I Had a Dream

February 28, 2009 – 4:59 am

I was diving down the interstate in my truck with my wife and kids. All of the sudden I look to the left and there is an overturned car in the median. It looks like the car has been there a while, but I can see the legs of two passengers who are still in the car. The car appears void of color, almost like it is washed out or was burned in really hot heat. It wasn’t a fire though because the people in the car are not moving; they appear to be dead.

As I looked away from the overturned car I saw that there were several tractor trailers strewn about on the median and the other side of the interstate. Apparently there had been a very bad wreck. There were no flashing lights yet so it must have just happened. As I drove slowly around the turn I started to see more and more cars and trucks that had gotten tangled up in this massive pileup. The magnitude of the destruction that had taken place was astounding.

Everything was silent.

Just as I started to feel extremely grateful, I noticed that I was coming up on cars in my lane that had gotten tangled up in this mess. I could see people slowly moving inside mangled cars. There was a car just in front of me that was facing the wrong way; I wasn’t sure if it had gotten spun around or if it had crossed the median. There was a woman inside. She was trapped in the passenger seat. Crying. Banging on the dashboard in anguish.

I started to get really scared. The pileup was closing in around me and there was no place to go. If I stopped the people coming around the turn behind me would hit me. I was worried that if I continued the pileup would envelope me. Maybe it was clear ahead, but it seemed to be getting worse. There was an exit just ahead, maybe I could make it there. I needed to get my family out of there before I called 911 or got out to help. I needed to ensure my family was safe. It was my job to steer clear of the wreckage.

Then I woke up.

It was a haunting dream. I can still see the anguish of the woman in the car.

I remember studying dream analysis for a few days in a college course once. We were taught that dreams are a way for our subconscious to bubble up concerns and deep seated emotions. The meaning of this dream seems crystal clear.

It is the economy.

It is my job to get my family though this. I do not have an employer whose job it is to make sure I get paid. That means I do not have to worry about getting laid off as so many others have. It also means the entire responsibility is on my shoulders. I see the destruction and turmoil around me and I see it closing in. I cannot see around the bend to know if it is going to get better or worse. The pain and suffering around me is real; it is closing in. There is no way out to stop or get off the highway. We have to go forward and it appears to get worse up ahead.

It was a terrifying dream. It is a very stressful reality.

Posted in Business, Family | Tagged , | Comments (2)

Check out TennesseeStartups.com

February 4, 2009 – 3:01 pm

One of the goals that I have is to help nurture the entrepreneurial spirit in my community. Specifically we have a growing technology community that has some thriving startups (as well as some not-yet-thriving startups). I want to help them work together and promote the city / state as a whole.

That is why I have decided to participate in the SpringStage Startup Blog Network. I have signed on as the catalyst for Tennessee Startups.

Check it out, subscribe to the RSS feed, etc. I will be posting about Tennessee-based startups as well as events and topics that are of interest to the startup community.

Posted in Blogging, Business | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

World Turned Upside Down

February 2, 2009 – 10:12 pm

I have converted. I never thought it would happen. There are some things that I expected would never change. This was one of them. It shocks me that I am about about to write what I am about to write. The thing is, it is a paradigm shift so major that I can’t keep it a secret.

Ok, are you ready for this?

I am actually kind of hesitant to admit this.

Here goes.

“Owning” music is completely absurd except in the rarest of circumstances.

I am now a believer in subscription based music. Over 80% of my music listening is now done via Pandora. Sometime I will listen to the “recommended music” on the Last.FM channel. Other times I will listen to the Drum & Bass Arena Podcast. On a very rare circumstance I will listen to music that I have purchased or downloaded over the years. Usually if I am listening to music files that I have stored on my computer or ipod it is because I want to listen to music on the home stereo while making phone calls. If I could run Pandora on my Apple TV then I might never listen to music I “own”.

This conversion has not been quick. I used to think Pandora was neat, but I didn’t want to count on an internet connection for music. Two things have changed since then:

  1. I am not traveling nearly as much. Until there is internet on airplanes (which is coming) travel would be a deal breaker for Pandora.
  2. I bought an iPhone and downloaded Last.FM and Pandora apps.

