testing

i will delete this soon.

whoops.

heh, whoops. i almost forgot that i had this blog, and i posted a bunch of new year's resolutions to it...last YEAR. so this is as good a time as any to do a little self reflection, and see if i've done well on my 2007 resolutions.

• be more positive - i think i've done better on this front. i'm not sure if i'm a more positive person in general, but i've certainly learned to hold my tongue back a bit.
• take things slower - hmmm...this is mixed. on one hand, i know when i'm at home, i still feel the need to do everything all at once so that i can get comfortable ASAP (like go to the bathroom and get undressed and take out my contacts), but for larger life stuff, i surprised myself by being able to juggle a lot of big changes at the same time (getting engaged, buying a house, finding a new job - more on all of this at another time). so i'll give myself a passing grade here.
• be more decisive - another head scratcher. when it comes to big things, sure, somehow i manage to make the call pretty quickly. i'm definitely moreso now at work - although that may be a function of being in a job where i don't have to get through 18 levels of approvals for every last thing.
• be better informed, read the news, watch the news - horrendous failure here.
• research returning to asia in the future - this one competes with the last one for the horrendous failure award.
• eat more fruit - i think i'm doing ok here. =)

all in all...to assign myself an arbitrary score, i think i just passed with a 65%.

new year, new promises.

why do people make new year's resolutions? if you stop to think about it, it's actually pretty stupid. what's the difference between december 31st and january 1st? as i get older, the difference gets smaller and smaller every year. i think when i have kids, that's when the holidays will kick back in for me, but right now, the holidays aren't all that big a deal, except for another reason to party.

that being said, i'll stop ranting and list out the things i want to work on this year.

• be more positive. or at least, learn to keep my mouth shut a bit more when nothing but disparaging thoughts come to mind. i don't want to be that guy or be perceived as that guy.
• take things a bit slower. i've gotten into the habit of rushing from one thing to the next, so much so that i can't stop to appreciate things. for example, when eating dinner at home, as soon as i'm done, i'm up and washing the dishes, because that's the next logical thing to do. what's wrong with just sitting and digesting for a bit? or, when cooking, i'm trying to do a million things at once - wash the veggies, cut them, start pan-frying, go, go, go...it's put a real crimp in my culinary skills. this is gonna be a tough habit to break.
• be more decisive. i don't know when i stopped being decisive but i did. i don't have much of an opinion on anything anymore, and that bothers me. i'd like to have a better formed opinion on small things (such as where to go for dinner or what to do over the weekend) to larger things (such as how i feel about unions and its affect on the american workforce).
• corollary to the last one, be better informed. read more. read the news. watch the news (in chinese).
• corollary to the last one (again), if i'm going to go back to asia i should start acting like it. i really don't know crap about business in asia, so it's an "easy to say hard to do" kinda thing. i should devote it the proper due dilligence, since it would be, uh, a HUGE life decision.
• lastly, eat more fruit. you laugh, but seriously. i feel like a lot of my dietary problems start first thing in the morning. i get up and drink coffee for breakfast. as a result, i'm starving at lunch. as a result, i get food coma in the afternoon. i get home, i'm starving again, so i eat too much for dinner, or i munch on chips or something before dinner. repeat x 365. hence, new dietary plan for 2007: fruit + some carb (toast) + coffee in the morning. mid/light lunch. fruit snack in the afternoon. dinner. maybe dessert. go to bed before my brain thinks i need more food.

oh, and lastly lastly - follow through. i'll check back around this time in 2008 to see how i did.

seen on the freeway.

on monday, 101 south. i really wish i could've taken a picture of this. a mental image will have to do. picture this:

a large black pickup truck, raised maybe 6 inches off the 22 inch rims, huge metal bars covering the front and rear bumpers and the lights, huge foglights installed in the front. i was driving an audi at the time and i think my head was about level with his footboard.

driver was a white male, mid twenties, buzz cut, sunglasses, yapping away on cell phone. typical.

license plate: UR TINY.

i'm fairly certain he was addressing his own penis.

home away from home.

stopped by the new and improved westfield shopping center in downtown SF, and i gotta say....wow. it reminds me of asia in a lot of ways - large, bright open concept mall, with a big proper food court and grocery downstairs. i'm happy to see stores like metropark, vans, lids, border's (a bookstore is always nice to have in a mall...a place to chill out), the french bakery upstairs (the name escapes me, but it's the same one on santana row next to straits cafe), straits cafe, out the door...

bloomingdale's men's also looks promising. i'm in full-on save $$$ mode right now so i didn't want to risk going in.

oh, and i'm looking forward to trying wichcraft someday. food network's been pimping tom collichio for ages.

it's nice to see that the higher-end stores are moving over to the new mall, and the rest is staying in the old mall - one of the things i always hated about the SF shopping center was the teenybopper appeal. walking in and out of the place was always a chore, with all of the fools loitering around outside.

so, taking all of that together, with all the rich indos running around with their gucci handbags, and the asian kids gangsta squatting outside the mall and smoking, it's just like being in taiwan or singapore.

ah, home.

content junkie.

hi, my name is b and i'm a content junkie.

it started off pretty harmlessly - the tv was used for 2 things: watching sports and an occasional dvd.

then came the tivo, which was great for buzzing through commercials for a couple of shows i was really into, like the simpsons.

