Monthly Archives: May 2009

Wow, it’s been awhile since I blogged here; I guess I’m too busy with Twitter now Anyway, for those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter, or spoken to me in the past few days, I’m traveling right now and won’t be back in Seattle until June 16th (just bought my flight home yesterday). I spent 2 days in Philly and attended the Beer with Bloggers on Tuesday evening along with the Philadelphia RE BarCamp on Wednesday. Great RE BarCamp crowd as usual; got to meet a few new folks and spend some time with friends from the RE.net. I’m currently in DC, staying with a college friend and working from a combination of … Continue reading →

I stumbled on the Top 10 Historical Travel Destinations tonight and wanted to share it. Why? Two reasons: 1) The cool pictures Photo by ZeHawk 2) I’ve been to 4 out of the 10 on the list (European Castles, Rome, Parthenon, and Angkor Wat). And yes, the other 6 locations are certainly on my list of places I plan to visit sometime in my life. Once you start traveling internationally, it’s a habit that’s all but impossible to kick — at least for me it is.

I just finished Three Cups of Tea, a great book about Greg Mortenson’s incredible efforts building schools in Pakistan and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. I’m not going to write an essay right now, but I sense a venting about how the United States has handled Afghanistan coming as a result of reading the book. For tonight, I’ll just post a quote which I think makes the point that we are not solving anything by engaging militarily. The quote came at a speaking opportunity Greg had to a room full of members of Congress and their senior staff. During that speaking engagement, one of the congressman said “Building schools for kids is just fine and … Continue reading →

This is a great quote that Zillow COO Spencer Rascoff heard at the conference he is currently at (and tweeted a few minutes ago): You need a person in your life who is 100% honest with you and can tell you you’re an idiot. I 100% agree. Luckily, I have several close friends who can and do tell me when I’m being an idiot. If you don’t have people like that in your life, find a few of them. Otherwise, you’ll keep on doing idiotic things without even knowing it.

My uncle sent me a link to this video last night, and it’s definitely worth sharing here. This cover of Stand By Me was recorded by completely unknown artists in a street virtual studio all around the world. It all started with a base track—vocals and guitar—recorded on the streets of Santa Monica, California, by a street musician called Roger Ridley. The base track was then taken to New Orleans, Louisiana, where Grandpa Elliott—a blind singer from the French Quarter—added vocals and harmonica while listening to Ridley’s base track on headphones. In the same city, Washboard Chaz’s added some metal percussion to it.