In late August I got a call from a Ed Zschau, a recruiter friend with who'd I'd first talked to back about 2 years ago when I was looking to leave eBay. He'd had some interesting leads but I ended up finding the Current gig through my friend Danny. This time he said he had something that might be a good fit and wondered if I was looking for something new. I had been on a few exploratory rounds with different places but nothing serious. So I had a call with Ed and ran through the high level details. Next up had a call with Kevin, the CEO, and then went in for a meeting with the Outright team. After a couple more meetings in a 2 week span of time they made me an offer and I gave my notice at Current. All very quick but it had all the right characteristics of a place I'd love.

On the Current side leaving was an interesting experience. I had really enjoyed my time there and felt like I was just scratching the surface of what we could accomplish but the call of an 8 person startup where I could play a bigger role was just too good to pass up. Suffice it to say that the Current folks were awesome to me, the going away week of festivities was awesome, and thanks to all the social networking tools I'm able to stay in touch. And btw- the way I measure success is by how many things dropped when I left and so far that count is at one (Sorry Melody for not getting that update done!).

Now I've been at Outright.com for 5 weeks (tomorrow starts week #6) and it is turning out to be exactly what I was looking for. Here's a super short list of the perks as I'm trying to keep this good for public consumption:

• 8 awesome people and a cool, early stage product
• added exposure to inner workings of the management team
• around the corner from eBay and my whole social circle there
• 5.5 miles from home (no $200+ monthly train ticket and I'm actually riding my bike to work... sometimes)

Who knew?!?

What a great movie. What an awesome story. Painful to watch.

I'm not sure what to say but these are the people I would like to meet in life. Wonderfully creative types who would look at me funny and not understand my silly, non-creative ways.

Check out Bill's big list of favorite shows and episodes!

Joan and Melissa got all pissed when Melissa was fired. How did they think it was going to end? Maybe the two of them would be the final contestants and Donald would name both of them winners? Didn't Joan use to say, "Oh grow up!"

It was really classy how Melissa ran off the set, swore at everyone, and called people whores while telling the producers that she wouldn't do a follow-up interview. Again... who hires these people? I'm sure the charity associated with her must be so proud.

Real World / Road Rules is another example. Everyone goes on and on about being honest and walking out with their heads held high. Uh, hello? You guys have been on these things before... you know how this works. I was watching last week's Duel II when Evan got called into the gauntlet and acted hurt and betrayed. Come on dude... when you call a guy a weasel for going after you it just makes you look weak and I actually root for you so don't do that crap.

PS- my favorite "character" is CT. I hope to never meet that kid when he's got a drink in him but still, he makes good TV. I wish he'd hold it together one of these times and just own the whole thing. He's a moster and could do it but that assumes a pretty big change.

I want that same thing for the iPhone.

Yes, I now buy directly from the iPhone over wifi but there are several types of media I need to apprently get on my PC and then have it sync to the iPhone. It used to be that I could only get podcasts that way but they've opened that up. This is awesome if a podcast isn't available by the time I'm leaving for the train in the AM... at least I can have it for the ride home. Also works great if I'm on a trip and away from my PC for a few days.

Still, for some types of products, like audio books, there is apparently some DRM step or something that is stopping me from following the same process. On TWiT this morning they were talking about Earth Abides and I wanted to download it for the ride home but it is a Audible book and that's apparently not an option.

PS- I love reading negative reviews on Amazon. Generally I expect a chuckle but occassionally I stumble across a reasonably well written review like this one for Earth Abides. I'll let you know which way I net out after I read it.

1) I wonder how many people fall for this?

2) I wonder how much of it is true... meaning, seems to be quite a bit of money floating around. In the post-Katrina world where we saw massive amounts of cash flow to places where they didn't have the infrastructure setup to spend it efficiently and people were basically given cash cards... who knows what excess and mismanagement is happening?!?

3) And I'll keep this list to 3... why is this being offered through a Canadian site? US money folks! ;-)

]]>http://www.billwatt.org/blog/rss-comments-entry-3543827.xmlBill WattSat, 21 Mar 2009 07:20:51 +0000http://www.billwatt.org/blog/2009/3/21/testing-an-image-by-email.html328294:3451268:3391878

"This book is absolutely terrible! Everyone's grandmother would be ashamed to know the language they use. It seems like a rated r book. A very disgusting read, so much talk about this person named Grendel who is portrayed as a cannibal. There is so much talk about blood and bones, ugh! Save yourself the effort and bypass this so called classic. I wish I didn't have to read it. If I could I would tell my teacher he was nuts for making me read it. Acutally what idiot made this a classic? My lord! Disgusting, absolutely awful. Save yourself in the name of classic books!"