A few years ago, when Picasa was only an application and it only worked on Windows machines, I worked at Google and jumped on some of the earliest betas of Picasa Web Albums. Consequently, I managed to grab the username jordan.
Fast forward a couple years and suddenly that username begins working in a strange manner with Google Calendar. People enter “Jordan” into their calendar invites, and they show up, quite mysteriously, on my calendar. This results in all sorts of hilarity when my friends, who I share my calendar with, see all the fun things I have planned.
A few weeks ago I had horse camp. That was fun. Today I am going with my friend Kim to get gas at Costco.
I’m very excited for Friday, when I’ll be travelling to Virginia to receive an award! Don’t worry, I won’t let the recognition go to my head. Sunday I’m serving food to the homeless with a youth group.
The 14th of every month I have a recurring reminder that “he” asked me out on July 14. I love incremental anniversaries!
I think the most disconcerting events to show up are the multitude of doctor appointments. Most days show at least one. A stranger to my calendar would think I was either the most diseased person in existence, or that I was the world’s biggest hypochondriac.
Once upon a time I loved Apple, then I couldn’t stand them, then they embraced unix and I loved them again, and now I’m starting to really dislike them again.
The trouble isn’t that they don’t make products that people find useful, the fact that Apple’s market cap recently surpassed that of Microsoft would suggest quite the opposite. Actually the reason is they are becoming increasingly more like the Office and Windows giant.
I agree fully with Jobs’s notion that HTML 5 and open standards are the future of computing, especially on mobile devices. I’m immersed in the world of development and design and trust me when I say there are few things that anyone in my line of work would enjoy more than never having to consider cross platform compatibility again. Open platforms are beneficial to all involved: end users have a wider range of choice in devices; creators spend more time making great products and less time working around incompatibility problems; and platform developers, knowing the next big thing is a click away, work to make their implementation the most desirable to all parties involved. This isn’t some new idea, it’s the same model that has made the United States one of history’s greatest and most successful countries.
My disagreement lies in the closed platform that Apple has built with their iPhone OS. Apple’s customers (perhaps unwittingly through lock-in contracts) pay between $500 and $700 for their mobile device, and yet they are consistently thwarted in attempts to use the hardware the way they choose. From the App Store lockdown that keeps people from having access to applications like Google Voice and Gay New York 101, to preventing users from installing other OSes on the phone, Apple has blocked users at every turn from doing things that they want to do with a device that the user technically owns.
While I respect Apple’s decision to create an experience that is easy to use, well designed, and (mostly) devoid of poorly designed or malicious applications; I can’t say that I agree with the way they’ve implemented it or in how they pompously tell their customers what is best. I’m a firm believer that a good product can stand on it’s own, and doesn’t need a closed marketplace to survive. Hey Apple, what are you afraid of?
Footnote: The majority of this was written using a drop in replacement keyboard (Swype) on an open source build of the Android operating system that I installed on my Google Nexus One. Forgive me for any spelling/grammar errors, but I think this came out pretty good for something written on a train… I’ll get around to editing it when I’m not in the middle of work.
Maybe it’s the constant evolution of my mind and feelings about the world, but my senses have felt unusually awake to the changing of seasons this year. When I’m not wearing headphones, I still find my feet moving to a strong beat. How is it that in 25 years of living – I never noticed the vibrancy of spring until now? Am I the only one?
Did you know that a 20 minute bike ride burns nearly 200 calories?
That’s just one of the many reasons that I try to bike to work at least a couple days a week. There are a lot of reasons to hop on a bike, but if you are going to ride in the city, watch out. Riding can be as dangerous as it is fun.
That is especially true this time of year; Trees and flowers are budding, people start running with their shirts off, happiness abounds, and everybody gets a little lost. I’m a very attentive biker. I stop (at least as much as the vehicles around me) at every stop sign, I watch for cars in all directions, I keep my eyes on the doors of parked vehicles to make sure one doesn’t swing out in front of me. Yet somehow I’ve still been nearly hit over five times this year. The reactions from drivers vary – some are mortified and apologetic, some are angry, and perhaps the worst, some don’t ever notice at all. So here, I present you with my tips for bikers and drivers on how to share the road and get where we are going safely.
Drivers
- Before you turn, look both ways and check your blindspots. Really, this is a given, but surprisingly not many do it.
