tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18488407955011544052024-03-14T01:56:35.500-04:00Tony's Friendly Observationsredargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-47858457720785801632014-12-30T09:55:00.000-05:002014-12-30T09:55:23.515-05:00My 2014 "The Hell With It! I Get To Make A List, Too!" ListLook, I know a lot of you don't come over the this blog much. I don't post here much. You probably are coming here because you saw a link over on <a href="http://sobadforyou.blogspot.com/">Wicked Guilty Pleasures</a>, my lovely music blog. But I do <a href="http://socialtony.blogspot.com/2014/01/my-2013-hell-with-it-i-get-to-make-list.html">a list like this </a>most years. And sometimes, <a href="http://socialtony.blogspot.com/2014/01/my-year-end-list-edit-or-ive-decided-i.html">I second-guess myself</a>. Actually, to open this year's list, I'm going to second guess last year's second guess.<br />
<br />
<b>Album of the Year, 2013 Edition</b> - Lorde, <i>Pure Heroine</i>. I totally didn't give this album a chance, mostly because Track #2 ("400 Lux") bored the hell out of me on first listen. And second and third, too. Those who know me well know that my favorite album of all time is <i>House Tornado</i>, the 1988 masterpiece by Throwing Muses. My first reaction to that album was similar. But I kept going back to it, over and over. One by one, each song won me over. And, as good as Sky Ferreira's <i>Night Time, My Time </i>was, and as much as I cannot deny the brilliance that was the woefully ignored <i>True Romance</i> by Charli XCX, <i>Pure Heroine</i> is the album I keep going back to.<br />
<br />
I cannot give <i>Pure Heroine</i> my <b>Best Album of 2013 I Didn't Hear Until 2014</b> award, because I did hear it. I could give Lorde's EP <i>The Love Club</i> that award, but 1. it was an EP, so probably not fair (I retroactively grant it 2013 <b>EP of the Year</b>) and 2. it had freakin' <i>Royals</i>. Too easy. <br />
<br />
<b>Co-Album of the Year, 2014</b> - Iggy Azalea, <i>The New Classic</i>. Not <i>Reclassified </i>(which is a fine album, but in my opinion, a reissue). All the great singles that went unnoticed by Iggy over the past year, all together. And then "<a href="http://sobadforyou.blogspot.com/2014/03/19-march-2014-iggy-azelea-feat-charli.html">Fancy</a>" happened. And they were no longer unnoticed. Which is a good thing, because Iggy has a way with lyrics, and<br />
<br />
<b>Co-Album of the Year, 2014</b> - Angel Olsen, <i>Burn Your Fire For No Witness</i>. Anyone who doesn't hear glimmers of Liz Phair's <i>Exile in Guyville</i> is either ignorant of that prior work or are just fooling themselves. This entire album, end-to-end, is heartfelt and brilliant. It is criminal that radio - even country radio - ignored this so whole-heartedly.<br />
<br />
<b>Albums of the Year, Honorable Mentions:</b><br />
Charli XCX, <i>Sucker</i> (It was really good, but not as good as the ones above) (might have been up there if she had put "SuperLove" on there like she said she would last September)<br />
Laura Cantrell, <i>No Way There From Here </i>(Simple country album by an artist who is shamefully overlooked)<br />
RAC, <i>Strangers</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>Comeback of the Year - </b>Bob Mould, <i>Beauty and Ruin. </i>I Dü believe this reminds me of Hüsker days. In all seriousness, it was his best effort since <i>Black Sheets of Rain</i>. He never really went away, but this album just seems like a comeback. True brilliance from a long time favorite.<br />
<br />
<b>Most Disappointing Album of the Year</b> - Phantogram, <i>Voices</i>. It was good, but overproduced. It should have been great. I am glad this great band got some popular radio airplay. I wish this would have been the magnum opus that was <i>Eyelid Movies</i>. I don't want to give the impression that this was a bad album. I just expected it to be great, and it wasn't.<br />
<br />
<b>Single of the Year</b> -The Pierces, "Believe In Me". Best known for doing the theme song for the TV series <i>Pretty Little Liars</i>, these two sisters released a new album this year. This song was one I heard on the radio exactly once. It was on a "new music" type show on NPR. The harmonies on here are amazing, and it is far more upbeat than "Secrets" (the aforementioned theme song that was also a single of theirs). <br />
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<b>Single of the Year, International Edition</b> - Fine, It's Pink, "Secret Island". A really new Romanian band, I really hope they take off outside Romania, because they are darkly fantastic.<br />
<br />
<b>Single of the Year Honorable Mentions (in no particular order):</b><br />
Iggy Azalea feat. Charli XCX, "Fancy" (two greats break through on one single)<br />
Iggy Azalea feat. Rita Ora, "Black Widow"<br />
Iggy Azalea feat. MØ, "Beg For It" (little known fact - Charli XCX co-wrote this song)<br />
Rita Ora, "I Will Never Let You Down" (best thing Calvin Harris ever did)<br />
Lorde, "Tennis Court" (Technically, a 2013 single that charted in the US in 2014. Dark brilliance)<br />
Tove Lo, "Habits (Stay High)" (Disturbing, but darkly clever)<br />
Disclosure feat. Sam Smith, "Latch" (see "Habits (Stay High)")<br />
Nicki Minaj, "Anaconda" (a sample so good Sir Mix-A-Lot loved it!)<br />
Charli XCX, "Break The Rules" (after "Fancy" & "Boom Clap", a reminder of the depth of talent)<br />
Charli XCX, "Breaking Up" (reminded me of an angrier version of The Waitresses)<br />
Katy Perry, "Birthday" (the song we all forgot).<br />
Jason Derulo, "Trumpets" (admit it - this was a damned clever song) <br />
<br />
This next category is a first. But it is the most deserved award on this whole list.<br />
<br />
<b>Worst Single of the Year</b> - Jeremih, "Don't Tell 'Em". An extremely lazy, very profane hip hop song that lifts its lyrics straight from the classic "Rhythm Is A Dancer" by Snap. It's an abomination, and an insult to music. And, when I say the performance was lazy, I mean it - there's no attempt to stay in tune. And this was a HUGE hit.<br />
<br />
<b>Worst Single of the Year, Dishonorable Mentions</b>:<br />
Katy Perry, "This Is How We Do" (she phoned this one in, people. A rare miss)<br />
Calvin Harris, "Summer" (indistinguishable from any other song he's ever performed) <br />
Jessie J, Ariana Grande, and Nicki Minaj, "Bang Bang" (a lame attempt to blur lines)<br />
Pharrell Williams, "Happy" (clap along if you cheered the week "Fancy" dethroned it)<br />
Bebe Rexha, "I Can't Stop Drinking About You" (never heard it? Consider yourself lucky. Rips off the aforemetioned "Habits" something fierce) <br />
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<b>Artist of the Year</b> - Iggy Azalea. She owned the year. And she deserved every bit of attention she got. She's one of the good ones - she worked hard for what she got (see: "<a href="http://sobadforyou.blogspot.com/2014/06/iggy-azalea-work.html">Work</a>"). She lives a quiet life off-stage. And she has done wonders for the careers of Charli XCX (who is a talented songwriter behind two of Iggy's hits, including <a href="http://sobadforyou.blogspot.com/2014/03/19-march-2014-iggy-azelea-feat-charli.html">the one on which she appears</a>), Rita Ora (who has not been allowed to perform <a href="http://sobadforyou.blogspot.com/2014/06/23-june-2014-rita-ora-i-will-never-let.html">her own single</a>), Ariana Grande, and MØ. So yeah. She earned this one. <br />
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<b>Best New Artist</b> - Tove Lo. Surprised? So was I. I didn't like "Habits (Stay High)" at first. But it's clever and sad and upbeat, all at the same time. And "Heroes" was so achingly beautiful, full of pain and despair, while keeping promise. I think we'll hear great things in the years to come.<br />
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<b>Best Album of 2013 That I Didn't Hear Until 2014</b> - Natalia Kills, <i>Trouble</i>. I had heard "Problem", her fantastic 2013 single, but I had not heard the whole album until this year. It's all good <br />
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<b>Best Album of 2010 That I Didn't Really Hear Until 2014 - </b>Marina and the Diamonds, <i>The Family Jewels</i>. Far far different than <i>Electra Heart</i>, it is a very personal affair about Marina's life as it was starting in the music industry. I first heard it near the end of 2013, but really gave it a good listen in 2014.<br />
<br />
<b>What I Am Looking Forward To In 2015:</b><br />
<i>Froot</i>, the new Marina and the Diamonds album. It's already pretty much leaked, and it's fantastic.<br />
The new Lorde album. We've got to have something strong there, if "Yellow Flicker Beat" (her song from the movie <i>The Hunger Games: Mockingjay)</i> is any indication.<br />
<br />
<br />
That's all I've got this year. Let's hear what you have to say in the comments. redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-795670519529810802014-09-10T14:05:00.000-04:002014-09-10T15:06:04.468-04:00I'm Serious About My iPod Classic PetitionYesterday, <a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/compel-apple-continue-offering-ipod-classic-option/7DR7W1kb">I started a petition on the official White House Petitions website</a>. I was upset, and still am upset, that Apple decided to discontinue the iPod Classic. A lot of you probably think this is frivious, but I don't. I take this very seriously. Here is why.<br />
<br />
(I've also shared it on Change.org, <a href="https://www.change.org/p/apple-bring-back-the-ipod-classic-or-else-release-a-comparable-comparably-priced-product#share">here</a>) <br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Let's first look at the economics of the situation. </b><br />
<br />
The last top-level iPod Classic cost $249. For that money, you got 160Gb of storage for your music and, if you chose, videos. No further contracted service is required.<br />
<br />
The largest iPhone 6 - which they announced yesterday - has 128Gb of storage, but also a lot of apps. You don't get all that storage for music. And it costs you at least $399 - for the iPhone 6 option...... if you accompany that purchase with a 2-year cellular plan, which will run you hundreds, or perhaps thousands of dollars. You CAN purchase the iPhone off-contract, but it will cost you at least $849. <br />
<br />
Of course, Apple will still sell you an iPod, which doesn't involve a contract, either. The largest of those is the 64GB iPod Touch, which is currently priced at $299.... still more than the iPod Classic, with almost three times the storage. <br />
<br />
Let's not even get into the fragility of the largely-glass devices, which require expensive cases to prevent from accidental breakage and inevitable replacement when they break anyway. <br />
<br />
My point: Apple eliminated the most economical storage option from their line. That has effectively eliminated an entire segment of the buying public.<br />
<br />
<b>Technology accessibility is another big part of my argument. </b><br />
<br />
In 2001, Apple "revolutionized" the portable music industry with the introduction of the original iPod. Specifically, they included in their design a very popular and intuitive scroll wheel, which could be used to navigate your entire music library. Back then, it was a physical wheel, but the design was improved - with the click wheel - and made more durable. This technology was used on the iPod, the departed iPod mini, and earlier versions of the mini's replacement the iPod nano. The configuration of the wheel, in simpler form, has been used as pushbuttons on the iPod Shuffle.<br />
<br />
So, it's a popular interface. But it's more than that, and to illustrate that, I want to share with you a personal anecdote. One of my Apple devices - one of two (the other being my Classic) (three if you count my former work-issued iPhone 4s) - was a 3rd Generation iPod nano, red. About two years after I got it, my screen started to fail. All I would see is a white screen. Thanks to the simple interface, I was still able to navigate my music library on my nano, blind. That nano is still in use today - it holds my extensive Christmas music collection - five years after the screen got flaky.<br />
<br />
By the way, I know how to do the temporary fix to the nano screen. So that has helped me a lot, too.<br />
<br />
My daughter has also had three Apple products. One is an iPad mini, which we don't need to discuss here - it is a different class of product. She currently has an iPhone 5c, which replaced a 4th generation iPod touch. The touch needed to be replaced, because it fell two feet and shattered. The glass was shattered. She could see the screen, but navigation was impossible because THE USER INTERFACE CUT HER FINGERS UNTIL THEY BLED. Since we didn't have an expensive AppleCare option on this device, we didn't get to repair it. The economics of that situation called for an iPhone 5c, although not an immediate replacement.<br />
<br />
And before I hear all of you say "there should have been a case on that iPod" - there was. Not an OtterBox, which IS on the iPhone 5c. The point is, I should not need to purchase an additional case to protect something that should work from accidental dropping. Some of you also are saying "just slap a screen protector on there", and we did THAT, too, which helped extend the life for a little while, but did compromise its usability.<br />
<br />
If the damage was any greater and did limit screen visibility, this would have impacted the device's usability. More to the point, it would have been a very expensive paperweight with a cutting hazard built in.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, my screen-challenged iPod nano still runs. <br />
<br />
<b>The iPod Classic has no replacement, and is a bellwether for things to come.</b><br />
<br />
Many people call the introduction of the iPod "the 2nd revolution of portable music". No longer were people limited to whatever 16 songs a record company chose to put on a CD (itself a fragile technology).<br />
<br />
However, that speaks more to Apple's past technology strategy, and not its present, which is a shift away from music and towards applications. Apple is a technology company, and they are expected to innovate. I know that. However, when they have innovated in the past, there was always a bigger and better model coming to replace it. Here is the timeline of iPods, as supplied by Wikipedia.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/cb7baf3d2860e3b7b2ec0ab34baaeb83.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/cb7baf3d2860e3b7b2ec0ab34baaeb83.png" height="334" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Timeline of the iPod device family. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
There are a few things to note on this chart. First of all, the 9 September announcements aren't included, so there will be models later on the iPhone timeline, as well as the Apple Watch. <br />
<br />
The second note is that when a model - like the iPod mini, or the original iPod - is discontinued, a new model - bigger and better and usually thinner - the iPod nano and the iPod Classic, respectively in these cases - was introduced. With the cancellation of the Classic, there is no model with so much storage. I haven't yet discussed in great detail the amount of storage available
on the iPod Classic.
My entire music library - nearly 20,000 songs - fits on my iPod
Classic. It's pretty close to full. No current iPod offered could hold
my entire library, and anything that comes close will cost me a lot
more. Apple still offers two pure music players - the iPod nano and the
tiny iPod Shuffle. At their current sizes, you'd need 10 nanos or 80S huffles to match the capacity of one iPod Classic. The iPod touch isn't
purely a music player, and I discussed that above - it's just more than
a 1/3 of the size of the Classic at its very largest.<br />
<br />
And, sure, there's iCloud.... with 5Gb of free storage and costs for more storage - best suited for backups - and iTunes Match - so you can access your ENTIRE MUSIC LIBRARY from a tiny little device.... if you have connectivity to the Internet, either via WiFi (which isn't prevalent everywhere) or a cellular connection (which you don't get on an iPod and isn't free (unless you are a T-Mobile customer, where music is free). It's not the same as having access to your entire music library at the top of a remote mountain getaway. You can no longer unplug and have all your music with you.<br />
<br />
The final thing to note is, no iPod got a 2013 refresh, nor does it look like a 2014 refresh is forthcoming. In fact,
the workhorse Classic and simple Shuffle haven't gotten refreshed in a
longer period of time. The Classic hadn't been refreshed during the
entire history of the iPhone, although there have been some revisions in
the amount of storage available. So, we are looking at the death of the iPod Classic today. By the looks of this timeline, the iPod nano and iPod Shuffle are next.<br />
<br />
Some of you are saying we should have seen this coming in 2011, when the device wasn't even mentioned when every model got an "all-new design". Well, we didn't. But that sign we should have seen coming tells me that I'm right about the nano and the Shuffle.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/apple-special-event-september-2010-all-new-design-for-ipods-slide-except-for-ipod-classic.png?w=704" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/apple-special-event-september-2010-all-new-design-for-ipods-slide-except-for-ipod-classic.png?w=704" height="400" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steve Jobs might have forgotten about the Classic, but we didn't. Source: 9to5mac.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>What Can We Do?</b><br />
<br />
As I mentioned earlier, I started a petition at the official White House site. If you want to sign it (and please do) go to <a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/compel-apple-continue-offering-ipod-classic-option/7DR7W1kb">https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/compel-apple-continue-offering-ipod-classic-option/7DR7W1kb</a><a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/compel-apple-continue-offering-ipod-classic-option/7DR7W1kb">https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/compel-apple-continue-offering-ipod-classic-option/7DR7W1kb</a>. Apple is an American company - each of their products still say that are "Designed by Apple in California". The Obama Administration has a history of getting involved in economic, technology, and commerce issues. For example, a petition asking for products by Tesla Motors to be sold to consumers in all 50 states <a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/response-we-people-petition-tesla-motors">got a response</a>. (To be fair, they also <a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/ale-chief-white-house-beer-recipe">supplied the recipe to White House Honey Brown Ale</a>).<br />
<br />
I have also written to Apple, who have not addressed this issue publicly as of this writing. I encourage all of you to do the same. I am going to share this on Twitter and make sure Apple is tagged, and I encourage all of you to share on your favorite social media platform.<br />
<br />
Please share any other ideas you have in the comments. I sincerely hope we get through to Apple. They need to know that there is still demand for this product.<br />
<br />
Update: I have added a 2nd petition, <a href="https://www.change.org/p/apple-bring-back-the-ipod-classic-or-else-release-a-comparable-comparably-priced-product#share">here</a>. redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-71918459650448447082014-01-13T23:54:00.000-05:002014-01-13T23:54:10.501-05:00My Year-End List Edit, or, I've Decided I Was Wrong About My Album of the Year Choice<div class="tr_bq">
I was wrong. </div>
<br />
This is what I said, exactly:<br />
<blockquote>
<b>Album of The Year</b> - Charli XCX, <i>True Romance</i>. Every single song can stand alone - and several have as singles - but the sum of all the parts - a dark pop gem that teeters between love and heartbreak - is so much greater. There's a lot of great promise here, and since her 2nd album drops in June, I think we will see it coming in 2014.
