Just spell it out
Cape League – Brewster @ Bourne
Since we had been on the road for two weeks, I had not had my baseball night out in while, so this was huge for me. We didn’t even get to the game until the 5th inning, but the for few innings we saw, it was great.
In the game, the Bourne Braves beat the visiting Brewster Whitecaps 6-4.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Future of Sports Television panel
I had the opportunity to attend the Ivy Sports Symposium at Harvard Law School earlier today.
The panel speakers were top shelf, including CEO/President levels from leading sports brands around the globe.
The Future of Sports Television panel (above) included Tracy Dolgin – President/CEO of YES Network, Larry Jones – EVP of Fox Sports Media, Mark Silverman – President of Big Ten Network and David Preschlack – EVP, ESPN/Disney.
If they offer a picture with a backdrop, then take it.
The event targets recent and upcoming graduates, but it is open to the public. Thanks to my membership with Sports Networker and the fact that we had planned a trip to visit family this weekend on Cape Cod, I was able to attend.
I went there to learn and get some insights from true insiders, but it was also great to cross paths with people that I have worked with in the past, including: Rich Gotham – President of the Celtics; Jimmy Lynn, currently teaching and consulting in DC, and Tom Richardson – Founder/CEO of Talent League.
She’s calling for the red dog.
We had an opportunity to make our first family visit to the Carrier Dome this weekend to see SU play Wake Forrest.
I was looking to make this trip for the last two season’s, but it’s difficult to plan ahead when your window is for early afternoon starts and game times aren’t announced until a week before.
Thanks to a fortunate lunch outing earlier in the week where I ran into Angela and Sonny Spera, friends going way back and SU grads, we were able to join their group and see the game. It all worked out very well; it also happened to be Family Day so we were also able to enjoy the SU Marching Band and bouncy houses on The Quad.
Also, it’s still difficult to see where SU is going to fit into the ACC, but on this day the Orange gave us an impressive 13-0 win.
