Ponderings 1/18/16

It has been a little more than a year (September 2014) since I last blogged here. But the goal for 2016 is to do this either once a month or at a minimum once a year.

1. Sports bars have been updating # of TVs, quality of TVs, etc. but I believe there is opportunity for further improvement:

1A. In the same way that silent discos let you dance to your own beat, why don’t sport bars let you listen to your own game. Similar to gyms, a sports bar should have the ability for you to use a headset to listen to your game of interest.

1B. Bars should add interactivity between the patrons e.g., linking to people’s Fitbits/wearables and showing the avg. heart beat at the bar, measuring the overall bar noise, and adding a stadium like dance camera (Not exactly this idea but check out this sports conversation app: http://getgameonapp.com/ Snoop Dogg approves it. )

1C. Adding a simple +1 button that links to the POS system and directly orders another round of what your group is having without requiring your server.

1D. Adding more areas to stand at the bar. Not only will this increase capacity, but it will also make us feel less guilty about watching sports for 9 hours on a Saturday or Sunday. (http://www.wsj.com/articles/sports-sitting-will-kill-us-all-1443635202).

2.  What is the proper etiquette to stop the “sorry, go ahead” loop when two people are trying to talk at the same time on a conference call?

3. One of the best ways to be reminded about something you need to do is to see the person/be reminded of the person that you were supposed to do something for.

I want an app that would flash pictures of folks I frequently interact with via phone or e-mail to help jog my memory. Ideally others would do the same and remember the things they owe me. This app would improve my current method of taking a walk around the office.

4. New Year’s Day comes pretty often in 12 months

If you have already failed your New Year’s Resolutions here are a few renewal options: (I am sure you can find more than these) 1/24-27 Mahayana New Year, 2/8 Chinese New Year,  3/21 Norooz New Year, 4/8 Ugadi New Year, 4/22-4/23 Theravadin New Year, 10/2 Muharram New Year, 10/30 Diwali.

5. Presidential Debates need to be reformatted.  

I wish the presidential debates shifted away from a somewhat arbitrary method of choosing candidates to answer questions and a somewhat arbitrary method of question selection.  Instead I would love a debate with rounds on a set theme e.g., foreign policy, fiscal policy etc. Candidates have a round to present specific plans (which are shared in writing before the debate), a 2^nd round to articulate counter arguments, and then a 3^rd round to share final statements (3 rounds with equal time for each candidate). In today’s format, I believe the moderator has too much power and the candidates are easily able to stay at the surface level of topics.

6. I want the ability to take a photo album from a trip and make that a list of specific recommendations for a friend.

Photo apps should add a feature that allows you to pick the favorite places you visited from your albums, turn that into a list of recommendations (e.g., a picture of a meal into the restaurant name, and a picture of a sunset on a beach into the name of the beach) and share that with your friends that need recommendations for a place you visited. (Folks should check out Bucket if you want something working that does some of above: http://www.likebucket.com)

7.  Why haven’t bagels taken off in more Asian, African, or South American countries?

I can get pancakes, waffles, toast, cereal, oatmeal, but rarely a bagel and cream cheese.

Ponderings 9/17/14

A few weeks ago I received a few signs to blog about sauce. At every DSO annual retreat (www.dsoglobal.org) we eat at least one meal at Taco Bell. This year I grabbed the pictured sauce packet. Then my buddy Mark told me that he was excited for some actual sauce-related ponderings. So that got me thinking about sauce and what makes a sauce like Sriracha great. (cartoon on Sriracha sauce)

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1A. What makes a sauce have the potential to be great?

A. It adds moisture – We have a lot of dry foods and sauces add moisture to make things easier to eat.

B. Its taste immediately complements most foods – Sriracha, Cholula hot sauce, and other favorites can be placed on many food dishes. Sauces must contain ingredients that people can put on more than one type of cuisine.

C. It has a personality – You can find similar versions of all sauces. But the ones that become popular have personality and urban myths behind them.

D. It is marketed to college students and willing early adopters – You need to cater to undergrad students by getting your sauce in restaurants that target them.  Once students like a particular sauce they get hooked and start trying the sauce on various foods. Sauces allow students to be lazier while cooking.  

E.  It has excessive sodium – Americans love salt. Sauces that contain a lot of sodium are addictive and can be preserved well.

1B. If you want to extend past the sauce market and win the condiment market you need a fatty hook with low fat options. Today Mayonnaise is still the best selling condiment in the US.  

