Blue lights and fog tonight.

This morning, I overslept, so I took a cab in.  I think without question, cab drivers are the most appreciative of tips.   No one must be tipping these guys more than just rounding up to the next dollar.  They're driving around for hours and hours all day, and I'm sure cabdriver economics aren't too good...   so I like tipping them.  You know who doesn't really appreciate tips and it drives me nuts?  Coat check people.  I hate coat check.  I hate checking anything.  If I wanna lug around all my crap, that's my business.  Blocks the aisles?  I'm notoriously underdressed for winter and I'm sure I usually have the thinnest coat in the room... not to worry there.  Valet is ridiculous, too.  With both the coat check and the valet, if my item is in plain sight, you're not providing a service.  So many times I'm in coat check and I can just reach over and take my coat b/c the booth is so small, but still, they have to hand it to me and its going to cost me a buck or two.  Coat tax.  That's what it is.  I'm being charged for dressing appropriately for the weather, which I barely accomplish anyway.  And coat check people for the most part treat it like its normal.  Its not even a tip anymore.  Its a charge. 
Tipping in restaurants is a broken system, too.  I will definately tip well for great service...  20-25%... but I'll be the first one to admit that it really doesn't have the desired effect unless you're a repeat customer.  It works in Gino's, because we're there all the time, but if you're a one shot deal, that's never going to do anything but show appreciation, and I sort of think there should be some kind of feedback loop there that improves my service.  Maybe we can do some kind of loyalty card service for all restaurants where, when I check in, the waiter or waitress gets my average tip and the variance in it.  He or she would see that my average is solid, but my variability is above normal--meaning that if you take care of me, I'll take care of you, but if you're rude to me, its going to cost you.  Otherwise, most times the server doesn't even see what you gave them while you're still there anyway, so it doesn't really have the desired effect. 
What really has to stop are the bathroom attendents.  I haven't seen to many, but if I do, I turn right around and decide I don't really need to go that badly.  I refuse to legitimize that scam.  I've been using the bathroom by myself my whole life... I don't need any help now.  I'm a New Yorker.  Just leave me alone and let me do my thing.  Don't help me unless I ask and don't hold my coat for $2 ransom. 

Five years ago, the Nasdaq peaked at 5048.  Today, it opened at 2065.  Unreal... and it really didn't take long to come down either.  By the close of 2000, its value had already been cut in half.  I think at the time we all knew it was coming... eventually...  but it was all a matter of when.  Sure, during the runup, we talked "New Paradigm" and thought the growth would continue forever, but there was a point after which it just got ridiculously out of hand.  I think the AOL - Time Warner, and the fact that a little punk startup that could was suddenly worth as much as this offline, established media giant threw a lot of cold water in people's faces.  But, whatever it was, it all ended very quickly on this date five years ago.

Lessons learned?  I hope so.  Public investors seem to be pretty well sobered, but that tends to go in long cycles and I'm sure they'll be some other kind of bubble 10-15 years from now anyway.  As for the private side and venture?  I'm not so sure any lessons were learned, because there are still a lot of investors around with a lot of capital.  However, like in any investment cycle, the quality investors will still succeed, and in bad times, while everyone suffers, its the wannabees that really get wiped out, and that will always happen. 

Anyway, to commemorate this event, I put up, on my CafePress site, a Special Unlimited Edition (meaning I'm happy to sell as many as I can sell) mug... well, actually, two mugs and a mousepad, with the following logo:

And here are the items themselves (large and small mug):

In addition, I've put up some funky blogger related t-shirts as well.

Happy shopping!

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Fordham Alumni Mentoring career panel.  Great turnout!  I go after the next person.

Link: WSJ.com - AOL to Launch Net Phone Service, Giving VOIP a Mainstream Name.

