Wyszdom

Me: i’m sending you an email
Matt: that’s so web 2.0
Matt: twitter that to me on lala

This is my real Valentine’s Day post. The only extra advice I’ll give here is that you shouldn’t act on it today. Wait until tomorrow.

It’s 1234567890.

1. I haven’t been tagged for this on Facebook; in fact, as of this writing I haven’t seen it mentioned there at all. If I were to participate in it, I would not feel comfortable tagging 25 people.
2. Data is my favorite character on Star Trek.
3. According to an online test, I have an ITSJ personality. I had trouble answering many of the questions.
4. I’m extremely uncomfortable when people show their emotions, especially in non-private settings like at work or in public. Even fake crying freaks me out.
5. I don’t like to say stock phrases like “you can do it!” or “everything will be okay” if I think it sounds obligatory or don’t believe it.
6. I don’t trust people.
7. In college and at work, I’ve always felt like an idiot who managed to sneak into a room full of geniuses.
8. I didn’t drink until I turned 21.
9. Every time I see a palm tree, I feel like I’m on vacation.
10. I’ve never worn a tuxedo.
11. I often fly across the country without reading a book, listening to music, or watching a movie. Did the same thing in school with Amtrak.
12. Until I was in college, I thought my friends and I had invented the pool game known as “dibble.”
13. If I’m driving alone, I don’t mind getting lost at all.
14. I don’t like situations that involve tipping and/or splitting a bill. It’s too complicated and inconsistent. In both cases, I often end up overpaying to play it safe and avoid math.
15. When I was pretty young, I fell face-first on a shovel which cut my nose. I had a visible scar for many years.
16. I’ve never broken any of my bones, but I did hurt my thumb skiing once and it hurt for several years.
17. I was born on New Year’s Eve.
18. David Letterman read my letter on the air in 2002. I didn’t tell anyone that it was going to be on (although I found out about it earlier that day), and my aunt screamed when she saw it that night.
19. I’ve sung and danced on the Disney Channel.
20. I don’t like to sing or dance in public.
21. When I was about nine or ten years old, my uncle’s dock collapsed after a big storm. I was the only one who made it to dry land without getting wet, and stood there watching my family wondering why they didn’t do the same thing. If my uncle is telling the story, I walked on water.
22. I got a C in a course called “Internet.”
23. I’ve never been good at, a fan of, or knowledgeable about sports. They made me play 1st base once for a single play in my tee-ball career. I can’t remember if it came from the batter or someone on my team, but the ball hit me in the head, my hat fell off, and I didn’t get the out. At the end of my career, they upgraded us to “coach pitch” for a game. After I missed the ball several times, they brought out the tee for me. From what I remember, we have video of it and you can hear spectators saying, “poor kid.”
24. On The Office, I identify with Jim, but think I’m really more like Dwight and Michael. I think Mike Leotta is Jim.
25. I considered making a list of 25 Things Not About Me that was all lies, but made this one instead. You can guess if any of the items are lies.

Submitted via the Personal Wyszdom request:

Skiing/Snowboarding – Mountain Virg
From: NIGHT HAWK

I have never been skiing, or snowboarding…  in fact, i’m
not even sure if snowboarding is one word or two.  I’m going tomorrow
for my very first time ever.  Going to do what you ask?  There in lies
the question… what am I to do?  Ski or Snow Board?

In addition to not knowing which art of winter rec sport to engage, I
am also uncertain as to what I will need to ensure maximum
satisfaction from the experience.  Particularly with regard to
apparel.  I’d imagine I need snow pants and goggles (not googles) at
the very least.

Any other advice for mountain virgins?

I must begin my answer by apologizing to Mr. HAWK. His question was submitted back on January 23rd, and I didn’t notice it until today since my advice queue had been so stagnant. Hopefully things turned out well for him without my advice.

I’ve only been a skier, but as far as I can tell, skiing and snowboarding are both pretty similar. Here are some differences to keep in mind:

• Skiers and snowboarders do not mix well on chairlifts. Skiers keep their skis facing forward, while snowboarders relax with their boards at an angle. If you’re going to be hanging out with a group of all snowboarders or all skiers, just do whatever they’re doing.
• Snowboarders spend about 90% of their time just laying on the middle of the hill for no reason.
• Snowboarders don’t have poles, which is pretty inconvenient if you have to deal with flat terrain.
• Some snobby resorts do no allow snowboarders.
• Skiing is probably more dangerous, because there’s a lot of stuff that can get tangled up, and your legs can travel in two different directions.
• If you wipe out while skiing, you may have to hike up the hill to retrieve several items.
• Ski boots are really uncomfortable, even if you’ve had them custom-fit for your feet. I don’t know how snowboarding boots feel.

Regarding apparel:

• You’ll probably fall a lot as a beginner, so if you try to ski or snowboard in just jeans you’ll get soaked pretty quickly. Make sure you get snow pants and a good jacket, both waterproof. They should block the wind well too, since that can really chill you. If you don’t mind looking a little dorky, get a one-piece jumpsuit which will virtually eliminate the chances of the snow getting up under your jacket when you fall. If you go with separate snow pants instead, you are taking a bigger risk but you get to wear suspenders. Life is full of compromises.
• Get a hat that you’ll be comfortable wearing all day and that keeps your ears covered.
• Get a comfortable neck warmer, but only wear it over your face if it’s too cold to do without. Otherwise, keep it around your neck only or substitute it with a scarf.
• Get some goggles. If it’s cold, sunglasses won’t do because you’ll want to block your entire face from the wind. Sunglasses also aren’t ideal when you’re starting out and falling a lot.
• Hand and toe warmers are wonderful if you need them, but don’t use them if they’re not necessary because they’ll make you sweat.

