Thank You, George Lucas

I'm a very avid reader. I have been since I was young. I used to sneak a flashlight into bed so that I could continue to read after my parents turned the lights out. The words created such vivid images in my mind, and took me to places I would never imagine on my own.

Movies sometimes have the same power for me. When a movie can create a sense of wonder and realism and emotion for me, I am instantly hooked. My "top ten" of movies is really quite simple.
1. Star Wars
2. Indiana Jones
3. The Lord of the Rings


I remember seeing Star Wars for the first time so clearly. My mom had a long day of me and my 4 brothers. She sent my dad out with the oldest of us to go the movies so she could have some quiet time. My younger brothers being just 6 stayed at home and went to bed. I, on the other hand, had an experience I would never forget, even after 31 years.

I waited 4 hours in line to see Empire Strikes Back. 6 hours to see Return of the Jedi. I fell in love with Han Solo. I had dreams of Mark Hamill vacuuming my ceiling in a blue and red striped rugby shirt. Don't ask. Really. Star Wars was a major influence in my life--and in more ways than I have time to write about here.

When it came time for the Star Wars prequels, I thought I had reached Nirvana (nerdvana?). As the opening began to roll, I grabbed my husband's arm and squeezed tight. He looked over at me and laughed. I was crying tears of joy and excitement.

[hey, i never claimed to not be a loser here]

2 hours later I felt a profound sense of loss. George Lucas f-ed up. In his quest for either technical perfection or the almighty marketing dollar, he somehow screwed over my childhood. Episodes 2 and 3 lessened the hurt a little bit, but not much. Somewhere, Lucas lost the heart of the story. The relationships that held the action together and created a world in which I wanted to live.

Fast forward to May 24, 2008.

I'm entrusting a rehash of my childhood memories to George Lucas again. This time, though, Steven Spielberg is involved. I'm feeling more optimistic.

The theatre goes dark, and my husband is again laughing at me as I am again wiping away the tears. The movie opens in classic Spielberg fashion. Your first shot of Indy is in shadow--putting on the battered fedora. With that one bit of cinematography, I knew everything was going to be ok.

I smiled. A HUGE smile. One that didn't leave my face for 2 hours and 4 minutes.

Thank you, George Lucas. For not killing my fond memories and having to provide a condition on my love.

Lawsuits and Arbitration, Oh My!

Troy and I bought a condo in Vegas a few years ago--pre-Zack. We viewed it as a good investment, and liked the convenience factor of it. And although ability to travel to Vegas has diminished (with the arrival of Zack and the big job changes), we are still very glad we made the purchase.

One of the appealing things about the purchase was that it is a condo-hotel project. Which means that we can easily rent the condo out without having to either hire a property management company or be there in person.

One year has passed since we bought, and we've recently learned that some of the other owners have filed a lawsuit against the builder for violating some laws during the sales process. In reading it over, the lawsuit has some merit. But their first step was overturned by a judge because the condo owners didn't go through the arbitration process first as agreed upon in our purchase agreements.

I never understand why people resort to lawsuits. There is one party who makes good with lawsuits. That's the lawyers for the little people who try to take on the Big Guys. They get paid no matter what the outcome. The Big Guys have lawyers on staff, so the marginal cost of fighting a lawsuit is zero. Makes it a tough world. And the only hope, imho, that the little people have is if the Big Guy wants to avoid negative publicity about the whole thing.

In this case, I am upset that no attempt to go to arbitration was made. They want the builder to buy back their units. I don't want to sell mine at all.

Instead, I just want to make a bit more money off of the rental program. So I came to Vegas to a meeting of other owners, opened my mouth and now took the lead on trying to move our complaints on the rental program forward to arbitration.

Oh my.

Defending Digital Photography

I wish I was a better blogger. If I was, I could actually have a source to cite here. But I don't. I pathetic.

I read an article recently that basically said that digital cameras were killing the "art" of photography because the transient nature of digital storage encouraged people to immediately ditch "non-perfect" pictures. The author of the article supposed that so many of our most cherished photos from the pre-digital ages were the cast-off ones. The ones that at first glance may not appear perfect but actually wound up capturing a moment that was not perfect or posed or predisposed. He lamented the toss-awayness of digital data.

At first read, I agreed with him. I have often discarded photos I've taken while looking at them on a little screen about 1" by 3/4." What treasures did I lose by casually hitting the delete button on my camera? Especially because my camera holds 200+ pictures and I have never come within 50 of running out of space. Why not hold on to it? Storage is cheap. I spent the next month or so holding on to every single click.

