April 2008 Archives

One's champagne birthday, also called a golden birthday, is the day when the age someone turns is the same as the day in the month he or she was born. It is also common for the birthday individual to have champagne, thus champagne birthday.

Of all the Golden Birthdays to have, 30 is a pretty damn good one. And this explains the gigantic bottle of champagne I got.

I've been catching up on podcasts from the Commonwealth Club and the Commonwealth Club INFORUM. I've had the Commonwealth Club podcasts in my iTunes for a while. INFORUM is a relatively recent addition. The whole idea of INFORUM just tickles me. It's "a division of the Commonwealth Club by and for people in their 20s and 30s."

I just listened to one on internet privacy called "2007: Is it 1984?" hosted by Annalee Newitz whom I've actually met before! At the BlogHer meetup at SXSW '07. She's super cool and smart as hell. Great discussion on the differences between common understanding of privacy vs the legal definition and whether or not privacy policies carry any legal weight. Missy and I both made the observation that it's really interesting how privacy infringements are always made in the name of (national) security. "It's in your best interest." How Big Brother.

I just listened to one on hot young sommeliers in the Bay Area and it totally reminded me of my friend Tony who, of course, I consider to be a hot young sommelier in the Bay Area. I totally got lost once they started rattling off varietals, but they did have some good comments on restaurant offerings and your expectations as a diner. Takeaway #1: Don't obsess over what you think the (low) price of your wine choice might say about you; if it's on the wine list, it's recommended. Takeaway #2: Never be afraid to ask the sommelier for help, regardless of how much you do or don't know about wine. Some guidelines are helpful, e.g., "I'd like to spend $30 on a bottle to go with this dish."

Now I'm listening to a second installment on the future of music. The host kicked it off with a summary of five copywrongs - things the recording industry government, corporations, and other bodies have done or are doing as a result of their inability/refusal to embrace the changes that are occurring and that are completely unreasonable and jeopardizing the future and the business of music distribution.

1. manipulation of copyright law. e.g., eliminating Fair Use which would require you to purchase a separate copy of a song for each device you want to put it on
2. Targeting internet radio with royalty fees
3. criminalizing attempted copyright infringement (i.e., the Copyright Protection Act)
4. "outrageous lawsuits against ordinary people" which "amount to extortion" and for which the "justification is public education through intimidation."
5. lawsuits against popular internet companies; e.g., Prince suing eBay/YouTube/The Pirate Bay instead of fans that violate the law

There's something new and great on a huge range of topics and current events almost weekly. In the iTunes store: [Commonwealth Club] [INFORUM]

I know there are all kinds of biologically good reasons why Aunt Flo comes every month and I know that your body gets really unhappy when you muck with that. But damn, that is a pain in the ass, especially if you have no intention of reproducing.

But if I could use all that shedded material to make muscle cells, that would be pretty damn cool.

Scientists obtained menstrual blood from nine women and cultivated it for about a month, focusing on a kind of cell that can act like stem cells.

Some 20 percent of the cells began beating spontaneously about three days after being put together in vitro with cells from the hearts of rats. The cells from menstrual blood eventually formed sheet-like heart-muscle tissue.

The success rate is 100 times higher than the 0.2-0.3 percent for stem cells taken from human bone marrow, according to Shunichiro Miyoshi, a cardiologist at Keio University's school of medicine, who is involved in the research.

Separate in-vivo experiments showed that the condition of rats who had suffered heart attacks improved after they received the cells derived from menstrual blood.

So they're not actually stem cells, but they can be made into particularly good muscle cells. And keeping your own menstrual blood for future cell generation eliminates the risk that your body will reject treatment.

Science is awesome.

I love Clarence's t-shirt. I want to know what the rule is, though.

(And I kinda keep wanting to refer to Missy as "the wifey.")

MIssy cracks my shit up.

While we were in Costa Rica, Missy took to calling me "mi poquita piña" ("my little pineapple") or "Piña" for short.

I came home from work one day to find this little guy on the counter.

I don't consider the Minneapolis Metblog and MNspeak to be direct competitors. I don't even have a good sense of whether folks out there consider us to be competitors. We both have the same basic goal of talking about what's going on in the Twin Cities. The format's different. The approach is different. Whatever the hell the metrics are of a "successful" site (metrics are debatable anyway) I don't have enough data on either site to draw any comparisons.