Other things to bring:

• Phone (if you find out that you don’t get service on the mountain, buy some radios with your friends)
• Camera
• Tissues
• ChapStick
• Food (granola bars work pretty well)
• Wallet
• Trail map

Have fun! And NIGHT HAWK, please let me know how everything turned out.

On Saturday, I flew to Vegas to check out Love, the Beatles-themed Cirque du Soleil production at the Mirage. Some highlights:

Virgin America
Because of limited direct flights between SFO and PHL and my use of red-eyes to avoid using vacation days, I’m generally limited to flying US Airways. It’s not a bad airline, but it certainly isn’t spectacular and they’ve only downgraded service in the 20+ years that I’ve been flying on them. It’s rare for me to go an entire month without getting on an airplane, so fortunately I have enough miles that I’m often upgraded to first class.

I’m well-aware of the better airlines like JetBlue and Virgin, but Virgin America literally only operates out of seven airports (nine in a few months), and the closest to my house that JetBlue can get me with a direct flight is JFK. So, I was thrilled when I found out that I could get to Vegas on Virgin America for only $200 round-trip. I actually bought the ticket in-between deals, and if I had been quicker or procrastinated, would have been able to fly for half of that. Based on the hotel and airline prices, Vegas must really be doing everything they can to attract people.

Ok, wow, two paragraphs of introduction just to say that I enjoyed my flights on Virgin. They had free satellite TV, comfortable seats, and complimentary soft drinks and juice. (US Airways will even charge you for water.) On the way back, I even upgraded to first class for an extra fifty bucks for a flight of less than two hours. Running on very little sleep, it was totally worth it even for the 20 minutes I sat there before we took off. I put my seat into the “relax” mode and was asleep within seconds. If they ever add flights to Philly, I’m going to start collecting points as soon as I can.

Love
Love isn’t my favorite Vegas show, but it was still fun and I had a good time. If you’ve never seen Cirque du Soleil before, then you’ll probably love it. If you have seen another on of their shows, especially a Vegas production, then keep these two things in mind before seeing Love:

1) It’s not as focused on acrobatics as the other shows, and instead focuses more on dancing and movement. I think it may appeal to the girls a little more. There are still a few impressive stunts.

2) As far as I could tell, the music is all prerecorded. Probably better than having them impersonate The Beatles, and they do some fun stuff with surround sound, but it does mean a lack of the traditional live Cirque music.

About halfway through the show, I was feeling pretty disappointed, but then taught myself those two things. Once I accepted that it was just a different show and threw out my old expectations, I had a great time and retroactively enjoyed the first half. Yes, this is how my mind really works. Next time, I want to see O. I’ve already seen Mystère, KÀ, and one of their touring shows when it came to Philadelphia. Mystère is the first show I saw and remains my favorite. KÀ is a close second.

The Strip
As usual, I enjoyed walking the Strip, even though there was a constant light rain. I didn’t have an umbrella or even a raincoat, but it was mild enough that my jacket kept me comfortable. Charlene and I checked out the Bellagio, Wynn, Encore, Palazzo, Venetian, Treasure Island, Mirage, Harrah’s, and Caesar’s Palace. We didn’t head all the way to the MGM Grand side of things, but I think we’ve both been to the hotels down that way before, so it was no big loss. CityCenter is still under construction and is huge. I look forward to checking it out someday.

I took pictures of a few of the lobbies which can be seen in this album, and I also took a couple of videos with my PowerShot which you can watch below. The Fountains of Bellagio is my favorite attraction, and I recorded it just after sunset. See how the sky changes color?

About a year ago, I took a useful course at Google called Getting Things Done, a system developed by David Allen. The instruction took hours, but I’ll sum it up for you in a few sentences:

Create lists based on location, device, or workspace, not based on project. For example, Keep a list of things you need to do at your work computer, a different list of things you need to do at home, etc. As soon as you know there’s something you need to do, add it to the list so you don’t have to worry about forgetting it. Once a week, spend a little time cleaning up your lists and checking off things that you’ve done.

It’s a good system. Read more about it if you’re interested.

One common implementation of this system was to use Gmail’s labels. You could send emails to yourself as list items, and then organize by label. To check off an item, you’d just remove the label. I used this for a while and it worked pretty well, because Gmail is ubiquitous. I always had access to it on my computer, and when I was out, I could get it on my iPhone and consult my “out” and “shopping” lists.

As you may have heard, Gmail recently added an experimental Tasks feature, which is simpler than using the workaround system of labels that people had created in the absence of Tasks. And, starting today, it’s now just as ubiquitous as Gmail if you use an iPhone or Android device. To take full advantage of it on an iPhone, I recommend creating a shortcut on your home screen as they suggest in the video. You’ll forget it’s happening in a browser.

Disclosure: I work for Google.