Tag: work

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business

At least it was a nice day for a drive

UWS church in NYC

It’s been a really busy week and it’s barely Wednesday

The thing with what I do is I send out proposals all of time and hope that one of them sticks. Had about five things out and didn’t hear anything so I continued with all my projects and personal tasks.

Then they all came through, which is good for scratch but not good for being able to much of anything else. Think I finally was able to shut off my brain at around 3AM

Spent yesterday all over Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island. My damn lying GPS just made it worse.

At least it was a nice day for a drive.

Location: surrounded by papers
Mood: busy
Music: you don’t live downtown no more And everything must come and go
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personal

Mussels in a white-wine reduction > Powerpoint presentation

Mussels in white wine sauce

Wrote this long thing about my 9/11/2001 but I’m not in the mood yet to post it. Maybe next year?

That’s all I’ll say on the topic to spare you the 9/11 overload.

———-

Been prepping for another lecture; this one I’m giving downtown in front of a lotta US attorneys tomorrow. Should really post somea the videos when I’m done but then I figured it’d just put you to sleep.

HG and I went on two dates recently, both at nice local taverns – PJ Clarke’s and PD O’Hurley’s. No particular reason, the weather’s just cooled down enough so that going outside is bearable. Reminded us of when we were still dating. New York City’s a bit wasted on us since we’re so blase to it. Trying to fight that.

Dunno if I ever told you, but I don’t cook in the summertime. Almost not at all. Too hot.

But the weather’s cooled down lots so I made some mussels in a white wine reduction – was trying to recreate a dish we both had and enjoyed on onea our dates.

It was good, not great. Too much alcohol left in the pot gave it a bit too much sting in the backa the throat. Did reduce down the sauce after we had all of the mussels the next day; poured it on some angel hair pasta and it was killer.

Will have to make more soon. For now, though, gotta make a Powerpoint presentation. Not nearly as much fun.

 

Location: the desk, working
Mood: hopeful
Music: just different faces, different names, get me out of here
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business

Stupid on different subjects

Street lamp in Byrant Park, in NYC

Me: Niggardly is a Scottish word meaning “cheap.”
Him: Nope, it’s Scandinavian. (gets dictionary)
Me: Dammit! I hate being wrong…

The weather’s been great in the city since Irene. Calm, cool, dry – it actually feels a lot more like early fall than anything else. Suppose I should enjoy it.

No time to do that today, though. Gotta be in court – although this time it’s not for me but a client. When it comes to court cases and clients, I usually play a supporting role behind the scenes. This time, though, sitting front and center. For a guy that doesn’t litigate, this’s always interesting.

Dunno how people get anything done in hot climates; always feel lethargic and slow in the summertime. But the second it feels like fall, it’s like the year’s begun.

Like to teach myself something every year. Twain said that we are all stupid, just on different subjects. That’s true – I hate not knowing something.

Dunno if I told you but this year, I decided to learn calculus. No real reason except I never did. But then I thought I should do something a bit more practical so I turned back doing  my Mission real estate courses.

Funny isn’t it? The whole time I was in school, dreamed of being outta it. Now that I’m outta it, dream of being in it (especially in the fall). It’s the human condition to blunt the sharp points of our memories.

Enough armchair philosophy, got an important date with an adult in a robe.

Ed note: Niggardly is completely unrelated to the racial slur – which it merely sounds like – the pejorative comes from Spanish/Portuguese noun negro.

Location: heading downtown
Mood: busy
Music: hell ya blew trial and tha judge gave you 25 with an L
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business

Why I bought the HP Touchpad; Doing the Opposite Thing

HP Touchpad review pictures

Spent the last couple of days trying to land the HP Touchpad. In fact, immediately upon returning from my trip, started the process – that’s how we dorks roll. For those of you that don’t know/have a real life, HP spent $1.8 billion to buy the operating system for the Touchpad, started selling it like three months ago, and then abruptly dropped the whole thing.

Ended up ordering like 18 of them knowing that most would get cancelled, which they did; right now, I’m scheduled to get about three of them and this may change.