I, for the most part, enjoy MNspeak. Let me just get that out of the way. I only started paying real attention to it near the end of the Rex Sorgatz era (Rex created the site). I think Max has done as fine as job as he can do in his duties as editor.

Why am I even talking about this?

Due to non-updated credit card information, MNspeak's domain name expired yesterday and the site was down for the better part of the morning.

A comment at the Minnesota Monitor suggested that this misstep was indicative of the state of things behind the scenes at mnspeak. And I agreed.

Tom Bartel, who publishes The Rake and whose son, Matt, owns MNspeak, hopped in the comments and got snippy with me. He responded directly to me (not to the original commenter). And that's what lead to this comment. I'm not mad or threatened. I'm just saying. Tom got touchy even though, when it's convenient, he likes to remind people that he doesn't actually own MNspeak or have anything to do with the operation thereof. That's just how Tom is, I've learned. Blustery and cranky. That's cool.

I've... expressed opinions about MNspeak [1] [2].

I still feel badly about the public accusation of bad netiquette on Max's part. It just doesn't seem like something Max would do, from what I know of Max. At the same time, anyone can post at mnspeak. Matt Bartel was in charge of daily posting for a long while. I still firmly believe that links which came through Metblogs (and other places) ended up in a mnspeak post without attribution and that one was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Today, rounding up the techier side of City Pages' annual Best of the Twin Cities issue, Paul Schmelzer notes that "MNspeak hasn't implemented any site updates since [Rex] sold it in 2006; by outward appearances, at least, that still seems to be the case."

My point here is that on several occasions I've brought MNspeak up as a topic on Metblogs and there was an outpouring of opinions on MNspeak in the comments. The users have something to say about the state of the site.

As a Metblog captain, I have sympathy.

I have control of and responsibility for certain things. But there are certain things that I have no control of at all. This was most abundantly clear over the 6 months in which the new Wordpress backend for the Metblog network was "almost ready." Where we felt the pain the most in Minneapolis was new author sign ups. Every once in a while you have to recruit new folks when old folks get bored or busy. And previously those signups went through Metblogs "corporate." We had no local control over account creation, and account creation was a manual process. So while we desperately needed new accounts created, we couldn't do it because of the state of the backend conversion and the availability of folks responsible for account creation.

I do realize it was a massive technical undertaking with somewhat limited resources. I know a lot of that was a necessary evil. I really do. Doesn't mean it didn't still hurt us.

MNspeak and Metblog don't necessarily have the same problems, but I can understand how it might be a little frustrating to have one's hands tied.

While MNspeak may not be broken, per se, (okay, the local blog aggregator is totally broken) you need a little refresh every once in a while. Create some news. Classic marketing. The fact is that all outward appearances indicate that behind-the-scenes at MNspeak is murky. I'm a little bored with it. I read the posts, but I don't hang out in the comments like I used to.

MNspeak, for better or for worse, gets lots of public feedback. I have yet to come across more than a thumbnail sketch of what Minneapolis Metblog might be doing right or wrong. Maybe folks don't pay us that much attention. I can tell you what I have on my to do list (whether or not it's actually getting done). I can tell you what I think of the new design and the new features (including those which have not yet debuted). But my perspective is different from y'all's. And that's a whole 'nother post.

It's the first 65 degree day of the year in the TC. Wait, maybe it's not. But I think it is the first 65 degree day in which the day before and the day after are also warm. We've got all the windows open.

We're having people over next weekend for my b-day, so the to do list is basically Make the House Presentable.

We've lived in this house for 10 months. There's a ceiling fan in the front entry way that's waaaaay high up. I think before the previous owners left, that was the one last thing to clean and they just said fuck it.

So we just now cleaned it. We ignored the dust and ran the fan last summer. Over the winter we pondered how best to clean it, choosing not to go out and by a Really Tall Ladder. We borrowed one of those telescoping poles that you screw roller paint brushes into and duct taped a Swiffer duster to it. I held the blades still with the handle of a Swiffer broom. Missy took the telescoping pole and did the dusting. It doesn't look furry anymore. Close enough.

Yeah, we like the Swiffer products around here.