1C. Putting sauces on food can be taken as an insult in some countries. Would you feel insulted if someone put sauce on your food before tasting your food? Would you feel insulted if someone put sauce on your food after tasting your food?

2. When is the last time you went to the movie theater?

3. This week I was a juror on a short civic trial. Here are some thoughts on the process:

A. Peremptory challenges (Read this link for a basic overview) allow each lawyer to excuse jurors without stating a cause. They are not supposed to be used to discriminate for sex or race but without needing a cause what stops them from being used to discriminate?  

B. Counties should let you schedule your Jury duty each year in addition to the random selection process.  

C. Lawyers make enough money. They should have a fixed fee payable to the court that is used to provide jurors with bagels and coffee. If you choose to represent yourself you don’t have to pay the bagel fee.

D. Even if jurors try to take their role seriously there are major incentives to deliberate as quickly as possible so that jurors can return to their daily commitments. This creates an environment that reinforces group think and makes it hard to dissent.   

4. Ebola is spreading at an uncontrollable rate and needs more attention from the entire global community. Here’s a good paper that shows the scary reality.

5. I often avoid saying hi to someone that I think I know or someone that I know but haven’t seen for a long time. But those "Hi's" go a long way and let you take a nice stroll on memory lane. 

Note to self: Always say hi.    

6. People always debate which coast is the best to watch sports. Here’s how the debate looks across the major sports:

Some arguments for each coast:

• The West Coast lets you see the end of most weekday games.
• The East Coast lets you see the start of more games and it is likely easier to stay up late vs. leave work early.
• It is really hard to catch EPL games especially the early games on the west coast.  
• Long or late lunch breaks on the west coast are great for Champions league games.
• Everybody can watch all weekend NFL Games but it is harder to make Sunday brunch plans on the west coast.
• No one is watching the MLB early weekday games in stadiums or on TV.

7. This week’s throwback pondering: The last time I blogged about Taco Bell was on 3/13/11.  

In that post, I created a rule that I would always try to live in areas where the ratio of Taco Bells to Farmer Markets is >1.

Unfortunately my last 2 homes have failed to meet the criteria so it may be time to move away from health conscious people or change the rule.  

• Seattle, WA: 10 Taco Bells & ~12 farmer markets – 0.83 Ratio fails to meet criteria.  

• Cambridge, MA: 1 Taco Bell & ~5 farmer markets – 0.2 Ratio fails to meet criteria.

Ponderings 9/11/14

1. Apple’s announced its new smart watch this week. As the smart watch market grows I hope companies have thought about these issues:

A. Not showing unread e-mails. I am already obsessive when I see the unread number on my phone. I definitely don’t need another reminder.

B. Single vibration/notification – Making sure I am not getting vibrations from my watch and phone for every notification I get. Especially worried about this in meeting rooms.

C. Being fairly waterproof.

D. Being smooth – So that folks who insist on tracking their basketball/soccer movement data don’t cut me with their watch.

2. “What if?” by Randall Munroe, the creator of the xkcd comic, is a collection of “serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions”. He turned a blog into a book and its fantastic. Unfortunately a book will never be made about this blog since this is “unscientific rambling to questions you don’t have” and none of my ponderings have stick figure illustrations. (Send me a note if you would like to volunteer to illustrate these)

3. Serena Williams is the greatest tennis player of our generation not Roger Federer.

4. We need to stop over reacting to NFL games.  I know it is hard to maintain perspective when there are only 16 games in a season and an entire week in between games to overreact. But here’s the truth: If you are 1-0 you likely won’t win the Super bowl and if you are 0-1 you still can win the Super Bowl.

5. Many of us have been hypocritical about how the NFL handled the Ray Rice situation.  Without getting into whether the NFL should or should not punish players outside of the US legal system, we should make sure we are not being hypocrites like I was. I picked Ray Rice late in one of my fantasy football drafts thinking that he is a good football player and he only has a 2 week suspension. Just for a chance to win ~$200 (much smaller than the stakes for the league and the Ravens), I picked him.  I am embarrassed at how narrow-minded I was. If we don’t want to boycott (I love watching football but the league has some serious issues), we should at least make sure our fantasy rosters only include the players we are proud to root for.

