I don't understand this guy at all.  Check out his four starts so far:

Date                     Opp.                     W     L      S      IP           H        R    BB   K            

Oh, and btw...  Julio Franco is obviously well into his sixties.  Forty-six?  Right.

Every now and then, the NYPD does these mass mobilizations to practice.  This was by Lincoln Center.  Good work!

This is my first moblog.  I got a Treo 650 today.  Dierg and I went out to dinner after work.  This was before she splattered ketchup all over herself.

My parents are in the process of moving...   We're all slowing locating closer to Gino's.  They've got a lot of work to do over the next month, though, because not only did the people who lived in their new house not do much work on it during the 30 years that they lived there, but they probably had the worlds most god-awful taste.  You just have to see it to believe it:

You had to see this coming...

Link: CNN.com - World's oldest man dies in New York - Nov 20, 2004.

*Hale retired 50 years ago as a railroad postal worker and beekeeper

*watched his lifelong favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, win the World Series again after 86 years.

*At age 95, Hale flew to Japan to visit a grandson who was in the Navy. While en route back to the United States, he stopped in Hawaii and even gave boogie-boarding a try.

*At 103, Hale was still living on his own and shoveling the snow off his rooftop.

*Guinness record-holder for the oldest driver. At age 108, he still found slow drivers annoying

*Hale outlived his wife, who died in 1979 (69 years of marriage)

Now that's a life.

Fred Hale.  113.  I may just have to live that long to see the Mets win another championship.

Web2MemeMap, originally uploaded by Tim O'Reilly.

Tim O'Reilly posted this on Flickr. This is a good visual display of what's going on in the new web.

I'm at WeMedia at the moment...

So the other day I ran some things to clean up my laptop...   uninstalling random features I didn't think I needed.  Who would have thought that uninstalling speech recognition features would also uninstall handwriting recognition.  Tablet rended useless for the moment... very frustrating as I try to blog the WeMedia conference.

Listening to the first panel, it makes me wonder whether or not the changing media opens up new opportunities for young journalists who have cultivated WeMedia platforms and technology to create trust.  In other words, is it easier for CBS to put Andy Rooney on a podcast or to hire a true podcaster...  and if they hire a podcaster, what could they actually provide that person in terms of channel support? 

Larry Kramer brings up an interesting point that new forms of media are increasing utilization rates of the newsroom.  Whereas in the past, political staffs couldn't find their way on the air when the station was hyperfocused on one progam, they're now publishing stories and video on the web.

According to Farai Chideya, NPR has a job opening for a New Media Music Editor.  I'll make sure Fred doesn't apply. 

Here's another digital divide:    Political/news engagement and disengagement.   How many people are less interested in the news and politics than they were ten years ago because they have so much other content to consume or because they're more connected to work?  (iPods and Blackberries gaining commuter minutes versus the newspaper.)  How many are more hyperfocused on it because of blogging and access to more and better information?  I feel like there's more of the former than of the latter.

