Adam's septoplasty / turbinate reduction surgery diary. Infotainment the doctor ordered!

Three out of four leading doctors told me that I have a really messed up nose (my septum is shaped like a hockey stick rather than the more conveniently functional lower case 'l' style)... and if I ever want to breathe decently, I simply must get a septoplasty + turbinate reduction surgery.

The fourth (admittedly imaginary)  doctor actually insisted the same thing, but also urged me to detail my experience in a blog post.  This is my story.

Monday -- night before:

11:50pm:  I greedily cram in the last bits to eat and drink, 'cause I'm not allowed to swallow anything past midnight.  Rather a stupidly written rule, actually.  Despite the fact that I wasn't notified of my surgery time (1:30pm) until the day before, I was given oral and written instructions well in advance with the clearly arbitrary, or at least very conservative no-eating/drinking-after-midnight rule.  I mean, I could have been assigned a 7:30am or 3:30pm surgery time.  Why not just say "no eating or drinking within 8 hours of your scheduled surgery"?

The kind side of me presumes this is to account for a possible last-minute change in surgery times ("Mr. Lasnik?  We're just calling to let you know we had a cancellation. Would you like to get this crap over with a few hours earlier?")  The cynic in me figures the lawyers & doctors believe we're too stupid to understand "8 hours prior."

2:30am:  No sense going to bed too early, right?  If I go to bed early and get up early, I'll just have more time to be hungry and thirsty.  So a 2:30 bedtime sounds about right...

Tuesday -- day of:

8:20am:  Lovely.  The groundskeepers are turning it all up full blast.  Trimming, mowing, huffing, puffing, the works.  So much for sleeping in.

9:30am:  Against my better judgment I check my work e-mail and get sucked in.

11:45am:  My AdamTaxi'ing friend comes and rescues me, drops me off at the hospital and bids me a warm goodbye and good luck wishes :).

12:15pm:  I walk into the first building I find and announce with genuine enthusiastic anticipation that I'm there to be cut up. Receptionist exudes an almost comical level of both alarm and confusion.  Oops.  This isn't the Surgecenter.

How employment at prominent tech firms stymies open communication

Let me first get the disclaimers out of the way:

• I have worked at Google since March, 2006.
• I do not speak on behalf of Google in this blog, nor do my views necessarily dovetail with those of other Googlers; I've historically held more of a public-facing role than most Googlers, so I have heightened sensitivities.
• I believe prominent technology firms -- certainly including Google -- contribute many things to the world that improve communications and societal openness.

*  *  *

This particular question on Quora got me to thinking:

Do people who work at Google / Yahoo / Microsoft / Facebook resent the fact that they can't genuinely speak up on the Internet and have to do so anonymously, in most cases?

This really hit home for me, and I decided that I'd outline the many ways in which I (and presumably many others) are forbidden from communicating in some ways and -- more commonly -- feel uncomfortable expressing ourselves in specific ways or on a variety of topics.

Stuff I am not allowed to discuss...

This is perhaps the most obvious category, the list of what employees like me are typically forbidden from communicating. 

Some new AdamMusic (and some highlights from music past)

I've been quite-rightly bugged by some of my friends to play more piano. So yesterday, I stayed at work late (actually 'til nearly 2am!) and banged out some stuff on the now slightly-out-of-tune-but-still-serviceable grand piano in one of the lobbies, filmed with my slightly-old-and-suboptimal-video-recording camera, and documented in this run-on-but-still-comprehensible sentence.

The first bit is from a mini-medley I improv'd based upon songs from the musical "In The Heights," which I had the great pleasure of seeing in San Francisco a few weeks ago. 

[ If you're curious and/or bored you are welcome to check out my slightly-alternate take ]

Note that -- as with all my medleys -- this doesn't contain an exact replica of the melodies, which I could make... but it's more fun to stretch them a bit :).  And you'll probably catch that I was particularly taken with the song Alabanza from the musical, so -- unlike in one of my typical medleys -- my riffing on this one tune takes up about 80% of the medley.

Photos and the physical, nostalgia, and the why

I'm getting ready to move.

Hmm, that sounded more philosophical / metaphysical than I may have intended.

I'm getting ready to move bodies to a new apartment.  Not exactly sure when or where, but already I'm inventory'ing my things, realizing just how little I own (no furniture aside from a bed, dresser, desk, and some bookshelves) and yet how much crap I've accumulated, including both boxes of amorphous stuff and things that, well, should be valuable to me.

A plethora of photo albums.  Yearbooks.  And yet more boxes filled with an assemblage of handwritten letters, high school newspapers and term papers, and the like.

These take up space, the physical, to be frank, more than the mental or emotional.  I don't really think about the distant past all that much, for better or worse.  Don't really have close friends from high school (my fault more than theirs), and -- as a card-carrying geek then as now-- let me just bluntly admit that school days were not necessarily my best of days.

I've already scanned thousands of my old photos, probably close to 100% of them in fact, with the very awesome ScanCafe service.  But these new digital files supplement, rather than replace the physical incarnations.

Or do they?  I was just realizing that -- except for doublechecking that all my pics got appropriately scanned -- I haven't spent more than a handful of minutes over the last years perusing my hardcopy photos.  Have you?  And how about those high school yearbooks?  Ten years after high school, have you given them more than a passing glance?

And whether you answer yes or no... I think a more interesting question is why.  If you still lasciviously / lovingly / longingly linger over your old photos and yearbooks, why?  If not, why not?... and would you actually consider junking them? (or perhaps you already have?)

Very curious to hear your thoughts... :)

If you're going to contact me...

I love you (you, you, NOT you!), but I don’t always love how you try to contact me.

I have a few respectful requests:

• Use my contact page, please.  It’s super-easy to find (top page in Google for “Contact Adam Lasnik”), and I even list my e-mail address on there.  Every time you instead try to get my attention via Twitter or Facebook message or LinkedIn or Flickr, Goddess kills a doggy [hint: that’s bad.]
• Please use a descriptive subject line.  This precludes “HELP!” or “Hi!” or “Great Pharmacy!!1”
• Don’t unsolicitedly send me a detailed business plan.  Seriously, this one really pains me to write, but when I receive a heartfelt and amazingly-detailed-with-multiple-attachment business idea for an existing Google product, my cover-my-posterior-reaction is to delete the note without reading it.  Google already gets sued a ridiculous number of times a week, and I don’t want Google (or me!) to be sued for “stealing someone’s idea without credit.” :-(  On the other hand, bug reports, a clever feature request or observation… if you can’t find a way to share this info with the appropriate Google team (e.g., via an official forum or form), feel free to fill me in and I’ll do the best I can to get it seen by the right people :-D.
  
  and, on a related note…
  
• Please forgive me.  I’m still behind on my personal e-mail (about 380 messages in my inbox, down from last year’s high of nearly 5,000), so it can take me a while to reply.

Thanks!

