Thieves!

Grrr… So, I present a client with an excellent candidate. The client rejects the candidate, then hires them a few days later, behind our backs. Then they tell me openly that their lawyer claims they owe us one-or-two thousand dollars at most. Then he claims he won’t pay us anything, but will “let us work on the next job.”

What?

What a FUCKER. Anyway, I’m trying to decide if I should sue them or not.

Sometimes, life is SO crazy...

...that it's impossible to blog. Maybe I'll try and recap later. I might just start from this point forward. I don't know.

Life changes back.

So, up until 3:30pm today, i had excellent reason to believe that my wife was in imminent danger of losing her sight over an uncertain number of years. Now, that diagnosis has been utterly revamped to: "We'll check you ever 6 months for the next few years, but it's unlikely anything will EVER happen."

Wow.

Politics: Terri Schiavo

Sad, sad, sad.

So: What the fuck is the federal government doing passing person-specific laws, and interfering with multiple judicial decisions made by the state courts? I thought this was the bullshit, big-government type of crap the Republicans used as weaponry AGAINST the Democrats? Holy jeez. It's incredibly hypocritical, yet par for the course. Such bullshit. I long for the days of Bob Dole. At least I could respect the man.

This jackass from the Mayo clinic made judgements based on videotape and records... without actually meeting the woman in person... this pretty much says everything you need to know about HIS credibility.

Honestly, I have no opinion on this case, because I don't understand it enough. Decades ago, I did introduce a bill to legalize active, personal-choice-driven euthanasia for terminally ill patients to my Student Congress. The debate was going along well enough until some kid made a speech in support of the bill saying "Kill the old people, we need the hospital beds." End of bill.

And this isn't even active euthanasia. It's entirely passive. If she made it clear she didn't want to be kept alive like this, it's her choice. But this unbelievably inappropriate involvement by the feds is pathetic and dangerous.

Daddy cries. But it's cool.

So, we're sitting at our enormous, rented table... (we're having 17 people for Easter dinner), and out of nowhere my oldest son says "You know, Dad, you've really changed since we moved to Chappaqua. Your temper is better, and you're even more fun."

I tear up immediately. He doesn't know what he's actually saying, but I do. He's saying "Since you got sober..."

I left the table for a moment, to collect myself. I consider myself incredibly lucky, and sometimes it takes a little reminder from an eight-year-old to keep that feeling fresh.

Holy crap.

I think I just closed a deal which put my company into the black for the quarter.

Sheesh.

I hung up on someone today.

And I NEVER do that. This lady had written me about a job, and I had invited her in for an interview. She asked if she could talk to me on the phone. Her email style totally irked me. She kept writing me short little email notes with literally no reference to the prior email, so I had to figure our what she was referring to. All lower case, too. And she was trying to get a writing gig.

When I got her on the phone, I was having a difficult time understanding her. We just didn’t connect. It wasn’t’ a linguistics thing, it was a vibe thing.

Finally, I said: “Normally, I have people’s work in front of me, so I can relate it to what we do.”
She responded: “I’m a generalist—“
I interrupted: “I don’t really know what that means.”
She got furious: “IF YOU DIDN’T INTERRUPT ME, I COULD EXPLAIN IT TO YOU.”

And then she paused. More pause.

I said: “I’m sorry, I think I better go.” And hung up.

Sometimes, the vibe of a person will weird me out so much that I’m not sure I can work with them.

Politics: Social Security

According to a new study, the obesity problem in the U.S. is going to kill so many people early, that social security will be saved by that alone. End of problem.

Privatization? I don’t think so. They tried it in Britain, and have regretted it ever since. But that aside: if their going to let folks invest their Social Security money privately, why not eliminate it altogether, and create an expanded retirement fund tax break program?

We’re idiots with money. That’s why Social Security exists. Leave it be.

Thanks for the call, “Jodi.”

At three AM this morning, some people on a conference call prank called my house. Because our answering machine says our names, and because my wife picked up after this, the caller called my wife by name, and started acting like she knew her. My wife was so half-asleep and confused that she kept trying to figure out who it was. I took the phone and asked the caller her name.

“It’s Jodi. I went to school with M.”
“What school?” I asked.

Giggle from her friend. And: click.

I couldn’t go back to sleepl, so I got up, wrote collections notices and client emails, until it was time for the 5:40 train.

Weird. Gross. Disturbing.

As I was waiting for the subway today, I saw a mouse get attacked by a rat. It was really, really disturbing

My daughter just read to me.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, by Suess.

Whoa.

My running life so far/Official Time.

May 15, 2004: First Half-Marathon.
13.1 Miles, 2 hours, 1 minute, 9:15/mile.

