Category: neck deep in the zeitgeist

Caffeine + information overload = insomnia

Dave

I never have trouble sleeping. The last time I remember having any real trouble getting to sleep was seven or eight years ago the night my house was robbed. Oh, and ten years or so ago when I decided to start drinking coffee. After a few weeks I was having rapid heartbeat and withdrawal headaches and insomnia and realized I had gotten to my mid-30s without developing a caffeine addiction and that was no time to start. But today I had a big cup of regular coffee with an espresso shot and now, more than 12 hours later, I can’t sleep.

I’m getting a similar feeling from Twitter these days. I love the concept. I love the immediacy. I love being able to see what people are doing and reading and recommending in such a short format. As a writer I find it a fascinating exercise in brevity and craft. But come on, how do you keep up with it? I just added half a dozen people in the last couple of days, for a total of 60 people I’m following, and I already feel overwhelmed. Guy Kawasaki alone sent 54 tweets in the last 23 hours. With an inbox holding 2,000+ emails that need to be read, deleted or filed, I get enough of that feeling from my Web 1.0 channels.

I just downloaded TweetDeck in the vague hope it would provide some relief, but while a nice interface, it doesn’t really address the problem of having enough time to read it all. I’ve starred quite a few tweets that contain links to articles I want to read later, but now I have a backlog of tweets to follow up on. Did I mention I have 2,000 emails in my inbox? How about the number of unread items in my Google Reader? I don’t need another firehose.

Is Twitter really a positive development in communication? Or will we start seeing articles in the next couple of years by people describing how they’ve increased their productivity by, as impossible as it sounds, turning off Twitter. “At first it was hard, and my colleagues had difficulty adjusting, but now I realize I’m getting more done.”

Hello, Internet! Are you ready to rock?

Dave

WordPress just offered me the opportunity to own my own domain and “make this blog davebtommylive.com for just $15 a year.” Thanks, but I think I’ll stick with dbthomas.com and dbthomas.net.

Does that mean that even davebtommy.com is taken?

I’m pretty sure that when I bought my first domain, plooble.com, I paid $150 for it. I came home late one Saturday night and had an email from Mindspring offering to sell me my own domain. How could I pass that up? I don’t remember what I paid for domain #2, dbthomas.net. Dbthomas.com was taken at the time but a few years later a domain broker sent me an email telling me it had become available and offering to sell it to me for 30 bucks. I went to GoDaddy and got it for $8.95.

Amazing now that $150 ever seemed a reasonable price for a domain. I’m glad I got the ones I did when I did. Or else maybe www.davebtommylive.com would sound like a bargain.

Although I am going to start introducing myself as Dave B. Tommy, Live.

Happy Birthday Marcus

Dave

Today is my nephew, Marcus’, 13th birthday. Happy birthday Marcus from Aunt Jean, Uncle Dave and your adoring cousin Conrad!

One of my favorite stories about Marcus is when he was about 3 years old. I think it must have been the Spring, around the time of my niece’s and sister in law’s birthday. He picked up a flier from the newspaper that had a picture of a bike and brought it to my brother and sister in law and said, “Happy birthday Marcus”. In other words, “Get me this bike”.

This year, my parents got Marcus a 16 Gb chip. We asked him what he was going to do with it and he said something about video games. Given what he’s done with his PSP, I think the providers of our national communications systems should be concerned.

Local TV takes a cue from YouTube

Dave

I get a news digest email several times a day from Local Tech Wire, the biz and tech web outlet of WRAL, our CBS affiliate. The editor, Rick Smith, provides some of the best and most in-depth business coverage in our area. He and colleague Valonda Calloway did a fascinating interview with SAS CEO Jim Goodnight a few weeks ago at our annual Media Day that demonstrated how more traditional news outlets are changing in response to Web 2.0. The interview went all over the place, from SAS’ third quarter results “up more than 12 percent over last year” to Jim’s advice on investing and reflections on how his own portfolio is doing. Rather than boil it down into a few sound bites for the evening news, they put the entire video up on their web site. If it was edited, I don’t know where.

Quick! Choose one! Polar bears or Twitter?

