Web Conferencing With Barrack Obama

One of the cool things about our office building is the fantastic lineup of speakers and guests Saeed and crew like to bring through. There have been lots of big name tech execs, entrepreneurs, authors, investors and just generally interesting people. Not a week goes by without someone interesting either dropping by the office itself, or available at an event in the building. However, Saeed has outdone himself this month, getting Senator Barrack Obama to stop by the building on June 2 for a meet and greet. Unfortunately, the way politics works these days, in order to be included in the meet & greet, you need to shell out $1,000 as a campaign contribution. While understandable, it’s disappointing. I’m not a particularly political person. I tend to be turned off by almost all politicians. While I’m far, far, far from figuring out who I’d like to be the next President, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least interested in Obama’s campaign. At least so far, whether it’s true or not (or just a media creation), he comes off as being someone who actually is interested in solving big problems, rather than someone who’s just interested in power. I think it would be quite interesting to see him in person, but I’m not giving him $1,000 just to find out — even if Rick makes a very compelling argument that this is a once-in-a-lifetime politician.

Still, for those of us who don’t have quite so much money to toss around frivolously on every other politician who comes to town, Saeed and crew organized for Senator Obama to hold a webconference at the building yesterday — which was free. Oddly, though, you had to “apply” at the Entrepreneurs for Obama website. Just the fact that you had to “apply” was a bit of a turnoff, as it suggests the campaign is trying to keep out certain people (or, more likely, capture your personal info for later pleas). I made the cut though, and headed down to the cafeteria to see what it was all about. For a chance to interact with a leading politician, I was actually surprised at the relatively small turnout. They could have easily fit everyone in the auditorium, rather than the larger cafeteria. Not sure if others didn’t make the cut, or it just wasn’t advertised widely enough, but I was a bit surprised. There were maybe 60 people there and lots of empty seats.

Then… came the technical difficulties. For a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, it was a bit embarrassing. They used Yahoo Messenger for the chat, and as we started, there was pure static rather than Senator Obama’s voice. That resulted in a few minutes of tech support while Obama sat waiting. Finally, they got it working, but the “video” wasn’t a video at all. I don’t know if there were bandwidth problems or what, but the “video” was changing at about 1 frame per minute (no joke). Basically, it was a still shot of the Senator holding earbuds to his ear that would shift every minute or so. The sound quality was awful and there was a noticeable lag. There really was no reason not to at least do the audio portion over the phone.

Obama gave a short intro that was about what you’d expect and then took questions. People seemed a bit shy to ask questions, but eventually came up with some challenging ones. That’s actually where Obama started to shine. While he initially started off his responses with the typical pat politician answers, with each question he started to dig deeper into his thoughts, and it showed that either he was really well briefed or was really thinking about these issues… Unfortunately, though, technical difficulties got in the way again. Grier’s brother David asked a long question about tax policy and government expenses and just as Obama said “that’s a really fantastic question,” the static came on again and we had to wait another 2 minutes to get the system working again. Obama joked, of course, that the technical difficulties had nothing to do with him trying to avoid the question. And, while he did give a good answer, the technical quality was really distracting. A total loss of communications happened a couple more times as well, and while the Senator was kind and gracious enough to stick around 15 minutes longer than he was supposed to, a lot of that time (both his and ours) was totally wasted.

After this, Obama’s “New Media Director,” Joe Rospers (who was there in person) gave a presentation that was somewhat forgettable. It was nice that he gave a little history of campaign websites, but it began to drag on after a bit and I gave up and headed back to work.

All in all, it was interesting. I’m still intrigued by Obama, though not enough to give him $1,000 just to be in the same room with him. I was impressed by his grasp of the issues being discussed, and the obvious depth he was willing to delve into in answering the questions. Other than a brief mention of how the patent system needed to be reformed, he didn’t touch on my pet topic of intellectual property reform. The guy organizing the event noted that the “Entrepreneurs for Obama” group had put together a position paper for the Senator on patent reform and I may try to get a copy of it — though I’m almost afraid of what it might say. As for the overall event, it would have been much better if the technical difficulties weren’t such a huge distraction, but give the campaign credit for at least being willing to try something like a web conference.

I snapped a few pictures from my seat, though, they’re hardly anything special.

Kaboom!

