Wyszdom

I was recently telling Ted that I had spent the past few days hanging out with a friend from college who was in town for a conference. His response: ”Friend from college?”

I really need to work on how people perceive my social skills.

But anyway, it is true that over the past few days I’ve done a couple of unusual things.

On a boat
On Wednesday night, I went to a party, in San Francisco, where there were plenty of people I don’t know. And you know what? It was pretty fun. Thanks to a social connection, I found myself invited to the First Round Capital summer party. Brendan was in town for the Velocity conference, so I invited him to come along and check out the party. FRC had rented out La Mar, a Peruvian restaurant overlooking the bay. Considering I was already well outside of my usual comfort zone, I disregarded my usual caution regarding unknown food and tried many new things. Unfortunately, none of it was labeled or visually recognizable, so I’m not sure what I ate. Some things were just colored blobs on spoons. I think I remember trying yellow and purple. As usual, anything that was fried tasted the best.

Both being employed at companies that are no longer seeking funding, and not in a position to give any away, Brendan and I just enjoyed the free food and drink, but were happy to talk to anyone who engaged us in conversation. We talked to representatives of a wide variety of startups, including Invite Media, a First Round funded company recently acquired by Google. And in the “small world” category, Brendan saw a former ESPN intern and I was spotted by someone who went to my high school.

Not everyone was there just for fun. One conversation ended pretty quickly after I confided, “I’m not asking for money or giving any away.” Even though I wasn’t really there to talk to investors, Brendan and I had fun joking that we were there to secure another round of funding for OnlineHaircuts.com, coming up with conversation-starters like “It looks like you need a haircut.” If I get invited to more events like this, I’ll totally have to print up some OnlineHaircuts.com business cards. I’m seriously working on the site, though. Let me see what I can come up with over the July 4th weekend.

When we arrived, the restaurant was already crowded, and our first mission was to make our way to the deck to enjoy the view. When we arrived, Brendan spotted a sign for a free boat ride for three. T-Pain was busy networking, so just Brendan and I got on board. We were greeted with glasses of champagne, and were actually outnumbered as passengers by the crew of three. As we pulled back in to the dock sitting on the bow of the boat, the attendees standing on the deck turned and watched as we approached. I assume that they were thinking, “Who’s arriving via yacht?”

While we were the only ones out on that first ride, about 30 minutes later we saw the boat departing again, this time full of passengers. We’re total trend-setters. Later in the evening, I wanted to sit down outside. Brendan pointed out that everyone else was standing. I bet him that if we sat, everyone else would. Within just a few minutes, I was proven to be correct.

I had a great time, so thanks to First Round Capital for the party. For you skeptics out there, there is photographic evidence of my attendance.

In a bar, with sports
On Saturday, Brendan and I went to the Tied House in Mountain View and watched the USA vs. Ghana World Cup game. I watched the whole thing, and didn’t even pull out my phone except for during the breaks. What’s next? Football?

I hope I just blew all of your minds.

On Saturday night, Brendan, Brandon, Maria, and I headed up to Muir Woods National Monument for an evening hike.

Walking through the woods at night is very calming and a nice escape. I live in an apartment, so I never get to escape noise. I really only started to notice how much I missed quietness after moving away from home and going back for a visit. Muir Woods offered this same calmness. I haven’t walked this deep into the woods at night for a long time… probably not since elementary school. At one point the ranger even had us each walk quietly down the trail alone, which was pretty cool.

If you’re in the area and are looking for a different way to experience the forest, I’d recommend giving this a try. The hike is generally offered between March and November on nights with a full moon. You can find it on the events page for the park. It’s a free event and they don’t even charge admission to the park that late, so the entire experience is free. It’s a really easy hike, but remember to bring a jacket or sweatshirt as it gets cold up there at night. They’ll tell you to bring a flashlight, but unless you have horrible night vision, don’t bother turning it on as it takes away from the experience.

Yesterday, Tony Trumbo and I presented at a webinar organized by WhippleHill about using Google Places and Google Webmaster Tools to manage how people find schools online. What we presented could apply to any business with a physical location and a website, but the primary audience for this talk was independent schools. There are one or two parts where we talk about WhippleHill, but remember that all of the Google stuff is open to anyone. If you’re feeling charitable, after watching the presentation try looking up a favorite local school or business and seeing if their listings could use some help.

Here’s a video of the presentation:

And here are the slides if you just want to skim:

The webinar format

We were originally scheduled to present this week in Nashville at the WhippleHill Summit. Unfortunately, severe flooding in Nashville damaged the Gaylord Opryland venue (where the conference was to take place), and the summit was cancelled. Since they already had a bunch of speakers lined up, the organizers asked the scheduled presenters to do webinars instead.

As a viewer, a webinar is pretty convenient. You don’t have to travel anywhere, you can multitask, and if you’re bored, you can quietly leave without the presenter seeing you. As a presenter, it’s convenient, but not ideal. You can’t see the audience, so it’s tough to know if they’re following you, and you miss out on that fun 1:1 hallway Q&A at the end. Fortunately we had Melissa acting as a moderator, so I didn’t feel completely disconnected.