A heartwarming story about bridging the culture gap

[I wrote this years ago, but had posted it on a site I no longer maintain; I thought it might be nice to share it with you now.]

As many of you may already know, I spent over a year total in Europe during and immediately after finishing grad school in ‘98. My experiences included an amazing mixture of triumphs, tragedies, laughter, adventure, confusion, and pretty much every other emotion one can have… but compressed in time and on foreign soil.

While I regret not keeping any semblance of a diary during my time in Europe, I still carry a wealth of knowledge and emotions in me… much of which bubbles to the surface at random times. For whatever reason, one event came to mind tonight, and it made me smile.

During my initial 3 month internship in Europe, I was dying to ‘taste’ as much of the continent as I could. My workplace was next to a train station, and nearly every other Friday I’d bring a small suitcase to work, and spin the virtual Europe-roulette-wheel (and consult the weather forecasts) to pick a travel destination for the upcoming weekend. I’d then leave straight from work, typically take an overnight train, spend Saturday and Sunday at my destination, and arrive back—sleepy eyed and exhausted—to work Monday morning.

Spontaneity and adventure sometimes gave way, however, to frustrating circumstances… including nasty weather, obnoxious hostel (and hostile) roommates, and in some cases, lack of an available nearby hostel at all. Such was the case when I arrived in Luxembourg one weekend… forcing me to scour surrounding smaller cities for lodging. When I finally discovered a hostel with vacancies in a far outlying town of the main city, I was none too thrilled to find myself alone at this hostel… except for a gaggle of giggling teenage German tourists from what turned out to be a church group outing. They ate at their reserved table for dinner within the hostel, and I ate, basically alone and lonely, by myself in another corner… understandably not wanting to butt in on a chaperoned group of young’uns.

To my annoyance, they’d occasionally look at me with eyes that seemed to mockingly ask, “What is that weird, tired looking guy doing at OUR hostel?” but aside from that, I ate in peace, and then—noting it was too early to retire for the night despite my fatigue—wandered out into the cobblestone streets to find something to do or see.

There wasn’t much. But lo and behold, before long, I heard a familiar gaggle of giggling a ways behind me, and, almost as if in a cartoon, that very same group of young kids shushed quickly when I peered back at them. Imagine my surprise then, when one of the girls broke from the pack and shyly approached me.

“Hallo,” she said, not quite sure of herself, but with quiet yet visible support from her friends behind her.

Still shocked, I blurted out an American “Hi there” instead of a matching Hallo.

“You’re English?” she asked.

“No,” I replied, “American.”

Her face lit up with a big smile, which compensated for the moment of silence between us.

She told me she was from Germany, which I knew, but I never could have anticipated the next turn in our conversation.

“Are you… by yourself?” she asked? I answered affirmatively, still confused by this situation… and I’ll never forget what came next:

“Do you want to be our friend?”

Such sweetness and innocence and courage! I could have hugged that kid right there. 

Instead, though, I delved into one of the most honest and memorable conversations I had during my time Europe. The friends of this girl, Christina, immediately sensed that I DID welcome a chat with them. And so, as they approached, they fired off a sometimes cacophanous bunch of questions in German for Christina to translate to me, and then waited eagerly for my response and acting-spokeswoman Christina’s translation.

A few of the questions were admittedly ignorant but nonetheless amusing in their simplicity: “Do you [Americans] really eat at McDonald’s all the time?” and “Are all the streets in the States very big?”

Before long, it was clear that most of what these kids knew of America they had gleaned from their exposure to the dominant American media. And that, indeed, scared me. Baywatch is SUPER-big in Germany (and apparently leads at least a few Germans to assume we’re all Malibu-stylin’ and beach going tansters). David Hasselhoff may be a laughingstock amongst some of the ‘hipper’ Germans, but he’s still a beloved actor and recording artist for much of Deutschland. In other words… given what we ‘export’ to Europe, we should all be afraid… be very afraid!

But before long, as the kids got braver with their English and started addressing me directly, I began to delve deeper into their opinions and prejudices.

“So what do you think of Americans?” I asked plainly.

They were none too shy or slow with their responses. “Creative!” “FAT!” “Sportive!” “Lazy!” “Funny!” and “Friendly!” seemed to be relatively agreed-upon adjectives. But the latter one spurred some deeper discussion, with one boy arguing that, “Americans don’t like Germans. They’re friendly to themselves but not to us. From the War.”

I should have been prepared for this. Even at parties with college-aged folk, the issue of the Holocaust often came up. What did Americans think of Germany? Of Germans? Of the War? And why? Was it fair to perpetuate the Guilt? Those that brought up this subject with me often did so almost randomly, over beers and fries, though with sometimes pretty intense curiosity and passion.

This same curiosity, combined with innocence, was so clearly present in these young kids. On one hand, they saw America as everything “cool”... but still so distant geographically and emotionally. There was a marked admiration for, yet confusion about and partially even disdain for Americans, perhaps no different than that reflected by our own general ignorance of other cultures.

But here there was such a heartwarming yearning from them to connect to me, to connect with the America I was an impromptu representative for. They continued asking me questions for nearly an hour, and drew closer to me all the while until I was almost surrounded. “You are nice!” gushed one of the girls out of the blue, prompting some titterings in German that I understood more than they realized.  Not long after this, Christina—by now pretty emboldened and unshy—asked, “Can I have your address?”

“Sure,” I replied, amused and flattered, though I couldn’t help but ask, “Why?”

“Because Julia likes you!” Christina replied with a huge grin, followed by a horrified look on a quickly clued-in Julia, “And she won’t ask you!”

Silly kids. Playful, wondering, movie-watching, tall, short, blonde, brunette, crush-having, sneaker-wearing kids.

At that moment I was reminded… that deep down we’re pretty much all the same, everywhere. There’s a child-like curiosity and goodness in everyone that never really dies. Sometimes it gets hardened a bit or repressed or shouted over, but it’s still there.

I had been tired and lonely and frustrated before I met these kids. And there are certainly times nowadays, too, when I’m feeling like that. But when life accentuates separation and distance, I look back on my encounter in Luxembourg and similar experiences and am reassured that friendship and understanding are still inherently valued. And though I never did hear from Julia, thinking of her and her friends especially makes me smile :-D

25 Things About Me

[ I resisted for a while, but after spending more than an hour reading friends’ “25 things” on Facebook, I’m sold, and feel obligated to contribute to the meme :-) - Adam ]

1. I had never seen snow coming from the sky ‘til college (grew up in S. California, went to school in the midwest).
2. I have not eaten fast food in a decade, except for In’N'Out and (rarely) Subway.
3. I started studying music at age four, wrote my first song around age six, and have always had perfect pitch (which is both a blessing and a curse).
4. I began e-mailing in 1987, before there was a public internet (on Prodigy Online Services) and was (I’m embarrassed to admit this) a forum leader on AOL in the early 90’s so I could avoid the high per-hour charges.
   