There’s a radio station here in San Francisco called KFOG that puts on a big concert, called Kaboom on Piers 30 and 32 every year, which is followed up by a big fireworks display synchronized to music. Sunnia and I try to go pretty much every year — especially since it’s free. Except… this year, it wasn’t free at all. Apparently the costs have gone up, so they decided to charge everyone $10 to go, which really isn’t that bad a deal, and actually could cut down on the crowds, which might be nice. However, before we even had a chance to make that decision, Byung and Greg invited us to skip the crowds and watch the fireworks from the comfort of their sailboat out on the bay. Cool!

Sunnia cooked up a strawberry-rhubarb cobbler and we drove up to Emeryville (where they keep their boat). We were a bit late and then got lost in the parking lot (don’t ask) trying to find the right dock. However, we eventually got there, and joined the crew of folks on the boat, which included 8 other adults and 5 children (I think all under the age of 6…). 6 of those 8 adults were all sailors, so Sunnia and I went below deck to get out of the way and hung out with Byung (and ate too much food) while we motored out. When I was a kid, I went sailing a few times with my Dad and Wil (on a much, much smaller sailboat), but it’s been at least 20 years since I’ve been on a sailboat, so it took a little getting used to the motion.

It had been crazy windy and cold (as the weatherman said on the radio “unseasonably cold and blustery”) all day long, and when I’d been walking Sugar earlier, I got worried about just how icy cold it would be on the water. And, indeed, even though I came bundled up in four layers, I was told I probably wasn’t wearing enough. So I stayed below deck on most of the ride out — and as we left the dock, the water seemed pretty choppy, so the ride was a bit bouncy. However, as we passed under the Bay Bridge (both the new and old part), amazingly the wind went away and it actually became pretty nice out, so we popped out to see the view. We motored over to McCovey Cove, with a nice view of AT&T Park and then anchored to wait for the show. Apparently someone was supposed to bring a boombox so we could hear the concert and the music synchronized to the fireworks, but somewhere along the way it was forgotten. No matter. Soon enough, the fireworks went off — and we were actually really close to the barge where they were setting them off. It was a long show (20 to 30 minutes or so) and both kids and adults seemed to enjoy themselves. About 3/4 of the way through, I figured I might as well try to see if my cameraphone would work and snapped a bunch of pictures. Unfortunately, most of them look like a boat exploding in the Bay:

Oh well. I did get one that actually looks like fireworks:



All in all, pretty cool. After the show, they turned the boat around and started to motor back, just as we had motored in, and we were all amazed at how nice it was out. Not too windy. Not too cold. Then, apparently, the sailors noticed that there was another sailboat nearby… and it had its sails up, rather than motoring. In an effort to defend their honor as sailors, they put up the sail, turned off the motor and away we went. We got to sail all the way back and it really was a lot of fun. As we got close to dock, Byung asked me if I would blog about this… so, what else could I do? All in all, it was a really fun experience, both the fireworks and getting to hang out on the boat. Hopefully we’ll get to go again sometime.

At What Price Would We Sell Our Wedding Date?

There have been huge collection of news articles lately about the popularity of July 7th for weddings this year. Even famous folks like Eva Longoria are planning to get married that day — though, she hasn’t found a location yet and, I’d imagine it’s getting increasingly difficult to find any venue at this point. It’s not too difficult to understand why. The date 07/07/07 has a nice symmetry to it, first of all. Then, of course, for many, 7 is considered a lucky number. Some religious folks believe that 777 is a number representing God. Then there are those who believe that 7 is a lucky number in gambling — and you can see that in slot machines where 7 – 7 – 7 wins you the jackpot.

Of course, for those of you paying attention, you’ll also note that July 7th, 2007 is when I’m getting married as well. Not only that, but we have a pretty damn good location for such a date: Heavenly. If you really think it is a godly number, what better place? Then again, if you’re not so into the Biblical aspect, but more into the gambling aspect, the location still works, given its proximity to Lake Tahoe casinos. Needless to say, we were pretty happy once we realized how cool the date was (and Grier insists that a secondary wonderful aspect of it is that I will never forget my anniversary).

