On September 11, 2001, after the first tower fell, it was time to go home.  I watched it live from the trading room television at GM, and we were all kind of dumbstruck until then.  I don't remember standing there for as long as I did, but I remember watching the smoke clear and realizing the building wasn't there anymore. 

Time to go home.

I had only been in my apartment for a little over two months.  Many of my friends were still up at Fordham, and there wasn't really any getting up there.  The subway and Metro North was shut down.  So, when I arrived, there wasn't much to do but watch...   and when I turned on the television, there was Peter Jennings. 

He came on and he stayed on.

I distinctly remember IMing with Brian saying how unbelievable it was how much time he was on the air.  It just seemed like anytime you turned the television on, there was Peter Jennings.  Amazing.  Comforting.  I watched.  I checked the internet every now and then, but for the most part, I was watching TV.  I needed to see it and I needed to hear someone talking to me... and not just some talking head.  This was someone we all knew. 

The disaggregation of media and television probably means that there will never be another bigtime network news anchor.  Brian Williams?  Charles Gibson?  Not quite so much.  Good, but not great.  I'm glad, though, that for what I hope to be the most dramatic and tragic moment in my life, I had one of these guys to sit down to and watch.

When I was a freshman at Fordham, I had, three days a week, an 8:30AM class and a 12:30PM class.  The 8:30 was 50 minutes long, which gave me a solid 2 1/2 hour window of time  until my next class.

What unfolded was the careful and intricate development of something that I would later term, "the Nap."

That idea would be improved upon and get replaced by "The Power Nap". 

You knew it was truly a Power Nap if there was drool on the pillow when I woke up.  I would walk in from the 8:30, drop my bookbag, take my shoes off and just fall onto the bed.  This would lead to a debate between me and my roommate Kevin as to why I wouldn't take clothes off and/or get under the covers.  Of course, that's the difference between a nap and actual sleeping, but we would debate the semantics of sleeping for some time. 

The Power Nap was a freshman year institution.  I felt so refreshed by it, but schedules changed, I'd have three roommates in sophomore year and the Power Nap fell by the wayside.  But, for a semester, like clockwork, I was King of the Nap and it was wonderful.

I bring this up, because I just played softball on Brian's team (which is why I wasn't at the boathouse) and I was tired from the sun and yesterday's long day.  I found myself with the inclination to return to the nap, proceeded to follow up on this inclination.  Clothes on.  Above the covers.  Drool on the pillow.  Like the eldar Ted Williams at the All-Star game, the Power Nap has reemerged to come out and see the fans one more time.

So, I now have direct evidence that a Kryptonite lock is so crappy, that thieves will cut it in broad daylight at 5PM in the afternoon on 20th and Broadway, right across the street from a busy restaurant.

I might as well have locked it up with tinker toys and some bendy straws.  At least the thief would have hesitated for a moment out of sheer confusion. 

Yes, my bike got stolen.  So, you can add that to the list of things I've had stolen in the past two and a half months...     digital camera, wallet, and now, bike.

The funny thing is that I kinda wanted a new one and didn't want to go through the hassle of selling it.  I should start looking on Craigslist right now for my bike,  no?  Where else would thieves sell it?   

While Googling "bike lojack" I found the following idea on a comment page.  Pure humor and not such a bad idea:

Link: Halfbakery: Bike LoJack.

How about if the bike is pedalled away without entering the secret code (rear brakes twice, backpedal one revolution, then front brakes once) a spike shoots up out of the seat. Wouldn't have to go very far at all to retrieve your bike then...

I will be at the Downtown Boathouse all day on Saturday...  from 9AM to 6PM.  Last boat goes out at 5:30PM...    come stop by, say hello, and go kayaking for free.   

So, you'll notice a few changes on the blog...  I finally got around to making all the menus work, which explains some of the weird posts you just saw.  Basically, I created a post that's going to act like a guestbook, so you can click the top menu and "Sign My Guestbook."  The second is that I have a Flickr badge now, so I'll have  a section/post for pictures.  I'll also be adding some to the Picture "Hall of Fame" or something like that.

More importantly, though, is that the Tag Team has linkrolls up and running.  The first one I've created is for my blogroll, which a lot of people have asked for.  If you'll notice, its in alpha order.  I don't think that's a feature yet, but Tim's working on it.  He coded that one for me on the fly when I realized that chronological order makes absolutely no sense when you're just creating a "Blogs I read" list.

Do you want a link roll?   Go here.

Then you can insert the little piece of javascript on your sidebar.

