Walk Score

In an effort to get people to look for neighborhoods where one can walk to local commonly used businesses, there is a new web site called Walk Score. Put in your address and find out your score. (My score is a 68 out of 100 - "Somewhat Walkable"). My city (Dallas) is the 21st most walkable city in the country (big cities I imagine) and my neighborhood is the 3rd most walkable neighborhood in Dallas. Kind of fun to look around!

Positive Changes In The Hood

The lowest part of Greenville Ave has lately become a scum-bar area with fights by weekend warriors after the bar closings. The thing is, these bars are not the classy bars - they are bars with cheap beer, little ambiance and no history. The bars/restaurants, on the other hand, just a bit farther north (closer to me) are nicer and more stable (and a better mix) which is a good model for what the lower part could be.

So the trend in this article is good news and a good sign.

Another One Bites The Dust

Sushi On McKinney - one of the first Dallas sushi restaurants I've ever been to is now closed. This restaurant has been around for a long long time. And it's a sad day. A lot of restaurant closings lately begs the question of whether it's the effect of the economy or just the cycle of restaurant life. When Sushi On McKinney opened, there really weren't that many sushi places. Now the landscape is filled with various cheap to 5-star options, asian fusion with a focus on sushi, all-you-can-eat places, etc... For all the closings, there seems to be a new opening - and it's often some new variant on the sushi / fusion theme (it's been a restaurant trend now for at least four years).

So, so long Sushi On McKinney. I have fond memories. When I was a few years younger I had an amazing first date there that I will always remember.

A Big Loss

I am saddened today with the news that Kitchen 1924 has shut down. When people would ask me what my favorite restaurant was in my neighborhood (Lakewood) I would always tell them Kitchen 1924. The last time I went, we enjoyed their Sunday brunch and it was a great time with good friends and good food. I loved their deviled eggs and macaroni and cheese. Dang I will miss it. Thanks for the memories Kitchen!

On another culinary closing note, Bennigan's has closed. Ugh, was that still open?

I Love Technology

Yesterday I was watching a silly old movie on cable (The Truth About Cats and Dogs) and heard a song playing in the background that I loved. I had heard it before but didn't know it. I got out my iPhone, clicked on a recently downloaded application called "midomi", hummed a few bars of the chorus and it told me the song. I had a couple of free iTunes songs from recent a recent TicketMaster purchase so I downloaded the song. My life is enriched. The song was "Caramel" by Suzanne Vega.

Good Samaritan

I was on the road at lunch today meeting a friend of mine when the guy in the car next to me motioned to talk. He said that my right back tire was very low. I went to the next gas station which turned out to be an EXCELLENT Texaco with full service and they were able to fix it right there.

It turns out that I had a nail in my tire. It cost $18 and about 10 minutes to get fixed up. I consider myself very lucky on several fronts: 1) I didn't have a blow-out of the tire 2) a kind guy alerted me and 3) I got so lucky with a great service station right there...

All in all - a pretty good Friday...

PMP Step 2

As many of you know, I have been going through the certification process to get my official PMP (Project Management Professional) Certification. After a few months of studying (and procrastinating) I have studied enough of the material to obtain a training certificate that allows me to take the exam. I've pretty much aced the practice exams and the final exam to get this certification (probably overstudied) so I'm anticipating the taking of the real official final exam should be pretty easy.

I should be able to take it within the next three weeks. I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, here is a copy of my training certificate!

My Morning Commute

What happens when you have a camera and a commute on a beautiful Spring morning? Well... click here and come along!

Some Pictures

Here are a couple set of pictures that I took over the last month. One is from St. Patrick's Day and one is from Easter.

Food Court Musical

I really enjoyed this little improptu musical at a food court in a mall in the Los Angeles area by an improv group.

Two Views On Art Form

It appears that I haven't blogged in quite a bit of time now. So - here goes - my first blog in some time.

Funny how when you see two things in the same day, the mind sometimes tends to draw similarities and comparisons between them. That is what happened to me on Sunday. I saw the movie "Sleuth" which is a remake of a 1972 movie with the same name. And I also went to see the Dallas Symphony's performance of Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (sandwiched between two Beethoven terrific symphonies).