   
5. Except for a friend’s wedding in Canada, I had never ventured out of the U.S. before age 27.
   
6. I’ve now been to more than two dozen countries.  Found the friendliest people in Brazil and Denmark, best food in France, best ocean in Australia…
   
7. I got a D in “Arranging [music] for Wind Ensembles” from a professor who was angry that I ditched a review session to do a 30 hour Dance Marathon.
   
8. I conducted a (small) orchestra for dozens of performances of the quirky, awesome musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”
   
9. I ran my own singing telegram business in high school.
   
10. I ran a web server (O’Reilly’s “Website”) in my grad school dorm.  I think I spent more time with that and other geek playthings than with my (often very very boring) law school books.
    
11. I love a cappella music... both the serene and the hard-hitting kinds and everything in between.
    
12. I am Google’s only Search Evangelist, named such largely because my boss (who recruited me) couldn’t think of another title for me to put on my job application. I actually focus on webmaster outreach and I still love my work.
    
13. I was apparently viewed as somewhat of a slacker/loser by my law school colleagues and an amiable and savvy networker by my business school colleagues.
    
14. Even though I love chatting with, learning from, hanging out with people, I am far more introverted than most people realize.
    
15. I have always really really wanted to be taller. Only recently have I more or less made peace with the fact that we shorter guys suffer real discrimination. Can't do anything about it, have to move on.
    
16. I LOVE food. I'm trying to tone up a bit, and believe me, I'm far more delighted to rachet up the exercising and dancing vs. forgoing "sinful" foods like dark chocolate and gelato.
    
17. I have composed dozens of songs, but not much of anything in the last decade. I recently bought (expensive!) music notation software to encourage me to get back into the composing world.
    
18. Yes, I'm a geek, but I'm mostly interested in how technology makes us more productive and (genuinely) brings us together socially. The latest-and-greatest-shiny-thing doesn't move me.
    
19. I used to have horribly awful posture, and now I just have mildly bad posture. Still trying to work on it.
    
20. I learned most of what I know and love about lindy hop from two teachers who moved far away and now openly have divorced themselves from the dance world. This still makes me very sad.
    
21. I was voted "Most Studious" in my HS senior year (despite rarely studying), sharing the award with a girl I had a massive crush on (who, last I heard, dropped out of college).
    
22. I have traveled internationally a ton for work and am grateful for the professional and other opportunities this has given me, but few believe me when I emphasize the stressfulness and un-glamorness of it.
    
23. I only keep up with one TV show ("LOST") and don't even own a TV.
    
24. I'm probably one of the few straight guys who loves musical theatre, enjoys step aerobics, doesn't drink beer, and yawns at the thought of car shows and football games.
    
25. I recently discovered yoga and now love it. My lower back initially protested, but has now seen the light, too :-).

A cappella birthday silliness -- much of it composed by me

Back in high school, I was not only a band geek, but a choir geek as well!  But I did far more than just sing your standard choral music :-D.  I loved composing, arranging and teaching, and often performing short songs in vocal quartets, and I founded my very own singing telegram business (“The Birthday Brigade”) to support this habit.

For $3, students could hire us to sing a special birthday song to one of the friends—in class, no less!  We even had teachers and administrators hiring us to sing for other non-students.  And by the end of our two year run, we earned enough money to purchase a sizable first-ever music CD collection for our school library (and back in the 80s, this was a big deal!).  Oh, and we also sang the national anthem at various school sporting events; one of the trios even got to sing at Dodger Stadium!

Anyway, in the middle of our second year, we decided to sit down at my place and record a bunch of our songs.  We didn’t do many takes, we didn’t use a fancy studio (just my dad’s old tape recorder!), and the results were certainly not perfect, but I think we did manage to capture a lot of the fun and also show off our love-of-singing :-D.

And alas, the “album” below (from 1989!) is missing some of my favorites, including “Mr. Roger’s [Neighborhood] Birthday” and “A Muppet Birthday” and no doubt others I’ve forgotten about.  But I hope you enjoy the songs nonetheless. [and feel free to see more detailed notes below the player widget]



(I’m singing on all of these except “Love Me Tender”; I think tenor on all tracks)

1) “And Why Not!” - music and lyrics composed by me.
2) “Ole!” - lyrics (as they are) composed by me, and music arranged by me (original melody from “Mexican Hat Dance”)
3) “Love Me Tender” - not sure who composed/arranged this one; the girls might have arranged this one themselves
4) “Star Spangled Banner” - composed by Francis Scott Key, not sure who did this arrangement
5) “Beethoven Birthday” - all composed by me, with deep apologies to Mr. Beethoven
6) “Celebrate!” - music by me, and I think (but am not sure) that I wrote the lyrics, too
7) “Merry Christmas” - sung to the tune of “We Wish you a Merry Christmas” with a tiny bit of lyrical substitution. I think I did the arrangement for this one.
8) “See ya!” - composed, um, on the spot ;-)

*  *  *

Edited on December 20, 2008 to add:
I’ve gotten in touch with most of the people in this recording, which I previously didn’t list because I wanted to make sure my memory wasn’t failing me!  My fine co-singers were Robin (bass), Jen aka “Moose” (alto), Stacey (soprano) and Cathy (soprano).  Oh, and Robin insists that it was *his* tape recorder.  I’m still not convinced of that :-D [and, yeah, I should ask ‘em if they’re comfortable having their last names here, and if so, I’ll add ‘em so they really get their fair notoriety :-P)

I, Robot

Hello.  Good day.  A little quiet?
I’m feeling a little blue myself.
You know, A little anxious for no particular reason
A little sad that I should feel anxious at this age.
You know, a little self-conscious anxiety resulting in non-specific sadness.
The state that I call blue.

- spoken by the narrator (“Man In Chair”) in the awesome musical “The Drowsy Chaperone”

Today I am a little sad because of a small heartbreak.
And a little anxious because, well, I should not be admitting this in public.

Real men

don’t

 do cry.  But real businessmen… the type who are strong, who manage or mentor, who think of respect and solidness and promotions… they are not bloviatingly blathering on a blog, blissfully or blamefully or otherwise.

Think.  Think of someone you look up to at work.  Do you want to know his private foibles, hear of his personal struggles?  Really?  No. You want someone to look up to.  Someone at least a little bit larger than life.  A rock, or minimally a damn large stone.

You have your own problems, and when you want to schadenfreudically delight in someone else’s problems, you have your TV or paper or favorite internet gossip sites within an arm or eyeball’s reach.

When your current or future dear leaders are feeling blue, they ideally do not show you, much less tell you.

Then again, maybe it’s different today.  Maybe the Live Journalers of the modern era will grow up to be respected leaders… warty angst, noserings and all.  Perhaps someday we’ll view an executive’s late night facebookings with indifference rather than annoyance or scorn.

Or maybe not.  Maybe he or she will methodically scrub, hoping the last trace of emotion is gone.  Here, look, a résumé.  A fine, level-headed portfolio indeed!

