I hate shopping.

I hate the whole process...  being sold to, crowded stores... buying stuff that other people don't need just because its the day they were born.  I wind up spending money, as most guys do, not actually buying gifts.  (As in...   You're a $30 birthday friend...  You're a $50 date vs. a $100 date.) 

Its all very...   manufactured.  John Cusack captured the feeling best:

“I don't wanna sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't wanna sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed, you know, as a career, I don't wanna do that...right now I just wanna be with your daughter, sir.”

But today, I just received a product that I bought last week that made me feel different about it, from Etsy.  Etsy is a marketplace for all things not mass produced... but as I learned, its a marketplace for people, because you don't just get the item, you get a personal story.  It has a community look and feel...  when you go on the site, you feel like you're at a fair.  Its made just for this kind of stuff... not a one size fits all site where you could sell a lamp, your '82 Chevelle, or women's surplus army pants all in the same place. 

First off, it came from Singapore.  And it didn't come from some big factory where hundreds of 11 year old kids are running big machines or doing this all day by hand until they bleed.  It came directly from Chu Ling, a mom with a 16 month old daughter who isn't feeling well at the moment.  She runs a shop on Etsy and comes from a very poor family.  She handwrote the envelope... somewhere in Singapore... last week.  Something about that is just really fantastic for me...   a lot more interesting than just getting a book from someone from Barnes & Noble.  In fact, I think I want to keep the envelope and give it as part of the gift.

I bought a purple glass pendant.  As soon as Chu received my PayPal payment, she wrote me by e-mail to tell me she'd mail it the next day.  When she did, she e-mailed me again to tell me the tracking number, which, to be honest, I didn't even use.  She had like 500+ positive buyer experiences to her credit against 0 negative ones and not even a single neutral ones. 

I'm very happy with my purchase, too.  So no more manbuying for me...  where I'm just a wallet making a monetary judgement of a friendship.  These things are special an now I feel like I can get special stuff for the people I care about most. 

The web is so fuckin' cool.

Brad wrote this morning about an interesting take on tech blogging.

Too many people writing about solutions, but not enough people talking about the problems.

At the same time, two people sent me some info on this Sunday's DC rally for Darfur.

I'm a bit cynical about these types of political rallies because I feel like its all about complaining about the problems, but not too many people have actual solutions.  Where's the ten step plan for fixing the atrocities in Darfur?   I'll get behind a reasonable solution, but I haven't seen any.

Maybe we should get the tech bloggers to bring their 85 calandaring solutions together to come up with one solution for Darfur...

...and then get the political protesters to work on pointing out what the everyday problems in the tech world that the average person needs solving.

I'd love that.   Web based, AJAX world peace...   and protesters outside Amazon with little "No walled garden" signs.

So I'm realizing that my commute is like 11 minutes too long and my neighborhood is one detached $2 million house too residential.

Its kind of funny, actually, because the first five months that I was living here, I was dating someone in Park Slope, which artificially split my commute in half.  It was rare that I was making the full trip at one time.  Now, admittedly, its kind of annoying.

Plus, I've had a lot of friends start to move into Fort Greene.  That got topped off when we went to see a company right in that neighborhood last week that had an awesome walkup space. 

I really dread the thought of moving again.

Well, first I need to figure out what I'm doing next year so I can size up my bite size.... so I'm probably not going anywhere in 2006.   

But it doesn't seem like this Bay Ridge thing is going to last.

MiniCharlie has the details on how you can see Fred, Brad, Fred's kids Josh and Jessica, and my friend Jen take on lots of nextNYers in dodgeball tonight!  Come out to watch the action!

I have this bizzare little habit everytime I fly on a plane.

I e-mail myself a simple last will and testament.

Then I e-mail my friend Brian the password to my e-mail, in case the plane goes down.

I'm not even afraid of flying or anything...   but while the plane is boarding, I tend to get board and my mind starts wandering.  I figure for the minute that it takes, I might as well have my stuff in order.

There is one thing that I've been putting in it, though, that I can make public here, though.  Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere, but while I have your attention, I think I'd like to make one request public.

I don't want a wake and I want to be cremated.  I really hate the idea of "embalming" and the being put up for display for a couple of days, then being dropped in a box in the ground left to decay.  I mean, come on, does that sound appealing to you?   Nope...  as soon as I go, harvest me for whatever organs people need, and then toast me.  Spread the ashes places I cared about, like the Boathouse or Fordham or something like that. 

Sorry if that was morbid, but that's life.  Now you all know what to do with me should I overdose on Jamba Juice.

Live from the N train over the Manhattan Bridge, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

....its a cement truck full of Wonder Bread!



Haha



You might not find this funny, but I as highly amused.

Sweet... Front row and lots of leg room, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

But where's my tray table??

Off to Tampa, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Niece's first communion...

So NewsCorp invested in SimplyHired...  and the talk is that MySpace will now get jobs content.

Obviously, since USV is invested in Indeed, it was important news.

At first, I thought it was a big win for them, but as I think about it, it may very well be the moment that MySpace jumped the shark.

MySpace is comprised of two things...    user generated content and entertainment.  That's it.  That's been the secret to its success.

But jobs?  How are MySpacers going to react when jobs start showing up?  I mean, I have a feeling that they'll probably just ignore it, because for most people, MySpace is self expression and a way to meet new people or discover new music.  It will be fascinating to see how job content gets integrated here.

I think MySpace could be a huge moneymaker for NewsCorp... the habits of this audience should be valuable enough to mine by "facilitation" alone, without "addition."  In other words, give the crowd enough ways to express themselves and that becomes a lot of valuable metadata.

