Bill Watt’s Blog

Oh boy… oh boy… oh boy!

Diablo 3

Man, I hate reading pieces like this (bill gates third act a story of redemption for the fallen geek hero) in ValleyWag. It has this soft and winding way of telling a story that ultimately ends up making me dislike the author.

• you’ve never met Bill Gates, and mostly you talk about your upper middle class view of the world, so why do we care about you thoughts on his next act?
• your family losing money in the dot com crash - this doesn’t make me feel sorry for you
• “many lean years trying to pay Bay Area rents on HTML coder wages that plummeted by two-thirds seemingly overnight still lay ahead” - yeah… see line above and ask me why you lost money in the dot com era.
• I had more thoughts but this “article” has already lost interest for me

It always amazes me when I think about the kind of detail required by some jobs.

I’m watching a movie right now (O Brother, Where Art Thou) and am amazed by the level of detail that the people that make these movies think through. There was a scene where the boys steal and eat a pie. They use newspaper to hold the pie and at one point the Everett (George Clooney) character throws his paper into the fire. The top page talks about the TVA finalizing the plans to flood the valley where the boys are headed. Then the fire burns off the top page revealing the second page which has an article asking, “Soggy Bottom boys are a sensation — but who are they?”

God, who thinks like this? Who visualizes a movie and works though that detail? That’s a brain I would like to engage!

When I watched The Darjeeling Limited I did some background reading about Wes Anderson and thought to myself that this is a guy I’d like to meet. That kind of brain can conceive of a movie from the higher story to every turn of phrase. When I read a Wired interview with Ron Moore, the writer of Battlestar Galactica, he talked about directing an episode and the additional creative ability it gave him:

Wired: You just directed. What was that like?

Moore: It was tremendous. It was an amazing experience. I approached it with a fair degree of fear, like, wow, I’ve never done this, do I know what I’m doing? Will I look like an idiot? And I just tried it. But I have a cast and a crew that made it easy for me, and I enjoyed it, and I directed something that I’d written. It was a thing I’d never done, which is, you write a script and you play the movie in your head as you write it. At least I do. And one of the first things you have to lose in this business is that movie, because it’s never going to be that way. You write the scene and envision them coming in camera left and sit down on this line, and then you watch the dailies and they come in camera right and stand through the whole thing. You just have to let go of that. You’re handing your script over to other people who interpret it and realize it, and when you’re directing, you can realize that. You can make the film I’m trying to make in my head. And yet you’re still free to play around with it and the actors bring stuff and change stuff, and there are still surprises. But you can actually create what it is you’re trying to achieve. That was great. I really enjoyed it, it didn’t freak me out. I was calm. I made my days. I saved money.

I liked it. I liked being the guy who had to answer all the questions. I liked people coming up constantly and asking, should it be this or should it be that? It’s that. Should we go here or there? Go there. Why are we doing this? This is why were doing this. What does this line mean? This is what the line means. Do you need coverage on this guy? No, I don’t need coverage. I liked that. It was energizing and fun.

Well… this is the kind of thing I think about on a Saturday.

(one update as of 6PM… I originally called them the Foggy Bottom Boys. Sigh. Apparently MY attention to detail is sorely lacking. )

Well- another year in my life has passed and it has been a good one. Here are a few of the highlights and you can read the older posts should you care about additional details:

• Alice and I have been having fun in CA
• I continued to attend the Wednesday night dinners with Jason, Jason, and JSK for most of the year. These were often 2 or more dinners a week so it is worth noting given the enjoyment I got and the amount of time consumed.
• I took a 6 week sabbatical from eBay including a trip that spanned places in England, France and Luxembourg (and visiting with friends in each) as well as some time in Santa Barbara and with the family in Ohio
• In one step I ended my time at eBay after 4.3 yrs and finished my official association with FairMarket after 9+ years. Many people thought this day would never come.
• I took almost 2 months off (was planning for longer) before accepting the next stage of my (work) life at Current.com

Ah, it was a good year.

I got a movie from Netflix today called Lost in La Mancha and truth be told I have been looking forward to seeing this movie for a few years.

A friend of mine went to see this a few years back and told me about the premise and back story (a movie about a movie) and it sounded really interesting. I shuffled it to the back of my brain and there it sat until last week. I was surfing around Netflix and the thought hit me, look for it! I did and a few days later here I am. A few hours ago I was planning to bang out this blog post and maybe two others I have rattling around in my skull, watch the movie, and then try to get to sleep pretty early. Well- none of that happened except this one post.

Anyway- I have all weekend and am really looking forward to it. Just thought I’d share!