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And until December, that choice wasn't even close, until I heard....... </div>
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<b>Album of The Year, Runner Up</b> - Sky Ferreira, <i>Night Time, My Time</i>. There are so many great pop singles on this album, it's almost an embarrassment of riches. Lyrically, it's deeper than what is playing on standard pop radio nowadays, reflecting a maturity far beyond Ms. Ferreira's years. It's dark pop gem-dom almost made me declare a tie in this category.<br />
<br />
<b>Why I Didn't Declare A Tie</b> - As good as <i>Night Time, My Time</i> is, I keep going back to <i>True Romance. </i>Both are going to be in heavy rotation for years to come, though. That, I have no doubt about.</div>
</blockquote>
So, it's two weeks into the new year, and about four weeks after I wrote this. And <i>Night Time, My Time</i> is in my heavy rotation. I'm really getting to know the album better. So, with all due respect to Charli XCX... I'm sorry, but Sky Ferreira's album was better. So flip-flop these rankings. <br />
<br />
I still stand by Charli as Artist of the Year. "I Love It" and "Superlove" weren't on that still-excellent album, so those are added to her achievements. <br />
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redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-26451251025431988482014-01-01T01:49:00.001-05:002014-01-13T23:54:04.079-05:00My 2013 "The Hell With It, I Get To Make A List, Too" List<div dir="ltr">
Well, here it is. I decided I'd make a list this year. These are a few of my favorite things from this year. It's going to be mostly music, as usual - I do co-write two music blogs (<a href="http://sobadforyou.blogspot.com/">Wicked Guilty Pleasures</a> and <a href="http://totally-covered.blogspot.com/">Totally Covered</a>), so it makes sense - but we'll pepper other stuff in.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<b>Album of The Year</b> - Charli XCX, <i>True Romance</i>. Every single song can stand alone - and several have as singles - but the sum of all the parts - a dark pop gem that teeters between love and heartbreak - is so much greater. There's a lot of great promise here, and since her 2nd album drops in June, I think we will see it coming in 2014. </div>
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<br /></div>
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And until December, that choice wasn't even close, until I heard....... </div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<b>Album of The Year, Runner Up</b> - Sky Ferreira, <i>Night Time, My Time</i>. There are so many great pop singles on this album, it's almost an embarrassment of riches. Lyrically, it's deeper than what is playing on standard pop radio nowadays, reflecting a maturity far beyond Ms. Ferreira's years. It's dark pop gem-dom almost made me declare a tie in this category.<br />
<br />
<b>Why I Didn't Declare A Tie</b> - As good as <i>Night Time, My Time</i> is, I keep going back to <i>True Romance. </i>Both are going to be in heavy rotation for years to come, though. That, I have no doubt about.</div>
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<b>Single of The Year</b> - RAC, "Let Go" (feat. Kele and MNDR). Remix Artist Collective, a.k.a. André Allen Anjos, finally took the CSS route this year and made his own music. For this great single, from the EP <i>Don't Talk To</i>, Kele from Bloc Party was tapped for lead vocals, with MNDR handling the chorus. It's a dark year for music, and this single is no exception. Still, it's a really cool, laid-back electronic gem, with Kele and MNDR both getting excellent highlights.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Single of The Year, Runner Up</b> - Lorde, "Royals". Perhaps the sparsest song to ever hit #1 in the US, with a lot of sharp rich cultural references, Lorde has crafted a cool, memorable song that speaks to those of us who do not keep our tigers on gold leashes. Incidentally, this was the first US #1 song by a New Zealander, so good for New Zealand.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Single of The Year Finalists (in No Particular Order)</b><br />
<br />
Icona Pop feat. Charli XCX - "I Love It (I Don't Care)"<br />
Charli XCX - "You (Ha Ha Ha)"<br />
Charli XCX - "Superlove"<br />
Sky Ferreira - "You're Not The One"<br />
HAIM - "The Wire"<br />
Kacey Musgraves - "Follow Your Arrow"<br />
Kacey Musgraves - "Blowin' Smoke"<br />
Mala Rodríguez - "33"<br />
Ylvis - "The Fox"<br />
Miley Cyrus - "Wrecking Ball" (you know I'm right about this one)<br />
Daft Punk feat. Pharrell Williams and Nile Rogers - "Get Lucky"<br />
Robin Thicke feat. Pharrell Willams and T.I. - "Blurred Lines"<br />
The Primitives - "Lose The Reason"<br />
<br />
I could have written paragraphs about each of these songs. For sure. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<b>Artist of the Year</b> - Charli XCX. Don't act like you're surprised. Not only did she release a great album (see above), but she wrote and performed on one of my finalists for single of the year, "I Love It (I Don't Care)" by Icona Pop (the songwriting credit went to her real name, Charlotte Aitchison, in case you want to fact-check this). Listen to the song. That British accent you hear on this Swedish group's single... that's Charli. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<b>Best New Artist Not Named Charlotte Aitchison</b> - Sky Ferreira. <br />
<br />
<b>Best New Artist Not Featured Prominently on <a href="http://www.idolator.com/6684562/sky-ferreira-charli-xcx-grimes-v-magazine-cover">This V Magazine Cover</a></b> - Kacey Musgraves. Truly the future of country music, a toiling songwriter for years, she finally got her big break album and Grammy nominations this year. </div>
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<b>Speaking of that V Magazine Cover, Best Album of 2012 that I didn't hear until 2013</b> - Grimes, <i>Visions</i>. I don't know how I missed her in 2012. This album is brilliant.</div>
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<b>Comeback of the Year </b>- My Bloody Valentine. <i>mbv </i>was one of the best albums in 2013, especially out of a band who hadn't made one in the 22 years prior. Believe me when I say you NEED to check this one out. Now.<br />
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<b>Biggest Disappointment of the Year</b> - Karmin, "Acapella". It didn't grab me at first, because it wasn't really the in-your-face style I expected from these two. Then I noticed that the song wasn't actually done acapella. All it all, it was a chart flop, a poor follow up to the promise of their <i>Hello </i>EP, and a song that probably deserved about as little attention as it got. <br />
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<b>Best Television Show, New or Otherwise</b> - <i>Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.</i> The character development on this show, centered around the presumed-dead-in-The-Avengers Phil Coulson, is pure magic. It's also nice to see Ming-Na back on TV. (For that matter, since Clack Gregg has been missing since the early days of <i>Law and Order</i>, it's nice to see him, too) I'm not usually a fan of Josh Whedon's work, but he crafted a gem here. It's not just about superheroes.<br />
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So, I guess that's a good start. How do you feel about it?</div>
redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-66026478945828859752013-06-18T01:19:00.001-04:002013-06-19T11:22:15.704-04:00Mashable..... A Rebuttal, in Defense of RavelryFirst of all, I should make a few things clear.<br />
<ul>
<li>I am not looking to date anyone based on the breed of their pet.</li>
<li>I am not a single farmer.</li>
<li>I'm not trying to complete with anyone for a place in line to Heaven.</li>
<li>I have no interest in investing in a strange woman's breast implants.</li>
<li>I don't really have a passion for mustaches. Anymore.</li>
<li>I'm not a single Star Trek fan.</li>
<li>I'm not seeking to get my dreams interpreted online.</li>
</ul>
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And I'm also not a knitter.</div>
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Why am I making these things clear? Because Mashable lumped all these categories of people in their article <a href="http://mashable.com/2013/06/13/bizarre-social-networks/">8 Bizarre Social Networks You Won't Believe Exist</a>. Now, there are some pretty strange social networks out there - Date My Pet, <a href="http://www.farmersonly.com/">Farmers Only</a>.... <a href="http://myfreeimplants.com/index">My Free Implants</a>..... This article is quite a gallery of the bizarre.</div>
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And then, there's Ravelry. Let me quote what Mashable had to say about this social network they are now deeming "bizarre"</div>
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And you thought fiber arts couldn't go digital. Ravelry is a free networking site for anyone interested in knitting, crocheting, spinning or weaving. It's similar to Pinterest in that users can submit project ideas and photos. The site even allows entrepreneurs or micro-businesses to sell their craft products online. </blockquote>
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Since 2007, it's racked up more than 3 million users.</blockquote>
Three million users. But hey, that's part of the lunatic fringe, right? <br />
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In case you didn't figure it out yet, I don't agree that Ravelry should have been placed anywhere near this freak show gallery of the bizarre.<br />
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And Ravelry is far from bizarre. It is a social networking site by purest definition. Really, there are only three main components to the site. First, there is the vast discussion board. These forums do tend toward the textile arts, mostly. However, there are other discussion boards as well. For example, there's quite an extended thread all about Mashable right now. The amount of engagement on all these boards is high, and it tends to be polite engagement. <br />
<br />
Actually, let me take this time for an aside. I know a lot of knitters and crocheters and seamstresses and tailors. Each of them takes their craft seriously, and each of them is exceedingly polite about it. They are all also really really happy to talk about what they do. So, these forums are already made up of really excellent, polite people who are really into sharing their work (and therefore don't really need the moderation or the <a href="http://www.ravelry.com/wiki/pages/RavelryEtiquette">etiquette guide</a>, but they have both anyway).<br />
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Which brings me to the second main component of the site. Most people build a Ravelry profile to share their work... and, more importantly, to catalog it. For example, a knitter can share what they've knitted, how well it went, what they want to knit.... heck, some members even use the site to keep track of their yarn!<br />
<br />
But no single fiber artist can know everything, which is why sharing is the third major component of the site. A lot of the sharing is 100% free - like <a href="http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/eyelet-tank-top">the pattern for this eyelet tank top</a> - although there is a store on the site where you can buy stuff, like yarn and patterns. Many textile vendors have a significant presence on Ravelry because it makes good business sense to do so. <br />
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There is no Candy Crush Saga, though. In fact, you won't find any games (at least, not games in the Flash/HTML5 sense. There are offline games centered around the site, but that's not really what I'm talking about here). Ravelry does an excellent job sticking to its core values of fiber arts, and keeping the rest of the bloat out. They've stayed small and independent - no purchases of other sites for them - and instead built their community by word of mouth and inside the close-knit (pun intended) fiber arts world. They've stayed simple and on topic.<br />
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They aren't sticking to topic solely for the good of the network, though. By keeping things simple, the staff of Ravelry can remain small (currently at five employees) and make a decent living. Simplicity in design and code - the site was built with and is maintained in Ruby on Rails - means maintenance can be handled by such a small staff. And, since their business model is largely based on a very small cut of profits from the Ravelry store, they need to keep things as low-overhead as possible.<br />
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It is their simplicity, dedication to plan, and near-perfect context that led Mashable to call Ravelry out in their article "<a href="http://mashable.com/2010/03/30/social-design-tips/">5 Simple Social Design Tips From The Masters</a>." That's right. The same site that was lumped in with the bizarre was held up as a example of good, a solid example of a well-designed network. By the same publishers. (Funny thing, Farmers Only was NOT included in that article)<br />
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I'm not a knitter. I stated that pretty clearly up above. I also stated a number of other classes of people that I wasn't. However, while I am not a fiber artist - I mean, I can sew a button back on if it pops off, but I am not the artist that most of these people are - I am a member of Ravelry. I mostly keep quiet - if you want to see my profile, <a href="http://www.ravelry.com/people/apostrophe3">here it is</a> - but I do have a few friends who have shown me around, and shown me the greatness of a simple social network where the people are actually..... social. As a social network fan and heavy social networking user, I want the social networks that I chose to join to aspire to the kind of engagement that comes naturally to Ravelry. That's why I'm a member - maybe I can learn something from these artists.<br />
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So, let's recap:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Ravelry has more than three million members.</li>
<li>Ravelry has a proven business plan that makes their employees money.</li>
<li>Ravelry's members are largely heavily engaged and a close-knit community.</li>
<li>Ravelry has simple, easy-to-maintain, easy-to-use site design.</li>
<li>Ravelry is so world-class in their engagement, they draw non-fiber artists into their network.</li>
</ul>
<div>
So, I challenge Mashable.... Invest some time in Ravelry. Learn more about them. Cover them with care. Don't callously label them as bizarre just because they are niche. You might learn something about how social networks should be - social.</div>
redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-9335486197906793892012-12-18T15:07:00.001-05:002013-06-18T08:36:50.393-04:00Why I Have Gone On A Personal Crusade Against The Westboro Baptist ChurchThose of you who follow me on Twitter have noticed that I have had a marked change in tone over the last few days. I've gone from lighthearted curling talk and posting about wicked guilty pleasure music..... to taking a church from Topeka, KS head on. Some of you are probably wondering why I suddenly decided to do this.<br />
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The catalyst was this press release, and Twitter updates referencing it. I apologize for the foul and hateful language in this. It's vile.<br />
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Now, I admit that I have been.... well, I'm not the most vociferous in my faith. I'm not a Bible thumper. Every other word out of my mouth does NOT praise Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior. But I do believe in God - I am a Christian, to be sure. </div>
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This is what I learned at church growing up:</div>
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<ul>
<li>Jesus loves the little children</li>
<li>Do good things, and you'll go to heaven</li>
<li>Do unto others as you would have them do unto you</li>
</ul>
So, when I hear about a group of people, long-time preachers of hate, imply that <b>God sent a gunman </b>to an elementary school in Newtown, CT, to ruthlessly slaughter 1st graders and tear the heart out of that town, I knew that I could not sit quietly. Such hate being spewed in the name of God is not only cruel, it's insulting to every Christian.... really, to anyone who believes in any God.... really, to anyone who is humane, regardless of whether or not they believe in God!<br />
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Setting aside all the Scripture that I am about to quote - it's really easy to traumatize someone who has just gone through a tremendous loss - the death of a loved one, a senseless tragedy in your hometown. This is exactly what the Westboro Baptist Church, a small but vociferous group of about forty people, do every time there is a well-publicized tragedy. From the funerals of dead servicemen, veterans who died for their country, to hurricanes, earthquakes.... and yes, even mass shootings of children. This is the same tactic employed by schoolyard bullies for years - bully the weak and the struggling, so you look mighty. It's not right when bullies do it, and it's not right when a church does it.</div>
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The Westboro Baptist Church use Scripture to rail against gay marriage and other lifestyles they find amoral. Much of the Scripture they use is from Leviticus. Leviticus is the 3rd book of the Bible. Essentially, it is a law book, for living in biblical times. In there, it is forbidden for a man to lay down with another man. Leviticus 18:22. It's pretty clear, right? They fail to mention other laws from Leviticus. Let me give you a little passage from Leviticus 23:26-32</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"> </span></span><span class="text Lev-23-26" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><sup class="versenum" style="font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">26 </sup>The <span class="small-caps" style="font-variant: small-caps;">Lord</span> said to Moses,</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span class="text Lev-23-27" id="en-NIV-3430" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><sup class="versenum" style="font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">27 </sup>“The tenth day of this seventh month<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-3430G" title="See cross-reference G">G</a>)"></sup>is the Day of Atonement.<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-3430H" title="See cross-reference H">H</a>)"></sup> Hold a sacred assembly<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-3430I" title="See cross-reference I">I</a>)"></sup> and deny yourselves,<sup class="footnote" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="[<a href="#fen-NIV-3430a" title="See footnote a">a</a>]">[<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+23%3A23-44&version=NIV#fen-NIV-3430a" style="color: #b37162; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: top;" title="See footnote a">a</a>]</sup> and present a food offering to the <span class="small-caps" style="font-variant: small-caps;">Lord</span>.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span class="text Lev-23-28" id="en-NIV-3431" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><sup class="versenum" style="font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">28 </sup>Do not do any work<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-3431J" title="See cross-reference J">J</a>)"></sup> on that day, because it is the Day of Atonement, when atonement is made for you before the <span class="small-caps" style="font-variant: small-caps;">Lord</span> your God.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span class="text Lev-23-29" id="en-NIV-3432" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><sup class="versenum" style="font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">29 </sup>Those who do not deny themselves on that day must be cut off from their people.<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-3432K" title="See cross-reference K">K</a>)"></sup></span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span class="text Lev-23-30" id="en-NIV-3433" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><sup class="versenum" style="font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">30 </sup>I will destroy from among their people<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-3433L" title="See cross-reference L">L</a>)"></sup> anyone who does any work on that day.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span class="text Lev-23-31" id="en-NIV-3434" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><sup class="versenum" style="font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">31 </sup>You shall do no work at all. This is to be a lasting ordinance<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-3434M" title="See cross-reference M">M</a>)"></sup> for the generations to come, wherever you live.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"></span><span class="text Lev-23-32" id="en-NIV-3435" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><sup class="versenum" style="font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">32 </sup>It is a day of sabbath rest<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-3435N" title="See cross-reference N">N</a>)"></sup> for you, and you must deny yourselves. From the evening of the ninth day of the month until the following evening you are to observe your sabbath.”</span></span></blockquote>
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That's Yom Kippur that is being discussed. Yom Kippur, for those not familiar with Judaism, is the Jewish Day of Atonement, and the holiest day of the Jewish year. It's not a day that Christians celebrate, and not a day on the Westboro Baptist calendar. In fact, rather than atonement, the WBC released <a href="http://www.godhatesfags.com/fliers/20120925_Dead-Soldier-Jacksonville-NC-Joshua-N-Nelson.pdf">this press release of hate</a>. </div>
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So, clearly, there is a selective reading of Levitican law by the Westboro Baptist Church. </div>
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I grew up in Enfield, CT - and because this tragedy happened in Connecticut, it probably is ringing even sharper for me. The reason I mention this is because of what happened in Enfield on July 8, 1741. I don't know if kids who grew up outside of Enfield are familiar with Jonathan Edwards, but on this date, he delivered the famous sermon "Sinners In The Hands of An Angry God". He was sent to Enfield to quite literally scare the Hell out of a particular congregation - to get them to turn to God and His teachings. He visits wickedness as a theme - the thing that will condemn people to Hell. </div>
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Does this message sound familiar? Well, it is similar, except Edwards offered a way out that didn't involve hatred. He wanted to see less hard hearts and more rejoicing in the Lord. The Westboro Baptist Church doesn't do that at all. They speak when there are cameras looking. They seek out the spotlight, highlighting their vanity and their beautiful signs. And, at this point, it's time for another Bible verse:</div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, carnelian, topaz, and jasper, chrysolite, beryl, and onyx, sapphire, carbuncle, and emerald; and wrought in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared. With an anointed guardian cherub I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground</span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Ezekiel 28:13-17, for those who would like to go look it up. And, in this case, God is directly addressing the angel Lucifer, as he was being tossed out of Heaven. Lucifer - also known as Satan - is the embodiment of all that is wicked. It is to this standard that, with their pain and cruel words, the WBC is living.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Let's talk about some of these cruel words. The parishioners of the Westboro Baptist Church like to put a lot of those on pretty signs. Here are a few below - I cannot speak the words.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.addictinginfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Westboro-Baptist-Church.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://www.addictinginfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Westboro-Baptist-Church.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/images/06/29/westboro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/images/06/29/westboro.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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And yet, clear as day, Isaiah 40:1</div>
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"Comfort, O comfort My people" says your God.</blockquote>
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Would a God that hates want his people to have comfort? Furthermore, where is the comfort being offered by these words and images? Answer: there is no comfort. And, even from a secular standpoint - these signs are just plain mean, obnoxious, and aimed at people already in mourning.</div>
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These signs and images are designed for one reason and one reason only - to get a reaction out of people. The threat of this reaction is often enough for the media to give these people time on the air to talk about their hateful views. It is frequently effective in doing so.</div>
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However, I do not believe we should be so easily allowing these people access to the media. Their threats are empty. The church raises much of its money by <a href="http://www.ydr.com/ci_14780513">suing the families of those they picket </a>for damages. They are First Amendment lawyers. However, just as much as they sue and countersue, they are sued. Their actions are protected by the First Amendment, and upheld by the Supreme Court. Their court battles and travel fees, however, are costly. There are reports that the church is nearly out of money, even with all their business income.</div>
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And the attacks are not confined to courtrooms. Their websites are hacked by large organizations, their Twitter accounts stolen. Frankly, in their message to the WBC, Anonymous is far harsher than I am on the actions and "seeds of hatred" that come from the organization. They are the organization that took down the WBC website and published a lot of personal information about the families who are members of the church.</div>
