David Beach's Blog

Hey! I'm in Today's Wall Street Journal

This is nice. Go box.net!

Here's a link to the article... requires login: The Online Storage Wars

The Flaming Lips

I'm back from my trip. I thought I'd have more Internet coverage while I was gone, but alas, no. I took it to be a blessing. I mean, I don't think I've been cut off from being online for that long in years. I can't remember the last time.

I went to see the Flaming Lips Saturday night. Ween was on the bill too with the Liars. We missed the Liars because I thought it was going to be The Go! Team, and I wasn't in the mood for cheer-leading loops. Wish I saw the Liars though...

Ween was great! I've never seen them. I have several of their albums, but had no idea that they had such a huge following.

The Lips were the Lips. It's a huge freaky birthday party dreamland for a child. Wayne is so positive. That guy can put a smile on any face. I was surprised about how well The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song played live. It was one of the best of the set.

more photos of my trip and of the show here.

So now that I'm back, I plan on keeping this thing up to date. There's lots happening in the w2.0 space that needs to be dealt with... I hope to let it fly soon.

Good Things

Things are a tad goofy in my world right now. I'll elaborate later. All good.

Here are some good things that I've seen lately. I'm sure you have too, but I wanted to at least link to 'em...

ShopWiki Color Search -- Very cool. Joe Laz and I were talking today about it... he was saying that so many folks like to shop by color. This tool pinpoints it. Does Goodwill still categorize their shelves and racks by color? The rainbow gradient of second hand hues was pretty sweet back in the day.

Opera 9 - Totally slick. It sticks it to IE as it is, but the fact that they are having a release event in the emerald city next week seems like an XXL gauntlet being thrown down. The browser (if you can still call it that) will never be the same.

10 Things That Are Bugging Me

I hate to sound cranky, but I need to get this off my chest. So here are the 10 things that are irritating me at the moment.

1. Tim McCarver and Joe Buck on the Fox Saturday baseball national broadcast. They totally suck and should be banished from the airwaves. They're an embarrassment to the game and the embodiment of jackassery.
2. That friggin' spinning, barking dog Discover ad that's all over Yahoo. It's almost as bad as pop-up and pop-under ads. We used to have those until Filo put the clamp down.
3. Our do-nothing society... where are the riots? There should be riots by now. Let's go college kids! Turn off the x-box, throw out the Abecrombie and Fitch catalog and start breaking windows.
4. Cell phone dependency. Is that call really that important right now? Really?
5. p-mail... I'll say it again, because I keep seeing it... Do you really have to check your email while you're taking a leak? Really?
6. The news crawl. Someone needs to have the balls to turn that shit off. CNN, MSNBC? Anyone?
7. Level 2-1 on Super Mario Bros. for the DS.  I can't get around those stupid dancing cacti without the fireballs.
8. Tim McCarver again... ooh he makes me steamed.
9. Cranky bloggers! Can't these people just shut their yappers and go on with their lives like everyone else? The arrogance! Like anyone really cares what they think.
10. oh... never mind.

Bad Blogger

I've been a bad blogger. I haven't written anything in a while. I can't stand blogs without fresh content. What's the point of having a blog if you're not going to write anything? I've seen a few blogs without an entire post in April. Has nothing happened in your life? Probably a lot has happened, which is why you haven't written anything.

Much has been happening to me. I've been car shopping. I have a Prius on the way. Hopefully will be here next week. That is one funky car. I'm pretty excited about it... I mean a Prius... so rare! If you see one on the road, it's probably me. Make sure you toot your horn and wave hello.

Work has been interesting. There's so much going on at Yahoo! I can't believe how many people are there. When I go to the cafe ("Dots") and see everyone... I think what do these people do? Who are they? Yahoo! has quadrupled in size since I joined. No wonder why there are so many meetings! Everyone has to meet about something. I've had meetings about meetings. Seriously. These people have to be doing something and I'm guessing it requires several meetings to figure it out.

But that's what growth is about. It will get sorted out. I hope. Or the people who like meetings will stay and the people who don't won't. That will be cool. One giant meeting. Like a party!

Actually it's important for us to stay agile and nimble. Even with so many people. We need to stay on top of making quick decisions and working at a quick pace. Thank god there are big giant examples of what not to do in Microsoft and IBM (and I'm sure countless others). Bloat happens, but it doesn't need to cripple you. It's about being focused, asking for forgiveness rather than permission, and keeping solid boundaries. Boundaries protect us and keep us focused. They allow us to say no when we need to, make quick decisions when we need to, and stay in the moment. All keys to an agile workplace. Which brings me to this...

The lack of true ownership and the inability to make decisions can kill any product or idea. I'd rather punch a product out that's 85% there, than not release it and spend too much time debating the final 15%. It's the web. Things can change. But I digress...

What else has been going on... eh, who cares? I'll be a better blogger from now on. I promise.

Link Blog

I've started my link blog. I hope to make it daily.

http://www.itsbeach.com/links/

Enjoy.

-beach

Rhymes With Drowning

I don't know what to say.