And only a strong, competitive, safe, and secure heart.

Of little sleep, many chances, big dreams

Tuesday I will be in Mountain View.  Tomorrow I will be in Frankfurt with good friends and many drunk loud Germans screaming at a big TV. Tonight beyond the witching hour I declined an adventure in Koeln, being the wise or stupid one.  Today I was rocking out with people from 10 to 79 and also teaching a tango dancer to waltz to a band playing surprisingly damn good cover songs.  Also today I unexpectedly toured Bonn for two hours with a beautiful new also-unexpected friend, played piano for an entire wedding in Sankt Augustin, and ate a breakfast of bread, sausage and cheese for the many-hundredth time.

Now I am not clubbing. I am not answering any work e-mail.  I am recharging my phone, my camera, and I am thinking.  And yes, writing.

Writing and thinking about how every new experience, every new friendship brings discovery, along with often joy, wistfulness, confusion… reminders of what was, what will not be, and choices.  Always choices.

Sometimes I envy those with simple lives.  They grow up and die in the same small land.  They marry their high school sweetheart.  They are neither worldly nor stupid.  They don’t have huge dreams to dream or to shatter or to just miss by a teeny tiny what if or an almost or a one-courage-short.  With small dreams come exponentially smaller risks, fewer disappointments, less uncertainty.  And certainly less angst.

I travel a lot.  I see a lot.  I have friends in more countries than I can count on my two hands doubled, and close distant friends in at least one hands-worth.  They’re so far away.  They’re having kids, they’re changing, they’re focusing.

And I… I am still exploring.  Sometimes regretting.  But—in those moments when I let my mind wander in the way that is not wandering to procrastinate or to forget—I am more wondering.  I cannot change what I’ve done and what I’ve become, but will I make better choices tomorrow?  Or, rather, will they be more important choosings of the things that matter, not which coupon site mint gum new web too oh site cool phone app sock alignment?

So here I sit, much loved and alone in yet another hotel room.  And I wonder if they are fast asleep or wondering, too.

Unmushy And Obnoxiously Geeky Thoughts on Love

In junior high, I was not thinking about love.
In high school, love was for everyone but me.
In undergrad, love was only for the Bad Boys.
In grad school, I was delighted to realize that good guys could find love, too.

And now, I am tempted to believe that love is surprisingly, frustratingly, completely random.

The Rational Me yearns to apply logic to love, typically less out of need than pure intellectual curiosity.  Do [x] and you will find love.  Be [y] and you will find love.  Or, most simplistically and IMHO reasonably, be a Good Person and you will be well-deserving of love and will be correspondingly likely to find it.

And yet, despite seemingly having many data points, I fail to find many firm correlations, much less prerequisites or guarantees.

What triggered this musing?  Well, I was out last Saturday night and bantering with two acquaintances I much admire.  Both professed almost matter-of-factly that they were single and—despite wishes to the contrary—expected to remain so for the foreseeable future.  They had, at least for the time being, pretty much given up on men.  And to stave off the anticipated finger-pointing, no, I am not a decent match due to some rather solid reasons.  And further pre-empting unwise contributions from the peanut gallery: no, blogging on a Friday night does not a loser make, and commenting on such timing can hardly make one an erudite pundit. ;-)

Anyway, these women are quite bright, athletic, artistic, thoughtful, friendly, and attractive.  “Good people.”  And single.

And yet, in painful contrast, I have the displeasure of too-frequently encountering masses of woefully mismatched pairs… of dense men with brilliant women, supercilious women with kindly men, and so on.  Ah, and given a recent (outstanding) California event, let me add, in timeliness and fairness:  slothful men with industrious men.

Where once I bitterly rued a chasm of inopportunity (unopportunity?) in the world of dating and love, now I see delicious opportunity tinged by capriciousness and chaos.  Certainly a marked and personally-much-appreciated improvement, yes, but undeniably annoying when considering the greater scheme of things.  Yes, not everything can or even should be quantified, analyzed, predicted, even explained… but a bit more karmic matching would be nice.  If somehow the Good folks could consistently win in the game of love, Darwin might not be appeased but we’d likely have a kinder, more productive, and happier society long-term.  And as a refreshing bonus, I’d not be stuck in awkward conversations trying to defend the lameness, timidness, or simply cluelessness of my male brethren.

What I've been up to

As many friends have reminded me, I haven’t blogged for a while.

Here’s a refresher on what I wrote a while back about why I blog.

And here are a few reasons why I haven’t been blogging for a while:

• Scrubbing
  I had to prepare my apartment for a parental visit. ‘nuff said.
  
• Traveling
  I visited Seattle, Ottawa, and Toronto… which involved preparing presentations, doing my first-ever TV interview, filing expense reports, escalating/acting upon tons of awesome webmaster feedback, recovering from staying in a tiny room above a Mexican restaurant (which cost nearly $150 a night!), helping a friend break up, and beforehand personally booking plane rides, train rides, hotel rooms, and more.  Trips are a lot of work, especially those that combine business and pleasure.
  
• Recovering
  I spent time recovering from having many bits of glass fly into my head.  This was associated with an accident involving me, my parents, my new car, and a very, very stupid and/or suicidal skateboarder who ignored a stop sign at a busy intersection and collided at high velocity with my slowly-moving vehicle.  While my parents and I are thankfully all healed up, I’m still dealing with financial and legal ramifications… and my car is still in the shop.  Upside:  I’ve been getting lots more exercise from walking and jogging and have lost two pounds of fat :-D.
  
• Practicing and performing
  I recently performed on stage at the huge Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California.  What a scary and exhilarating experience!!!  I hope to have a recording that I can post here in the near future.
  
• And yet more travel-planning
  I’m planning trips in the remainder of this year to Dublin, Seville, Louisville, Los Angeles, Chicago or Las Vegas, Viernheim, Mannheim, and Caracas.  I’m excited but stressed about this, as you can imagine.
  
• Working
  I’m heading up two major events at Google, taking on new responsibilities, attending Search Engine Strategies San Jose in August, and much more.
  
• Apartment searching
  Though this has been temporarily put on hold while I’m carless, I have been scouting out a new place to call my own closer to the Googleplex to eliminate the generally-comfy-but-time-consuming daily commute from San Francisco to Mountain View.
  
• Facebooking
  Facebook has both taken time away from my blogging and has dried up much of my drive to blog.  With Facebook, I’ve been able to share what’s going on in my life with friends, highlight interesting articles, ask questions and get answers, show off music and photos, and learn what’s going on in my communities, in my friends’ lives, and so on.  Still, though, Facebook isn’t (yet) a complete replacement for self-hosted blogging as I see it, so don’t count on me shuttering BLADAM just yet :-D.
  
  *  *  *
  
  I always have tons of stuff I want to share… continually have blog drafts bouncing around in my noggin.  But now you understand why those have remained mental drafts for the last months.
  