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They might want to picket at a location nearly two thousand miles away from their home church. They do not have the means to do so, nor do they have widespread support.</div>
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This is by no means the first time Westboro Baptist Church have tried to rally people with their ugliness to their cause. They've picketed military funerals, other churches they see as Godless, and even concerts. In most cases, the people who died (or were still living) are adults. This time, 20 first graders were brutally murdered in their school, through no fault of their own, in what is supposed to be a safe place, and an entire school and entire community was traumatized, through no fault of their own. To even THREATEN to picket and capitalize on such an unspeakable tragedy, and to terrorize the poor parents who just had the most unspeakable horror imposed upon them, through no fault of their own is morally repugnant.</div>
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I have two daughters myself. In my mind, if I just let all this go, I am not setting a good example for my daughters. I am not teaching them the true way of the Lord. I am not teaching them to stand up for what they believe in, even in the face of loud opposition or bullies. We have family members that are gay and family members that are in the military. What the Westboro Baptist Church brings in the name of God is a direct attack on our family, and I will not stand for it. I don't agree with their message, and I don't agree even more strongly with their method of delivery.</div>
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But I will not fight them with hatred. I will stand strong in my beliefs, but I will face them with light and with love and with kindness and with reason. Thus far, beyond some name-calling that they have brought upon me, they have had no response. In fact, one of my scriptures - Isaiah 40:1 - appeared to have reminded at least one of them the true meaning of Christianity, and they stopped ranting. </div>
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All this railing has had a by-product. A lot of my followers - my new followers - are right-wing supporters who probably saw my quotes and thought I was a Bible-belt guy. I'm not, but I also like my new followers - they are good, moral people on the side of right, with whom I don't always agree politically. I welcome opposing viewpoints and respectful debate. </div>
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So, I will continue to speak out against bigotry, zealotry, and all that is hateful coming from this tiny little church in Topeka, KS. Thank you for listening while I do.</div>
redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-25740015440399266082012-01-24T10:13:00.001-05:002013-06-18T08:37:40.591-04:00Oscar Predictions - So How Did I Do?<br />
I did OK on Oscar predictions, but I made some big mistakes. Let's review, shall we?<br />
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I have crossed out my errors, and added the additional nominees in <i>Italics</i>.<br />
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<b>Best Picture:</b><br />
The Descendants<br />
The Artist<br />
The Help<br />
Hugo<br />
<strike>The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo</strike><br />
<i>Midnight In Paris</i><br />
<i>War Horse</i><br />
<i>Moneyball</i><br />
<i>The Tree of Life</i><br />
<i>Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close</i><br />
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Not too bad. They did nominate nine films, which is a lot. However, neither one that I thought might sneak in - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Shame - made the cut. <br />
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And this doesn't change my prediction for a 2-horse race with The Descendants taking it.<br />
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<b>Best Actor:</b><br />
George Clooney - The Descendants<br />
Jean Dujardin - The Artist<br />
<strike>Ryan Gossling - Drive</strike><br />
<strike>Joseph Gordon-Levitt - 50-50</strike><br />
<strike>Michael Fassbender - Shame</strike><br />
<i>Demian Bachir, A Better Life</i><br />
<i>Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy</i><br />
<i>Brad Pitt, Moneyball</i><br />
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I am very surprised that Brad Pitt made the cut, and equally surprised that Michael Fassbender didn't. I guess I shouldn't have been - the Academy is not the most progressive group, and Shame was an NC-17 rated film - but it's wrong!<br />
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I still call George Clooney as the winner here. He still had two for-your-consideration worthy performances in 2011.<br />
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<b>Best Actress:</b><br />
Michelle Williams - My Week With Marilyn<br />
Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady<br />
<strike>Kirsten Dunst - Melancholia</strike><br />
<strike>Charlize Theron - Young Adult</strike><br />
Rooney Mara - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo<br />
<i>Glenn Close - Albert Nobbs</i><br />
<i>Viola Davis, The Help</i><br />
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I'm not surprised on the two additional nominees. I'm not even surprised that Charlize Theron didn't get a nomination. I am surprised that Kirsten Dunst's fantastic performance has once again been overlooked. I really thought that was going to happen.<br />
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Neither of my two frontrunners were left out, however, and I still give it to Michelle Williams.<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actor:</b><br />
Christopher Plummer, Beginners<br />
Kenneth Brannagh, My Week With Marilyn<br />
<strike>Patton Oswalt, Young Adult</strike><br />
Jonah Hill, Moneyball<br />
<strike>Viggo Mortensen, A Dangerous Method</strike><br />
<i>Nick Nolte, Warrior</i><br />
<i>Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close</i><br />
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My two predicted nominees that didn't make the cut aren't surprises. I thought Max von Sydow might sneak in, and, to be perfectly honest, Nick Nolte isn't a huge surprise, either.<br />
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With Nick Nolte in the list of nominees, however, this is no longer a 2-horse race. I still think Christopher Plummer takes it, but Nolte, who has never won, could surprise here.<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actress:</b><br />
<strike>Shailene Woodley, The Descendants</strike><br />
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids<br />
Bérénice Bejo, The Artist<br />
<strike>Bryce Dallas Howard, The Help</strike><br />
<strike>Carey Mulligan, Shame</strike><br />
<i>Jessica Chastain, The Help</i><br />
<i>Octavia Spencer, The Help</i><br />
<i>Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs</i><br />
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Can't say I'm surprised with the nominees from The Help. I already had called Jessica Chastain as a possible nominee. I am shocked at the fact that Shailene Woodley didn't get nominated. That is a gigantic oversight, and the Academy should be ashamed.<br />
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Of course, since my predicted winner wasn't nominated... No one saw Albert Nobbs, and The Help will split votes, so this just became a 2-horse race, going to the extremely funny and recent Emmy winner Melissa McCarthy.<br />
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But as far as I'm concerned, this is Shailene Woodley's award, and any winner here is the runner-up to what was the most complex performance I saw on screen all year.<br />
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<b>Best Original Song:</b><br />
"Man or Muppet" - The Muppets<br />
<strike>"Life's A Happy Song" - The Muppets</strike><br />
<strike>"Pictures In My Head" - The Muppets</strike><br />
<strike>"The Living Proof" - The Help</strike><br />
<strike>"Hello Hello" - Gnomeo and Juliet.</strike><br />
<i>"Real in Rio", Rio</i><br />
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Only two nominees. And the one that survived of my predictions is my pick to win it. <br />
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<b>Best Director:</b><br />
Michel Hazanavicius - The Arist<br />
Martin Scorsese - Hugo<br />
Woody Allen - Midnight in Paris<br />
Alexander Payne - The Descendants<br />
<strike>Tate Taylor - The Help</strike><br />
Terrence Malick - The Tree of Life<br />
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Malick in, Taylor out. Can't say I'm upset about that, but I am a little surprised. Doesn't change the fact that I think Michel
Hazanavicius wins this.<br />
<br />redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-2184660777506977012012-01-23T15:26:00.002-05:002013-06-18T08:37:48.707-04:00Oscar Predictions - 23 January 2011As of this writing, the Oscar nominations have not been announced. Having seen a few of the contending movies, I figured I'd give you my predictions as to who I think will be nominated and who will win in a few of the major categories.<br />
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So, without further ado:<br />
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<b>Best Picture:</b><br />
The Descendants<br />
The Artist<br />
The Help<br />
Hugo<br />
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo<br />
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Pretty easy category to call. Sometimes, they nominate up to 10 movies. I think this year, we're not looking at more than 6. In my opinion, Shame or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy might sneak in. There's been a lot of chatter for Moneyball - I just don't see a nomination. Another movie that's gotten a little bit of chatter that won't get in? Melancholia. But more on that in a minute.<br />
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As far as winner - it should be The Descendants, which was the best movie of the year. The Artist might swoop in and steal this one, but that would be an upset.<br />
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<b>Best Actor:</b><br />
George Clooney - The Descendants<br />
Jean Dujardin - The Artist<br />
Ryan Gossling - Drive<br />
Joseph Gordon-Levitt - 50-50<br />
Michael Fassbender - Shame<br />
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A lot of people, once again, think that Brad Pitt will sneak into this category. I don't think he will, even though he was very good in Moneyball. Gary Oldman could be nominated for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but I would be shocked. <br />
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George Clooney had two for-your-consideration performances this year - The Descendants and The Ides of March. There's no way he loses this.<br />
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<b>Best Actress:</b><br />
Michelle Williams - My Week With Marilyn<br />
Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady<br />
Kirsten Dunst - Melancholia<br />
Charlize Theron - Young Adult<br />
Rooney Mara - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo<br />
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This was the toughest category for me to predict. So many excellent performances. Viola Davis in The Help was hard to leave out of these category, as was Tilda Swinton for her great performance in We Need To Talk About Kevin.<br />
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And I'm including Kirsten Dunst's chilling performance in Melancholia, and few other predictions are. Others don't like her odds. I like her odds. Her performance was deep and complex, more so than any other in her career. I haven't been a fan of hers before. I am now. And since the movie isn't going to be nominated, even through it should be as well, the best performance in the movie must be.<br />
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And I think this is a two-horse race between Michelle Williams and Meryl Streep. Too close to call, but I give it to Williams.<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actor:</b><br />
Christopher Plummer, Beginners<br />
Kenneth Brannagh, My Week With Marilyn<br />
Patton Oswalt, Young Adult<br />
Jonah Hill, Moneyball<br />
Viggo Mortensen, A Dangerous Method<br />
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All five are easy calls. Max Von Sydow might sneak in for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Brad Pitt might sneak in here with his performance in The Tree of Life. I think Albert Brooks is on the outside looking in.<br />
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Again, this is a two-horse race. Kenneth Brannagh hasn't gotten enough respect for his role as Laurence Olivier in My Week With Marilyn, but I can think of no better actor for that role, especially after watching him become a tormented Olivier so perfectly. And Christopher Plummer has come a long way from being high on the hill with the lonely goatherd... A tremendous performance for an 82-year old who has never won an Oscar. He probably takes it.<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actress:</b><br />
Shailene Woodley, The Descendants<br />
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids<br />
Bérénice Bejo, The Artist<br />
Bryce Dallas Howard, The Help<br />
Carey Mulligan, Shame<br />
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There were, once again, many excellent performances in this category. A whole slew of women from The Help could have qualified, but I think Ron Howard's kid gets the nomination. I will not be surprised by a Jessica Chastain nomination, though. Sandra Bullock's career-defining performance in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close finally vindicates her for The Net, as far as I am concerned, but that's as good as she gets this year.<br />
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If anyone other than Shailene Woodley wins, I'll be throwing Junior Mints at my TV screen. <br />
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<b>Best Original Song:</b><br />
"Man or Muppet" - The Muppets<br />
"Life's A Happy Song" - The Muppets<br />
"Pictures In My Head" - The Muppets<br />
"The Living Proof" - The Help<br />
"Hello Hello" - Gnomeo and Juliet.<br />
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"Man or Muppet" for the win. The Muppets was a musical with many memorable songs, but that was the most so.<br />
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<b>Best Director:</b><br />
Michel Hazanavicius - The Arist<br />
Martin Scorsese - Hugo<br />
Woody Allen - Midnight in Paris<br />
Alexander Payne - The Descendants<br />
Tate Taylor - The Help<br />
<br />
It's possible that George Clooney or Steven Spielberg could sneak into this category, but I doubt it. Terrence Mallick is on the outside looking in with The Tree of Life.<br />
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This is a tough race. All five are solid nominees. I give it to Hazanavicius, who had the extra handicap of a silent film.<br />
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I could do more predictions, but let's start there. What do you think?redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-71218747482676223092011-12-23T12:36:00.002-05:002013-06-18T08:37:31.825-04:00The Hell With It! I'm Making A List! My Favorite ThingsEveryone else gets to make lists. So I decided that I would. It'll be mostly music stuff, but I'll splash other stuff in. <br />
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<b>Comeback of the Year: The Primitives </b>Best known for having an album on the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack - that song being the very catchy "Crash" (which was seven years old when the movie was released in 1995) - this group, led by the charismatic and initially platinum blonde Tracy Tracy, flashed and then flamed out. <br />
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Fast forward eighteen years. The Primitives come back with a new EP - Never Kill a Secret. And it's really good. Tracy's voice aged really well. <br />
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This was the easiest choice on this list. The rest - not so clear.<br />
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<b>Album of the Year: Cars, by Kris Delmhorst.</b> I love covers. So, clearly, an album full of them is going to catch my attention. A classically trained cellist, Kris did an album of covers of songs originally done by The Cars. Many of their big hits are represented. And done really really well. But here - judge for yourself.<br />
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She keeps the originally optimism of the songs, while adding her own soulful quality. And none of them are boring.<br />
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<b>OK, I Admin It: Guilty Pleasure of the Year: Price Tag, by Jessie J</b>. I don't want to like this song. I don't want to like it at all. But it's not about the money, money, money. It's a damned happy song, and I'm not ashamed to say I enjoy it. Jessie J, a songwriter by trade, wrote this song and performed it herself. And she really can sing. I have posted a live performance of the song, so you can enjoy it, too.<br />
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<b>I Had NEVER Heard of Them Until This Year, Which Is Hard To Believe, And I Love Everything They Do: Spain</b>. One of Josh Haden's many projects, this one has at times featured his sister Petra. They did release material this year - available on<a href="http://spaintheband.bandcamp.com/"> their Bandcamp page</a> - so if you are looking for a Christmas gift for me, this would be a good one - so I guess it's OK to put them on this list.<br />
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More importantly, I had never heard of them until this year, and they are fantastic. Seek them out. Here is a live performance from 2011 of their 2006 song It's So True, rereleased this year.<br />
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Not everything they do is so quiet, but the guitar/bass sound in this song is definitely their signature. And I love this song - it's so mournful, but so heartfelt.<br />
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<b>I Had NEVER Heard of Them Until This Year, Which Is Hard To Believe, And I Love Everything They Do, Honourable Mention: The Like.</b> This band, who I discovered while watching music television channel TheCoolTV, also gets the<b> Thanks for Blowing My Daughter's Mind</b> award. For this 2005 video.<br />
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From what I can see, they released no material in 2011, hence the honourable mention. Still, their two albums, while very different and with different lineups, are both worth a listen.<br />
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<b>I Missed This in 2010, But The Party Lives on This Year: Phantogram</b>. I mean, they're from Saratoga Springs, NY! Upstaters are not bands I should be missing. And yet, I missed this exciting two-piece. They released an EP in 2011 (Nightlife), but what I was listening to this year was not that, but their 2010 release, Eyelid Movies. They also toured in 2011. So here's a live performance of one of their 2010 singles, from the 2011 Coachella festival - this is another one of my favorite songs of the moment.<br />
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<b>Song of the Year (and you know I'm right): Friday</b>. Love it or hate it, it was everywhere. And let's not slag too hard on the vocalist - Rebecca Black isn't a bad singer at all. She's not. The song was terribly written, but her performance of the song was admirable, and the combination of the terrible-but-accessible lyrics and her earnest rendition made for a catchy tune.<br />
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<b>Song of the Year (runner-up): Lluvia al Corazón</b>. Maná has for years been one of the biggest selling bands to come out of Mexico, and yet, you've never heard of them. Something of a Latin version of U2, but they're so much more than that.<br />
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They've been around for more than thirty years. And they don't get mainstream airplay because they sing in Spanish. I mentioned above that they are like a Latin U2, and that extends to their philanthropic endeavours as well. I urge you to check them out.<br />
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<b>Movie of the Year (or, who my Oscar Vote is going to): The Descendants</b>. It's a drama, a three-hanky tearjerker. And yet, it's still really funny and touching. George Clooney (<b>Best Actor</b>) gives what I think is the best performance of his career since E/R - the old sitcom starring Eliott Gould, not the NBC drama - in a movie that should take home a lot of hardware during this awards season.<br />
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And for those who did not get my E/R reference or forgot that George Clooney did a lot of forgettable television early in his career, here is a montage of clips from the classic 1984 series, which also featured a cameo by Martha Quinn:<br />
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<b>Best Actress: Shailene Woodley, The Descendants</b>. The depth of emotion that this woman had to tap into for this role, which will get Supporting nominations but was really a lead in this movie, is jarring from such a young actress.<br />
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By the way, if you can't tell, I really liked the movie.<br />
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<b>Best Book I Read This Year: Rat Girl</b>. Kristin Hersh's chronicle of her early songwriting days, when mental illness was starting to creep in. A fascinating read, especially if you are a fan of her band, Throwing Muses (as I am). <br />
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<b>News Story of The Year: Osama Bin Laden is dead</b>. Really, are you surprised? There was no bigger story, no matter how many Kardashians got married and divorced.<br />
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<b>Television Show of the Year: Outsourced</b>. It's a shame that this touching comedy set in India was cancelled too soon. It even looks like it was a last-minute cancellation, paving the way for the far-inferior Whitney. However, we'll always have that complete first season.<br />
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Little-known fact: Outsourced was based on a movie of the same name. And I have not seen this movie, but it looks like it's far more dramatic. This series could have been M.A.S.H. for a new generation, except funny and not overrated.<br />
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<b>Blog of the Year: American Curler</b>. <a href="http://usacurl.blogspot.com/">Shameless self-promotion</a>.<br />
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I guess that's enough stuff to list for now. Let the debate begin.redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-89212815231341140072011-11-28T15:15:00.001-05:002011-11-28T15:40:03.293-05:00Cranberry HaupiaI make cranberry sauce every Thanksgiving. It is a really easy dish to make. Throw sugar and water in a pot with cranberries, and boil it until the cranberries pop. Squish the heck out of the mixture while it's heating, and the skins will mix in and add nicely to the flavour. Chill overnight.<br />
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Traditionally, I make three sauces. The first is a spiced sauce. To the cranberries, I add cinnamon and nutmeg. It's a big hit. The second is a drunken sauce. In this, I use some sort of liquor - this year, I used Southern Comfort, but in years past it's been brandy or sherry - in place of some of the water. Both turned out fantastic this year. <br />
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In a normal year, my third sauce is a traditional, with just the three core ingredients, with a little orange juice mixed in. However, this year, I decided to try something different. For I had cans of coconut milk, which I was going to use to make haupia. Haupia, for those not familiar, is a traditional Hawaiian luau dessert, made from coconut milk, sugar, and arrowroot or cornstarch. I made a test batch of this, and it turned out really good - a mild dessert, with a good coconut flavour. When it is chilled, the consistency is stiff enough that it can be cut and eaten like a bar, if it is chilled thin enough. <br />
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And so, I stared at the ingredient lists for haupia and cranberry sauce. And I looked at the extra coconut milk sitting on my kitchen counter. And thought - hey, they are prepared similarly; why not do them both AT THE SAME TIME? So, I did. <br />
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Biggest hit of Thanksgiving. Apparently, cranberry and coconut match extremely well together. <br />
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So, without further ado, my recipe. Disclaimer: I'm still tinkering with it a little bit. Also, the recipe is mine. No one else out there has done this. Please don't publish it without asking me first. You can share this blog post, of course.<br />
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<b>Cranberry Haupia</b><br />
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<b>1 can coconut milk </b><br />
<b>1 bag (12oz) fresh cranberries</b><br />
<b>5 tablespoons cornstarch</b><br />
<b>2 cups sugar</b><br />
<b>1 cup water</b><br />
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<b>Add water and 1 cup of sugar to a large saucepan. Add cranberries and bring to a boil. When the cranberries start to pop, add the rest of the sugar, the coconut milk, and the cornstarch. Reduce to medium heat, so the cranberries keep popping. Continue stirring and mashing the entire mixture.</b><br />
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<b>Eventually, the entire mixture will take on a smooth consistency, but you still want it to be a little watery, just short of pudding. When it has done so - and it will have reduced significantly by this point, remove heat, transfer the mixture to a refrigerator-friendly container, and chill overnight.</b><br />