I've been pretty down on AOL for a while after being a big supporter (and a stockholder) until the merger.  Nothing that the company has done, not a single new innovation (not that there were any) has made me believe that the company had any hope for future growth.  However, if done right, I think maybe VOIP might be something big for AOL.  What does "done right" mean?  It means that AOL has to AOL-ize the product.  It needs a cute little yellow running man and a "You've got phonemail" message and all the same little hokey things that made the internet so accessable to people back in the late 90's.  So many users tiptoed on to the web with AOL holding their hand, and eventually, they grew up to be internet savvy and left home.  VOIP may prove to be the warm, homecooked meal that keeps the kids around for a little while longer.
  The key will be converting the dial-up people to a broadband connection+VOIP service, and somehow manage to squeeze AOL for Broadband in between.  VOIP is clearly a superior value to someone still holding on to a landline in their house, and that represents the bulk of the AOL userbase.  AOL users, for the most part, are beyond late adopters, and I believe that the majority of them are not yet broadband enabled.  They're internet dinosaurs, like my dad.  My dad is still on dial-up.  My parents don't even have call waiting.  But AOL speaks dinosaur... they must, because they still have 22 million subscribers.  AOL might have a pretty decent shot shopping cheaper phone service, and replacing the phone company with this relatively trusted brand they inexplicably hold on to. 
    So lets see what the pricing and features look like...  all I'm saying is, this could be a ray of hope for a stagnant company.

Larry and I are going to Gallagher's Steakhouse for dinner tonight.  This is what you see when you first walk in.  Where's the beef?  Its here.  All of it.

This is the view from the window directly across the room from me in Reception.  :)

The NYC weather was bizzare today, dropping about 25 degrees in like three hours and even starting to snow.  Yes, it was 52 yesterday.  Right now?  20... and the wind is howling like you wouldn't believe. 

The snow didn't really stick at all, except around the rooftop greenhouse you can see on the building next door to us.  (That's Broadway down there.)  Maybe, if you're lucky, I'll post a few more office pics to show you what my work environment is like.  This way, all of the entreprenuers can visually prepare themselves for the encounter beforehand. 

Well, this is a bit weird, since I can't find actual mention of this anywhere...   I mean, its advertised on Friendster, but Six Apart doesn't seem to have it on their site and no one else seems to be commenting much on it.   You can now create a blog on Friendster, and its powered by Typepad.  In fact, it basically is Typepad and there isn't much integration on the site between the two products, other than the fact that you can annouce your new blog to all of your first degree friends. 

The interesting thing is that there's a free version, and from what I can tell, its essentially FREE  Typepad.  However, it says that it will be Ad-supported, although they don't seem to have placed them yet on my test blog... maybe because I have no content yet.

The interface is clearly Typepad, though, and so are the pricing levels for the ad free services.  I thought, to be honest, that I was going to be sent to LiveJournal when I picked the free one.  I'm really surprised there's now a free level of Typepad out there for Friendster members.  Its really a fantastic value and I think that a lot of people will take advantage of it.  Supposedly there are 13 million people on Friendster.  That's a lot of free blogs out there supported by ad revenue.  I wonder how the ad revenue will be split between Friendster and Six Apart.

I also why I didn't get an e-mail from Friendster on it, or why it didn't show up on Six Apart's website.  To my knowledge, this is the first such deal they have providing blogging services to a content partner.  Will this start a battle to snatch up portal users?  When is Yahoo going to start offering a blogging service to its members?  Might they use Typepad the way Friendster has or go on their own?  Fascinating stuff.  And now I should go to sleep.  I wish there was a way to connect this story to my Success Blogging site...  I'm desperate for traffic there.  Ah well.  :)

Former Mets GM Steve Phillips is speaking at the Buyouts Symposium.

WTF?

What does he have to do with buyouts?  He wasn't even a good GM...   the Mets fired him.  Plus... its the Mets.  I mean, I'm a Met fan, but its not like the team has done anything to warrent their fired GM speaking anywhere.  To be honest, I think I'd rather see Bobby Valentine speak.  Maybe he could wear a moustache, too.   That would be hilarious. 

There are speakers that, if you can get them, apply anywhere...   Rudy Guiliani, Bill Clinton.   Steve Phillips is not one of these people.   He wouldn't even be welcome at a Mets Fans Symposium.  I don't get it.

This apple's core is crooked...  Should I eat it?