If the cops want to look at my sweaty gym socks, they're more than welcome...   It doesn't make me feel "violated" at all.  Bombs, however, make me feel violated.

Link: New York City: NYCLU sues city over subway searches.

The New York Civil Liberties Union today filed suit against the city to keep police from searching the bags of passengers entering the subway, organization lawyers said.

Now you can see what I see...

Sounds like they should just set up a blog and get alumni and students blogging on it.  I mean, why hire just one personto "invent" their own version of Fordham's identity versus just setting up a blog and letting the community broadcast its own message on what Fordham is to them in a very honest and sincere way.  It would be a lot cheaper, too.

Link: The New York Times Job Market: Marketing - New York, NY.

ADVANCEMENT COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST A rare and rewarding challenge: play a central role in the transformation of an excellent university into a world-class university. The right person for this job will be able to understand and communicate what makes Fordham University so special and-crucially-be able to make others understand as well. In this role you will liaise with marketing, communications and advancement leaders to incorporate our institutional identity into every aspect of our advancement communications across print and online media, from collateral for the Office of Development to copy for University publications. You'll be able to do so in the voice appropriate to the varied audiences addressed. Finally, you'll need to be able to manage internal client and vendor relations to ensure a finished product on time, within budget and on target. You should have significant, direct experience as a strategic writer in advancement communications in an academic, marketing or non-profit environment. And you should be as strong and creative a thinker

Carvel Due Diligence with Brad and Fred, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

VCs scream for ice cream.

Union Square Ventures Outing to Shea, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Mets losing 6-4...Wright's up.

Its 3:49PM on Tuesday, which means its time for my regular Monday movie post. 

Sorry, its been busy around here...

Aren't all of you supposed to be on vacation, so I can go, too??  Instead we've got all these great deals to work on.  Damn you!

Anyway, I asked someone over the weekend what my movie should be this week... without even saying what movies I had seen or liked or giving her a choice.  Her response was exactly why I agreed to post it, because its something we've all seen and I've never met anyone that didn't think it was a great movie.

"Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'."

Now you know... and everyone knows.  Its just a fantastic movie all the way around.  Its a difficult, but beautiful story of friendship in the harshest of circumstances, and an interesting commentary of the world "out there" versus the world "in here" and what it means to be innocent.  Shawshank Redemption may very well be the best movie of my generation...  and Morgan Freeman is definitely one of the top 5 actors of my generation.  What's amazing was that Shawshank went a complete 0-fer in the Oscars, because it was up against Forrest Gump, which cleaned up, and Pulp Fiction. 

I've only seen the movie twice.  Its not the kind of movie to see over and over again... its just too much to take.  Either way, its truly a great piece of work.  Tim Robbins also does a great job, but I think his charactor gives him a little wind at his back.  His charactor is just in the right situation to really result in a great performance, whereas I think Freeman does a little more to get Red there, but now I'm being picky. 

Link: del.icio.us/toby/toby:blog.

I love when I get links and I'm like, "What the hell is this?  ooooooh.... I get it."

So Toby from MusicMobs has built himself a blog in del.icio.us... well... sort of.

He's tagged and grouped his posts so that the front page has a group of four links... a link to del.icio.us links about stuff he likes, a link to outgoing links of interest, his linkroll, and his "blog", which is essentially a link to other things with a short comment in the extended field.

hmm...  Is del.icio.us going to give Typepad a run for its money?   Doubtful, but this is cool nonetheless. 

This was a game of destiny.  Fordham had been showing signs of greatness all year--for an inning here an inning there.  In their 15-10 loss last game, it felt like they were one or two plays from turning the tables.  It felt like this was a team ready to put it all together.

So, when Dave Murphy told Charlie O'Donnell, "I'm going to hit today," the manager should have realized it meant a lot more.  Murphy's season had been an up and down one, and while he's always put the bat on the ball, the lack of output in the boxscores had sunk him to lower depths of the lineup.  Still, his intensity and enthusiasm had been unmatched, it was only a matter of time before he'd have a day like this one--going three for three with a game ending solo shot in the bottom of the final frame. 

In fact, Murphy was playing so well, that the Fordham manager turned to his firstbaseman Cuthbert and said, "Wouldn't it be great if Dave just f*#%ing ended it right here?"  One pitch later, the game was over.  In addition, he turned in a perfect 6-3 double play with men on 2nd and 3rd in the top of the final inning to preserve the tie to go with a leaping catch of a soft liner earlier in the game.

