Shabbir's Diary

Random bits that didn't make it earlier in the week

All the stuff that I didn't get to post earlier in the week...

Why does the guy next to me on the train think it's appropriate to call his doctor on his cellphone, describe his medical symptoms, and then make an appointment?  Would he want his doctor, health insurance plan, or hospital to be that careless with his personal medical information?

Why, oh why, did I get an e-mail inviting me to a private policy briefing next Wednesday night for online influentials where the speakers are going to be Greg Raymer (2004 poker champion), Howard Lederer, and Chris Ferguson, three of the smartest poker players I've ever followed?  Why did that have to get thrown together the week I'm already scheduled to go to Vegas for work and a little cards? 

Actually, I shouldn't whine, I'm sure I'll get invited again, and though I would love to get a chance to sit down and play cards with those guys, at the end of the day, it's not like I'm going to get a lesson or anything.  And I'll be in Vegas playing cards, so how can I complain?

One good things to come out of that is that I've gotten an invite to a private club game.  These aren't the thinly veiled casinos of New York, but actual private clubs that have been the mainstay of Washington for years and are home to regular card games by people with money.  Well, enough money to belong to a private club which has dues of several thousand dollars a year.

I'm very excited about this.

Have a great weekend everyone!  Enjoy the weather!

Slowly but surely, the big brands are letting go of their icons....and loving it.

I love this campaign:

Burger King was initially leery of Heavy's proposal that it send masks of the king character to two dozen of the site's regular contributors. And rather than permitting the company and its lawyers to approve each video, Mr. Assaad asked the company to keep its hands off.

"We said, 'Legal will have nothing to do,' " Mr. Assaad said. " 'It will be user-generated content, and you will have to trust our editorial judgment.' "

[..]But the ones that were shown on Heavy were certainly more risqué than is typical for Burger King.

One video showed what seemed to be a scantily dressed woman flirting with the viewer over a Webcam. As she removed her bra, she revealed herself to be a man wearing a king mask, holding up a sign that said, "You've been served by the king."

Your audience knows what's best.  The question is, do you really want to hear it?

Link: A Web Site So Hip It Gets Laddies to Watch the Ads - New York Times.

It's spring!!!!

Any day I ride my motorcycle into work is a good day.  No matter what else happens, it's a really, really good day.

I'm headed out to play some cards Friday night, and I'm tres excited.  It's a low stakes game, $1/$2 with a rotating game.  One round of Hold'em, then Omaha, then Razz, then Stud, and then Omaha/8.  Although some people look down their noses at low stakes games, I think they're fab.  I'm perfectly comfortable playing for $50.  Yes, I make a lot more money than that, but no, I don't need the challenge of winning or losing a lot of money to cause me to focus.

There are a couple of distinct problems that come from having disdain for playing lower limit games:

1. It's the sin of pride, and you come off like an ass when you try and bully the poker table you're at; and
2. It's indicative of a gambling problem.  (See question 10: "Have you ever borrowed money to finance your gambling?")

I've seen this rationalized before.  "I really need to play at higher limits, so I've borrowed money at 50% interest so I can play $5/$10 and $10/$20 instead of $2/$4"   Please, if you're not a fulltime card player, and sometimes even if you are, your borrowing is indicative of a gambling problem. 

At Friday night's game, I'll be sitting down at a table where I'll be the best, or the second best player on all of the non-Hold'em rounds, and one of the best three players during the Hold'em round.  The players will call too many single and raised bets.  What's the best strategy here?  I think it's a combination of careful hand selection and never folding made hands.  Because I know that most of the players won't know how to value their hands, and won't be able divert enough attention from their own cards to do much reading, I think there will be a lot of showdowns with crap cards.

I'll post the results when I get back.

The New Wisdom of the Web - Next Frontiers - MSNBC.com

Brad Stone is a soft-spoken reporter who doesn't get enough attention.  Go read the article he co-authored with Steven Levy about why people are raving about the latest burst of creativity and innovation on the web:

At its first release two years ago, Flickr is in some ways the ultimate user-centric site—its customers even helped shape the direction of the company as it moved from an online game to an instant-messaging service with pictures to what it is now—a way for people to upload their photos and share them with the entire community of users.

This small shift from previous online photo sites, which stored your pictures in the hope that you'd order prints, changed everything. What was once the digital equivalent of a shoe box became a vibrant community built around photos and a vast collaborative effort to produce an infinite scrapbook.

Link: The New Wisdom of the Web - Next Frontiers - MSNBC.com.

A Turning Point on Iraq

Howard Kurtz's latest column in the Washington Post is about the media's hostile tone in questioning the President about Iraq.  I think this question from the President's press conference last week sums it up best for me,

ABC's Jessica Yellin: "Are you willing to sacrifice American lives to keep Iraqis from killing one another?"

No, I'm not, and neither should you.

Link: A Turning Point on Iraq.