So we figured we should run the fan to blow off whatever loose dust may still be sitting on it. Replaced the battery in the remote control and... nothing. There are two light/ceiling fan combos in our house: one in the kitchen and this one in the entryway. They each have their own (labeled) remote. Despite the fact that the remote for the entryway light/fan worked just fine last summer, apparently now both remotes will only operate the light/fan in the kitchen. Who the hell knows.

Anyway, we have windows open and breezes blowing through and the fan in the kitchen is running and Missy is vacuuming and I'm continuing to unpack the very last of my boxes. The very last of my boxes! By the end of today, everything I have will be put somewhere. I hope. And probably a lot of it will just sit where it is, on a shelf, under the stairs, whatnot. But it's not packed and that's all that matters. I thought so at the time, but I've confirmed that I did a pretty good job of getting rid of stuff when I moved in here.

We were noticing that there are very few things in the house are ours. Things that we've purchased together. Which is fine because it's only been 10 months and we didn't really need anything and we're not folks who buy a lot of stuff anyway. And I don't have a lot of knick knacks. Not knick knacks that were purchased for the purpose of being knick knacks. I have mementos that I've acquired. Can't quite bring myself to proudly display them on Missy's very nice shelf thing in the living room. I have things I'd like to put on the walls that I just haven't gotten around to getting frames for. But it's cool. I'm comfy the way we are for now. We might paint and do some tiling this summer. Projects!

Smells like fresh air in here.

Hot damn!

At someone's Twitter recommendation (I apologize, I cannot for the life of me remember who it was John Hoffoss!), I've been trying out some of Dave Seah's Printable CEO time and task management tools. (I briefly met Dave Seah at the BlogHer meetup at SXSW '07.)

I was slightly skeptical because... well, it's my own ability to be productive at all that I sometimes doubt. I've sort of investigated a few online solutions. I didn't want to spend money for something I wasn't sure about. It would be my personal bucks used for work-related things. And I have so many work-related projects that free versions of paid products aren't sufficient to manage them all.

I wasn't convinced that an online solution was the way to go, either. Since I do pretty much all my work on a computer, I think that my brain does go into this zone when I look at my computer. It's hard to break out of that haze of task completion and make my brain move in the different direction required to organize.

I just had a flashback. When I moved from Production into Validations, one of the first things my then-manager insisted on was that I get a Franklin-Covey planner. I did, and I haven't touched it once.

The one Printable CEO tool that I've really settled in with is the Emergent Task Planner. I don't integrate it with the other tools the way it's designed to be used. I don't need it as a project management tool, just a task management tool. So I have no need to tie it in to higher-level organization or goals.

I like having a limit on the number of tasks I can add to it. It forces me to focus on what's most immediate and keeps me from getting overwhelmed.

I like having space for notes. It's a temporary holding pen for thoughts and information, all in one place. So when I start a new sheet for the next day I can discard what I wrote if I finished the task or carry over the info I still need to finish something.

To my surprise, I like the time tracking. We have to report our time at work, but nothing's billable per se so I didn't used to pay too much attention to it. I've found it motivating to be able to fill out my time sheets more accurately and I now record daily instead of weekly. It helps me to know exactly how much time I spend on certain activities so I can plan more accurately in the future. It helps me see that I did, indeed, get some work done in a day.

The other item I've used is the Task Order Up. Having all the orders up gives me a better sense of just how big my overall workload is. I put them up right before I went on vacation, and I think my boss was kind of like "what the heck is this?" and probably had a peek at 'em. I still like my post-it status board for higher-level project status tracking and my post-it calendar for timing. The number of post-its on the status board does already give me some sense of workload, but not all my projects fit quite so neatly into those buckets.

So big thanks to whoever you are on Twitter for suggesting it and big thanks to Dave Seah for creating such a nifty and simple product. The fact that it's so easy to use shows that it clearly has a lot of thought behind id.

This is why I ignore your little red exclamation points: If the e-mail isn't urgent to me, then it's not "urgent." Period.

Actually, I don't ignore everyone's. But I figure if something was really that urgent, they'd pick up the damn phone or walk over. If I consider you to be someone who is prone to alarmist behavior, I'm even less likely to respond to your exclamation points.