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It is just that simple. Give it a whirl. And try other fruits in it as well. I'm curious as to how yours turns out.redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-74455113180898263932011-11-04T16:36:00.000-04:002011-11-04T16:37:11.761-04:00Several of the Things I Love About CanadaWhen I was 15, I wrote an essay for my English class. I had just returned from a trip to Canada - Oshawa, Ontario, as I recall - and was really wowwed all around by the country and how wonderful it was. This was not my first trip to Canada - my grandfather lived in Niagara Falls, NY, so a trip over the border was second nature to me - but it was the first one I wrote about. <br />
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People were really pissed with me. I didn't understand why. Perhaps I should have seen that I was making what would appear to be an unpatriotic statement. I didn't really care. I loved Canada, and was planning to move there after I graduated from college.<br />
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Well, the moving to Canada didn't work out - my wife didn't want to go, and I couldn't get a job up there - but I live about 90 minutes from the border, and I visit frequently. And my love for the country has grown.<br />
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I promised myself long ago I'd post a list of all the things I love about Canada. Please don't mistake this for a complete list (I do have to leave room for follow-up posts!). <br />
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<b>Please do mistake this for a plea for honourary citizenship.</b><br />
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1. <b>Canadian People are Friendly.</b> That's right, I said it. With the exception of the one Canadian (John Morris) who kicked a stone at my car, I've never met an unfriendly Canadian. Actually, I'm kidding about Mr. Morris - it was an accidental stone kick. I've had Canadian strangers just say hello to me and start a conversation. (Granted, I was wearing colourful pants at the time). I have several Canadian Twitter followers; they are among the friendliest and most polite. Now, don't worry - I know there are a few bad apples in the Canadian gene pool. I've just not met them yet.<br />
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<b>2. Extra Letters In Words</b>. Why be colorful when you can be colourful?! If I do get my honourary Canadian citizenship, I would gladly open a chequing account (not checking!) at a fine Canadian financial institution.<br />
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<b>3. Curling</b>. I don't think I need to talk about this here. If you want to know about my love of curling, you're already reading <a href="http://usacurl.blogspot.com/">my other blog</a>.<br />
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<b>4. The Streets Are So Clean</b>. I'm not saying there aren't litterbugs in Canada, but there is far less trash on the streets of Toronto than the streets of New York City. This was one of the cornerstones of my aforementioned English class essay. Clean streets made a huge impression on 15-year-old me.<br />
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<b>5. Brent Butt</b>. Unless you're from Canada or an former avid watcher of late-night WGN television, you don't know who Brent Butt is. Mr. Butt is a comedian from Saskatchewan. It is his comic genius that created the brilliant Corner Gas. His little show, which set Canadian viewing records and was played on Chicago superstation WGN, was about a small town in Saskatchewan, Dog River. This town was fictional, but the real town it was based on, Rouleau, SK, had quite a booming tourist business for awhile. Brent also starred on the show, and it was his dry humour, along with the timing of his cast, that made the show great.<br />
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After Corner Gas, he also created the series Hiccups, which doesn't air here in the US at all. Yet. According to their Twitter account, they are working on it. Thankfully, most of the episodes are available on YouTube. Brent's role on Hiccups is a little smaller - he wrote the show to be a starring vehicle for his wife - but it, and he, are still funny. Also, I have a clip. <br />
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<b>6. Swiss Chalet</b>. This restaurant chain, which specialized in excellent chicken, used to have a presence in the States. However, they decided to abandon me and focus on growth in Canada. It is an essential stop every time I am in Canada for more than three hours. If you get a chance to go, make sure you check their dipping sauces. <br />
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And, since we're in a restaurant mood....<br />
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<b>7. Tim Hortons</b>. Did you know one out of every 9 cups of coffee in Canada comes in a Tim Hortons cup? And every March! <b>Rrroll up the Rrrim to Win</b>! I am thankful that I have Tim Hortons in the States. It is very good in Buffalo and Rochester (where I live), fantastic in Canada, and, sadly, abysmal in Connecticut. If you go to a Tim Hortons anywhere and use their WiFi, you are in Canada. Anything geolocked to Canada i.e. TSN's curling coverage is not at Tim Hortons. So, thank you, Tim Hortons, for bringing Canada to the United States!<br />
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<b>8. Poutine</b>. I have NEVER had poutine. This yummy-looking concoction, classically made of french fries covered with cheese curds and brown gravy, is such a sensation that there are restaurants dedicated to them. I will have had poutine by mid-March, so you can bet they're going to be featured here!<br />
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<b>9. Canadians Have An Excellent Sense of Humour.</b> It is no mistake that there is a Second City Comedy School in Toronto. Or that a large percentage of the Saturday Night Live casts throughout history have come from Canada. Plus, Canada generated Alan Thicke. And Tom Green. That's got to be some sort of joke on the world....<br />
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And have you seen what Don Cherry wears on Hockey Night in Canada? That's got to be some kind of joke!<br />
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<b>10. Canada Does Not Mind Stepping In For The United States in Certain Situations.</b> The movie <i>A Christmas Story</i> is a classic, set in the American Midwest. The house, which was used for a lot of the exterior shots of Cleveland Street, is in Cleveland, Ohio, and a landmark. Most of the rest of the movie? Filmed in St. Catherines, Ontario. This is not the only time that Canada has had to stand in for a US locale on film. Toronto now has a burgeoning film<br />
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<b>11. "It's Federal Currency And You People Talk About It Like It's A Hanna Barbera Character"</b> That quote is from a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother, uttered by Barney Stinson concerning loonies and toonies, the one- and two-dollar coins that Canada uses instead of bills. They are so named because of the loons prominently featured on the one dollar coin, which came first. Compared to American currency, Canadian bills are also very colourful! It's pretty - US money is green.<br />
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But, can I get back to the marvel that is a toonie for a moment? Let me show you a picture!<br />
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It's a bi-metallic coin! The center is different than the rim! How cool looking is that?<br />
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<b>12. Being Erica</b>. I am an unapologetic fan of what is the most creative television show this side of Quantum Leap. Rather than bore you with my word, which would gush, let me share with you the <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/beingerica/">official CBC description</a>:<br />
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">"Being Erica</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"> is a one-hour series that explores the life of Erica Strange, a woman who has been given a wonderful gift. Every episode, Erica goes back to relive a regret from her past, in order to come back and make a positive change in her present."</span></blockquote>
The show is brilliantly acted and masterfully written. The characters are, for the most part, multi-dimensional and not always making the right, happy choices. The title character, played by Erin Karpluk, is a woman in her early 30s, who, at the start of the series, has just been fired from a dead-end job. She's single, Jewish - that particular aspect will be revisited in a second - and full of regrets. And she meets a therapist, Dr. Tom, played by Michael Riley, who gives her the aforementioned wonderful gift. <br />
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The show is so good, it is sold all over the world. The first three seasons have played on SoapNET in the United States, and I expect the 4th season (which I have seen through means that I probably should not disclose) will be on some ABC property. Furthermore, a US remake of Being Erica is in the works. Let me be the first to endorse Erin Karpluk as the lead in that... it won't happen, though.<br />
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What is so masterful about the show's writing is that the writers don't just tell you things. Take Erica's faith, which I mentioned above. A big deal is not made about it. It just gets filtered into conversation. But her father is a rabbi, and a whole episode is focused on her bat mitzvah. It is handled perfectly. Which kind of brings me to #13....<br />
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<b>13. Canadians Aren't Hung Up On Religion</b>. I have no problem with religion. None. Might discuss my own faith in a future post, but not today. There is another television show that airs in Canada, called Little Mosque on the Prairie. It's a moderate hit in Canada, and is relatively well received. Unlike Being Erica, it has not been picked up in the United States. Fox did announce plans to remake the show.... in 2008. It isn't happening. <br />
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In the United States, we're scared to touch religion in comedy and drama. Unless it's Christianity. 7th Heaven - anyone remember that show - is one of the few shows that did. It's a taboo topic, in general. In Canada? Not so much.<br />
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<b>14. Carling Bassett</b>. Those of you who have known me since I was 13 are not surprised by this. (You may be surprised I put her so low on the list). Many of you gentle readers, even in Canada, are scratching your heads wondering who Carling Bassett is. I'm about to take you to school. To call her "Canada's version of Anna Kournikova" would trivialize her. She was Canada's best tennis player in the 1980s. She only won one adult singles titles - the 1987 Strassbourg Open, a Wimbledon tuneup - but did well at several major events, making it to the quarterfinals and semifinals of several.<br />
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Now, let's put her significant tennis achievements aside for a moment. She was also represented by Ford Modelling Agency. So, here I am, a red-blooded American 14-year old boy.... and I get a copy of Tennis Magazine.... and they are discussing the WTA calendar.... and they have a few shots.<br />
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I am not going to post the <a href="http://sports.popcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/carling-bassett7.jpg">Carling Bassett shot</a>, but trust me. I was impressed. <br />
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She's not Carling Bassett anymore. She married American doubles tennis player and my least favorite men's player in the world, Robert Seguso, in 1988, and she hyphenated. The couple now runs a tennis academy in Florida with Chris Evert. They have four children - three sons, including a 1-year old and a 23-year-old, and a daughter, Carling Jr.<br />
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The first name was her mother's maiden name. Mom's family ran the brewery. John Bassett, her grandfather, owned CTV. Her father, also John Bassett, was a notable tennis player in his own right, so it ran in the family.<br />
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<b>15. C-Plus</b>. A delicious orange-flavoured soft drink, supposedly with Sunkist juice in it, it has a more real orange flavour than any other soft drink in the world. It remains to this day my third favorite soda pop from anywhere, ever.<br />
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Cherry RC is #2. Not available in Canada. Very hard to find in the United States. I do still like some things about my own country.<br />
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7Up Gold is #1. That will get a blog post all to itself someday.<br />
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<b>16. Bilingual by law.</b> It would have been very easy for colonial Canadian politicians to force English on Quebec and a little sliver of New Brunswick. Instead, they made the rest of the country accept the French, embrace the French, and support the French. All food packaging, at the very least, has to be bilingual, by law. And French television stations are everywhere. On every cable system.<br />
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The rest of Canada is thanked for that kindness by threats of secession by Quebec. That's just wonderful.<br />
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I really should state that Inuktitut is also an officially recognized language, but not all signage and packaging needs to be in that language. It is, however, a language in which CBC North does broadcast, to the benefit of the large Inuit population.<br />
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Sixteen is probably enough items for now. I might have to start the follow-up post right way. Feel free to comment and tell me what other things about Canada I should be loving, or at least trying to love.redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-89408939244558896332011-10-12T15:20:00.002-04:002013-06-18T08:38:14.137-04:00Lessons from Steve Yegge's Google RantLate last night, a Google engineer named <a href="https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts">Steve Yegge </a>made a mistake. He wrote a very angry rant about Google+, and where Google was failing with it. He intended the rant for his fellow engineers. But it was late, and he was tired, and he didn't know Google+ very well. So, he posted it publicly, accidentally. <br />
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He has since removed the rant and apologized profusely. To their credit, Google is giving him some admiration, at least in public, for being unafraid to express his opinion. And, for the record, if Mr. Yegge asks me to remove the text below, I will, happily.<br />
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It's a long rant, but I urge you to read it in its entirety. I have posted it, unedited and as it appeared. He calls Google to task for not understanding platforms and accessibility, much like Amazon (with AWS), Microsoft, and Facebook do. It's a really interesting read for those interested in the development process and what software developers think about.<br />
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He also talks about the principle of "eating your own dog food". If you build it, use it. Amazon and Facebook grew because they developed their products for a small, internal (or, in the case of Facebook, college student) audience before going public and big with them. It's a principle that I don't think is applied all that widely, especially in siloed companies, where there is little inter-team interaction.<br />
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Finally, he is a gentleman who actually cares about his company, and has eschewed offers to leave, opting instead to fight for the future of his "family" at Google. It takes guts to do something like that, and it's not something that every company would take well. I gave credit to Google once in this post, and I will do it again now - this is a company that cares about its employees and sees the value in an employee that cares enough to have an opinion and express it, warts and all.<br />
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And, for the record, I was shocked to see that there's only one API call for Google+. And he's right about the font issues in Chrome.<br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><b>Stevey's Google Platforms Rant</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I've been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right. Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one. It's pretty crazy. There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two companies, and Google is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly. I actually did a spreadsheet at one point but Legal wouldn't let me show it to anyone, even though recruiting </span><b style="line-height: 18px;">loved</b><span style="line-height: 18px;"> it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">I mean, just to give you a very brief taste: Amazon's recruiting process is fundamentally flawed by having teams hire for themselves, so their hiring bar is incredibly inconsistent across teams, despite various efforts they've made to level it out. And their operations are a mess; they don't really have SREs and they make engineers pretty much do everything, which leaves almost no time for coding - though again this varies by group, so it's luck of the draw. They don't give a single shit about charity or helping the needy or community contributions or anything like that. Never comes up there, except maybe to laugh about it. Their facilities are dirt-smeared cube farms without a dime spent on decor or common meeting areas. Their pay and benefits suck, although much less so lately due to local competition from Google and Facebook. But they don't have any of our perks or extras -- they just try to match the offer-letter numbers, and that's the end of it. Their code base is a disaster, with no engineering standards whatsoever except what individual teams choose to put in place.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">To be fair, they do have a nice versioned-library system that we really ought to emulate, and a nice publish-subscribe system that we also have no equivalent for. But for the most part they just have a bunch of crappy tools that read and write state machine information into relational databases. We wouldn't take most of it even if it were free.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">I think the pubsub system and their library-shelf system were two out of the grand total of three things Amazon does better than google.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I guess you could make an argument that their bias for launching early and iterating like mad is also something they do well, but you can argue it either way. They prioritize launching early over </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">everything</i><span style="line-height: 18px;"> else, including retention and engineering discipline and a bunch of other stuff that turns out to matter in the long run. So even though it's given them some competitive advantages in the marketplace, it's created enough other problems to make it something less than a slam-dunk.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">But there's one thing they do really really well that pretty much makes up for ALL of their political, philosophical and technical screw-ups.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon's retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, Apple's Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally -- wisely -- left the company. Larry would do these big usability studies and demonstrate beyond any shred of doubt that nobody can understand that frigging website, but Bezos just couldn't let go of those pixels, all those millions of semantics-packed pixels on the landing page. They were like millions of his own precious children. So they're all still there, and Larry is not.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Micro-managing isn't that third thing that Amazon does better than us, by the way. I mean, yeah, they micro-manage really well, but I wouldn't list it as a strength or anything. I'm just trying to set the context here, to help you understand what happened. We're talking about a guy who in all seriousness has said on many public occasions that people should be paying him to work at Amazon. He hands out little yellow stickies with his name on them, reminding people "who runs the company" when they disagree with him. The guy is a regular... well, Steve Jobs, I guess. Except without the fashion or design sense. Bezos is super smart; don't get me wrong. He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">So one day Jeff Bezos issued a mandate. He's doing that all the time, of course, and people scramble like ants being pounded with a rubber mallet whenever it happens. But on one occasion -- back around 2002 I think, plus or minus a year -- he issued a mandate that was so out there, so huge and eye-bulgingly ponderous, that it made all of his other mandates look like unsolicited peer bonuses.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">His Big Mandate went something along these lines:</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">1) All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">2) Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">3) There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team's data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">4) It doesn't matter what technology they use. HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols -- doesn't matter. Bezos doesn't care.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">5) All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">6) Anyone who doesn't do this will be fired.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">7) Thank you; have a nice day!</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Ha, ha! You 150-odd ex-Amazon folks here will of course realize immediately that #7 was a little joke I threw in, because Bezos most definitely does not give a shit about your day.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">#6, however, was quite real, so people went to work. Bezos assigned a couple of Chief Bulldogs to oversee the effort and ensure forward progress, headed up by Uber-Chief Bear Bulldog Rick Dalzell. Rick is an ex-Armgy Ranger, West Point Academy graduate, ex-boxer, ex-Chief Torturer slash CIO at Wal*Mart, and is a big genial scary man who used the word "hardened interface" a lot. Rick was a walking, talking hardened interface himself, so needless to say, everyone made LOTS of forward progress and made sure Rick knew about it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Over the next couple of years, Amazon transformed internally into a service-oriented architecture. They learned a tremendous amount while effecting this transformation. There was lots of existing documentation and lore about SOAs, but at Amazon's vast scale it was about as useful as telling Indiana Jones to look both ways before crossing the street. Amazon's dev staff made a lot of discoveries along the way. A teeny tiny sampling of these discoveries included:</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">- pager escalation gets way harder, because a ticket might bounce through 20 service calls before the real owner is identified. If each bounce goes through a team with a 15-minute response time, it can be hours before the right team finally finds out, unless you build a lot of scaffolding and metrics and reporting.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">- every single one of your peer teams suddenly becomes a potential DOS attacker. Nobody can make any real forward progress until very serious quotas and throttling are put in place in every single service.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">- monitoring and QA are the same thing. You'd never think so until you try doing a big SOA. But when your service says "oh yes, I'm fine", it may well be the case that the only thing still functioning in the server is the little component that knows how to say "I'm fine, roger roger, over and out" in a cheery droid voice. In order to tell whether the service is actually responding, you have to make individual calls. The problem continues recursively until your monitoring is doing comprehensive semantics checking of your entire range of services and data, at which point it's indistinguishable from automated QA. So they're a continuum.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">- if you have hundreds of services, and your code MUST communicate with other groups' code via these services, then you won't be able to find any of them without a service-discovery mechanism. And you can't have that without a service registration mechanism, which itself is another service. So Amazon has a universal service registry where you can find out reflectively (programmatically) about every service, what its APIs are, and also whether it is currently up, and where.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">- debugging problems with someone else's code gets a LOT harder, and is basically impossible unless there is a universal standard way to run every service in a debuggable sandbox.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">That's just a very small sample. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of individual learnings like these that Amazon had to discover organically. There were a lot of wacky ones around externalizing services, but not as many as you might think. Organizing into services taught teams not to trust each other in most of the same ways they're not supposed to trust external developers.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">This effort was still underway when I left to join Google in mid-2005, but it was pretty far advanced. From the time Bezos issued his edict through the time I left, Amazon had transformed culturally into a company that thinks about everything in a services-first fashion. It is now fundamental to how they approach all designs, including internal designs for stuff that might never see the light of day externally.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">At this point they don't even do it out of fear of being fired. I mean, they're still afraid of that; it's pretty much part of daily life there, working for the Dread Pirate Bezos and all. But they do services because they've come to understand that it's the Right Thing. There are without question pros and cons to the SOA approach, and some of the cons are pretty long. But overall it's the right thing because SOA-driven design enables Platforms.