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.