  So… no promises that I’ll blog more often—sorry.  But be assured that I’m not just belching in front of the T.V. :-D

This is an occasion. Let's toast it! (The cover of Life Magazine!)

They say the meek shall inherit… and I’m hep to the jive!

So, yes, Terry, I did have to go ahead and blog this ;-) (it’s one of the damn coolest birthday cards I’ve gotten… thanks!)

[e-card below, via Plaxo’s neato ecard offerings]

(alas, this link no longer works, sorry!)

Where is Adam (online)? My participation in and thoughts about various presence/sharing services

In case you're interested in stalking me and/or knowing what my thoughts are on various online presence / networking / bookmarking sites I have tried, here's a (completely unscientific, wholly biased, unabashedly uncomprehensive, and generally of questionable use) list :-D

FYI, I'm findable via my full name on the services below unless noted otherwise.  And sites owned/operated by Google are indicated by [g], as a brief disclaimer/reminder since I work for Google (but not on any of the
products or product-types below).

Social networking

• Facebook
  - a social networking site which used to be used primarily by college students (perhaps still is) and is gaining fame and respect in new quarters
  
  It's my favorite social networking service by far. I belong to the Google, San Francisco, Indiana University, and Northwestern University groups, and generally only add friends, co-workers, professional acquaintances I know decently well from meeting in person, and so on. I've actually found this to be useful not for making new friends, but rather for catching interesting info and fun tidbits and insights into my current friends' lives. I am impressed with nearly all aspects of this site: the strong configurability of privacy options, the reasonably-clean and standardized views*, decent navigability, and overall utility. I haven't really gotten into the groups, though, which mostly seem like exercises in humor and/or vanity.
  
  *This just in: According to Eliot on Wired, Facebook may be opening up its profile pages to widgets. Given the smart people I know that have recently been hired to work at Facebook, I can only hope that the service won't be horrifically MySpaced (uglified to hell and made practically unusable). But hey, if things turn south, I'll at least have people I can poke about it!
• Friendster
  - one of the first social networking sites, now apparently a haven for lonely Filipinos.
  
  I have an account here, but almost never log in. Some nice integration, I suppose, but nothing that really interests me. The brash obnoxious ads are a turnoff. And regarding the demographic reference... it's more a puzzled commentary on how various services (Orkut, Friendster, probably others) end up becoming so particularly popular in a handful of countries. I suppose much of this could be explained by the network effect (e.g., some popular Filipinos became active on Friendster, invited their friends...), but I can't help but wonder if UI / User Experience interlaces in interesting way with cultural preferences and expectations. Put more pedestrianly... I wonder what it is about, say, Friendster that causes it to appeal so much to Filipinos? (and Orkut to Brazillians, etc.) I bet someone has studied this. Paging danah...? :-D
• Orkut
  - a quirky social networking experiment by a Google engineer, now noted for its loyal userbase outside of the USA.
  
  Ah, not much to say about the service at this point. I no longer use it, but hey, many many millions of people around the world love it.
• Multiply
  - What's a total of seventeen users times practically zero awareness? Join this service to find
  out!
  
  Seemed interesting initially, but it was hobbled by a confusing interface and an anemic adoption rate. I think maybe two of my friends at most use this service nowadays.
• MySpace
  - Just like what you'd get if you had a spastic monkey doing design, an evil genius devising navigation (how many ad views per simple action?), and a bunch of lemmings for fans.
  
  Aaaaagh! Make it stop. Make it stop! At least make it stop blinking-spazzing-playing-seven-clips-simultaneously and generally serving as an affront to aesthetics, art, common sense, and humanity. To
  preserve what's left of my sanity, I prefer to view the success of this monstrosity as due purely to the network effect (it was an early entrant, everyones' friends were on MySpace, yadda yadda). Anything else is just too depressing. And yes, I have an account here only so my surprisingly-less-enlightened friends will quit bugging me to establish one, so I suppose that makes me mildly hypocritical.
• Tribe
  - Want to meet artsy, hippie, burning-man types? This is your scene :-D
  
  I like the threadedness of the message forums, but the site feels a bit cluttered and unfocused. Plus... again, sorry to bring up the network effect, but... most of my friends outside of the Bay Area are elsewhere online.

Professional networking

• Ecademy
  - The professional networking site that's the non-American version of LinkedIn. But more
  expensive.
  
  Tried it once. Was annoyed at the apparent lack of any free level of service, so that was the end of that. I didn't see anything about this service worth paying for that I couldn't find via other online or  offline means.
• Ryze
  - "Hi, I'm a stay-at-home marketer. Would you like to join the most amazing wealth creation
  scheme that combines hot dogs, Buddhist monks, and..."
  
  Used to use this professional networking service quite a bit, but now it feels relatively empty and multi-level-marketing focused.


• LinkedIn
  - Like any other powerful tool online or offline; great if you use it wisely, potentially painful if you don't.
  
  I like this service overall. I've not used it much for my own networking, but I have definitely been pleased to help others... pass along legitimate requests, and so on. The key is not treating it like MySpace (adding everyone who requests you to add them), but rather judiciously linking to people you trust and who trust you... ideally, folks you have professional ties with or can similarly vouch for.

Resource sharing / reviewing / bookmarking

• CitySearch
  - Big, colorful, commercial, and overstuffed site that features user-submitted reviews on restaurants, hairdressers, etc.
  
  Used to use this, but have moved over to Yelp, which seems -- if not more accurate -- at least more interesting, more entertaining, and slightly-less cluttered and commercial.
• Del.icio.us
  - Lamely named social bookmarking site that's been (sort of) superceded by more robust and feature-rich offerings and is now owned by Yahoo
  
  The geek "Web 2.0" (ack, I feel dirty already) crowd latched onto this early on, and I never quite got the appeal. Other services have offered considerably more features... of particular note, the ability to take a searchable "snapshot" of the page when it's bookmarked for easier retrieval later. On the flip side, this site had (and still has) an admirably spartan feel to it. No ads (that I can see), and no clutter. For those who crave APIs, minimalist feature sets, and simple bookmark sharing, del.icio.us could still be a reasonably good pick.
• Digg
  - Watch out, here comes the highly-opinionated and non-buying mobs! (is so! is not! yeah, well, your mamma was an SEO! LOLZ!!!!!!!1)Okay, so perhaps that's a bit unfair. Digg was an interesting idea and still continues to surface some noteworthy or at least entertaining sites. But, as with many fine ideas, it's been creaking at the seams
  due to its mass adoption and resultant oft-moblike/groupthink feel. Anyway, I no longer check this site with any regularity... not enough time, too poor signal/noise ratio.
• Google Reader -
  An outstanding feed-reader that's easy and fun to useSure, I'm biased, but after an unsuccessful first version, the Reader team's got their groove goin' on. Nifty keyboard shortcuts (hit ? to see 'em!), a pleasant UI, and the capability (which I sadly haven't used yet) to make any of your tags/folders publicly-viewable. Now if they'd just combine this with a
  public-version of Google Bookmarks... :-D [g]