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">That's what Bezos was up to with his edict, of course. He didn't (and doesn't) care even a tiny bit about the well-being of the teams, nor about what technologies they use, nor in fact any detail whatsoever about how they go about their business unless they happen to be screwing up. But Bezos realized long before the vast majority of Amazonians that Amazon needs to be a platform.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">You wouldn't really think that an online bookstore needs to be an extensible, programmable platform. Would you?</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Well, the first big thing Bezos realized is that the infrastructure they'd built for selling and shipping books and sundry could be transformed an excellent repurposable computing platform. So now they have the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, and the Amazon Elastic MapReduce, and the Amazon Relational Database Service, and a whole passel' o' other services browsable at</span><a class="ot-anchor" href="http://aws.amazon.com/" style="cursor: pointer; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">aws.amazon.com</a><span style="line-height: 18px;">. These services host the backends for some pretty successful companies, reddit being my personal favorite of the bunch.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">The other big realization he had was that he can't always build the right thing. I think Larry Tesler might have struck some kind of chord in Bezos when he said his mom couldn't use the goddamn website. It's not even super clear whose mom he was talking about, and doesn't really matter, because </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">nobody's mom</i><span style="line-height: 18px;"> can use the goddamn website. In fact I myself find the website disturbingly daunting, and I worked there for over half a decade. I've just learned to kinda defocus my eyes and concentrate on the million or so pixels near the center of the page above the fold.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">I'm not really sure how Bezos came to this realization -- the insight that he can't build one product and have it be right for everyone. But it doesn't matter, because he gets it. There's actually a formal name for this phenomenon. It's called Accessibility, and it's the most important thing in the computing world.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">The. Most. Important. Thing.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">If you're sorta thinking, "huh? You mean like, blind and deaf people Accessibility?" then you're not alone, because I've come to understand that there are lots and LOTS of people just like you: people for whom this idea does not have the right Accessibility, so it hasn't been able to get through to you yet. It's not your fault for not understanding, any more than it would be your fault for being blind or deaf or motion-restricted or living with any other disability. When software -- or idea-ware for that matter -- fails to be accessible to</span><i style="line-height: 18px;">anyone</i><span style="line-height: 18px;"> for </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">any reason</i><span style="line-height: 18px;">, it is the fault of the software or of the messaging of the idea. It is an Accessibility failure.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Like anything else big and important in life, Accessibility has an evil twin who, jilted by the unbalanced affection displayed by their parents in their youth, has grown into an equally powerful Arch-Nemesis (yes, there's more than one nemesis to accessibility) named Security. And boy howdy are the two ever at odds.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">But I'll argue that Accessibility is actually more important than Security because dialing Accessibility to zero means you have no product at all, whereas dialing Security to zero can still get you a reasonably successful product such as the Playstation Network.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">So yeah. In case you hadn't noticed, I could actually write a book on this topic. A fat one, filled with amusing anecdotes about ants and rubber mallets at companies I've worked at. But I will never get this little rant published, and you'll never get it read, unless I start to wrap up.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">That one last thing that Google doesn't do well is Platforms. We don't understand platforms. We don't "get" platforms. Some of you do, but you are the minority. This has become painfully clear to me over the past six years. I was kind of hoping that competitive pressure from Microsoft and Amazon and more recently Facebook would make us wake up collectively and start doing universal services. Not in some sort of ad-hoc, half-assed way, but in more or less the same way Amazon did it: all at once, for real, no cheating, and treating it as our top priority from now on.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">But no. No, it's like our tenth or eleventh priority. Or fifteenth, I don't know. It's pretty low. There are a few teams who treat the idea very seriously, but most teams either don't think about it all, </span><b style="line-height: 18px;">ever</b><span style="line-height: 18px;">, or only a small percentage of them think about it in a very small way.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">It's a big stretch even to get most teams to offer a stubby service to get programmatic access to their data and computations. Most of them think they're building products. And a stubby service is a pretty pathetic service. Go back and look at that partial list of learnings from Amazon, and tell me which ones Stubby gives you out of the box. As far as I'm concerned, it's none of them. Stubby's great, but it's like parts when you need a car.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">A product is useless without a platform, or more precisely and accurately, a platform-less product will always be replaced by an equivalent platform-ized product.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">all</i><span style="line-height: 18px;"> don't get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call. One of the team members marched in and told me about it when they launched, and I asked: "So is it the Stalker API?" She got all glum and said "Yeah." I mean, I was </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">joking</i><span style="line-height: 18px;">, but no... the only API call we offer is to get someone's stream. So I guess the joke was on me.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Microsoft has known about the Dogfood rule for at least twenty years. It's been part of their culture for a whole generation now. You don't eat People Food and give your developers Dog Food. Doing that is simply robbing your long-term platform value for short-term successes. Platforms are all about long-term thinking.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that's not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there's something there for everyone.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: "Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Let's go contract someone to, um, write some games for us." Do you begin to see how incredibly </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">wrong</i><span style="line-height: 18px;"> that thinking is now? The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">You can't do that. Not really. Not reliably. There have been precious few people in the world, over the entire history of computing, who have been able to do it reliably. Steve Jobs was one of them. We don't have a Steve Jobs here. I'm sorry, but we don't.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Larry Tesler may have convinced Bezos that he was no Steve Jobs, but Bezos realized that he didn't </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">need</i><span style="line-height: 18px;"> to be a Steve Jobs in order to provide everyone with the right products: interfaces and workflows that they liked and felt at ease with. He just needed to enable third-party developers to do it, and it would happen automatically.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I apologize to those (many) of you for whom all this stuff I'm saying is incredibly obvious, because yeah. It's incredibly frigging obvious. Except we're not doing it. We don't get Platforms, and we don't get Accessibility. The two are basically the same thing, because platforms solve accessibility. A platform </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">is</i><span style="line-height: 18px;"> accessibility.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">So yeah, Microsoft gets it. And you know as well as I do how surprising that is, because they don't "get" much of anything, really. But they understand platforms as a purely accidental outgrowth of having started life in the business of providing platforms. So they have thirty-plus years of learning in this space. And if you go to </span><a class="ot-anchor" href="http://msdn.com/" style="cursor: pointer; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">msdn.com</a><span style="line-height: 18px;">, and spend some time browsing, and you've never seen it before, prepare to be amazed. Because it's staggeringly huge. They have thousands, and </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">thousands</i><span style="line-height: 18px;">, and THOUSANDS of API calls. They have a HUGE platform. Too big in fact, because they can't design for squat, but at least they're doing it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Amazon gets it. Amazon's AWS (</span><a class="ot-anchor" href="http://aws.amazon.com/" style="cursor: pointer; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">aws.amazon.com</a><span style="line-height: 18px;">) is incredible. Just go look at it. Click around. It's embarrassing. We don't have any of that stuff.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Apple gets it, obviously. They've made some fundamentally non-open choices, particularly around their mobile platform. But they understand accessibility and they understand the power of third-party development and they eat their dogfood. And you know what? They make pretty good dogfood. Their APIs are a hell of a lot cleaner than Microsoft's, and have been since time immemorial.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Facebook gets it. That's what really worries me. That's what got me off my lazy butt to write this thing. I hate blogging. I hate... plussing, or whatever it's called when you do a massive rant in Google+ even though it's a terrible venue for it but you do it anyway because in the end you really do want Google to be successful. And I do! I mean, Facebook wants me there, and it'd be pretty easy to just go. But Google is </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">home</i><span style="line-height: 18px;">, so I'm insisting that we have this little family intervention, uncomfortable as it might be.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">After you've marveled at the platform offerings of Microsoft and Amazon, and Facebook I guess (I didn't look because I didn't want to get</span><b style="line-height: 18px;">too</b><span style="line-height: 18px;"> depressed), head over to </span><a class="ot-anchor" href="http://developers.google.com/" style="cursor: pointer; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">developers.google.com</a><span style="line-height: 18px;"> and browse a little. Pretty big difference, eh? It's like what your fifth-grade nephew might mock up if he were doing an assignment to demonstrate what a big powerful platform company might be building if all they had, resource-wise, was one fifth grader.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Please don't get me wrong here -- I know for a fact that the dev-rel team has had to FIGHT to get even this much available externally. They're kicking ass as far as I'm concerned, because they DO get platforms, and they are struggling heroically to try to create one in an environment that is at best platform-apathetic, and at worst often openly hostile to the idea.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I'm just frankly describing what </span><a class="ot-anchor" href="http://developers.google.com/" style="cursor: pointer; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">developers.google.com</a><span style="line-height: 18px;"> looks like to an outsider. It looks childish. Where's the Maps APIs in there for Christ's sake? Some of the things in there are </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">labs</i><span style="line-height: 18px;"> projects. And the APIs for everything I clicked were... they were paltry. They were obviously dog food. Not even good organic stuff. Compared to our internal APIs it's all snouts and horse hooves.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">And also don't get me wrong about Google+. They're </span><b style="line-height: 18px;">far</b><span style="line-height: 18px;"> from the only offenders. This is a cultural thing. What we have going on internally is basically a war, with the underdog minority Platformers fighting a more or less losing battle against the Mighty Funded Confident Producters.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Any teams that have successfully internalized the notion that they should be externally programmable platforms from the ground up are underdogs -- Maps and Docs come to mind, and I know GMail is making overtures in that direction. But it's hard for them to get funding for it because it's not part of our culture. Maestro's funding is a feeble thing compared to the gargantuan Microsoft Office programming platform: it's a fluffy rabbit versus a T-Rex. The Docs team </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">knows</i><span style="line-height: 18px;"> they'll never be competitive with Office until they can match its scripting facilities, but they're not getting any resource love. I mean, I assume they're not, given that Apps Script only works in Spreadsheet right now, and it doesn't even have keyboard shortcuts as part of its API. That team looks pretty unloved to me.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Ironically enough, Wave was a great platform, may they rest in peace. But making something a platform is </span><b style="line-height: 18px;">not</b><span style="line-height: 18px;"> going to make you an instant success. A platform needs a killer app. Facebook -- that is, the stock service they offer with walls and friends and such -- is the killer app for the Facebook Platform. And it is a very serious mistake to conclude that the Facebook App could have been anywhere near as successful </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">without</i><span style="line-height: 18px;"> the Facebook Platform.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">You know how people are always saying Google is arrogant? I'm a Googler, so I get as irritated as you do when people say that. We're not arrogant, by and large. We're, like, 99% Arrogance-Free. I did start this post -- if you'll reach back into distant memory -- by describing Google as "doing everything right". We do mean well, and for the most part when people say we're arrogant it's because we didn't hire them, or they're unhappy with our policies, or something along those lines. They're inferring arrogance because it makes them feel better.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">But when we take the stance that we know how to design the perfect product for everyone, and believe you me, I hear that a lot, then we're being fools. You can attribute it to arrogance, or naivete, or whatever -- it doesn't matter in the end, because it's foolishness. There IS no perfect product for everyone.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">And so we wind up with a browser that doesn't let you set the default font size. Talk about an affront to Accessibility. I mean, as I get older I'm actually going blind. For real. I've been nearsighted all my life, and once you hit 40 years old you stop being able to see things up close. So font selection becomes this life-or-death thing: it can lock you out of the product completely. But the Chrome team is flat-out arrogant here: they want to build a zero-configuration product, and they're quite brazen about it, and Fuck You if you're blind or deaf or whatever. Hit Ctrl-+ on every single page visit for the rest of your life.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">It's not just them. It's </span><i style="line-height: 18px;">everyone</i><span style="line-height: 18px;">. The problem is that we're a Product Company through and through. We built a successful product with broad appeal -- our search, that is -- and that wild success has biased us.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Amazon was a product company too, so it took an out-of-band force to make Bezos understand the need for a platform. That force was their evaporating margins; he was cornered and had to think of a way out. But all he had was a bunch of engineers and all these computers... if only they could be monetized somehow... you can see how he arrived at AWS, in hindsight.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Microsoft started out as a platform, so they've just had lots of practice at it.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Facebook, though: they worry me. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure they started off as a Product and they rode that success pretty far. So I'm not sure exactly how they made the transition to a platform. It was a relatively long time ago, since they had to be a platform before (now very old) things like Mafia Wars could come along.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Maybe they just looked at us and asked: "How can we beat Google? What are they missing?"</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">The problem we face is pretty huge, because it will take a dramatic cultural change in order for us to start catching up. We don't do internal service-oriented platforms, and we just as equally don't do external ones. This means that the "not getting it" is endemic across the company: the PMs don't get it, the engineers don't get it, the product teams don't get it, nobody gets it. Even if individuals do, even if YOU do, it doesn't matter one bit unless we're treating it as an all-hands-on-deck emergency. We can't keep launching products and pretending we'll turn them into magical beautiful extensible platforms later. We've tried that and it's not working.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">The Golden Rule of Platforms, "Eat Your Own Dogfood", can be rephrased as "Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything." You can't just bolt it on later. Certainly not easily at any rate -- ask anyone who worked on platformizing MS Office. Or anyone who worked on platformizing Amazon. If you delay it, it'll be ten times as much work as just doing it correctly up front. You can't cheat. You can't have secret back doors for internal apps to get special priority access, not for ANY reason. You need to solve the hard problems up front.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">I'm not saying it's too late for us, but the longer we wait, the closer we get to being Too Late.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">I honestly don't know how to wrap this up. I've said pretty much everything I came here to say today. This post has been six years in the making. I'm sorry if I wasn't gentle enough, or if I misrepresented some product or team or person, or if we're actually doing LOTS of platform stuff and it just so happens that I and everyone I ever talk to has just never heard about it. I'm sorry.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 18px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">But we've gotta start doing this right.</span>redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-74991573714693293452011-08-31T14:27:00.000-04:002011-09-02T09:47:30.386-04:00My Experience on a Game Show, Part 8 - The Party and The UnpartySo, here it was. August 17, 2000. My wife was uncomfortably pregnant, and yet felt compelling to clean the house. Because we were going to have two TVs full of Millionaire, and a room full of people who had no idea what was going to happen. I mean, some of them pieced together parts. There were those who had put 2 and 2 together, and realized that I was on two episodes - that only happens if you are the carryover contestant. But those who didn't know about that little piece i.e. who were not lifelines were in for a huge shock.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
Linda's mother came over to help clean the house. We had snacks, a bunch of sheet pizzas on order.... a cake. Now, it is important to note that I am not a fan of cake. It's mostly frosting that I don't like. However, much like my aversion to ketchup, I recognize that I am in the minority on that. So there was cake.<br />
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I went to get the pizzas at our local pizza place. I suppose I should also mention that I had wings. And beer. And all the soft drinks and coffee anyone could want.<br />
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I came back to a very full house of people - friends, family, friends of family, friends of friends, family of family.... and a few people I didn't know. One of those people was from the WOKR-13 TV crew - once again, they sent a cameraman - a different one this time - to hang out and tape me as I watched the show with all my friends.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXYJdLKw6-kPPXhf1vJB5o4KuV93V1Zlatcg1549qJOoEltLMgAS2Qi61ZeMv3RuNffTydMduIoDbWAf23ox-AFVUSamjZClQyqZ9GUU_QwPtdS4NzsaxNbFhS44hZT2y0aNlM5mZfA3Q/s1600/cheers2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXYJdLKw6-kPPXhf1vJB5o4KuV93V1Zlatcg1549qJOoEltLMgAS2Qi61ZeMv3RuNffTydMduIoDbWAf23ox-AFVUSamjZClQyqZ9GUU_QwPtdS4NzsaxNbFhS44hZT2y0aNlM5mZfA3Q/s320/cheers2.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who are these people?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
We all ate - including the media! - and drank. One friend of mine brought her own half gallon of milk - she, too, was pregnant. And then, it was 8pm! Time for the show! Oh, no! Places, everyone! The 30 or 40 people in my house jockeyed for position in front of my 2 TVs. I wasn't going to be sitting down and watching. I already knew what happened!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUAkByXQeM6YLVKOZhnM6plnrkWIaDlQLSC-9q_PkCOgfyntqZo_WmGUlm2cDaECGMg60xAkGqsB9na3Alz7NYjnzfaCnDmW62RgBsQuUzgWM0Fw2abwcaa5JDGI6RIPv0nb6017PNFuk/s1600/me1000000shirt.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUAkByXQeM6YLVKOZhnM6plnrkWIaDlQLSC-9q_PkCOgfyntqZo_WmGUlm2cDaECGMg60xAkGqsB9na3Alz7NYjnzfaCnDmW62RgBsQuUzgWM0Fw2abwcaa5JDGI6RIPv0nb6017PNFuk/s320/me1000000shirt.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Can the contestant get you a drink?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Most of the people in the room didn't know that I had made it into the hot seat. Most of them assumed I had, though. I have good friends and family. They thought a lot of my chances.<br />
<br />
As the episode went on, Linda and I mingled and told a lot of stories. About Frank Tangretti, who I loved, but I guess irritated a lot of the audience.... including his wife. I got to hear her kibbitzing while in the Ring of Fire when Frank was in the hot seat - she was sitting directly behind me - so I wasn't completely surprised by her comments on air. And about Nick Meyer. No one liked him, even edited.<br />
<br />
I agree that Nick was edited to be a little arrogant. I didn't think he was quite that bad.<br />
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And then.... to the surprise of most of the room(s).... including the cameraman...<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeBWgLojDCB9kXjgYqfX-5xeU9yCq361GUcSIRn-n6MBB6DtCsOiJlI0B6fzbR4vBWN6U749xUYPxb7-qMT1ApqWBugTIqB9kNEeloZ_G2dUX7v3t5ZI02zUWL8ECAWR-xraI65Zs_v60/s1600/Cheers.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeBWgLojDCB9kXjgYqfX-5xeU9yCq361GUcSIRn-n6MBB6DtCsOiJlI0B6fzbR4vBWN6U749xUYPxb7-qMT1ApqWBugTIqB9kNEeloZ_G2dUX7v3t5ZI02zUWL8ECAWR-xraI65Zs_v60/s320/Cheers.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hey! I know that guy!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It was my turn!<br />
<br />
Needless to say, everyone was excited, and so was I! This was my shining moment, and I was proud, just as everyone in the room was proud. Now, I did find a place to sit and watch. It was painful to hear my own voice... and the picture of me at the end of the episode, of course, was frightening.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFsVsWz9F1JKO9ppDBu7X_6IM-LTAvm4l_94ksHWEpxi1UGuvJxyEF3icyjmltatGELJ0M98hIzv0ltHQ0GpUDwvlwPi4SdqlafPLi7N1F4IJiPxHEs0mN_ZNX-yd0TUVsgn2FKkuKIp0/s1600/tired.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFsVsWz9F1JKO9ppDBu7X_6IM-LTAvm4l_94ksHWEpxi1UGuvJxyEF3icyjmltatGELJ0M98hIzv0ltHQ0GpUDwvlwPi4SdqlafPLi7N1F4IJiPxHEs0mN_ZNX-yd0TUVsgn2FKkuKIp0/s320/tired.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is that the best shot they could have taken?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
But I was going onto another day! <br />
<br />
At this point, the phone and the doorbell started ringing. Everyone who WASN'T at the party but was watching the #1 show on television, only to see my mug up there, wanted to know what was happening.<br />
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Bizarre sidenote to this story: one of the people who showed up at my door was my wacky next-door neighbor. She was very much the type of person who would talk to you for hours on what she believed and not let you get a word in edgewise. She was a nice, lonely lady who had poor social skills. However, today she was in rare form. She congratulated me on my time on Millionaire, and asked me all about it. <br />
<br />
What she asked next is a little strange: She asked if she could take a piece of pizza back to her kids. My reply: "take two!". Apparently, she thought I meant to take two full, overflowing plates of pizza back home. Which she did. I didn't find this out until much later.<br />
<br />
Well, the TV crew said goodbye, and all the friends and family and strangers said goodbye, their bellies full. We did tell the partygoers that there would be no party on Sunday, but I could not tell them why. You know, $4 million lawsuit.<br />