The question, of course, is Why would I buy the HP Touchpad when I already have an iPad?

The answer is that, as a $599 iPad competitor, there’s no question that it’s simply not as good and not worth the money. As a $150 colour eBook reader, that’s a completely different story. Since I use my iPad 99.9999% of the time as a PDF and ebook reader, most of it’s functionality is wasted.

So I’m thinking of just selling the iPad and using the HP Touchpad as a stopgap device until the iPad 3, or even the iPad 4, comes out.

The other reason to get it, however, is to hack it to run the Android operating system in a year or so. From everything I’ve read the OS on the tablet (webOS) is excellent. The problem is that there just aren’t enough apps for it. For the next year, the built in Kindle App and Facebook app – the only tablet Facebook app from what I’ve read – coupled with the built in ebook reader and 50GB of cloud storage for life, should make it a worthwhile stopgap device for me for the next 18 and by then, a stable Android os hack should be floating around.

It’s coming in a week or so, so I’ll post details as it comes about.

End unabashed dweeb.

Red plastic down near Canal Street, NYC

Me: OK, I’m ready.
Her: Do you have your swim trunks?
Me: No.
Her: Do you have your hat?
Me: No.
Her: Do you have your sunglasses?
Me: No.
Her: (Shakes head)
Me: I’ll go pack those right now.

Now that the vacation’s over, it’s back to work.

Met up with my old business buddy for some good Irish stout. He owns Cruisedirect.com, which just got listed in the Inc 5000 as one of the fastest growing companies in America. That puts his biz in the top 1% of all businesses in the country.

Did y’know that the Empire State Building was built in the middle of the great depression? There’s this saying that Any company can be good in good times, only great companies can be good in bad times. Sometimes, doing the opposite thing of the rest of the world’s the way to go.

Getting itch to start something up again and I’ve got a few ideas percolating.

We’ll see how it goes.

———-

Just for laughs, Google the words “Intellectual Property NYC” and then click “videos” on the left-hand side.

What do you see where you are?

Location: prepping for some business
Mood: ambitious
Music: don’t you worry, it could be so sweet
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business personal

Quiet summer weekends in New York City

View of Bryant Park Grill, NYC

Friday had lotsa meetings lined up, onea which was with an old work associate. Ended up being a three hour meeting. In a nutshell, he got screwed. I’d fight hard for any client but even more so when it’s a friend.

As an odd twist, on an unrelated point, his old boss was the CEO of a Fortune 100 company – and a kid that I went to elementary and junior high school with. We both knew each other because we were in the nerd group. It’s like being in the cool group except the complete opposite of everything and no one calls you except to get homework assignments.

Me: Tell him you know Fatlogan.
Him: They really called you that?
Me: (laughing) That or Whaleboy. Ask him and see. He’ll remember me only because I was the second fattest kid in the whole school and always wore the same four shirts.

I wonder if he talks like a kid from Queens.

Afterward, my boss and I grabbed some food and rum over at The Bryant Park Grill. Then more rum at the Cellar Bar. And then more rum at Salute. He thinks I’m good at what I do. It’s nice to hear. Even nicer when there’s rum involved.

Two glasses of water at Bryant Park Grill, NYC

Saturday, HG and I rented a whip and made it out to Staten Island for some family stuff. Spoke to HG’s cousin for a bit.

Her: I think that when people have kids, they’ll be a lot like they were.
Me: Then that means my kids’ll be pantsed a lot.

It was a nice drive there and back. Afterward, the wife and stopped by to get some frozen yoghurt at a new joint down from us called 16 Handles. Afterward, we lumbered home.

Me: It was a nice weekend.
Her: It was. But it’s good to be home.

Glass of rum on the rocks with a thick slice of orange at Salute! NYC

Location: sweating at a wooden desk
Mood: dreading the heat
Music: the future could it be the good old days
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Getting rid of clear stars in iTunes

How to remove hollow / transparent stars in iTunes

Actually have a slight bit of downtime this week so I’m spending it doing a buncha tasks I’ve been putting off, like clean up my amazingly chaotic music library.