• StumbleUpon
  - A serendipitous and often wondrous way to surf the Web and discover cool stuffI shied away from this service for ages; I don't have time to aimlessly "stumble" around the Web! But I've been slowly using it more, and finding it has useful features and unearths cool sites for me :-D.
  [My Stumbleupon page]
• Yelp
  - Irreverent, sometimes painfully hip, but typically entertaining and often useful
  
  Want consistently unbiased and deeply thoughtful reviews of restaurants and other local places? Then Yelp may or may not be your cup of tea. But if you're patient and have a good sense of humor, you can often glean quite a bit of helpful info about various places around town. The conversations in the Talk section can be surprisingly cathartic, friendly, and even useful. [My reviews]

Photo sharing

• Flickr
  - The most active and diverse photo sharing site I've ever seen, with a doggedly committed community-oriented management
  
  Sure, they've gotten a lot of flack after getting absorbed by Yahoo. Yes, like on any user-generated-content-site, there's bound to be crap, controversy, jerk-offs, and so on. But that aside, Flickr undeniably has an astounding number of gorgeous, hilarious, and downright captivating photos taken by talented photographers as active members. And speaking of active members... the Flickr crowd is hugely loyal, passionate, and not shy :-D. [My photos]
• Fotki
  - The skinnable and surprisingly easy-to-use popular photo site you've never heard of
  
  Sets within sets! While Flickrites are still begging for this, Fotki's had it for ages. It also has journals and a bunch of other doodads that are done better elsewhere, but thankfully that stuff doesn't clutter up the simple-yet-powerful photo interface. $30/year gets you unlimited storage and very cheap (and good!) prints. [My photos]
• PicasaWeb
  - Jarringly basic and spartan for geeks, surprisingly easy-to-use for normal people (who just want to easily share their photos with their family)
  
  Want to join a feature-rich photo site with great sense of community? This ain't it. But it's reliable and -- as a very nice bonus -- you can upload your videos to be displayed within your galleries (Google Video style). Best hidden feature: use the right and left arrow keys to zoom through galleries and enjoy the pre-caching and the perfect-fit-to-your-display views. [My Photos] [g]
• Honorary mention: Smugmug
  - I've never used it, but really like the attitude of its CEO and the intense, friendly customer-focus he has pushed throughout his company.
  

Instant messaging

• Trillian
  (my choice at home) - Offered in both a free and more-powerful $25/year version, Trillian is mostly reliable and amazingly handy
  
  No matter how much I try to convince all my friends to use Google Talk ("GTalk"), a ton of 'em still insist on sticking with Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, or -- dog forbid -- MSN Messenger! A few of them even still use their AOL accounts for e-mail; I've disowned those folks... but hey, I digress
  those other apps at the same time and having my computer grind to a halt, I use Trillian at home, which automatically logs me into all the networks and displays my buddies in a totally customizable and wonderfully compact single-column view. Downside? Sometimes connectivity to different networks is flakey. And though they promise a Web-based version Real Soon Now (tm), it's seemingly impossible at present to easily sync one's Trillian account across computers, so your chat history gets split between your desktop and laptop and so on. But hey, one app to rule them all? Pretty damn useful!
• Google Talk (my choice away from home) -
  Simple, great voice quality, usefully integrated into Gmail (and elsewhere).
  
  It's lightweight, fast, and just works. I really like how chats are (optionally) archived in my Gmail account, so I don't have to remember whether I e-mailed a friend or chatted with her about an upcoming party... I can do one search and know for sure that I forgot to invite her! [g]
  

Other

• Plaxo
  - "I'm updating my addressbook..." aaaaagh! Thankfully, Plaxo is much, much more than this.
  
  This is one of those sites despised by many geeks and, in fairness, journalists and other popular peeps who at least previously got deluged by the perfect storm created by clueless n00bs and a suboptimal viral approach pushed by Plaxo in the early days. With an improved emphasis on improving the existing network rather than wildly expanding it, Plaxo is now increasingly loved by millions of folks (like me!) who appreciate the service's (mostly free) offerings. The core feature which I use and find invaluable is the sync'ing of my friends' contact info into my various addressbooks. Plaxo has recently announced that their upcoming 3.0 version (ah, gotta love engineers' creative naming skills) will also support
  Gmail addressbooks. w00t!!! Disclaimer: I was a contractor with Plaxo a couple of years ago.
• Twitter
  - Look, I'm having a cheese sandwich! I just burped. I tat i taw a putty kat! i'm a twit therefore i am. Just got my cell phone bill, lemme open it up and... AAAAAAAGH!Twitter -- the oft-stultifyingly boring but oh-so-Web-2.0-utility that lets you, uh, share "what are you doing now?" ("I'm picking my nose, but it's really hard to do while typing...") Maybe it'd be more
  interesting if I had more friends on it. Feel free to twit (?) me at http://www.twitter.com/thatadamguy.

How I blew off Google... and more pre-Google career tidbits

Happy Googleversary!
As I was getting ready to board the Google Shuttle home recently, a colleague (who started at Google on the same day I did) poked me and jokingly wished me a "Happy Googleversary!"  Right then it hit me that, yeah, I had been at Google for a full year.  Wow!

Also in the last few weeks, coincidentally I presume, many folks -- particularly fellow alums -- have been e-mailing me to ask about what it's like at Google, how they can get a job there, etc.  I will be e-mailing all of
them back (sorry for the delay!), but in the meantime it's prompted me to do something I've been planning to do for a while:  write a few (okay, maybe more than a few) words on how I ended up at Google and what my thoughts are about working there.

How I blew Google off
As many of you likely know, I was fascinated with Google for years before I started working there.  In fact, in 2000, I featured Google in a department newsletter I wrote for the then-high-flying high-tech PR firm -- Niehaus Ryan Wong ("NRW") -- which I worked for as an Interactive Strategist.  In 2001, my entire department was laid off and so I got to Google for "how can I save my pride and find a cool new job?"  I ended up using my online communication skills to keep me sane and mostly in the black doing consultant / contractor stuff.

I think it was in early 2002 that I made a pretty big mistake, however. The conversation went something like this:

Friend:  Hey... I got a job at Google... you know, the search engine... it's really great!  I think it has some huge potential, you should work here!  Want me to submit your resume?

Me:  Congrats!  But... it's in, what, Mountain View or something?  And -- no offense -- how interesting could working on search really be?  And I'm doing just fine on my own, but thanks!

Yes, I now rank that as one of my most severe and painful bouts with cluelessness.  I wised up not too long after that and applied for a couple of jobs at Google; got some interviews and the recruiters ultimately told me
politely and firmly that I had a good attitude, fine credentials blah blah blah, but wasn't a good fit for the positions.  And looking back, it's clear they were right.

