Bill Watt’s Blog

Yeah, I’ve had a little bot to drink tonight so this may sound like an, “I love you man!” moment but bear with me. This has been an interesting week. I’ve been enjoying work even though I’m completely behind and crazed, Alice is going to Boston for the week (including our anniversary), Jason and Carol moved to ATL on me, my little brother turned 37, and we just had a dinner sort of celebration for Lily who is winding down her years at eBay.

I’m not a big fan of change and yet none of this has flustered me. I’m really enjoying my life these days. My family is all doing well, my friends are having fun, starting families (go Chad & Jen, Amelia & Ben, and others who are not yet named ), I’m making good friends at the new job, and Alice is starting a new adventure.

My favorite thing is catching up with people over a meal and wine. I don’t know… I’m just enjoying life and thought I would share.

Just got a pretty funny email from Steinhorn (who now asks to be called J. Scott):

Subject: And so it goes…

It all started with a get-together at my favorite Chinese restaurant – Hunan Chili…

I had just started working at Tellme, and thought it would be fun to get together for dinner with Heidema and JSK. I was wrong. But nonetheless, a great tradition started…and a couple weeks later, Bill joined and the tradition strengthened…

WEDNESDAY NIGHT DINNER was born!

After 88 weeks and 65 dinners at 56 restaurants (yeah, we had a couple repeats), it appears the tradition is unfortunately coming to an end. It makes me sad, but also gives me a chance to analyze a spreadsheet, which makes me happy. :-) 

Here are some stats:

• Number of dinners that Heidema attended: 51
• Number of dinners that Steinhorn attended: 62
• Number of dinners that JSK attended: 62
• Number of dinners that Bill attended: 59
• Number of dinners that Carol attended (she made a wonderful stand-in): 10
• Number of dinners that Rookie attended: 2
• Number of times JSK was sick, threatened not to come, but then did anyway: ~17
• Number of times Steinhorn ended dinner drunk: ~35
• Number of times Bill ordered steak well-done: ~20
• Number of times Bill had to complain about steak not being well-done enough: ~20
• Number of times Heidema flirted with the waitress: ~30
• Number of times Heidema flirted with the waiter: ~20
• Number of times Bill made a comment to Carol indicated she was too good for Steinhorn: Too many to count
• Number of times Steinhorn made a stupid comment proving Bill is probably right: Too many to count
  
• Special guests included:

o Bill Watt (our first special guest!)

o Jamie Iannone

o Malia Mueller

o Adam Ables

o John Bodine

o Josh Scott

o Dave McClure

o One of Heidema’s friends from east coast who was a great JSK stand-in, but I can’t remember his name

o Elliot Shmukler (our only two-time special guest, not including Carol and Rookie)

o All the people JSK likes and nobody else does (at his b-day party in 2006)

ALMOST final updated spreadsheet attached…I look forward to finishing this up on Tuesday and hopefully adding some new rows in the future (with all attendees present)…and who know, maybe you guys will even find a replacement for me (keep an open mind, Bill!)…

J Scott

And for the record… my friends in the city have already proposed replacing Wed night dinner with Wed night drinking so consider yourself replaced.

This article from Valleywag based on this Silicon Alley Insider article makes me laugh. It is mainly this comment:

“Dinner is probably served to a much smaller number of people, mostly single engineers who roll into work later in the morning. No matter if it’s free, after a while, you get tired of eating institutional grub three times a day and spending ten hours in the same office complex.”

That has not been my experience overall. People working in places like that do tend to take advantage of those perks more than you would guess. Ask Ackley about the FAIM dinner club and if everyone worked after eating. Also, from what I hear, the food is not very “institutional” by my standards.

Well- good for them. eBay’s food was not a perk but I enjoyed the people I ate with daily.

This is roughly where I plan to spend my noon to 1’s this week.

