the more neurotic among us do.

I'm working on a project that will enable internet users to explore, express, and aggregate their identity on the web, and have fun doing it.

On the other side of the world, people are working on a project to blow up people who are trying to blow them up, because of religious, cultural, and national identity.  It is not fun for anyone.   

I have a friend who is struggling right now with her identity in terms of how she relates to others.  Who does she want to be with?  Who can she be herself with?  You can't tell someone how to be themselves.  They need to figure it out on their own.  The only thing you can do is remind them that they shouldn't be anyone to anybody but who they want to be, and focus on people who accept them for who they are.  Oh, and then, don't forget to accept them for who they are.

At Union Square, they're trying to identify a candidate that will be a good fit for the team...  On one side they're trying to figure out what the profile of that person is, and on the other, there are some young people out there thinking about whether they would be a fit for that position. 

But really, what does it all matter, unless you have a Facebook account.  And, today, through the magic of being a faculty member, you can finally Facebook me!  Fordham doesn't have alumni e-mail addresses (why, I have no idea... its just a simple forwarding thing)... so getting an account has proven difficult.  However, now that I actually teach there, I legitimately got a profile.  What amazes me is that its really a lot like Friendster, but what keeps it strong and useful is the offline relevency.  When you can write what dorm and room you're in, you can know who's in your hallway before you even move in.  I don't think any social network will ever get more relevent than that, unless someone builds Apartmentster for NYC and people agree to list where they live.  I'm not sure I see that happening.

MySpace is experiencing some... well...  technical difficulties.  (Like total loss of power at their only datacenter.)  The site was almost unusable all weekend and completely down yesterday.  So what are all these kids doing to do in the meantime?

1. Like, um, shop.

2. Watch videos of live action recreations of Goldeneye for Playstation.

3. Make friends with someone from the Philippines.... check out Friendster.

4. Go outside and play...   hahahahahahahaha    j/k!  Outside...ha! 

5. Write a letter of appreciation to Tom...  but write it using cut out letters from all different magazines.  Oh.. and maybe make it about something besides appreciation, too... 

6. Stand in the place where you are.  Think about direction.  Wonder why you haven't before.

7. Go see Clerks II!!   Seriously, it might even be funnier than the first one.

8. Ask your parents a really uncomfortable question about sex.  This works even better the older you are.

9. Break out into total chaos.  Create false idols of MySpace on hilltops...   like a giant golden thong.  Loot.

10.  Write some really profound messages on the sidewalk in chalk...  like...   "This is written in chalk."   Makes you think, doesn't it?

There is ZERO chance it will not rain in NYC tonight.  It WILL happen.  Accuweather says there is 100% chance.

If I were the weathermen, given my track record, I think I'd couch that and just take it down to 90% just in case.  What do you gain by telling us its 100%?  Its just all downside.

Someone gave Joshua a zebra plant with some lucky Chinese coins in it.  As del.icio.us flourished, so did the plant.

When he left for CA, he left the plant with USV and it continued to grow.

That is, until we gave him back his lucky coins...  I really only wanted the plant and the lucky coins were meant for him.

I think its too late to ask for the coins back...

The other day, I went into Duane Reade to buy some deodorant.

There were two on the shelf of the brand I normally buy, in two different scents:

STORM FORCE and cool mountain misty flower breeze somethingorother fluffy cotton bunnies

Now, of course I bought STORM FORCE, because that's the way I want to smell...  like the FORCE of a STORM.  STORM FORCE-- Two words that imply power, but mean absolutely nothing when put together in that order. 

I need this.  I must have this.  I want to walk down the street with a team of roofers behind me replacing shingles on rooftops.  I don't want admirers... I want debris.  FEMA should call me every morning after I put it on to see if everything is ok.

STORM FORCE

STORM FORCE

Because most of all, that's the way women want their men smelling, right?

Hmm... wait... I need to rethink this.

Maybe STORM FORCE wasn't the right move there.

Perhaps I should have gone with the misty cool fluffy mountain bunnies.

The Felds celebrated an anniversary (congrats) and Brad writes...

"We spent a lot of time talking about how satisfied we are with our respective existences on this planet"

How many people can honestly say they feel that way?

Too funny...   thanks for the head's up, Dave.