Those two changes set the stage for…

  1. Christmas. I dig Christmas music, but most of it sucks. Also, owning Christmas can screw up your iPod 11 months out of the year.

So I decided to create a Pandora station for good Christmas music. I started adding in the good stuff I already owned and then expanded to stuff I wished I had. I temporarily screwed up the channel when I added this really great song with Christina Aguilera and Dr John; the station was filled with shitty pop for about 45 minutes. Then I rated the crap down and it started getting really good. It started playing tracks that I couldn’t find anywhere else (like a McCoy Tyner Christmas song off some out of print compilation). Being able to share the station was an added bonus too.

Then, after Christmas we drove down to Disney World for a (really quick) family vacation. On the way back Sabrina wanted to listen to some Classic Rock. I am not sure if you have ever noticed, but Classic Rock stations on the radio are fucking horrible. I apologize for the profanity, but I can think of no other way to describe these stations. They play the same crap over and over again. The amazing thing isn’t really the crap that they play, but rather the amazing music they don’t play.

So, while Sabrina was in Starbucks grabbing a cup of joe I was able to fire up the Pandora iPhone app. I created a station with The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and The Stones. We were then able to listen to some Rock that didn’t suck while driving 70 mph down the Interstate. (Ok, I will be honest. “95 miles an hour girl, it’s the speed I drive”). We down voted a few songs, but it was tons better than the crap on the radio. The added bonus was that there was no ads and that we never drove out of range of the radio tower (and luckily the Interstate system is painted prety solid with 3G from Atlanta to Nashville).

When I got home I promptly became a paying Pandora customer. It doesn’t really make the service more valuable, but I figure paying for it is the way to try and keep it around. Which gets to the interesting part.

When I was a young lad I used to spend upwards of $100/month on recorded music (most of it at Tower Records on West End). I was able to go in and browse a pretty eclectic selection of music. Then around 2001 I jumped on the Napster Bandwagon and the amount I spent on music plummeted. There were years where I may not have bought any music. Now I might spend $300/year.

It is not that I am cheap; it is that the perceived value has changed (and let’s be honest, the real cost has dropped as much if not more). I would pay for a satellite radio subscription in a heartbeat if I thought it was worth it. I have had XM in quite a few rental cars and it is almost identical to cable TV – plenty of channels playing marginally interesting material. Hardly worth the price. (We also canceled all cable and satellite TV recently).

Pandora on the other hand is a different story. If I had to, and it I knew it would be available everywhere (especially on my Apple TV), I would pay $40/month. The difference in Pandora and Satellite is that I can be in control. I know what I like. I don’t need a DJ to pick out tunes. Sure, a great DJ is great, but most DJs more of a hinderance than a help. (Note: some girl on Vanderbilt 91.1 was ON FIRE the other day. It was Tuesday or Wednesday midday.)

I used to know this really cool opera major who attended Blair School of Music. She had an incredibly well developed set of musical preferences. I will never forget her telling me about some non-music major telling her that she had horrible taste in music. Her response was (rightfully) “who the hell are you?!?”. The great part of the encounter was that her take-away was not that others should not question her taste in music but that no one’s taste in music should be questioned. Taste in music should be celebrated, not criticized.

“Owning” music limits musical taste. You become shackled to your music files. You feel guilty for not listening to them. You feel like there are some you “should” listen to. You have some that you totally regret purchasing. You worry that something might happen to them. You can only copy them to 5 devices. None of that is enjoyable.

Tonight I started with Michael Franti which took me to Bob Marley via Ben Harper and Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. I am completely enjoying it. I will keep this station and refine it. I will add it to my collection of kick ass music whose taste I own while I am unencumbered by the files.

Speaking of files. I bought a new laptop a couple of weeks ago. I started writing this post because I was just about to copy over my music files from my old computer and decided that I didn’t want them cluttering up my hard drive (which is a cavernous 320GB). How much are they really worth?

