Well I made it up to NYC in one piece. Came up with a buddy of mine this week to visit a friend because we had to cancel a trip last year and our tickets were about to expire. Did a ton of walking around today and am pretty exhausted. Walked off that tasty slice from lunch hopefully. Good practice for the fitness challenge I guess (the walking, not the pizza). The weather has been kind of overcast and cool today, but i like that usually so its okay. After not much sleep last night (due to packing and an early flight) and walking around all day today, we were pretty exhausted and decided to crash for the evening. So here I am in the hotel at 8pm. How lame is that?!?! Don't worry, I'll make up for this the rest of the week. Anyway, looking forward to seeing a friend tomorrow or the next day and going to a taping of The Daily Show on Thursday. Other than that, no concrete plans. Just going to see where we end up. So I guess bye for now. Hope everyone is well.

After a number of consecutive weekends in the office with the rest of the team, we are pretty close to being caught up with all the projects we've got going. So last weekend, I finally got out and played golf on both Saturday and Sunday. It was a much needed break and the weather is warming up now so I'm looking forward to hitting the course as much as possible this summer. Maybe I'll get my score down to a respectable number sooner or later.

CNN Video of residents rallying to keep the Sonics in Seattle.

I recently made a hotel reservation and they sent me an email inviting me to visit a website they setup where you can meet and interact with the guests who will be there during the same time period. They are basically just forums, one for each month, but I thought it was interesting. If you found the right type of hotel with the right audience, our social functionality might be a great fit. Even afterwards maybe, if you wanted to upload pictures you took during your trip, or pics and reviews of the hotel itself.

From the email...

To make your stay even more exciting we've created a site where you can meet fellow Pod Hotel travelers who are staying at the Pod Hotel when you are---before you get there!

Please note your reservation number, which will be your password, and your login is your email address.

Go beyond your pod!
http://podculture.thepodhotel.com

The following is from a blog I ran across about staying fresh on projects, and is definitely true in my opinion.

"When do we do our best work? When we're excited about something. Excitement morphs into motivation. We do our best work when we're motivated. A great way to stay motivated is to work on something new. No one likes being stuck on a project that never seems to end.

The typical project

The typical project starts out great but then our motivation and interest wanes as time goes on. It's natural. Staying interested in a project over a long period of time is a challenge for anyone. The longer the project the thinner the tail. You're not going to do your best work in the tail.

The ideal project

When you break a big project into smaller chunks - into tiny projects - you stand a better chance at maintaining motivation and rekindling interest. When you have a pie of tiny projects you get the chance to work on something new more often. We do our best work when we're excited about starting something new.

Break problems down to their atomic level

The best way to optimize for new is to break features and projects down to their atomic level. Keep breaking them down until you all you have left are a lot of small project elements instead of a few big project molecules."