Aydin worked at a Zoo outside Istanbul for three years. We finally had a chance to check it out on our return from Kalkan, and it was amazing!
We fed some Coati’s peanuts, got to go in and meet the lemurs, saw the Chimpanzees and other monkeys eat, and got up close to lions and tigers.
It was just awesome!
Micky is out of town.
The house is too quiet. The bed is too big. There’s no one to make laugh once the babies sleep, and when they sun rises the wrong person is cuddling their morning awake. Even the Chinese food leaves a longing for more.
There’s just too much space.
Well it finally happened.
@monvural ahem, your thoughts?
— Berkawittz (@berkawittz) July 12, 2014
I got called out for stopping the daily posts. And so they’ll come back, and they’ll come back with a vengeance!
Tonight though will just be a shout out to Berko who’s got me back on track.
I started at TokBox six years ago today.
It’s been an amazing journey to say the least. I interviewed with 20 companies my 5th year of college. I got a ton of first round interviews because I’d worked my ass off to build a killer internship resume. I just couldn’t close the door though on a bunch of companies (Mint, Facebook, Apple, Google to say the least).
But TokBox took a chance on me.
It all started with Timmy Wenzel who did my pre-screen interview. Turns out he had no idea what he was asking, but damn did he have me fooled. I came out to SF, interviewed with Ron, Nick, Kundan, I think Jason. It was scary. I wore a tie, and they all made fun of me. None of them are TokBox-ers today 🙁
I got my offer letter, and asked Timmy for more money. He said no. I took the job offer. Just asking Timmy for more money scared the shit out of me, but my dad said I had to do it. Timmy later told me if I’d asked again he would have said yes. I couldn’t though. His hair was too perfect.
There is genuinely only one other job I think I would have considered, and that was to go work for Steve Jernigan. I didn’t believe in the product Part of me thinks I should have just followed Eishay wherever he went. The road would look so different had I done that. I’d be a much, much better engineer though
Over the years the faces changed (a lot). Micky joined that November. I chased her the following January. Ian came the following May. Deidre came and left in that window. I think she was just 2 years too early. She and I just couldn’t convince folks quickly enough that the API was a legitimate thing.
It’s felt like three different roles. I exploded as an engineer under Yang. I exploded as a PM under David. And now only God knows what I’m doing under Scott. But all three of those experiences are A+.
In this epic state of nostalgia I think about all the things we could have done differently. What if we’d killed the load time llama, and just converted to an HTML based site? What if we’d hired that CTO guy? What if we’d handled the pivot differently from a company organization point of view? What if I’d left when everyone else was seeming to go?
The horizon for a VC-backed platform company is very different from a consumer-app company. We lost on that big time. And yet, Telefonica is allowing us to do great and big things. Silver linings abound.
I’m most proud that Janine and I convinced Ian to pivot. The technology was always meant to be a platform play (even if I had no chance of being the engineer to make it really happen). I told Ian once, “You’ve got me and Janine. That’s all you need to make this thing happen”. I was almost right.
I’m most sad about how many people we churned through along the way. I’ve never worked anywhere else, and so I don’t know if it’s typical to have such a “death” toll. It was a steep emotional cost to say the least.
This week Ian’s back. The vibe in the office is full of energy. The opportunities in front of us are so clear, so full of potential. The time coming up looks so much more full of potential than the time passed.
And I think that’s a sign that after 6 years… I did something right. Something to be proud of.
I took the N-Judah into the office today. I really like taking the train. There’s a peacefulness to it that isn’t physical (way to many people), but instead mental (not driving == not thinking).
Today however that blew up.
I got on the train, and noticed that a woman and man were talking to each other. Well… He was trying to talk to her, and she kept answering in short, curt answers.
She was getting ready to hop off at 19th, and as the doors opened he jumped up, hugged her, kissed her, and off she went.
I wasn’t actually sure if that was a scene out of a horror movie, or if he was the star of some teenage fantasy where the shy looking guy jumps up and kisses a girl.
And I actually don’t know if this part matters or not, but she had large breasts, and she wasn’t hiding them.
Full disclosure: I definitely noticed her for her physical assets. I am not claiming to be holier than the male character I am describing. I did not take any physical action toward either character.
So I’ve shared this story with my dad and brother, Micky, Genevieve, and Ashley as well.
Everyone agrees that the guy crossed over the line.
However no one agrees with the true border of where the line is nor do they agree on the severity of offense.
Sparing you a long replay of the day’s conversations I’ll leave the conclusion that I came to at – Humans are not as removed from our animal ancestry as we think, and the societal structures that we have to prevent these actions aren’t as strong as we’d like them to be.
More to come in the next few days I’m sure.
I always make fun of Saket when he does music posts because it’s always some random, obscure artist no one has ever heard of. Well now it’s my turn 🙂
This weekend when we went up the coast to Jenner, we came back down CA-1, and found a cute little bakery. This group of gals setup shop, and started playing, and the music was quite good.
