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January 30, 2005

40%

Four weeks of the quarter have now passed, which puts us at the 40% mark. It's all just craziness.

I get asked a lot by friends and family about business school, and what it's really like. I often tell them that Mary is a much better barometer of my schedule than I am - she's the one that notices when I'm home late, up early, or seemingly preoccupied with some deadline.

What's disconcerting to me at the moment is how Back-to-the-future-esque it all seems. I honestly don't remember working this hard since my first quarter of b-school (which is kind of like boot camp, but with longer hair and spreadsheets). Shouldn't things be slowing down? Shouldn't senioritis be settling in? Shouldn't my fellow 2005'ers be putting up our feet in class and heckling? Aren't we, after all, "outta here"?

Seems not. Our midterms are in the past, but the team projects are still ongoing. A 2-credit, all-day Negotiations class kicked off on Saturday, and will resume on this coming Friday (and Saturday). In the meantime, there's enough reading and homework to kill an ox. Mock interviews are ongoing (Microsoft is here tomorrow for internship interviews, so I've been busy prepping 1st years), and then we start transitioning our MBAA offices to the next generation.

I'll try to blog a bit more in the next few days. Just as soon as I remember to breathe.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 30, 2005 11:23 PM.
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January 24, 2005

Buy Your Mac A Drink

The Macintosh turns 21 today: January 24, 2005.

Some folks in Germany tracked down Mac programming legend Scott Knaster (I remember buying Mac programming books by the guy when I was a CompSci major at UPS in 19-frickin'-90), who just happened to have a videotape of the launch event. Jobs, all of - what? 28? - at the time, dressed in a suit, is clearly more excited than anyone ought to be.

The video servers are overloaded, of course (Slashdot effect), but I had good luck with this mirror (20.9 MB QuickTime).

21 years. My god. And today, as Woz says, "Pretty much every computer is a Macintosh."

CNET has coverage, too.

UPDATE, February 6, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 24, 2005 8:26 PM.
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January 23, 2005

Now Running 3.14...

I've just completed an upgrade of the blog software to Movable Type 3.14 (from my previous 3.x version).

If anyone notices anything out-of-the-ordinary with the blog, please drop me a line.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 23, 2005 8:42 PM.
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January 21, 2005

Home, At Last

We're back.

The house feels alien - it's cold and damp, a little breezy. Things aren't where we left them. But we're here, and the air's breathable, and that's a start.

Time to get going on laundry.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 21, 2005 9:54 AM.
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United Comes Through

I've been trying to trace down an anomaly in my credit card balance - it's lower than it should be. At first, I figured that the bank had simply attached some pending transactions that weren't showing up through Web banking. However, the discrepancy continued and continued, so I started digging back through the transaction record. Suddenly, BOOM! There it was.

United Airlines credited back my VISA for our aborted pre-Christmas trip to Spokane.

This is terrific news, and my thanks to United for doing right thing by us. So: aside from the fact that the refund was done on the down-low (I mean, not so much as an e-mail to let us know they were doing it), hats are off. I'm happy.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 21, 2005 9:47 AM.
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January 20, 2005

Mac Mini: Hands On

MacWorld's Dan Frakes is back with another Mac Mini piece, this time talking about his "hands on" experiences with the new machine. Conclusion?

"For the money, I predict it's as complete a system - hardware and software - as you'll find for this price."

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 20, 2005 5:44 PM.
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Moving The Industry Forward

I wanted to expand a little bit on last night's post about the Mac Mini. In it, I complained that "...some modern PC laptops don't come with WiFi, Bluetooth, FireWire, DVD drives, or even modern (2.0-era) USB" which is "...bad for the industry, because it retards technological progress in general."

A few of my friends have asked: what the heck am I talking about?

Personal computers aren't "for" anything in the same way that other, physical objects are. The last 30 years of personal computing have been, quite literally, a series of people figuring out neat things they can do with their machines and then getting their friends to do it, too. BOOM! Overnight industry.