In many of these articles about July 7th wedding days, they talk about desperate brides (it’s always the brides, isn’t it?) who so want that date that they’re willing to pay those who’ve already secured the date. That resulted in a conversation tonight at dinner where we began to wonder at what price would we sell the date (and location… and what the hell, I’d even throw in the cool artwork I made for the Save-the-Date) for our wedding? It would have to be something overwhelming, just to keep my mother from strangling me. So, we figure that it would have to be enough that we could make it up to all the guests who already made plans to travel to the wedding, and then would probably need to buy us a new home as well — given that our current search for home has made us realize how ridiculous home prices are in the Bay Area. Also, if it helps us afford a nicer honeymoon, that wouldn’t hurt either.

So, that probably prices most folks out of the market (though, Ms. Longoria, I imagine it might be well within your budget — so feel free to call). In the meantime, anyone have any suggestions on how much we should sell our wedding date and location for? Sunnia thinks we should put it up on eBay and see what happens.

* PS: If my mom hasn’t yet discovered this blog, I get the feeling she may find out about this post rather quickly. She may require that the amount get bumped up to pay for the hospital stay that would be induced from finding out we were potentially changing the date of the wedding after so much planning.

The View From The Top

Okay, I had you going with that last post, right? I don’t post for a month, and you figure you’ve got at least another few weeks before I’m back at it. However, with all that travel, I might as well post at least some images. So, this is from the trip to Atlanta, where I got to stay in the Westin Peachtree which (I learned from a voiceover in the elevator) is the tallest hotel in the western hemisphere. When I checked in they asked if I wanted a floor closer to the ground or higher up, so I said higher up (I never seem to get that option). At this point, I had no idea how tall the hotel was, having only been focused on finding the hotel itself, rather than how many stories it had (I hadn’t looked up on entering it). They gave me a room on the 39th floor, which isn’t bad. The elevators I entered only went up to 45, so I assumed that was as tall as it went. The entire building is a cylinder, so each room is wedge like, with floor to ceiling windows curving around the outside (pretty cool, actually). Even at the 39th floor, it seemed like there weren’t many other tall buildings around, so I snapped some photos with the camera phone:

So that was fun. Of course, my second night there, I got to have dinner at the Sundial restaurant, which happens to take up the top 4 (72 through 75) floors of the building (and, yes, it rotates) — at which point, I discovered my “high” room, wasn’t really that high up the building. Turns out folks who room on floors 46 through 70 get their own separate elevators. And, of course, the Sundial restaurant gets its own damn elevator, which happens to be glass and on the outside. Lots of fun, though some people who I shared the elevator with were apparently afraid of heights. Either way, it was sunset, so I snapped a couple shots out the window from the 72nd floor:

Not much else to report from Atlanta. I did have one fun experience, though. I normally am better at preparing before going on a trip to a city I’m mostly unfamiliar with. However, this time, I didn’t even bother to figure out how to get from the airport to the hotel, figuring I’d just grab a cab and “how bad could it be.” Well, it would have cost $30, which isn’t too bad, but the insane line waiting for cabs had me thinking twice. I saw various airport shuttles and wondered if the Westin had one. Someone at the taxi stand told me they did, but gave me directions I think were more designed to get rid of me than help me reach my destination. I found a courtesy phone and called a different Westin (the Peachtree wasn’t listed — which I knew was a bad sign). The woman their told me that there was another shuttle called the Linq (or Link, I forget) that would take me to the hotel.

I headed back outside and found the shuttle… which had a line nearly as long as the taxi line. And there was one shuttle at the front and it looked like a minivan. The wait was going to be ridiculous. I asked the woman in front of me if this was the right line, and she said “well, this is where the reservation said to go” and pulled out a printout reservation. Reservation? Oops. So I wander off and see another long line, and ask the guy at the end if it’s to buy tickets on the shuttle. He thinks so, but notes there are no signs and there doesn’t appear to actually be anyone at the front of the line serving people. Oh yeah, the cost for the shuttle: $20. We stand in line for about five minutes with nothing happening, and the guy says that he’s been to Atlanta before, and he remembers that there was a train, so he’s just going to take that. He seems like a nice enough guy, so I tell him I’m following him.

