Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Another Toy Warning!


While Floam is fun to play with, it is basically made of the same filling that is used in bean bags...so while your kid will enjoy molding it into things that are supposed to resemble dinosaurs, cars, etc..., you'll spend the rest of the day cleaning up the pieces, or even worse, if you have small kids at home, on the phone with poison control after you realize that they ate a bunch of the pieces....

Warning: Hazardous Toy from China

Seems like all the concerns about toys from China has died down this year, but my kids received a toy for Hanukkah that warrants a post, hopefully i can save other parents from the anguish and anxiety that it caused in my house.

Within 10 minutes of listening to the repetitive noises, and watching the Ken Kesey-esque psychadellic lights, you'll be ready to jump out a window.

If someone offers you one, my recommendation is to say "thank you SO much, but I already have 2 at home" or something like that....

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

My first 09 prediction...


here's my first stab at a prediction for 2009...
I think 2009 is the year that high fiber steps out from the shadows and grabs the spotlight....we've already see it happen to food with multi-grain items being everywhere...but in 2009, i think metamucil, which has been around and living in obscurity for more than 80 years, will become the next Red Bull...They may need to do something about the name, but I believe that when 2010 comes along, I guarantee that I won't be the only one sipping a Stoli-Mucil.

Burning off the chicken fingers

A lot of people have told me that having 3 kids so close together in age would be great cause when they got older, they would "entertain" each other...guess these laps through the kitchen are what they were talking about....

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Twenty (at least) Questions


We were pretty much snowed in on Sunday, and I spent a good amount of time with Sam, my 3 1/2 year old...I guess its age appropriate, but he asks a lot of questions...here's a running list of those asked during just a 15 minute sit down at the kitchen table....broken out into themes...(most of the time he asks his questions with the word "Right?" at the end of his sentence)

Hanukkah Related
  • Do policemen save menorahs as well as people?
  • Do policemen have memorahs? What about police ladies?
  • Do policemen light the candles?
  • This candle looks like a leaf, right?
  • Hanukkah comes every month?
  • What holiday comes in November, thanksgiving?
  • my menorah looks beautiful, right?
  • what's this hairy stuff again? (a pipe cleaner)
  • Next week when i get bigger, i will celebrate christmas?
  • do you get dreidels on Hanukkah?

While watching the patriots game on TV
  • Why is there snow on tv also?
  • Are they making snowballs?

Related to the movie Ratatouille
  • all the cookers have buttons on their shirts, right dad?
  • The cookers are all really silly, right dad?
School related
  • every wednesday is show and tell, right?
  • you can see what my job is in school right?
  • i wasnt the door helper yet, right?

All people know what Spanish is, right?

Friday, December 12, 2008

Kentucky Fried Nasty

Tried a healthier approach to dinner last night, used ground flax seed to bread chicken cutlets....
i know what you're thinking, sounds putrid, right? must've been pretty disgusting, no?
well, in short, yeah, in retrospect, a pretty bad idea and while they didn't look terrible, they were basically inedible....

Netfilx vs. iTunes


With Tivo's new Netflix integration, there are now some interesting price comparisons for viewing online content on your TV...I've got AppleTV and Tivo, so if i want to watch for example, Heroes Season 1 in HD, I could purchase on iTunes for about $65...Or, I could watch as part of my Netflix account as part of my $20 a month membership which also gives me access to 3 at a time DVDs/Blu Ray discs. The one major drawback is that with Netflix, I would not be able to watch on my iPhone or iPod.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Sam's view of his mom and dad...


In pre-school, Sam was asked to cut out pictures of people to represent his family...Was a little disappointed to see that while he saw his mom as youthful, attractive and bordering on hot, he pegged me as a graying (though definitely distinguished) man, straight out of a flomax commercial...

Netflix/Tivo Integration Arrives


Was happy to find a new menu option on Tivo the other day called "Video On Demand", which now provides users with access to the hyped Netflix integration.
Based on my experience with the Tivo/Youtube integration, had pretty low expectations, but was pleasantly surprised at what I found. The UI was easy to navigate, and because you cannot select content via Tivo - instead you must add titles to your queue from a web browser, it is really easy to navigate in Tivo. (This could also be seen a bit of a drawback as you need to have access to the web to add new content to your Tivo queue, but I got around this by using my iPhone to add titles to my queue while i was watching).

Overall, it was a really good experience...Was able to watch a couple of standard quality programs as well as one HD quality movie. Also cool is the availability of complete seasons of TV programming - broken out episode by episode. I imagine this will cause some problems for iTunes pricing model...For example, I pay about $20 a month for a 3 at a time DVD plan on Netflix...With that, I get (at least today), all you can eat "Watch Instantly" content. If I wanted to watch a season of "The Office" on iTunes, that would run me about $20 on its own...With Netflix, I'd have access to that content as part of my flat fee.