Spreadsheets? Dan Bricklin was a Harvard MBA who got sick of "running the numbers" by hand. Desktop publishing? Paul Brainerd thought that computer documents ought to work more like a sheet of paper. Marc Andressen had a jones to look at images and text, together, on this geeky thing he and his friends were screwing around with at college. Shawn Fanning liked the idea of sharing his music with his friends.

In each case, these innovations depended on that which had come before. The spreadsheet needed a non-mainframe computer. PageMaker needed that, plus a GUI. Mosaic both of those, plus the Internet, HTTP and HTML. And Napster required everything of the other three, plus digital music (which itself required CD-ROM drives and sound cards). Good, cheap, widely-available modern hardware is the precursor to software innovation.

Now consider the modern PC. Many Pentium 4 machines out there still ship with freakin' parallel ports. In human terms, this is like having a prehensile tail as well as an opposable thumb. It's just embarrassing.

Why the legacy equipment? Because the PC hardware business is a low-margin, high-volume business that's based on "shipping boxes" with little regard for the future impact of that box. PCs are usually bought based on comparative specifications (e.g., Box A has 600mhz processor and 40 GB hard drive, Box B has a 500 mhz processor and 30 GB hard drive. Hence, Box A is better), so manufacturers tailor their specs to what their competitors are offering. Innovation proceeds along grooved tracks - processors get faster, drives get bigger, CD-ROM drives get faster, etc. - but no real time or money is proactively spent by the PC makers to introduce new kinds of hardware or features that will obviate the existing stuff. Status quo = profit.

Take USB. USB is, without question, a terrific peripheral technology. In the old days, your computer would have a variety of ports that would allow it to talk to external devices. These ports were "dumb" (no ability to auto-detect whether something was plugged in to them), and slow (say, 57,600 bits per second or so), but they were compatible with the growing body of devices (printers, scanners, mice, keyboards, etc.) that were being introduced by third-party manufacturers. Consumers hated having all these little ports on their machines because they were complex and prone to trouble (if anyone remembers DOS or Windows 3.1, you also remember the fun of IRQ conflicts). These ports were also one-at-a-time; if you had a printer plugged in and wanted to use a modem that required the same port, you'd have to unplug the printer to use the modem. And vice versa. This "pain in the ass" factor tended to impede people's adoption of both printers and modems (or more than one peripheral in general), because of the issues changing out the devices.

So USB promised to change all this. It's fast (12,000,000 bits per second), smart (it detects whether something is plugged in or not), daisy-chainable (you can support up to 127 devices off one USB bus - just add a hub if you need more ports), didn't experience IRQ conflicts, and even had power - devices could get their electricity from the USB bus itself, and no longer needed to be plugged in to the wall. USB was even invented by Intel, so it was backed by one of the most powerful and respected companies in the industry.

USB, on introduction, flopped.

No, really. PC manufacturers at first didn't include it on their designs. This was a combination of the cost and education issues. Consumers "weren't asking for it", so makers didn't include it. Of course, consumers "weren't asking for it" because they didn't know about it ... because their PC didn't come with it. Chicken and egg.

Then Intel twisted some arms, and a few manufacturers (Compaq, for instance) started including it. Still, nobody used it because all the keyboard, scanner, mouse, and printer vendors were making devices compatible with the "larger market" - the old, serial- and parallel-port using public. Again, chicken and egg.

What USB needed - and ultimately got - was a shot in the arm. And the shot in the arm came when Apple introduced the iMac in 1998.

The iMac was watershed for a lot of reasons, but the most-overlooked, IMHO, was that it jumpstarted the USB market. See, the iMac didn't allow any kind of peripheral to connect except for USB. The industry snickered - didn't Apple know that there weren't any USB peripheral vendors out there? - but, overnight these USB peripheral makers had a captive market for their stuff. And so they started making it, and shipping it, and the iMac's success meant that millions of people were buying USB stuff and loving it.

Time passes. A few years later, the penetration of USB peripherals was sufficient to make its other advantages obvious to the rest of the world, and the PC industry started pushing USB. And today, the "USB economy" - keyboards and mice, of course, but also USB flash drives and iPod Shuffles - is huge.