Because of the nature of the content presented, it was tough to do a presentation without relying on slides. Generally when I present (such as when I teach how to search), I avoid slides and do live demos. In this case I think slides worked out pretty well, and Google Presentations has definitely improved over time. We were able to escape with only one slide using bullet points, and another using two ordered lists.

Sharing information

I think it’s pretty cool that WhippleHill is offering this type of training for free. If you follow the advice we give about SEO at Google, you’ll often hear us say something along the lines of “Create high quality content or a unique service and establish yourself as an authority.” That’s exactly what WhippleHill is doing. Many people may come across these webinars and watch them for free without becoming a WhippleHill customer, but that’s fine. Once the webinar is created, I’m guessing it costs WhippleHill virtually nothing to distribute. Bandwidth is cheap. But some people may come across this content, determine that Whipplehill must really know what they’re doing, and consider purchasing their services or referring someone else to their site.

Resources

Google Places

Webmaster Central
Webmaster Tools
SEO Starter Guide
Webmaster Central blog
Webmaster Central YouTube channel

Nobody asked about non-Google stuff, but I had looked these up just in case:

Bing’s local listings center
Yahoo’s local listings
Bing’s webmaster tools
Yahoo! Site Explorer

Special thanks

Special thanks to Nelson for taking my picture with Googlebot and to Albert for walking by the conference room and staring at me while I was presenting.

Today, I learned about a new feature in Google Earth and then used it to find the location of my bike accident.

On Saturday, June 5th, I got into a small bike accident. Enough people have asked about what happened that I figured it’s worth writing a blog post about it. It’s going to be kind of long because that’s the way I write, but I’ll tell you right now that nothing terribly interesting happens, so feel free to skip this one.

Warning: there is some mildly explicit description of minor injuries, but no gross pictures.

I was out on what was supposed to be a nice 22 mile ride on a sunny day, that really felt like summer as it hit 80°. As I approached Google on Stevens Creek Trail, I was feeling pretty good. Usually I’m mad at the wind at that point in the ride, but I was feeling unusually relaxed and as far as I can remember, riding pretty slowly. The trail at this part is up on a hill with no shoulder.

Suddenly, without any cause that I can remember as I don’t think I was trying to avoid any oncoming traffic or other obstacle, my front wheel went off of the right side of the trail. As soon as I was off of the pavement it was pretty clear that recovery was hopeless, and I went down without much of a struggle.

At first, I was just embarrassed. I was pretty sure that there were people behind me, and I must have looked like a klutz falling off of the trail when I could have been riding straight down the middle. Nothing really hurt aside from some stinging, although I could see that my left hand was bloody. As I tried to get back up to the trail, the hill seemed a lot steeper than it looked from above.

One biker whooshed past as I placed my water bottle up on the trail. I struggled a bit, but I was able to climb up pretty quickly and then pull up my bike. I had managed to turn the front wheel at least a full rotation, and as I turned it back to the normal position I noticed that the front brakes had become disconnected. Fortunately, other than a scratched-up handlebar grip, that seems to have been the extent of the damage to my bike. The chain even stayed on. At some point I realized that my right thumb was bleeding, as was my left knee.

Since the bike was rideable, and I couldn’t have used my front brake even if I wanted to thanks to the condition of my left hand, I got back on my bike so I could ride to work and figure out what to do from there. As I approached the building, I planned on hitting up one of the medicine cabinets for some bandages, getting patched up, and riding back to my apartment. Looking at my hands, though, I realized that if I opened the doors, I’d leave blood on the handles, and that’s just not polite. So, I went to the fountain we have in the courtyard to rinse off my hands.

The fountain has a very shallow section along the outside, so to get to the main pool I had to walk on water for a few steps— a bit which never gets old. As soon as the top layer of blood washed off, I could see the palm of my left hand was worse than I thought. It had been really sliced up by the rocks on the hill, which surprised me since I thought it was a pretty easy fall. Because of the way the skin was shredded, and the fact that there was dirt within the slices of skin, I knew that this wasn’t something I’d be able to fix myself.

I stood around for a few minutes trying to think of what to do, and in the meantime texted Charlene with some video advice. I think I got skin on my phone.

I thought about calling Google Security to see if they could help, but this looked pretty serious and they’d probably just want to drive me to a hospital. We have a medical center on-site, but I doubt the doctors are in on weekends. I thought about calling a friend, but my leg had a good deal of blood on it, and nobody wants blood in their car. Plus, I didn’t have a bike lock with me. I could have stashed my bike inside, but I decided that all things considered, it would be easiest to just ride back to my apartment and then drive myself to the hospital. Nothing was gushing out of me and I had been walking around for several minutes without passing out or anything, so I knew I could make it. I hopped back on my bike and had a quick, one-handed, 3.7 mile ride back to my apartment. I got a few weird looks as I rode along with my bloody chin, leg, and hand, but I think that since I was moving, nobody was too concerned.