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And, for the next three days, I got to see THIS on every newscast:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidLdunDVP0nRE6ui8SaKAw_na0KMj5XdMwZEabpm73YA9_Of2I2A5BGjviLiUPuTRB7PdUhks0645bqLp_THLSwlXhe-aE6P-HZIvV-UJHV1qJXZCXnAeNYZb1NZZzEjh3Y8PTU1FCHqM/s1600/interactive.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidLdunDVP0nRE6ui8SaKAw_na0KMj5XdMwZEabpm73YA9_Of2I2A5BGjviLiUPuTRB7PdUhks0645bqLp_THLSwlXhe-aE6P-HZIvV-UJHV1qJXZCXnAeNYZb1NZZzEjh3Y8PTU1FCHqM/s320/interactive.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We were playing the interactive game at home!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
And deflect questions. And... this was bizarre.... GET RECOGNIZED IN PUBLIC!<br />
<br />
On Sunday, I wasn't planning to watch the show. I was at my brother-in-law's house. The show was taping - I did want to save it for posterity - but the last thing I wanted to do was watch it live. Which is why, when WOKR-13 called me, asking me if I would be having a party, that there was no hesitation in my "NO!" However, they asked nicely if, even without a party, they could watch at home with me. And so, we all went over to my house to meet the news crew. <br />
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What they didn't realize? They were getting a story.<br />
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Well, you all know what happened next - I was done within about 3 minutes of the episode start. It was nice to see me edited into the show open, though. I was glad I came home for that. And then, of course....<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzaUHUhzQBriXRI_YxCJyeC0oZxTsSLU7HGZ8mdqEKxh7uh8vSLHvgxcz6u-RZGocbtmgiry17Xso-e9kUsPla8YdeqE3zz_38shXXF4VS-klq_D_rqABhFXOUvBxUsXXuWTyh91TwHdg/s1600/masthead.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzaUHUhzQBriXRI_YxCJyeC0oZxTsSLU7HGZ8mdqEKxh7uh8vSLHvgxcz6u-RZGocbtmgiry17Xso-e9kUsPla8YdeqE3zz_38shXXF4VS-klq_D_rqABhFXOUvBxUsXXuWTyh91TwHdg/s320/masthead.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hey, guess what? I wasn't happy!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
And, then, the comments from the roomful of people who KNEW what happened, right down to the letter. Needless to say, that piqued the interest of the cameraman, who stopped packing up and started asking questions.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwTGfIivwqYaeIVLXYKs4E410q30vmRAT1tUTEvLO7E5bUBlT6WnkD1oqT6aLjlxnKhNlmzh-ZZnqg8EEilKVjsO43mREZsoN_Ek9572UlxUvKGH9D5SqDC4q3sxdH2wvC914XGmQmk5Q/s1600/pissed.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwTGfIivwqYaeIVLXYKs4E410q30vmRAT1tUTEvLO7E5bUBlT6WnkD1oqT6aLjlxnKhNlmzh-ZZnqg8EEilKVjsO43mREZsoN_Ek9572UlxUvKGH9D5SqDC4q3sxdH2wvC914XGmQmk5Q/s320/pissed.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I was still not happy.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I gave him the entire story, right down to a copy of the letter. He was very interested. And WOKR ran with it! They talked about this on every newscast for the next two days. I was their poll question on their website - should I have a 2nd chance? 73% of visitors voted for me to have another chance. Unfortunately, that wasn't binding, but I am told that Channel 13 did present the results to the network, which might have prompted their response. I am also told that the newsroom, full of media insiders, was split on the correctness of my answer.</div>
<div>
<br />
So, if media insiders couldn't get it right... how could I?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One person who did not vote for me was Bob Lonsberry. Mr. Lonsberry is the voice of a popular midday afternoon talk show in Rochester, NY. Who decided that it would be funny to call me the "Chili Whiner", after the town I lived in. (It's pronounced CHY-LIE, not Chi-lee!) So, hot-headed me called into his show. I told the screener who I was, but he didn't tell Bob. THAT was funny. He was going off about me, until he found out that he was talking to me.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anyway, despite how he was on-air before he knew who I was, Bob did take the time to be kind to me off-air. And he gave me a chance to tell my story, my way, at a time when I was really angry. I have no ill feelings against Mr. Lonsberry. </div>
<div>
<br />
However, my advice to anyone who is ever in a situation where you are on a game show - DON'T READ THE OFFICIAL FORUMS. Full of haters who called me the most unspeakable names, and who said disparaging things about my wife. Just nasty. I wonder if that's how celebrities feel about tabloids. One of my fellow contestants - I think it was Mike Boris, but I honestly don't remember - kindly and verbosely defended me and told the story of the entire situation. I certainly wasn't going to.<br />
<br />
Well, that's my story. It was a very good experience, and I would do it again. I really would. Heck, I wanted to go back immediately. It is an addicting thing, being on a game show - one of my fellow contestants had been on two prior to "Millionaire" - "The Price is Right" and "Press Your Luck." I have tried to get on another show - I have gone through the qualifying rounds of "Jeopardy" and "The World Series of Pop Culture", with no success thus far. <br />
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But keep watching your screens. I'll be back on the quiz show circuit sometime! You know I don't give up.</div>
redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-4726697890782239042011-08-30T11:42:00.000-04:002011-09-02T09:47:24.851-04:00My Experience on a Game Show, Part 7 - The "Media Frenzy"When I arrived at home, finally, I had so many things to do before the 17th of August - the date of the first airing.<br />
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One of the things I had NOT to do? Tell everyone at work what happened. I didn't have $4 million to spend on a Disney lawsuit. That did NOT stop everyone from asking. I was pretty good at telling people that I could not tell them the results. Sometimes, I would just make stories up.... "They gave me 15 questions all about jellybeans!" <br />
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I did, however, write a very long letter to Valleycrest Productions, specifically directed at the attorney. In this letter, I pointed out that I did not want Valleycrest to reverse their decision outright. I wanted another shot at the show. Let me explain. <br />
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One of the contracts I signed, very early on, was an agreement that I would only be able to appear on the evening show or any future syndicated show twice every two years. One of the contestants from my show, in fact, was on his 2nd trip to the show - his first was the first US $1 million winner, so he got to see a lot of momentous occasions. If I qualified for the hot seat, that would be my last trip to the general show - they reserve(d) the right to invite me back for special events. <br />
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So, now I could never go back to the show. And THAT'S how it ended.<br />
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I also included in my letter details of my after-elimination conversation with Michael Davies, during which he informed me that magazine publishers he contacted could not come to consensus on this subject; I included examples where my answer was correct, and the magazine had no masthead. Finally, <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/masthead">I included the dictionary definition of masthead</a>. No mention of staff members.<br />
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The reply I would get, well after the air date, would thank me for my kind letter and for being a contestant. And for my examples that supported their answer. Even though they didn't. At least they read the letter, I guess.<br />
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The week the show was to air - the show would air on a Thursday, and as far as the local ABC station knew, that was it - I started to get the media calls. The first was from the big newspaper in town, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. They ran a small story - "Greece Man Wants To Win Million." <b>I didn't live in Greece</b>, but I did work there. The Democrat and Chronicle, who did their interview over the phone, were a little sloppy in their headline, and ran a retraction the next day. The photo with that story was taken by a Greece Central School District media person - that's where I worked.<br />
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It should be noted that I got an awful lot of permission from Greece Schools to have all this media coming to talk to me. Media frequently visited Greece Schools - to cover school events, board meetings... community outrage...<a href="http://www.campuscmg.com/index.asp?PageId=17&CatId=7&ProjId=95"> fire bombings</a>..... and so the district had a media relations team. They didn't often let people outside of leadership - principals, assistant superintendents, and the like - speak to the media on district property. The Director of Information was my boss, so I knew who to ask. He readily gave permission (after all, I had already been in front of a lot of cameras) so long as I didn't speak for the district. <br />
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The next interview was from the local hometown smalltown newspaper - ABC was good at including them, but they saw the Democrat and Chronicle story - in Greece, NY. A reporter - Jennifer Wedow - was sent to my office to interview me. Ms. Wedow was a young reporter who wrote an excellent (long) story about me and my pursuit of game show fame and fortune. I'm pretty sure she no longer writes for the Greece Post, but wherever she is writing, her stuff is surely worth reading.<br />
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I vowed, after I read her story, that I would plug her work whenever possible. Who knew I'd be writing about this myself 11 years later?<br />
<br />
Finally, Channel 13 - WOKR-TV at the time - the local ABC affiliate - contacted me. They wanted to do an on-camera pre-interview with me. My name was to appear on the show from the 15th of August, and they wanted to make sure they got me on the news soon after that. The first segment aired on the 16th of August. I would soon tire of seeing my face on the local news...<br />
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Wow. I look so young. I wonder where that shirt went? I don't think I have it anymore. <br />
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A cameraman was sent out to do the interview - I didn't get a reporter in my workplace - but this was very exciting! At this time, I told the camerareporterman - prompted by a question from him - that I would be having a party to watch the episode. He, of course, asked to be invited. I really couldn't say no - after all, ABC would want to see this.... right?<br />
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Little did I know they'd be back again.redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-38260218020404286522011-08-29T11:06:00.000-04:002011-09-02T09:47:17.083-04:00My Experience on a Game Show, Part 6 - Our Last Day in New YorkSo, here we were. I was a big fat loser in New York City. I had blown my big chance. And it all seemed so unfair! My answer wasn't wrong. <br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
As Linda and I started our Thursday in New York City, this is exactly how I was feeling. I was still pretty far down on myself. And no one could blame me. Trust me, I already had the $32,000 spent - not even the million! I was going to get a new car for myself - I was driving a '92 LeSabre at the time - and also a new dishwasher. I didn't have extravagant dreams.<br />
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Wait a minute. We're in New York City. And we're still on Disney's dime!!! Our flight back to Rochester was an evening flight, so the car wasn't going to come get us until late afternoon. So, we went out and tried to enjoy the city as much as we could!<br />
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Our first stop was FAO Schwarz. The greatest toy store in the world. I was sad that I really couldn't afford to buy anything in there (I had just lost on a game show, after all), but you can't help but smile when you're there. What a fun store, with so many toys to see! I was like a kid in a toy store.... oh... wait.<br />
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We also went to Rockefeller Center - because we needed to see that - but there's not much to see without the skating rink, which as I recall wasn't in service.... because it was July! We then turned our attention to another New York City landmark, Macy's. Macy's was interesting. I felt like I was putting my life in my own hands there. The escalators were old and seemed to be hand-cranked. It was really crowded. And there were a lot of displays for Regis Philbin's ties everywhere. Way to help me get over my failures, Macy's. Thanks a lot for that.<br />
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I would return to New York City, and Macy's, several years later. I did enjoy the store a lot more that time, although I had a different experience that time, with young children and very tiny bathrooms. Oh, that was a terribly stinky time. Maybe I didn't really enjoy Macy's, ever.... At any rate, this time, I was in a terrible mood, and so we left pretty quickly.<br />
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We figured it was time for us to finally eat something. We stopped at a little coffee shop - not Starbucks - about two blocks from our hotel, and had coffee and a sandwich. Linda had water and a sandwich. And it was really good and reasonably priced. I wish I remember what the place was called - I know a lot of my readers will want to know where there is a reasonably priced coffee shop in Manhattan! - but I don't. I know it was close to Columbus Circle.<br />
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For those who know the city, you know this all means that my poor pregnant wife and I did an awful lot of walking. We also did a lot of talking. About how what happened to me on the game show, between the missed dinner and Nick Meyer and losing in that fashion, sucked. And about how we were in New York City, and we had a free short vacation, expenses paid. And about how we had a great story to tell and our big upcoming party to watch the first episode!<br />
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And now we had a good lunch. We walked back toward the hotel, to see Lincoln Center - our hotel was literally on its front steps. But we got sidetracked by someone at a cafe right near our hotel. Someone who knew my name and called for me.<br />
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Nick Meyer.<br />
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He heard what had happened to me - he was not in the studio for it, as far as I knew - and so I felt safe telling him what happened in the hot seat, and how I could hear the entire argument. And how I was sorry that he had missed his question. He wasn't at all upset about it. He was there for the experience, not the money. (He was a bit more affluent than I was). His perspective helped me down a path I was already on.<br />
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All in all, I had a good conversation with Nick. Like I said, I liked the guy, with the exception of the time he spent in the Hot Seat. My wife, whose bladder was still spasming slightly from the marathon she endured at his hands the day before, did not hold him in such high regard. I can't say I blame her, or anyone in that studio, for disliking him so. I just didn't.<br />
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I didn't keep in touch with any of my fellow contestants. I might go back now and look them all up on Facebook. I have tried to track down Nick Meyer already, with little success. It turns out that Nick Meyer is a pretty common name.<br />
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Our conversation, unfortunately, coupled with our longer-than-expected walk back, axed our visit to Lincoln Center. Instead, we grabbed our bags - stashed at the front desk of the Empire Hotel (we had checked out because we had to in the morning) and caught our car back to Laguardia. And our flight back to Rochester.<br />
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I looked out at the city, and the tall buildings as we left. I had some regrets that we did not visit the World Trade Center - regrets that would be much greater a year later - but all in all knew that my experience was tremendous. I resolved at that point that I would do everything in my power to get back to New York.redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-45529260971263161822011-08-26T12:41:00.001-04:002011-09-02T09:47:52.822-04:00My Experience on a Game Show, Part 5 - Episode 130Linda and I were whisked away to our own private dressing room. OK, it was more like a very large closet, but it did the trick. We needed to quickly change to uphold the illusion that this was all occurring 3 days later, not 30 minutes.<br />
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I was done first, and moved to makeup. The makeup people were congratulatory, and very very nice to me. So were all my fellow contestants in makeup, who were just learning that I was to be joining them for the evening. Wow. What a wonderful group of people they were.<br />
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You'll find throughout this story that I only have any negative words for two people. It is important to note that everyone involved with me and the show were wonderful and kind and accommodating as much as they could be, right up to the executive producer and network people in the house. With two exceptions. But more on them in a few minutes.<br />
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We all lined up backstage again... the contestants, me, and Regis. And, much like Episode 1 this day, we all marched in. This time, though, I got a personal introduction. And I waved to the crowd and hammed it up. It was fun!<br />
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My lifelines got another call at this point, telling them that it was time to start taping. Clearly, they knew that I had won something, because this was Episode 2. I just wouldn't be able to tell them exactly how I did.<br />
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Now, it was time for Reeg and I to walk in together and start the episode, and we did so. It was a well-orchestrated affair. He is so short - about 5'3" tall. You can see the height difference when we are standing next to each other. Although I think he put on lifts for Episode 2.<br />
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Regis reviewed the last episode and the two contestant failures from the "night prior." And then he turned to me. And my reaction when I came out of that fastest finger seat. He's pretty good at the small talk. And he highlighted that I called every single day to get on the show. And a race against time because my wife was pregnant.<br />
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Regis explained the game to me and the audience at home, including telling thousands to use abc.com to play along.<br />
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What part of a magazine would you normally check to find the list of staff members?<br />
A. Back Cover B, Centerfold C. Masthead D. Table of Contents.<br />
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"Masthead is where they put the title. Centerfold is where they put the....." So, I reasoned out the answer pretty quickly to be D. Table of Contents. Final.<br />
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"STOP TAPE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"<br />
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"QUIET ON THE SET!!!!!"<br />
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And two floor producers rushed the podium. Both wearing headsets. Both listening intently to a conversation that I can only barely hear. I know both voices on the other end of the conversation, though. One is Michael Davies, the Scottish executive producer of the show. The other was the show's attorney. Clearly, there was a problem with the question. I would find out later what the exact issue was. But at this moment, I didn't know.<br />
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And no one was talking to me. And Regis was looking at anything but me. He was avoiding eye contact.<br />
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For what seemed like hours, but was probably only a half hour, I had to endure this non-communication, silence-expect-for-the-headphones - and that was a HEATED argument! At this point, I had convinced myself that I knew that I was done on the show - that I had somehow blown the question. So, I really got myself a good, dejected look.<br />
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Finally, the producers gave the all clear to resume taping and backed away. And I braced myself.<br />
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And this is what you saw next on TV.<br />
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"No, I'm sorry Tony, it was masthead." They edited all that time away. It was like it was instant. Except that it was not.<br />
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Yes, my time in the hot seat was over. And I had lost. I was embarrassed to be done so quickly. I was sad, dejected. And confused. I didn't think I got that answer wrong. <br />
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"So you go home with $1,000" No real encouraging words from Regis. And the people in the Ring of Fire were, of course, thrilled that I was done. They got to<br />
get into the hot seat rather quickly. And I got to walk off stage sadly.<br />
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Except, at stage's edge, I was greeted by none other than Michael Davies. Who was really apologetic and explained the entire situation. He started by telling me that I was not wrong in my reasoning, which is why they had stopped tape to research the answer.<br />
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And they had found magazine publishers to support my answer.<br />
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So why wasn't I still in the hot seat? The attorney had reminded Mr. Davies that the show's answer was also correct, and the show's decisions were final. The fairness of the question, and the correctness of my answer, were both moot.<br />
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I think Mr. Davies tried on my behalf. I don't think he succeeded.<br />
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So, I was left to go sit on a couch backstage and watch the rest of the show. At that time, I was finally brought a tuna sandwich. It was all they could find. In New York City. Linda declined to eat, but we did take advantage of the drinks they had backstage.<br />
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At this point, I had to fill out paperwork. My $1000 winnings, which was more than $600, was taxable, and so I had to fill out my tax forms. As soon as I did that, I was handed a check from Valleycrest Productions for $1000. I walked out of there with my money, in full. <br />
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One by one, the four contestants who made the hot seat, only to lose relatively quickly, from the 2nd episode joined us on the backstage couches. Frustratingly, I knew the answers to every question that was directed at all of them, including the ones they missed. And they all felt worse for me, despite leaving with the same amount of money as me, for the same reason.<br />
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One guy walked away from the $125,000 question, so he got $64,000. He also felt badly for me. I felt happy for him. He was a really nice guy.<br />
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Needless to say, there were no more controversies on that show.<br />
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After taping was done, I was asked by my fellow contestants what had happened. I still wasn't quite sure, except that I had gotten a right answer marked wrong. And I was still really upset about it. <br />
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Regis said goodbye to all of us. He was openly hostile toward me and would not shake my hand. He was too busy with all the ladies. (OK, I understand that a little). He was also tired. I can't blame him on that.<br />
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The producers told me that they had called my lifelines at this point, thanking them for their service. They did not divulge what had happened. They did offer their apologies to me as well.<br />
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We all piled in the bus and went back to the hotel. Several people called me that evening and asked me what had happened. I, of course, could not tell them. I walked to the convenience store near my hotel, got some food off their buffet....<br />
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<i>OK, I have to stop the story here for a minute. Every convenience store in Manhattan, it seemed, had a buffet. A really nice salad bar, and some nice hot items. Sold by the pound. Linda and I frequented two different ones - both were excellent. Wish we had these in Rochester.</i><br />
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..... brought the food back to our room, and we ate and tried to sleep.<br />
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I slept terribly that night. But the next day, things got brighter, and I got perspective. redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-56747029478175088522011-08-25T16:20:00.002-04:002011-09-02T09:48:07.602-04:00My Experience on a Game Show, Part 4 - Episode 129<b>WARNING: This installment contains adult language. Mostly uttered by Regis Philbin</b><br />
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We all march in. First, the nine of us, and then Frank Tangretti, and finally, Regis Philbin. It's chilly, and purple, and smoky, and the crowd is cheering loudly. Then, we take our seats.... well, the nine of us anyway. Regis does as well, for a moment, presumably to get his bearings.<br />
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And he started screaming. Angrily and profanely. At the very sweet young woman holding the cue cards. To "lift up the fucking cards! I can't see them! It's fucking dark over there!"<br />
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Then he left, with Frank, to go offstage. <br />