"Sleuth" was part of the Talk Cinema series that I have blogged about in the past. The movie is a very compelling look at the interplay between two people (played by Michael Caine and Jude Law) as they play verbal and not-so-verbal games with each other as the younger Law is in love with the older Caine's wife. The action all takes place in a house that is so rich in a modernesque type of design that these surroundings are definitely a fitting supporting cast member. The audience and the reviewer present (Robert Wilonsky) didn't really think too much of the movie - especially noting the overacting of Jude Law. I can see their perspective - the movie itself doesn't have the right pacing and some things happen towards the end that seemed a bit superfluous to me. But I found myself smiling throughout. Smiling at the clever writing by Harold Pinter. Smiling at the interplay of the house and the two leads. Smiling at the "overacting" of Jude Law - I thought it was played brilliantly. So as a movie, perhaps it deserves some criticism but as an enjoyable experience in the movie theater I applaud it and had a great time and found the process the making of the movie vs. the movie itself very rewarding.

The Stravinsky was remarkable. There is nothing hummable about it. This is clearly 20th century classical music with rhythms and harmonies borrowed from Satie and Gershwin combined with influences from Baroque! I can't say that the concerto worked for me as a piece that I could love as I do, say Beethoven's Pathetique. But, then again, I found myself smiling throughout. I loved the interplay between the huge discordant harmonies from the horns combined with jazz-like flourishes on the piano. And the softer impressionistic movements were beautiful in a way that would still be too abrupt for a Ravel.

What do these experiences have in common? Well - I'm not sure - but I felt like I was captivated by the workings of the creators of these pieces while, perhaps acknowledging that the complete work doesn't quite stand up. However - the important part is that both are pieces of art and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. So what's more important - the finished product or the process of creation? Does it matter? As long as the listener/watcher has fun?

Oh. I also watched the Cowboys game. Of course, that's ALL about the process!

Song Writing

Did anybody see the movie "Garden State" a couple of years ago? My company recently had trivia question that asked which song was playing in the Natalie Portman character's headphones. I remembered it because not only was it a nice song but she handed the main character her headphones (as if she were handing him his soul) and said "this song will change your life". It was the Shins song "New Slang".

The lyrics are sad, multi-layered and beautifully written. It's about being old enough to not be pleased by simple things anymore, about living in a boring town with nothing to do but dwell on past loves (I'll reprint the lyrics below).

I find myself inspired and coincidentally have lately been spending more time in the home studio just picking on my acoustic guitar (of which I'm NOT a great player). But pretty and introspective things have been coming out off my fingers, lyrics and harmonies developing in my mind. Strange that I haven't been writing or producing much but I think I should take advantage of this creative energy while I have it...

"New Slang" by the Shins

Gold teeth and a curse for this town were all in my mouth.
Only, I don't know how they got out, dear.
Turn me back into the pet that I was when we met.
I was happier then with no mind-set.

And if you'd 'a took to me like
A gull takes to the wind.
Well, I'd 'a jumped from my tree
And I'd a danced like the king of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.

New slang when you notice the stripes, the dirt in your fries.
Hope it's right when you die, old and bony.
Dawn breaks like a bull through the hall,
Never should have called
But my head's to the wall and I'm lonely.

And if you'd 'a took to me like
A gull takes to the wind.
Well, I'd 'a jumped from my tree
And I'd a danced like the kind of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.

God speed all the bakers at dawn may they all cut their thumbs,
And bleed into their buns 'till they melt away.

I'm looking in on the good life I might be doomed never to find.
Without a trust or flaming fields am I too dumb to refine?
And if you'd 'a took to me like
Well I'd a danced like the queen of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.

My iPhone Review

Well, I bought an Apple iPhone on Tuesday morning and have been playing with it since so that I can bring you my initial thoughts.

First of all, I love it! I won't spend too much 'ink' here talking about how cool it is. If you want to get a flavor for the things that it can do, I highly recommend the 25 minute video on Apple's iPhone website. I will spend some time here on improvements that should be made to it. I am a happy customer and I really do love the thing. For perspective, I only had the most basic of cellphones prior to this.