Todd Downing. He and I were good friends growing up. Geeks? Hell yes! Todd was crazy talented, he could pick up any artistic implement and play it. Musical, pens, paints, clay, whatever. We'd spend all of our time coming up with ideas to be the next Lucas or Eno or Stan Lee even. We started our own production "company" as kids. It was a miniature media empire. We'd publish comic books, magazines, games, films, and music. We'd find any way to make these things then show 'em or try to even sell them to whoever we could.  We had no idea what we were doing, but we knew we had to do it. Some of the kids we did this stuff with back then went on to Pixar, or ILM, Warner Bros., or Yahoo!

At some point in the early 90's, Todd moved with his high school sweetheart and wife Samantha to Washington state. First to Renton, then to Seattle. He and I sort of grew apart over time. I started the record label and then went to IUMA; he went on to deep dive in the RPG world, working for Microsoft then his own companies. Todd and Sam had two children, Tyler then Kayleigh.

This is the incredibly tragic and almost bizarre part. I may not have all the facts straight but the story is the same. You hear of people that have a run of bad luck, but that doesn't even begin to describe what has happened to Todd and his family in the past 10 months. In April, Samantha lost her battle with a very rare form of cancer. She died at 37. The next month Todd's father, Edmund, fell to another rare cancer of the brain. Then on Christmas Eve, just as they were trying to get their lives together, their house is flooded by a huge sewer break. Sewer = Shit. Half of their house was damaged and they lost tons of memories and valuables. AND THEN... four days ago, on Valentines Day, Todd's house catches on fire and guts the place. They lost everything. Everything. Thankfully the kids were in school and Todd got two of the three pets out. Punky the cat didn't make it. Think about that for a second. No clothes, no computers, no food, no CDs, DVDs, books, toys, furniture, photos, paintings on newsprint from your preschooler... everything you saved for one reason or another... gone, nothing left.

It makes you wonder. How can so many freakishly wrong things happen to one family in such a short period of time? It doesn't seem random, but it's impossible to believe that someone or something planned this. Yes people die, yes houses flood, and they even catch on fire. But does it all have to happen all at once? And does it have to happen in such a way to seriously fuck up the outlook of two innocent kids? How can they feel safe?

It's not right.

Todd writes one of the most honest and often heartbreaking blogs called Rhymes With Drowning... the title says it all. Please visit it and pay your respects to a hell of a guy who's been through his own personal war. No one deserves this to happen to them, especially my friend with the wild imagination and limitless creativity. I hope his spirit hasn't been crushed because I think he's been put here to do something wonderful... maybe, for some reason,  someones telling him that he better get to it.

Die Old Promotion...

Jane says I need to promote dieold.org more. So here I am promoting my die old blog. Okay, here's the deal. I've been overweight for a long freakin' time. I've decided that if I don't finally do something about it, I won't "die old."  And that's pretty much the ultimate goal right? The "good" might die young, but the lucky, healthy bastards are the ones that are fortunate enough to have a long life. I don't know about you, but I want to be one of them.

Die Old is my blog about this process. I write every day. What I eat, what I do, how I feel. I've tried many times to do this and I've learned a lot about myself. I've learned that I can't do it alone, so I figure the only way I'll succeed is if everyone in the world knows what I'm doing. Keeps me honest. Please check it out and bug me as much as you want, link to it, tell a friend, anything. It will help me to die old... thanks.

Oh yeah, the address is http://www.dieold.org :)

Die Old: New Blog For Me

I've started a (another) new blog for me. Die Old. Please go to http://www.dieold.org/ for more info. Thanks,
-beach

What's New With Beach?

Man I need to post more. Or maybe I don't.

Here's what's going on with me and some of the reason for my absence. First, last Friday was my 10th wedding anniversary. That's hard to swallow for some reason. Time has really zipped along. But I couldn't be happier. Jane and I went to Carmel then to San Simeon for the weekend. Saturday was also Jane's birthday. We had a great time. I picked up the watch I've always wanted at Lussori in Carmel. We stayed at a great place on the beach just north of Cambria.

The day before the trip I caved and went to the Apple Store and got a black 30GB iPod with Video. Now we're talking. This is really want I've been looking for. Big drive, nice color screen, and the video playback is promising. I'm playing with torrent files, video blogs, and I purchased an episode of Lost from iTunes. It looks great. I see a lot of potential for this kind of portable video.

Cale turned me on to ffmpeg for some magic. To be honest I'm a little behind the times here. But I plan to catch up fast.

Here's the thing about these ipods. If you get one, especially the new ones, please buy a case. But don't just buy a case, buy a special wrapper to protect it. They will get totally scratched within days if not hours of you owning it. I can't stress this enough. It's worth it to protect it.

Buy an invisibleSHIELD
And just in case get some Applesauce Polish

Work has been busy. It's the holidays and we're seasonal too. My team and I just launched new wish list creation and management tools called My List (beta). It's probably the richest list management too in the shopping space. You can save any product you find on Yahoo! Shopping, organize it in a list or multiple lists and share those lists with anyone you wish. Here's an example of a shared list I created of some music that I've been listening too... Stay tuned. I'll post more on the subject when it's time.