Thank you Pandora. I have seen the light.

Note: After writing this I thought I would check and see if Bob Lefsetz had written anything about this. Turns out he was on a similar page 3 days ago. He even had this beautiful gem of a quote that sums it all up: “The stations come in perfectly. The sound is great. Only the content is bad.”

And then Upside Down by Jack Johnson came through the headphones.

Posted in Misc, Nashville | Tagged , | Comments (7)

25 Random Things About Me

February 2, 2009 – 6:50 pm

A friend from school (I think all the way back to elementary school) has tagged me in a 25 things about me post on Facebok. Since I try and keep everything consolidated and then propagated, I am writing this on my blog, but will “tag” people on Facebook. I have written one of these “# things about me” posts before, but I don’t think I did a particularly good job. Hopefully this one will be better. Though some of the stuff most people already know, people who I went to school with on Facebook may not know it.

Note: It may be dangerous to do this during a time of reflection and clarity.

  1. I am fiercely competitive. This shows itself in odd behaviors that may not appear to be driven by competition.
  2. I have been blogging at jaxn.org since 2001 (shortly after 9/11, but I didn’t mention 9/11 when I started, even though I lived in DC).
  3. I first started using a laptop in 1998. I have had a laptop ever since. It has changed my life; it gave me a career.
  4. I am a partner in an LLC that owns two Plato’s Closet franchises (Cool Springs and Murfreesboro).
  5. My first car was a 1986 Prelude that I got when I was 20. I had always wanted a Prelude. It cost $2,000 and had paint chipping off.
  6. I am currently driving a 2007 Ford F-150. I am not sure I can go back to driving something smaller. Having a truck is also very handy.
  7. I also have a 1969 Volvo p1800 that my Aunt bought used in 1970. It is slowly rusting away before I have the time / money to fix it.
  8. I had the opportunity to do a 16 day Outward Bound expedition. I maneuvered a canoe through class 4 rapids, climbed a cliff, hiked for days with a 50lb pack, and more. Afterward, during a one on one debrief with a counselor, she told me “you have a very low tolerance for bull shit”. I will never forget that.
  9. I don’t really give a shit if my kids use foul language.
  10. I think believing in God makes doing the right thing less noble.
  11. I have been arrested. As a juvenile I was arrested for things like graffiti and truancy; as an adult I have been arrested for drag racing and from an unpaid ticket.
  12. Nobody can cook fried chicken as well as my mother. Seriously. World’s Best.
  13. I changed “good” to “well” in that last sentence b/c I heard my mother correcting me in my head.
  14. I correct my kids on grammar all the time. They will hear me in their heads when they take tests.
  15. I love sailing and do not do it nearly enough. Hopefully my family will start to enjoy it more.
  16. In 1998 or 1999 I created a partnership between Belmont University, Vanderbilt University, and the YWCA to hold Nashville’s first Take Back the Night. The partners did a phenomenal job organizing the event and as far as I know the partnership has lasted ever since.
  17. Professor Bill Fletcher at Belmont University then nominated me for a “Do Good Stuff” award for my work on Take Back the Night and a Race Relations Group I ran. I was presented with the Regional Award at the 1999 C.O.O.L. National Conference in Salt Lake City, UT
  18. In 1999 I read an article in Utne Reader about how we should drop out of college and start a path of “self education”.
  19. I quit college and moved to New Hampshire when I was 22 to organize the 2000 C.O.O.L. National Conference. It was my first salaried job. There was strife over my keynote speaker: Billy “Upski” Wimsat who wrote Bomb the Suburbs and No More Prisons. It turns out Upski also wrote that article in Utne Reader (I didn’t know that until after the conference).
  20. I met my ex-wife while I was living in New Hampshire. She was living in Florida. We met in New Orleans.
  21. I have more debt than I should.
  22. I miss playing music.
  23. I failed out of Jazz school at Loyola in New Orleans b/c I was too self-conscious. Looking back, I think I had the chops and talent.
  24. Sometimes I feel like I have left a trail of destruction throughout my life.
  25. Sometimes I leave things unfinished. (when I wrote this in HTML I thought it was #24. Maybe I finish more than I know.)
Posted in General, Personal | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Quick Thoughts on the Stimulus Package

January 31, 2009 – 8:45 pm

I haven’t really been keeping up with news and such for the past week (and it feel great). I have picked up bits and pieces of the stimulus debate.