March 19, 2005, Fourth Half-Marathon.
13.1 Miles, 1 hour, 48 minutes, 8:15/mile.

Yowza!

Tour of my past, or: The Brooklyn Half-Marathon.

My great-grandfather helped build the Wonder Wheel in Coney Island. So when the the race started, and the first half-mile took us right by it, I felt a little twinge of sadness... I miss my family, in spite of everything. We ran down the boardwalk, turned around, and came back up past the Wonder Wheel, turned left at the Cycone, and merged onto Ocean Parkway.Directly past where my Grandmother used to live. I had a really fast, crazy, rush of images as I looked up at her building. I feel like being a teetotaler for the last one-and-a-half years has done good things for my memory.

The last five miles took place in Prospect Park, where I ran past the fields I used to go to every Saturday and Sunday. Early. When dogs are allowed off lead. I saw people out with their animals, and I was happy for them. That was always a highlight of my week.

It was a neat experience. I woke up at 4:30, drove to Prospect Park, took the F train to Coney Island (befriending a nice guy named Igor, who is 38, but has a 19 year old son in college), and got there plenty early to check my stuff onto the baggage bus.

I managed to shave seven minutes off of my previous best finish, too... the unofficial results have me doing 8:12/mile for 13.1 miles. I'll get the official results tonight.

Things in my life.

1) My wife might have an incurable and degenerative eye disease. Second opinion forthcoming. Might mean nothing for a long time. Might mean a lot very quickly. Kind of a world-shaker.
2) I have a job offer verbally, and a written offer coming on Monday. This would mean leaving my own firm, to join another firm.
3) I have started therapy. My stated goal: to get over my crazy-ass, borderline father, and the damage he’s done to my family.

That is all.

Wrath of the incompetent, part II.

I’m not quite mature enough not to feel some personal sense of relief over the fact that Grey Interactive HR (and more specifically the two individuals I dealt with) has a horrific reputation. Whereas I thought they were simply mean and clueless, I found at that they are also thieves. Allegedly. At least according to industry sources. In particular, these folks have been known to agree to one price, let the work proceed completely, and then refuse to pay more than half of that price. Icky, icky poo. Allegedly.

So, since my ego isn’t strong enough not to need this kind of reinforcement, it made me feel better about my experience with Grey Interactive.

Gotta work on that ego.

Coming home.

The pretty girl in the too-tight pants and green St. Patrick’s day shirt is crying her eyes out, and has been for twenty minutes. It’s 9:21pm, and I’m on the train home from New York City, where I had one heck of a meeting with my friend and mentor about life, where I’m at, and where I’m going.

She walked to the doorway of the train, talking on her cellphone. It’s a polite move (instead of sitting in her seat, and talking), one I wish more people would do. I didn’t know she was crying for several minutes. Horrible voyeur that I am, I shut my music off so I could hear what was upsetting her. But I couldn’t make it out, and didn’t want to spend a lot of time trying.

I thought she had left, but I just heard her crying again. Medium sobs. Pretty sobs, in a way. And now I can see her black leather shoe and the edge of her jeans: she sat down on the floor of the entranceway.

She’s somewhere between 18 and 22 years old. What could be troubling her? Young love gone bad? Social ostracism? So many things can feel so intense when you’re young.

Ah, well. She just moved to the seat across from me, and she’s actually being quite foul-mouthed and angry and derisive. And, I think, more than a little drunk.

Wrath of the incompetent: Grey Interactive

Most of my clients are fantastic. Some are incompetent-but-nice. Some are mean-but-competent. Some are incompetent but mean. My least favorite, though, are the folks at Grey Interactive Human Resources. Which is sad, because there are many aspects of Grey which are quite awesome, including some of the folks at Grey Interactive proper. But the HR department is the kind I really hate talking to: they know nothing about what they do, and try to cover it up by acting all derisive. Ask them for details on a job, and you either get, "Try to steal someone from XXXXX or who has worked at XXXX" (because they hired someone from XXXX or heard that the Creative Director likes XXXX) or, well, nothing. They don't know technology, design, ANYTHING. I don't understand why they don't stick to HR, and hire a decent creative recruiter, like, say, McCann has. Or a gazillion other companies with decent recruiters on staff. Or like some of the other GREY companies, for pete's sake.

I dunno. It's not like I ever billed Grey Interactive for anything. It's not like I'm losing money. But when the HR department is so poor, it just burns me. I'm a Quality junkie.

End of rant. Back to fatherhood, politics, and parenting.

Apple got it wrong.