The exact same thing happened with WiFi technology - it'd been around for a long time, but it was expensive and exotic. Apple shipped the iBook with WiFi, shipped a base station to go with it, and now WiFi is everywhere. In fact, the entire Internet and telecom industries are undergoing some major change, and a lot of it is being driven by cheap, reliable, wireless technology at the PC level.

My point in all this is not to praise Apple, per se (they did a lot, but they did some of it from necessity), but to instead damn the rest of the PC box makers for lacking anything that even remotely approximates vision. (Dell is one of the worst, here.) By "giving the people what they want" (which, mysteriously, is almost exactly what they've come to know), these companies are effectively freeze-drying our technical infrastructure at the 1981 IBM-PC era. They're killing tomorrow to eke out a slightly-more-marginal profit today. Golden goose, anyone? Hello?

Microsoft is spending a lot of time and money on designing the "PC of the future", and I commend that. My suspicion, however, is that Microsoft is still stuck lobbying the Toshibas of the world to produce radical new hardware designs (e.g., Tablet PC) for customers. Some of this lobbying is successful, some not. Some markets will take longer to mature than others. Hardware makers, however, generally don't care about long-term industry growth. They're too focused on short-term earnings.

So maybe Microsoft should get in to the PC business. It could produce the high-end "reference" machine, and let the other manufacturers follow suit and fill the needs of their respective niches. Hm.

In the meantime, Dell is happy to sell you a $400 PC that's the best 1981 had to offer. But don't let anyone tell you it's the equivalent of the Mac mini.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 20, 2005 4:13 PM.
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Mac Mini, Unwrapped

A number of folks are getting their Mac Minis, and a few are taking photos of the "out of the box" experience. You can take a look at two: uneasysilence.com and tombridge.com. (It's so TINY!)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 20, 2005 3:31 PM.
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"Fantastic Four" Teaser

A teaser trailer for the upcoming "Fantastic Four" movie (opens July 4, 2005 - aka "Will Smith Weekend") is now online. It looks ... interesting I liked the Fantastic Four comics as a kid (I'm not a big comics guy by any means, but remember enjoying those), and have hope that this could be another entry in the Good Comic Book Movie pantheon (Exhibit A: X-Men).

That said, I'd feel a lot better if the director were Bryan Singer instead of ... Tim Story?

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 20, 2005 3:26 PM.
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January 19, 2005

Mac Mini: Comparing Apples To Oranges

MacWorld has an interesting, side-by-side comparison of the $500 Mac Mini versus a $400 Dell system. It's a good read because it does a good job of elaborating on what low-end PCs (and, IMHO, PCs in general) don't give you with their "bargain" sticker price (like, oh, say, a freakin' video card). I'm perpetually shocked that some modern PC laptops don't come with WiFi, Bluetooth, FireWire, DVD drives, or even modern (2.0-era) USB. Instead, these technologies are sold as add-ons, and it's up to the user to a) figure out why they want them, and b) make them work. Messy, messy, messy. And bad for the industry, because it retards technological progress in general.

(NOTE: This is not true of good, higher-end PC brands like Sony or HP. However, if you compare good, higher-end PC brands to Apple product, the prices generally tend to cancel. You get what you pay for, no matter what operating system or processor you choose to use.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 19, 2005 9:00 PM.
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Endless Summer(field)

The apartment is getting better, but it's still not there yet.

I visited yesterday to check on things. The windows had been open for a few days, so the air quality was pretty good. Before we move back in, though, the place needs to pass the acid test - basically, how bad is the fume accumulation with the windows shut? Hence, my plan was to simply shut the windows and walk away for 24 hours. If the floors had off-gassed enough, the air quality would be acceptable. If not, not.

Mary visited today, before noon. The fumes are better, but definitely there. Dammit.

We're venting again, and are (ever) optimistic that we'll be able to go home on Friday morning. Even if we do (and God, I hope so ... if we spend much more time in this place we'll be going out for drinks for the staff, getting invitations to weddings, and being asked to be godparents or something), our work is just beginning: the icky fume smell is in everything we own - clothes, fabric, drapes, you name it. We're going to have to wash everything and keep airing things out for the forseeable future.