As much as I love and crave physical world interactions I do have most of my day to day connections via the web, email, IM, twitter, facebook, and on and on. Unlike many people I actually love that. It isn’t that I’m replacing people with virtual connections but instead that I’m extending ability to interact with folks using all these tools. The interesting thing is how many new relationships this has opened up. People I would never have known I know follow through twitter. I interact with celebrities and presidential candidates in ways my grandfather would never believe. And staying in touch or reconnecting with people from my childhood is now as close as a super poke (or tossing a cow at them!).

Anyway- I posted earlier about watching Teri Garr on Dave Letterman and how amazing she is. When I got home tonight I found a very nice email waiting for me from a woman who had seen my blog post appear in a Google Alert for brain aneurysms. She thanked me for posting because she doesn’t get a chance to watch Letterman often (neither would I if it weren’t for DVR’s) and let me know she had added the clip to her blog for others to see. Check out her post about the Teri Garr interview.

I would encourage you to check out Heidi’s blog(s).

I’m assuming we’ve all had the experience where people find out we work at a place, belong to a club, or know something about something and as soon as people find out they start to associate you with the experience they had with the thing. Working for eBay turned out to be the single biggest generator of those experiences I ever had. We’d be at Starbucks and people would see the work badge and want to talk about a problem they had on eBay. Going to a wedding in Pittsburgh, PA I ended up having a round table with users about their experiences on the site. (Starting to see why Alice thinks all I do is work?)

So, it isn’t a big shock when I open up the laptop this morning to find this IM:

[09:56] friend: i had possibly the worst experience i’ve ever had trying to do something online yesterday
[09:56] friend: trying to sell something on ebay
[09:56] friend: i hold you personally responsible
[09:56] friend: i would like those hours of my life back please

Which is a pretty funny version of what I hear all the time. So, as funny as that is on a personal level it is pretty annoying considering eBay has been doing this for so long.

And here’s the real issue… as eBay moves to compete more directly with Amazon (based on all the news I’m reading this is the direction they’re heading… good luck with that) the seller experience is going to matter and the buyer experience can’t stay the way it is either. There have been posts and discussions for the last couple years about this (see this interview with Andre) but I think the world has changed quite a bit since then. We’re Web 2.0 now and customization by vertical or by experience is likely quite a bit easier than it was in 2004.

I shop eBay when I want a deal. I shop Amazon when I want something of higher quality, when I’m looking for a suggestion or thoughtful product comparison, or want the thing immediately. eBay is still for the bargain hunter while Amazon has done a better job of providing me the best retail experience without needing to talk to people.

Also, if you were to believe Ryan Spoon then Amazon became the 2nd coming as soon as they figure out how to get him his razors and toilet paper.

OK… day 1 with the new toy is done and here is my review:

It rocks!

Setup was incredibly easy.  It really does take about 3 min to unpack and connect and another 3 min to enable including a firmware update. It is silent because it has no hard drive or fans or anything like that so I think Alice is going to love it too.

Now, when I first turned it on I was sitting at the end of the bed and was very close to the TV. It was a little rough given the 480 resolution and all the other things that are hooked up are at least 780 but generally 1080. I sat back, closed my eyes, reset my expectations, and when I opened my eyes it was all good. I am looking forward to the day they offer HD content but this will certainly do for now.

So- if you have a Netflix account with at least an $8 / month account then I will suggest that you consider spending the $99 and buying this toy. You won’t get all the movies ever but it is wonderful for those weekends when you want to watch something spur of the moment without all the crap from Comcast.

Man, I had no idea all the stuff Teri Garr has been through. She’s had MS for 20+ years and had a brain aneurysm where they had to drill a hole in her head and wrapped a coil around her brain. I’m watching her on Late Night with David Letterman and she’s amazing. Also- she’s promoting her new movie “Expired” where she plays twins.

I can’t begin to imagine the type of strength this woman has and I have a new found appreciation for her. Watch the Letterman clip then you tell me if you’d go on national TV after all she’s been through and how you’d compare to her.

Apparently my Roku Netflix box arrives tomorrow… woo hoo! I really can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to playing with this thing.

It does make me wonder how the world thinks we’re moving to metered bandwidth. Everything is moving online. How will I know how much bandwidth everything consumes? What if I’ve moved my phone to VOIP? “Too bad” seems like a harsh answer.

I was listening to TWIT this week and Leo was going on and on about how the proposed pricing makes sense for now but will eventually bite us all in the ass. His reasoning was that the proposed caps are all well and good for what the normal person consumes and what the providers currently classify as “bandwidth hogs” but that in a short amount of time all of us will be consuming more. Natalie Del Conte (not on TWIT) pointed out that everything is connected now and none of those devices have a way to tell you when they’re connecting.

Plus- my biggest concern is that I want to get away from physical media. I want to (legally) download movies the day they come to the theater and store them on my multiple TB drives (I have but 1 TB drive now but in the dreamy future of later this year that will grow). I want these guys to encourage me to consume content in this manner and not try to stop it in the interest of their IPTV or Pay Per View schemes.

Let the content flow!