Recently I met up with a friend and ex-colleague of mine from Microsoft Japan and I was reminded of how much my ex-Japanese colleagues loved beef. Similarly, certain members of our current Circos team (ahem). And now, my pregnant wife is also craving beef!
So I’m dedicating this post to them with the list of best restaurants where I’ve had beef!
Famous Restaurants with beef in NYC (I used to live right by Sparks, #1 on our list, and walked by it all the time; the reason for its fame? a mafia shooting occurred there)
Cupertino Restaurants with Beef (something a bit more local, but well-known in the Silicon Valley, if you can afford it, is Alexander’s, top on our list. I recently had the fortune to be treated there and my dinner companion and I split a piece of steak… that was all that was allowable on his expense account)
Comfy, luxurious, boutique hotels in Paris (I stayed at the Plaza Paris Vendome, which has been renamed to Renaissance Paris Vendome… this was when I came down with shingles while in the midst of a business-trip and had to find a place to recover. I’d vouch for this hotel’s amenities, and it’s #1 on our list).
What is it about working in the tech industry that causes people, especially guys, to gain the equivalent of the “freshman 15″?
Recently I saw a few friends from Microsoft who have grown in the middle. And I know many more people who are so much more plump in the before v. after picture. I was also one of those people. Below are pictures of me at the end of 2002, 2005, and current. Can you guess when I worked at Microsoft?
Since I left Microsoft in 2005, I’ve had to work really hard to keep the weight off. At the height of my enormity I weighed in at 180 pounds. I didn’t feel good but always made excuses (too busy!) to go work out. Around the same time my father fell ill and it took him a long time to recover. His illness was a wake up call for me to get in shape, stay in shape, and live healthy.
Even though I’m still in the tech industry, I’m more conscious now about eating healthy and exercising regularly. I’ve seen so many of my friends gain weight under the stress and from the irregular hours. The extra pounds in and of themselves one can shed, but it’s the added complications such as hypertension and diabetes that can accompany being overweight which cause the long term damage.
Ian Usher in Australia is putting his life up for sale after a painful breakup with his wife. Included are his house, friends, job, and his possessions. He’s hoping to walk away from it all on June 22nd.
Many years ago I started a competition called the Imagine Cup when I was at Microsoft. The idea was to give technology students around the world a chance to use .NET to create something really cool. If the software application they built was good, they’d be invited to represent their country and compete at a global event, all-expenses paid, and be treated like rock stars. This idea came out of a brainstorming session I had with BillG during one of our project reviews.
The competition was named after John Lennon’s song, Imagine. And since the first competition in Barcelona, it has grown to become the premier student technology competition in the world. The year that more than 100,000 students competed was in 2005, Imagine Cup’s 3rd year, and the finale was held in Yokohama, Japan. The theme for that year was “Imagine a world where technology dissolves the boundaries between us.”
At the competition pre-briefing, where student finalists from over 50 countries were gathered together for the first time, the goodwill between students was heartwarming. I ended my opening remarks with the inspiration for the Imagine Cup: the last verse from the song Imagine,
Imagine there’s no possession
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing for the world
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Last night, I watched American Idol, and saw David Archuleta’s performance of this exact verse. I was blown away. A lot has been said about how prodigious he is, what a great singer he is, and what a nice kid he is. That’s all true, but the thing that really blew me away was how he leveraged his musical talent to dissolve the boundaries between us. On the drive to work today, talk about his performance was all over the radio. When I got to work, everyone was talking about that performance. And as Michael Slezak from Entertainment Weekly wrote,
He has the eyes of Bambi, only darker and perhaps 11 percent more earnest. When the camera catches his broad, open, guileless grin, you can kind of understand how a mother feels the first time her baby looks up at her and smiles. And when he sings — oh, that voice! — grandpas (and Paula) grab their handkerchiefs and dab the corners of their eyes, remembering simpler days when ”nice boys and girls” were the toast of the airwaves.
The judges adore him. The tweens in the audience can’t stop screaming for him. And, perhaps most remarkable of all, he doesn’t give off that whiff of creepiness that too often clings to youthful performers — you know, the forced maturity, the soulless ambition, the ability to come up with a polished but uninteresting sound bite the minute the cameras start rolling.