The good life... and how I grew weary of it
Over the next few years, I enjoyed working as a consultant / contractor with some super companies, a bunch of great people, and some understandably demanding but usually interesting clients.  But despite the cool projects and decent money and improving professional reputation, I grew weary.  I missed having a set of regular colleagues I could banter with and learn from face-to-face.  I missed having a mentor.  I wanted, also, to mentor others... and not just online.  I got tired of flying back and forth to Los Angeles for a client; 'twas a nice client, but I hated the city and the traffic that plagued it.

Most of all, I felt wistful about never having worked for a medium/big company, never getting to really have a feeling of ownership in a company that provided products/services internationally.  I wanted to be even a small part of something big but not faceless, have an impact, have significant room for growth careerwise and otherwise.

As you'll see below, I am thankful to have found this in Google.  It's not a utopia; there are things about the company that greatly frustrate me, there are days in which I feel overwhelmed and stressed.  But these days are few in number and gratifyingly dwarfed by the days in which I am very, very happy to be surrounded by people I respect, doing things I see as valuable, for a company that excites me and treats me ridiculously well.

A few words about companies I worked with or even just interviewed with pre-Google
Before I talk more about Google, I thought I'd share with you a few quick personal thoughts about some companies.

Some companies I worked with before Google:

• Plaxo: Very smart people. Collegial office conveniently served by a shuttle from Caltrain. Fascinating problems to solve. And their core product is hugely useful, increasingly well-designed, and truly has no equals. No need to send out "update my info please" notes; just enjoy the network effect of having lots of addressbook info updated. My interviews here were friendly, hands-on ("Okay, show me how you'd do this..."), and challenging.
  
• Intrapromote:
  Friendly, hard-working, supportive folks who've been doing SEO for quite some time... and who happen to have one of the more concise, unpretentious, and underrated SEO blogs around. Through Intrapromote, I got to work on some pretty huge online campaigns with major Fortune 500 companies and the experience opened my eyes to a lot of tough issues that large sites face every day. The
  interview process with Intrapromote was refreshing: very open, informal, and sensible (no lame questions, no useless under-pressure crap).
  
• Virgin Digital:
  I'm saddened by how this service flamed out in the U.S. The execs I worked with here were admiringly passionate about music and about enabling people to share their love of and insights about music with each other. They were motivated by the right ideas but -- given that the service didn't survive -- unfortunately hobbled by either a lack of resources, bad luck, poor execution or all of the above. My
  interviews were... well, not really interviews. This was a case of, hey, Adam, we know your work, we've had some good chats, when can you start on this project? That's not to say that Virgin's consultant/contractor hiring was haphazard or careless, but rather that the President (who hired
  me directly) was pragmatic, efficient, and no-nonsense... operating on an intuitive (and, I humbly think, accurate :-P) sense that I was a decent and appropriate fellow to work with.

And companies I interviewed with and received offers from immediately prior to
working for Google:

• Art.com: Classy and friendly people, very nice office overlooking the bay, and a damn neat product. The recruiter I dealt with was helpful and instantly likeable. All of my interviews were comfortable, reasonable, and -- most importantly -- truly two-way... conversation, not interrogations.
  
• Microsoft's MSN AdCenter: The MSN AdCenter campus is in beautiful Redmond (nice!) near one of my favorite cities (Seattle... yay!) but... located adjacent to a shopping mall away from the main MS campus (yuck!). Interview questions tended to focus on what I've done, and how I might handle client situations. Not terribly surprising. Suggestion to the AdCenter team and all other companies, for that matter: If you're having a final-stage candidate do a full day of interviews, invite him to lunch with some of his potential-future colleagues. Giving him a box lunch to eat alone in an office is not only a bummer for the candidate, but robs you of the opportunity to see how he or she relates to others... and that sort of interaction, IMHO, can be quite revealing ;-). On a more positive note, I was relieved and pleased at how thoughtful my MS recruiter was throughout the process. When I told the guy I had an offer from Google, the fellow didn't throw any chairs, but rather was extremely kind and supportive and urged me to take the time to make a decision that was best for me.

Vanessa Fox (nude!) urges me to expose my...

No ands, ifs, or butts—this titilating title and content isn't just a naked attempt to get a leg up on my subscriber numbers.

I normally keep this sort of thing close to my chest, but when Vanessa Fox invited me to bare all my reasons for blogging, I felt bound to oblige.

Ironically, just the day before, I was asking myself the very same thing (no, not why didn't I pick a more sexy blog name... okay, that too!... but primarily, why DO I blog?). Seriously.

And what I came up with at that time was this very-honest list:
1. I don't know.
2. I don't know.
3. I don't know.
4. I don't know.
5. Honestly, I don't really know.

That, of course, may go a long way towards explaining why I seem to average about a whopping post or two a month nowadays :-(.

But, to avoid disappointing Vanessa and all 42 of you others who read my blog, I did some more soul searching and came up with a decidedly more interesting list of reasons why I blog, or at least why I think I do.

I determined that I've had decidedly different motivations to blog before and after working for Google. And -- in contrast with some of the others participating in this meme -- apologies in advance for the more-serious / comparatively-boring nature of my answers.


Key reasons why I blogged before becoming a Googler

1. While working on my own and quite often working from home, blogging was an additional way of "connecting with the world," and especially with like-minded geeks.


2. On a related note, since I was spending very long hours in front of the computer doing client work, it was also a convenient way of blowing off steam.


3. I've been passionate about Google for ages, and figured by being a loudmouth about my Google wishes and gripes and such, I might effect positive change :-D.


4. As a contractor/consultant/online-communications-mercenary, I viewed my blog as a bit of a showcase. In particular, I felt it was important to demonstrate that I had a basic understanding of online communications, possessed information and also opinions (hopefully even interesting ones!) on a variety of geeky and non-geeky topics, and was, frankly, someone that'd not be too terribly boring to work with. Along those lines, I also viewed it as a bit of a filter; anyone who'd turn up their nose at my online-evident eccentricities was likely someone I wouldn't want to work with anyway :-D.

Reasons why I still blog

Well, I'm certainly not looking for any consulting gigs nowadays, and when I have Google ideas or gripes or questions, I just walk down the hall or bug a colleague by e-mail or IM. Still, though, I continue to blog (and enjoy doing so) for other reasons...

1. It entertains and amuses my friends and I guess others as well. I have good friends all over the world, and they've told me that even my lame entries make them smile.


2. I enjoy spotlighting geeky hobbies and passions that others might not know much about and might enjoy getting to know (e.g., Lindy Hop) :-D.


3. I've greatly appreciated what I've learned from others on the net and feel that it's karmic'ly right to share a bit in return (tips, reviews of products and services, and so on)


4. I kinda feel obligated to blog. That doesn't mean I don't find it fun and rewarding, but there's also the negative motivation of sorts: I've built up a brand, however insignificant and badly named, and invested a crapload of time into not only the content but the infrastructure/design/etc. behind this blog as well (don't laugh! just implementing that stupid menu above took forever, not to mention the re-templating + importing after switching from MT to EE. Abandon all that work?!!!!!!!)


