TGIF. It's been a long week, friends. Three days of listening to consumers talk about powdered beverages in focus groups. Good news, though -- for these groups, I think we actually found all of the remaining TANG consumers...
Around this time for the past 2 years, I was preparing for a trip to watch the Tour de France. This year, instead of seeing cyclists push their bodies to human limits (including my own) on the Alpe d'Huez, I'll be watching the paint dry on the walls of my new condo. Instead of sitting with a good friend in a Parisian sidewalk brasserie with a cold Kronenburg and plate of salmon and cheese, I'll be waiting for my refrigerator to arrive (and realizing that it won't fit in my kitchen). Instead of trying to get a glimpse of Lance (and Sheryl!!) near the USPS/ Discovery Channel team bus, I will be trying to figure out how to meet my new neighbors without stalking them. And instead of trying to simultaneously drive a mini-bus (more "bus" than "mini") in the Alps and read a French Michelin map that looks like vomit from a kid who just ate a box of Crayons, I will be driving my own car across town 200 times to pick up one more load...
Sure, it's because of extenuating circumstances, but this will have been the first summer in five years without a major bike trip (Canada, New England, France, France). Next year, friends, come hell or high water, I'm going back to Europe. Today, though, I'm headed to Northwest Wisconsin for a family vacation. Look for me on ESPN 3's next Lumberjack Championships...
NATHAN
P.S. I thought the following was pretty funny...
Monday, May 9, 2005
Protest against Eddie Bauer's Nanotech
On Saturday in Chicago, activists protested topless outside of the Eddie Bauer store on Michigan avenue. They're concerned that the Nano-Tex coating the company uses to make stain- and wrinkle-resistant clothing could cause health problems. Howard Lovy's NanoBot has posted exclusive photos of the protest and the press release from the activists, representing a Chicago group called THONG (Topless Humans Organized for Natural Genetics): "We’re out here naked so people can SEE THE PROBLEM, Nano-Tex is such a radical and unpredictable new technology, like biotech, that it takes something highly visible, like a naked body, to get people to focus on the need to stop corporations from using humans as guinea pigs for new, untested, and unstable new technologies!" said Kiki Walters of THONG.
And from a Chicago Sun Times report: Some passersby averted their eyes. Others giggled nervously and kept walking past the demonstrators -- about nine men and women who appeared to be in their 20s. "Where's their mother?'' asked Tonya Stewart of Bowling Green, Ky., in Chicago for an Auntie Anne's Pretzels franchise meeting. "Y'all are rude,'' scolded Juanita Simpson, 25, of Beverly. A bunch of guys in town for a bachelor party seemed to approve. "This is the most action we've seen all weekend,'' said Brian Siebert, 25, of St. Louis.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Monday, June 20, 2005
Twenty-first posting - eyes
Another duathlon under my belt. This one was the combined Long Island Gold Coast Triathlon /Duathlon, and for many of the competitors, was a prelim course for New York Triathlon on July 17. (I, however, was far far away from the triathletes.) There were almost 700 total competitors, 80 of whom raced in the duathlon (and all were happy we didn’t have to swim in the sixty-degree Long Island Sound).
The event was billed as a 3 mile run + 12 mile ride + 3 mile run. The runs didn’t end up that way – but I have yet to receive word on the final distances. Overall I came in 9th, top of my age group with time of 1:15:14, and my best time actually came in the first run. The ride had a couple of tight turns, which made things interesting, particularly when I got to swoop past some of the first timers. I do know that I averaged 19.5 mph on the bike, which I felt pretty good about.
I took some advice from Active.com and tried to fine a “peripheral vision” zone that let me focus more internally than externally. With the exception of the bike-to-run transition (the brick), I think it actually worked. Really. The idea is that you look ahead but pay less attention to what’s happening in front of you than to your sides. It works when you’re passing, but it’s very hard to do it when you’re being passed. I also felt like it gave my eyes a rest – strange, I know.
Give it a try this week, but not while you’re driving. Vroom vroom, NATHAN
The event was billed as a 3 mile run + 12 mile ride + 3 mile run. The runs didn’t end up that way – but I have yet to receive word on the final distances. Overall I came in 9th, top of my age group with time of 1:15:14, and my best time actually came in the first run. The ride had a couple of tight turns, which made things interesting, particularly when I got to swoop past some of the first timers. I do know that I averaged 19.5 mph on the bike, which I felt pretty good about.
I took some advice from Active.com and tried to fine a “peripheral vision” zone that let me focus more internally than externally. With the exception of the bike-to-run transition (the brick), I think it actually worked. Really. The idea is that you look ahead but pay less attention to what’s happening in front of you than to your sides. It works when you’re passing, but it’s very hard to do it when you’re being passed. I also felt like it gave my eyes a rest – strange, I know.
Give it a try this week, but not while you’re driving. Vroom vroom, NATHAN
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Twentieth posting - hot
It's hot here. Africa hot. Pee evaporates before it hits the pavement hot. Tires melting off of my wheels hot. This doesn't feel as bad, though, as my years in Washington when I walked to the office, shirt untucked and unbuttoned, hoping for some semblance of a breeze. It also doesn't sound hot. For those of you from Oklahoma (or lucky enough to have visited), you might remember hearing the cicadas buzzing from first thing in the morning until the sun goes down. To me that's the sound of hot.