Remember Rick Ankiel?  At 20 years old, he started Game 1 of the NLDS against the Braves in 2000.

He took a lead into the third, and then had a complete meltdown.  He threw five wild pitches, walked four and that was about all she wrote for his whole career.  Not only did he not have what it took to pitch in the playoffs, but his performance so shattered his confidence that he never succeeded again in the majors.

And conversely, look at Mariano Rivera and flash back to 1995.  (I know... he plays for the bad guys... I'm just trying to make a point here.)  Rivera was a starter when he first came up... made 10 starts actually...  and finished the year with a 5.51 ERA.  Nothing special by far.   But all it took was 5 1/3 innings of shutout relief in the first round of the playoffs against Seattle to see that this was a guy who thrived when the game was on the line in a clutch situation. 

Rivera had "it" and Ankiel didn't... and there was nothing up until those key series for each player that could have predicted their success.  There wasn't a scouting report out there that could have told you enough about their mental makeup to clue you into whether they would wilt or shine in a tough spot.

And even if there was, its still a matter of what happens on the field.  A lot of people show their character in different ways.  How about John Rocker?   Sure, he was mean, angry...etc... things you'd probably normally want in a closer...   but he turned out to be a complete head case.

So, while velocity and control might be key measures of effectiveness to a scout, a lot of the times what is really predictive of success has nothing to do with a person's natural talent.   That sometimes makes predicting success an exercise in character judgement more so than it does a job of looking at someone's historical track record.  Should scouts be conducting character reference interviews?  I wonder if they do at all. 

What about as you are building a company?   Particularly in venture, when you might be asking people to do things that no one has ever done before, a lot of times, you find yourself betting on character.  This is made so much more important because of the size of the staffs you are adding to.  If employee #5 is a bad hire, its a lot worse than a bad hire for #5000. 

So what are the keys to checking someone's character out and also the rightness of fit with an organization?  Certainly, you've got to sit them down and put them in front of as many people you know and trust as possible.  That was certainly a key for me when I got hired.  While Brad and Fred never bothered to check out my resume, because they saw my work first hand in my due diligence of their fund, they focused in on my references and the impressions I made on people in my office.  I'm quite sure that my interview with Kerri, because I was going to be sitting right next to her, was probably just as important as whatever I had put on my resume, had they seen it. 

I guess its a little bit like dating.  You just don't know exactly if you're going to be a match, and no profile, quiz, etc. is going to prove compatability for you...  sometimes you just have to take a chance on someone you get a good feeling from... someone you wouldn't mind facing a little bit of the unknown with.

Link: Gothamist: Critical Mass Clashes with Police Again.

New Yorkers, probably more than any other kind of people, are really good at making issues out of things that shouldn't be issues.  The combined mental and emotional effort that has gone in to these silly bike rides could be spent doing lots of other things that would make much greater impact on society.  How about helping kids to read, spending time with the elderly, or feeding the homeless.  If I was sick in a hospital bed, watching TV because I had no one to visit me, and I saw these people protesting their "right to bike in a big group", I'd be pissed.  And then, I'd probably cry.  So, next time one of these mass rides comes around, instead, why don't you think for a moment about how you can directly improve the life of one of your fellow human beings.  Spending more time with your family counts, too.  You should be ashamed of yourself if your best contribution to the good of society is causing traffic.

Link: tony morgan | one of the simply strategic guys: 10 Easy Ways to Know You're Not a Leader.

10 Easy Ways to Know You're Not a Leader

   
1. You're waiting on a bigger staff and more money to accomplish your vision.
   
2. You think you need to be in charge to have influence.
   
3. You're content.
   
4. You tend to foster division instead of generating a helpful dialogue.
   
5. You think you need to say something to be heard.
6. You find it easier to blame others for your circumstances than to take responsibility for solutions.
   
7. It's been some time since you said, "I messed up."
   
8. You're driven by the task instead of the relationships and the vision.
   
9. Your dreams are so small, people think they can be achieved.
 
10. No one is following you.

I'll add a few:

11) You can't/don't take the time to understand people who disagree with you.

12) You don't create other leaders.

13) You have to make every decision yourself.

I'm goofing around with my avatar, experimenting with text to speech and giving him a little more futuristic look.  I've got him saying the first paragraph of the Sunscreen Song, which came out the year I graduated high school.