jstrauss

Russ had a great (and scary) post yesterday on MSFT’s DRM endgame. There is a pretty healthy discussion going on in the comments (to which I contributed). If you are at all interested in digital media, it is definitely worth a read.

And on a self-congratulatory note (yeah, I know Crank, my head is already so big it has its own cube): Russell and I have talked about this stuff a fair bit off-line. And in an IM convo tonight after I posted my comment, he credited our discussions with helping to bring some more clarity to his thinking.

I try to hide it, but I’m really a pretty big nerd deep-down, and this definitely gives me some nerd-cred satisfaction. Now all I need to do is get some PageRank love, and I’m in business 😛

Now go read this: http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008464.html

5/7/2005, *4:25PM*, Bar None

Today was a pretty big day for me professionally. I won’t go into the details right now, but suffice it to say today was one of my better days at Y!. I had an email conversation about some of the day’s events with my dad, in which he congratulated me on my “grand-slam homerun” (btw, I am eternally grateful for both of my extremely supportive parents), and I think that metaphor resonated with me. Because as I was heading off to bed, the below quotation from the West Wing kept echoing in my head.

I was thinking about how I need to get Sasha to watch the West Wing in the context of our earlier IM conversation about smart people and the fear of failure. Upon reflection, it struck me that Aaron Sorkin really has a knack for capturing the complex demons of insecurity that plague some of those we might expect to be most secure…it is obvious (in both his poignancy and his rap sheet) that he is writing from personal experience. Anyway, the below is a great quotation from a great scene from a great episode of a great show; the pitch in question is “being the smartest kid in the class.” I won’t claim to be the smartest kid in the class, but I do feel a lot of the time that I don’t get all of the ball…so, here’s to more grand-slams and less foul balls!

From “Hartsfield Landing” (Season 3):
 LEO: What’s going on?
 BARTLET: I don’t know. Toby keeps coming back at me with this… I don’t know. He says I let the pitch go by.
 LEO: What pitch?
 BARTLET: I soften… I smooth myself out publicly. It’s not a put-on, by the way, I’m honestly folksy.
 LEO: Yeah.
 BARTLET: Yeah what?
 LEO: Yeah… nothing.
 BARTLET: You agree with him?
 LEO: I don’t think you let the pitch go by.
 BARTLET: I don’t.
 LEO: I think you foul it off.

Ok, so it wasn’t really a crime…but, it was really Danny Bonaduce (I was gonna use the Y! Movies link, but it was so bad compared to IMDb…come on guys!).

Here’s how it all went down:
Yesterday afternoon Princess took me and Rob shopping on Melrose for funky outfits for last night’s “Golf Pros and Tennis Hoes” party (more on that later). Before I go any further, I want to rant about this whole vintage clothing racket for a minute! I remember in Philly when we would go to an actual thrift store (not to be confused with a vintage store) and buy an entire hilarious outfit for $4.75. I was actually in a real thrift store recently in Sunnyvale, so I know they still exist…but if you wanna find that kind of stuff in LA or NY, the only source seems to be these damned vintage shops. It is obviously a great business, considering they must just go buy up stock from the remaining thrift stores in the poorer parts  of town and then sell it at outrageous mark-ups in the trendier parts of town. I guess I’m just jealous that I didn’t get in on that scam. Anyway, having shopped at actual thrift shops, where the real clientelle wishes they could afford to buy new, the irony of a $250 “distressed” t-shirt (yes, I really did see one of those yesterday) is not lost on me. Before I continue the story, I do just want to get in a dig at Urban Outfitters and the fact that the company that syndicated vintage chic to the rest of the country is now the anchor tenant on the strip of Melrose from where they stole the idea in the first place…it’s like Starbucks opening up a branch across the street from Juan Valdez’s house (who am I kidding, that’s probably already happened).

But, I digress. Anyway, after unfruitfully scouring a couple of ridiculously over-priced used clothing stores, I was about ready to give up on the whole thing. Then, we stumbled across this great *little* shop  (literally, safe capacity might have been 10 people) run by an Asian burn-out with shoulder length hair and a middle-aged Persian woman, where Rob and I found exactly what we were looking for, at actually reasonable prices ($32 for a crepe polo shirt and plaid pants). I would include a link to the shop, but I can’t find it anywhere on the internet (the receipt says Basile Fashion, 7461 Melrose Ave).