In doing so, however, it made me a little more conscious of each click. And I began to realize the flip side of the whole digital thing. Storage is cheap. Film is cheap. Developing the pictures is cheap. Even printing pictures is cheap.

Since moving to digital, I have clicked the camera shutter more times than I had previously. Because the marginal cost of one more picture is practically nil. But the marginal benefit could be huge. Many times, my son is doing something somewhat mundane--playing with his sippy cup, laughing with the dog, riding his play train, dancing, napping. The things kids do every day. But because I was able to snap 25 pictures in 3 minutes, I was able to get the perfect shot--that captured the exact look of concentration as he tried to get that last drop of juice out of his sippy cup. The look of pure joy as he danced in a little circle waving his arms around, as he opened his mouth in the beginning of a snore in his afternoon nap.

I thank the people who brought photography to the digital age. For I have been able to capture the emotions and experience of my son's life more than I ever could have in the film age.

The new Nationals Ball Park

This past Saturday (March 29), I went to the new Nationals Ball park in DC. We chose to go on Saturday, even though it was an exhibition game, because we wanted to stay away from the circus that was the George W. Bush throwing out the first pitch mess. Good decision from what I heard :)
My hopes were high for the ballpark. As some (or all 1) of my readers know, I got on yearly trips with husband and friends to ballparks around the country. The goal is to enjoy some baseball, take in the local experience at the park, have some beers and find some cool thing to do in a city we otherwise never would have been to (Milwaukee, that would be you!). But a big part of the trip is the ballpark itself.

I have my personal favorites:
1. Pac Bell Park in San Francisco (I know, its AT&T park, but just like Candlestick is still Candlestick...)

• Great view of the Bay and on over to the Oakland Hills
• Excellent food that is representative of local establishments. Garlic from Gilroy in the form of the 40-clove chicken sandwich, Garlic Fries from Gordon Biersch (sp?), Compadre Nachos, Anchor Steam beer. All local and yummy.

2. PNC Park in Pittsburgh

• By far the best view from a stadium: You can see the Roberto Clemente bridge (which crosses teh Allegheny River) from the stands, and the vista is amazing. On game days, they close the bridge to just foot traffic.
• The food, again, relies on local fare: pierogies, Allegheny City Beverage, Primanti Brothers and their famous smash sandwiches. Yummy.
• Recognition of their heroes--Pop's Plaza (named after Willie Stargell), Roberto Clemente bridge, and a giant statue of those two plus Honus Wagner, Legacy Square to honor the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords
• General fan friendliness: Family bathrooms, a Home Run ball exchange policy, Kids ID bracelets, etc.
• in short, a lot to love

3. Fenway Park in Boston

• Yes, yes, a diehard Yankees fan putting this park on my list. But before I'm a Yankees fan, I'm a baseball fan. And how can a baseball fan not love Fenway Park? Now I wish the Sox sucked in their ballpark forever, but I can't dis the ballpark. Gotta respect the team for hanging on to the old dog and making lots of improvements. When I was last up there (Fall 96?) it needed a lot of work. But I've heard its getting better.

4. Oriole Park at Camden Yards

• here, its all about the warehouse. A great design, good seats all over the house.

Back to the original topic of the post: The Nats new ballpark.

I was disappointed.

That's not to say that there weren't things that I didn't really like, but the overall effect was, eh.
Things I did not like:
1. Not much atmosphere or character. There is so much history and architecture that could have been used to inspire the stadium. Instead, we get (what felt to me) a carbon copy of the Phillies new stadium. Nice, but not memorable.
2. When you had a choice of a view of the river or a view of the Capitol building, you choose... neither? Well, I guess you can kind of see the Capitol from the cheap seats... but why not orient the building to get better view of the monuments? I mean nothing is allowed to be taller than the Washington Monument for a reason people!

What I did like:
1. Our seats (thanks, Eric). They are on club level, cushioned and quick access to a temperature-controlled area with food and bars.
2. Local food. Here, they did good. I had a Ben's half-smoke with chili and fixin's from Ben's Chili Bowl. I could also have scored chili Mac from Hard Times, some BBQ from Red, Hot & Blue, ice cream from Giffords. The food choices get an A from me.

Of course, since I am a Baseball Fan(atic), I'll still be going to my share of game there. Even if I am slightly disappointed. Maybe it will grow on me.

Making Money by Blogging

I've been using the web for a while now, (obviously) and have had many false starts on blogging. I think, actually, that this blog is probably my longest running attempt at blogging, and you can see how piss-poor I am at doing it consistently.

However, I have run across a bunch of people, especially recently while working on Mixx.com, that blog for the money. Not for some other motivation.

