Phase 2 Nostalgia

Edit:  This is really long. Sorry.

You know, it’s funny how life works.  My 27th year has brought me more than just a few gray hairs in my beard (and one on my head!), it has also brought me a higher level of objectivity on life.   I’ve heard this happens.  Like most people I’ve always assumed myself pretty clever, only to be proven wrong by experience and change.   It’s a bit of a paradox, the whole “do I really get it” thing.  On my death bed, I will think “now I really get it” - but, of course, if I lived another 10 minutes I would be proven wrong again.

I digress.

I found a picture tonight of myself and some of “the boys”.  Now these are “theeee boys”, mind you, those ones still live in Iowa and Denver.   These are the “Phase 2 Boys”, the ones that I thought I would never have.

My last really strong memory of “the way things were” back home is unfortunately not a very positive one.  We had some amazing moments between the time we graduated from Solon, and me moving to California.  (There was of course the brief period of 5 months or so after graduating from Orlando and moving back to Iowa, that was great fun too.)   But those aren’t the things I think of when I think about “how it was.”    I still think about Emmetsburg, I think about the championship that never was, I think about letting down our town, the fans,  Coach Hansen, and each other.    I think about being lonely out in Lane 8, getting housed in the state finals.  Of course I know I never “let down” my family, so I don’t really think about that, though I’m sure they were every bit as disappointed as we were.

I’m sure a lot of the guys feel like that, and that’s OK.   It’s not something I “hold on to”, it’s just what comes to mind.    But the biggest thing I think about when considering my “youth” is the friendships, the bonds.   It is/was such a tight brotherhood between all of us, it was something I was forever certain could never be matched or simulated.   As time goes by, (and again, I know many people go through this) you grow apart from some of those people.  I’ve been lucky enough to be gifted some of the most amazing people in the world as friends (looking at you Marshek, and others) and those relationships have morphed and molded over the years apart, but never faded.   Others, however, as happens with time, have naturally begun to dissipate and dissolve, which is a very sad thing.   There are many explanations for this which I won’t go into now (those are “beer conversations”), but the thing to remember is that it’s OK.   It doesn’t mean you don’t like each other now, and it doesn’t lessen the relationships that you had before - it’s just the natural cycle.

Now.   In the blink of an eye, I’ve been gone from Iowa for 9 years, and have lived in Los Angeles for over 7 years.   Yeah,  you read that right, almost a decade.    I’ve almost been gone from Iowa longer then I was in the Solon school system.   LOTS has happened in that time.   I have a successful, lucrative career that (although nobody ever said it) I know lots of people probably thought was a fool’s errand.  I have traveled to 14 countries on 4 continents.  I have won (with my team) two National Championships, the first of which had a huge impact on me psychologically, which is something for another post.   I have met and fallen madly, madly in love with the most beautiful, intelligent, courageous, caring, athletic woman - and I have (much like a warlock) duped her into falling in love with me.   Physically I have gotten to a place I never though I could get (@220 I’m not as fast as I was at 185, but boy do I hit harder).

And I’ve made friends.   Good friends.   Lifelong, step in front of a bullet, tell them I love them, friends.  Who would have thought?

For the longest time after I left Iowa, I was convinced that couldn’t be done.   I thought my group of ~15 brothers was the first and last time that could ever happen.  People always said “oh you meet your REAL friends in college”.   College came and went with some GREAT friends, but unfortunately never really that “brotherhood” that I had in Iowa.  (I would like to point out, Nate and Blake are not included in that equation, they are part of “Phase 2″, which I am getting to)

When I first came to the Santa Monica Rugby Club, I knew everyone was cool.   Right away I met some incredible, friendly, down to earth people.   We became friends.  We bled together.  We partied together.   They introduced me to the woman of my dreams.   Many of them continue to amaze me every day with how caring they are, and I find myself attempting to model my actions towards friends and family to be more like them.

I found this picture tonight when I was digging through a box looking for computer parts.  It’s from Halloween (duh) about five years ago.   Two of these guys (The cow, and Elton John) I don’t see much anymore (moved, retired - respectively).   The Rabbi I’m lucky enough to still see often.   When I saw this photo, I got a feeling of nostalgia that I have never really felt with anything except for pictures and memories from Iowa, and the way things once were back there.