So tonight I went to the NY Tech Meetup with Brad.  I have to say, its really cool to be around so many people really into what they're doing--and somewhat tangentially thinking about the money aspect.  From what I've experienced so far, this scene, at least the people that strike me and leave an impression, are so much more focused on building on great ideas.  Its a few derivatives later that the idea of cashing in comes in.  The people I relate to want to build on great ideas, and from what will come great companies, and great companies will bring great returns, which is what the investment side of VC is conceptually supposed to result in anyway.  The focus in our office has definately been about the ideas... that's hugely evident even in the first three weeks of me being here.  We sat down with an entrepreneur that we really like tonight who started talking about possible revenue streams and partnership deals and Brad and Fred definately pushed him back to just working on the idea...  get working on the idea and building up a great product and the rest will come in time.  It really made me feel like I'm in the right place with the right people. 

The funniest moment had to be when these two guys from a startup were presenting, and it was so obvious that they were in Beta...  like... not even in Beta... more like, "We built this for ourselves and it came out pretty cool so here it is."  Anyway, someone asked how you make money from the deal...  Its just too hard to explain not only if you weren't there, but you aren't in this world... this little NY tech circle of lots of exciting things going on.  Who knew that in a city of 8 million people you had a few passionate people with great ideas that were not too worried about VC fundable business plans?  Their answer to his suggestion of what they might do?  "Um, yeah.. sure."  Love it. 

PS...   I had somebody use the "chips and routers" term to me.  For a second, I was like, "Hey, that's what I call it."

Duh.

He reads my blog. 

I know how many hits I get and how many Feedburner subscribers I have, but when you meet an actual human being who reads and actually remembers...   well, that's faaaantastic. 

Jeez... now that I think of it... that's a lot of pressure.  If I have actual human beings reading, and not just numbers on a Feedburner stat page, I better go work on trying to be interesting. 

Scott at the NY Tech Meetup...

Ok, so this one is doctored, but its getting really hard to keep the letters small in the snow, so I'm kind of limited as to how much I can write.  Anyway...  I also took some normal pictures as well.   Last night's snowfall was a very photogenic snow.  It was wet enough to stick everywhere, but fluffy enough to build up to some size.  However, it wasn't too much that it just covers everything, and there wasn't so much wind that it knocked the snow off the trees. 

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

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

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

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

Well, this is just getting out of hand now...    Weatherbug is reporting a tie-die blob headed straight for the city. 

We could have 6-10 inches of love-ins, Country Joe and the Fish, and pot starting as early as this afternoon.   And you thought snow was going to be an inconvenience...

Last night, the team dropped three games and tied one as the snow fell outside PS 191.  They weren't blowouts, but now next week's game becomes even more important.  Dodge This! will be fighting for our lives (or running for them)!  And, if that doesn't work out... we always have kickball, which we just signed up for.

The team name?  "Kick this!" of course.   I took a few pictures at Lincoln Park, a proud sponsor of the Zog Sports league and on my way there, I snapped off this pic on Broadway looking down from 49th street.

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Live weather update from NYC.

Here's the mid-season update...   We're in 6th place out of 12 teams in our division.  Dodge This! is holding its own at .500.

Lazer/Blazer Division

Name                                                        W            L           T            Pts
Dodgy McShady KG                     10         1         1         21
Balls of Furry PR                            9         3         0         18
First Picks GO                               9         3         0         18
Moral Victory RB                            8         3         1         17
Get Outta Dodge IV                        5         4         3         13
Dodge This! HG                              6         6         0         12
Jajballers CH                                  5         7         0         10
Orange Crush OR                           5         7         0         10
Blue Evaders BL                             4         8         0          8
Special Olympics BK                      3         8         1          7
Snoop Dawgs From LIC OL              3         9         0          6
Team Voltron LG                             2        10        0          4

Link: The Door Gates.

I haven't posted about The Gates yet, but this link is inspiring.   

In all honesty, I suppose The Gates because it is bringing in lots of revenue to the city.  I know someone in the hotel business and she told me that her hotel was packed on what would otherwise be a slow week when this thing opened.  So, since it didn't cost the city anything, and it brings in tourists, I'm a fan, even if I don't really see its artistic value.  To me, it just kind of looks like an orange obstacle course for oversized dogs at Westminster.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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