Buying it was simple. I checked the inventory at my local store the night before online, saw that they had it and went there at 9:00. There was a modest line - perhaps about 20 to 25 people. It took me 20 minutes to get served. I had my Sony eReader so I was happily reading Salon.com iPhone commentary while I waited.

Activation was super easy. It literally took me 2 minutes from plugging the thing into my computer. I already had AT&T so that it made it really seamless.

So on with the critique. I will label these either software issues or hardware issues. Software issues can actually be solved seamlessly by Apple if they desire without need for a new phone. Hardware, of course, would.

• Provide seamless integration with all of yahoo's domain names for email. I pay for AT&T/Yahoo broadband but have a sbcglobal.net email address instead of a .yahoo.com address. Unfortunately Apple has hardcoded the .yahoo in the setup for yahoo mail. Doh! At first I just set my mail account up as a POP account (simple). But then I decided that I wanted to take advantage of the IMAP service that yahoo provides so I found out that my sbcglobal.net account comes with a free alias that IS a yahoo domain name. So now I use the .yahoo domain name as my main iPhone email account. It's the exact same mailbox (good) but when I send email from my iPhone, the sender sees my email addy as the .yahoo address. That could be confusing. This leads to my second critique.... (software fix)
  
• Provide a "reply to" option for email. (software fix)
  
• Allow email to be landscaped. Now I'm spoiled when using the browser (Safari) because I can turn the phone on it's side to view pages in landscape. This is great for some sites because of column width issues. But it makes viewing an HTML email seem less functional because I often times find myself turning the phone on it's side - but to no avail. (software fix)
  
• Provide a font size button. Not normally an issue due to the way you can double click on a column in a website to set the screen width to that column width. However for some pages that have no HTML columns, this can be hard to read in either landscape or portrait mode. Simple fix - provide a font size button - maybe just S,M, L. (software fix)
  
• Improve the AT&T Edge network. The speed is about twice that of a dial-up. This has been written about extensively. Well - it's not THAT bad but then, I'm used to nothing, so I still like it when not in a WiFi hotspot. Surprisingly, Google maps works pretty darn fast using the Edge network. Not sure why... (hardware fix to be compatible with 3G networks)
  
• Provide the ability to edit contact information or take notes while listening to a voice mail. This integration is not there so it's frustrating when someone leaves a phone number of message on a voice mail (not the originating phone number!) and you can't just input it into your contacts or take notes right away. (software fix)
  
• Provide a 'delete all' button for the camera roll. You have to go through one at a time to delete them. Since the download application uploads all your camera roll pictures into the computer at one time, it only makes sense that 95% of the time you would want to go back and delete all of them from the iPhone at one time. (software fix)
  
• Provide a sync to Yahoo! calendars. For Windows, it only syncs with Outlook. This is OK and works great but I don't like applications anymore that only exist on one machine. I work and I am at home - usually two (or more) machines. I want the same access from all places. The iPhone integrates lovely with Yahoo! Contacts so this would not be a stretch. The world is going ASP! (software fix)
  
• Start a manual email download when entering the email account, not the individual mail folder. Since I have two email accounts set up right now (and may add more), I don't really think it's necessary to have the extra touches. (software fix)
  
• Provide the ability for the Safari browser to add the currently viewed URL to your contact list web page field. Another integration point that would be very east to implement and pretty useful. (software fix)

That's all I have so far. If it sounds like I don't like it, it's not that at ALL. In fact, because the integration between applications and the usability is SO incredible - it actually makes the small areas of improvement that much easier and obvious to find!

Oh - the phone works great here in Dallas as well! hahaha

Modern Day Update Of Classic Comedy Bit

I thought this was pretty funny!

No Record This Month

June is over and the official rainfall measured at DFW Airport clocked in at 11.1 inches. This falls short of the June record set in 1928 of 11.58 inches. Of course there was no DFW Airport in 1928 so, who knows, maybe we did set a record. ;-)

June did, however, make the top 10 wettest months ever. In June we had 19 days of rain compared to May which brought 21 days of the wet stuff.

There is no end in sight. Every day here seems to be a 50/50 chance of thunderstorms. Very weird weather!

What's That Smell...?

