Our Good Friend Jimmy, may he get well soon
BRT_2909.JPG, originally uploaded by Bryan Thatcher.
It has been a sad and unfortunate couple of weeks here at Fusebox and Empressr. One of our own Jimmy has fallen very ill. Many of my friends have met him in some respect or other, he was at SXSW he was at the latest Web 2.0 in San Francisco, a city he loves, and has been a true catalyst in the development of the business for both Fusebox and Expressr.
I learned last weekend that Jimmy had a stroke!! at only 38 years old it was not only shocking but heartbreaking, knowing his love for life and love for people. This had a profound impact on my own life. I guess you can say fortunately for him, his stroke only effected his left leg and to a minor extent other motor actions of his left side. I visited him in his hospital room last Tuesday and his sprits were high, a little confused why something like this would happen to him. Yesterday he was moved to a rehab center, not an Amy Winehouse sorta rehab but one that will get him walking and moving like he once did. I feel great sadness for these events and wish him the world and hope for a speedy recovery.
I know and understand the frailty of life from what happened to me two years ago that event like this changes your life in more ways that you can possibly think. Sometimes it takes a radical event like a stroke or what had happened to me to realize that life is way too short and should be lived every day, there is no waiting for tomorrow, cause tomorrow may not be there. I will support Jimmy in his decisions as he embarks on this new chapter of his life and I hope that he decides to remain part of the Fusebox Empressr family, no matter where he ends up. Much love, and get well soon.
GlobalCitizen and I about to get rocked
I just didn’t look good from the start… should of stayed on the beach and had a beer
Crazy east coast ocean
This past weekend has to be the largest East coast surf i’ve seen during July. July is usually the flattest month, but thanks (I think) to the hurricane Bertha hanging off the coast of Bermuda, she sent in the swell.
Needless to say I got my ass handed to me… need more time in the 2-4′ surf before attempting overhead and crazy.
Dale Davis at Fusebox
Dale drops by the Fusebox Empressr office. Very cool dude, very tall
at&t store 6th ave and 17th st
The line at the at&t store at about 9am today. not going to wait on that!
The Times Newsaic
My friend David Taylor started a very ambitious project this past January, he is creating a collage every day using the New York Times. Each piece has a certain structure and a theme or concept that was derrived from that days paper. Each piece is created from torn pictures and text from the paper and glued to a board cut to the size of a folded issue of the NYtimes.
He has just posted the first quarter of 2008 to his blog The Times Newsaic he created just for the project
One of David’s favorite pieces, and mine is the one from January 20
It is fun to see what David was thinking on certain days of the year like your birthday (this one scares me)
or anniversary, I love the coincidence of the placement of diamonds! Check out your notable days.
Get with the program folks
Airport security my be an oxymoron, I wonder all the time if the inconvenience is actually worth it.
But so long as we have to deal with the security lines, lets all get along together. 80% of the people making their way thru security are the ones screwing up the system, by creating some efficiency will make the user experience at best tolerable.
So a few tips:
Prior to getting to the table to place your stuff on, put all loose things in your carry on. You should have your carry on and your luggage if you are not checking your bags.
Grab 2 bins, If you need more that 2 bins, you are carrying too much stuff.
Get all the heavy metal crap outta your pockets before arriving at the line, how many times do you watch someone, beep, then empty their pockets.
Got a laptop? first make it accessible, second, put it in a bin by its self, and do that first, really do it first before removing your shoes
Shoes, ok how long have we been going shoeless thru the metal detector (way to long, upgrade the damn detectors, I digress) your shoes come off last, for those of you who decide that knee high tied footwear are the right thing for air travel, you are wrong, same goes for tied shoes, high top sneakers, and any other shoe that requires more than 2 seconds to remove both.
Place shoes in the second bin along with your jacket etc
Rolling baggage, does not go on the table, roll that until the last second and put it on the xray machine belt.
If you follow these simple rules the line will move fast and efficient making your fellow travelers much happier.
And finally, once thru the metal detector, collect your stuff and move, don’t put your shoes on, don’t put your laptop back in you bag, just grab it and move on, there are usually tables located right past the collection zone, that’s what they are there for, so use them.
This is crazy
My keyboard and trackpad went south, last week, so I brought my MacBook Pro to the Apple store and it magically all worked. ok. Then this past weekend on Sunday same shit no keyboard or trackpad, plugging in external works fine… but I’m stressing, and I don’t really need the additional stress, heading to San Francisco today, Tuesday ment that I can’t get it repaired in time. Solution, get the cute bluetooth keyboard from Apple, yeah it is like all Apple products, a very slick piece of industrial design, but I really don’t want to be wipping out my keyboard to work with my laptop. Fuck, this sucks.
A little twitter management
Last night I finally got to following peeps that have been gracious enough to follow me over the last few weeks. I’ve considered using a bot to auto-follow new followers, but I do have 2 criteria for following and I don’t know of a bot that you can assign these types of constraints to.
- No avatar=no follow, yes I’ve broken this rule in the past, hence why a bot can’t decide to follow someone just because the are a nooby
- does it look, smell, taste, like a spam bot=no follow, and yes I have broken this one as well. Twitter has enough flow of conversations during the day to make anyone’s head spin, and if you are working, it’s really hard. Spammers=block after one or two confirmed spams
That’s about it for my follow strategy, now for my current following strategy!
I just went thru all the peeps that I follow, but haven’t returned the favor, they were pinged with a new follow request. I’ll wait a few weeks and then remove them from my following list. of course like above there are exceptions, there are a few people that I enjoy reading their tweets and most likely, I will not move them to the deadbeat status.
Cottage Update
Wow it’s looking really cool! Siding is almost done, all the windows and doors are finally in. The plumber has plumbed and this week, electric.