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Julio Ojeda-Zapata, in his latest Maynard Institute column, broke down the behind-the-scenes-in-plain-view goings on at the MPR Ethics in Online Journalism forum that Greg and I liveblogged for Ye Olde Metblog.

My final word on the subject: Bob Collins had a perfectly valid point that if people in the audience had contrary comments to make we should have made them. However, the format was really not conducive to that at all and so the commentary spilled over elsewhere. I think we all learned some lessons about what to try and what to expect the next time. If there is a next time.

Additionally, liveblogging is hard. It's really tough to stay engaged enough to synthesize but step outside of the conversation long enough to transcribe.

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Black German Cultural Society - My people!

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Stayed late at work today. I tend not to do that. I used to do it all the time. Don't really need to anymore. But Missy's not home this evening, so my normal routine was out the door. And, I don't know, I was feeling productive. It was kinda nice. I didn't want to actually commit to staying late in the evening by starting on a bigger project, so I got a bunch of little things out of the way.

At the moment I'm not following my One Thing at a Time rule. I'm eating and writing three different blog entries and cleaning off the dining room table and making a mental 'round-the-house to-do list. So not much is getting done. So I should probably finish this.

I'm lucky. Saw this item today on income disparities in Minnesota and it really hit me that, while we're not rich by any stretch, we do okay. There are a lot of people that struggle. There are a lot of people that do just fine on less income.

In spite of the fact that a good chunk of my free cash goes towards monthly payments of varying kinds, at least I have the free cash to apply to them. Despite the fact that I clearly do not have enough retirement savings, at least I have some. Hell, I just spent a week on vacation. In a foreign country. That is not Canada.

Which is not to say that I shouldn't aspire to more. Acknowledging that "it could be worse" does not mean I should give up on "it could be better." Still, I really should take that time to look around and acknowledge that it could, indeed, be worse.

All the other times people asked about what happens to their frequent flyer miles when something happens to an airline I didn't pay attention, but now with the impending Northwest-Delta merger (or, technically, the acquisition of Northwest by Delta), I need to know.

Looks like, since it's an acquisition and not Northwest folding, I'll get to keep my Worldperks miles and they'll become SkyMiles. I think I'll be ditching my Worldperks Visa. That bastard's got an annual fee and everything and the only reason I kept it was for the miles. Okay, and the credit history. I should probably pay it off. Looks like my best bet is to use up the miles I have on a Northwest flight before the merge is complete because it'll be even harder to use them than it already is after that.

Peter Greenberg talks about what a fraud frequent flier miles are for the consumer and what a profit center they are for the airlines. Makes you not want to bother, but it's hard to ignore that carrot, too. Why not accumulate the miles and just maybe I'll get something for it someday. And if not, I'm no worse off than when I started.

Update: Looks like an American Express card may be in my future. (via)

Okay, wait, is it flyer or flier?

Filed under "That Was Fast!" we have newglobalairline.com. That came out of Delta's press release.

I know this happens all the time, but it's still weird to me because I've never not lived in a Northwest hub city. At least from Detroit you can fly Southwest, unlike here. Don't know if that situation will actually change in Minneapolis but whatever. We're going from one dominating mega carrier to another. Meh. The promises are that MSP will remain as a hub and, more importantly, that some executive offices will still be located here. Can't say the same for Detroit. Sorry, DTW.

Actually we all know that doesn't work because we'd have been having this weather here a month ago, but whatever.

We took our bikes in today for check-ups. The cool thing about Erik's Bikes is they won't give you a tune up if you don't actually need it (unlike The Hub). They told me all I needed was a bracket thingy re-aligned and that's all they did. Nice! In fact I got the call that they finished my bike as I was walking through their parking lot to my car.

Missy got something or other fixed up and had her new clip-in pedals put on. The nifty thing about that is that that particular service includes attaching the cleats to your shoes!

What I also like about Erik's is that while their employees are clearly knowledgeable, they have never made me feel like a less important customer because of my distinct lack of knowledge about bikes and biking. Maybe us newbs are more likely to spend more money, I don't know. The guys at Erik's in Eden Prairie are super cool.