Fordham did much of their damage with two outs.  O'Donnell singled in the first and advanced to third on Jason Giannitti single.  When Giannitti tried to advance on the throw to third, O'Donnell took off for home, plating Fordham's first run and cutting Mizuho's lead in half.  Firstbaseman Brian Cuthbert knotted it up with another single which scored Gianitti.

Once again, Patty Dickerson turned in a solid effort on the mound, shutting down Mizuho for the final three innings for the team's 3rd win.  The defense played solidly as well, with Larry Porco catching a couple of long drives in the outfield in front of the capacity crowd of three.

The team plays its final game on August 8th at North Meadow.  Spectators are always welcome.

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Nivi, ever the web services innovator, is calling for a groupcast via del.icio.us of Bay Area tech events.  He also highlights a potential use not only of del.icio.us, but of RSS in general...   So, now I'm adding another slick app to my "Things that I want" post...  Give me a little widget that subscribes to RSS event feeds.  It should be a holding tank for things I might potentially want to go to, and let me just click "yes" or "no" as to whether or not I want to go to them.  When I click yes, it should automatically populate Outlook.  Evite needs to get on that, too.  I'm tired of copying and pasting event data to my outlook and getting events in my e-mail.

PS... I'd love to hear your "Things that I want out of Web 2.0".  If you blog a list, trackback to my original post here.

Link: Nivi : Introducing: The Bay Area Technology Event Groupcast.

"P.S. Wouldn’t it be cool if

   1.

      We entered event information (like time and place) in the del.icio.us “extended” field.
   2.

      Then ran the del.icio.us feed through some kind of hcal web service that automatically translates the “extended” field to hcal format.
   3.

      And finally subscribe to the hcal-ified feed with a calendering program?

Answer: Yes, it would be wicked."

All you can eat sushi, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Don't worry, tummy, there's more on the way.

Bay Ridge Sunset, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

This is down the block from me...the hill sort of makes it look like SF.

Link: Investments and More: VC's - Top Brass Solid, Others not.

Such an outcome is significant to the industry. From my perch, the partners of most tier one (i.e., Sequoia Capital and Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson) and tier two (Mobius Venture Capital) venture capitalist firms are "worth their salt". The principals and associates are hit and miss jobs. Usually, the associates are the worst, with huge egos and usually spotty operational, idea, and strategy skills. The associate is usually from some power investment banker outfit. They are deal guys. They know how to get a deal done and that is about all. They usually possess little vision, strategy, or operational capability. Some make it, some don't - others succeed because of luck or politico.

This is just too funny. 

Here's a test...

Ask 10 people in the venture capital industry to name the top 5 VC firms not named Sequioa or Kleiner...    there will probably be very little overlap.

Even harder...   ask them to name the top 10 VCs that don't work at either of these firms.  There will probably be next to no overlap.  That's because there is no "best" VC.  There are "appropriate" VCs for your business and then there are varying network sizes, experience, etc. 

For example, John Doerr is by far not the best VC...   

...for a company making next generation semiconductors.

Mike Moritz is a terrible partner... 

...for an early stage biopharma deal.

Fred Wilson?   Wouldn't let him near my company...

...if my company was a based in India.

You get the picture.  Find the right person for your company and stay away from other people's lists of the "best" VCs.

Link: Genuine VC: How Yummy are Cookies?.

David quotes Jupiter saying that 60% of internet users delete cookies.

These are the same people that push the already lit-up elevator button after I'm obviously standing there waiting:  Paranoid to the put that they inconvenience themselves.

Robert Redford will show up again on this list, and both Dan Ackroyd and Mary McDonnell have already appeared.  Same, too, with Ben Kingsley.  Perhaps I should just have made this a Top 25 Actors list.

Sneakers is about a quirky cast of characters that gets paid to break into things so that no one else can break into them.   Then, when one of them gets discovered to have a not so clean record, they need to break into a place to break their friend out of trouble. 

There are a lot of characters in here...  maybe too many, but its a bit like Ocean's Eleven, where none of the characters really get developed to deeply, but you just kind of have fun watching them play the game with each other.  In addition to the aforementioned repeaters, those making their first and perhaps only (although that's subject to change) appearance on my list are Sidney Portier and the late River Phoenix, who both do a great job as well.

In any case, in addition to being a fun, quirky, and geeky movie, it sounds fantastic.  James Horner's soundtrack is worth a purchase, and listening to Branford Marsalis play the sax is worth the price of admission.  The soundtrack seamlessly sets off the movie and you probably only realize how good it was if you listen to it separately afterwards.

Grey Monday, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Beautiful weekend, but cruddy Monday.  (Live from the N train over the Manhattan Bridge.)