We wander over to the MARTA, which is the subway there, and discover that, unlike just about every other subway station I’ve been to in the country, people are *damn friendly*. The woman at the ticketbooth knows exactly where I need to go to get to my hotel. Total price: $1.75. Then, again, as I actually used the ticket to enter the station, there’s another MARTA employee waiting at the gates, asking where my destination is, and again telling me the best way to get there. Very easy. Got to chat with the guy I followed and he’s an interesting guy. He’s an IT manager for the United Nations and had worked there for over 20 years. Had some fascinating stories.

Anyway, after all that, it should come as no surprise that I just took the MARTA back to the airport at the end of my trip as well. I wanted to get to the airport by 9am, so I left the hotel at 8am, figuring that there would be some rush hour traffic on the subway in the middle of downtown. Apparently, folks in Atlanta aren’t big fans of their public transportation system. As I rode the huge (probably 5 or 6 stories in one go) escalator down, I realized I was the *only* person on the entire escalator. At 8:15am (I was a little late) at what appeared to be the middle of downtown. Oh well. Made the trip even easier.

Also, when you get to the airport, if you’re flying Delta (I was), you can actually check-in, getting your boarding pass, and check your luggage from inside the MARTA station, avoiding all the main terminal lines. All in all, quite nice. So, if you’re flying to Atlanta and your hotel is somewhere downtown, skip the cabs and the shuttle and just take the MARTA.

Fields From The Sky

So there’s this theory that you actually need to blog on a daily basis to get into the habit, and while I do that for work, it’s not so easy around these parts. I get ideas for posts, but then life/work/everything else gets in the way and I have to decide if it’s worth staying up another half an hour at 4am to do a post or actually getting to bed before the sun starts rising, and the pillow usually wins out. Of course, I keep collecting all these ideas for posts (and, yes, I’d said I was going to do a series of music posts, but that’s gotta wait a bit).

Anyway, I was going to do a post on my travel schedule lately. Back in business school I thought that the students who wanted to go into consulting were nuts, after hearing about the hours and the amount of traveling. Of course, as fate would have it, these days I’m willing to bet I put in more hours than most of the folks who went into consulting — and I haven’t taken an actual full vacation in… well… forever.

And, I was thinking it out recently and realized that I’ve actually been on an airplane at least once every month for at least the past 15 months — and the same will be true at least through July and possibly beyond that. Of course, it’s not quite as bad as it seems. For some weird reason, my travel schedule almost always has me flying somewhere at the end of a month and flying back at the beginning of the next month. So I flew at the end of November and back at the beginning of December, then again at the end of January and back at the beginning of February… and then again at the end of March and back at the beginning of April. Of course, then I had 3 more flights in April, so I sorta killed it there. July is now looking like it may involve something on the order of 7 to 8 flights, but at least some of them will not have a damn thing to do with work for once.

Of course, you’d think with all this travel I’d have stacked up some pretty nice frequent flier mileage, but you’d be wrong. Not sure how that’s happened, but I’ve never been able to redeem miles for anything. Part of the problem is JetBlue. For all the wonders of JetBlue, your points only last 12 months — and even I’m not flying fast enough to stack them up. When I booked my latest JetBlue flight, I learned that they (like every other airline) have a credit card, and points you earn with it last forever, but I really have no desire to get another credit card, so I’ll just suffer along.

Anyway, the point of this post before it went off on a tangent was that I actually enjoy flying. I’ve always enjoyed looking at maps and stuff, and staring out the window while flying, figuring out where we are and seeing what everything looks like from the sky really is still a joy. When Google Earth first came out and gave you nearly the same sensation, I was thrilled. However, I’ve found myself doing one odd thing while taking off and landing in metropolitan regions: I start spotting baseball fields.

I don’t know why, but it just amazes me how many baseball fields there are, even in densely packed areas. In some cases, it must represent a ton of valuable real estate if it were turned into housing, but we’ve decided that the tradeoff is absolutely worthwhile. Given my ongoing obsession with baseball, I’m certainly not going to disagree. However, you have to wonder what someone who has no idea what baseball is would think flying over one of these areas and spotting all these odd fields with dirt diamonds over to one side.

Yeah, I go a month without posting and this is the best I can come up with… I keep hearing random friends/relatives/acquaintences tell me they’ve discovered this blog (not that it was ever hidden, but I never told anyone about it either), so maybe this is my attempt to bore you all away, so I can go back to blogging in obscurity.