What a mess.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 19, 2005 8:58 PM.
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January 17, 2005

NY Times On Social Security

The New York Times has a fascinating article about Social Security - its history, how it works, sensitivities in its projections, and so on. Given the current drive toward "private accounts" being pushed by the Bush administration, it's a must-read. (Free registration required)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 17, 2005 2:24 PM.
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Back To The Hotel

Last night was not a lot of fun. The fumes I wrote about started irritating our eyes and making us seriously concerned about health effects. Eventually, we decided that we needed to vent the apartment lest we inhale this crap all night.

We opened windows on each of the four sides of the house and fired up the fans. This immediately dropped the ambient temperature in the place to near-freezing, so Mary and I piled blankets high on the bed and tried to huddle for heat. It's kind of like camping.

Sleep was fitful at best. It rained during the night and various noises kept waking us up. We finally got up this morning to an ice-cold house, rainwater pooled on the floor around the windows, and a faint fume-y smell. I've had a headache all morning.

We're heading back to the Summerfield tonight.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 17, 2005 12:20 PM.
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Delicious Monster Hangs At Zoka

Wired has a fun article about Wil Shipley and the gang over at Delicious Monster:

"As well as creamy lattes, the coffee shop offers wireless internet access and big, bench-like tables that several people can gather around. Often, Delicious Monster's entire seven-person staff will work there."

For the record, I love their software. And if you want to meet them, Zoka can be found here.

(Thanks to Khan for the link!)

UPDATE, February 6, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 17, 2005 8:18 AM.
Comments (0). Posted to Apple. Permalink for this entry.

January 16, 2005

Wanted: Midden Pile

Smell is one of the more under-rated senses.

Mary and I returned to our apartment today, following the hardwood floor treatment on the ground floor of the duplex.

The place stinks. It smells like paint or paint thinner - a sharp, medicinal smell that, frankly, comes off like the sort of thing that 12-year-old boys try huffing behind the gymnasium.

Of course, this is three days of accumulated fumes, so we're venting the apartment. We've had every window open for most of the morning and afternoon, with fans going full blast and blowing air OUT, trying to get things back to smelling normal. The observant will note that it's 34 degrees outside, so I'm hunched over my laptop or my Brand Management reading, trying to stay close enough to a space heater to keep my knuckles warm so I can type or hold a highlighter.

The paint thinner smell has destroyed, utterly, any sense of familiarity in the apartment. Every time I've come back from a trip or a few days away, there's a subliminal sense of "safe" that comes from walking in to my own house, putting my bag on the floor, and breathing deeply. I expect it's going to be another week or so before I feel like this is "our" place again.

For some reason, my mind keeps going back to "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control", a 1997 documentary from Errol Morris about the connections and parallels between a robotics specialist, a lion-tamer, a topiary gardener and a specialist in naked mole rats. The mole rat guy explained that mole rats identify one another as a member of the tribe (or not) by smell - basically, mole rats in a given tribe all roll around in the same big pile 'o shit (they called it a "midden pile"). When two mole rats encounter each other, if their smells match they're OK. Otherwise, it's Mole Rat Fight Club.

I guess I just wish my house felt like home. (sigh)

UPDATE, August 5, 2007: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 16, 2005 10:15 PM.
Comments (0). Posted to Misc. Permalink for this entry.

January 14, 2005

Summerfield. (Some Are Not.)

As I've written previously, the duplex Mary and I live in was recently sold to new owners. They've asked us to stay on as tenants, but in the meantime are doing a lot of work to the place before they move in. This weekend, they've decided to re-do the hardwood floors on the main level.

Since re-doing floors involves sanding (noisy, dusty) and the application of toxic chemicals, they've generously put Mary and me up at a hotel - Summerfield Suites by Wyndham - downtown. (We're just north of the convention center).

I have to say, this place is pretty nice.