Dave

This morning I got hit by a headline on a wire service article that snapped my head back: “Web 2.0 investments dive in Q3 but cleantech surges.” “Oh, no,” I thought. “Here we go again. The media can’t declare something on the rise without simultaneously sounding the death knell for something else.” We saw the same phenomenon a few weeks ago when Wired declared blogging dead, assassinated by Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. “At roughly the same time I resurrected my blog.”

On reading the piece I realized it’s not taking that direction at all. Venture investment in Web 2.0 startups is down, whereas investment in sustainable energy startups is going up. Still, I’m sure the headline will stick in some people’s minds: Web 2.0 is out, green is in.

I’m glad I work at a company that’s pursuing them both. Not only is our solar farm scheduled to go live in December, but we’ve also broken ground on a new office building and customer visit center that will incorporate a wide variety of green features. And we have a new product, SAS for Sustainability Management, that helps companies measure and manage their environmental impact.

As for 2.0, we have an active Marketing 2.0 Council engaged in understanding 2.0/social media initiatives and strategizing how we can use them effectively. And we’ve just hired our first Social Media Manager “me”. No one is talking about how one focus is better than the other. No one is saying, “Let’s stop all this social media nonsense and spend more time on green.” In fact, we’re talking about how social media can help us tell our corporate social responsibility story. It’s a natural fit, when you think of it, and I’ll write more about that as we go along.

One of the many things I’m learning from social media is that we have the capacity to hold many ideas, concepts and pieces of information in our brains at the same time. The multitasking we thought we mastered in the ’90s is but a pale imitation of what we’re capable of now. So we can make room for green and 2.0 at the same time, can’t we?

Dinner at Saint Jacques

Dave

The Mrs. and I went to Saint Jacques in Raleigh last night for a pre-birthday “mine” dinner with our friends Memsy and Gill. I’ve been there several times for lunch with my dad and have been trying to get there for dinner for at least a year. It’s one of the most elegant, calm and sophisticated restaurants I’ve ever visited, reminding me favorably of Pachon in Tokyo, where I celebrated my 21st birthday in what is still the benchmark meal of my life. At Pachon, the wait staff are basically ninjas. You finish your dinner roll, there is a slight shimmer in the air, and a new roll appears on your plate. Dinner for four cost about a thousand bucks, and that was in 1986.

Saint Jacques comes closer to that level of service than anywhere I’ve eaten in quite some time, certainly anywhere in North Carolina. The owner, Lil Lacassagne, is from Provence and worked for Roger Vergé at Moulin de Mougins. When I’ve described the level of service to friends, I cite one quick example: The restaurant’s napkins are white, but if you’re wearing dark clothes, they bring you a black napkin so you don’t get napkin fluff on your trousers. There’s much more, but it all flows from there.

Lil is a perfect host, friendly without being unctuous. When my dad and The Mrs and I have been there for lunch, we’ve had long conversations with him about his work in France, how he came to the US and where he gets his tomatoes. I have a very high standard of service that descends from my German restaurateur grandfather, and Lil lives up to it in a way that I very seldom find. Last night he guided wine aficionado Gill through a selection process that was a joy to behold and left them both smiling.

Here’s what I had “yoinked from the online menu”:

Crusted Scallop on a Smooth Bed
Wild caught delicious scallops, pan seared in a thin crust, served atop a julienne of soft pear and fennel braised with smoked bacon. Rich and slightly sweet, a delight of the senses

Braised Veal Pied Paquets “stuffed veal” Veal hanging tenders filled with meat and vegetable stuffing, slowly braised in red wine, served on a garlic and cheese creamy polenta finished with cippolini onions and tomato veal braising juice.

The scallop was outstanding, and I’m not a huge fan of scallops. But everything that’s great about a scallop was there, without any of the stuff about a scallop that’s not great. If you know what I mean. Fresh and reminiscent of the sea, but not fishy.

The veal dish was also very good, but a bit more like meatballs than I was expecting. Really, really great meatballs, granted, but the initial impression stuck.

I had the apple tarte tatin for dessert, and it was obviously how much time and care had gone into making it.

We enjoyed the meal very much and the price was reasonable for the level of service, attention to detail and quality of ingredients. This is a restaurant to visit for the complete experience, rather than for cutting-edge gastronomy.