Archive for June, 2007

Getting Married

Posted in Me: My Favorite Subject. And Hopefully Yours Too on June 29, 2007 by themaroon

Well, today at around 4 p.m. I’ll be a married man, unless my fiancée comes to her senses. And we’ve been together for most of the last 6 years, so I have to think that if it were going to happen, it already would have. My dad, who has been asking her why the hell she’s with me since day one, keeps asking her if she’s sure, and she has yet to say no.

Apple tried to upstage me by releasing the iPhone on the same date, even after I got my groomsmen iPods as their gift. I figured everyone who wants an engraved flask (which is probably nobody) already has one from the last wedding they are in.

That reminds me, I need to go find mine and fill it with some Chopin.

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Best Movie Ever

Posted in TV, Movies, Music, and Why They All Suck on June 25, 2007 by themaroon

Without a doubt the best movie ever. Ninja Cheerleaders.

See you there.

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The Atheist Bible

Posted in Are Religious People Stupid? on June 23, 2007 by themaroon

The official God FAQ.

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Meteorology

Posted in Stupid Shit I Found On The Web on June 21, 2007 by themaroon

Since my wedding is outdoors and within 10-day forecast range, I decided today to check the report. Scattered thunderstorms. No shocker. We spent a bunch of money on a place that had a really nice garden so we could get married in it, so why wouldn’t it rain? Those attending will be glad to hear there is a backup indoor location.

I’m not too worried, because meteorologist seem to guess incorrectly more often than not at that distance. In fact I looked around online and found somewhere that they are only 30% accurate from 8 days away. So I guess there’s actually a 70% chance it won’t rain. I don’t really understand why they don’t just say the opposite of what they think, then they’d be right an extra 40%. Weathermen could learn a lot from George Costanza

I would say I’m happy to have a 70% chance of sun, but I know my luck. I’ve been offering everyone I know 2-1 that I would rain for the last year. No takers. I might kick it up to 3-1 now. Still, enough people have gone broke betting on me to have good luck that I doubt I’ll get any action.

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Relationships

Posted in Me: My Favorite Subject. And Hopefully Yours Too on June 20, 2007 by themaroon

A lot of guys my age are pretty down on relationships. They’re all in the “single and loving it” frame of mind. And while they’ve got a lot going for them, there is one very commendable thing about being in a relationship that you rarely hear, which is that you can put foil on your window.

See, at this apartment I’m staying in here in Cambridge, the windows have nothing but cheap blinds on them. I like to sleep until 3 or 4 in the afternoon most days, so that’s pretty damn annoying for me. So here’s how I solved the problem:

So what does that have to do with relationships? A single guy my age spends all of his time trying to convince women to come to his bedroom. And nobody who has any chance of bringing a strange girl home could risk having a window covered in foil. I don’t know for sure because I haven’t tried it, but I’m pretty sure that unless she was blind, she’d hightail it on out of there.

So even if he’s really good at picking up women, most nights the single guy sleeps alone. And when the sun comes in at 8 a.m. he has pretty much no choice but to wake up. Not me though, I just keep on sleeping. Since I have a girl whose pretty much stuck with me, I can put all of the Reynolds wrap I want over my window.

I will say that there were some logistical considerations I had not considered when I decided to foil my window. For one, the window air conditioner is a pain to work around. It also lets air in beside it. It has those little accordion shaped things to try to block up the window, but they’re not perfect. And when the wind blows, the foil moves and makes a crinkling noise.

Also you have to be really careful not to have seams, or light gets in. One tiny ray of sunshine in a room is pretty much disastrous. That’s why today I did a second layer. I also stretched it taut and ran strips of tape across it lengthwise to keep it from moving.

There’s still some minor crinkle effect though. Any thoughts on how to get rid of it?

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Ain't No Party Like A Paul Graham Party Cuz A Paul Graham Party Don't Stop

Posted in Startup on June 17, 2007 by themaroon

The Cambridge experiment is going pretty well. I’d be lying if I said I love the city, but then, that may be because I haven’t really seen much outside of my apartment. We’ve been so incredibly focused on getting work done that there has been very little time for anything else. It’s unquestionable that we’ve been at least five times as productive here as we were at home, so I guess Cambridge is at least serving its purpose.

There are a few things I’d do differently if I had to do it over again. For one, I would live either in a suburb, where rent would probably be cheaper anyway, or over in Harvard Square. Right now we’re about a mile from Davis Square, which is rather unimpressive. Alternatively, I would have rented a fully furnished place near Porterand just flown out here. The main reason I drove was so that I could bring my 24″ monitor, the Aeron, some tables (which ended up going unused in favor of the kitchen table) and some computers that it turns out we really didn’t need. In retrospect, I should have simply mailed myself the chair and monitor and just packed some clothes into a suitcase and called it a day.

