Open mind, insert thought

The story starts, as so many good stories do, in Vegas.  Through a magnificent turn of events, I found myself in a suite at the Wynn with the cool (and very hospitable) founders of Sling Media and two of my bandmates from Soul Patch (Ryan and Jason, who also happen to be VCs with Foundry Group, formerly of Mobius).  As a band, Ryan, Jason and I had just taken over the Rockband setup in the suite, played over the plasma mounted in front of those insane floor-to-ceiling gold-tinted windows the Wynn is known for.  We rocked Dani California hard (proud to say I scored 100% for my efforts on vocals!), and given how much we seemed to have loved the game, the guys from Sling had us watch the Guitar Queer-o episode of South Park.  While they were setting everything up to watch the show, I heard "I just grabbed the torrent for this last week."  We watched, and after laughing until I cried, I knew I had to have this episode.

Here's where the confessional part of the post comes in - I had never before used BitTorrent.  Certainly I knew how the technology worked, but I'd never taken the time to make use of it myself.  So, I grab the BitTorrent-brand BitTorrent client and set about searching for South Park torrents.  Find the one I wanted and fire it up.  This probably means I owe someone somewhere the entire cost of creating every South Park ever in existence, so I'm not sure why I'm writing this.  Anyhow, once I have the finished package all pieced together, I pop it open.  Not a video in site, only .rar files.  Not only had the original been broken into torrent pieces, the original original was broken into a multi-volume RAR archive.  So now I'm off to try to find some shareware to combine these.  WinRAR does the trick and has a free trial period (if I use it ever again, I'll buy it - fine).  Okey doke, now we're off and running.  Files are combined and I get a single .wmv out the other end.  But it won't run - I get sound but no video in Media Player.  Back to the original torrent site, and I'm warned that most of the files here are probably encoded with DivX, but then again maybe another codec is used.  They suggest playing all the files with VLC media player to be sure I have all the codecs needed.  OK, so I download that.  Now it's working great - on my PC.  But I want to play it in the family room from my Mac Mini (here's where a Slingbox would come in handy, eh?).  I take a look at the stream info through VLC and, sure enough, I need DivX.  I bring the .wmv over to the Mac Mini (good thing I already have Flip4Mac installed there, which allows QuickTime to play .wmv files), and I grab the DivX codec off their site.  Then - success!  It works!!

I play the episode for Jenni and she laughs until she cries, too.  And I feel like a master of the fractured, incredibly non-user-friendly world of torrents.

Posted by Scott D. at 08:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jennifer, Dani and I went to see the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the San Jose Tech Museum today.  It was every bit as fascinating as we'd hoped, probably a bit more.  I'd read about the plastination process prior to our visit, but was still amazed to see how perfect yet imperfect the preservation and presentation was.  Also surprising (to me) was the strict way that the displays were referred to as "plastinates" rather than "people," "donors," or "bodies."  A few of the many highlights from the show:

• A display where the muscles were removed from and standing next to the skeleton of one donor. The plastination process makes the muscles firm enough to stand on their own.
• The fact that the kneecaps were always with the muscles, never with the skeletons (they're seriously embedded in the tendons and ligaments of the legs).
• An entire room devoted to embryo and fetal development, including a plastinate opened to reveal an embryo (as well as the black lung from smoking that, apparently, killed the pregnant donor).
• Embryos and fetuses at just about every stage of development
• The Exploded Man, which was a plastinate completely separated (individual organs, systems, etc.) and suspended and expanded to take up twice the normal space of a body.
• The various penises and vaginas (the latter both shaved and natural - don't ask why I notice these things) on the plastinates.  Jenni, in a moment of humor, covered Dani's eyes (the girl's 6 months old - I don't think I was warping her mind, dear).
• Incredibly thin slices of plastinates that made cross-sections (an entire body was shown in this way).
  
• And, in the center room, the brain itself.  Healthy brains, brains that had suffered from strokes and had blackened marks on them, and a brain ravaged by Alzheimer's.

It was a truly stunning experience.  I would recommend that you go, but if you live in the Bay Area you might be out of luck as it's closing at the Tech on January 26th.  If it comes to your city, take the time to attend.

Also would like it noted that Jenni and I are really pushing the boundaries of new parenthood.  I carried Dani around in a front-carrier the entire show, and she was a perfect angel.  She's such a flirt, she definitely made a few friends and garnered more than her share of smiles.  Cheers to a fun day out and a grand adventure in having a baby and enjoying the world.

Quick shoutout - for the second time in as many weeks I ran into Geoff Ralston.  He was there with his son to attend the show, guess they were just leaving as we walked in.  Hope you guys enjoyed it as much as we did! 

Photo courtesy of Body Worlds

Posted by Scott D. at 05:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I attended the 2008 CES, which meant I was in Las Vegas for a full week.  Yes, I did survive.  Barely.  Imagine four six-hour days in a row of standing at a demo station, giving essentially the same pitch every 10-15 minutes.  Follow that up with the requisite Vegas lifestyle each night (the evening STARTS around 11:30), and you might understand why I'm just a bit burnt this weekend.

It was not all bad (actually, it was kinda worth it ;) ).  The highlight of the week undoubtedly was hooking up with my good Colorado friends from Soul Patch, Ryan and Jason.  They're with Foundry Group, a VC firm in Boulder, and they were in town to see the latest and greatest toys.  We grabbed dinner, then headed to the suite at the Wynn where the guys from Slingbox were staying.  The suite was insane, and they had Rock Band hooked up to the Plasma.  We took our positions, Ryan playing guitar, Jason on the drums, and me on the mic (there was no second guitar controller for playing bass).  The song was Dani California, and if I must say, this tired set of bandmates rocked the Wynn.  I scored 100% on the vocal line, a feat of which I'm quite proud!  After that, of course, there were cocktails, people watching (by which I mean woman watching - good lord, Vegas brings out something in people...), and then a promise to meet again soon.  After parting with those guys, I ended up at LAX at the Luxor to meet my team mates - but that's another story.

Glad I went, glad to be home, hoping there's no permanent damage to my sleep patterns. 

Posted by Scott D. at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The new year has arrived.  It is a year I have been eagerly awaiting, perhaps the year for which I have most prepared in my life.  I start the year as the father of a happy and healthy six-month-old baby girl, a husband of twelve years, and a professional of ten.  That framework combined with a significant amount of work examining where I am and what I'm doing provide the basis for a year of change.  Good change, hard-fought change, but ultimately change that I can accomplish purposefully.

Of the many lessons 2007 taught me, one stands out: I can be selfish.  Selfish almost to the point of being childish.  What's in it for me, how does this make me happier, what can I do to warp this situation to suit my needs of the moment?  Perhaps it's the only child in me coming to the surface in my adulthood.  Perhaps it's the "guy" in me who simply wants his way all the time.  2007 was about breaking down a petulant sense of entitlement, a year of examining my motivations and my goals.  It was painful, personal, and honestly not a year I'd care repeat.  While many wonderful things happened in 2007, both personally and professionally, it was also very sad and very scary.  2008 will be about understanding what is truly important, prioritizing those things above others, and following through.  Every day, every week, every month of this year, listening honestly and acting decisively with passion and compassion.

I'm glad you're here, 2008.  We needed you to come. 

Posted by Scott D. at 03:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)