204.5: Two pounds forward, two pounds backward

I don't know if I should be disappointed or not but today I did my Wednesday weigh in and I was 2 pounds heavier than last week. I exercised a lot last week. I ate pretty well -- except for last night when I had a huge meal. I ate at Chandlers and had king crab, soup, and appetizers. I'm hoping it was just a bad day and that I return to sub 203 next week. We'll see. Work to do. Food not to eat.

An email from the void...

This blogging thing can be a bit of a solo journey. You write posts each day and they go out into the ether. Most times this is a pleasant process... but sometimes it feels like you're writing into a void.
And then the void speaks back ... It's awesome.

I got the following email today:

I've been enjoying what you've been writing lately, no matter how short the blog posts are. I'd really be interested in reading a more lengthy version of Time is the Enemy when you have a chance.

Also, I've been meaning to write to give you big props for giving your operations folks some kudos a couple weeks ago.

Anyway, keep them short if you have to, but keep them coming.

Adam

Thanks for the encouragement Adam. I'll be sure to write more on the enemy time....post coming soon.

Time is the enemy

I'm conscious everyday at Judy's Book that our enemy is time. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Go team go...lot's to do!!

Sorry for such a short post ....just a busy day!

Weeds

weeds, originally uploaded by a sack of seattle.

My brother David has been telling me to watch this show -- Weeds -- for years. I finally listened to him this weekend. I rented the DVD. It's a great show on showtime. Loved it. Recommend it to any adult ....no need to have inhaled.

CEO driveby

I've learned that CEOs need to be careful about the perennial CEO driveby.
As CEO, I have permission and responsibility to go outside the normal organizational boundaries to make sure the organization succeeds. I can ask what is going on in any part of the organization. Here's the problem with careless use of this right:

Simple inquiries can and often are mis-interpreted as a request... or worse yet, a demand to do something.
The random question or suggestion in the midst of an on-going process can and often does have the opposite effect -- it can interrupt ....or worse yet, undermine forward momentum of an existing team or manager.

Thus, the name -- CEO driveby. I've learned the way around this is simple -- don't do it. Resist the temptation. (easier said then done) Make a note of your inquires and suggestions and bring them up during your weekly meeting with your managers.

Ning and douchebags

Found this post and thought it was interesting. Take aways:

Don't be a douchebag
Be careful what you publish on the web

An email to my republican friends

I got a handful of emails yesterday from my Republican friends. Most of them know that Bush is a disaster but they feel compelled to justify and rationalize their past votes and political leanings. A couple of them have said, "I'm a single issue voter and Bush has delivered on lower taxes."
At first, I left this statement alone but ultimately felt compelled to write this in an email to one of these single issue republicans:

I think you're smarter than that.... You know... these single issue voters are frankly stupid -- when have you made any important decision in life based on one factor. Whether it be an investment in a company, a job decision, a date request, what to have for dinner etc. it's always based on a more general view of the situation....and from a general perspective, Bush and his staff look incompetent at best....

You can be a republican and be smart but if you still think Bush is doing a good job (even with the your view of lower my taxes -- he economically undermined this country in a major way)...well, then -- you're a lot less smart than I thought you were.

Hope does not spring eternal for presidential democrats?

I'm a card carrying democrat. I was disgusted by George Bush's win in 2004. Who voted for him? And now that people are waking up to just how bad he and his administration actually are (damage already done!), I was feeling like sanity was returning to America.

Then, I read this article in Time magazine with the following quote:

"So why, in poll after poll, including the new TIME poll, does that advantage seem to disappear whenever voters are asked to pick a president in hypothetical head-to-head match-ups among front-runners with solid name recognition. In our poll, Hillary Clinton loses to John McCain, 42-48%, and to Rudy Giuliani 41-50%. Even though Clinton maintains a 7% edge over Obama among Democratic respondents, Obama fares better in the general election match-ups. It's so close that it's a statistical dead-heat, but Obama still loses: 43-45% to McCain, 44-45% to Giuliani.

Unfortunately, these results make sense to me. It looks more and more like the presidential candidate for the democrats will either be Clinton or Obama. Is either one electable? Sure they could both beat George Bush or DIck Cheney -- but can they beat Giuliani, McCain, or Romney? According to Time -- the answer is no. What's a democrat to do?

Google is so web 1.0

From Bambi Francisco of Marketwatch:

The topic of Google came up after Perkins predicted that there would be a Web 2.0 shakeout in the next 12 months, pointing to YouTube's $1.65 billion sale to Google last summer as a symptom of a potential sign of irrational exuberance about to break out.

If spending is any measure of irrationality over an opportunity, he has a point. Some $844.4 million was invested in 167 Web 2.0 deals around the world last year, more than twice as much money and nearly twice as many deals as in 2005, according to Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young. The U.S. dominated Web 2.0 investing, accounting for $682 million and 126 deals.

The Rodriguez family dynasty in boston: 2 acquisitions, 1 family, 1 month

One of my partners at abuzz recently sold his recent venture to Hitachi ventures for a cool $120,000,000. Read about it here. I knew at the time that Andres was a super talented guy and now he's gone out and proven it big time. Way to go Andres -- my only question for you is not how you did it but rather...how in g-ds name did I not participate in the A round of financing on this deal!
Then just this past week I was reading techcrunch and read this post about tabblo being acquired by HP. At first I wasn't sure whether this was Antonio's photo company or not but -- I followed the links and sure enough ...it was. Truly impressive guys -- 2 companies sold to massive companies that begin with the letter H in one month. My hats off to you and the beginnings of a true Boston dynasty. Hope I can celebrate with you soon.