I didn’t realize it would take me this long to recover from Demo!I finally had time to take care of some personal things that I’ve been wanting to do. First and foremost was dealing with my cellphone. I’ve been unable to get reception at my place, which would explain why I had over 8,000 rollover minutes from AT&T. And since my fingers are too fat for the iPhone, it just made no sense to continue with AT&T. So this weekend I went cellphone shopping. I looked at Verizon and T-Mobile (I did give AT&T a chance but more on that later). In the end, I went with T-mobile, and I got a Blackberry Curve, which I’m pretty happy with.The UMA feature on t-mobile was what sold me. Turns out that If you register the wi-fi network you’re on as a homespot, you can make calls over the internet as opposed to wireless, which means that you don’t lose those precious anytime minutes. Also, since I travel constantly, when I’m overseas if I can get on a wi-fi network I can talk to the US team without paying long distance, which is very very cool. If I need to call someone with an international number (for example I’m in Singapore and need to call a Singapore number), when connected to the wi-fi I can call my Skype To Go (local US) number, which allows me to then dial an international number at the Skype rate.Hey, you know when you’re start-up you’ve got to figure out how to save money.The only problem I’ve had with t-mobile thus far is that the Curve doesn’t do a great job at auto switching from EDGE to wi-fi. Sometimes I have to force it to happen by turning if off and then on again. When I called the t-mobile support they were puzzled by this and offered this to be the only solution, which I think is mediocre.So about my AT&T experience. Like t-mobile, they pulled up a coverage map which showed that their coverage of my place was between “best” and “good” whereas with t-mobile it was smack in the middle of “excellent”. The person at the store then proceeded to tell me that the structure of my building could be preventing good reception, and that I should call customer service to have them re-orient the tower nearby to point more towards my building. I asked him to call them but he said he couldn’t, that I should do it from my place (where I get no reception, so how was I to call?)I had received an iPhone as a birthday present, but after this incident I returned it. When I went to the Apple store I told them that I needed to return the iPhone because I couldn’t type on the phone, and the guy who took the phone from me nodded knowingly and didn’t try to convince me that I should give it another try. I think they must have had enough returns based on that reason alone.
I got an iPhone for my birthday, and before I unwrapped it I went to the Mac store to see if I could get used to the keyboard.
I was so disappointed, because my fat fingers basically made the keyboard inoperable. I think the hit rate was maybe 10%. This is too bad because I really wanted to switch over to the iPhone, and was even willing to give up the 3G service I have on my Blackjack.
Now what I think I might do is to use the iPhone as a second phone (e.g. as an office mobile phone for the company) and keep my Blackjack until I find something better.
Why is it that you can’t buy an iPhone if you don’t have a US ID (e.g. driver’s license) and a credit card issued by an US bank? I found this out today when I brought one of my friends from Singapore to the Apple Store. By the way, you’re also limited only to 2 iPhones even if you have the ID and the credit card. This was reported in the NY Times a few weeks ago, excerpt below:“Customer response to the iPhone has been off the charts, and limiting iPhone sales to two per customer helps us ensure that there are enough iPhones for people who are shopping for themselves or buying a gift,” Ms. Kerris said. “We’re requiring a credit or debit card for payment to discourage unauthorized resellers.”Apparently the ID requirement is “new”, according to our very helpful Genius at the Apple Store. I think the specific explanation was “They keep adding new things we have to check.”Hmm… what is Apple doing?Finally, I have an AT&T plan that has 3G, which means I’m kind of locked into the Samsung Blackjack (I don’t like it, there is no wired headset other than Bluetooth, which doesn’t work very well, and when I use the phone to talk I almost always get a headache). But the iPhone has no 3G, so browsing the web would have to be on EDGE, which would make the experience slow. Plus, Genius told me that it can’t support AT&T’s overseas mobile networks (esp in Asia), so I’d have to continue to use my Blackjack while overseas. I suppose I could use the Wi-Fi feature on the iPhone to solve the browsing problem, but last I checked AT&T doesn’t have a good hotspot plan like T-mobile.So while I have an US ID, a valid US credit card, AND I haven’t bought any iPhones yet, I decided against getting an iPhone for now. I hope that later on when I want one there won’t be further restrictions added on like proof of income based on last year’s tax return or proof that I own a Mac (I do) and an iPod (would the iPod Nano count?)
A friend of mine recently used his GPS to go from our office in the Financial District to the Caltrain station. Instead of walking down Sansome to Market to Powell to 4th and King, my poor buddy ended up following the GPS directions (in the voice of a British lady) on his HDC Windows Mobile device, which navigated him through the one-way streets to criss-cross SOMA as though he were on car. What should have taken about 25 minutes walk ended up taking 40. Thankfully the train during rush hour runs frequently, and he wasn’t too delayed.Sometimes low-fi technology like a map and real people is still the best. We all had a good laugh about it afterwards, particularly as he was so proud of the device and its GPS capabilities. We all decided that we’d trade the British lady accent for the ability to be able to tell the GPS that we were on foot v. driving in car.An update: My buddy found the option to let the GPS navigate for him via foot after a little digging. We had another good laugh about it.