And now this causes me to create an aside from the point of this. What is my motivation for writing this blog? I genuinely have no idea. I can take a guess at some motivations, but there certainly isn't a strong dominant one. For example, I like to write restaurant reviews, so that's a motivation (for some of my posts). I have some long-standing issues or ideas in my brain that sometimes need working out. I get annoyed by some things. All this ties together to create the feeling that I want to blog. Given those things, though, I wonder why I don't just create a private blog. Or write to a local file on my harddrive. Why do I want other people to read my blog? I really don't want that, as I've only ever told like 3 people that I do write a blog. had this thing going for 2 months before my husband knew. And I tell him everything--except those things that I know will bore him ;-)

Anyway....

I was looking at a site called dat money (I'll refrain from giving them a backlink they probably crave). The guy says he made like $500 last month on his blog. Thing is, his blog isn't really that great. At all. Its a blog about blogging. I am beginning to think there are 20,000 of these blogs about blogging that are involved in some Ponzi scheme to fool people out of their money using AdSense. Hmmm...

I know that if I put my mind to it, I have way more to offer to a reader than blogging about blogging. I'm pretty good at my job (maybe). I know a lot about social media and the internet. I am also pretty filled with advice for new moms--not that anyone would probably want to hear it. I am good fantasy baseball and fantasy football player. I know a lot and am very opinionated about sports.

Maybe some day, I'll give money blogging a start. I'd have to figure out how to run wordpress or something.

St Patty's Day, Interrupted

We went out to dinner for St. Patty's Day last night. We had to, I'm Irish!
We went with friends to the Melting Pot for their Irish beer dinner. The setup was pretty nice--they had a big room with 3 long tables and 3 fondue pots for each table.

As a side note, Troy didn't like the setup. As he said, if I wanted to go to dinner with some strangers, I wouldn't have chosen the beat bloated dude we had to sit next to. For the record, the couple near us were actually very nice. A bit chatty, but nice.

Anyway, the first course was cheese fondue, of course. It was paired with Kelly's Irish Cider, Raspberry flavored. I loved that stuff! Wow, I could drink that all the time. I'll have to find somewhere to get my drink on with that stuff.

The second course was salad. I chose the Caesar. It had Parmesan-crusted pine nuts. They were outstanding, and a nice addition to a Caesar. I'm usually pretty picky about my Caesar salads.

(flashback to '93) My Caesar pickiness stems from a cross-country drive I was on. Stopped at a Denny's in Utah. Yeah, I know, a Denny's in Utah. I ordered a Caesar salad because how could you mess up Romaine, croutons, Caesar dressing. Yes, you can get all fancy with that (made tableside, anchovies, parmesan shavings, etc), but at its core, those are the 3 things that make a Caesar a Caesar. Take one away, and no Caesar. So anyway, I order my Caesar, there in Denny's and the waitress says:

"what kind of dressing you want with that?"

Me: "Excuse me?"

Waitress: "What kind of dressing do you want on your Caesar?"

Me: "Caesar dressing"

Waitress: "Honey, I know you want a Caesar, but I need to know what kind of dressing you want on it"

Me: "Can I have Caesar dressing?"

Waitress gives me sort of an angry look

Me: "Caesar salads generally have a dressing on them called Caesar dressing. Why can't I have that?"

Waitress: "We don't have 'Caesar' dressing"

Me: "Ranch?"

Waitress: "Yeah, I can do ranch for you"

So out comes the salad with Romaine, tomatoes, carrots and ranch dressing. I guess in a Denny's in Utah, "Caesar" means you want Romaine lettuce instead of iceberg in your salad. Oh, and you want to pay $1.00 more for that "fancy" lettuce.

The best Caesar I had was in Florida. One of those places that make the salad right at your table. Kind of cliche, but in this case, the salad was awesome. Hint of anchovies, garlic croutons, Parm shavings, a very garlicy fresh-made dressing, Really crisp Romaine cut at bite-size pieces. Yummy.

So back to St. Patty's Day...
Paired with the salad they offered Wexfords. Wexfords is one of those Irish beers that, like Boddingtons and Guiness,comes in the pub can with the little ball in there that makes the beer pour all funny. Now don't get made at me purists, I say funny to mean just that its different than your standard beer pour. Usually, I don't like beer that comes in funny cans with little balls in it. However, I reallly enjoyed Wexfords. Or maybe I was just in love with my Parmesan-crusted pine nuts and my taste buds were dead from the Raspberry Cider. In any case, it is a beer I will order again.

The entree was standard Melting Pot fare--raw meats and veggies for you to boil up on your own. It was served with some double-chocolate malt bock stout nasty crap I would rather not taste or drink. So I gave mine away.