We’ve now been to two dinners at the offices so far, plus one Thursday tea. It’s been a pretty cool experience. On some level, we feel out of place there. We’re very atypical among the groups involved. We’re older, for one thing. Most of these guys seem like recent college grads. I’m the youngest in my group at 26, and there might be two or three groups total in which I wouldn’t be the oldest.

Also Chad and I are financially solvent, and John is used to years of the poker lifestyle. So whereas other people are living on Ramen, probably paid for with some of the investment money they got from the program, we’re shopping at Whole Foods out of pocket. I was telling Alexis something about my trip there and one of the other founders said “You can afford Whole Foods?”

We also joke that if you ranked all of the people in terms of programming ability, John and I would be in last place. Most of the people are MIT CS students. John does have a CS degree, but he hadn’t written a line of code in maybe four years. Chad’s the only proficient programmer among us, and of all of the founders he might be the best person at designing scalable apps, since he has a lot of real world experience with that.

At the same time, I like the atmosphere, and if we feel out of place at all, it certainly isn’t because of any attitudes or actions of the YCombinator people or other founders. It’s a very free-spirited, congenial atmosphere. The exchange of ideas is rather impressive, and there are a lot of very smart people there.

Saturday was a party at Paul Graham’s house. It was fun to meet up with the other founders in a more social atmosphere. With the group being so large you don’t really get a chance to know everybody. Jessica said she wanted us to leave knowing everyone’s names, and while I’m not there yet, I think I’m close.

Also I got to see Paul’s rather unique ear plugs. If you ever meet him, be sure to ask about that.

As far as the startup goes, I feel it’s progressing at a good pace. We’re near doing some private testing. We’re also working on a Facebook app that I think has some potential. It’s only marginally related to our core business, but it is in the same niche and if nothing else could serve to load us up with accounts if it catches on.

I’ve also realized something about the startup world that I think I will soon write an essay about. It basically came to me from telling everyone at YCombinator about our idea and only one or two people even having any idea what we were talking about. If my theory is correct, and I’m almost positive it is, I think there’s a vast well of untapped startup idea potential out there.

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Sopranos

Posted in TV, Movies, Music, and Why They All Suck on June 13, 2007 by themaroon

I caught the finale of The Sopranos Sunday night. Eh. About what I expected. This whole season has been long and boring, and the finale didn’t break the streak. Like the last four seasons, it was overhyped and failed to live up to expectations. And like the last four seasons, I watched it anyway.

I think I know why they ended it the way they did. David Chase loves to defy expectations and throw curveballs at viewers. Everyone who watched the show had an expectation. The most common was Tony getting whacked, followed closely by Phil Leotardo getting whacked and Tony resuming life as usual, and either way that would pretty much wrap it up. There were a few more (Tony ending up in jail) but what nobody expected, other than me, was for there to be no real resolution at all. Nobody thought they might do that because, well, it would be retarded. And it was. That’s precisely why I saw it coming.

Still, for some reason, though it was obviously left vague by design, everyone tries to ascribe meaning to the ending. The most common theory is that it harkened back to Tony’s previous conversation with Bobby, in which they said “you probably never hear it coming” or something like that, and therefore conclude that Tony dies at the end. Still other people said that the guy who went into the bathroom was just staring at Tony the way any random guy would stare at someone who was regularly pointed out as a mob boss on the evening news.

Me personally, I’m just angry. I was watching it on my Xbox courtesy of the newest beta of Transcode 360, and I’d already had a few technical difficulties. I thought the screen going black was just something wrong with Media Center. John said “what just happened there?” and we both agreed it must have been a bad file or something, because there was no way the show’s writers could be that dumb. After a brief search on Digg we found out we were wrong, they were.

So just to be part of the gang, and despite the fact that it was intentionally left unresolved, I’ll give my account of what probably happened at the end.

The thugs who came in towards the end put some Jay-Z on the jukebox, probably the song 99 Problems. The strange guy comes out of the bathroom wielding a gun and pointing it at Tony. Unbeknownst to him, AJ, who had taken ninja-therapy at the hospital he was recuperating in, has a katana sheathed on his side. He pulls it out and slices the guys forearm clean off, which, along with the gun, clatters to the floor. The guy collapses, crying and looking at his bloody stump, in a pool of his own blood.

Meadow shrieks when she sees it happen, but then suddenly Eva Longoria comes in and consoles her with a very long, very hot make-out session. Tony has a heart attack and collapses into some lasagna, but nobody notices because there are two hot chicks getting it on and obviously nobody is going to be looking at a fat guy with that stuff happening. Also, a law is passed that makes old people stop being allowed to drive.

That’s my dream ending. What’s yours?