So overall, I think the Tivo/Netflix integration is defintiely promising, and worth checking out.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Expired License


Found this in my office...Was my food handling license from when I was in the restaurant business....
Took a one day class and learned the ins and outs of helping to keep innocent people from getting sick from the food we made...

Friday, November 28, 2008

Thanks

Last year on Thanksgiving, i wrote a long post about being thankful.....This year, was going to skip it and just refer to last year's post, but last night, as I was packing up the car to head home from Thanksgiving dinner at my cousin's house, I captured a quick video which kind of summed up a piece of what I'm thankful for....

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Blockbuster sucks too


Based on my experience with Blockbuster yesterday, I am now, more than ever, anxiously awaiting the point in time when I tell Luke, Sam and Madison about this quaint concept that used to exist where people actually needed to go to a store to rent movies.

I rented a couple of video games back in September, and returned them in their drop box about a week and a half later...Well within the allotted time they give you to hold onto a rental....

Yesterday, went in to rent Sam a game for the WII....The guy behind the counter, who happens to be the manager proceeded to hand me a copy of the last game i rented back in September, and said "you own this now". I was really confused. Apparently if you don't bring back the game within 40 days or so, you end up owning the game. No warning is provided, no email notification, just a charge to your credit card (in this case, about $65) for the 2 games that they say were returned late. The manager thought this was really funny - chuckling at times - as I voiced my concern. I would've thought it was pretty funny as well, had he mentioned any sort of desire to remedy the situation - which he didn't.

My belief, which I stated to the manager, is that they had a process issue with their drop box - I returned the games when they needed to be returned, but somehow they were misplaced once inside the store. This was confirmed partially when the store manager couldn't even locate the other game I had returned on the same day...He actually said that they had no record of it being returned.

I did receive a call from Susan Feldman the district manager for Blockbuster last night, and while she repeatedly scolded me for returning the games late - even as I restated to her what actually happened - a credit is to be issued to my account.

It really highlights a pretty major challenge for companies with dying business models and a proven inability to rise to the technological and organizational challenges of changing markets. How do you find motivated, customer focused staff to join your soon to be a cautionary tale operation? In this case, my expectations for service and product have been molded by Netflix...The antiquated use of technology and sub-par service at Blockbuster is just night and day from what I've received from Netflix.

So i'll be checking out Gamefly today to see if that better meets my expectations, and am pretty sure it couldn't be any worse than Blockbuster.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Verizon Sucks, I'll go with the iPhone

When I worked at Bloomberg about 10 years ago, I used to routinely work with staff from Verizon as part of my job, and always found the employees that I worked with there to be pretty rude, and not particularly focused on satisfying their customers...
10 years later, I visited Verizon to check out what I thought could be my next device, the Blackberry Storm, and found that not a whole lot has changed in the last 10 years.

My primary concern with the iPhone is the touch screen keyboard and how it might affect my ability to type emails. So when I went to try out the Storm, top of mind for me was the use of the keyboard for email. But Verizon would not allow the removal of the black piece of plastic that was attached to the Storm for security measures to be removed from the device so I could test out typing email. Instead, the 5 Verizon employees who were standing around chatting with each other, each provided their own ridiculous excuse as to why I wouldn't be able to fully demo the typing feature. The main sales guy from Verizon actually didn't even put down his own Blackberry throught this process - instead - he was texting or emailing while trying to answer my questions about the demo.

So I left Verizon, not having even gotten the chance to try out the Storm, but based on my interactions with Verizon, I'll go with the iPhone.

Friday, November 21, 2008

AppleTV vs. Tivo



I've owned Apple TV for about a year, and while it doesn't seem to have caught on in a big way, I am totally hooked. I recently finished the 1st two seasons of Mad Med, purchasing episodes directly from Itunes via Apple TV...(Someone asked me what time Mad Men is actually on, and I had no clue - guess that's what the term time-shifting means). While there are some options for opening up Apple TV to online content outside of Itunes (You can apparently view Hulu content with software from Boxee), you're pretty much reliant on Apple to determine what you can and can't see.

Next month, Tivo's integration with Netflix will go live presenting another promising solution for bringing a massive content library into your living room...From the Tivo newsletter

"Starting next month, all TiVo® HD customers* are going to fall in love with Netflix® all over again (it's even better the second time around!) when you can send more than 12,000 movie and TV episodes straight to your living room using just your TiVo remote ..."

While I'm looking forward to testing it out, I am not all that optimistic. I've been using both the Apple TV and Tivo interfaces to Youtube - and if Tivo's Netflix integration is as clumsy as their Youtube integration, I anticipate that I'll continue to be a loyal Apple TV fan. The Apple TV UI is so slick - making it easy to search for and find Youtube content, and navigate menus - and Tivo's is sluggish and slow, making it a real chore to use.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Advantage iPhone?