Ah, and then towards the end of the meat course, comes the Smithwick's. Ah, I love me some Smithwicks.

But then came the phone call. From the sitter.

Little Zack fell down and bumped his crown. And cried for 20 minutes. My son doesn't cry for 20 minutes. He only moans at night for 20 minutes when he wants his bottle or his mommy. So we left. Early. Before the chocolate course. Great sadness.

And I didn't get to finish my Smithwick's.

By the time we got back to check on him, Z was his old happy self, no sign of pupil dialation, etc. We think the crying was cause he got scared when he smacked his coconut.

Did I mention I didn't even finish my Smithwick's? And that I didn't get the chocolate fondue?

Tonight is our anniversary (13th!) and a trip to Morton's. Maybe no interruptions this evening.

On Redemption

I got into a weird place at my old job. My boss moved me into a new position, that was really quite different from the old job function I held. "We hired this new guy" he told me, "and we think he can do a better job of creating a differentiated and compelling product vision than you." Hmm, I said. "And you are an expert at shipping products, so we will put you into this job over here that is leading up the project managers." I'll get back to you, I said.

I went home to talk to my husband, who is so very supportive of me, it brings me to tears when I really think about it. He reminded me that the last time I worked a job I wasn't really made to do, I was miserable. I got bored so quickly. And a bored me is a bad me.

I also started thinking about the larger picture here. I had worked diligently for this company for more than 11 years. Put off having kids because I was so dedicated to the job. Made many sacrifices, including having only two "unplugged" vacations in 11 years. And it had come down to the fact that my skillset was completely unappreciated by the company. Not just unappreciated, but underappreciated.

My personal brand, what I had worked so hard to achieve, was not what I had imagined it to be. Those above me in the management hierarchy thought my skillset was completely different than it actually was. Anyone who worked more than 15 minutes with me knew that doing the task of project management was NOT in my wheelhouse. In fact, it was a running joke how horribly disorganized I was. When I was a project manager 6 years earlier, I was running a project involving a team of over 200 people, and when I left the position and had to transition the project to another project manager, my "transition" document was an email with everyone's name in it. I said, well, I think I have this plan in my head, and that's all the people that are working on it. Not much skill there for a project manager. In the next 6 years, I never evolved my horribly lacking project manager skills, even though the company in general evolved what was asked of the project managers. And now I was being told to lead a group of people who's job function I didn't even understand. Uh, how about putting me in charge of the finance department? I probably would have had just about the same amount of chance of understanding how to lead the accountants.

How did it get to this? Not sure. I was never one to suck up. I had always had my own style. I had never been afraid to speak my mind, whether it was to the CEO or to a brand-new hire. I figured if that person didn't want my honesty, then that was their shortcoming.

Having some time, and going through the stages of grief, denial, anger, etc etc, I came to realize that it wasn't that the management of that company didn't get ME; it was that they weren't product people and didn't understand what it meant to create compelling products. And, I probably pissed them off at some time. Oh, and I was hugely pregnant and on maternity leave for 6 months--hard to make an impression in that state ;-)

What the management at that company didn't understand, and doesn't understand, is that being a 'product leader" is not just about coming up with ideas -- which my replacement was obviously great at. Its about coming up with ideas, turning them into an actual set of achievable plans, and making micro-decisions along the way about the end-user experience in order to achieve something that is functional, enjoyable, has "smile" moments (where you have surprised the user into enjoying something more than they thought they would), works, matches your business goals and reflects the value proposition for users that your brand is communicating to the market. Its inspiring people to understand the vision of what you are trying to accomplish, how that vision translates into a positive for the company, and thus why they should believe in you and work their ass off to accomplish said set of tasks. Its getting to know each member of the team, to understand what motivates them so that you can speak their language and create individual motivation points for each team member to bring out their best. Its raising the level of people who work around you. Its creating a cohesion so that all voices feel heard and valued and motivated. Its about convincing your team that all the great ideas are theirs (even when/if they aren't). Its about achieving an end while making the means as enjoyable as possible for everyone.

So after I asked to be given a layoff package--and to my old boss's credit, he complied and I was able to pay for my son's college education in one fell swoop because of it--I spent a lot of time second-guessing my skills, my passion, and my sense of where I belonged and what I wanted to do 'when i grow up.'

I signed on with Chris McGill to build out an idea he had from scratch. I created requirements, hired a brilliant tech guy, a web developer wunderkind, made wireframes, supervised the creation of a design, and shipped www.mixx.com.

And got more than 100 glowing reviews, a surprisingly large amount of raving fans who have created their own mixx fan site, and 7 other ex-coworkers who chose to leave that other company and come work with me.

Redemption.