It’s a bit Dixie Chicks, but also a bit more musical and a bit more blue grass. The music was great. Amelia and Luka both got into it, but were quite embarrassed about putting money in the tip hat. So it goes. When he finally got the guts to do it, Luka didn’t want to stop (a.k.a take money out and then put it back in). Silly boy.
I would generally say don’t listen to me when it comes to music, but I know I’m right on this one – this is a cool group of gals to spend an evening jamming to.
We celebrated Geoff’s 70th birthday tonight.
We actually missed the real deal back in February. We just couldn’t make it back to the UK, and ended up missing two big milestones (Dan turned 30 as well). Instead, we’ve brought Wendy and Geoff up to Bodega Bay (their favorite), and found a cool house (with a hot tub) to hang out.
We spent today at Goat Rock State Park. It was epically windy. But man was it fun. Folks have built a bunch of lean-tos, and other structures. We hid behind a dune and had an awesome picnic. It was a really great day with the family, Wendy, and Geoff.
Then we cooked an awesome Turkish dinner – kofte, shepherd’s salad, yogurt, and then had some dessert. It’s a great weekend to celebrate a great guy.
Happy birthday Geoff.
Mike shared this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU4oA3kkAWU
with me yesterday. I forgot where he found it, but it’s an amazing story.
People talk all the time about how sports bring people together. The power of the Olympics, the World Cup, an exhibition game amongst once bitter enemies and now tentative friends.
And yet, large sporting projects usually lead to massive gentrification of neighborhoods. Mass protests in Brazil marred the Confederations Cup. The money that’s in the sporting leagues these days. Empty stadiums because sponsors couldn’t possibly give away enough tickets.
I think stories like this are the exception, and no longer the rule. Sports is becoming a bottomless pit of money. The purity of the games is left to kids playing in parks, streets, and boats around the world.
And I think that the power of sport is in giving those kids the dreams. Too bad the reality is becoming so sour.
Some oft cited reasons to choose to stay together:
I know plenty of folks disagree with this. But kids are a great reason to choose each other. Not for the kids sake. But for your own sanity. Someone to talk it out with. Someone to share it with. Someone else to be responsible. So in a really, really selfish way, I actually buy this one.
Emotions temporarily making choosing to be together easy and difficult all at once. Love tells us to stay together. Other emotions pull us apart.
I think we’re so perfectly taught that love fixes things; love overcomes hurdles; etc. that we turn love into the choice. I choose to love her, and therefore I stay with her.
When leaving is too much work, or the inertia of choosing something else is too overwhelming, we decide to just let sunk cost make the choice for us. It’s a bad place to be, but one that I see a lot of people come to peace with and continue.
The idealist in me says this is the only reason we should ever choose to stay in it. It’s never this simple, but man oh man I wish it could be.
It’s critical that it be a running average because any given incident is likely to be all pro or all con. It’s hard to see the silver lining in the moment.
I don’t think we’re very good at calculating running averages, but in a lot of ways I think the best relationships that I’ve seen are the ones that can understand their past and predict their future based on the running average.
But none of these feel very satisfying to the larger thesis. So there has to be something else to it. I just haven’t found it yet :-/
This blog post is 6 days late. It all started when I got sick, fell behind, and I’ve been playing catch up ever since. Some of these catch up blog posts are relevant to the day. Others are just random musings.
I’ve had friends get married and divorced much quicker than I thought would happen. There was one that didn’t surprise me at all, and others where I couldn’t believe it. The profiles of the folks are totally different, and while the sample size is small, I’m not convinced there would be many patterns even if I went looking for them.
Fundamentally it came down to the individuals changed at a quicker pace than the relationship grew to accept these changes.
So I’ve been asking myself quite a bit about what, in today’s world, glues relationships together.
It turns out the negative cases are a lot easier to find than the positive ones. Once upon a time a woman had no choice but to stay because she couldn’t support herself and her kids otherwise. Then as that changed there were cultural and religious expectations that a divorce was unacceptable regardless of the situation. We all know that that gave undue power to the abuser in the family (whoever it was (and whether it was emotional or physical)).
But if religion no longer stops us from getting a divorce, and society no longer shames us, then what keeps us together?
Choice.
I’ve thought about it for a while, and it really does come down to the fact that every single day individuals in a committed relationship make a choice to stay together. Marriage is 100% a legal entity for worst case scenarios, and to protect & share assets. But monogamy, which used to be tightly coupled with marriage, is a daily choice.
And I think that’s why it’s so easy for individual growth to outpace the relationship. We so easily make different choices from the ones we made yesterday – americano instead of latte, caesar salad instead of garden salad, taking the highway instead of city streets, etc. – that it’s become really easy to just choose to end the relationship.
We’re great at changing our minds. We’re great at being convinced that a choice we used to always make – wearing front-pleated trousers – is something that we should (and can) quickly change. And it applies to big decisions as well (marriage & divorce in fact).
And so the follow on is… why do we make the choice we do? And that’s tomorrow night’s blog post 🙂