We've now moved on to another animal... well, another animal moved in on us.

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Obviously, Adrianna is rather discerning about her exotic petting zoo animals. She had a lot of commentary on the emu.

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Ok, so there are three of these emu & other animal videos. Frankly, I found the off camera discussion to be pretty funny. If you didn't find the first one to be amusing, you probably won't be amused by the next two either... just a warning. If I see a big drop in my Feedburner number, you might read about an emu disappearence on Block Island.

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Photo 608, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Somehow, we got him to look at the camera. By the way, Adrianna is the one in the middle, if you weren't sure. I'm the bald guy.

Photo 609, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Saturday was much better, but as you can see, I'm not particularly thrilled about the weather situation upon our arrival.

Goating to Block Island, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

We're on our way to Block Island, RI...(thanks to Greg, Christie for tagging links and emailing suggestions)... We met this guy Billy on our way...

My softball team got caught up in a "reply all" fest over the past week and we kept getting "system administrator" bouncebacks from this guy who worked at Goldman Sachs.  We figured he gave Zog the wrong e-mail or something.

Nope...  we went on vacation and his mailbox was full. 

So, basically, Goldman Sachs limits the mailbox size of this guy who works in Risk Management to something like 75 or 100 MB, and decides that anything above that should get bounced back.  GM used to limit my mailbox size as well.

Why?   To save server space... i.e. money.   

GM did the same thing on our file server.  They'd send out notices to everyone to clean out their folders on the common drives to conserve space.  For e-mail, they taught everyone how to "archive" by putting their old e-mails on their local drives.  Archiving was long and slow.

Up until yesterday, it never occurred to me how UFR (Utterly Fucking Ridiculous) a practice this was.  How is it possible that Google can offer 2+ gigs of storage and Goldman Sachs only gives its employees 100MB? 

First off, let's estimate the costs of e-mail limits.   Let's say that, in GM's case, everyone managing the pension fund spend just twenty minutes every two weeks cleaning out their inbox.  If the average person there makes 75K, which is probably right given that it was a buyside, mostly Post-MBA shop, it works like this.

75k/52weeks/45 hours a week = $32.05 an hour.

$32.05 an hour x 26 weeks x .33 hours a week= $277.78 a person in time lost managing e-mail storage.

$277.78 x 150 people = $41,666 a year in wasted e-mail storage management time.

I think you can buy storage servers cheaper than this, no?   :)

PLUS, what about the other costs?

Like, what if someone e-mails you with a major deal with lots of revenue for your firm and gets a bounceback because your mailbox is full?   Is that what you really want to have happen?

What about important notifications that you miss?

How unprofessional will your firm look when it can't match its server capacity with its storage demands?

There are lots of technologies out there that de-dupe corporate mass e-mails, attachments, etc. and save lots of storage space, if its that much of an issue.  But seriously, its 2005... I make spreadsheets that are 50MB.  Let's stop playing e-mail storage tiddlywinks, suck it up, and buy another server.  Your best people should spend ZERO time worrying about staying under 100MB.

Its Wednesday, so you know what that means...    my movie selection two days late.  Sorry.

So last night, I went out with my new Zog Sports softball team.  I signed up as an individual, so now I have a whole new set of people I'm getting to know.  I asked someone what their top five movies would be to take to a desert island.  This is a little bit different than saying favorites.  I love Shawshank, but I couldn't watch it over and over and over again on my desert island.

One selection she had was pure brilliance:  Beverly Hills Cop.  And you know, it doesn't even matter which one.  Frankly, I don't even know which one was which.  There's one with Wallyworld and another with Bridgitte Nielson...  They're all kind of the same.  Same plot.  Crime gets committed.  Eddie Murphy is on vacation or accidently around or follows up a lead from across the country and isn't supposed to be there.    He pokes his nose where he doesn't belong.  The local cops haven't a clue and he's just nosey enough to figure it out.  He laughs a lot, flashes that big smile, and impersonates a lot of wacky charactors to get by underpaid rent a cops or receptionists or hostesses.  Judge Reinhold has a gun fetish... and his partner has an ulcer.  hmm.. did I forget anything?

But, the one thing they have in common...   no matter what time it is, or how many times I've seen them before, I'll stop to watch Beverly Hills Cop if I'm flipping through the channels.  That's what makes a desert island movie.  I seriously think I could wake up every morning on my desert island, watch a little Axel Foley, and not get tired of it.  Its not even that its that entertaining...   its just entertaining enough, simple enough...   Its kind of like the movie equivilent of Livan Hernandez.  The guy goes out and throws seven or eight innings every time and gives up three or four runs.   If you knew you had a pitcher who could throw eight and give up four runs, you'd take that every time.  Same with Beverly Hills Cop.  Solid, but unspectacular entertainment every time. 

Plus, how cool is that theme song?  Go ahead... hum it.  You know how it goes. 

So what's your desert island movie?

Link: Bubblegeneration - Evil Corporations Only.