but as i got older and busier (and my attention span shortened), i found myself drawn more and more to tv shows. little bite-sized pieces of content, perfectly consumed over a meal.

then came the plasma tv, in all its HD glory. and it's true what they say: once you've gone HD you can't go back. so the poor tivo was rendered useless in favor of on-demand HD programming from my wide network of friends. *ahem*

and now i have the best of all worlds: HD quality programming, commercial free, when i want it. and i'm hooked.

what's going to be the future of digital content distribution? when more and more people are getting their content the way i'm getting it now, and less are sitting and waiting for shows to start, something's going to have to change. the networks won't be able to rely on advertisers buying commercials that are just going to be cut out from the show...so i guess eventually we'll have to pay for everything. maybe they'll run a ticker across the bottom of the screen to stream ads constantly. maybe they'll offer subscription downloads - ad free version will be for-pay, but with ads will be free.

how strong is the desire to not only get content when you want it, but also where you want it? is there a market for a portable digital media player that can grab shows anytime and anywhere? we're starting to see that in slingbox, but that seems far too complicated and expensive to really become a widespread standard.

so, i don't know where this post is going, but it's some stuff i've been thinking about. i'm sure there's tons of business opportunities in this space, and who knows which will become viable, but one thing seems clear to me: in a few years, we're all going to be content junkies. whoever figures out a way to feed the addiction is going to be stinking rich.

10 months and 20 days...

...since my last blog post. forgive me blogger for i have sinned.

woops. well, i'm back. i think the time off should have been plenty of time to kill off what little readership i had before, but oh well...more privacy for me. when no one's watching, you can be free.

so what's happened in the last 10 months or so?

• been working my tail off. i read my last post about "learning a new business" and it took me a few days to remember what the hell i was talking about. then it hit me..ahh, right. well, that project got shelved. but 8 months later, it's back on, so i can't talk about it again. other than that, i've become the defacto senior web producer for my group, because of attrition and lack of new hiring. the upside is that i get staffed to every large project. the downside is that there's only so much time in a day.
• i'm coming up on a much-needed vacation. we're leaving for maui in 2 days. i'm excited, yet not. it's weird. you get on a roll at work and you don't really want to leave that. plus i have a hard time leaving some of the most important people in my life: sangiovese, tempranillo, pancetta, and prosciutto. (in case you're wondering the first 2 are goldfish and the latter 2 are my turtles.)
• i haven't talked to my family enough. i think i'm developing an old-man level phobia of talking on the phone, because i just despise it. so much to the point that i have a hard time calling my brother just to see how he's doing. if you asked me where he's working now, i'd have no idea. yeah, it's that bad.
• the suns nearly blew it in the first round of the playoffs. man, i have NEVER been that pissed in my entire life. after game 3, i was just wrecking things. but that was a momentous occasion for me, as an obsessed sports fan. it's like "hitting bottom" as a drug user. you hit bottom and you realize that you've hit bottom, and that's when you decide to pick up the pieces in your life and turn things around. and so i did. sports won't affect me as much as they used to. or so i hope, just wait till next june.
• i'm obsessed with the "•". i use this with ALL my emails now to lay out bullet points. on a mac, it's "alt" + "8".
• i've decided to go back to school. eventually. why? i can't think of a good reason, really. something tells me that it's time. you know, it's the same feeling you get in your head. it's time to get married. it's time to end this relationship. it's time to buy a new car. it's just time. the feeling i get is that i can't do this job forever. my biggest problem is i just don't have it in me, to take what someone else said as gospel and just go do it unquestioningly. aapl's got a culture of that, at least in my group, and it's a cultural thing that comes all the way from the top, down to us. anyway, my point is, i don't like being told what to do. and i hate sucking up. the faster i can get to a place where I'M telling people what to do, and they're sucking up to ME, the better.
• don't get me wrong, i hate suck-ups. but if you had to choose between sucking up and being sucked up to, which would you prefer?
• i saw "the last kiss," the movie by zach braff (ok i know he didn't make the movie but i can't be bothered to look it up. the guy who wrote "crash" wrote it.) why is this significant? it wasn't a great movie, by any stretch, but it was good. why was rachel bilson so attracted to zach braff? i mean, that NEVER happens. you just don't get coed hotties coming up to you, forcing their number on you, and basically dragging your ass to bed, with little or no effort on your part. anyway, i digress. the reason why that movie's significant, and this is the same thing i've been telling other people, is that zach braff's character? that's ME. i'm in his point in life. almost 30, in a very good place in life, happy, stable...but not quite ready to say: this is it. not quite ready to stamp some "final" details on my life. i'm almost there, just not...quite...there...yet. and i don't think it's a fear of commitment, to another person, or a mortgage. to me, it's the fear of turning in your last crazy dream you had for yourself. am i ready to shelve that last dream? i was telling di the other day, the mid-20s crisis comes from reconciling what you thought you'd be doing at 25 when you were 21. so this is kind of the same thing. i'm battling the expectations i had on myself when i was 21. or 18. or 12. "by the time i turn 30, i want to..."

anyway, in case you were wondering, that last post, that's why i'm here. it's time to figure some shit out.
forgive me blogger, for i have sinned. it's been 10 months and 20 days since my last post.
but, i'm back.