Little kid and his dad at Pier 40 this morning...

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Here's the rest of what the WTC site is supposed to look like.  If we have to wait any longer, they'll have to retrofit parking on the roof for flying cars.

Two great comments by Gothamist readers:

"I, for one, welcome our new steel and glass monolithic overlords."

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Timeoutnewyork.tv is having a photo contest to have your NYC photos featured on the front page of their site.   Just tag your best NYC photos (horizontal only) timeoutnewyork.tv on Flickr and you're automatically entered.  There might be a free magazine subscription in there or something, too... not sure... the details aren't up yet.  Technically, it starts tomorrow, but here's your chance to get a head start.

Check out their site, too.... its pretty cool.

GothamGal has a though provoking post up about the insanity of carefully crafting over acheivers and getting kids into college today.  She says that we should drop the current system and look for a new way to screen students...  fewer tests, less pressure.

I do think that what is going on is insane, but anytime there's insanity, you don't have to get caught up in it.

When I was in high school, the average graduating SAT score for my class was 1350.  Now I hear its up over 1400...   average...  1400!   I was lucky because we all seemed to take a pretty healthy approach to it, but one could go nuts trying to test prep your way to a score like that.

If you need to take two test prep courses and hire a private tutor to get your kid to score a 1520, then, well, sorry, that kid just isn't a 1520 student.  I remember this guy in my freshmen year of college who used to study in the lounge about 10 hours a day to get a 3.7 and I just remember heading out the door with my baseball glove to have a catch and enjoy a nice day while he was studying.  If that was what it took to get the really high grades, well then I just wasn't going to be a great student... simple as that.

It was that kind of approach that I had in high school.  In hindsight, I probably could have worked harder, I admit, but it was where my head was at the time.  Pushing me wouldn't have helped.. .I had to push myself... which I did, big time, when I got to Fordham.   Yeah, so I went to Fordham, which was a good school, but it wasn't Harvard or Yale or Princeton.  However, I wouldn't be where I am today at another school.   Being at Fordham, close to the city, enabled me to intern at the GM pension fund during school.  It also meant that another Fordham grad who was at GM sort of took me under his wing, rather than the Harvard intern we had, because he felt like this guy would get everything he wanted anyway.  That led directly to my job in the private equity group, which led to Union Square Ventures, which led to Oddcast.   

If I was coming out of Harvard in '01, it wouldn't have been enough for me to just go to Harvard... I would have had to beat out all my own classmates for jobs.  When you go to a top school, you almost have to be the best there, too, because there will already be 5 or 6 Harvard resumes in for a job, and they're not going to interview all of you.

You don't have to go to a top ten school and you don't have to be a Goldman Sachs investment banker to be successful either.   Teach your kids to follow their own way at their own pace.  Of course, give them all the tools and encouragement to be their best, but don't push them to be more than they're mentally ready to handle.  I wasn't ready to take the lead in high school and I would have burned out very early had I tried.  I'm lucky that my parents were just happy I was in a good school and supportive of whatever I did.  They let me come around on my own terms.

Oh, and I wound up doing better than that kid who studied ten hours a day...  and I really do owe it mostly to my mental health.  In college, I really believe its really not about how hard you work, but more about how smart you work and how you handle stress.   Oh, and networking, too.  You'll never make good contacts in your field, which can take you a lot further than your GPA, if you're a big ball of stress that seems mentally unstable.

And then there were eight. 

Everything I learned in elementary school science seems to be a lie.   

Did you know there were more than three states of matter?   At first I learned about Plasma, making it four, but now it turns out there are a whole bunch of 'em.  That probably explains why if you leave ice cubes in the freezer long enough, they completely disappear.

I've been working really hard today, so I took a ten (err..  20...) minute break to make a Chuck Norris avatar for my sidebar.  More reasons to reorg the sidebar...    I gotta find a way to make him randomly repeat different Chuck Norris facts.

New York City snowfall tally as of this morning...   13 inches.  Dorean came by to play in the snow around 11 last night and we threw snow at each other like eight year olds and then went over to Carl Shulz Park.

Her dad built an igloo on 86th Street with his snowblower, and of course, I had to get in it.  The snow wasn't piled to high yet, as you can tell from my car, which we wrote on.  I think it continued through the night, though, and this is how things looked outside my window this morning.

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I've posted about this before, but its come up again.  Last Election Day, I tried to doublecheck my polling place by e-mailing the NYC.gov website.  They finally got back to me in late January.

Well, today, they replied again, for good measure I suppose...

"SORRY FOR THE DELAY, YOUR POLL SITE IS:PS 290, LOCATED AT 311 E 82 ST."