Frankly, I think the Facebook would have made so much more sense.  College students use the Facebook as their personal PIM... the online connection to their college life that colleges themselves could never create.  Job content, particularly internships, would fit very seemlessly here and probably get a lot more traffic than the average career planning office's website.  (A vertical job search would probably be a lot more useful, too.)  The web offerings of most career planning office's websites are so poor and so behind the times, that by adding a vertical job search to the Facebook, particularly one neatly tied in with cool social features (tagging jobs for friends, broadcasting them to the Finance club, etc...), they'd be doing a huge service to the students.

Plus, regardless of which site gets more traffic, the Facebook is a better target audience for job seekers, because MySpace has a lot of high school students.

The other interesting thing about the Facebook is how it eventually deals with alumni.  At some point, Facebookees are going to leave school and the Facebook is going to be their connection to other alumni.  That means that, if I were InCircle, I'd be looking over my shoulder.  It wouldn't take much, if anything, for Facebook to be the first stop for alumni in terms of social networking, and that's InCircle's business model.  Jobs makes a lot of sense for alumni...  and integrating social features means Facebook moves close to LinkedIn's model as well.  Imagine going on the Facebook to checkout a job, then being able to see how many of your school's alumni work at that company and how you're connect to them.  I think that would be useful for students as well, once a critical mass of alumni are on board.  Sure, it doesn't seem like "fun" content...   but there are thinks really useful to students that aren't always fun. 

Besides... getting paid to work at a great job is fun...trust me.

But back to MySpace, either way, its a facinating deal and it will be an even more interesting integration.

Indeed found this job for me...      Do the best CEOs really job search on Monster?  I always figured CEOs should be passionate people already working in or around the space of your company, or with an obvious public track record of success.  Seems to me paying $300 to post a job on Monster for an early stage tech CEO is a good experiment in adverse selection.

Chief Executive Officer - New York City, NY

Ohio based early stage technology based company with... services in a startup/entrepreneurial venture, the confidence to lead in a high-tech company, and the... (From Monster)

So I wound up getting a Media Center PC (HP) and my next project is to be able to start feeding videos that I either record from the TV, burn from my DVDs, or get off of del.icio.us or ThePAN onto a portable player. 

I've been leaning towards getting a PSP, but storage is limited there.  However, I do like the idea of getting back into gaming a little bit.

So, basically, what I want is a video iPod that plays games. 

Or a PSP with 40 GB of storage.

With PCs, you can add whatever items you need...  there's a 3rd party development market for software and lots of freeware to get your stuff to do what you want it to do.

For PSP and the iPod...  closed=sucky.

Very frustrating.

Welcome Equity Private of SubRosa Capital to the blogosphere.

...but this time, its doormen.

I wouldn't have even known, except that Fresh Direct sent around a notice.

"As you may know, if an employment contract agreement is not reached, 28,000 doormen, elevator operators, porters, and other residential building employees have indicated that they will strike on Thursday, April 20, at 11:59 p.m.

We anticipate a strike could bring delivery complications for your FreshDirect order. As a result, we encourage customers in affected buildings to schedule deliveries for early in the week. In the event of a strike, we plan to reduce time-slot availability on Friday, April 21."

Wow... this could be almost as tragic as the taxi strike.   Remember that?  The streets were mostly clear of traffic.  Everyone took public transportation.  Oh... wait...   that wasn't so bad.

With this doorman strike, people might need to...um...  open their own doors!  Lord, they might even have to get packages sent to work!

Cry me a river.

Maybe we'll start opening doors for each other!  How nice would that be?

BTW...  Some woman kept the door at the gym open for me yesterday even though I was like a good 20 feet from the door.  Maybe she's practicing for when her doorman is gone.

nextNY is having a dodgeball tourney next Monday night from 6PM-8PM.  We have 5 teams and 3 individuals left over for a 6th.   Leave a comment if you would like to fill up one of the last 3 or 4 slots on that team, which will be the last one.

If you sign up, you have to show.

Details here.

Brad was telling us yesterday of a management training exercise he attended while at AT&T.  They took a bunch of suits rock climbing, and Brad being somewhat atheletic was doing pretty well getting up and down the rock face.

So the instructor told him to try doing it blindfolded.

You would think that would have made it a lot harder, but the reality was, climbing blindfolded made it even easier--because you didn't waste time trying to "overnavigate" your path by sight.  You just reached out for sure footing and pulled yourself up.  You didn't pick out a rock or a line up the face that "looked ok" which was probably misleading anyway. 

Making decisions about your next step is always going to involve some risk.  If you think you've calculated all the variables, you've probably overthought it and maybe to your own detriment.  Sometimes you just need to take the plunge sometimes, whether its getting creative (and a bit risky) with a marketing strategy, feature development, or your own career.   

In the last couple of years, I've had the privilege of working with a lot of college students in various career mentoring programs, and one thing has always stood out at me.

Probably about two thirds or more of the applications for NYSSA's SEMI Program come from either immigrants to this country or children of immigrants.  Now, I know that's generally not reflective of the general NYC college student population, so, a disproportionately large percentage of the foreign students are taking advantage of this great opportunity. 

I asked one student about this and he told me that education and opportunity is the only reason that he was here--it was the only reason his whole family came here in the first place. 

What's really obvious to me is that a lot of the native born students here are simply going to get steamrolled by competition like that... and as well they should be. 

So maybe instead of closing the borders, we should be trying to figure out how we can get the people that are here as motivated as the people trying to come here.

This kid was at the Hammerstein Ballroom last night...  talk about quality time with Dad!  More videos here, especially now that Phanfare has MP4 support!

Is MySpace and the Facebook just a better way to meet people?  Are people tired of YAFP?  Check out the traffic on some of the big dating sites and the smaller upstart ones...