Tim.McGuinn.es/s

Just spell it out

Visiting the White House

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Washington Monument

Doing the lean back on the Washington Monument tourist thing

The weather may have been very wet on Saturday, but we made it into Washington, DC, to celebrate our daughter’s birthday by touring the White House.  The president was in Los Angeles for the weekend, but we didn’t let that damper our enthusiasm either.

Overall the tour isn’t very long, and the tour confirmation note described the tour as being a self-guided, 45-minute tour, but it is what you make of it.  Our daughter managed to befriend one of the secret service people on the tour route who allowed us inside the East Room tour ropes and gave us a special up-close view of the George Washington’s official portrait — Did you know it misspells “United States of America” on a book spine?

Some more pictures are posted at Flickr, they show a timeline that starts with smiles, but soon fatigue sets in when we get to the National Mall.

The biggest struggle of the tour, as we live in this social media world, is the need for restraint as phones and cameras are not allow. There are very clear signs for no photography or social media allowed, so you can’t do any selfie check-ins from Blue Room.

Later for Now, NYC

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NYC Skyline

Taken from the ramp after leaving the Lincoln Tunnel in October. Like many times before, on this last time out of the city I had fallen asleep in the tunnel.

The great blog secret has now come to end; my project in NYC that started in mid-May is now over. It made for a complicated 7+ months where I would usually leave home on a 6am bus early Monday and the get back on Friday evening. It included becoming an AirBNB power user — if only they had a loyalty program, or even gave a crap about their customers (probably more on them in a later post).

Sometime next spring and summer and fall and Christmas, I’ll probably think back and wonder what I did last year, and it will hit me that I was somewhere else. The toughest stretch for us was back in June/July when we left for a family trip to Maine on June 23. My next time home was for 2 days over the weekend of July 11, and then I left Monday July 14 to return back 3 weeks later on Aug 1. That’s 2 days home over 6 weeks.

After leaving the family in Maine, where they stayed for a couple more weeks, we all met again at a friend’s in Connecticut on July 18. After a weekend there, we all drove into Brooklyn where I had rented an apartment for the week, again via AirBNB.

What was I doing in NY? Building data platforms at a media buying agency. It was a great getting back to a agency environment where the clients had real budgets to spend; it was a big jump from the last local web agency I worked at where we held photo shoots in a storage container. Why in sexy storage containers? Because it was a storage container company.

Holding the Trophy High (while Wearing Gloves)

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Dick's Open Trophy Champions Tour Sr PGA

Walking off the 18th green with the winner’s trophy at the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open — in this case the winner was Bernhard Langer.

I came through on my prediction from earlier this week — when the week is over I will be holding the winner’s trophy for the 2014 Dick’s Sporting Goods Open.  Players on the Champions Tour usually are not so brash, but I’m no player — just they guy that carries the trophy from the ceremony on the green back to the press room.

Big Tableau Show

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Tableau 8.2 release

Just wanted to show guys in suits with large displays to prove that I was there.

I had a chance to attend the Tableau 8.2 Roadshow today at The Westin New York at Times Square. Even in the sub-releases of tableau there is always something interesting. As I’ve learned in working with it recently, it is easy to make a case study about how much time Tableau saves you in an on-going production environment. However, the learning curve is big as I try to ramp up on it.

Some of the features that they were presenting were: Easier Data Connections, Mapping Changes, Visual Data Window, Story Points, Tableau for Mac.

Overall the Story Points feature is by far the biggest bang for Release 8, so seeing demos and getting some best practice tips are a benefit. Right now it’s still a much talked about benefit, but we have not been able to easily integrate across our users.

Personally, the Mac demo hit home directly, since I do all my outside work on a Mac so this would make life easier, but the coolest was the mapping updates. Along with the new, more detailed maps, I sat in a break-out presentation where they showed how to connect our data maps to outside map feeds, like weather information, that could overlay our maps. This is one of those situations about ramp-up time, since we were looking at a new pitch for a sunglasses company and figured that it would be great to show results or make predictions based on the weather, assuming that more sunglasses are sold around sunny days, but learning how to make it useful will have to wait to a rainy day (see what I did there) where a deadline is not looming and we have some time to learn.

New York for New Technology

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Save Zac

Call the Emergency Zack Morris Hotline

It’s well after midnight, and I’m on a quiet bus driving across western New Jersey.

Why? I had a chance to attend two tech conferences today in NYC.  In the afternoon it was the ClickZ Conference which focuses on the search industry, mostly on SEO tools and SEM advertising.  Back when I last attended the show, it was known as Search Engine Strategies and it covered 3 expo floors at the NY Hilton.  This event, held at the Marriot Marquis in Times Square, covered 3 ROWS!  I know it’s not because the business is not generating the same revenues, but there certainly has been a pull back.

Later, I caught the subway to NYU for the monthly NY Tech Meet-up.   It’s been almost 5 years since I attended my first NYT Meetup — which I was also a presenter for Hakia.  It’s bigger than ever and there is always a sense of excitement since you never know if the demo that you are seeing could be the next big thing.  In the past, I’ve seen the first demos from Foursquare and MakerBot and each time you sensed that you just saw something that was going to be big.  But note that they’re not all that special — you can call Zack Morris at (718) 395-5255.  You can watch the rest of the April event here.

 

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Let’s Hear It for the Lady Techers – Clarkson Wins NCAA

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Clarkson wins 2014 NCAA Championship

Clarkson wins 2014 NCAA Championship

After years and years of cheering on our Techers, we finally have some hardware. Clarkson stopped Minnesota’s attempt to capture their 3rd straight championship, beating the Gophers 5-4 yesterday in Hamden,CT.

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In Honor of Ang

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We think this was sometime around 2000 on a visit home from Boston. I could count on a full sheet waiting for me.

We think this was sometime around 2000 on a visit home from Boston. I could count on a full sheet waiting for me.

It’s been a long week since my mother passed away early Monday morning.  It’s hard to think about a bright side, but I know that she is in a far better place than she has been over the last few months, and so many people have opened their hearts to my family and shared stories about the kind things Ang had done for them.

I never realized how many people use these online obituary tools to, but I sat down today and read through them all.

Ralph Kiner’s Place in History

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NelsonMurphyKinerLegends_medium

Mets Broadcast Team – Lindsay Nelson, Bob Murphy, and Ralph Kiner

If you’re not a NY Mets fan, Ralph Kiner’s passing may not be as big a part of your childhood as it is to those of us that grew up in the WOR-9 area.   For those of us that waited every night for Kiner’s Korner following the night’s broadcast this is a great loss.

For baseball fans, Kiner’s place in history is overlooked as current day numbers pile up. When Kiner retired in 1955 after just 10 seasons. He was #6 in career HRs. Check out the Top 6 list at the time:
1. Babe Ruth (714)
2. Jimmie Foxx (534)
3. Mel Ott (511)
4. Lou Gehrig (493)
5. Ted Williams (394)
6. Ralph Kiner (369)
He led the NL in HRs in each of his first 7 seasons in the majors. No rookie has ever led his league since 1905, and Kiner did it his first 7 years.

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First Spare

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We had to wait until week 2, but she finally picked up her first spare.

We had to wait until week 2, but she finally picked up her first spare.

We are two weeks in bumper bowling season, and we’ve seen our first spare. It was a natural — no bumpers, and then she followed it up by getting another spare in the next frame.