More simply, Web 2.0 is about the shift from network search economies, which realize mild exponential gains - your utility is bounded by the number of things (people, etc) you can find on the network - to network coordination economies, which realize combinatorial gains: your utility is bounded by the number of things (transactions, etc) you can do on the network.

The point is that this shift is combinatorial - each person can do X activities in a combinatorial network, and it's combinations of these activities that make value explode. Contrast with a exponential network, where it's the number of people on a network that create value. That is, a relationship between any two people is 1:1 in an exponential network, but many to many in a combinatorial network. It should be intuitive to you that the former kind of network has more potential for value creation.

[10:28] [Spambot]: hey wats up
[10:28] Ceo21: hi...   Who am I speaking with?
[10:28] [Spambot]: we met at your place a couple of weeks ago
[10:29] Ceo21: That's a bit vague...   can you be more specific?
[10:29] [Spambot]: sean
[10:30] [Spambot]: mixed blk and wht we had oral sex
[10:30] Ceo21: riiiight...  Yeah,  you have the wrong IM.
[10:30] [Spambot]: just kidding i know
[10:30] [Spambot]: this is amanda
[10:30] [Spambot]: we meet at the club the other night
[10:31] Ceo21: ah... IM spam... nice
[10:32] Ceo21: So what else do you have to say for yourself?
[10:32] [Spambot]: we met at the club
[10:33] Ceo21: I think your IM spam engine needs a little work.
[10:33] [Spambot]: ok srry to bother u

I just got tix for Giants - Saints on Monday night...    They went on sale on ticketmaster at 10AM...   great seats, too!

On our roof, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Taking pics for our website

"...You know what they don't realize?   

People are smart.  They're not stupid--especially smart people."

        - Fred Wilson

When I was at Fordham, the students wanted to see teacher ratings.  The teachers weren't a fan of making those public, because they didn't want it to become a popularity contest.  Several online efforts were tried, but they failed because it was tough to get one to become the central place for everyone to rank teachers.

Well, teachers, sorry, but you can't stop information from being free, because now the biggest student network has added teacher recommendations.  MySpace now has a place where students can rate their profs--something that a lot of schools either couldn't do or tried to squash.

I'll add my own ratings, but I was curious about some of my faves... here's how they fared:

Prof. Bob George, Finance... I took him like four or five times.  Fantastic teacher... tells it like it is and doesn't let people shovel the bs in class.

4.37 out of 5.0, even though he's not rated as being so easy, which he isn't for finance novices.

Comments:

Tests may be intimidating at first and you may not be satisfied with your first few grades, but if you work hard and study the book and his notes (do problems, etc) you'll get a good grade at the end. Take him, to the point and smart.

Great teacher...very sarcastic. Doesnt take attendance but he knows your name and will hold it against u if u don't show up. Doesn't really teach out of the book...he doesn't have to...as far as I know he could have written the whole thing in one night. V

The only option for finance majors. Untouchable when it comes to his subject matter (go figure - Wharton MBA, Chicago PhD). You will learn so much in his class and will see if you have the mind to handle true finance. The most difficult class at FU.

And of course:

DON'T TAKE HIM - You got it?

As for Dr. Darryl Tress, Philosophy:  4.23 out of 5

The intro course to Aristotle was ambitious reading, but Tress does a very good job of examining the basics, and certainly keeps in mind that the course is intro level. Extremely helpful--don't worry about the big words--she'll explain!

Dean Nancy McCarthy:   4.8 out of 5

If it were not for this woman I would never have graduated. If you ever need anything, she is the person to talk to. One of the best

Pier 96 (56th Street) Open for Free Kayaking, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Come on down...I'll be here all day. This is our new boathouse and we're running the same program we run at Pier 26.

In the last few months, I've seen so many instances of philosophies and strategies that we espouse for entreprenuers and businesses actually apply to my real life.  I think its one of the drivers of the whole "Web 2.0" phenomenon that what's happening how is that we're making the web match how we actually want to live, versus living on the web and changing our habits to do so the first time around.

Therefore, I'm going to reapply my recent list for life...  so be happy, healthy, live long and prosper...

1. Solve small problems.  Instead of trying to do everything at once, divide your issues into smaller ones and get them out of the way.  Keep your solutions simple.

2. Surround yourself with a "responsive and chatty audience"--people who challenge you, give you feedback, and tell it to you straight.

3.  Do something new and different.  Now.  Tomorrow.  Every day.

4.  Distribute.  Distribute.  Distribute.  Get out there and reach people with similar interests, pursue your interests.. i.e. get deeply intertwined in the world around you as opposed to waiting for the world to get deeply intertwined in you.

5.  "Don't hold users against their will."  Don't hold on to relationships with people who clearly aren't excited about being in your life.  All you can do is be the best person you can, if they still don't want in, let them go.

6.  Be mindnumbingly simple.  Don't over complicate your life.

7.  Get people hooked on free--give back to the community by volunteering your time, knowledge, etc and demonstrate your value not by asking for big compensation, but by not asking for any at all for a lot of the things you do.