And they want us to believe they'll figure out electronic voting without a hitch?

This would be funny if it wasn't true.   On Election Day, as I was walking out of my house, I wanted to doublecheck my polling place.  I was pretty sure I knew where it was, but it was my first time voting in my home district (no more trekking back to Brooklyn.)  Anyway, the NYC voting website had an e-mail address for location inquiries, so I e-mailed them.  Today, on January 26th, I finally received a response...

Curbed, the NYC real estate, etc blog posted an ethical question about some renter who wanted to get away with not paying his broker fee to a careless real estate agent.  Responses were requested and I submitted mine on the side of ethics and just treating people well overall.  It got posted.. wooo!   So, if you're a real estate agent, now you know I'm an ethical guy and the kind of guy you want to send listings of apartments for sale with reasonable maintainence south of 59th Street around 400k.  One bedrooms only, please.

Link: Curbed: The Curbed Ethicist (Part I): Pay The Guy Already.

Real estate brokers provide little else besides the knowledge of an open apartment, which he did here. Sure, he very haphazardly involved himself in the process, and you could probably get away with not paying him, but its not as if he didn’t do his job. You wouldn’t have known about the listing if he didn’t post it, and in my mind, he deserves payment for that... Trust me, screw people over and it will come back to haunt you. What you should do is pay him the fee, but explain to him that you didn’t have to and point out to him the err of his ways. Maybe he’s new and he’ll be so indebted, that in a few years when you move, he’ll find you a sweet deal.

Rooster paraphernalia?  There was a story in the news this morning about how cops broke up a cockfighting ring in the Bronx.  They confiscated a whole bunch of roosters, plus assorted "rooster paraphernalia."   I haven't the faintest idea what that could possibly mean.  Little tiny boxing gloves?  Beak guards?  Championship belts?

Link: The Mobile Andrew: November 2004.

Did you notice what's hilarious about this pic?

Andrew Anker has been moblogging for some time now, which basically means he has a camera phone that he takes pictures with, and e-mails them straight to his blog with a little note.  He works for Six Apart, which is the company behind Typepad, which powers my blog as well as my Find My Path career site. He snapped off the photo above at Six Apart's recent board meeting.  The picture is of the co-founder of the company, Mena Trott, but what really struck me was the two gentlemen in the backround.  One of them is someone I had the fortune to meet earlier this year, David Hornick, who is a VC from August Capital who funded the company recently.  The other guy... well... the other guy is HUGE... or at least appears that way in the picture.  So David wouldn't make the Sand Hill Road basketball team (which, by the way, would likely be dominated from the guys at ComVentures and John Hummer, who used to play in the NBA/ABA), but still...  this is just hilarious.   

I brought the pic to David's attention and he responded:

"Just clicked on your link.  That's hilarious.  The guy I was talking to was
a mere 6 foot 8.  Of course that seems pretty darn tall when you're 5 foot
4."   

At least he takes it in stride, no matter how short those strides may be.   Good luck guys!  I've enjoyed keeping up with this company.

Ok, so not really...  someone stuck this on me.  :)  Proud to support female blogging!

I know I'm going to have to reset my catagories.  I'm realizing that most of my blogs fit into like eight catagories and then I've also got both a "Friends and Outings" and "Outings and Friends" catagory.  I don't know how that happened.  So I'm at the airport now, shelling out another six bucks for 60 minutes of TMobile wireless.  Actually, I don't mind it, because I use it sparingly, since DTUT covers me pretty well in terms of wireless usage. 

I was reading apophenia and she commented on the nature of the blogger/audience interaction...

"For me, the plausible deniability invoked in blogging is strong. I can convince myself that i write for me and me alone ::wink:: and convince myself to be shocked when i receive feedback. I can check my stats, but those are just numbers - nameless, faceless people. Yet, here i am, speaking to nameless, faceless people, only i'm required by this situation to convince myself that you do really exist, even if i cannot see you. In this situation, i have the expectation that i am a face to you and you're just an assumption to me. It really brings life to the idea that i'm just a talking head."

She's actually studying the socialogy behind blogs and social networking over the web, among other things and she writes some really thoughtful stuff.  Her archives go back to 1997, making her the earliest blogger I know.

This trip was fantastic for me.  I feel reenergized.  Beware my next big project.  I hadn't actually taken a real non-family vacation since.... well, I can't actually remember.  Perhaps it dates all the way back to when Deirg and I went to Jill's wedding.  This vacation thing could be a good thing, even if I am enjoying my life.  Sometimes, its good to get a restart.