One thing that was driving me crazy was removing all the transparent / hollow stars from my iTunes library. After some googling and tweaking, finally figured it out:

  • Select “Grid View” by pressing this button.

  • Press “Apple key ⌘ + A” to select all – CTRL+A if you’re using a PC
  • Right click and select “Album Rating > None”

You’re done. 5 seconds.

There’s never a time when you’re just done with stuff – everything is a constant maintenance issue. Just the way it is, I guess. Sometimes, feel like it’s like playing Whack-a-Mole where, once you solve one small issue, a new one pops up.

Off to wrestle…

———-

If this entry helped you at all, leave a comment and take a look at the rest of this blog about life in NYC or consider picking up my eBook thriller about organized crime in NYC, The Men Made of Stone; sold everywhere for just $2.99!

The Men Made of Stone - Logan Lo
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Location: my apartment, putting on kneepads
Mood: relaxed
Music: another chance and a someday soon Shining like the Alabama moon
YASYCTAI: Clean up your music files, they must be a mess. (hours/1 pt)
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business personal

My three business credos

Birds on a wire; pigeons on a streetlight, NYC

Think I’m gonna stop writing for Technorati. No major single reason but a few little ones:

  1. Been crazy busy with work and those articles take me longer than anticipated to write – plus they make change requests that eat up more time
  2. Kinda feel like there’s no real support for articles since they run them all equally without any promotion
  3. There’s no means of auto-publishing. This I understand cause they want some editorial control but it has ramifications for me.

My three business credos, which’ve enabled me to not have a “real job” for decades yet still live comfortably, are:

  1. Underpromise, overdeliver.
  2. Save 10% of everything you ever make.
  3. Be a man of your word

It’s the last one that causes my friction with Technorati. Said to readers that we’d publish weekly on Fridays and yet, no; the editors manually put up each entry so articles’re published when an editor gets around to it.  They completely missed publishing last week.

It’s not as if I think people’re waiting with bated breath for my next installment; it’s that I said I do it.

When I say I’ll do something, it gets done. Even the people that can’t stand me know that if I give my word, it’s done.

Figure that my job’s to write and their job’s to publish. Y’can’t keep bugging someone to do what they’re supposta. Ergo, no more column.

It’s a shame – liked writing it and they weren’t bad fellas, just maybe understaffed.

Maybe I’ll move it somewhere else – any ideas?

———-

Him: How do we get to the museum?
Me: Just walk down Broadway and make a left at 79th Street. Keep walking straight until you see a large building that looks like a museum.

HG’s brother stayed over the other night and enjoyed hanging out in the city enough to stay for another dinner. We ended up doing Vietnamese the first night and pizza the next.

It’s nice when your significant other’s siblings and relatives aren’t jerks. Hoping they think that it’s nice that their sibling’s fiancee’s not a jerk too. It’s rough when that’s not the case.

Went to wrestle the other day and now my neck’s all jacked up; can barely move right now.

Man, the holidays’re gonna leave me a porker.

Location: at my desk, immobile
Mood: in pain
Music: I guess action speaks louder than words
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Getting Clients – Under promise and over deliver

West Village, downtown NYC

Few years back, got this assignment that involved about 20 separate deals. That was the high water mark for coin in a month for me. This month, thought I might beat that record and it’s close.

Been putting in about 15 hour days trying to get everything accomplished in time. After the dismal past two years where I was living just enough for the city, this’s a welcome relief.

Friend of mine recently asked me how I get my clients. Told her that I subscribed to Giuliani’s mantra of under-promising and over delivering. That is say, never took on something that I knew I couldn’t do and do well and never gave a price or a deadline that I knew I couldn’t make.

When y’do zero advertising and rely on word-of-mouth to pay the bill, your reputation for getting the job done’s paramount.

On a related point, always find that I’m more productive all of round when I’m firing on all cylinders. Something about working like crazy makes you keep working like crazy, don’tcha think?

Back to the grind.

Location: in fronta papers
Mood: sick
Music: father works some days for fourteen hours
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