Here is what it looks like to me:

Obama wants to act big to regain confidence.

House Dems used it as an opportunity to sneak in things they have been wanting to fund. (Reminds me of the Patriot Act and makes me sick).

Republicans are trotting out old ideas (that don’t work) as if they are new ideas. We are not going to fix the economy by giving tax cuts to people who already have excess They are trying to find a new word for “trickle down” but it just doesn’t work.

Also, people talk about this really dumb statistic about how fast the money will get into the economy. This is not a short term problem. There is not a shirt term solution.

We have financial habits in this country that are detrimental to our long term viability. We need to dump a shit ton of money into education and infrastructure to play catch up. We need to get more money available for innovation instead of consolidation.

From what it looks like to me, I am once again proud to cal Jim Cooper my Congressman.

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Podcasts I Actually Listen To

January 31, 2009 – 3:52 pm

When I bought my new laptop I decided to start from scratch instead of using the Migration Assistant. Some of the basics (email, settings, bookmarks, calendar) were handled by MobileMe (formerly .mac). I have been downloading the applications I use as I need them (I leu of a post about which apps I use, check out my slightly outdated iusethis.com profile).

One of the most interesting parts of the switchover has been noticing that there are some podcasts that I am missing. I have never been a big podcast listener. However, there are apparently some that I miss…

Drum and Bass Arena
Every few weeks the crew at breakbeat.co.uk post an hour long mix from a Drum&Bass DJ. This is great stuff to code to. I used to listen to Bassdrive.com a lot, but with these podcasts I have 20+ hours of mixes in various styles that I have rated. This is by far my favorite podcast. I have a couple of year’s worth of archives on my old laptop that I will move over.

The American Life
I used to listen to this podcast on the plane every week. Now that I am rarely on a plane I have found that this podcast is a great way to wind down at the end of the day. I don’t listen to it every week, but that means that I listen to 2-3 episodes some weeks.

Rachel Maddow Show
We no longer have cable or satellite TV. Instead we have Apple TV and over the air HD. I really like Rachel during the election so now her podcast is my goto political news fix.

So those three are the ones I really wanted back. I can’t remember the 10-15 others I was subscribed to on my old laptop (another reason “subscriber” stats are total bullshit).

I have also subscribed to a few new ones that I am not yet ready to endorse:

  • President Obama’s Weekly Address
  • Railscasts – A podcast about Ruby on Rails
  • Grand Unified Weekly – a science podcast iTunes recommended (and I believe a grand unified theory probably exists)

I know there have to be others that I would really enjoy. I am not really interested in podcasts about people’s opinions (I have enough sources for opinions). What podcasts do you suggest?

Posted in General | Comments (3)

Goals

January 8, 2009 – 10:56 am

I drove past a church a while back that had the following tidbit on the sign out front:

“Goals are dreams with a deadline”

Since then I have been trying to give myself deadlines. I need to do a better job of hitting my deadlines, but I am getting there.

Anyway, I don’t really have any New Year’s resolutions per se, but I am starting to think about some new goals.

For instance, I really want to get more efficient at using my computer. Ever since I switched to a Mac I find that I use the mouse more, jump around in a constant state of distraction, and listen to more music. I am grateful for the more music part, but I either have to get more efficient on my laptop or I am switching back to linux (even though it is not nearly as “good”). The good news is that the problem is not my laptop or OS X. I just need to take better advantage of the tools that are out there. I have hewn this desire into a goal yet, but I am getting closer.