While we waited for Missy's bike, we hit Lake Calhoun for a walk. It was nice-ish. Clear sky, sunny, 45 or so degrees. But dang it was windy. You could only really feel it for about a third of the way around the lake, but it was chilling. I, being "optimistic" about the weather, had on a hoodie and down vest. Not exactly windproof, but perfectly comfortable for most of the walk. I quizzed Missy on dog breeds.

We were originally going to do Lake Harriet, but Lake Calhoun is closer to Jamba Juice. The Jamba is attached to a Whole Foods, so we did a circuit in Whole Foods for free samples, bought a few completely impulse purchases (cookies, a cinnamon twist, some crackers).

We went back to Erik's and picked up the bikes and as soon as we got home Missy put her shoes on and tried to figure out the pedals. She did a couple laps around our parking lot and let's just say that she'll have to do some more parking lot practicing before she heads out on the road. Rule #1: Pull your feet out of the clips before you hit the brakes, come to a complete stop, and begin to fall over sideways.

Nice afternoon to be out. Nice afternoon hanging out. It still amazes me that after this long I can spend so much time with her and not get bored or feel awkward or struggle for conversation. I think we're both amazed that we made it through a whole week in Costa Rica with pretty much no one to talk to but each other. We can be quiet when we have nothing to say. We can talk about some heavy stuff. That's one smart girl. I love it. Big sexy brain.

I came across MidwestPolitics.com via our friendly neighborhood online news outlet, MinnPost.

With crucial nomination contests approaching in Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio, and the 2008 presidential election now less than 10 months away, six independent political and government news sites from across the Midwest have teamed up to launch MidwestPolitics.com.

The site is a cooperative venture between sites based in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. Its goal is to provide readers with background and coverage of the crucial Midwest battleground in the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election.

To back up that "cooperative" claim, the contacts for various MidwestPolitics features and info come from different participating sites.

One site per state, so MinnPost is the only source from Minnesota. They're filtering out all the non-political content. At the moment, all it's doing is aggregating content. No additional analysis.

There's no RSS feed for all the headlines. You have to actually visit MidwestPolitics to see the aggregated news. Or else drop the feeds from each participating site into your feedreader. You have to dig a little at MinnPost to find the politics feed. It'd be nice if MidwestPolitics at least included the feeds from the sites it's aggregating if it's not going to publish one big one.

Notably missing is Indiana. I don't know if its because there's not a suitable online publication willing to participate or Indiana's not "crucial" enough or what. Makes for a nice snaggletooth midwest map, though.

So if you live in the Midwest (except for Indiana) and you weren't sure what your best source for your state's non-partisan political news is, check these out. MinnPost and the Gongwer news sites for Michigan and Ohio are full-on news sites, whereas the Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois sites are politics-only.

For the record, that there map (including Indiana) is, in my opinion, the correct map of midwest states. Don't be tryinna lump Missouri and the Dakotas in there.

I'm listening to the press conference the Lynx held with Candace Wiggins (Stanford) and Nicky Anosike (Tennessee) on Thursday, the day after the WNBA draft. They were our 1st and 2nd round picks respectively, and we picked up Charde Houston (UConn) in the 3rd round.

Let me just say this: Reporters ask some dumb questions sometimes. C'mon Twin Cities sports press corps! Come up with something unique. Or do your homework before you come to the press conference.

The LFO offered season ticket holders a chance to attend the press conference. I couldn't go, but I would have loved to. That's a really cool thing for them to do. I have mixed feelings about the overall fan experience at the Target Center, but they're pretty good about the STH benefits.

Speaking of the press, my favorite Lynx coverage comes from Stephen Litel from Downtown Journal. Turns out he's now doing WNBA coverage for SLAM Online, too. I'm-a have to make my way down to the press table and introduce myself.

After the Lynx pulled off the draft-day trade for Lindsey Harding last year, I was pretty stoked going into the season. But I didn't know anything else about our other draft picks so I didn't really have any expectations around them. And while last year's 10-24 record doesn't look great on paper, there were some exciting things on the floor and the record doesn't at all reflect the improvement over the previous year's 10-24 record.

But this year. I'm not expecting a championship or anything. Hell, I may even be expecting a lot with a playoff berth. (Y'all know I'm big on managing your expectations.) I'll settle for .500 this season. But the addition of Candice and Nicky and Charde and (hallelujah!) a post coach for an assistant (that's former WNBA player Jen Gillom) is really just so exciting. I watched the Final Four, so at least I've seen them all play once or twice.