It's my dishwasher! My White-Westinghouse dishwasher has washed it's last dish, sadly. I had a repairman out and he assessed the situation to be that the motor was broken. A repair would cost about 80% of just buying a new one. I have no reason to doubt him as his company does not sell dishwashers, only service.

I have no idea how old my dishwasher is. It came with the house which I bought in 1999.

The encouraging thing is that he said they really make good dishwashers now - built like tanks and very efficient. He recommended to stay with the big four manufacturers: Westinghouse, GE, Whirlpool and Maytag. Truth be told, I really don't use it that much, but it does come in handy during party cleanup and I know that my housekeeper appreciates it. I suspect I'll buy one of the cheaper ones among the good brands.

If anyone has any recommendations, please send them to me here. I'll probably hit the stores tomorrow.

Enough Already!

It just keeps raining and thunderstorming here in North Texas. In the 20 years that I have lived here I have never seen anything like it. The graphic to the right shows us closing in on a record June but it's been raining consistently here since March. It's almost as if I went to sleep and woke up in different city - one that has a rainy season.

I looked up some other statistics as well:

• Rainfall for the year so far: 31.83". Normal: 18.67". 70% more.
  
• May: 13 days w/ thunderstorms; 9 days w/ heavy rain; 21 days w/ light rain; rainfall 62% above normal; 22 cloudy days
  
• April: 4 days w/ thunderstorms; 2 days w/ heavy rain; 8 days w/ light rain; rainfall 12% below normal; 11 cloudy days
  
• March: 5 days w/ thunderstorms; 4 days w/ heavy rain; 14 days w/ light rain; rainfall 25% above normal; 14 cloudy days
  

I couldn't find the number of sunshine days for the year but I'm sure that it is dramatically smaller this year. So what's going on? I have the suntan lotion at the ready and figured out where the local public pool is but there are no opportunities.

I guess that means I must do more much-procrastinated paperwork. Yuck!

The Sony Book Reader

I bought the Sony PRS-500 book reader pictured above last week. I had been researching it for a couple of weeks. This reader reads Sony e-book formatted books, Word documents, PDF files, TXT files, etc.. It also plays music and displays pictures. The product came out at the end of last year (2006) and retails for $300. With your purchase, you get $50 worth of books from the Sony bookstore and 50 free "classics" of your choice. (though classics prior to 1923 can be found for free at manybooks.net).

Mostly, I very much like this book reader. The only dissatisfactions that I have have to do with software features that are not very mature but could be incorporated very easily into the existing product. Here is a summary:

The GOOD

• e-ink technology makes for amazing book-like reading
  
• size: 9 oz., 1/2 inch thin, 6" display - perfect combination of portability and readability
  
• battery life - amazing - 7500 page turns estimated. The device uses no battery while reading - just during page changes
  
• love having multiple books, articles and blogs 'carted' with me at one time
  
• relatively easy to put online articles into reader
  
• can change the text size dynamically
  
• expandable memory for even more books though I can't imagine needing to (stock - it can hold 80 normal sized books)
  
• access to classics published prior to 1923 for free (expired copyrights) at manybooks.net
  
• very simple software
  
• good bookstore
  
• most books are cheaper than buying through Amazon (example: Walter Isaacson: Einstein: His Life and Universe - Amazon price: $19.20, Sony price: $13.59)
  

The BAD

• Sony store doesn't have all titles - needs more
  
• comes with a very limited RSS capability. Only offers a handful of popular RSS feeds (blogs) and the format is too small. Plus I have noticed that it is not updated very frequently. This is EASY to fix - just bolt on a general third-party RSS reader (they are almost generic these days) and make sure the format is of appropriate size. This is (for me) a killer ap for these things. I cut-and-paste from my RSS reader (bloglines) into a Word document and then import into the Reader. Easy steps but easily avoided with minimal software work by Sony.
  
• Bad PDF support. Basically a PDF document gets shrunken to the Sony screen size so you can't read it. Again - this woud just take an easy software update and access to Adobe's API to fix.
  
• Unlike the iPod, the you can't make the Sony automatically synch up with the PC library through their software - you have to manually move articles over. That's fine and easy but I'd like an option for the automatic synch.
  
• no wifi capability. While I didn't buy it for that it would be nice in future products.
  
• dependent on Sony formatted books and it's bookstore.
  