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TV

Posted in TV, Movies, Music, and Why They All Suck on June 10, 2007 by themaroon

Once before I asked you guys for some television recommendations and you really came through for me. Someone said to watch Arrested Development, and that it was “far better than anything that’s on TV now and I liked it as much, if not more, than Seinfeld.” I watched all three seasons. I don’t think I’m ready to put it on par with Seinfeld, but it was pretty great. Certainly too good for television.

Another person said The Office and My Name is Earl were “both quality new programs”. Yes, and yes. The Office proves what I’ve been saying for way too long, which is that Steve Carrell is maybe the best comedic actor around. The 40 Year Old Virgin might have sucked, but it would have sucked far worse with anyone else in that role. Same with Little Miss Sunshine. I can’t really think of anyone who could pull off Michael Scott as perfectly as he does.

And my name is Earl is definitely one of the best shows on television. Every time someone mentions karma I find myself saying “oh, you must be a Carson Daly fan too.” Lame, I know.

I got a ton of recommendations from friends for House, which I find to be pretty much the worst show on television. But then, I don’t watch much TV. It’s just the same bland, broadly drawn characters in hokey situations, just like every drama. It’s basically season 872 of Law and Order, but in a hospital.

Ooh, a guy who’s kind of good and kind of bad at the same time, but at the end of the day you just have to love him because he helps people. Never seen that before. He’s like John C McGinley’s character in Scrubs, but not funny.

I tried watching 24, and got bored pretty quickly. Yet another show aimed at society’s lowest common denominator. Same with Grey’s Anatomy. I’m checking out Lost but don’t expect much better.

That show quickly became one of my favorites too. The last season was a little off I thought, but there were a few great ones in there. I’m usually hyper-critical of anything set in a hospital too, since it’s so cliché, but they do a good job of not being just like every other medical show, mainly by being hilarious.

So I guess what I’ve discovered is that I prefer one-camera sitcoms with no laugh track. That’s not surprising I guess, given my low tolerance for repetition, and perhaps the fact that the more creative film makers seem to be drawn to that format these days.

Still I’m open to any format. I’ll even watch reality TV, though very skeptically. I need something to fill the hour or so before I go to bed at night, and spending so much time on the internet has made me unable to read anything more than 150 words long, unless I wrote it. So, any more suggestions?

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Introducing Hacksaw Chad Duggan

Posted in Stupid Shit I Found On The Web on June 7, 2007 by themaroon

John and I were packing for Boston, and Chad had come over to pick up a few things to load into his car since he was coming out a few days later. We went to put stuff in his trunk and I noticed some interesting stuff in there. There was a baseball bat (Chad is definitely the sort of guy who has never played t-ball or gone to a batting cage in his life), a two-by-four, some duct tape, a flashlight, and some other junk I can’t remember.

Pretty much the whole ride out John and I were laughing about the slab of wood and how paranoid our friend must be to have such a thing in his trunk. John asked “who does he think he is, Hacksaw Jim Duggan?” And thus was born a nickname.

Of course it didn’t end there. Immature clowns that we are, we even registered the domain name. Please check it out at HacksawChadDuggan.com. If you enjoy that site, there’s about a 90% chance you are male and under the age of 27.

I plan on updating daily.

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Cambrizzle

Posted in Me: My Favorite Subject. And Hopefully Yours Too on June 5, 2007 by themaroon

Long time no post. Sorry about that. I’ve been consumed with the move to Cambridge and all of the startup work. That’s progressing at a pretty good pace I think.

So far I don’t really care for this place. It’s crowded. It’s loud. It smells bad. I drove to a Whole Foods that is less than 3 miles away and that took almost a half hour, and once there I had to fight through aisles so narrow you practically had to turn your ketchup bottle sideways just to get it out.

My rent here on a tiny, very old apartment is more than I pay at home for a mortgage on a recently built house in a good school district and a new Lexus SUV. And if there’s anything about this town that makes it worth the expense, I’ve yet to find it. The restaurant situation looks pretty amazing here, but I’m not sure how much chance I’ll get to try it out.

This also has to be the worst city in the world to drive in. I take multiple wrong turns on every trip even with GPS. The road layout is just that confusing. Lots of traffic circles and six way intersections. It makes you really appreciate newer cities like Las Vegas, which are basically one giant grid.

I think that from living where I do, I’ve become accustomed to space. I like my neighbors being on the other side of an acre of grass. I like having a spare room for an office. I like having a room big enough for a 55″ TV, even though I’ll never really watch it. I like having a backyard to chase my dog around. I like having a giant driveway and a two car garage.

So while this apartment is nice for Cambridge standards, I miss my home. I’m not the sort to get homesick either. I’ve spent weeks away with little trouble, but after three days here, I want to move back.

Nonetheless, we’ll get a lot more work done here. We’re already getting stuff together. I expect we’ll have a private beta up and running in 2 weeks, and hopefully a public one not too long thereafter. I’ll keep y’alls posted.

 

 

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