6. Olive Garden’s overall sales have been dropping for some time but all I see them doing is offering more free pasta.

Here are 2 of their recent promotions:

A. “Buy one , Take one” – When you buy an entrée at Olive Garden you can take an additional one home.

B. Giving out 1000 passes to eat 7 weeks of unlimited pasta for $100. (Olive Garden already offers a 9.99 all you can eat pasta deal each year so you would need to go to Olive Garden 10 times in 7 weeks to beat that deal)

The 2nd promotion definitely built buzz. But I don’t think any of these are going to help sales when the best thing about an Olive Garden meal are the bread sticks and the mint. You can get 240 of those delicious Andes mints for $11 at Costco (Only 7*7*3=147 mints if you do 3 meals at Olive Garden every day for the 7 week promotion).  

7. When did attending a weekday NBA basketball game become so expensive?   

8. On #TBT I decided to take a look at some of my old ponderings..

A. From the first pondering post: Why does February have 28 days? We have 7 months with 31 days, 4 with 30 and 1 with 28. It could have been 7 months with 30 and 5 months with 31. With leap year making 6 months of 30 and 6 months of 31.

B. In December 2010, I ranted about emoticons. Its 2014 and its probably time to control f emoticon and replace all with emoji and repost it. (Good idea Maja)

C. Finally, I haven’t talked about Apple since May 2012. In that post I wanted and still want Apple to let you change Siri’s voice to Samuel L Jackson, Lil John, Morgan Freeman, and Dick Vitale’s voice. Lil John would be the default so that no one would get upset when Siri didn’t understand what you were requesting and responded with” “What”.

Ponderings 9/4/14

1. In the past few weeks there have been several fights about seat reclining. The recent surge in fights has been caused by a new product called Mr. Knee defender. The product allows you to prevent the seat in front of you from reclining.  

Recent fight: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/aug/26/plane-diverted-as-passengers-fight-over-seat-reclining

Just like sharing arm rests on a flight there are no clear rules for seat reclining. Here’s my stance:

A.    Knee defenders shouldn't be allowed on airlines. (That said major kudos to the person who invented them)
B.    When you purchase a seat you purchase the right to recline.
C.    Just because you have a right doesn't mean you have to use it. Look at the situation and make a call on whether you recline or not.
D.    In general only recline when cabin lights are dimmed and if you want to recline at other points be respectful to the person behind you.
E.     Airlines suck and keep squeezing customer service for higher margins. We need to find ways to channel our anger at them and be willing to pay premiums for airlines that actually emphasize customer service. 

2. Every global basketball competition reminds me that Pau Gasol is an amazing player. Bulls fans should be excited for a healthy Pau.

3. It is really difficult to make a group decision on where to eat. Apps like Yelp provide too many suggestions and most urban places have multiple high rated options for almost all cuisines. Here are a few features I would like to have to improve these apps:

A.  Poll the group. When you do a yelp search you select a few restaurants that sound interesting and directly from the app send a poll to your friends you are eating with to vote on the top option.

B.  Poll an expert. Same as above but you can send the poll to friends who have lived in the area you are currently nearby.

C.  Easy vetoing. When you are searching for restaurants you can easily remove categories of restaurants someone has recently eaten at or doesn’t like. I believe more people tend to say no Pizza today vs. lets do Chinese today. People keep vetoing until a decision is made.

D.  Personal secretary option. I provide the time I want to eat, the size of my party, and any group dietary restrictions.  With that information the service makes the decision and the reservation if applicable.

E.  Decision Roulette. You provide the names and the app selects a person to make the decision for the group. The person has a minute to decide otherwise the app switches back to personal secretary option mode.

4. Brainstorming with post-its and white boards is really effective. But I am still waiting for an easy and instant way to capture the essence and visual structure of the discussions in a digital and easily editable format.

5. Debate Cookie Jar: There should be an app that lets you admit you were wrong about some fact or argument. In a discussion you may overstate a fact or make another false claim. Most of us never own up to this. The app would let you apologize for something you did wrong and make you pay a dime to the person/people you were talking with. Over time I would choose to debate with the people who had paid the most dimes because it shows they are willing to debate and willing to admit they are wrong time to time.

6. Cooking without measuring cups and precise instructions is much more fun. It lets you be more creative and when you fail miserably there is always Sriracha and Cholula.

Image sourced from: www.gadgetduck.com

Ponderings 8/26/14

1. Earthquakes and wine don't go together. 

2. Today it’s a lot easier to work across countries and time zones. But depending on the time difference there can be no overlaps in working hours (I defined this as 8am-6pm). Similarly, keeping in touch around the globe can be hard if there is no overlap during non-working and non-sleeping hours (defined as 7-9 am & 5-11pm). I created a table to visualize compatible cities for work collaboration as well as compatible cities for communicating outside of working hours.