The room has a killer view of Queen Anne and the Space Needle, as well as a bit of Lake Union. We've got a kitchenette, two TVs and the room comes wired with high-speed Internet access (slight annoyance: the Internet service is per-day, and only supports one computer. Since Mary and I are both packing our PowerBooks, we're relying on the Internet Sharing feature in Mac OS X to turn mine into an ad-hoc base station).

One other funny note: rather than the usual Gideon's Bible in the nightstand drawer, there's a book called, "The Teaching Of Buddha."

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 14, 2005 10:04 AM.
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January 12, 2005

Thoughts On MacWorld

So I wanted to get this out yesterday, but events conspired against me. Apologies.

Well, the MacWorld keynote was one hell of a show - even by Jobs' usual standards. We got product introductions (Mac mini, iPod Shuffle), pro-style updates to the core iApps (iLife '05), a new Keynote, and the long-rumored AppleWorks successor, called Pages.

iPod growth is off the charts and profits are at record levels. Apple is not just firing on all cylinders, but has actually achieved liftoff.

It's amazing what Jobs has pulled off since 1997.

News coverage is pretty comprehensive, but I wanted to call out a few things that I think are pretty interesting.

• First, Slashdot has officially freaked out, in positive way, about the Mac mini. Apple posts on Slashdot usually attract a mixed bag of responses, but this is, hands-down, the most overwhelmingly positive I've ever seen. We'll see if that enthusiasm translates into sales, but initial reports are encouraging.
• The iPod Shuffle is genius. Positioning it as a "shuffle" means it has a point of distinction from other music players. It also positions the hard-drive iPods as "primary" devices, with the Shuffle as the "on-the-go" player for walking, working out, or whatever. The fact that it has no moving parts makes it perfect for exercise. And I note that the 512MB model holds 120 songs; at 4 minutes per song, that's 8 hours of music ... which is more than enough time to run a marathon.
• I'm buying a 1 GB iPod Shuffle for running. I was going to buy the $99 one, but as it turns out you can use it for a thumb flash drive. So if I buy the $149, I can get a half-gig flash drive PLUS my half gig of songs. I suspect that the iPod Shuffle is going to quickly scoop up sales that would go to "vanilla" thumb drives - the logic will be, "for an extra $20, I can get an iPod AND a thumb drive?"
• Jobs claimed that the iPod market share doubled in 2004, primarily by scooping the high end of the flash-player market (his exact comment was, "the iPod Mini worked.") The iPod Shuffle is, I think, perfectly designed to go after the remaining flash market. It's the right product at the right time, with the right brand and the right marketing. If Apple can pull off an 80+% share of the MP3 player market (that's based on total units, not dollar-denominated or some subgroup, such as hard-drive-based players), it will be a HBR-worthy coup. Amazing business strategy and execution.
• Mac mini? Three words: About. Damn. Time.
  
  Apple has been knocked for a long time for the "expense" of their hardware, but when you compare their stuff to comparably-equipped Wintel hardware, the prices are always super-close. Sometimes the Mac is $50 more, sometimes the PC is more. Part of it is that Apple always puts the "extras" in to their stuff (Wifi, Ethernet) while on many PCs this stuff is third-party (or of lower quality). The Mac mini, on the other hand, is stylish, small, and hits the price point that gets people to genuinely re-evaluate the "expense" issue in their minds. I mean, yes you can tart the thing up with more RAM, a DVD burner, Bluetooth, etc., and boost the price close to a grand, but that's the user's choice. If you want to walk out of the Apple store with a brand new Mac for less than $500, you can. Outstanding. And unprecedented. Look for Mac mini prices to inch downward over time ... and for the addition of things like TV tuners and whatnot to make it a living-room box.
• The big surprise, however, was Pages, which has been rumored for a super-long time and finally arrived. While a lot of Microsoft haters were hoping that Pages (and, presumably, a complement of other Office software) would shoot Mac Office dead, if anything Pages has just confirmed how good Office 2004 really is.
  