This weekend I was up in Ithaca for my 5th year business school reunion. Was great to reconnect with friends I hadn't seen since graduation, and re-hash stories about people we liked and didn't like. We're a catty bunch, but deep down we're nice people. Like Ithaca, Cornell's campus is so beautiful that it was easy to forget the miserable winters. Overall I was surprised to hear so many people were still at the same company -- five years into the burn. We graduated slightly after the tech boom, so there were fewer West Coast casualties. One guy started a company called Jambo (http://www.jambo.net) which may or may not succeed because I still don't understand the business model, and another started one called Happy Wares (http://www.theezcarry.com/default.asp) and invented an ergonomically designed grip to help you carry plastic shopping bags. He made it on to QVC, which is (I'm told) the Holy Grail for inventors. Actually looks like he's already a success.
The funny thing about Ithaca is that it also brings out the latent entrepreneur in me. I've been there several times since graduation, and each time, I day dream about starting a microbrewery/ bookstore, or an adventure tour company, or a restaurant on the lake with a dock. The town is hardly the place to sustain these thoughts, although with a few million dollars coming my way in the next lottery, a house on Lake Cayuga would not be out of the question....
Day dreams must end, and work days must begin. Hope yours is a good one. NATHAN
This weekend I was up in Ithaca for my 5th year business school reunion. Was great to reconnect with friends I hadn't seen since graduation, and re-hash stories about people we liked and didn't like. We're a catty bunch, but deep down we're nice people. Like Ithaca, Cornell's campus is so beautiful that it was easy to forget the miserable winters. Overall I was surprised to hear so many people were still at the same company -- five years into the burn. We graduated slightly after the tech boom, so there were fewer West Coast casualties. One guy started a company called Jambo (http://www.jambo.net) which may or may not succeed because I still don't understand the business model, and another started one called Happy Wares (http://www.theezcarry.com/default.asp) and invented an ergonomically designed grip to help you carry plastic shopping bags. He made it on to QVC, which is (I'm told) the Holy Grail for inventors. Actually looks like he's already a success.
The funny thing about Ithaca is that it also brings out the latent entrepreneur in me. I've been there several times since graduation, and each time, I day dream about starting a microbrewery/ bookstore, or an adventure tour company, or a restaurant on the lake with a dock. The town is hardly the place to sustain these thoughts, although with a few million dollars coming my way in the next lottery, a house on Lake Cayuga would not be out of the question....
Day dreams must end, and work days must begin. Hope yours is a good one. NATHAN
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Nineteenth posting - Kansas
I am reading a book called What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank. If you haven't heard of it, you can still probably guess that it's a full-on, liberal-slanted view of how the nation's midsection was co-opted by the Christian Right and corporate America to think and vote through morals- and values-tinted lenses, rather than through economics.
My parents used to (and still) say that people vote their pocketbooks. Good Democrats they are, but my parents -- like me -- have been sort of blindsided by what may or may not have been a conscious conservative Republican effort to put social issues into the forefront of political decisions (spun in "values" language). From the last election (the first that W won), it was amazing for me to hear so much about values and so many loaded social subjects (e.g., abortion, school vouchers, gay marriage), and such disproportionately little discussion on the economy and positive government.
One Amazon reviewer wrote of the book: "His most important point is how class resentment in Kansas (and similar states) has been turned away from economics and sidetracked into "values". This political process has a long history -- that's how fascism has always worked." The class resentment part is echoed in a series of New York Times articles on class in America. This country has always had a different and more fluid version of class than that of other parts of the world. A trap we seem to be falling into lately is that class definitions are becoming more and more material and less social. It's as if the "socio-economic indicators" are being overweighted to the "economic." The class piece doesn't worry me so much -- it's one of the great things about America that you're not born into or out of a social class -- but this class resentment through values is scary, and I'm afraid it is only getting worse. The book has its funny parts, particularly for those of you from the Midwest, and what you might consider less conservative areas of the Midwest... I highly recommend it.
On another note, a friend of mine in California, one with his finger on the pulse of great, great music, just sent me a CD that begins with one of the best theme songs from a TV show -- The Rockford Files. I played it this morning on my drive in to the office and couldn't stop smiling (http://www.timvp.com/rockford.html).
Rock on! NATHAN
My parents used to (and still) say that people vote their pocketbooks. Good Democrats they are, but my parents -- like me -- have been sort of blindsided by what may or may not have been a conscious conservative Republican effort to put social issues into the forefront of political decisions (spun in "values" language). From the last election (the first that W won), it was amazing for me to hear so much about values and so many loaded social subjects (e.g., abortion, school vouchers, gay marriage), and such disproportionately little discussion on the economy and positive government.
One Amazon reviewer wrote of the book: "His most important point is how class resentment in Kansas (and similar states) has been turned away from economics and sidetracked into "values". This political process has a long history -- that's how fascism has always worked." The class resentment part is echoed in a series of New York Times articles on class in America. This country has always had a different and more fluid version of class than that of other parts of the world. A trap we seem to be falling into lately is that class definitions are becoming more and more material and less social. It's as if the "socio-economic indicators" are being overweighted to the "economic." The class piece doesn't worry me so much -- it's one of the great things about America that you're not born into or out of a social class -- but this class resentment through values is scary, and I'm afraid it is only getting worse. The book has its funny parts, particularly for those of you from the Midwest, and what you might consider less conservative areas of the Midwest... I highly recommend it.
On another note, a friend of mine in California, one with his finger on the pulse of great, great music, just sent me a CD that begins with one of the best theme songs from a TV show -- The Rockford Files. I played it this morning on my drive in to the office and couldn't stop smiling (http://www.timvp.com/rockford.html).
Rock on! NATHAN
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