So, then all that I needed to complete my Ty Webb outfit was some spiffy golf shoes. After running out of vintage options on Melrose, we decided to take a shot at a sporting goods store to see if we could find some new, but cheap, golf or bowling shoes that would work. This mission took us to the Beverly Connection, where  standing on the bridge from the parking lot was Danny Bonaduce. He was with his daughter (pictured), and they had just come across (or we had interupted them in the process of abducting, your pick) a little Asian girl bawling her eyes out.  Long-story short, the little girl had been separated from her parents in the mall, and I helped Danny Banaduce find a mall employee to whom to hand her off. So, not really fighting crime, per se…but the headline is catchy, and it’s not too much of a stretch.

It was all-in-all, a very LA Day. My Danny Bonaduce experience (btw, he’s *ripped*) was book-ended by a great talk with Walter Hill (we discussed the severability of great screen-writing from great directing [his opinion, as a writer-director, is that it cannot be done], the soul of art, and the meaning of originality [now I have to read Borges]), and a fashion-themed bat-mitzvah party at the Beverly Hills Hotel that included a 20min adaptation of Zoolander featuring cameos by Walter Cronkite and Warren Buffett!!! Where else is life this absurd? Have I mentioned that I love LA!?

Oh yeah, the “Golf Pros and Tennis Hoes” party got broken up before I could make it up there…guess I’ll have to find another excuse to wear my new plaid pants.

This is (from L to R) Kyle, Beatrice, and Nina. They are 5th-graders in Mrs. Leath’s class at Bishop Elementary in Sunnyvale.

Y! has a number of great community outreach programs managed through the Yahoo! Employee Foundation (Y!EF). One of them, in which I participate, is called Classroom Buddies. EmC and I *try* to make it to Mrs. Leath’s class once every other week. Unfortunately, the nature of our jobs makes it very hard to keep a regular appointment like this. Sometimes we go over a month without being able to make it to class (as if we don’t feel bad enough about it, then the kids say stuff like, “we thought you forgot about us”). When it is 11pm and you are still bogged down with work, something like this can seem like just one more chore you don’t need, and the guilt just compounds the pre-existing stress. I have more than once thought about how my life would be just a little easier if I didn’t have this hanging over my head. But, then you actually go…and WOW, does it feel good! Each time, we walk out of there talking about how great it was and how we need to come more often.

Today was a particularly good session for me. The kids have a math test coming up, and Mrs. Leath gave Em and me 3 kids each (mine are the 3 above), who she thought needed special attention. What is most interesting is how varied the kids’ levels are, especially since they have all been sitting through the same lessons. Em and I both agree that there is still a lot of work to be done in educational science, and even more work to be done in our public schools. You hear about the importance of class size in every public education discussion, but it really doesn’t hit home until you see what just a little bit of individual attention can do.

First of all, neither of us were encouraged by Mrs. Leath’s understanding of her students based on the groups she assigned to us. From 1 hr of working with the 3 kids, my assessment was: Beatrice understood everything, but had some minor self-confidence issues; Nina was pretty comfortable with the concepts, but had never paid enough attention to try to apply them; and Kyle had been so conditioned to being treated as dumb, that he didn’t even bother to try anymore. I think I made progress with all of them, but I think I made the biggest impact on Kyle.

When we started, he was completely oblivious…I had to keep calling him out to get him to even look at me. He had no idea what he was doing with any of the stuff, but was too ashamed to admit it. Long story short, with just 1hr of individual attention, he demonstrated a real grasp of the concepts. We talked about ways to approach the problems that made them less intimidating. And most importantly, I think he began to believe that he could do the work, where he had been previously resigned to failure. While I am pretty proud of myself for helping with that change (he thanked me 3 times on my way out), I am disheartened that a kid who is actually capable of doing the work has slipped so far through the cracks that he feels totally disenfranchised by the 5th grade.

But, we who have declined to become teachers and instead sit back and bitch about property taxes are really in no position to judge those who are at least out there in the trenches. While I don’t think our current crop of public school teachers are necessarily the best we can offer our kids, they are there and they are handicapped by a lack of resources. I have no plans to quit my job and become a teacher, nor am I going to be endowing any charter schools anytime soon. But, I have volunteered to tutor Kyle after-school in addition to the regular program. I would encourage anyone who is reading this (so, that’s probably all of 2 people) to find some time, even (especially) if you have none to spare, to share yourself with kids (your own kids will do). I guarantee you won’t regret it.