Some interesting findings:

A. San Francisco and the Pacific Time Zone don't share work hour compatibility with Europe, Africa, and most of Asia. PST is fairly compatible with East Asia and Australia.

B. European and African Cities can find time to work with most places in the world but rarely will find downtime to communicate with friends around the world during non-working hours.

C. It is pretty difficult to communicate between US coasts during non-working hours. Especially if the person on the west-coast works late.

D. It should be pretty easy to keep in touch with a buddy in India

3. Lebron James is the best general manager in the NBA. During the offseason he managed to build a younger big 3 that has immediate championship potential and more upside. And this time people love him for doing so.

4. Recently there has been a lot of backlash against the ALS challenge. The two main contention points are the waste of water and that this challenge is moving the attention away from other global issues. 

Here’s my stance:

A. If you are going to do the challenge find a clever way to reuse the water. Do the challenge on grass, find a water substitute, or use a smaller ice amount.

B. Find 1-2 recurring ways to save water and pledge to do these in your video. For example, collect the water you waste warming the shower up or shower for 2 minutes less each day. These will have more impact on the drought than the water wasted for the ice challenge.

C. Donate a recurring amount to ALS. Fundraising is difficult and viral campaigns are hard to recreate. ALS donations will likely drop back close to pre-ALS challenge levels once the campaign dies down.  Recurring donations will help ALS have sustainable funding.

D. Speak up about/find ways to support the other causes and issues you care about. FB may not be your venue of choice but find some venue.  

5. Services need to be careful about providing too much in free trials (especially to cheap folks like me) when the free service may be all the customer wants.

A. I signed up for a free 30 day trial for Amazon unlimited. During the 30 days, I finished the 5 books I actually wanted to read in their unlimited list. Now that I have unsubscribed it will be hard to get me back on the service even if their list of available books increase. (Remembering to unsubscribe is hard though)

B. I wanted to print out digital photos so I signed up for an account with Shutterfly that offers 50 free prints. 50 free prints was more than I needed and I didn't gain any loyalty to Shutterfly.

6. You know you need to ease up your competitive side when you find satisfaction repeatedly lapping 60 year olds swimming in your lane. But luckily the 13 year olds that speed past me bring me back to reality.  

Ponderings 8/19/14

1. Introductory e-mails are fairly awkward but I don’t think they need to be.

Common introductory emails are for: 1. A person moving to a new city with a person who lives in/knows the city, 2. A person looking for a job with a particular company with a person who works for that company, 3. A person debating career paths with a person who picked one of those career paths, 4. A person looking for information in a particular industry with a person with experience in that industry etc.

In all of these scenarios there is someone who could clearly get value (the “receiver”) from the introduction as well as someone who could provide value (the “giver”). This dynamic unfortunately makes these introductions awkward. It is unclear which party should respond first and its unclear whether e-mails took place behind the scenes privately between the introducer and the “receiver” and the introducer and the “giver”.  There are introductions without a clear “receiver” or “giver” but most introductions I do have some element of this.

To make this process more transparent and less awkward I propose the following rules:
A.     If you are being introduced to someone, regardless of whether you are the “receiver” or the “giver” you respond immediately thanking the introducer and following up on it. This removes the scenario where both parties are waiting for the other person to reply.
B.     Schedule a short phone call (It can be 15 minutes). This is not only a favor to the “receiver” but also a favor to the introducer. And for folks who do this a lot they know that more often than not the “giver” and “receiver” roles can quickly change and the “giver” often gets more value out of an introduction.
C.     Move the introducer off the thread but follow up with the introducer to let them know what came out of the introduction.
D.     Say no immediately if you don’t have time. Don’t lead a person on and don’t keep moving a meeting you don’t have the bandwidth to make. Be upfront if you don’t have time or no longer are interested in the original introduction. The first impression reflects not only on you but also the introducer. 

2. The popularity of selfies has made everybody understand the arm length of all of their friends. In each of our groups we know the person with the longest arm that also has the technical know-how of proper selfie phone positioning.

3. The NFL Pre-Season has minimal upside but a huge risk of downside. You do get to see young players improving and get your first glances at the potential highly touted draft picks but you inevitably see injuries to key players for your team. Since the games don’t matter the joy of any touchdowns is immediately erased by any injury. It is also hard to judge how your team is playing since many starters don’t play or play sparingly.

