Category: Things I Like
Oh goody, they are here. Every magazine, newspaper, and most of the online publications known to man are putting together their “2008 year in review” and their “2009 prediction” editions. What a fucking waste of human energy.
This has been one of my pet peeves for 20+ years. For a while I managed to ignore them completely. At some point I started getting asked for my predictions and succumbed to my ego for a few years and participated in the prediction folly. At some point I realized that there was zero correlation between my predictions and reality and that by participating, I was merely helping perpetuate this silliness.
The energy that goes into the “year in review” and “prediction” stuff seems to be significantly greater in “extreme” (both good and bad) times. The prognostications become stronger and bolder. The analysis by hindsight intensifies. I don’t think this benefits anyone.
Over dinner recently, I was having a discussion with a friend. The conversation took place in a very full and busy restaurant. At some point the discussion turned to the sentiment throughout the United States right now and how the level of anxiety, negativity, pessimism, depression, and downright panic seemed at an extremely high level and appeared disconnected from general reality. We talked about what “general reality” meant for a little while – both “our realities” (which are different) as well as our view of the “actual general reality in the United States.”
As we rolled through some of the discussion, I made the offhand comment that I thought much of the sentiment that existed started near the end of the summer a few weeks before the DNC. As I thought about it more, it made sense. For the 90 days prior to the election, all we heard and read was “things suck in America.” Oil hit $135 / barrel and was going to go to $200 / barrel (it’s $35 / barrel today.) Gas was going to be $10 / gallon (it’s under $2 / gallon in Colorado today.)
I was on vacation in England the week Lehman went bankrupt, AIG melted down, and Merrill Lynch got bought by Bank of America. Amy and I rarely watch TV on vacation (other than movies) but since CNBC’s Closing Bell was on about the time we were crawling into bed, we watched it as though it was a sporting event. Over the course of the week, we must have seen 100 different people predict 500 different things. 485 of them were wrong. Oh – and I read Taleb’s The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable during this week and just could stop bursting out with cynical laughter each evening. Over the 90 days we heard over and over again how much America sucked. How many problems we had. How everything was totally screwed up.
Of course, the financial markets have been a disaster in Q3 and Q4. The housing bubble has finally officially exploded (doesn’t explode sounds more dramatic than burst.) Unemployment is rising. Credit is frozen. Retail sales are massively off this Christmas. All companies except Walmart are having a tough Q4. Blah blah blah. And now come the 2009 predictions.
My prediction for 2009 – the vast majority of the 2009 predictions will be wrong. Ignore them. Find a Dharma that fits your Karma (more on that when I review Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement (Columbia Business School) by Bill Duggan, which I read last night.) You get a finite number of years on this planet – make the most of all of them, no matter what is going on around you.
As Chanukah sprints ahead and gets started before Christmas, we all know how this ends since Christmas will finish before Chanukah does. To refresh your memory, take a look at The Difference Between Christmas and Chanukah. An oldy but a goody.
A marathon wouldn’t be a marathon without my sherpa. Amy plays the role perfectly, including taking all the important pictures. My favorite:
I was inspired by the hilarious McSweeney’s article Recreational Jewish Youth Basketball: An Ethnography (thanks Amy) to host a Jewish Christmas party this year near Keystone, Colorado. If you happen to be out this way on the evening of December 24th and have a hankering for Chinese food and a movie, please drop me an email to coordinate.
Marathon #14 is done. It was fantastic – I finished in 4:39:21 which is my fourth best time of the 14 marathons that I’ve run. The course was fantastic, the weather was perfect, and I had a great pace car (Matt Shobe).
As I mentioned in my previous post, I didn’t feel particular ready for this one. My running has been solid and steady with a good base, but I was feeling tired from the cumulative effect of travel combined with four other marathons this year. I had a great vacation a week ago, but last week was brutal and I didn’t really spend any time thinking about the marathon until Friday. Oh – and I’m still heavier than I want to be (although lighter than when I declared a jihad on my weight.)
There were about 1100 runners in the race. Matt and I started in the very back of the pack so it was satisfying to pass a number of folks (I was the 847th finisher.) I felt very strong at the half way point (2:18:36) and was able to hold the pace in the second half (a 10:29 per mile pace overall.) I had a ton left at the end – I had an 8:46 pace for the 1.2 mile stretch from 25 on.
Once again Amy has been a phenomenal sherpa. We’re sticking around to see Huntsville (US Space & Rocket Center anyone?) and are planning to have dinner with Andy Smith, the founder/CEO of Gyminee (one of the TechStars 2008 companies that is based here.)
I feel superb right now – a little sore but basically like I just did a long run. I’m hopeful that I’m starting to figure out how to train for and run these things.
I’m running the Rocket City Marathon tomorrow. It’ll be my 14th marathon in my quest to finish one in every state in the US. My co-host in this experience is Matt Shobe, one of the founders of FeedBurner. Matt’s a real runner (PR of 3:25) but, as he writes in his post This time, I’m running for charity, he’s going to pace his slow friend Brad.
I’ve had a hard time getting my head into this marathon. I had a great week off the grid in Mexico but then returned to an incredibly intense week. After four 15+ hour days, I finally had a little chill time which masqueraded as "travel to Huntsville day". I went to the Expo (small and cute), got my number, and started to get excited. I don’t feel especially trained or well rested for this one, but the weather looks like it’s going to be perfect, the course is flat, and I’ve got a friend who is going to suffer through 26.2 miles with me – what more could a marathoner want?
It turns out that my coach Gary Ditsch of Endurance Base Camp drove down from Kentucky to run this one with a triathloner that he also coaches. We met face to face for the first time and are planning to head out to dinner (yup – pasta) as a micro-gang.
As Matt says, he’s going to run this one for charity – in this case Children’s Medical Missions. If you are so inclined, please support Matt (for the both of us) – I just did (that feels a little recursive.) And – as always – thanks to my anchor sponsors Return Path and Pixie Mate for their support of Accelerated Cure via their sponsorship of my running quest.
Ahhh – that was a very nice vacation. Q4 vacation is often around my birthday, so Amy whisked me away to Cabo for a week of being completely off the grid. If you don’t follow me on Twitter, I was on a blogging vacation for a week before that because a distributed denial of service attack (what did I say, who did I piss off?) apparently took me off line for the previous week.
While the DDOS attack continues, things have been more stable since we’ve changed a bunch of config things. Once we finish the move to a much more industrial strength hosting service, I hope the probably goes away entirely. And – if it doesn’t, maybe I’ll just take another vacation from blogging.
In the mean time, I’m back, rested, and ready to blog again. For what that’s worth.
I was reading through Technology Review in the bathroom this morning and came across a quick piece on Iron Man that I missed during the movie. Apparently Tony Stark was MIT Class of ’87. Note the Brass Rat (not the same as the one I never wear.)
The article on the web goes on to mention my good friend John Underkoffler, who was the science and technology advisor for the movie (along with a number of other movies including Minority Report, The Hulk, and Aeon Flux.) John is the founder / CTO of Oblong Industries, one of our Foundry Group investments. Oblong will be unveiling itself later this month.
That’s me and John at my parents farm in Bells, Texas over 20 years ago. He’s the real Tony Stark in my book.
I love a good data visualization. A friend (thanks Rick) pointed me at this awesome site of different mapping permutations based on the 2008 election results. For example – election results based on a population cartogram.
Lots more on the site – check it out. Thanks Rick!