So, I'm looking at my fellow passengers waiting to get on.  These are all the cheap people, because there was a $200 difference between the red eye and the afternoon flight.  I'm debating what will make me sleep easier....  light food or a big turkey sandwich.  Either way, even if I don't get good sleep, I'm heading straight to the gym when I get into the city.  That will make me feel better.  I'm looking forward to that post-gym shower.  Ok, boarding soon.   I gotta figure out what zone I am.

Oh, PS...   Good for the Scott Peterson jury.  We all knew he was guilty.  Of course, I still can't figure out how, where, when, or why... but I suppose that doesn't matter.  You know some goofball will marry him while he's in prison, too.

Last night, I found a spot on the right side of the street for today, making it six consecutive days of alternate side parking that I have found a spot.  Four times, I found the spot in the morning on the day of, and twice the night before.  Manhattanites with cars will appreciate this.  Everyone else...  just trust me that this is truely a personal triumph.  :)

This just speaks for itself.  Classic male. 

"You wanna know what we're thinking?  I'll tell you what we're thinking...   Nothing.  We're not thinking anything.  We're just walkin' around, lookin' around.  Our minds are a complete blank."  -Seinfeld

This is photographic proof that if I went colorblind one day, dressing would not be a problem.  Think I have enough grey t-shirts?  What's that blue one doing in there?  That doesn't belong there.

Link: TRENDWATCHING.COM Newsletter | Global Consumer and Marketing Trends | April 2005.

Thanks to Liesbeth den Toom for pointing me in the direction of the permalink for Trendwatching.  They've got an interesting site up and this month's newsletter highlighted "Tryvertising".  The idea:  "Give me free stuff and if I like it, I'll keep using it."  Sure, we've gotten little packets of shampoo in the mail, but did you know that there are some hotels that will let you drive around in a Maybach for free?  I hope this catches on, because I'm all about free stuff.  That's how I got hooked on Fresh Direct.  They had this free $50 of groceries offer and I'm all about food, so it was a can't miss.  Now, I don't think I've bought groceries in a regular supermarket more than twice.  The other day, I ordered mangos.  No mangos in Gristides... at least nothing that looked like a mango anyway.  We used to do the same thing at GM when people tried to sell us data services or research.  The message:  Get us hooked!  Not enough companies are doing that.

I first heard Mitch Hedberg on the XM Radio comedy station.  I think the first think I heard him say was that he wanted to be a race car passenger that bugs the driver. 

"Say man, can I turn on the radio? You should slow down. Why do we gotta keep going in circles? Man, you really like Tide ..."

I thought the Tide thing was hilarious and from then on, I was hooked.  I saw him on Comedy Central once... hair in front of his face, just barely audible, deadpan delivery.  Think of what Steven Wright would be if he looked like Kurt Cobain, and he was more random.  That was Mitch Hedberg.  I missed it, but apparently they found him in a hotel room in Minnesota two weeks ago.   I'm really sorry to see this guy go.  I was actually online looking for tickets to shows and they had an announcement on his site.  Here are some other Mitch quotes:

I hope the next time I move I get a real easy phone number. Something like, 222-2222. I would say sweet. People would say, "Mitch, how do I get a hold of you?" I would say, "Press 2 for a while, and when I answer, you will know that you have pressed 2 enough."

I think Pringles' initial intention was to make tennis balls. But on the day that the rubber was supposed to show up, a big truckload of potatoes arrived. But Pringles was a laid-back company. They said "Fuck it. Cut 'em up."

I get the Reese's candy bar. If you read that name Reese's thats an apostrophe S. Reese's apostrophe S at the end of that name. That means the candy bar is his. I didn't know that. Next time you're eating a Reese's candy bar and a guy name Reese comes by and says "let me have that", you better hand it over. "I'm sorry, Reese. I didn't think I'd ever run into you."

I was in a bar, minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, "You're gonna have to move, you're blocking a fire exit." As though if there was a fire, I wasn't gonna run. If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.

When you go to a restaurant on the weekends and it's busy they start a waiting list. They start calling out names, they say "Dufrane, party of two. Dufrane, party of two." And if no one answers they'll say their name again. "Dufrane, party of two, Dufrane, party of two." But then if no one answers they'll just go right on to the next name. "Bush, party of three." Yeah, but what happened to the Dufranes? No one seems to give a shit. Who can eat at a time like this - people are missing. You fuckers are selfish... the Dufranes are in someone's trunk right now, with duct tape over their mouths. And they're hungry! That's a double whammy. We need help. Bush, search party of three! You can eat when you find the Dufranes.

Perhaps someday I can tell you where this picture is from.  Maybe...  hmm..  Valentine's Day?  If you knew, you'd understand how fitting this message is.

I figured I'd take the picture now just for the record before I have to shovel the letters out of the snow....

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