With the reviews coming in, looks like the iPhone will be the way i go...I'll probably try one out at Verizon, but the feedback on sluggish performance of touchscreen/menu navigation and email has me concerned about the storm...

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Storm vs iPhone


Trying to decide on my next device, and think i've narrowed it down to iphone vs storm...interesting article here

Luke's Haircut


Took Luke to get a haircut...I think he cried more than he did during his circumcision....

Thursday, October 30, 2008

XTC Skylarking

Listened to XTC Skylarking on Lala today for the first time in a while....its been about 22 years since it came out and probably 10 years since i've listened to it, but it remains one of my favorite albums of all time....definitely worth a listen

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Lala

Lala is a pretty cool site that lets you listen to and download drm-free music....definitely worth checking it ou

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Steve Wolkoff


The DoubleClick family suffered a tragic and sickening loss last week, when Steven Wolkoff, a former employee,, was killed in a car accident in California.

I had the chance to meet Steven for the first time in late 1999 when he interviewed at DoubleClick for a job on my team. He didn't have a whole lot of experience, but he had something far more memorable - sincerity -- a way of communicating that came across so genuine-- you would've wanted him on your team regardless of what you were setting out to accomplish, cause with Steve, it wouldn't have mattered -- he would be an asset regardless of the challenge. I did what anyone who had ever met Steve probably would've done and hired him. It took all of a few weeks to realize Steve's exceptional capabilities---technical aptitude in combination with human competencies -- Steve set his sights on rich media, and never looked back.

I remember a meeting in 2000 with a company we were thinking of acquiring - certainly an area Steve had no experience in at that time - but it didn't matter - I watched this young, inexperienced guy - command the respect of the entire room. If you knew Steve, this probably doesn't surprise you. Steven had a way of communicating - even and honest - which seemed to always resonate with those he came in contact with and while i am sure he may have been a bit nervous - he oozed inner confidence, the kind most never find, especially not at such a young age.

To the Wolkoff family and to Cindy and your family, my deepest sympathies go out to you.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Happy 10,000th view....

10,000 views in 6 months....still can't explain it completely....

Saturday, April 26, 2008

How to pimp your pilot


I really like my Honda Pilot, but added the utlimate accessory about a month ago when I accidentally hit a bird in flight....Turned out the bird got stuck in the grill of the car...

I did feel deep regret over taking the life of an innocent bird, but you have to admit, it makes the family friendly Pilot look pretty bad-ass.


Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Luke Escapes


He looks pretty cute, and definitely innocent, but the kid is rough and tumble, and a toddler force to be reckoned with...

This past weekend I left him in the exersaucer and took sam upstairs for a few minutes....Luke, like some sick combination of Harry Houdini and David Blaine, wiggled his way out escaping from the exersaucer, climbed up on a 2 foot high coffee table, and then, as if diving into a mosh pit or like walking the plank of a pirate ship, he jumped off the table.

Thankfully he is ok, but was one of the more frightening moments I've had as a parent.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

My New Colors



After almost 9 years of wearing DoubleClick burgundy / black and more recently, nerve center green, tested out my new Google colors last night...Wore the new tee, but still had my DoubleClick 10 year anniversary fleece on top...old habits die hard...

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Apple Air Song

Here's Yael Naoim on conan o'brien....need to fast forward to 37 minutes in...try not singing it for the rest of the day!

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Red, the opposite of green?

In the midst of a tantrum, you'll try anything to calm down a child...today, it was luke, freaking out for no (apparent) reason....Allison charmed him with a plastic, environmentally unfriendly, red cup....All the kids got in on the act....worked like a charm

Sunday Morning Watching the Kids

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Jerry Garcia lives in Denver




I lived in Colorado for a year and never heard of this place, but last night my coworkers in our Thornton office took me to a place called "Sancho's Broken Arrow" in LODO. Reminded me of the Right Track Inn in Freeport where Allison and I met, and where we used to see the Zen Tricksters back in the late 80s... They played mostly Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia music, with a little bit of the Allmans thrown in. It was a great time. The whole place is decorated with dead paintings and posters, you can see some of those here.

Monday, March 03, 2008

Whole Foods - They have the gun and the mask out!

Whole Foods is known for ridiculously high prices, but I thought $18.00 for a 12 pack of Heineken was pretty representative of their eco-friendly-chutzpha....I guess Heineken, with its "green" packaging, is a perfect fit, no?

Alliteration for the Day: Forward Facing Finally


After a year of facing backwards, the twins are finally facing forward in their car seats...The backseat of the car now more closely resembles the middle section of a 767, which is what Allison and I have aspired to for the last 365 days.

Paying Bills...


Sat down Sunday to pay bills...And while it is never something I look forward to, was particularly distressed this month at the sheer size of the stack....It was just about 5 inches high, as you can see here....With February being a short month, even with a leap year, this monthly ritual came a bit too close on the heels of last month's tedious bill paying session....Anyone know if you can outsource this to an offshore service provided?