I was able to get both myself and my bike up the stairs to my apartment, and headed to the mirror to check myself out. The chin scrape wasn’t that bad, but it was dripping, and I noticed an abrasion on my shoulder that I hadn’t seen before. Sorry, Newfound Lake t-shirt. I noticed blood on my shorts above the knee, but didn’t think much of it as that part of my leg didn’t hurt. I called the number on my insurance card to find the nearest emergency room run by my insurance company. I politely waited through the prompts asking me to hang up and call 911 if I was having an emergency. After initially suggesting Redwood City, an agent was able to give me the address of a closer hospital. I wrote it down on the back of an envelope and headed to my car. Obviously my injuries did nothing to improve my handwriting skills:

Just before I got in the car, I broke out the first aid kit I’d kept in my trunk for years without ever using, and put some gauze on my chin and then wrapped some around my leg, since they were both likely to get blood on my car. I made it to the ER safely, and as far as I can tell my car remained blood-free. Note for next time: do not put dry gauze directly on a wound. It sticks.

The ER visit took four hours, but I’ll summarize quickly:

1. First step: Cool gel anaesthetic on most of my wounds (leg, palm, chin, and right thumb) that had to sit for about 30 minutes before they would do anything. Everyone who saw me asked if I was wearing a helmet, but they would stop mid-sentence as they noticed my incredible helmet hair.
2. Got a tetanus booster while waiting. I didn’t feel it at all. I think this is the one that used to have the reputation for being painful, but the nurse said something about the new ones not using square needles. He scanned a barcode on my bracelet and then the syringe; I thought that was cool.
3. Scrubbing. I don’t know exactly what went on here as I just stared at the ceiling, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. From what I can tell, it was mostly the nurse squirting water across the wounds. After he was done, though, the physician’s assistant came in, picked something up and said “Did he use this?” I told her that I didn’t know, and she said, “I still see some dirt.” She told me that she was more thorough. I told her that she was more painful.
4. The PA asked me if I wanted stitches in my knee, which would speed things up and help reduce scarring. By this point, I had realized that the state of my leg was much worse than I had thought. However, stitches would mean more time in the ER (I had already been there for four hours and was hungry for dinner) plus a return visit to get them removed, so since they were presented as optional, I passed.
5. Dressing. Petrolatum-infused bandages + gauze + surgical tape on most wounds, and adhesive bandages on the less-injured chin and shoulder.
6. X-ray of right thumb which was painful to move. Just a sprain.
7. Finger splint for thumb, plus an ACE bandage for my left knee to prevent me from bending it and breaking open the cuts.
8. Would you like any prescriptions for the pain? Nope. Honorably discharged!

Recovery has been slow but steady. I’ve become pretty good at changing the dressings myself, and it’s getting less painful every time. In fact, the only wound that still causes any discomfort is my knee.

I’ve already removed the splint from my thumb, though it is still painful, and am covering the abrasion with a Band-Aid rather than the full bandage + gauze treatment. My chin is doing well; I still can’t shave over the cut, but it’s closing up and I have a Band-Aid over it since the nurse said that exposure to sunlight could leave a scar. I hated looking at my left hand for the first few days as it looks the most… complex, but starting on Friday I was happy to see that it had started to heal quite quickly. I’m still not completely sure what’s going to happen with all of the skin; I’ll spare you the details but I have a feeling some of it will be coming off. My knee is a little disappointing. I’m not using the ACE bandage anymore (they gave me two of them and I soaked both in blood on the first two days), so I can walk pretty well, but the wound continues to bleed daily. I probably should have gone for the stitches; it’s having trouble closing up.

On Tuesday night, I noticed that my left foot, and everything below my left knee, was much larger than my right side. It gave me an idea of what my leg would look like if I gained somewhere between 50 and 100 pounds. The next day, it was still swollen and not getting any better, so I made an appointment with the doctor just to make sure there was no infection. He checked it out on Thursday and didn’t seem too concerned, and by Friday the swelling started to go down. Friday was another important milestone as it was the first time since the injury that I was able to put on shoes. Before that, not being able to bend my knee enough didn’t allow me to reach my left foot.

At this point not  my injuries are more of an inconvenience than a source of pain. Having bandages on my hand make things tough… even washing my hands takes longer than usual. Not being able to walk well (or bike) is also a little annoying, but the worst part of the leg injury is that it’s hard to get comfortable enough to sleep. The first night after the injury, I slept for six hours (unheard of on a weekend for me), and the second night only three. To help pass the time while keeping my leg elevated (for the first week it was difficult to even use a computer due to the position I was in, plus my injured hands), I watched a lot of movies on Hulu and my Apple TV. Get Smart was my favorite.

A lot of this writing wouldn’t have been necessary if I had been recording a video at the time of the accident. I’ll try not to make that mistake again.

Because I was horrible at baseball.

See also: #23.

Google Maps recently came out with a pretty cool new feature, and I got to see one of my photos is already in it! Check it out:

It’s potentially embarrassing if I can’t remember your name, yet you remember mine. And the name of my plant.

I hope you don’t read my blog.