Bill Watt’s Blog

Oh boy… I love new toys and the iPhone ranks right up there on things I look forward to buying.

Why am I transitioning:

• I’ve had an iPod touch since they came out and I like the interface.
• The enhancements they’ve made (sync to corp email and 3g speed enhancement) make the timing feel about right.
• I’m going to get it setup so I can use it as a connection for my laptop to the internet so I can work while on the train or when I travel.

Why ditch the blackberry that I have loved for about 9 years?

• Interface hasn’t changed much and we’re in an innovation world
• Things like always connected email as the norm. Even as blackberry continues to be the best at that… there is so much more going on. I find myself looking up Twitter posts, going for directions, and all kinds of stuff that are easy on the web and annoying (yet possible) on hte blackberry.
• My job has changed from eBay and FairMarket where I was primary contact and needed to type long responses. At Current there is a team that handles the support and I just dabble with answering escalations. As I learn more I’ll do more but we don’t have much in the way of off hours support that I can be helpful in answering. (Alice likes the change where the pager is not going off at 2AM)
• AT&T was already charging me the same price to have a Blackberry so it will be a lateral cost move to get the iPhone.
• One last thing that was outside the control of RIM - my company has done a miserable job getting the blackberry to work with Exchange (frankly, all of our email functions blow) so working with the iPhone can’t be worse. Seriously.

I’ll let you know when I get it and if it improves my life. But mark my words… they better not come out with a 32GB model 1 month after I buy the 16GB model. Grrr.

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’ve been riding the Caltrain to San Francisco since I started this new job. For me it is a total no brainer as gas is >$4, traffic sucks, and my ride on the train is so easy.

Lately we’ve seen a huge increase in the numbers of folks taking the train. My use of “huge” is not scientific… I’m just saying it is much more crowded and the parking lots fill up earlier and earlier. Anyway, there are several videos going around YouTube of the Japanese subway experience is not the same as my experience so I can’t complain. Here is an article I saw today for those folks back East who may wonder how it is.

The subtitle of this blog makes me wish I could include Lisa Stansfield’s “All around the world” as the soundtrack to the post.

Good luck to Heidema’s friend. I’m sure your experience will be very different than how Heidema will remember it happening.

They posted the pics here.

I spent yesterday skiing Bear Valley with a group of folks from eBay including most of the FAIM and ROW development and QA.

The bad. Getting up at 4 to be at eBay by 4:45 and on the bus at 5AM for the 3.5 hour drive.

The good. It was an amazing weather day and was maybe even a little too warm out. It was awesome to see the old team and get to hang out for the day on the ski slope.

All in all it was a pretty funny day. Rishi had apparently never seen snow so it was my pleasure to impart a little big brother wisdom on him (”Avoid the yellow snow!”) and it was amazing how many folks from the 2 buses were new skiers. The woman from the ski resort said it was 70% first timers and she was amazed because people started and kept going all day.

I spent my time on the slopes trying to keep up with two friends who were much better than me. It was a good challenge and they were willing to give me pointers as they saw areas to improve and encouragement with every stop. I only fell once and my left side is still feeling it today. I have finally realized that the last 10 years of inactivity really are taking a toll.  Maybe this will be the thing that drives me to the gym? We’ll see.

The ride home started around 5:30, included a stop to pick up pizza, and then we were back at campus by 9. I put in a couple calls on the 10 min drive home and was asleep by 10:30.

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.

So, I jump in the car today to get coffee and notice that my clock is wrong. Since I am clueless about such things as seasonal time changes I look at my blackberry, see nothing has changed, and then am left to wonder which is right. I should have realized that my $300 blackberry was patched specifically for this new change process but that my brand new, nearly $50k Acura MDX didn’t get the news.

I understand that old appliances and things that aren’t connected to the Internet will have problems with the time change they’re not expecting but I own a ton of stuff that is connected in one manner or other and I expect those will just change. My car is getting tons of data via GPS and bluetooth… isn’t on of those bits of data the current time? It knows where I am and can do the offset easily.

As an aside- I’m also not sure why my car’s GPS system doesn’t (A) remember the last city I searched or (B) default to all listings that match my search sorted by distance to me. I was looking for a Pete’s coffee yesterday (meeting a friend… not my choice ) and it started with a different Pete’s business that was alphabetically ranked higher but was hundreds of miles away. I know searching on a console is not exactly simple but I would love if the default sort was a setting like so many other pieces and then I could make the problem go away for me while other people could blissfully search alphabetically.

I think this is what the abundance of search options on the web has taught me… I should be able to get relevant rankings.

Everyone wants kids and puppies to like them and for me a visit to the family is a good example. When I get there I watch to see how long it takes the nephews to warm up to me.

We were waiting at the Desert Inn and my brother and his family came in. My younger nephew warmed up to me immediately but the older always takes a while longer. This is especially true since I grew my hair out. As he said the last time I was home, “you have long hair… you’re not supposed to have long hair.”

Before long both were warmed up to me and we had a good visit.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List show but I love her. Yes, it is “adult language” and topics so those of you who don’t like that would really not like this show or her act in general. But if you have a chance, this episode where she prepares to go on a Rosie O’Donnell cruise is very touching.

Her parents have been a big part of her D-List show and in this episode, it feels odd to call it that when it is so raw and personal but it is reality TV, her father passes away. He was a funny funny guy and reminds me a bit of my grandfather with his say what comes to mind approach and his upbeat personality. Even when he passed he asked to have golf on the TV and to have control. The thing that is so hard is watching Kathy deal with it on camera. The performer side of her has to go on but the pain is just so real.

I’ll be honest… I’m heading to see my grandfather tomorrow and this is one of my worst fears. What’s going to happen on the day I get that call? He’s had a great run (he’s ~94 yrs old) but if I could trade 20 years of my life to have him for another 20 it wouldn’t even be a question (as long as it didn’t require surgery… you know, I’d want that pill that takes from one and gives to another… ).

As a side note- I lived with my grandfather for 10 years after college when I was spiriling out of control, had no idea what to do, and no real aspirations. He was there for me and we became really close over the years. I was lucky to have that kind of time where before I thought it was great to see him for a bit each summer and maybe at Christmas. It became so normal to have him around that when Alice and I bought a house we picked one about 7 miles East from her folks and 7 miles West from my grandfather. It was really cool for me as an “adult” to have that sense of family all around. Sunday dinners with her folks at our place and weekly dinners and all the holidays with grandfather.

Anyway- I hate the whole topic of mortality. I don’t want to think ahead to any of this but it is a reality. But, I’ll just make sure and tell people I love them and never leave with unsettled issues.

I also need to try and do more than just focus on work. Yes, I want to work hard and I know that makes my family proud to see what I do but in the end, the job will just have been a job. They give vacation time for a reason and I need to take advantage fo that to get back home and see the family and to see my nephews grow up!

The 1k connections on LinkedIn and all the friends on Facebook won’t buy you another minute. (But if you want to add me to either network I’d be happy to accept the link!)