202.5 fatblogging entry

I weighed myself after getting squashed in squash today. I lost bad. 5 games to zero. I lost 1 game 9 to zero. It was painful. Just felt like every step was slow...BUT, I weighed myself afterward and I hit the scale at 202.5 which is the lowest I've weighed on that scale since I started weighing myself about 1 month ago. I give myself a B for increasing exercising and decreasing calorie intake. I can do better particularly on the intake side -- my self admitted weakness. I still occasionally snack at night. But 202.5 is positive progress. I'll take it and feel good about it.

Organizational change

I'm quite happy with some of the organizational changes that have taken place at Judy's Book over the last couple months. The things that make me happy:

Product -- we're making real progress on releasing what I think with be the best local deals site on the web. The first phase of this release is now in beta and there's more coming in early April.
Organization -- we're acting like a real company. People are playing there positions and we're executing much better than ever before. This is due in part to an alignment of management focus as well as a reorganization that created more structured departments than we had before.

Let's keep rolling...

Individual contributors who want to be managers

I've had 2 conversations in the past month with people who are strong individual contributors in their current role and want to be managers. One conversation was with a sales person and the other was a developer. I've seen this story before. Excellent sales person hits numbers. The person thinks management doesn't do a good job and that they could do it better. They get promoted because they're the best sales person and move to the management job. It turns out they lack the skills it takes to be the best manager. They lack the organization, the communication, or the leadership skills it takes to succeed as a manager. Moreover, they're less happy with the job than they thought they'd be. They didn't know that managing people can be a real pain in the ass. It's hard work. Yes, it's glamorized and everyone thinks they want to be the boss. But let me tell you -- being the boss is not for everyone. Not everyone is good at it. In this case, my career advice to both the sales person and the developer was you'd be better off, happier, and more successful (money wise) if you stay in your individual contributor role and expand your skills. Just my 2 cents.

Operations folks

Operations and test folks are your typical unsung corporate heroes. They do not get the appreciation or acknowledgment they deserve for keeping systems and websites running 24 hours, 7 days a week. Our guys -- Kurt, Dave, and Jeffro, do a great job in general and in particular this week have4 been stepping up beyond the call of duty responding to pages at 4AM and making sure the site stays up. Thanks guys.

Shaving on the road or at the office

Just realized I was scruffy and in need of some grooming. Looked for my Edge shaving cream and couldn't find it nor could I borrow any. I managed to find Ivory's vanilla liquid soap and decided to use that and a public toilet's sink. Just finished and feel transformed. There's nothing like a clean shave to freshen you up -- even if it's with liquid soap. Remember that all you road warriors.
I could have and probably should have titled this post -- making do with what you've got.

Death

I had an acquaintance friend pass away over the weekend. She was 26 years young and was on a vacation with her husband in Palm Springs. She was involved in a bike accident and died. I went to the vigil last night.
Life is friggin weird and fragile. You just never know what lies around the corner. Live hard now. Tell your family and friends you love them today...you may not be able to tomorrow.

Trying to shut down alexaholic is stupid

I read Mike Arrington's post about Amazon's recent attempt to shut down alexaholic -- in my opinion, this is stupid. Alexaholics success is a result of Alexa's failure to service their own customers expediently and sufficiently. Alexa could easily put Alexaholic out of business if they improved their service (period). The improvements are relatively simple too. Just allow a user to compare different web sites traffic grids against each other. For goodness sakes, this is clearly amongst the primary use cases at Alexa.
If Alexa didn't want to do this, my guess is Alexa could have bought Alexaholic too. While on first blush this may have seemed stupid, I don't think it's nearly as stupid as trying to use legal methods to shut Alexaholic down. That's really stupid....and unlike Amazon in my opinion. In my opinion, they've been a company that has typically embraced web services and innovation more generally. Why are they doing this? It seems that Amazon prefers legislation to innovation. I don't get it.

Spammers at work

This marketers vs. technology battle plays out at digg, reddit, and my new favorite website, mybloglog.
I got this spam in my message box at mybloglog....
From Samuel Komo,

After going through your profile , I decided to contact you for the relationship and bussines assistance .

Well, to introducing myeslf, I am Samuel Komo , TWENTY ONE years, I am a citizen of Cote D'ivoire former Ivory Coast in West Africa.

I am writing to solicit your noble assistance for the transfering and investment of Nine Million, United Stat Dollars US D.
This doesn't mean the marketers are winning

We had to fight spammers last week at Judy's Book. Someone had co-opted our "invite a friend" feature and was using it to send 30,000 messages or more a day. We were able to shut them down...but not without a disruption of our development calendar and a fair amount of work.
The battle rages on...

Marketers 1, technologist 0

My partner Chris and I have a saying that there's an ongoing battle online between marketers and technologists. You can see that play out every day on your google search results. Google is attempting to apply technology to make algorithmic search relevant and useful and marketers of all types are working hard to figure out how to game the system.