As I said, the software updates would be easy to solve for Sony even with the existing reader and I actually expect them to happen. Though part of the equation will be how popular these things become. If Sony can sell more units by offering better RSS and PDF suppor they will certainly add these.

Not only do I like reading books on this, but I enjoy downloading internet articles and reading them later in an easier-to-read format than online on the PC. For example, I get a daily summary of all of Salon's articles (for a $30/year fee) in one file which is very easy to transport into the book reader.

This is an essential product if you travel a lot and are sick of bringing oodles of books and papers with you. It's a useful product if you like to read online content but hate reading articles of any length directly on the PC. It's also a useful product if you enjoy having access to books for cheaper prices.

The Sony PRS-500 is one of the very few e-ink technology products on the market and should be the product that starts making this technology more wide-spread although a few improvements would make it even more killer. I do sort of hate depending on Sony though... (but Apple doesn't have one right now!!!).

June Crepe Myrtles

Yes it's time for my annual June pictures of the crepe myrtles in the front of my house. Click the above picture for a larger size. Loyal readers of this blog (thanks Mom!) will no doubt remember the daily bloom progress I shared with you in 2005, as well as the early bloom picture from last year. The above picture was taken on June 23rd and seemed to represent the peak.

It IS interesting to have this documented and see the date difference each year!

Zipping Through The Trees

Yesterday I went down to Austin to do a Canopy Tour with the Cypress Valley Canopy Tour company. The tour was arranged through a DFW Adventure Group I belong to.

I drove down with four other people (thanks for driving Monica!!) from Dallas. The drive to Austin is a little over 3 hours and Cypress Valley is about an additional half hour northwest of Austin. This took us right through the most beautiful part of the Texas Hill Country. All in all our group consisted of about 20 people.

The Canopy Tour is modeled after similar tours that started in Central America - most notably Costa Rica. The idea is that a separate eco-system exists above or near the tree line in jungles that humans rarely get to see. IN a way this is a similar concept to scuba diving that allows one to experience an entirely different ecosystem underneath the sea.

The tour consisted of zip lines (see pictures) where you zip through the trees between platforms built around some of the larger trees and walking on bridges between platforms. We were about 40 feet in the air most of the time and some of the larger cypress trees were as tall as 150 foot. The zip lines were FUN and very non-dangerous feeling - i.e. I would recommend them to anyone. I just wish that we could have taken the longest and fastest one (we were going up to 30 mph) over and over again.

The guides were very good keeping us clipped in all the time and guiding us through all of the platform changes. We really didn't have to do ANYTHING with our equipment - they did it all. They were also knowledgeable about the trees and wildlife and pointed many things out to us. Though when on the zip lines, I was more inclined to enjoy the ride rather than try to observe nature! lol

Great fun! And all of the people in the group were really good company! BTW - credit to Todd and Monica for all the great pictures!

More pictures below. You can click on all of them (including the one above) to view the larger size.

Dallas Farmers Market Idea

So, I was reading the latest article in D Magazine about the Farmer's Market and about how important eating locally is (on a number of levels). I was so inspired! Dallas has one large farmer's market located downtown. While the focus of the article was multi-faceted, what caught me was the underlying assumption that if the current Farmer's Market was expanded, more people would come. I'm not so sure.

This got me thinking...

I think that the Dallas Farmer's Market may not be the best and only solution for a city the size of Dallas. I mean - it's great that it's open every day, it's great that it's so big, etc... but no matter how much better we make the parking situation and access by throwing more money towards it, I think that the inconvenience factor will always be there for most of us. At the end of the day, it's just too hard to most residents to go downtown to grab a bit of local produce and a fresh loaf of bread. This is a big city! And we have traffic, etc...

A better solution is a more European one (or big-city American as well) - bring the market to the citizens. The idea would be to supplement the current central farmers market with several smaller neighborhood markets. Perhaps these could be open once a week (for example, the Lower Greenville neighborhood on Saturday mornings, Oaklawn - Thursday night, Oak Cliff - Wednesday evening, etc..).

Unfortunately, the city of Dallas is putting more money into the Farmers Market in the next couple of years if I remember the article correctly. I'd like to see the money go towards helping establish these smaller markets.