The benches at Swift were really comfortable last night.  They weren't very high, but I felt like the seat to back ratio provided good back support.  I'm sitting on a folding patio chair at DTUT at the moment.  Its alright.  Accident prone Ruby just came in complaining that the deli next door carded her for cigarettes.  No ID, no cigarettes.  Who walks around without ID?  Who still smokes?  Could be worse.  She could be starving to death on national television 15 years after her husband's botched attempt to kill her while the whole country feigns interest as if they'll remember her when the next kidnapping or hostage standoff or sex scandal grabs the headlines.  Don't snicker.  Anyone ask about Elian lately?  You know that baby who fell down the well?  Jessica McClure.  Well, she's in college now.  Now there's someone who'd make a great blogger.  Watch out Wil Wheaton.  Obscurity definitely trumps mediocre celebrity.  The smoochy studying couple next to me is leaving and another couple is taking their place.  I swear everyone in this place looks like they're on an internet date.  The Battery Ventures guys need to come to this place to understand the inner workings of Friendster dating.  I like how CNN now puts people's positions on things right under their names.  Bob Jones.  Against socks and sandals.  Shelly Smith.  This socks and sandals are ok.  By the way, this whole Holy Thursday teachers strike is a crock.  If all of these teachers showed up on church on that day to actually observe Holy Thursday, that would be one thing, but it isn't even a Holy Day of Obligation.  Amazing how, in some schools, half the faculty was so strictly religious that they felt the need to take off.  If I was a teacher, regardless of whether or not I thought I should have off, I don't think I'd ever leave my kids alone for the sake of a union protest.  That's a good sign to the kids that you don't care about them.  They made it to school, you should, too.  Given the kind of music that plays here at night, I don't think this is really the kind of place you should take kids under 10 at 9:30, but yet, people insist on it.  No good will come of this girl walking around with an open smores related flame.  She's walking way too fast and its leaning back towards her, making her nervous and causing her to walk even faster.  Where's the fire extinguisher?  People, if you ever turn on CNN and the headline reads "O'DONNELL:  8th DAY WITHOUT FEEDING TUBE", someone please shoot me.  I'm serious.  I don't care if you're not sure whether or not I'm responsive or conscious.  I refuse to let my dwindling life deteriorate to the point where I'm little more than a ratings generator.  I think I'm one more post away from the first Google page for a "DTUT" search.  I'm the first two on the second page.  Someone link to me.  Push me over the top.  This post needs purpose.  And now I'll check spell, knowing full well I spelled "definitely" wrong again.  You know what's also weird?  "Blogger" is not in the Six Apart dictionary.  Can we fix that?

I love seeing depictions of the future on film, and I always think its really cheesy when the future is some kind of peaceful utopia.  Blade Runner's future is a dark, rainy stew of microchips, languages, neon, and flying cars.  (Its 2005... where are our flying cars?!)

Sometime towards the end of next year/beginning of 2007, we'll see Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones 4...  25 years after Blade Runner...  25 years of attempting to top what I think may be his best performance.  Harrison Ford has never been the indestructable tough guy... he's always carried the weight of the situation on him, but still managed to win in the  end.  The streets of the future have worn him down in Blade Runner, but he's got enough for one or two good swings.

Sean Young is perfect in this movie...   too perfect, which creates a lot of conflict for Harrison Ford's replicant eliminating dayjob.  Its too bad she went from Stripes, Blade Runner, and Wall Street to starring opposite Punky Brewster in Motel Blue.  (I've never seen it, its just that IMDb paints a pretty dismal picture of her spiralling career.) 

Darryl Hannah's eyeblacked replicant charactor isn't someone I'd want to mess with in a dark alley in the future either...   especially with that crab walk and all.  So let's see... Darryl's played a robot, a fish, a 50ft. tall woman...   pretty versitile. 

The visuals in this movie are really something...   a lot of time is spent just showing us the landscape, putting every scene in context.  The juxtaposition of all this technology and all the grit and grime set an appropriate tone for the job that Harrison Ford is tasked with doing.