So, the iPod Shuffle should be loaded with a specific playlist, that is played in order, or not. It should NOT be randomly loaded by the host computer. The reason: when you come across a song you really like that's new... YOU CANT SEE WHAT IT IS.

The "autmoatically load the iPod with new songs every time it's connected" feature of the Shuffle isn't enabled with the regular iPods, though. So what I do is this:

1) Make a Smart Playlist, where the song has to be less than 7 minutes, and longer than 2 minutes. This eliminates sound effects, long classical pieces, and Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick."
2) Delete everything on the iPod.
3) Go to the playlist, start playing it in random ordeR.
4) Sort by song number.
5) Drag a couple thousand songs to the iPod.

Now, when I hear new music, I can see what I'm playing.

Now THIS is a day.

I got up, took my oldest boy to the middle schoo to teach a seminar for third and fourth graders in our town's Young Writer's Workshop. I taught a seminar on resume writing. It was totally hilarious and wonderful and sweet. The kids were really interesting, for the most part, and I had a blast. We came up with about 100 different types of jobs, and related experiences from each grade the kids have been in to the job they wanted to get. There was a nice lunch afterwards, which I at with friends.

Then I ran 13.18 miles, to make sure I could run 13.1 miles next week, in the Brooklyn Half Marathon.

Now, I'm going on a date with my wife. Rock on.

Cat wakes up daughter.

Daughter wakes up daddy to remove cat.
Daddy removes cat.
Daughter goes back to sleep.
Daddy has an early cup of cofee.

I heard singing in the bathroom.

So, check this:

I come home from work. Dinner is almost ready. Maggie is making this crazy-cool vegetarian dish from this cookbook she got. The dogs are jumping, my oldest son is leaping aroudn in his normal, frenetic way of greeting and...

...I hear the song "Happy Birthday" coming from the bathroom. Sung by my two youngest.

It turns out Maggie taught the kids to wash their hands for as long as it takes to sing "Happy Birthday." The best part is, they even add the "cha cha cha!" in between the lines. I thought this was such a great idea that I'm doing this (albeit in my head), when I brush my teeth.

7:23 minute miles? Me?

So, I ran my first 5k today. I've learned some lessons.

Last year, I ran three half marathons, a marathon, and a 10k. The 5k is a little different, because it's so short: you can't warm up during the run. So I found out. I've always had a harder time with the first mile or two of a race... and I didn't warm up before this one. I was too busy parking (168th and Fort Washington Avenue in NYC), then chatting with my friend George... and I basically spaced on warming up.

So I ran the first mile in 8:23. That's the fastest race mile I've recorded.

Then, I tried to pick it up. It was a pretty hilly course, up to Fort Tryon park, so the last 1.25 miles were initially spent recovering from that. But I managed to finish the race at a sprint, which felt good.

The amazing thing: I finished in 23:53, which meant I averaged 7:23/mile for the last 2.1 miles.

For many, that's no big deal. Me? I'm just blown away that I've come this far. I am SO lucky to have gotten past those difficult parts of my life that could've killed me. I'm SO lucky.

My daughter just asked if she could show me a Hula Dance. Gotta go.

Sometimes, I'm not so good at this.

My youngest is making me CRAZY. He doesn't just disagree with everything I say: he disagrees hard and long and without any letup. Give him a time out, he marches up the stairs yelling the same thing that got him a time out in the first place. You can't convince him of ANYTHING.

I know, I know, he's three.

But he's SO stubborn compared to my other kids. The normal tactics don't work. I gotta figure out a new approach.

My morning.

4:20 alarm goes off
4:25 drink creatine drink
4:30 go to basement to run on treadmill, discover two separate animal accidents. There’s pee and poop everywhere.
4:31 – 4:37 – clean up poop. Try not to puke.
4:40: Get on treadmill
4:41 – 5:24 – run five miles.
5:30 – take a shower
5:50 – Write a pleasant bigwig at an agency.
6:00 – Drive to train station.
6:08 – a trainmate improves a joke I made about having a full day already, saying “The alarm will go off any minute and your real day will begin.”
6:13 – train arrives.
6:17 – present moment.

Who am I to say no?

Oh, boy. So this client that took 140 days to pay us, and nearly killed my firm in the process, just came back with… a sincer letter of apologi

GOD, I want to be a cynic. I don’t want to believe this person. This is the same CFO who ignored call after call after call, and only paid us when things got legal. This dude writes me a letter saying he feels terrible about screwing us, and wants to offer us a suite of new business that we won't have to fund.

Is it greed? Or am I being a rational businessman, since I wouldn’t be fronting the cash for performing these services, this time around. Who am I to say no?