Yes - each of these markets would be smaller but I think it would just be GREAT for all citizens in the city of Dallas. Can you imagine - having one night or morning a week where all your neighbors get together and shop for the freshest of local stuff! I'm sure that the local businesses would love it as the markets would drive traffic to their stores as well (especially if the various markets could potentially be setup during low-peak times for the businesses - talk about win-win!

A friend of mine mentioned after writing a draft of this that we could also look into using some under-utilized public parks for this - GREAT idea!

I understand there may be volume issues (can we make sure that the farmers are incentivized) and probably some zoning issues (noise, street - closings, etc..) but I'll bet with smart people looking for solutions - we would have a real opportunity to not only make our neighborhoods better and more friendly but also we would be doing a LOT (in my opinion) in driving demand for our local farmers.

I believe that by bringing the market to the citizens (instead of the other way around) we can provide a real quality low-cost service to Dallas residents, we could increase demand for local produce which would benefit our local farmers (and our taste buds!) and help provide for a bit more neighborhood/community feel in our city. Another benefit: Maybe we will all eat just a LITTLE bit better!

I sent a version of the above to my city councilwoman and she replied back that she thought it was, indeed, a good idea and suggested that I engage with the farmers market or other produce carriers to see if there is interest. I actually don't know if the Farmer's Market itself would be interested (competition?) but I would suspect that the farmers would be as I think it would increase demand for their products.

Not sure what the next step is, but I would be interested in opinions!

Monday Morning Haiku

"Falstaff" amused me
Funnel cake at Dallas Arts
Soprano's - What The...

Waikiki Observations

This week I went to Honolulu to explore a potential business opportunity. I stayed in the Waikiki area. While I had been to Waikiki a few times before, I had never really spent too much time there altogether. Early in my career I did a lot of consulting for Qantas in Australia and would stop at Waikiki for a on the way home for quick mini-vacations. Following are some quick snapshots of observations that I had...

• Their version of 7-11 is called "ABC". In Waikiki, these stores appeared on about every two blocks.
  
• ABC sold everything from gifts to tourists, aloha shirts, typical 7-11 type stuff and a lot of Japanese oriented treats (ex: bento boxes)
  
• Every other business is named Aloha something or other. Ok, I exaggerate - but only slightly...
  
• Honolulu is very much of a purely mixed Japanese and American culture. I as impressed how integrated and seamless to both cultures it appeared. For example, I went to a Japanese noodle house for lunch one day. In Japan, this can be slightly intimidating as nobody speaks English and the ordering process can be tricky to a newcomer. In Waikiki, though I was the only American there, the waitresses spoke English and ordering was just like in America even though I was seated next to the typical Japanese businessmen I had been used to seeing in Japan. The saba (salted Mackerel) I had was amazing! Like I remembered it was in Tokyo.
  
• Everybody wears Aloha / Hawaiian shirts. Tourists and businessmen alike. All that was missing were the lei's.
  
• I bought an Aloha shirt (from ABC store, of course!)
  
• Waikiki is very touristy (obviously) but I was also surprised at how many locals lived and worked there.
  
• Apartments are listed as either "furnished" or "partly furnished". Partly furnished means they come with appliances like a refrigerator and stove. Many apartments are furnished because many mainlanders maintain vacation apartments there.
  
• I found the service people very friendly and willing to talk about their experiences living in Honolulu.
  
• Roy's was excellent!
  

Tuesday Morning Haiku

Rain and wet weather
Dominated the weekend
Still relaxing time

"Once" (again)

I went to see the movie "Once" on Friday night after I had written my previous blog entry. You can listen to the whole movie soundtrack at the Fox Searchlight website and I highly recommend it. The music really is touching and beautiful.

I really enjoyed this little film. It's not really a musical but there is a lot of emotion conveyed between the boy and girl in the music that they play separately and together. Whether you are a musician or an avid listener, I believe that the music in this movie will remind you of the magic and force that it is capable of and probably what made you fall in love with music in the first place.

I certainly enjoyed all the musical aspects of this movie from the beat up guitar with the hole in it to the fascinating weekend in the low-budget studio. But what really won me over is the quirky charm of the leads and the positive reminder that there is great power in the human spirit.