Mixed Media

Last week marked several milestones for me regarding different forms of media:

1. I finished listening to the entire Jimmy Buffett discography chronologically and am now well prepared for the July 5th concert in London. Speaking of which, I still have an extra ticket for that show if any Parrot Heads are looking to join.

I've made my way through the "K"s and I'm now in Led Zeppelin, having just finished I and II. What a strong start they made onto the music scene!

2. I beat all the Military Madness levels as both the good Allies and as the evil Axis, so I now hold the title of Grand Strategy Pooba--at least by 1989 video game standards! If history is any evidence I probably won't play any video games again for a long time but this was a fun diversion for the last few weeks.

3. I watched The Kite Runner in lieu of reading the book. I'm sure the book was better but most reviews I read indicated that movie was pretty faithful to it. It was interesting--pretty well done.

4. I finished Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, his third in a string of engaging, thought-provoking books. I question some of the causality in the cases he makes but they are interesting nonetheless and I would recommend this book. Reading it gave me pause for thought about the opportunities I have had and especially about the unique high school environment created for us at TJ. Fortune has definitely smiled on me throughout much of my life and I'm not sure I deserve it. All I can do is my best and hope that I live up to the extraordinary opportunities with which I have been blessed.

On another note, things are absolutely crazy at the Poken office these days. We have flown in our new Web interface development team for "war room" style productivity. This has effectively doubled our headcount--but of course we haven't increased our office space at all. Result: high entropy! "Chaos" might be a better word, but it seems to be productive. The new team members are nice and smart and a good addition to our existing uberteam.