  Pages is clearly an AppleWorks replacement, period. It's an entry-level, visually-dazzling word processing program. Yes, it reads and writes Word files, but it's ultimately a way for home- and small-office users to produce church newsletters and the like without a lot of hassle. The integration with the iApps is genius, but the focus on templates really tells the story - Pages is all about customizing an Apple-designed layout to your specific purpose. In that way, Pages is not dissimilar from Microsoft Publisher.
  The reason this is significant is that, despite Pages' long-overdue arrival, Office 2004 still is, and will continue to be, the pre-eminent productivity solution on the Mac. Spending time in Spreadsheet Modeling class has shown me, more than ever, what a fantastic product Excel is. Word is a staple. And, while I'm a Keynote fan (I find PowerPoint kinda clunky), there's no denying that the Office apps work and feel very Mac-like. The folks in the MacBU at Microsoft bust their asses for the platform, and the quality really shines through.

One more quick note: Gizmodo had a hysterical Apple parody (iProduct) on their site, which spawned a parody of the parody (iProduct rebuttal). Be sure to check 'em out.

UPDATE, March 12, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 12, 2005 10:04 PM.
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January 11, 2005

Live MacWorld Coverage...

I'm in Brand Management right now, but I'm totally distracted by the live keynote coverage of MacWorld expo over at MacCentral.

Updates and thoughts later today.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 11, 2005 10:49 AM.
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More Hot Tub Anecdotes

As of 9 PM last night, there wasn't anyone using the hot tub at Richard's. We were there for a good 30 minutes or so, and absolutely nobody walked in to use it while we were soaking. Hmm...

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 11, 2005 10:31 AM.
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January 10, 2005

Richard Is Reading

Ha! It's clear that Richard is reading my blog - he phoned about a half hour ago and invited Mary and me over for some hot tubbing.

Given that I just got back from a run (two miles!), that sounds pretty good.

Also, the Roland Orzabal album I bought on Half.com last week arrived today, and I'm eager to give it a listen with some friends and a glass of red wine.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 10, 2005 7:50 PM.
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Storm Watch

The Storm have published their 2005 game calendar.

Opening night is Saturday, May 21, 2005 at 1 PM. Key Arena. Be there.

If you're an iCal user (or a user of ics-compatible calendar software, such as Outlook), I have built a file with their home games all populated and ready to go. Get it by clicking here.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 10, 2005 4:05 PM.
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January 9, 2005

Celebrity Hot Tub Party!

It's been a long week (as evidenced, at least partially, by my lack of posts since Tuesday), so I went over to Richard's last night to hang out and play Halo.

Metropolitan Tower has a hot tub (along with a pool, exercise room, sauna, community room, etc.), so at one point we decided to go for a soak and unwind.

As I was sitting there in the tub, jets of hot water blowing against the small of my back, I engaged in the usual idle thought of the non-hot-tub-having, namely, God, if I lived in a building with a hot tub, I'd be in the thing all the time!

And yet, I think the data say otherwise.

Consider. Richard's lived in Metropolitan Tower for better than two years. Mary and I aren't exactly strangers to his apartment, if you know what I mean - we're over at least once a week, and sometimes more than that, for one thing or another. It's an odd seven-day window when we're not together, drinking red wine and talking politics, work, school, or some other damn thing. Yet we never use the hot tub, or even ask to. And, come to think of it, Richard's never mentions that he's "just finished a soak" or "got back from the pool." It's a feature that everyone knows about, pays lip service to using, and ... never seems to use.

Other anecdotal evidence: the hot tub and pool area was devoid of others when we arrived. This is a Saturday night. In a building with hundreds of other residents, there's got to be a chance that at least 1% of them would be using a popular community facility to relax.

Still more evidence: all the people I've known with hot tubs at their houses - my friend Jason had one when I was growing up, and my friend Dave has one at his place in Issaquah - never seem to use them. Hot tubs are invariably in need of cleaning, chemicals, or some maintenance that prevents their use.

So now I'm really, really curious. If I were the manager of a property that had a hot tub, I'd start compiling usage statistics on the thing. I have two questions.

First: of the number of people shopping for apartments, how many ask about (and express delight/pleasure in the existence of) the hot tub? (I bet this is pretty high - 20% or so.)