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

111 days and counting....

November 7th was a very special day...the last day that all kids in the house were without a cold, stomach virus, bronchiolitis, rota virus, etc... So its been about 111 days, and about 30 trips to the pediatrician, but spring is just around the corner...have to believe things will get better with some warmer weather.... i can dream, no?

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Homemade Cooler



The twins celebrated their 1 year birthday yesterday, and while we had all the food ordered in advance, i totally forgot to buy beer for the party...and with all the screaming in the house, beer would be a pretty large priority...
allison went to the supermarket at the last minute and bought some, but it was warm...thanks to the snow we got on Friday though, I transformed the patio table into a cooler, and all was well in the world.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

One year down...


Hard to believe that its already been a year since the twins were born, but on 2/23/07, Luke and Madison arrived....While the first 6 months were pretty chaotic, the 2nd half of the year was a little more manageable....

A few of the key numbers for the year...
  • 4500 - the number of dollars spent at babies r us
  • 8550 - number of diapers changed
  • 7 - number of nannies that have come in and out of the house
  • 2 - Avg hours of sleep per night for first 4 months
  • 75 - percentage of time this year that at least one of our kids was sick
  • 58 - trips to the pediatrician
  • 24,000 - approximate number of ounces of formula used
all adds up to a pretty amazing year, and wouldnt trade it for anything....

Friday, February 22, 2008

San Francisco - Berry Nice


Out on the west coast this week for client and team meetings, and while the weather didn't cooperate, and i got rained on in LA and San Fran, I did get to sample some west coast strawberries at breakfast today that were totally worth the trip. Made a couple of trips to the buffet to load up on these...they were awesome.

I respect the whole "locally grown produce" thing but it really doesn't help you much when you're interested in some mid-winter strawberries...

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Ipod vending machine


Did a double take when I saw this machine at jfk today. It's a vending machine that sells ipods, as well as ipod accessories.

I tried to check it out, and thought it was pretty ironic when the touch screen didn't work.

Not sure if I'd be buying my devices or accessories at a vending machine, but a creative approach nonetheless.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Taken to the Cleaners

Called a plumber to install a new bathroom sink after shelly cracked our current one....Wasn't sure how their prices were, but am now pretty sure i'm getting ripped off...

in addition to installing the new pedestal sink, he offered to sell me a new faucet as well...he was going to make me a deal, and give it to me for $250, down from what he usually gets, $500. I googled it and found that it retails for $150....he's a nice guy, but not that nice...

stay tuned...

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Congrats Dwight Howard

Practice Makes Perfect I guess!

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Couldn't this happen to the knicks?


Knicks woes continue, even their cheerleaders can't keep up with the competition!

has it been 25 years? holy crap.....


Found this picture online of my bunk from camp anawana in 1983....25 years ago...i have changed a little bit since then, but was still vertically challenged

My old boss quoted

One of my old bosses from William Morris, Cara Lewis was quoted in this article about Kanye West...

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Formula Countdown


The Lamp Post

Google Maps added Albany as a city with "Street Views", here's a shot of the Lamp Post a bar I went to when visiting friends when I was up there...


View Larger Map

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

The Antidote for Barney and The Wonder Pets

For the last 2 1/2 years my tivo has been packed with kids programming for sam and now the twins and while i've tried to take back some of the 80 hour capacity for myself, it has been a real struggle, and a battle i consistently lose....but finally this past weekend discovered some common ground with Sam...He loves music videos, and with Tivo's Music Choice, you can choose from a pretty good variety....Sam's favorite, embedded below, is Nickelback 'Rockstar'....but he also likes Daughtry's 'Home' and The Killers 'Read my Mind'....
the only problem is that unlike barney or the wonder pets which are 30 minutes long, with these music vids, youre forced to watch the same 3 minute clip upwards of 20 times a day....a small price to pay to rid yourself of the purple dinosaur


Saturday, February 02, 2008

Sam Sneaker Envy


Sam got a new pair of nike jrs this past week, and i am totally jealous...much cooler than my old school new balance 865s....need to find out if they make an adult version....

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

My stache...

We had our European regional company meeting this week in Dublin and last night was our party, which was an 80s themed event....They gave out mustaches and I gotta say that i am pretty certain that based on some of the feedback i got on mine, i'll be growing one of these out asap....

Consensus was that it allowed me to cultivate a look similar to Ron Jeremy or Cal Naughton Jr (John C Reilly's character from talladega nights), or even a bit of Rollie Fingers, so you can see why i'd be so enthusiastic about growing my own.





My son's future business


Passed this shop on the streets of dublin last night, could it be foreshadowing of my son sam's career....

Randy Moss - Dominated by Giants!