     So I got another call from Patricia Kitchen, the Newsday reporter who interviewed me a few weeks ago.  We left off last time talking a little bit about blogs and I had pointed her to my attempt at a Career Q&A blog, which I haven't quite yet put the full court press on.  Anyway, this time, she's going to write an article about how blogs can help you with your career, and again, I talked her ear off for a good long time.  As I talked about it, I think she was overwhelmed, and admittedly, I was to, about the scope of uses blogs could have in terms of helping you out with your career.  In fact, at one point, she said, "I know you have your other book that we talked about, but you almost have enough for a book right here."
     At first, I kind of blew that notion off...  "Haha.. yeah, right."   But, after I got on the phone, I thought about it.  Actually, there was a lot of useful stuff here, and it was cutting edge and ahead of the curve.  More interestingly, I was as qualified as anyone else to write something about it.  I've seen how blogs change the interviewing process and blogs have enabled me to develop industry connections.  Not only that, their ability to keep me informed on a realtime basis about what's on the minds of the thought leaders in my industry is invaluable.  I started thinking about blogs as a career learning tool when I passed some marketing and brand related blogs onto a recent college graduate looking to switch into the marketing field.  She found them really useful, and I realized after talking with Patricia that there aren't a lot of good resources available to introduce people into this blog world, and more specifically, how really explore its value as an extension of your offline network.
     In fact, I'd go as far as to say that blogs will fulfill the promises that all of these professionally themed social networking sites will ultimately fail on.  For example, I filled out a LinkedIn profile about two months ago.  I think I used it once and that's about it.  Its not because there aren't interesting people to connect to on it--in fact, there are lots of top tier people who have LinkedIn profiles.  Its just that the site and really the concept, is very static.  There just isn't enough to do on them.  There's nothing active going on.  I'm just going on there to actually try to connect with someone (i.e. pinging people with hat in hand, which I hate).  There isn't any of that non-networky networking that really builds relationships.  Like, for example, offline, when you speak at a conference, it begets a lot of great conversations, builds your reputation, and connects you to a lot of feedback.  You don't explicitly speak at conferences to network, but its a valuable underlying benefit that gets you connected to people with them necessarily feeling like you're using them.  Blogs have the same effect and that's where their real value is.  When you write an interesting post, people comment on it, link to it from their own posts, and it helps build your own reputation as an interesting thought leader.  The more people who connect to it and read it, the more they are likely to bring you into their circle of "People I Read" lists, which, to me, is just as valuable a network as anything you can create on LinkedIn or Friendster.  You might not get the scale, but the connections you make are stronger, and to be honest, it doesn't matter if you get the online scale.  You get scale by being connected to the offline networks of people you're linked into online.  You don't need to be connected to 100,000 Friendsters... all you need is five or six people who regularly link to your blog and pass your thoughts around to their on and offline colleagues.  Plus, unlike conferences, anyone with great insight can become a thought leader.  You don't necessarily need a fantastic resume to be thoughtful about a particular field that you follow and anyone can blog about what they're up to.  I think for any professional wanting to get ahead and make a name for themselves, no matter what industry they're in, a regular blog is a must.  Think about it.  If you were a middle manager at some no name company, and you've been blogging for the past year about the ways you would streamline your business if you got the chance or the initiatives you took with your little group, that could be very impressive self promotion if you got someone to look at your site and you put it on your resume.  Instead of having your self worth reduced to bullet points on a single sheet of stock paper, a potential employer could scan through months of your thoughtful accounts on management.  Plus, obviously, your writing would say something about your communication skills.
    Obviously, there are pitfalls.  You have to decide what things you can say for confidentiality reasons and what you can't, as well as where you draw the line in terms of putting up personal information, political views, etc...  but I think the benefits for career advancement are huge.
     Therefore, I've made the decision to put my current work on career advice for young college students aside and start writing a book about blogging to help your career.  Ms. Kitchen has unknowingly inspired me, and I really think this idea has a good shot of taking off, because, thanks to the election and Dan Rather, blogs have jumped into the public spotlight in a big way, and a lot of people are still scratching their heads over the practical uses for blogging. 

    The ironic thing is that when I named my blog "This is going to be big...", it never occured to me that what would be big was the blog itself.

Download 4_to_86th.3g2

After meeting the guys from Vimeo, I've started playing around with my phone's video feature.  What I really need to do is to get my PowerShot fixed and get the video working on that.  I'm sure I'll eat up all my allowable bandwidth on this, but its a video clip of me waiting to arrive at 86th and Lex on the 4 train after a Fordham basketball game last night.  They lost, and I'll post more about that later, but for now, here's the clip.   (Jeff the Analyst has informed me that you need the latest version of Quicktime (6.5) to view it.)

At Demo, Mena introduced her mom to do the next iteration of "Its so easy, my mom can use it."  The team at Six Apart is building a product that her mom actually wants to use, because, these days parents can be pretty tech savvy.  (So I hear, anyway...)

Well, I'm glad that Mena's mom knows how to use a computer, but my mom doesn't, nor does Nana.  Yet, I'd love to find a way to connect them to all the content and photos I produce.  I'd even like to copy them on e-mails.