Second: of the actual residents (and their guests) in a given building, what percentage of the population actually use the hot tub? (I bet this is shockingly low - 1 - 2%.)

And, this begs a larger question: how the heck does Tubs stay in business?

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 9, 2005 12:10 PM.
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January 4, 2005

One More Trip 'Round The Sun

Birthdays are strange. People come up to you all day and congratulate you for doing ... what? Surviving? I mean, it's not like we did anything to earn our birthdays. It's not like graduating high school, completing a painting, or earning a perfect attendance record at work. All we had to to was show up.

So anyway. 32 years ago today (and right around this time - 10:15 AM), my Mom was doing a whole lot of work on my behalf. While my memory of the occasion is dim, I have been assured that I was pretty ungrateful after I arrived - crying and carrying on.

(Thanks, Mom.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 4, 2005 9:31 AM.
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January 3, 2005

My Ass Is Out Of Shape

One of the big themes we give to people considering UW is that success in business school is all about tradeoffs. You can't have it all. If you really want something - career success, quality family time, washboard abs, an ability to sling Java with the Bill Joys of the world - it's going to require an investment of time, and, given that time is fixed at 24 hours a day, time for one thing will necessarily come out of time for another.

This is a long-winded way of saying that I'm deeply out of shape.

The first casualty of the b-school experience is not sleep. Nor is it your social life. Instead, the first casualty is exercise. With rare exception, business school students cut the gym once the work starts piling. By the time winter quarter rolls around, well, there's a roll around most student waistlines.

In keeping with both a New Year's commitment and a general desire to get back to my fighting weight, I went out running tonight. Hoo-boy. I did a mile, but I did it slowly. Real slowly.

My goal is to do the St. Patrick's Day Dash in March, the Olympia Half Marathon in May, and the Seattle Marathon in November.

At my current rate, the St. Patrick's Day event should be renamed. I'm not dashing anywhere.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 3, 2005 6:06 PM.
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Woodinville Is Wine Country

I grew up in Woodinville. So when I found out my Mom and stepfather were in town and staying with old friends of the family, we naturally all set aside time to have breakfast together.

That was yesterday morning.

Breakfast quickly turned in to a walk along the Sammamish River Trail, and the walk into a winery tour. While most people know the St. Michelle or Columbia wineries, (or, for that matter, the Red Hook if your tastes run to brew), Mom instead took us to some places I'd never heard of - Facelli and DiStefano. Tastings were conduced, and bottles acquired.

As such, we've now got some good stuff in our wine rack.

Two special points about the experience. First, the weather was spectacular. It was clear and cold and sunny, and the crispness in the air seemed particularly conducive to good thinking and good conversation. From time to time I found myself feeling like I was in a film or something - no pauses, smart comebacks, good insights. (Given the wine content of the afternoon, the film would have to be a sequel to Sideways). I regret not having my digital camera with me to snap a few shots for the blog.

Second, Woodinville surprised me. I have fallen head-over-heels in love with living in Seattle proper, and somewhat pooh-pooh the 'burbs. (The fact that I grew up out in the middle of tract houses and Zip markets doesn't much help). And, indeed, these wineries aren't much to look at - they're in industrial office parks, for Pete's sake - but the wines were excellent and the people genuinely warm. Maybe there's more to the Eastside than Borders and Bed, Bath and Beyond after all...

UPDATE, September 10, 2005: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 3, 2005 8:56 AM.
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January 1, 2005

Emerald City

What is it about New Year's Day that feels so surreal?

I mean, yes we were out until two in the morning, and yes I didn't roll out of bed until - what? - 10:30, but still this whole day feels like a long, lost Sunday.

Mary and I rang in the new year at Consolidated Works, attending the Heaven and Hell Ball. Total blast. We got to see Harvey Danger and United State of Electronica bring down the house. Saw old friends, drank some watery beer, laughed, cheered.

Happy new year, everybody. 2005 is looking pretty good from here.

UPDATE, November 18, 2005: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined.

UPDATE, November 10, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 1, 2005 5:30 PM.
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