joygantic

Tenure!

My brother received tenure at the University of Kansas yesterday.

If you're not familiar with academia you may not understand why tenure is such a big deal.  It's a designation that generally is equated with "a job for life" or, more specifically, an imprimatur that the professor in question has met the high standards of their profession and has the "academic freedom" to research whatever the hell it is they think is important.

Tenure is a key vehicle for ensuring that our society has people who think about, research, and teach things that are unpopular.  And getting there requires an academic track record of research that's accepted and vetted as important and high quality by an academic's colleagues at their own university, in their field outside their university, ad ultimately a series of gatekeepers at the department/college/university level have to sign off.  It's the biggest possible deal for for an academic.

It's been a long road for Brian.  This achievement marks a key juncture in a career that he's  been building for--what?--fifteen years?

Wow.

I'm happy as hell for him and proud as can be.

Spring Sprung Sprang

Today's the first day of Spring which I know 'cause Google's logo was filled with tulips.  But it was reinforced when I was standing in the pouring rain wishing I had sunglasses on because the sky was so bright.  Ah, Spring in Seattle.

This year I gave up the entire contents of my intestines for Lent.  And to show my religious devotion I had a fever for 36 hours.  In honor of the baby Jesus who would be sacrificed for our sins, I curled up in a fetal position and prayed for hours on end.  Though there shall be no false idols, I worshiped at a porcelain god and was duly punished. 

I shake my fist at the damned stomach flu that's weakened me, moved work deadlines to my weekend, and necessitated the cancellation of planned manly drunkenness and skiing planned for a weekend bachelor party in Canada. 

Perhaps it's the cosmic forces of the universe telling me that a weekend of drunkenness and skiing would land me in the hospital.  But I'm annoyed I won't be able to trot around in my new, stylish, high tech, orange parka (thank you REI dividend!).

Seriously, the last time I felt close to this horrible was 20 years ago when I found myself alone, with dysentery, on a houseboat in Kashmir, watching my bloody diarrhea go straight into the lake creating a feeding frenzy among the little fish that apparently thrived on the trauma of travelers.  Sorry.  That was gross.  But that was also the only point in my life when I really thought "you know, it wouldn't be so bad if I just DIED right now."

I didn't come close to that threshold this time, but it sucked and I do wanna reach out and hug my mom (an RN) for her medical advice and my dear friends who texted/emailed support and care offered to bring me whatever I needed. Thankfully I had tuna to feed my blind cat and managed the energy to buy Gatorade so dehydration was avoided.

TMI, I know.

<sigh>

But I walk on . . .

Round here, not much to report except:

• My minor sound bite this week on Morning Edition prompted multiple friends to text/email me, reminding me that mass media is, well, mass media. (And reinforcing that when your PR ace puts talking points together, you should stick to them. Doh!)
• Our data on iPhone made splash, which is awesome, though I wish the New York Times hadn't made me out to be such a fanboy 'cause my thoughts on the device are more nuanced.
• My brother sent me an article that made me change my underwear and confirmed again that it was a good decision to give up rockclimbing.  I posted it to MetaFilter.
• I need a haircut (shaggy on the sides, balding in the center--can't we have some equity here?)
• I'm in Seattle all next week.  Unless I go to LA on Monday.  Or NYC on Wednesday.
• Having turned in my expense reports for the year to date I've realized that the expense of keeping me aloft in my gig would be a fine living for more than half of the populous. I'm completely unsure about how I feel about that.
• I'm not sure there is any bigger way to feel like an asshole than to be approached by a homeless person while talking on your iPhone and preemptively (and truthfully) say "sorry man, my wallet's in the restaurant" and have them respond "I just wanted to say God Bless You"

Over and out.

I Dig Our New Neon Logo

We're Three!

Our company turned three today.  OK, that's actually not completely accurate; today is the third anniversary of our public launch, which is something it took many months (bot not too many months) to gear up for.  There was a birthday party at Seattle HQ, but I'm in Toronto, perhaps for the whole weekend depending on how debilitating the current snowstorm turns out to be.  I made this little commemorative video:

Blame Canada

I'm in Toronto where it's cold and there's lots of dirty snow on the ground.  Yum.

I'm here for copious client meetings and a speaking slot at Canadian Music Week.  Make no mistake, I love the Canadians, but for the second year in a row I'm wondering why I'm here in the cold and not at SXSW with the (other, more southernly located) cool kids.

I'll cop to a mild bout of what a friend has dubbed "Traveler Sadness Disease" (TSD).  TSD is often brought on by being alone in atrociously designed and decorated hotel rooms.  It's agitated by timezone displacement and confusion around when one should eat dinner.

One would think, or at least hope, that hotels would be down with the Internet now that it's, uh, 2008.  <sigh>  I'm happy to have broadband in my hotel room (sad there's no WiFi) and jsut spent five minutes disassembling the "security lock" attached to the router in my room so that I could *shock* plug in the long Ethernet cable I always travel with . . . if I'm on the road, the very least I want is the Internet in bed.