I hear the Draft Day party at NBA City was packed. That's great to see. I know this team and this league doesn't have the widespread appeal that others do. I suppose it's like any passion; you want everyone to be as excited about it as you are.

The home opener is a little over a month away, against Detroit. Eeeeee!

So we use this electronic document management system. It's a document repository, it allows for version control, and it we use it to electronically review/approve/sign documents.

Right now you use this thing called a Change Request to route a document for review/approval. The CR screen has all the info about that document and the routing (signers, dates, times, etc.).

I had this great idea a while back that they should have RSS feeds for each CR, so you could see what activity there has been on it. I'm most interested in who signs it and when. I don't like to have to keep refreshing that screen -- for each of the many CRs I usually have at any given time -- to see who I need to pester about reviewing something if we're in a hurry.

I mentioned this to the IT project manager. I don't think he knew what I meant by RSS feed. He referred me to someone who I think was a database specialist. She might have been a programmer, I don't know. We don't really have a need to keep programmers around. I knew the chances of it actually happening were slim anyway, but I thought I'd bring it up just to see what he said. No surprise it didn't go anywhere.

I thought it was a good idea anyway.

I have the Michigan-Notre Dame Frozen Four game on, muted. I'm back to wading through the SXSW 2008 Showcasing Artists playlist. This is drowning out the crazy, ridiculous wind outside.

It gets old talking and hearing about the weather. It gets equally as old experiencing the weather. And since we're constantly exposed to it, talk about it we will. Winter refuses to go away. We got one helluva sleet today, might get a few more inches of snow tomorrow, and then it'll be 50 every day next week. Can't we just skip to that part?

This is cuddling weather. I'm in the big chair by myself for the evening. Missy's out and about in the weather. Sucks for her to be out in the weather. Sucks that there's no sitting in the big chair together. Wah.

I'd almost like to thank the United States for building a cell phone network that's incompatible with the rest of the world's because it forced me to cut the cord while we were on vacation. I've been trying to limit my internet time since my return. Between that and my actually being busy at work, there's not a whole lot of Metblogging going on.

The forced hiatus seems to have cured my Twitter obsession. It's dulled to a healthy enjoyment, but the driving need to stay caught up on Twitter seems to have subsided. That's a relief. What a brainless drone that can be. I'm not all anti-Twitter now, but it just sucks up all the spare brain cycles. Okay, Twitterific is open, but I set it to only refresh every 15 minutes. Baby steps.

Reading of the Day comes from Queercents: In Search of Gay Money: 5 Steps to Partnered Pocketbooks.

My girl's home now and she's sleepy, which means I'm not staying up for overtime. Hopefully Michigan will pull it out. I can't believe their last championship was 10 years ago when I was still in school. I could stay up if I wanted to, but it's just not the same going to bed later. There's habits and rituals and stuff. I like my bedtime habits and rituals.

I just had to leave work. I had enough.

It's that time of year where we have a huge crush of activity. This happens about twice a year. Shit just starts to happen all at once. It's hard enough juggling stuff under such tight deadlines, having to guiltily delegate stuff to my boss, and still not spend ridiculous hours in the office. Because, you know, I have stuff to do at home and someone to come home to.

This is, of course, making up for the relatively slow first quarter I had. When I had much less to do. When I continued to blow off some things I had been blowing off simply because I really don't want to do them, even though that would have been the best time to do them. When they pulled the rug out from under our nice secure employment and everyone was pissy for a few weeks. (Looks like I forgot to blog about that. We'll save that story for later.)

So I'm busy enough as it is.

What I don't need today - or ever, really - is people trying to get out of doing their due diligence (I'm sure there's "cost" involved somewhere). You swear up and down it's going to run just fine. Well if it's that simple, then run it ahead of time and prove me wrong. Because it cannot go wrong when it comes time to run my batch. I've been screwed on every one of these I've done in the last 6 months because of similar circumstances.