It turns out, while I wasn’t looking — while I was building my career, and lifting weights, and going on weekenders with Carol, and running sprints, and eating Cobb Salads at O’briens, and living life, I’ve managed to make some of the dearest, most wonderful friends that I never thought I would have the pleasure of finding more of.  I’ve got Phase 2 Nostalgia for my Phase 2 Brotherhood.

Phase 1:  I love you guys.

Phase 2:  I love you guys.

That’s all.   If you really read this whole thing, I will give you a gold star next time I see you.

c

(Kevin Bennett, Me, Paul Chung, Charlie Courtenay)

Edit: p.s. - I would also like to point out how large Charlie is.  I’m 6′2″. Look at him - slouched for the photo and still towering over me like I’m a wee babe.  Imagine him coming at you full speed on the field… yeah.

Question for the Times

Alright, in a week already riddled with “x vs. y”, this one trumps all.

Freddy Mercury vs. Bon Scott vs. Steve Perry

The ultimate Battle Royale.  So, who is it?  Who is your pick for greatest voice in the history of the universe?

Discuss amongst yourselves, I’m feeling verklempt.

Jeff Bezos posts job ad for Amazon, 1994

This is an awesome gem from the past that somebody dug up. It’s a job ad to work at what would become Amazon, posted by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 1994 - how would anyone know what it would become? I suppose that’s the gotcha in the startup world, nobody ever knows…

http://groups.google.com/group/mi.jobs/msg/d81b6c1fa8f361f

cool.

Joe Kilifer, Switzerland (almost), Coach Sovers

So Joe Kilifer, Nathan Jones, and I were in a place that looked sort of like Switzerland, but wasn’t because I kept talking about how much it reminded me of Switzerland.  In fact it looked a lot like Bjork’s new video, Wanderlust.

Then Coach Sovers and the track team showed up, because we had a meet.  But I needed to get train tickets, but was in the wrong place and kept forgetting to get them, and I was in a panic about it, but at the same time didn’t really care.  Sovs was happy to see me, and the team had new orange uniforms, which were ugly.  Especially since they were on a yellow bus.  But I didn’t say anything.

So Joe and I (Nathan disappeared) just kept hanging out.  We were amazed by something.

Too bad I only dream like once every 4 months.  I love dreams.

That’s the Spirit!

From The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (via Hacker News):

“…it seemed as though all I could see was a lot of bright young men in grey flannel suits rushing around New York in a frantic parade to nowhere. They seemed to me to be pursuing neither ideals nor happiness — they were pursuing a routine. For a long while I thought I was on the side lines watching the parade, and it was quite a shock to glance down and see that I too was wearing a grey flannel suit.”

Very proud to love what I do for a living, to be 25 and being in a place where I am both very happy and also excited about the future gives me warm fuzzies sometimes.

Web browsers? Yeah, that was an Iowan.

Fact of the day:  Marc Andreessen, who was a co-founder of Netscape and is credited with creating the first widely-used web browser (called Mosaic) was (not suprisingly*) BORN IN IOWA.

*at least not to those of us who are loyalists

Firefox 3 Memory Optimizations

A quick rundown of what changed and how they did it for the new beta of FF3:

http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firefox-3-memory-usage/

I wish the AE team would take a good look at this and realize the importance of small changes making huge differences. (ok semi-small, as the article mentions the memory allocator they switched to doubled size of codebase during development…)

How about instead of “Brainstorm”, maybe next time we can shoot for After Effects to have some more render stack optimizations.

Kevin Hale on Genghis Khan

So last week at the conference, the second workshop I took was given by Kevin Hale of wufoo.com. It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, but Kevin seemed like a pretty intelligent guy and perhaps the topic was a little too broad. I’m not the type to one-off somebody, so I poked around online a little and saw he gave a talk once called “How to Run a Startup Like Genghis Khan”, and I saw a photo of one of this slides… my interest was captured.

I poked around, and voila.

Slide Presentation for “How to Run a Startup Like Genghis Khan”.

I love the interwebs.

What happened Adobe?

Dear Adobe,

When did you forget how to write great software?

Yours in animation,

Chris Kelley

The British Isles

So being a rugby player in America, I would say that probably 30%-40% of my good friends are foreigners. Probably 20%-30% of those are from somewhere in the British Isles.

 Here is a great venn diagram explaining the British Isles.