Bill Watt’s Blog

In an almost 100% different direction from the previous post, I was watching a news article tonight about a young girl who just got a new heart. The expected story was that the family was grateful for their daughter’s life and everyone was understanding Thanksgiving a bit more this year.

The real story was of a young girl who was deeply saddened by the loss of another girl her own age in a car accident that was the source of her new heart. It was touching to see the girl’s sadness for the parents of the other girl.

I caught myself thinking something like, “Don’t be silly… it isn’t your fault and at the very least only one family had to suffer that fate” but then to think how a 12 year old girl views the world made it seem not silly at all. This isn’t the original video I saw that talked about the sadness but if you watch the video from ABC then you see the other side… the kindness of the parents who lost so much and still reached out the the girl who had just been saved.

Man, I’d like to think if I were in that situation I would be as good a person.

Well, we all know that I’m not as current on other people’s behavior as I could be but it makes me sad when I see things like this collection of video clips from a documentary. The topic is “the most hated family in America” and from the short bits I’ve seen I can imagine that is an accurate summary.

I just (1) don’t understand this much hatred, (2) don’t understand how they got to the point of hating the entire US, (3) wonder what these people do for a living and (4) wonder how / where these kids will be in 10 years.

Note: Fay- if you’re reading this then the clip is not suitable for Chris to watch. Other parents the same goes for you but I only know that Fay and Chris sometimes read my blog so I wanted to call it out specifically for them.

I know, I know… the people in my immediate circle just groaned at the thought of me trying to take the social up a notch but that’s the facts folks. I’m got to take it past 10 and work on finding a new gig.

• Send out more LinkedIn invites - check
• Dial up the Facebook pleading for leads - check
• Start calling people who have VC connections - check
• Talk to every person at every party about how big their startup is and if they need a PM lead - oh yeah, I’m that guy now

Looks like I need to go buy some interviewing clothes and maybe get a haircut too. Sigh.

I would like to have the kind of pull needed to have Kanye, Alicia Keys, and Kerry Washington like in this video. Not that it is the best video ever… just funny that these guys take the time to play bit parts in a friend’s video. Different world.

So, on Monday I was driving home and noticed a car next to me where, at every stop light, the woman driving basically slumped over the steering wheel. She looked exhausted or possibly beaten down and was taking every opportunity to let it all go limp. I really felt for this woman as she moved from high alert to total shut down every half mile.

I think I know how she felt but I’ve never expressed it like that unless you count the occassional days where I put my head on the desk for 2 minutes, dig deep, and then push on.

Anyway- here’s to that woman and hoping that post-Monday has gone better than it looked like Monday did.

Does someone really think we need this movie?

I can’t figure it out… but I can’t stop watching anything she’s in. Now, I’ve never actually seen her in any musical which is the thing she’s most famous for but if she’s on talk shows or whatever then I can’t turn away. Something about her smile, voice, or the fact that I never have any idea where she’s going with a story but it is always going to end up with some funny twist and her laughing.

I’m pretty sure she’s always at 150% and I have no idea what she’d be like in person but for now, I’ll keep watching from afar and smile along with her.

I am looking for movie recommendations… email me your favorite movie(s) and I’ll see what I can do about putting them in the queue. My prefered movies are comedies so those will get higher priority.

Well, since Saturday’s are a bit more leisurely (during the work week there are always 100 people to talk to at the local Starbucks) I was able to take a few min this morning and try out the iTunes @ Starbucks that was just rolled out. The concept is pretty cool and the implementation is nice enough. I think the filtering they added to recognize the iTunes request without requiring a tmobile account was horribly slow but once it authenticated me it was pretty quick accessing content.

What I liked:

• It was slick being able to see the recently played list
• I can certainly see that this would be cool for extended travel (like my sabbatical this summer when I was gone for weeks) for getting new music without needing access to my main PC back home

What I disliked:

• Slow connection time - assuming this really is the connection speed I can expect then this is certainly not something I’d do while running in and out
• It did confirm that I hate all music ever played at Starbucks. Being able to see the now playing and recently played list was awesome and a great marketing idea if I thought any of the music was interesting.

I am curious to see if they allow podcast and other non-paid downloads or larger content like video. That would be awesome. You’re talking to someone over coffee about the shows they watched last night and you log-on and purchase it right then. Maybe I’m in the minority on that being useful… but I might do that since I often stockpile content and then use downtime to catch up.

HP EX475 MediaSmart Home Server

I just hope it actually works so it looks like I’ll be waiting on some reviews.