Why doesn't somebody create a "convert to meatspace" service for e-mail and RSS.  I'd definitely pay for Nana to get, each week, a printed copy of all my posts (well, minus the tech ones anyway), with embedded photos, mailed to her.  In addition, I'd like to be able to send her e-mails at nana@meatspace.com that someone would print out, put in an envelope, address, stamp, and mail for me.  I hate snailmail.  I hate stamps... never have them, never know where to get them. 

I'm not saying this could ever be a huge business or is something we'd ever invest in... its just something I want.  Plus, its got to be so easy to set up.  Printers and mail machines are automatic now... you'd just have to hire a monkey to refill the paper.  A website, a server, one printer, one mail stuffer, one postage machine and a basket that the post office picks up everyday... oh.. and the refill monkey.  How hard could that be?

...because we all know, just like Rocky V, the third Godfather didn't exist.  You never heard of it.  It never happened.   You hear me?

Because Sofia Coppola may be able to direct, but she can't act her way out of that nose.

But anyway, these two movies always go together.  You buy the boxed set.  Its like...  pasta and sauce.  Cappuccino and a little sambuca.  (Or, if you're my grandmother, a lot of sambuca...  j/k!  We always pour more in than she wants.) 

I don't really have to say much about the Godfather set.  You know it.  You've all seen it.  It has an amazing cast of actors and the time is taken to tell the story of an excellent book, which I read as well.  If you haven't seen it in a little while, spend an afternoon with it on a rainy Saturday.  While you're watching, don't hesitate to stick two pieces of bread in your cheeks and do your own Brando.

I bring this set up, which should be on everyone's list, because I was reminded of Sonny Corleone the other night.  James Caan does a terrific job as the headstrong, short tempered eldest son of the Don.  Remember what he does to Connie's husband for hitting her?  Well, I'm walking along 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn the other night and this couple is crossing the street.  The car waiting at the corner beeps them along as the light changes to green.

The guy whips around and says, "What's your f*cking problem?"

The driver responds, "Get the f*ck out of the street."

Obviously, he didn't know he was dealing with Sonny...   this guy basically takes off, without hesitation, down the street running after the car on foot.  The next line is classic:

"Get out of that car so I can bitch slap you!"

That's vintage Sonny as far as I'm concerned.  It was at that moment that I fully realized I was back in Brooklyn.

But look where it got him.  Sonny never made it and the quiet youngest brother that was destined to be "a senator" winds up taking over the family business.   But that's ok, because they're moving to Vegas and going legit.

Right?

This movie is nothing short of an epic.  Its the Italian immigrant's version of King Arthur and The Knights of the Round Table.  Because its not just about the movie.  Its about everyone's version of the movie in their own lives.  Now its an overplayed stereotype, but these people were like royalty at one time and there was a story to be told long before the movie came out.  Where they criminals?  Sure.  Did they have the respect and devotion of their communities more so than elected politicians?  You bet.

You know, I think its interesting how every ethnic backround has its own underworld element, with its own style and relationship to the rest of the community.  We always see this mafia thing as "protective" as oppossed to parasitic, but you never know whether or not that's the media spin.  I think that would be an interesting study.

As for the movie?  That's an interesting study in itself.  But remember, leave the gun.  Take the canoli.

I am mentoring a Fordham freshman and she just started a blog to keep track of her career development and organize her thoughts.  I think its a great experiment and I, for one, am very excited to see where this leads.  I'd appreciate if you could pop over and leave a word or two of encouragement or advice for Christina--either about blogging or about finding her niche in the business world in general.

I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes.

Gabe Morris wrote this on my last post:

LinkedIn annoys people to the extent that it connects you without relevance. The basis for LinkedIn and Friendster’s automatic relevance is degrees of separation. But this has weaknesses – there are second degree contacts who I have very little in common with, while I am sure there are hundreds of people in the sixth degree and beyond that I would have plenty in common with.

Excellent point.  If you're going to build a relevent social network, the glue should be something more than connection itself. 

Got video?   Try Vimeo.  I uploaded a clip of my parent's dog, Joy.

A couple of rounds of pool with Fred, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

And yes, he did win...



..one game...by one ball. :)

This is my car..., originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Well...its exactly the kind of car I want to order anyway...and I checked...its an automatic. :)