Here is the reply to my email offering to help tutor Kyle:

Dude. Seriously disheartening.

Am I using too many exclamation points in my blog post titles?…oh well.

Ian is a cool ass dude. I have known this on a number of levels for some time now, even though we have only actually met once. Chock another one up to the power of the internet to connect people of like mind. Anyway, Ian had this great post on his feelings about film, which really articulated something that I, especially as a child of Hollywood, had been kinda ashamed to admit:

I have been meaning to post this for a while. The above picture was taken at the Spider Club (had to use a Citysearch link, cuz Y! Local don’t got a listing) in Hollywood last Wedensday (April 13). I got off the plane from San Jose and pretty much went straight here…great way to start a vacation. I had never been to this place before, which should be no surprise, since I don’t live down here anymore (and even when I did, I was pretty clueless about the club scene…unless St. Nick’s counts as a club). Of course, Mich hooked it up as she always does. I really liked the decor– Moroccan themed with vaulted ceilings and an atrium– especially the stage with the stripper pole (pictured). The photo doesn’t really capture the enthusiasm of the young ladies who chose to make use of the pole, so you will just have to take my word for it (however, I will say that enthusiasm is no substitute for rhythm).

Anyway, I like to think that I’m less shallow than most guys, and I was more amused than arroused by the spectacle on stage, but I have to say that there is something to be said for hanging out with beautiful people. And that is something that I definitely miss about LA. The Bay Area has a lot of things going for it, but it just cannot compete in terms of hotness up in da club. Everyone has their own subjective prioritization of criteria when it comes to deciding where to live. But as a 24 year-old single guy, this is definitely up there on my list.

Check out some more pictures I found on the web from the Spider Club…now it wasn’t quite like that the night I was there, but I think these pics might help you better understand what I’m talkin’ about.

Vacation begins! Will blog more about this later. But right now, I feel the most relaxed I have felt in months. I have an hour to kill at SJC, and there is nothing I *have* to do while I wait (hence the patience required to moblog such a long entry).

So, this is too cool!!!  My younger cousin (he is now 11, I think…Nathaniel, don’t kill me if I got this wrong…there are a lot of you to keep track of), the one in the white shirt on the left in this picture from Thanksgiving 2 years ago (he’s bigger now, but still can’t beat me up), has launched his own website, asciiforever.com, using Y! Domains, and featuring AdSense (*don’t get me started*).

So, the website is too funny on a lot of levels…it has revealed to me a whole ascii underground that I thought (read, hoped) was long dead. Nathaniel has an excuse (he is 11, and his parents are mild technophobes, so he has been discovering the web on his own with a pretty crappy computer), and this guy actually did something pretty cool with ascii…but to the rest of you, get Photoshop! (Good thing this isn’t a public blog, lest I invite an ascii flame-war).

Anyway, I got Nathaniel to sign-up for Y! Messenger, and now 360, so I am doing my part for the stock. Now we can chat much more frequently, and I am getting a real kick out of watching him discover technology and become so engaged with the web. What’s really interesting to me is the fact that he has every videogame system under the sun, but is still spending time exploring the global community (albeit of freaks who love ascii) that the internet has created.

Keep up the good work buddy, I’m proud of you. And all you UED guys at Y!, watch your back, cuz this kid is coming for your job!

P.S. Not to let Nathaniel steal the whole show, there is also a 9 year-old in this picture who speaks fluent Chinese (and thinks all white people look alike, but that’s another story). There may be something to be said for this whole genetics thing, but that probably would mean I’m adopted. Either way, I’m proud of all of my cousins…just especially of Nathaniel today.

Forgot to pack my sandals for the trip to Vegas this weekend. And since Bally’s doesn’t have slippers in their rooms (like the Four Seasons), I had to actually buy some instead of wear the hotel slippers like I did last time this happened (Bushey was so proud to be seen with me). Crank, Melissa, and I found these at the Bally’s pool shop (which is *really* far from the lobby, especially when you are barefoot). They were marked down to $9 from $30, so who could resist…why lie, I would have bought them at $30.

I have linked to the photo album here (you can also get to it through my 360 page, see the photos section in the top-right hand corner). There is only one in there right now, but I will put a few more up soon.