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And the theme music starts! And Frank and Regis walk in and sit down. Frank had gotten to the $2,000 question the night before. They make some small talk about how the game is played, and the lifelines, and then it begins!<br />
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The $4000, $8000, $16000 and $32000 questions - the 2nd plateau - went rather quickly. Of course, Frank did have time to talk through them and think about the questions. A lot of his talking and thinking through ended up on the cutting room floor, of course. <br />
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This is a good time to mention that the producers know how many questions at each level they can get through between commercial breaks. And they do it all in virtually one take. Which means that the menacing music you hear throughout the show as if to add jeopardy to the thought process - well, that's pretty much continuous. They do edit that during prep for air, but for the most part, we in the studio are hearing what you are hearing on TV.<br />
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So, we go to commercial break, which means we go to bathroom break. That's good. I have to pee. So does my very pregnant wife. Little did we know what was to come on that front. I was allowed to see her during this break.... but we were escorted at all times. We could not taint the taping. <br />
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Back to our seats, and taping continues. Frank is currently appearing in a local production of "The Wizard of Oz", and he regales the audience with a song that you didn't hear in the movie. His wife, who is a nice and charming lady, rolls her eyes and makes comments that are caught by the microphone! She's really funny.<br />
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The questioning continues. Frank gets the $64000 question correct, but blows the $125,000. Awwww. Frank's day is over, but he's a bit richer, and very jolly for the experience.<br />
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Wait! I'm on! Regis pronounces eight out of nine names correctly. Poor Dick Glaser. His last name is pronounced "Glass-er" but Regis said "Glazer". He got D'Orazio right, though. I was looking and smiling and waving at the camera for my .5 seconds on screen. Surely, that's all I could hope to get.<br />
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Let's play! I don't remember the question exactly, but I think it was putting philosophers in order of their birth country, starting in the US and going east.... I do have video of all of this, but I don't watch it much. I will put clips up later! Anyway, I didn't win this round. Nick Meyer - remember, my Fastest Finger nemesis - did, though. And he went to the hot seat.<br />
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Commercial/bathroom break 2!<br />
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I liked Nick, to be completely honest. No one else did, though. After this, you won't, either.<br />
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Nick had a friend with him - a male, named Johan, as I recall (I really have to go back and watch the episode again) - who attended because his girlfriend could not. In the Hot Seat, with Regis, he did come across as arrogant. That was not the impression I had of Nick Meyer at all, outside of that seat. <br />
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Frankly, Nick's time with Regis was fairly uneventful for the first 10 questions. He got to $16,000 in relatively short order. Which made me very happy. I wanted a 2nd shot at the Fastest Finger to get into the hot seat myself! Nick's speed was only going to help me with that.<br />
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Nick did struggle with one question: how many antennae does a lobster have? I knew it, but he needed two lifelines to figure out this $8,000 question.<br />
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Little did I know what was ahead. <br />
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We did have another commercial break before Nick reached the plateau. I made sure I gave him some encouraging words, even if I was hoping he'd fall flat on his ass and be done, already. I say that, but I wasn't, really. I hoped he did well, found a place to quit, and let me have a chance.<br />
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We returned to our seats from commercial... and the marathon began!<br />
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Three questions.<br />
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$32,000 - What is the southernmost capital in the United States. The answer was "Austin, TX". I knew this pretty quickly. It took Nick about 15 minutes.<br />
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$64,000 - What is the name of the character who became a hero of the "male movement" through Robert Bly's 1990 book. Nick knew this in less than 5 minutes - Iron John. This is the only question in his stack I did not know instantly. So I give him a lot of credit.<br />
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$125,000 - In 1984, who won the first-ever women's Olympic marathon? A. Rosa Mota (the cheater), B. Joan Benoit, C. Grete Waitz, D. Mary Decker Slaney (who ran less than the marathon and was skiped accidentally by Zola Budd). Yes, I knew this one quickly as well. He didn't. He got the right answer (B) in about 20 minutes. He was pretty close to answering Rosa Mota. He didn't do that, though. I was a runner in high school. I knew who Joan Benoit was.<br />
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Commercial break! OK, let's all go pee. Nick was sequestered this time. <br />
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And I was starting to get a little agitated. I was hungry, and I knew we were running out of episode. I was hoping I'd get a chance, but it was looking slim.<br />
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Back to the seat for $250,000<br />
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What color best describes the sand of the Kalahari Desert? Red, White, Grey, Black. Well, I knew about the Red Kalahari. Clearly, Nick, who kept bringing up Botswana, did not. And so he babbled on about it for more than a half hour. <br />
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This is where the phone-a-friend was used. <br />
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This is a good time to explain the phone-a-friend. I was asked to supply a list of five people to be my lifelines. I chose four that I knew very well - my father-in-law (who is really good at American war history), my brother-in-law Greg (who is a music guy who knows a lot about sports), my sister-in-law Mary (who knows a fair amount about pop culture) and my brother-in-law Mark (who has Internet access). My 5th lifeline was my boss. He had a roomful of people gathered and was having a party. If I were to call him, he would shout my question to the room for an answer. As it turns out, this is within the game rules, and a common practice.<br />
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All five of my lifelines got several phone calls that day. At this point, they had received two - one making sure they were ready, and one telling them that the episode had begun. They needed to know that this was an all-day commitment - that there might be two episodes to worry about - and if they were not able to fulfill it, they needed to let the producers know immediately. <br />
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I will let you know as this story goes on when other phone calls were made to phone-a-friends.<br />
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Now, the phone rings right in the studio - not really - Jason (the friend) was prepped ahead of time by producers. But Nick only got to talk to him for 30 seconds. And what you see on TV, is really what is happening - a clock on screen, the tick-tock sound.<br />
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His phone-a-friend was useless. Completely. So Nick guessed. And was cocky and angry when he said "Final Answer, Regis."<br />
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Correct. <br />
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And so we were up to the infamous $500,000 question. The one where Nick sat and thought and talked and sat and talked and thought. For fifty-two minutes!<br />
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Which of the following actresses was in the original 1968 cast of the Broadway Muscial 'Hair'? A: Susan Sarandon B: Bette Midler C: Glenn Close D: Diane Keaton.<br />
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My reasoning: Bette Midler worked in bathhouses in the 70's. Susan Sarandon starred in "Rocky Horror" and was really young. Glenn Close was a possibility, but her career was late-blooming. So, I deduced that the answer was Diane Keaton.<br />
<br />
Nick took 52 minutes of listening to Regis telling him that people would think more of him if he walked away. And scattered boos. And being kind of quiet. With that damn music and the cold studio.<br />
<br />
He guessed Bette Midler very early. And said "Final Answer" on that after 52 minutes. <br />
<br />
52 minutes.<br />
<br />
The audience cheered when he said "Final Answer." And louder the cheers were when Regis said the answer was Diane Keaton!!<br />
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Goodbye, Nick.<br />
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Needless to say, I would not see Nick again until the next day. He was sequestered. Because he would have been lynched. I felt a little bad for him.... well, I'm getting ahead of the story just a little bit. More on that later.<br />
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<br />
Well, no time for a commercial break. There's still time in the episode to fit in one more contestant! Believe me, they were rushing. Fastest finger! Hurry Up!<br />
<br />
"Put the following movies in the order of their theatrical debut, starting with the most recent"<br />
Planet of the Apes<br />
Any Which Way You Can<br />
12 Monkeys<br />
George of the Jungle.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij3AS2pK7yeyHafLna-R1zvxMopBW8O7vj3C5YUnjrMr0IWiHtNS_0UrI18QusiM6nx6fUGqLmTP9CeNPT0rUcOfDFheuO9vlPkQ1Yu-HqEln_ULOV4aV-6H7jSV70BWm4qWqpE1g1Vkw/s1600/iwin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij3AS2pK7yeyHafLna-R1zvxMopBW8O7vj3C5YUnjrMr0IWiHtNS_0UrI18QusiM6nx6fUGqLmTP9CeNPT0rUcOfDFheuO9vlPkQ1Yu-HqEln_ULOV4aV-6H7jSV70BWm4qWqpE1g1Vkw/s320/iwin.jpg" width="320" /></a>5.18 seconds later, I had won. By .2 seconds.<br />
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I was quite excited. I got up, and repreatedly pumped my fists. Woo hoo! High fives! Hugs for Regis!!!!!!!!!!!!<br />
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And now, I was drained. Thank GOD we got a commercial break! My wife found me - she was about to get moved to a new seat - but she really really had to pee. She was pregnant and had to quietly hold it for two hours, thanks to Nick. Needless to say, she was NOT Nick's biggest fan.<br />
<br />
I peed as well. And then took my HOT SEAT!<br />
<br />
I was really glazed over as I had some banter with Regis. So did Linda, who stumbled over how to describe timing of our impending baby. We were told in no uncertain terms that we needed to uphold the illusion that we were in the studio on August 17, and not July 25.<br />
<br />
OK! Let's Play!<br />
<br />
For $100 - Someone who asks you a series of question is said to be "giving you the what?" Third Degree.<br />
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$200 - A silly person is often compared to what animal? I've been called a silly goose for years!!!!<br />
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$300 - According to the opening sequence of the original TV series "Star Trek," what is the final frontier? I started laughing. And I was asked why. Of course. I am not a fan of Star Trek, so for me to get this question (which I answered correctly) was funny. Space.<br />
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$500 - How many cells make up a protozoan? Uh oh. Where's 1? Oh, whew! It's D.<br />
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$1,000 - In the children's game of Old Maid, which of the following cards is removed from the deck before play starts? A. A jack B. A queen C. A king D. An ace. <br />
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Oh shit. I had only ever played the game with an Old Maid deck printed expressly for this purpose. So I thought about it. So I asked the audience.<br />
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They guessed Ace. I knew that was wrong. So Regis tried to talk me through the question. And I didn't listen to him. I went with my gut - a queen. <br />
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You can see the relief on Linda's face when I am right.<br />
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HORN!<br />
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<br />
Episode over. Regis and I are positioned to greet the camera as it pans away at the end of the episode. Needless to say, I was spent, and the camera shows it. I look like a deer in headlights, don't I?<br />
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While all this is going on, Regis is talking with me. He tells me "The hard part's over. You don't have to worry about all that shit anymore." Referring to the Fastest Finger competition. He was quite encouraging.<br />
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This was as nice as Regis would be with me<br />
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A normal taping takes less than two hours. Because of Nick's shenanigans, this one took three. Because of that, all the Episode 2 contestants had dinner. They didn't know who the carryover contestant was - they would very soon. But I did not get dinner. And neither did my wife.<br />
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Producers promised me they would run out to get me and my wife something to eat, and they would get it to us as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to be right now, because we had to go change our clothes and get back into makeup - and we only had 35 minutes until the next taping. <br />
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This was all so fast. Little did I know that time was about to STOP.redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-25518063225346046862011-08-22T17:44:00.000-04:002011-09-02T09:47:58.535-04:00My Experience on a Game Show, Part 3 - The Pre-Game ShowThe 6am wakeup call came waaaaay too early for me. I am not a morning person. Nevertheless, Linda got up and showered, and I did the same after her. Linda and I gathered our things, including our two clothing changes - we were to carry them both other - they had been approved the night before - and a book and shirt I wanted Regis to sign. We then went downstairs to discover we were among the first to arrive at the van to take us to WABC studios. <br />
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So, we piled into the van, and we waited. Eventually, all 18 of us arrived, and we drove to WABC. We could have walked quicker - we had the night before - and by the way, these were nice neighborhoods - but that's not how Disney does things. <br />
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A continental breakfast awaited us. I had my fill. So did my wife.<br />
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I haven't yet made a big deal about this - it plays into the story a bit later - but my wife was significantly pregnant. Linda was quite the trouper - she was in excellent shape, and it was an easy pregnancy, but this was a lot for her to go through in the beginning of her third trimester. We may have our differences now, but I appreciate that she did this, mostly, for me. Not that she didn't enjoy the free trip to New York City, but it was my trip.<br />
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After this, we were ushered into the studio. If you are familiar with the show, you know that there is a plexiglass floor - it might have actually been acrylic, but it was clear - lit from beneath. A large steel structure held a lot of lights that waved up and down. There was a circle of ten seats around the center of the stage - we all had assigned seats. And about 200 audience seats surrounded the stage. I know, you probably thought there was a lot more. There aren't. <br />
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The studio was also chilly. <br />
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Episode 2 contestants had also arrived by this time - they didn't need to be so early, but they did need this orientation part. We all sat in the audience seats at first. And we watched a highlight film compiled from past episodes. People are quite animated when they win Fastest Finger, and when they win some money. And when they lose. It was an interesting video (and one that I think I am part of now).<br />
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It was time for us to meet people. We had a couple of producers that we got to know well throughout the day, and they were doing most of the talking. At this point, we did have a couple of guest speakers. The first was Executive Producer Michael Davies. He was a Scottish man who considered "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" to be his baby. He welcomed us all personally, and was sincerely appreciative to have us all there.<br />
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The second was the show's attorney, an abrupt, unfriendly woman who was quite clear in telling us that we had signed paperwork that required us to not disclose anything before the show's airing. And also in no uncertain terms telling us that the show's decisions on questions was final, and we would lose a lot of money if we tried to sue them. She left me with a feeling of great dislike, a feeling that would grow exponentially later.<br />
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Back to our producers. They gave us two words of advice. The first was, don't take advice on questions from Regis. He's the worst game show host at trivia, and is usually wrong. (They were also quick to point out that Alex Trebek was almost as bad). The second - there was no time limit on questions. The producers furthermore went on to tell us that the record for longest time spent on a single question was 12 minutes... until the previous Sunday, when a woman spent 31 and 33 minutes on two questions. They did not reveal to us how she fared on those questions - I did make a note to check; she missed the 2nd one. They also mentioned that Regis hassled her on both questions. He was to be tuned out and ignored.<br />
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And we were told what we were going to experience. We'd be sitting in the Ring of Fire - where the Fastest Finger was - at the beginning, and the carryover contestant - a jolly man named Frank Tangretti - would go to the hot seat with his old buddy Regis. After he was done playing, we'd be introduced, and we'd have about 1 second on camera, so we'd better make it count. <br />
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The week that this was taping happened to be Kathie Lee Gifford's last week on Regis Philbin's other show - Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee. One reason that the WABC studios were used for this show was the proximity to the Live! studio at WABC. Anyway, he was apparently in a particularly foul mood that week, because all the fanfare around Kathie Lee was wearing him out and he was a bit of a narcissist and couldn't handle all the spotlight on her.<br />
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Also, all our million dollar fake checks, as well as fake checks for all other amount, were already printed. We'd be leaving with the big checks as souvenirs. Which I thought was pretty cool. And before the episode, we'd all walk in for the audience's sake, and Frank Tangretti would be introduced separately and was going to be playing to the crowd. Watch him carefully, Episode 1 people - that could be you later this afternoon.<br />
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Episode 1 was to tape at 1pm, with a dinner break after, and an Episode 2 tape time of 5:30pm. Episode 1 people, with the exception of the carryover contestant, could leave afterward if they wanted to. <br />
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Did I mention the studio was chilly? The studio was chilly.<br />
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Now, it was time for us to get on stage! Episode 1 contestants were brought down to our assigned seats, and shown the equipment. The Fastest Finger competition was played with screens in front of each contestant.... and five buttons. Four buttons were assigned to each choice, with the fifth going to a "Submit" button. It was important to make all four choices in order, and then choose "Submit". <br />
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Time for us to practice! There were six questions. I won two of them, and came in second on the other four. Nick Meyer won three of the other four questions. We had Fastest Finger down!<br />
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Episode 2 had their turn in the trial seats while we watched. That was hard.<br />
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And we all got to sit in the hot seat. That was fun.<br />
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Well, it's time for an early lunch. We were ushered into the WABC lunchroom, where we got to eat... just the couples - in this case, Linda and I - and a floor producer, or an intern - they were soooo young. Their job - to get some interesting stories about me to feed to Regis. They wanted fun, interesting, embarrassing television. They got a couple of tidbits for small talk - obviously, Linda's pregnancy. They got something about me not liking my food to be touching that they were going to use - I am pretty particular about that. I really don't like my food to be touching. Actually, the producer could see that from my plate.<br />
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Time for us to change, for the hour was upon us. Linda and I put on our game show clothes, and went to makeup. I have never liked having makeup on - not as a kid at Halloween, and certainly not now - but for this, my dream, I was willing to go through it. The makeup artists were very nice and very encouraging.<br />
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On the way down to the set, we met Regis Philbin. He wasn't all that warm and friendly to any of us, but he was cordial enough. We could hear the comedian warming up the audience - we weren't told about that, but I knew about it from what I had read elsewhere.<br />
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The butterflies were looming in my stomach. Linda was led to her seat in the audience - she had one reserved for her, just as all the other travelling companions did - and I was left to walk on stage. With my competition. Right next to Nick Meyer. I was going to be sick.<br />
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No time for that. Time for us to walk out and meet the audience. Let's begin!redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-13915479675043792212011-08-22T16:25:00.000-04:002011-09-02T09:47:44.274-04:00My Experience on a Game Show, Part 2 - The Day Before The ShowWhen we arrived at Laguardia, we went to get our bags.... only to find out that our driver already had them. That's right. Disney sent a driver. <br />
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At this point, I should stop and say that I will be mentioning a lot of companies. Let me try to sort them out. You all know Disney. Disney owns ABC, who broadcast "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". Celador is not Disney, but the company that originally created the show for UK broadcast, and who were represented, at least in some way, by the Executive Producer, and the guy running the show, Michael Davies. But more on him later. Valleycrest Productions was the US company producing the show. Celador and Valleycrest both had pieces of the US show. I think Valleycrest is partially or wholly owned by Disney. <br />
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In general, I will refer to Disney in this story, unless the exact company name is important. Frankly, I don't know if Disney sent the car, or if it was one of the many other companies involved, but a car was sent, and I am giving Disney credit.<br />
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The car took a very scary mid-morning ride from Laguardia to midtown Manhattan, where the Empire Hotel was. Now, this was a very nice hotel - right on the front steps of Lincoln Center - chosen for its proximity to the "Millionaire" studios at WABC (who are also owned by Disney). Linda and I checked in and dropped our bags off in our very very small room. We read the packet left for us by Valleycrest Productions (see, there, it's important), telling us that we were to be at a suite upstairs at 6pm sharp, to fill out more paperwork and to get further instructions.<br />
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So Linda and I, the two wide-eyed kids from the little city, went walking down Broadway. We got to Times Square, to 34th Street, and we turned left. That's when we entered the Empire State Building. And we went to the top. Such tourists we were! But such fun we had! (Gosh, I should find those pictures!) What a great view from up there.<br />
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We discussed taking the subway to see the World Trade Center, but we decided against it, and ate lunch at Au Bon Pain instead. I love Au Bon Pain, and they aren't in Rochester, so I take every opportunity to eat there. I feel the same way about Arthur Treachers, by the way. There aren't any of those in New York City, and ABP was right in the Empire State Building. We also did some light shopping - nothing much - and started walking back to the hotel for our 6pm meeting. <br />
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I skipped part of this story! I had called my friend Mike Dabaie - he was my best man at my wedding - to see if he wanted to go to dinner that evening - he lived in New Jersey with his wife (who is also a friend of mine), Lisa Milbrand - they still live there, in fact. He gave us the idea to just walk up Broadway. Other than the nightmare that was Columbus Circle - lots of construction, and a busy place - it was a quick and easy walk. If you go to New York City, I urge you to walk it.<br />