Thank your spouse today.

Sarah got the call last week that she had a number of live deals going, and so she cancelled her trip to Mexico City.  This upset her greatly, and upset her dear friend in Mexico City probably more.  So Sarah put her head down and started working.  And working.  And working.

By Sunday night she figured she'd put in a 70 hour week.  Before the baby I would have felt a bit neglected, but with the baby it's a whole different ballgame.  Since he's got high seperation anxiety right now, he won't let anyone else hold him except Sarah, myself, and the nanny.  So except for when Sarah took breaks this weekend from her work, I basically held him, played with him, fed him, or put him to sleep.

This isn't to say I didn't enjoy our time together.  We looked at books in Barnes and Noble, we ate at Mama Lucia's, we had Friday Boys Only Night Out at the Brazilian BBQ with my brother in law Tom.  We did all sorts of things.  But at the end of the day it can get tiring to do nothing else all day except keep a 9 month old happy.  And so I am weary.

It is this morning, as I told people the story, that I started to realize just how much Sarah and I support each other in child rearing.  The fact that taking care of Ish is such a joy shows that we clearly both act as a buffer for each other, covering each other when we're tired.

I honestly don't know how my single-parent friends pulled this off.  They are obviously made of tougher stuff than I.

There are sanctimonious jerks on both sides.

Remember when I said that the Europeans were sanctimonious jerks for running the Muhummad cartoons repeatedly?  Well there are jerks on both sides.  I can't imagine how any tradition that puts people to death for religous choices can expect to be taken seriously in the modern world.

Link: CNN.com - Clerics to West, Karzai: Back off Christian convert case - Mar 25, 2006.

No, it's not about Web 2.0

I just converted my entire 2,500 photo, 3 year collection to be hosted on flickr instead of on shutterfly or on my home-built server.

There are a number of reasons for this, but it's not about web 2.0.  I'm so sick of the web 2.0 buzz-bubble I could puke.  Shutterfly could have added better photo classification features.  But they didn't.   Shutterfly could have created an interface that was less graphically heavy...but they didn't.   I've even seen the new Shutterfly and though I can't talk about what it's got in it, I'm still using flickr.  It's just about listening to what users want, and then trusting that if you build a service they'll love, they'll show you how to make money from it.

This is actually a lesson my CEO has taught me repeatedly.  Offer services clients value, and they'll show you how to make money.  It is, in fact, deceptively simple.  And by the way, if you're building a service you're not sure if they'll value, you're going to get your butt kicked.  Bubble, burst, pot kettle black.  You know the drill.

 

That photo badge in the upper right corner of my site is the latest flickr photo from the daily baby set, or you can always go to my flickr page and see what I've made public.

To All the Girls I've Rejected - New York Times

I find this story in today's NYT from a college admissions officer fascinating, especially as the father of a young man who I hope will someday want to go to college:

we heard about a young woman from Kentucky we were not yet ready to admit outright. She was the leader/president/editor/captain/lead actress in every activity in her school. She had taken six advanced placement courses and had been selected for a prestigious state leadership program. In her free time, this whirlwind of achievement had accumulated more than 300 hours of community service in four different organizations.

Few of us sitting around the table were as talented and as directed at age 17 as this young woman. Unfortunately, her test scores and grade point average placed her in the middle of our pool. We had to have a debate before we decided to swallow the middling scores and write "admit" next to her name.

Had she been a male applicant, there would have been little, if any, hesitation to admit. The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants. Today, two-thirds of colleges and universities report that they get more female than male applicants, and more than 56 percent of undergraduates nationwide are women. Demographers predict that by 2009, only 42 percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men.

Link: To All the Girls I've Rejected - New York Times.

More Laptop Than Cellphone, but It Still Fits in Your Pocket - New York Times

Phones and laptops are running towards each other at amazing speed.  Microsoft is betting they'll meet somewhere around the form factor of the Origami devices.  On the low end, phones like mine and T-Mobile MDA (featured in this NYT story) are coming at it from the low end.

Here's the fascinating thing though: these devices are only useful to the broad market if they run Windows.  The OS of choice for the new crop of phones is Windows Mobile 5.0, but it's clear that people really need that.  Even the Blackberries see a huge demand for reading and writing MS Office documents.

I think they meet somewhere in the middle at the Origami, but futurist predictions aren't usually that linear.  I can see a point five years from now when you have four kinds of portable devices:

1. Tiny phones (available today)
2. Small phones that run windows and are a laptop minus the form factor (almost there today)
3. Tiny laptops (like the Vaio, and available today), and
4. Monster laptops, like the Apple one with the widescreen. (available today)

It's possible that the form factor dominates all and Origami devices are too big to be phones and too small to be laptops.  I hope that's not the case, but only time will tell.

Link: More Laptop Than Cellphone, but It Still Fits in Your Pocket - New York Times.