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Answering machines and obituaries are still funny.

Answering machines and obituaries are still funny. At least for now. I’ve been re-watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 1, which originally aired in the year 2000. The episode premises are all about these things–answering machine messages; obituary typos in the physical newspaper; the cutoff time when calling someone’s home phone in the evening (and how it differs if they have kids?); which day of the week do you call to confirm Friday plans; hard-to-follow driving directions; etc.

More than half of Season 1 episodes seem to have at least one plot point hinging on home phones, “car phones,” answering machines, or pagers. The jokes still work for me, but I wonder if my kids will be able to relate to it at all. All the more reason to re-watch now!

I made some new friends today.

I made some new friends today. At my age, this doesn’t happen every day! My new friends are three start-up founders who are working with some colleagues of mine. We were introduced Monday, then spent time in meetings together Tuesday and Wednesday.

These three are serious, ambitious people. You can tell they are on a mission. But while they take their business seriously, they don’t take themselves too seriously. Throughout the week we laughed, joked, and got to know each other. After our last meeting, we went for lunch.

This is their first time in the U.S., and all they’ve seen of New York is Midtown and Times Square. I wanted them to experience a different side of the city before their long international flight home tonight. We hopped on the train and went to a favorite downtown restaurant of mine.

We had an amazing meal, debriefed on a hectic week, and bonded over shared interests and outlooks. I got the feeling that we are fast friends, and will eventually be longtime friends. I can’t wait to see if I’m right, and to see how this new friendship may deepen.

I’m blogging from my phone today.

I’m blogging from my phone today, over coffee at Ground Central in Hell’s Kitchen. I’m at a conference I’ve been coming to for 10+ years, and for most of those, this shop has been my respite whenever I have 20 minutes to sneak away from meetings.

Sitting here now—as I’m writing on a giant iPhone 15, using the Jetpack app for WordPress—I’m thinking about how long technologies take to mature. When I started coming here, mobile and cloud were both still new-ish, especially in the legal market, where I work. I remember mobile data challenges being a big problem in legal tech. Companies dealing with mobile data were the hot startups for a few years here. Similar story for cloud, the legal market was the last to arrive.

When I left my job a few months ago, I turned in my work laptop. I bought a Chromebook and it’s my only laptop right now. 10 years ago, this would have would have been unthinkable. I still use Microsoft Office products daily. But the web and iOS apps for Office work great now, and it’s all tied together by OneDrive. I can get by with a Chromebook until I’m full time again, no problem.

By the way, if you’re around Times Square check out Ground ace the coffee is good, as are the music and sound system. Today they’re playing Regina Spektor, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and White Stripes.

It’s good to be in New York.

It’s good to be in New York. Years ago, I was traveling here often enough to start keeping a MetroCard in my wallet year-round. The card is so useful to have on hand, and so noticeably unnoticeable in its thinness, that I was never tempted to remove it from my wallet.

These days I’m in NYC less frequently, but still I haven’t considered ditching my MetroCard. It’s not only the inconvenience of buying a new one for each trip. When I open my wallet and pull out that blue and yellow card, it still gives me a little jolt of happy energy to be here, to know my way around, and to feel familiar, if not native.

All transit systems have issues, but for me New York’s subway works great, and is so far ahead of transit in Chicago and other US cities that I never take it for granted. Nearly every trip I’ve ever taken on the NYC subway has been to or from someplace exciting. Being here it still feels like an adventure. When I’m not here, seeing the MetroCard in my wallet reminds me of what I love about the city, makes me look forward to coming back.