5. I'm inspired by many other bloggers, seeing how much they inform and inspire. The generalist nature of my blog means I'm unlikely to ever become a major blogebrity and I'm rather content with that, but I know that even non-A-level-bloggers wield a power to do good through their writing, however cliched that may sound.

* * *

On that note, I'd like to tap five fine female friends of mine to give their top five reasons that they blog (or thwap me with a wet e-noodle for forgetting that they have already disclosed such info on their blog):
- Erica ("Erica's Joys")
- Jen ("Nonsense Verse")
- Meg ("Little Meg Goes to Grad School" -- where I even have a thankfully anonymous guest mention :-P)
- Susan ("Let's Eat")
- Thu ("Of cats and code and random stuff" -- and birthday girl this weekend!)

Five things you (probably) didn't know about me

I don’t usually participate in bloggy memes, but two folks I like and respect (Aaron Shear and Aaron Pratt) have invited me to take part in a viral “Tell five things about yourself that few people likely know about” thingy.  So I will :-D

1) I’m more introverted than folks suspect.
Though most folks see me as oft-smiling and reasonably social, I actually quite dislike large crowds, and am especially unfond of very large, loud parties.  I’ve gotten better at meeting people and making conversation, but I still much prefer small social gatherings (birthday parties, movie nights with 5-20 people I am comfortable with, long dinners with a handful of friends, and so on).  I also quite value my alone time… to read, think, rest, etc.

2) I have perfect pitch.
This is probably more entertaining or jealousy-inducing in you fellow musicians, but… yes, I can tell you what key a piece is in or what a particular chord is just by listening.  This isn’t useful in most circumstances, and in fact, it somewhat hampered my classical piano sightreading since I’d always try to play popular classical pieces by ear.  My evil-but-brilliant piano teacher thus forced me to study more obscure classical pieces that I wasn’t likely to have heard before :-P.  My perfect pitch, however, did come in handy when…

3) I ran my own singing telegram business in high school.
Due to a mixture of good behavior and amazingly trusting administrators, I was able to form and lead a group of about 12 fellow high school students in daily practices and quasi-guerilla singing-birthday-telegramming… during class time :-).  If I remember correctly, we charged something like $2 or $3 per song (including delightfully PrintShop’d personalized card), and also were regularly asked to sing the national anthem at many high school games.  I think we raised a couple thousand bucks (yes, that was a lot of songs over two years!), which we donated in its entirety to the school in the form of a music CD library for checkout :-).  And in case you’re curious, I personally arranged all the Mozart-quality pieces, including “A Muppets Birthday,” “Mexican Hat Dance Birthday,” “And Why Not?” and several other astoundingly brilliant (but brief!) compositions.

4) I joined the Northwestern Novice Crew (rowing) team out of peer pressure.
I lived in a super-awesome dorm at NU (“Willard WOO!”) even as an upperclassman, and a bunch of adorably cute freshmen girls persuaded their favorite Big Bro to join the crew team with them.  I lasted a month or two before sanity caught up with me (5am practices in the freezing cold on the river?  Willingly?!), and bowed out only after I fainted during practice.  Turns out I had been weakened by the flu, but I figured it was a “sign” anyway.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, all the froshies who egged me into joining the team quit well before I did :-P.

5) I can put each foot behind my head (but not at the same time).
This is even before I tried yoga.  Imagine how flexible I’ll get after a few more pilates and yoga classes! :-D

*  *  *

And now, to tag five other lucky winners, in no particular order…
- Erica Joy Baker
- Graham Waldon
- Bountiful (and increasingly Big!) Bee
- Ryan Schultz
- Doctor Awesome

Self improvement -- how do you measure your progress?

A few years back, I had some free sessions with a personal trainer at my gym, and one of the most useful takeaways was this:

Unless you write stuff down, it’s too easy to “fudge the facts” in your mind.  How much pushups are you doing with good form?  What are you eating each day?  We tend to maximize the former, minimize the latter, and that’s not good.

For starters, he made me write down each day *everything* I ate and drank, along with estimated calories associated with each thing I put in my mouth.  Boy, that was a depressing but enlightening shocker!

Well, I decided to go one better and start my own personal health chart (in Excel), daily noting my progress on several fronts (weight, body fat percentage, pushups, etc.).  Alas, after a few months, that kinda fell by the wayside, so I picked it up again a year later.  And, once again, that only lasted a few months. 

I’m trying yet again, and—now that I have the regular routine of a full-time job—I’m hoping it’ll somehow be easier to keep up the list.  For the very curious, I’ve included below exactly what I’m measuring:

- E-mails still in my inbox
- Body weight
- Body fat percentage
- Pushups (#)
- Various medicines (e.g., remembering to use Nasalcrom, an allergy medicine)
- Meditation (in minutes)
- Stretching (yes/no)
- Aerobic exercise (minutes)
- Strength training (minutes)
- Mood (1-10, 1 being suicidal, 10 being euphoric)
- Mood jot (my mood in a few words… e.g. “Overwhelmed and frustrated” or “Optimistic and excited”)
- Sleep (time I went to bed, time I got up, total hours of estimated actual sleep)
- Notes (what I accomplished that day, major challenges facing me, etc.)

*  *  *

In looking over my previous efforts, I’ve noticed the following:
- My weight seems to increase the day or two after working out.
- Eating massive huge fatty meals seems to reduce my weight in the short term (!?)
- I tend to be overwhelmed/stressed more than I thought I was.
- My sleep patterns are more erratic and less healthy than I assumed.
- Surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be a strong correlation between getting lots of sleep and feeling less tired the next day. 
- After gaining nearly 10 pounds at Google and then losing those same 10 pounds, I’m now about where I was weightwise a year or two ago (still about 15 pounds to go!)

*  *  *

Have you kept your own “metrics journal”?  What are some of the things you have measured?  Observations?  And did such a journal help you reach goals?

More photos: From Gregarious Greeks to a Korean Combo and beyond...

I’ve had the good fortune to travel a lot over the last years (mostly for fun, not business, though that’s shifting) and also am blessed with many fun and photogenic friends.

With no further ado, here’s a sample of photos I’ve recently uploaded:

Talented Tjapukais



A sexy swing dancer



Watery wires



Korean combo



Gregarious Greeks



A fab flower


Here's the entire list of my photo sets on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thatadamguy/sets/

Enjoy, and comment away! :-D

Once again, attending a camp for swingers

Tomorrow night I’m heading off on a plane to once again attend a camp for swingers.  As you can imagine, posting on my blog and sorting through my t-shirt drawers will be far from my mind. ;-)

Take THAT, Lisa Barrone :-P

Anyway… if you’re interested in all the details (including lots of photos!), visit Swing Out New Hampshire’s Web site.

See y’all in a week or two :-D

[Added to reduce chances of some folks having a heart attack:  It’s a swing DANCE camp, people.  Lindy Hop.  Jazz music.  Sheesh… such dirty minds ;-)]