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So, back at our hotel, and we go to the 6pm meeting. There were 19 contestants and their travelling companions there. I got to chatting with a couple of them, mostly from the afternoon taping - you know, the ones NOT in direct competition with me. Those of us who were contestants were lucky enough to get a WWTBAM t-shirt that identified us as contestants. We were encouraged to have Regis Philbin sign them the next day.<br />
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No, Regis was not at the meeting. <br />
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There were instructions - breakfast and lunch would be provided, and dinner to those who were on the late episode. Our day as early contestants would begin at 6:45am - the afternoon folks got to sleep in. A van - really, two vans - would pick us up and drive us the three blocks to the studio, where we would go through makeup and training, as well as be debriefed by producers.<br />
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We also had to sign some paperwork - all of us - stating two things. 1. We would not divulge what happened in this episode to anyone. At all. Or else it cost us $4 million dollars. 2. If we moved, we had to tell Disney and Valleycrest Productions. That's something I have to do to this day. I hope they have a reunion someday. That would be fun.<br />
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They also fed us. Just sandwiches, but no matter. Linda and I had dinner plans!<br />
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They also fed us a meal and gave each contestant a per diem of $50/day. So, in other words, a Disney producer handed me three $50 bills. And they were feeding us on one of those days, so we were in good shape.<br />
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Mike and Lisa met us at our hotel and we walked over to <a href="http://www.shunleepalace.com/newyork/index.php?&MMN_position=1:1">Shun Lee Palace</a>. They gave away complimentary packs of matches in a bowl on their host's station. It is one of the last places I have seen do so, and I am happy I took a few packs (they came in handy at birthday parties for years to come).<br />
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Shun Lee Palace is a Chinese restaurant, and one of the best I've been to at that. I usually get a very safe Kung Pao Chicken when I go to a new place, but this was a special occasion, so I ordered one of their specials.<br />
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Chicken with Tree Ears.<br />
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They're mushrooms.<br />
<br />
It was a good choice. I didn't want to have kung pao peppers in me the next day. This was a mild, yet delicious dish. If you want a recipe to make it yourself, I found <a href="http://www.food.com/recipe/shredded-chicken-with-tree-ears-and-mushrooms-403758">this one</a> that is pretty close to what I ate that evening. <br />
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Mike and Lisa are great people who gave me a lot of encouraging words. They had been married for a couple of years, and were and are just terrific friends. Sadly, this is the last time I've seen them. I have to change that really soon.<br />
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Linda and I parted ways with Mike and Lisa back at our hotel, and, after setting a 6am wakeup call, we went to bed. I was a bit restless and excited - who could sleep with what was coming the next day?! - but I did sleep.<br />
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And 6am came too early.redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-54735159865231903452011-08-22T11:50:00.000-04:002011-09-02T09:47:39.481-04:00My Experience on a Game Show, Part 1 - How I Got To New YorkAs many of you are aware, I was on a game show in August 2000. It was a small production, called "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire," starring a little-known daytime talk show host named Regis Philbin.<br />
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OK, it was the biggest thing on the planet for about a year. So, how did I come to be on this show? That's a story in itself.</div>
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The show began a limited run in the summer of 1999, and I was quite a fan from the start. I'm reasonably good at Trivial Pursuit, had participated in my university's College Bowl team, and thought I could do well at this. Well, they had a qualification process - call in to a phone number and participate in their little quiz. My wife encouraged me to do this during its initial run. And so I did.</div>
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The quiz itself was in the style of the "Fastest Finger" competition on the show - put these four choices in order, however the question asked you to do so. Miss one, and the call is over. If you answer all three correctly, you are placed in a pool of callers who got them all right. A subset of those callers are moved to a second round. It would be another 10 months before I discovered what the 2nd round would be. </div>
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Needless to say, I was disappointed to not be selected for this round. However, when the show came back in the fall, as a regular series, I was delighted to see that the call-in system of recruitment was going to continue. There were windows of a couple of weeks where the call-in window was opened, and call I did - every day possible. Most days, I successfully made it through the first round. And yet I did not get the 2nd round call back. </div>
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I waited through September. And October. November. December. And January.</div>
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At the end of January, my wife and I received news that would jeopardize my quest, or at least put a time limit on it. She was pregnant with our first child. We found out on Super Bowl Sunday. Now, I am not going to say my quest for game show riches was the first time in my mind that day.... or even that week... but the pursuit now required some planning.</div>
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It was decided that if I did not make it onto the show by July - three months prior to the October due date - I would not go onto the show, and my pursuit would be over. </div>
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So my calling resumed, throughout February. And March. April. May. June.</div>
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Now I was getting nervous. Here it was, July, and I was still not through to the second round. Not even once. My pursuit was not over yet, though I was starting to push it on the timeline. My wife kindly gave a short extension, with the knowledge that she might not be able to travel with me to New York City if I was successful. </div>
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It was a late afternoon at work when I got the call. I didn't believe it at first - after all, it had been a long time - but I was convinced by the nice lady from Disney that, indeed, I would be competing in the 2nd round. I had to choose an episode for which to compete - I was given taping dates and times. I chose the July 26, 2000 taping, in the morning - it was a 2-episode day. My rationale on that - which ended up being 100% correct - was that people wanting the free trip to NYC would want to extend it on Disney's dime by being the carry-over contestant, so less people would want to be the carry-over contestant, only to have to compete a 2nd time on the same day. From a qualifying-for-the-show standpoint, I chose correctly. Had I known then what I know now about being a carry-over contestant on the same day, I might have chosen differently. </div>
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But that's getting ahead of myself in the story. More on that later.</div>
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My 2nd round was scheduled for the following afternoon, at 4:30pm. The format would be the same as round one - "Fastest Finger" questions, a miss ends the game. This time, however, the ten fastest contestants would be sent to New York City to participate in the taping. I was quite excited - I told everyone about my pursuit - I mean, my friends and co-workers all knew about my pursuit, but they were as excited as I was to hear of the advancement of the pursuit.</div>
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What surprised me was how many people already had the confidence in me (that I didn't quite have in myself) to already plan to be my lifelines. One of three assists that I was allowed in the on-air version of "Millionaire" was a Phone-a-Friend lifeline. I went with an unusual solution to lifelining, but more on that later. </div>
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Needless to say, I aced round 2. It was really easy for me. No problem at all. And within 30 minutes, I knew - I was going to New York City. As it turned out, I could have taken a bit more time - only nine people signed up for my episode got all five questions correct - but it didn't matter - I was going to New York City.</div>
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In late July. Wait. Could my wife come? She was my first phone call. It was after-hours.... but as it turned out, she called her doctor earlier in the day (that sneaky devil!) and cleared a late July trip. Luckily, she was in great shape, and this pregnancy was complication-free. </div>
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I jumped ahead a bit for story-telling purposes. Disney now needed a lot of information from me - address, phone number, who was coming with me - I had already told them my wife, but it was subject to change - who my local ABC station was (WOKR-13 at the time - they're now WHAM), where my local airport was (they were buying me tickets to fly there), how many extra tickets for the taping I might need (I did ask for two additional, for family members who wanted to drive down to see this occasion). </div>
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And I had to fill out a LOT of paperwork. A LOT of paperwork. Identifying my five choices for phone-a-friend. Four were easy - my in-laws, who were scattered throughout the country, were well-connected and smart, so they would be good subject-matter choices. The fifth was my boss, who made a deal with me - I could have the days off, and he would book a conference room and fill it with people, so I could call him and he could shout out a question to the room. This was OK, as far as the rules were concerned, and as I found out later, a common practice. </div>
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My wife - her name was Linda (her name still is Linda - she's just not my wife anymore) - and I prepared, by playing a fair amount of Trivial Pursuit, and continuing our religious watching of the show. And packing for a three-day trip to New York City. We had to pack enough monochromatic clothes to cover two episode - no patterns, as they do not look good on TV. This was not a problem for me, but for my pregnant wife, who had a limited wardrobe, this required planning and compromise. Luckily, for her, the rules were not as strict - unless I won the big prize, she'd be staying in the audience. We would fly to New York on the 25th, in the morning. We would have most of that day to enjoy the city, but had to return to the Empire Hotel - right next to Lincoln Center - by 6pm for a meeting with show producers and for more paperwork.</div>
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The 25th came, and we got on a plane from Rochester, NY to Laguardia Airport in New York City. We were on our way!</div>
redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-17917371722567837332011-04-25T12:07:00.001-04:002012-01-09T08:54:12.147-05:00Going Viral AND Staying Viral<div class="MsoNormal">
Friday, March 11, 2011 is a day that will live forever in Internet history. On that day, the Comedy Central blog dedicated to the show Tosh.0 posted a video for the song “Friday”, by 13-year-old Rebecca Black, as part of a post called “<span style="color: windowtext;"><a href="http://tosh.comedycentral.com/blog/2011/03/11/songwriting-isnt-for-everyone/">Songwriting Isn’t For Everyone</a></span>”. I won’t be taking shots at young Ms. Black’s performance –many on the Internet have – but the song, as written, is awful. At one point, the lyrics slowly explain the order of the days of the week. A big conflict in the song is whether the singer will be sitting in the front or the back seat of the car.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For the twelve readers who might not have seen the original video, here it is.</div>
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In the four days following the Comedy Central blog post, more than six million people viewed the Rebecca Black video on YouTube. As of this writing, there are almost 120 million views. Several cover versions, remixes, parodies, and copycat performances have been released. The song has been released to iTunes, to great success.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Friday” has become the latest in a long line of things on the Internet to “go viral”. That term for rapidly-growing, short-term, word-of-mouth marketing, coined in the mid-90s and popularized by a <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/virus.html"><span style="color: windowtext;">Fast Company magazine article</span></a> in 1996, has been used to describe several quick-flashing fads, from the infamous <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI">Double Rainbow </a>videos, to <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/charliesheen"><span style="color: windowtext;">Charlie Sheen’s Twitter</span> </a>account, to Larry Platt’s famous “<span style="color: windowtext;">Pants On The Ground</span>” American Idol audition. Most of these have been very short-lived and quickly forgotten.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have personal experience with going viral. I created a Facebook page in February 2010, during the Winter Olympics, in tribute to the colorful trousers worn by <a href="http://www.facebook.com/noctp"><span style="color: windowtext;">The Norwegian Olympic Curling Team</span></a>. Within a week, over a ½ million “Likes” were registered on the page, which peaked at about 660,000 fans during the Olympic Closing ceremonies. Click-through traffic from my page crushed the manufacturer of the pants. Curling clubs around the world were packed with fans wanting to learn how to curl, many of whom where only fans of the pants previously.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After that, the fans started to go away, and I struggled with retaining as many fans as possible and sustaining the site. I was successful. As of 15 March 2011, I still have 598,896 “Likes”. I know by statistics that people are still interacting with my new posts, and are still following links. I have a link on the page, provided by Loudmouth Golf (the makers of the pants), which drives traffic to their site (and generates quite modest revenue for USA Curling’s Katie Beck Memorial Fund for junior curling). A 90% retention rate over a year is good for a business, and fantastic for something viral. <o:p></o:p></div>
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How can you retain your viral customers, as I have?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Stay As Close To On-Topic As Possible, Without Soundi</b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">ng Like a Broken Record.</b> Your customers came to you because you offered something that was entertaining in a different way, or because something you offered was attractive to them. Don’t abandon that attractive component; rather, expand on the subject<s>,</s> while offering something new. In my case, I followed Loudmouth Golf’s pants and the Norwegian curling team post-Olympics. </div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Be Persistent. </b>If you aren’t offering new content, people will move on. This rule applies not only for viral content, but any published content in general. My times of greatest loss have come when I have not posted for more than a week.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Don’t Try To Duplicate Your Success. </b>You got lucky once by being yourself. Don’t try to catch the same lightning in a different bottle. You will miss and it will tarnish what you did with your original content.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Don’t Sweat the Haters and the Bandwagoners </b>If you have gone viral, there will be a backlash. There are people who are going to get sick of you. And they will tell you this<s>,</s> in no uncertain terms. In some cases, they will tell you in truly vile terms. And there are people who will just leave<s>,</s> and not come back. Those are not your customers. Put a positive spin on their comments if you possibly can, but do not chase them down to recover them. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Broaden Your Audience By Using Other Avenues</b> I am amazed to still find people who never had any idea about my little Facebook page. I’ve used a 2<sup>nd</sup> Facebook page to drive some traffic to this one; I have also used my <a href="http://www.twitter.com/redargyle"><span style="color: windowtext;">Twitter account</span></a> and <span style="color: windowtext;"><a href="http://usacurl.blogspot.com/">my curling blog</a></span> to bring new people into the conversation. If you’ve got something viral you are trying to sustain, don’t be afraid to reach out and tell people about it. Use other methods to reach this audience. This new audience will help drive the conversation further, in directions you never saw possible.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Going viral can be a very good thing for your brand. How you react in the aftermath will determine if it remains an asset or become a liability.<o:p></o:p></div>redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-3483547428399636132011-01-10T15:44:00.005-05:002011-01-10T17:10:12.429-05:00Verizon Wireless Is NOT Getting The iPhone... YetI am the Rochester Smartphone Reporter for Examiner.com. Below is my first article. In case it doesn't get published in time - it being my first article, I don't get to do it willy-nilly - I wanted to put it here as well.<br /><br />----------<br /><br />Last week, Verizon Wireless sent invitations to an event in New York City. This announcement has been interpreted my many sources, including the Wall Street Journal, as the long-awaited announcement of the Verizon iPhone. Why else, the speculation continues, would Verizon Wireless be so flashy, and not announce this at the Consumer Electronics Show last week? It cannot possibly be anything less important than the iPhone.<br /><br />However, this doesn't look to be a typical Apple announcement. There are several reasons to draw this conclusion.<br /><ul><li>Apple has announced all their new technology over the last decade either on their own campus, in Cupertino, CA, or at their annual Developer's Conference. Lincoln Center in New York City is neither location.</li></ul><ul><li>Apple makes their own product announcements. They didn't allow AT&T to announce the iPhone. They didn't allow Zynga to announce FarmVille for the iPhone. Sure, AT&T and Zynga were on stage and in attendance at their respective events, but it was Apple's show. This isn't.</li></ul><ul><li>At CES, Verizon Wireless had a huge presence. Throughout the show, they introduced phone after phone after phone. Almost every phone they introduced was based on Google's Android Operating System. For Verizon to so quickly announce a product seen in the marketplace as a huge rival to the product line they spent the last week trumpeting seems counterintuitive. </li></ul><ul><li>Verizon Wireless already has an Apple product in their stable - the iPad. However, their version of the iPad is the WiFi-only version. Currently, Verizon's network runs on a technology that does not require or utilize a SIM card. Apple's 3G products in the US all require SIM cards, which is great for the AT&T network. The next version of the Verizon Network, their 4G/LTE offering, does utilize SIM cards. It stands to reason that the first iPhone on Verizon will be an LTE phone. Those were all announced last week.</li></ul><ul><li>More on the LTE front: Verizon Wireless is building their LTE network, but the coverage is still spotty, focused in some of the largest markets. If the iPhone is an LTE version of the device, its audience would be severly limited by this factor. On the other hand, if it were only a 3G device, the limitation would be the use of old technology that will be left behind by year's end. Either way, Apple loses here.</li></ul>It's important to note that there is significant evidence and wide reporting that tomorrow's announcement is about Verizon's introduction of Windows Phone 7 to their offerings, and is not an Apple announcement. This reporting, right or wrong, has no bearing on the opinions expressed above. However, that phone, the HTC Trophy, is a 3G phone, and not reliant on LTE, which is why it was not announced at CES.<br /><br />And it is possible that the speculation by the Wall Street Journal is right, and this speculation is incorrect. However, while the iPhone is imminent on the Verizon Wireless network, all signs point to that particular announcement coming well after tomorrow.<br /><br />I look forward to your thoughts and comments on this subject!redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-658799108797608272010-11-07T14:05:00.001-05:002010-11-07T14:05:11.120-05:00Etch-a-Sketch<p><object width='425' height='355'><param name='movie' value='http://www.youtube.com/v/wEvprisU9Y8&rel=1'></param><param name='wmode' value='transparent'></param><embed src='http://www.youtube.com/v/wEvprisU9Y8&rel=1' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' wmode='transparent' width='425' height='355'></embed></object></p>This is Etch-A-Sketch Guy doing my daughter's name. Enjoy. <div style='clear: both; text-align: center; font-size: xx-small;'>Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5</div>redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-42182125353461261522010-10-23T02:26:00.001-04:002012-01-09T08:58:45.257-05:00Blue BoxI just downloaded a Blue Box/Red Box app to my phone (an original Droid). For those too young to know, real Blue Boxes were used by phone phreaks such as Steve Wozniak (who made and sold them) to audibly trick pay phones into making free calls. <br />
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I doubt this app will still work. Technology has come a long way since the 70's. However, if I find a pay phone tomorrow, I will try it and report the results here. <br />
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<br /></div>redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848840795501154405.post-24571696125834530532010-10-14T09:09:00.012-04:002010-10-14T09:46:25.055-04:00Why I Have an Orkut AccountAs many of you know (because that's how you were directed to this post), I have a Facebook account. You can search for me over there. I actively update my status. I play the games. (That's right. I have a farm AND a Mafia!) I also have a Twitter account, and I tweet a lot. Sure, a lot of my tweets are retweets (and I will discuss ReTweet, the Android app, at a later date), but it's fun.<br /><br />What many of you don't know is that I also have an account on Orkut. Wait.... do you even know what Orkut is? Well, let's go to the "official" Google description of their social network:<br /><br />"orkut is an online community designed to make your social life more active and stimulating"<br /><br />(source, http://www.orkut.com/Main#about.aspx)<br /><br />Nice theory. But I only have four friends, so I am just not getting far there. Incidentally, all four of those friends are also my friends on Facebook. So that's not the reason. <br /><br />A look at the demographics (http://www.orkut.com/Main#MembersAll) shows something different about Orkut. The largest populations of members are from Brazil and India. The United States rates a distant 3rd. So, perhaps a way to find a new audience for my ramblings (even though I only have four friends!)?<br /><br />No, that's not it, either - although it is kind of interesting to see so many posts in Portuguese. <br /><br />As I alluded to earlier in this post, Orkut is owned by that #2 site on the Internet, Google. Love them or hate that, you are foolish to ignore them. I don't know if Orkut is going to become the basis for the long-rumored GoogleMe "Facebook-killer" social network - in fact, I kind of doubt that it will - but I do suspect that Google will test some of their concepts there. <br /><br />At least one Google Chrome extension that I use a lot - Social Translate (https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/giljlmclogpacbccpelmggfcjnickhhf) - was built so fools like me, who don't really speak Portuguese all that well, could read those Brazilian posts on Orkut. That extension works with Facebook and Twitter as well; it works with languages other than Portuguese, too (which is good for someone who has a LOT of Norwegian friends).<br /><br />Google is also all about integration and single sign-in. Orkut was one of the first social networks to have a native app available in Android Market. Anyone who has ever gotten an Android-based phone know that, in order to activate the phone, a GMail account is required. Now, I already had a GMail account, so no worries. Many people signed up for GMail solely because they chose an Android phone. But now, you have a Google account. And that same Google account.... works with Orkut. And, I suspect it will also work with GoogleMe if and when it comes.<br /><br />Incidentally, that same Google account also works with several other Google services, that I will write about in future postings.<br /><br />My final reason for wanting Orkut - besides wanting to be ahead of the curve on GoogleMe, loving the single sign-on, not being able to ignore anything Google does - is that I am a social network junkie. I joined because I wanted to see why it had more than 100 million members - sure, that's 20% of Facebook, but itis more than Twitter, it's more than Friendster, it's more than LinkedIn - that is a huge critical mass. And I just couldn't ignore that. <br /><br />Now, I will be adding a link to my Orkut profile to Blogger profile (another service that uses the Google account, by the way) soon after I post this article. Please, feel free to be my friend there, too!redargylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14259984251230446715noreply@blogger.com0