• Monday: South Beach Cafe (they did yell at me for having my laptop out but to be fair… they do have big signs saying it isn’t allowed from 12 to 2) and had a pretty decent little lasagna and side salad
• Tuesday: Korean BBQ (spicy pork)
• Wednesday: Apparently Primo Patio has a special jerk pork on Wednesday that I only just heard about. Ding ding!
• Thursday:  TBD
• Friday: I’m supposed to be catching up with some folks from StubHub so we’ll find something over by them (although it does look like someone booked a meeting to run till 12:30 so that may be an issue)

We went to Vin Santo yesterday and while the service was great and atmosphere what we expected I had a little problem with my dinner. Alice’s filet mignon came out perfectly but I got the pan fried pork chop and it came out raw. I mean raw. To say that it was undercooked would lead those of you who know me to assume it had a slight pink center but this looked more like a salmon dish and the center was cold to the touch.

Too bad… I did get a bite of one side that was cooked and it was pretty good. Next time I’ll go for the New York strip and be happy.

Alice and I had a great time catching up with Matt and Hima last night. We went to Zucca European (Yelp reviews) in Palo Alto and the food was ok… not great but ok. It was better the last time I went with the guys for one of our Wednesday night dinners. I most enjoyed the cranberry salad and the chicken part of my main dish was ok. Even the lemon tart stared out pretty good until I realized I couldn’t cut through the crust.

So, all in all it was ok. It was pretty expensive for an ok meal and I think that was my last time there. But the nice thing is that you can always  count on good company and good wine to make an ok meal much much better.

Yesterday was my first official work day where I didn’t go into eBay. The last two nights have been odd for me because I usually sleep really well but on 12/31 I dreamed all night about work and on 1/1 I didn’t so much dream as was just restless. Last night was much better.

So, yesterday I made some new resolutions. For one, I’m going to think of this as me retiring from eBay and work to put this in a longer term perspective. I need to find the right next job and can afford to take some time to get the right one. Second, I’m going to spend some time fixing some things that have been wrong with my life the last (n) years. I know that big changes rarely stick so I’m not committing to running marathons or writing the next great novel but I am going to get up every morning and walk a few miles to a starbucks, take a paper or book with me and do some focused reading that doesn’t involve blogs or news feeds. (Ok, this might change to being online reading too but for now I’m going unplugged.)

I did wake up yesterday, answered a bunch of personal email, got dressed and walked a couple miles to the closest starbucks that doesn’t blare music so I could sit and just read for a bit. Then I met Carol and Jason for lunch at Baja Fresh (love the bare burrito) followed by a quick jaunt home, a 30 min nap, then a shower and some errands (our Comcast bill jumped like mad so my first task was to call and get that fixed) and then I got to visit with Alice when she got home. It was a Wednesday so we had our weekly dinner at the Counter even though Heidema is off doing God knows what in Asia for his sabbatical.

Then it was home to watch some TV and then I crashed around 11 to read and was asleep by 12.

It was a good, simple first day of retirement.

The meal I’m making today includes prime rib, baked potatoes, and a green bean dish with pine nuts that I just toasted. Simple but should be good and gives Alice a chance to relax on her first CA Christmas.

Last year’s menu was a bit more complicated but I was trying to please a few more folks.

I think Hima’s husband is trying to kill me. I’m not sure what I did but he must be pissed. I’m basing this on the very devious way he has chosen to do me in.

All I know is that more and more Dots keep showing up at my desk and, well, you know… I have to eat them. It would be rude not to!

First day back… sabbatical is over.

It is pretty interesting to me that I haven’t taken more than a few days off here and there in the last 3 years and I was just able to take 6 weeks out. It is an awesome team around me (PD, QA, PjM and PM all rock!) and looking in from the outside was a great reminder that we have a great base that doesn’t depend on one person showing up.

Please… don’t get me wrong. I have no lack of ego and I know what I bring to the team but it was cool to see the team, especially my PM team, rock it.

Anyway, the point is that this was day one back. It was a nice and relaxed day with time to catch up with friends I haven’t seen in more than a month. Ah, and lunch and coffee breaks with friends!

And to cap it off I got to catch up with Geis after work. Good living.

Oh! And I ran into Nathan this morning at Starbucks and he let me see his iPhone. It really is beautiful and the thing just looks like the commercial. Yes, I know all the negatives and why it wouldn’t be a good replacement for my blackberry but dang… it is pretty.