8. Don't waste any money on marketing... i.e. Don't go tooting your own horn.  If people want to sing your praises, fine, but keep the singing of your own praises to a minimum.

9.  Don't overfund.  Money isn't everything.  Too much of it will also cloud your head.  Just do what you find interesting and don't worry about the money--live within your means.

10.  No one sucks.  Strive to find the unique beauty and interestingness in everyone you meet.  Everyone has something to teach you.

And if this doesn't work for you... try the Sunscreen Song.

Last Friday, I was pissed.   I waited around all day for a bedroom set from Levitz via Furniture.com that never arrived.

So I blogged about it.

But I didn't just blog about it.  I went to LinkedIn and found the guy at Levitz all the way up the chain of command that this delivery screwup led up to... the Senior Vice President of Logistics.  I called him out:

"You know who the buck stops with?  Ward Dingmann, SVP of Logistics at Levitz.  If you leave your image to the guy at the warehouse, forget your company.  So, maybe Ward will Google himself or someone who know him.  He's on LinkedIn, but I'm not connected to him.  So, if anyone knows Ward, let him know there's a pissed off blogger who is without a bedroom set."

Then... I got a comment, for someone at Levitz corporate:

"I read your blog about the problems encountered with your delivery. If you will provide me the delivery document number, your e-mail address, or the phone number you used when you placed the order, I will get the information to Ward so he can personally look into the situation."

Then, at 5:08PM on Tuesday, I hit the jackpot.  One business day later:

Mr. O’Donnell

I wanted to personally apologize for the problems with your recent delivery attempt.  Definitely appreciate any feedback (good or bad), and always attempt to improve our service. 

While it is certainly no excuse in your case, we are in over 3,000 homes nationwide each day and try to perform all deliveries timely and to the satisfaction of our customers.  I’m sorry that it did not happen in this case.

I can assure you we have already looked into the specifics of your delivery, and identified what might have happened.  I have asked our VP of East Coast Warehousing to call you (on Wednesday) once he has all of the facts around what happened, and more importantly, can make a commitment on our attempt to correct and re-deliver.

In the meantime, please to do hesitate to call me directly with any other concerns or comments.  Thanks again for your patience, and we hope you give us an opportunity do earn your trust again.

Sincerely,

Ward

And, like clockwork, Mr. Housein, head of East Coast Warehousing, called me up first thing Wednesday morning.  He was apologetic and didn't pull any punches...  saying they "screwed up" and explained to me in detail, exactly what happened.  Basically, the stuff got barcoded or scanned wrong, and the person who did it didn't doublecheck when it got mixed up and came up cancelled.  That's why there was no follow through, no notification... b/c someone just took a "cancelled" scan and accepted it without doublechecking and following through. 

They do 1200 orders a day out of that place.  It happens.  One slipped through and it happened to be mine.  So when we rescheduled for Saturday and I asked if he could get it to me earlier rather than later, he said, "We'll get it to you first...   we've got to do this one right."

PLUS, I have a later order pending that's supposed to come the first week of October... a couch.  He said that he was getting a shipment in on Friday, and if the couch came in, he'd put it on the truck and get me my couch (a month ahead of schedule) and the bedroom set at the same time.  He even gave me his cell number in case I needed to get in touch with him!

When I asked him about the time that I lost in waiting around and what they were going to do about that, he said he was going to talk with customer service and "do the right thing to make you happy."

So there it is.  After blogging about it on Friday, I get a response the next business day and I hear exactly what the plan to solve the problem is the day after.  I got a total admission of failure by high level people in the company and full transparency into what happened. 

So today was the rescheduled delivery.  8:30AM, the doorbell rings and the furniture is here--both my bedroom set and my couch.  The delivery guys were courtious and quick.  On top of that, after they left, I got a phonecall from the warehouse doublechecking to make sure my stuff arrived.

I have to say, I'm pretty wowed by this whole chain of events and the level of personal care taken by executive level people in the company to make good on a warehouse mixup.  Basically, the won a lost customer back, and hopefully even got a few new ones because of this post.  You should really check out their stuff at furniture.com.  It was reasonably priced and it really looks beautiful now that its here, one week late for the bedroom set and over three weeks early for the couch. In the end a good result made possible by some very dedicated Levitz employees.   Nice job Ward and Housein!

Admin Area, originally uploaded by fredwilson.

So, apparently, I don't work in reception... I work in the "Admin Area". That's how Fred described where I sit next to Kerri when he was taking pictures of the office to give to a friend's architect.

I wasn't at my desk because I went up to Greenwich, CT, to visit with my old co-workers at GM. They're now called Performance Equity Management.

Link: New York Daily News - City News - Man sues landlords for $13M.

An 87-year-old upper East Side man who says he was callously tossed out of his rent-controlled apartment filed a $13 million lawsuit against his landlords yesterday.

Link: New York Daily News - Home - More schools than ever for 1.1M students.

Some 74 new schools are making their debut, swelling the ranks of public schools to a record 1,408 to house more than 1.1 million students.