What I don't need today is people trying to bully me into doing something a certain way because it's "obvious" and "we don't need to do it" and "it's just like that other thing we did." Hello, we work in pharmaceuticals! The FDA needs to see these reasons on paper. I can't just toss it into my document because it's supposed to be figured out already. I can't cover your ass because you didn't address it in the first place. I get your reasoning and - guess what! - I completely agree. But it needs to be documented on paper. So just write me a fucking memo. And since we're going to keep having this argument every time, how about if you document on paper why we don't need to do this anymore. And then I need you R&D people to get the Commercial people to agree. You directors that they pay the big bucks to make these kinds of decisions.

I know that's cryptic and it takes even longer to explain what I'm talking about and there's only so much I can say. I just needed to get that off my chest. Came on home so I could stop stressing about it, since all that arguing today took away from time spent on that one protocol I should have finished yesterday that is taking way longer than I anticipated.

Okay, there. I'm done. Off to dinner, then to choir.

• NCAA Women's BBall championship game.
• WNBA draft.
• Watching Michigan play in the Frozen Four with the alumni club.
• Choir.

Bonus: Things I am hoping for this week:

So, yeah, we went to Nashville over St. Patrick's Day weekend. I'm all lazy and out of order with the reporting, I know.

That was my second of three travel events in March. It's both exciting and exhausting to be on the road so frequently. Especially when it's weekend travel because you essentially get no downtime. I like my recovery and lazy time, thank you very much. Maybe if I did it more often I'd get used to it. But work doesn't require me to travel at all, so no luck there. No frequent flyer perks or expense accounts for me.

Anyway. Nashville. Why Nashville, you might ask?

The Boyz are my longest continually maintained relationship outside my own family of origin. I've known them for ten years now.

*pause to feel old*

The Boyz opened up a second office for their biz down in Nashville. They've got a new townhouse/office in which they spend quite a bit of time. And I semi-traditionally do a St. Patrick's Day thing with them. So down to Nashville we went.

The city: If you don't like country music, I'm not sure what there is to do there. I'm sure they've got some neat looking outdoorsy things. There's a big river and all. There's got to be a museum or two. Not much to it, best I can tell.

The digs: Man, that was a nice place. I'm fairly certain a place like that in the Minneapolis city limits would cost half again whatever they paid for it. And within walking distance to downtown to boot? Sheeeee-it. We were thinking about a single-family home when we move back into the city, but now that I'm accustomed to townhouse living and now that I've seen their snazzy place, I'm rejiggering my search parameters.

The doings: I know I said all that stuff about what there is to do in Nashville. Maybe it's one of those places that you just need to know where to look. That's what I tell people about Detroit. But sampling all that Nashville has to offer that wasn't exactly the purpose of our trip. (The purpose was to hang out with The Boyz.) It was rainy and we ate and hung out with The Boyz and the Pauls and Gerry and we went to the gay bar. And there was Wii. I had my Wii cherry popped and had a sore right arm for it. Man, I love that Wii tennis. We slept on the most wonderful bed I've ever slept on and we were lucky because that lovely bed was too big to fit in the Murphy bed frame. Sadly, no other visitor to the Nashville office will ever have the pleasure of sleeping on that bed. Maybe on our next visit to Michigan....

That's the same thing my mom used to tell me about going to the bathroom. "Just try."

Clarence today was talking about being afraid to put out there something that you know think is not your best work.

I don't think I hold myself in such high regard. Not as a writer, anyway. Whether or not I should is a topic for another post. I'm not so much concerned anymore that what I'm going to post isn't good enough. I think it's more that I'm not as interested in what I have to say sometimes. Anymore. Sometimes.

As Aaron and his commenters were debating the relative merits (or not) of Twitter, Aaron unintentionally made the point that just because you as a writer think something is interesting doesn't mean that your readers agree with you. Just because you think you are interesting doesn't mean other people do. I made the point that it's usually not the writer that judges whether or not the content is good; it's the reader.

So what do you as a writer do? Just try. I told Clarence to just try.

They're not all going to be winners. But sometimes if you make that small imperfect start, you might surprise yourself with what comes out. You know, it's good practice. Best case scenario: You get feedback. Worst case scenario: You get feedback. Right?

Which is why I opened up this window and started typing. Because I had lots of thoughts about stuff to blog about today, but I was busy and I let them go and now I can't remember what they were. But I figured I'd just try.