4. Levi’s Stadium, the new 49ers stadium, has some ground breaking technology. The stadium boasts great connectivity and apps for viewing replays, finding bathrooms, and ordering food. Watching a few stadium tours got me thinking about what I would really want as a fan watching a football game in a stadium.

A.      The ability to watch and listen to the broadcast audio feed. When something questionable is happening on the field (challenges, injury status of a player etc.) it is hard to determine what happened. Every once in a while it is nice to be able to view the TV broadcast and hear what the announcers are saying.

B.      “Viewing rooms” – I want the ability to have a synced audio feed with all of your buddies watching the same game regardless of where your buddies are located. (i.e. Buddies can be in the stadium or at home) Once you are synced the experience is like a conference call where everyone can hear each other and share reactions live. (I am assuming you can come up with a solution to make sure everybody is watching at exactly the same time. So maybe we start with stadiums first.)

C.     Google glass like devices that allow you see the first down line, instantly watch replays, and give you real-time information on a player you may be looking at with the glasses.

D.     Comfortable seats that can give you massages to calm you down during tense moments.

E.      Seat controls that let you control the height of your seat. The feature would help short fans and fans that don’t like standing. (Stadiums should just mandate standing in most sections to avoid this feature)

5. Cell phones should automatically try to find out as much information about a caller not in your address book when you receive a call from them.

A.     Revealing where the call is coming from

B.     Search to see if this is a number registered with a company or an individual and if it can find anything display the result

C.     Determine whether it is a cell phone or land line

D.     Mention whether the number has called you before and if so when was the last time

6. We as humans are really bad at walking in other people’s shoes. If you aren’t personally near an issue or haven’t had experiences with the issue take time to talk to people who have had that experience (wear the shoes). Also don’t dismiss an issue just because you haven’t encountered it. If you are wearing the shoes don’t automatically reject anything someone without the shoes may say. Take time to inform people not in the know of what you know.

Side Note: Women tend to own more pairs of shoes than men and also seem to be better at the above. Just pondering…

7. To celebrate national left hander day I would like to complain about the lack of lefty gloves and golf clubs in PE class, scissors, can openers, knives, spiral notebooks, driving rules, and ink pens.

8.  It is pretty fun and great as a consumer to watch Uber and Lyft fight it out. We should all make bold and detailed predictions about the battle. 5-10 years from now one of us could be writing the best-selling novel: “How I and only I knew who would win the car sharing battle for 10 key reasons”

I last pondered on 8/19/12. Today is 8/19/14. During this 2 year hiatus I tried but failed to improve my writing, spelling, and grammar skills and I tried but failed to get Merriam-Webster to make “ponderings” a word. After a 2 year break change to this blog is long overdue. (i.e., Why does the background still look like a 5^th grader is writing this blog) I am hoping to get back to a regular blogging rhythm but looking for new ideas and collaborators. If you have suggestions or are interested in collaborating let me know. 

Ponderings 8/19/12

1. Parents should start naming their kids with unique and new names. (Feel free to throw in numbers, and symbols) Your kids will thank you when they are signing up for gmail, twitter, and other social media accounts.

2. Wild animals must be very confused about humans. Some want to kill them, while others just want pictures of them. (Also animals must freak out the first few times they see cameras pointed at them)

3. After Usain Bolt claimed he was the greatest athlete of all time, I started thinking about the criteria that should be considered when trying to compare athletes.
A. Popularity of the sport worldwide
B. Number of people who play sport (What is the size of pool of all potential challengers)
C. Number of Countries where sport is played
D. Number of championships/medals (This needs to be weighted by the number of medals or championships available to an athlete. For example swimming has many more medals and titles than boxing)
E. Number of years being Number 1
F. Influence athlete has on sport (technique, rules, brand, popularity)
Based on the above, I think Bolt is in the discussion but doesn't have enough A, B, C, or E to be the greatest.

4. Cameras should add  a feature where as someone starts walking into your picture the camera starts beeping. This would either get the picture intruder to stop or to let the picture taker know he will need to wait.


5.If National Parks ever get cell phone service or WIFI get ready for some awesome apps to help you with all of the below.
A. Can I eat this Berry?
B. How many miles left in this hike?
C. Where is the trail?
D. Is there any other cell phone near me? Am I secluded enough to use wilderness as my bathroom?
E. Which hikes are people seeing cool wildlife on?
F. How far back is my slow hiking buddy? How far ahead is my super-fit hiking buddy?
G. What are some good hiking riddles?

6. Do you really trust the people sitting in the emergency aisle to be able to fulfill their responsibilities in an emergency?