I also need to finish a bunch of loose ends on various projects. Somehow in December I found myself on the 5 yard line on 6 different projects. I don’t care who you are there is no good way out of that. Some of it was bad planning and some of it was just weird luck. Regardless I am still digging out and it requires me to jump around moving the ball forward one project at a time when they all need my total attention right now. I dropped out of a couple of games and will complete another one this week. After that I am going into a full on post-holiday assault. I think the first step will be to set the deadlines and knock them out one by one.

So here is my goal: I am going to be back to solid ground by February 1. Until then posting here and interaction on social networks will be limited.

Happy New Year!

Seth Godin and Joel Spolsky are also thinking about goals (though more coherently) today.

Posted in Personal, Philos | Comments (0)

You May Not Have Known

December 14, 2008 – 8:44 pm

I have been tagged in one of those blog meme things. I am now supposed to share 7 things about myself; some random, some weird. I have only been tagged for a meme 3 or 4 times in the 7+ years that I have been blogging (that is fun fact #1). I have always assumed that I am not tagged for memes because people either don’t find me that interesting or they think I am an arrogant prick who will ignore them (both positions are defensible). So, thanks for asking Marcus.

  1. I have lived in Nashville, TN – New Orleans, LA – Manchester, NH – Philadelphia, PA & Washington, DC. I have always wanted to live on the coast.
  2. I believe in omnipresence, but I do not believe in omnipotence. I do believe there is a realm we don’t understand; it would be arrogant of me to think I am able to say what that realm entails.
  3. Speaking of fantasy, my fantasy football team is in the playoffs and it looks like I will win the championship. This year I used an Excel spreadsheet to help me draft players based on consistent average output (high average points with a low standard deviation). Math FTW!
  4. I learned how to create an ordered list that starts at #2 specifically for this post.
  5. I have struggled with depression for years (probably longer than I realize). I don’t have any reason to be depressed though. I am living The American Dream and I am incredibly grateful for that.
  6. I am a left-handed Leo. So is Barack Obama.

Ok, now I am supposed to tag some more people. How about Cory Watson, Andrew Fielding, Kate O’Neill

Here are the rules:

  • Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
  • Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
  • Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. Note: no one seems to follow this one. 3 is a better number.
  • Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.
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2008 Really Is The Year of the Editor

December 3, 2008 – 7:57 pm

On January 3rd I declared that 2008 would be the year of the editor. Around the same time Seth Godin was saying the same kind of thing. Turns out for once that I was right.

Today Gabe Riveria announced that Techmeme would start employing the use of editors to sort through the results of the automated algorithm. They have big hopes for the benefits of human editorial intelligence:

“The news will just get faster and more interesting. Obsolete stories will be eliminated sooner while breaking stories will be expedited. Related grouping will improve. Most of this will happen only on Techmeme, though other sites (like memeorandum and WeSmirch) will increasingly benefit from the direct human touch as well.”

I am hoping that an editor will increase the quality and timeliness of stories there. It may be asking too much to hope for a reduction in sensationalism since it is a business after all.

It has been a long time since one of my posts has been been linked to by Techmeme (that I know of). I don’t expect that to change (honestly, I want to read posts that are better quality than my own), but it will be interesting to see how human editors affect the variety of contributors to Techmeme. Will an algorithm or a human have a greater tendency to pick favorites?

BTW, I found out about the changes at Techmeme from a link at Hacker News. HN has become my goto source for tech / startup /etc news. One thing I prefer about Techmeme over HN is the related stories. If the quality goes up at Techmeme I could see myself preferring it.

Note: Techmeme is not the only example of 2008 being the year of the editor. I think Mahalo has proven itself to be a great resource during breaking news due to the process of editors (or curators).

Posted in Blogging, Philos | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

Jax Holiday Trax

December 3, 2008 – 9:49 am

I am a big fan of holiday music. The only problem is that the vast majority of it sucks.

So I have been working on a Pandora channel for holiday music that doesn’t suck. To me, that means it is at least a little jazzy and not very poppy. Stuff that makes me feel good, but doesn’t bore me to tears. I like a little dissonance.

If that sounds good then check out Jax Holiday Trax.

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