- Put down the cell phone. If you were that important, you’d have an assistant. Whatever it is, it can wait until you aren’t putting anyone’s lives in danger. Pull over for five minutes if you need to.
- Leave a safe distance between you and anything else on the road. For bikes, that means a few feet.
- Keep in mind that bikers often can not ride as far to the right as you think they can. People opening car doors in parked cars pose as much of a risk to bikers as moving vehicles do. Now you know why cyclists will be a few feet away from anyone parked.
- For that matter, when you open your car doors, check for approaching vehicles – powered or otherwise. This is for the safety of your door and your body as much as anything approaching.
Bikers
- When you are on the road, you have to follow the rules of the road. If you break the rules and get hurt, your just an effing idiot.
- Have and use the proper equipment for biking. At the very least have on a helmet and have a strobing headlight and taillight.
- Bear in mind that even when a driver is wrong, they’re still in a 2,000lb+ vehicle that propels itself with thousands of explosions. You might have tree-trunk Apolo Ohno legs, but that car is still going to win if you go to battle.
- (Chicagoans) avoid the Lake path during peak times. It’s the wild west of dumb behavior. I highly suggest biking to the path and going for a run or taking a walk instead!
- If you listen to music while biking, keep the volume low and only use one side of your headphones. Listening to what is happening around you is as important as seeing it.
Okay, I’m going to sleep now so that I have the energy in the morning to bike to work 
Be safe!
Anyone who speaks unfavorably of NYC is… lifeless.
That may seem a bit harsh, but I hope you agree by the end of this post. You see, life can very easily become one mundane blur of beige. The problem with beige is people generally don’t hate it, so it ends up painting more than just the walls of living rooms. It ends up in our wardrobes (figuratively and literally), diets (hopefully only figuratively), jobs, relationships; it ends up permeating everything.
How do beige and NYC relate? Unfortunately there is a lot of beige in NYC. Go to any tourist area and you’ll see it all around. People travel around the world to visit and where do they end up? In bigger versions of the same places they frequent at home. Safety. Familiarity. Did you really expect to find wonder at Gap and TGI Friday’s?
But NYC has a lot that is vibrant, too.
One afternoon, three years ago, I was on a business trip in NY and decided to get lost in the city. I hopped on Yelp, looked up the best places in NY to get cupcakes, plotted a course that took me to three of them, and set out. Several hours later I had the sugary evidence to prove that I’d explored the city: a quarter-sized dollop of chocolate buttercream proudly displayed on my (literally) beige jacket. At the third bakery a rather handsome twenty-something took the opportunity to flirt with me while pointing out that I was a wreck. A year later my friends were asking why I disgustingly hadn’t washed the stain out, but I left it as a reminder to not get stuck in a rut.
So while I could recount my journey in diary form, I’ll save you the boredom. You’ll learn nothing from my stories of magic in bars, walking through Central Park until I had blisters on my heels, running into Zachary Quinto, or deliciously stumbling upon some of the tastiest Asian food I’ve ever had. If there is one thing I wish to share with you from a week in NY, it is purple gingham.
In other words: don’t live beige. When life is an adventure, you’ll always have a response when you are asked “what have you been up to lately?”
I’m fairly certain you will agree with me when I say this: Sex is (almost always) fantastic. It’s fantastic and it’s everywhere. It’s in our media, it’s on our phones, it’s in department stores, and occasionally it’s in our bedrooms (or perhaps theirs.) Yet strangely, considering how rampant innuendo is in our society, blatantly speaking about sex is still somewhat taboo.
A little over a year ago, I left the relatively safe and comfortable confines of Google’s Chicago office after working there for three years. I left to do something different. I left to change healthcare so it would be better. I’m proud to say that the team of people I work with every day has done a fantastic job of having an impact in that area, but there’s a barrier to making it big: how do we educate people about something that they don’t want to talk about?
April is STD Awareness Month. Join me in breaking down the barriers that prevent people from being healthy. Be safe, and encourage others to do the same. Safe sex means using protection, being educated about what’s out there, and knowing your status. Remember, the worst thing that can happen is not that you get an STD, it’s that you get an STD and don’t do anything about it. Many can be cured, and none of them mean the end of the world if cured.
So go out there and have a “ball” (or two), and for fuck’s sake, get tested. And if you want to try our new approach to STD testing, use the link below to get $50 a complete sexual health checkup.
