Speedos: The Next Generation
I write to you now with the sun shining bright upon the shores of Lake Chelan, just 10 feet in front of me. The weather is too beautiful and the scene too serene for any regular board shorts. I had to step up my game. The title of this blog post intends to make no metaphor. I am wearing Speedos.
Speedos have a long tradition in my family. Here’s a photo of Nonno (my Dad’s father) in a Speedo in (I’m guessing) Sorrento, Italy.
Gramps wore Speedos non-stop through the Reagan administration if I recall correctly, but I’ll spare you to two total Speedo images for this post.
I can see your Facebook updates…in Outlook?
Microsoft today launched Facebook integration for Outlook via a new social plug-in. See the story a http://mashable.com/2010/07/13/outlook-facebook/.
What does this mean for you?
Your personal Facebook information and activity will be more closely tied to your business network. Period.
If you are “friends” with someone on Facebook and exchange email with them in Outlook, this plug-in will show that person’s Facebook activity in the Outlook experience. Even if you don’t have this plug-in on Outlook, your information will still appear in Outlook for anyone who has the Outlook plug-in and is your Facebook friend.
I unfortunately cannot provide a screenshot of my business inbox, but I can show you how I see Facebook status updates when I am composing mail to my boss, Kristen. She I are Facebook friends, and even though she doesn’t have the plug-in, I do so I can see her Facebook updates in the New Mail Message window.
Outlook also provides similar plug-ins for MySpace and LinkedIn, but considering the nearly half-billion Facebook users and dominance of Outlook for business email, this is probably the most impactful social integration for business yet.
Of course, this isn’t all bad. You have immediate access to information about people in your business network if you choose to use the plug-in, and that could create for better working relationships. You can skip those office parties and team offsites to get to know your coworkers. You’ve got a Facebook plug-in for that!
On the other hand, you will want to be sure that you do not post photos, status updates or other content that you wouldn’t want your colleagues or business network to see in their inboxes. Likewise, you may want to delete unflattering messages that friends have left on your wall. They, too, will appear in front of your colleagues.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. If/when Outlook integrates more robust features like Facebook photos, movies, calendar, friends, mutual friends, location updates, etc., then we’ve got a whole new privacy issue at hand, which affects businesses — and their legal and HR departments. When Facebook and Outlook start to look the same, that’ll be a tough transition for employees to figure out. Things could get ugly. At least this go around Facebook will be able to share some of the legal costs with Microsoft.
I assume that Facebook will continue to create more intelligent filters so that you can determine who in your network can see your content through a plug-in like this, but until then I would assume that anyone in your Facebook network is eligible to see your personal information and activity on Outlook.
On that note, I have some toga pictures to de-tag.
Married Friends
I realize now that I’m married that I will soon be, if I’m not already, someone’s “Married Friend.”
Urban Dictionary always steals my thunder for cool definitions, so I’m not even going to go there. Here’s my cooler-than-Urban-Dictionary definition of “Married Friends”:
a) People who have been married for as long as you have known them, and your friendship with them is inseparable from your friendship with their spouses
b) People who you only see when they are with their spouses and thus you refer to the couple as the same person by name (i.e. Pamanda)
c) Abbreviated ”MF” for obvious reasons
As used in a sentence: “We were going to see our married friends Pamanda at midweek dinner, but Paolo has class on Wednesday nights so we won’t be able to see those MFs until next week.”
The “Married Friend” stamp can be undermined if and only if you have known a person before he or she was married. For example, I have known Wesley long before I was married and therefore I cannot be his Married Friend. I am just a plain old friend. However, if I meet a married couple through Wesley, they can only be MFs to me.
Here’s the challenge with being a MF: It’s tough to coordinate. I had a hard enough time keeping track of where I was supposed to be before I was married. Now Amanda and I have to keep both of our schedules in sync, and they mostly are anyway, but I don’t always know if Amanda has planned some rogue event, or if I remembered to communicate to Amanda that I had an event come up. We’ve managed so far, but we also have just about every weekend of the summer planned out and somewhere in there I need to hang a new front door and build a fence.
Ain’t that a MF?
I have to say that the greatest tragedy of having couple friends (MF-to-MF) is when you have to break-up with them. I call it a break-up because if you or your spouse can’t maintain a friendship with one half of the MF then you can’t be friends with them either, even if you get along with them or at least one of them yourself. You have to be clear about it. Just like marriage, it’s an all or nothing proposition.
Of course, the beauty of being a MF is that you get to share all of your social experiences and friendships with your spouse, as it should be. And inherently you should be married to your best friend, which is why it’s worth all of the surface level scheduling and strange couple (or MF-to-MF) friendships that you endure with your spouse.
No matter how I splice it, I’m now a MF for life, and I’ll be a MF to everyone that I meet for the rest of my life. I suppose I should just embrace it, huh?
(In my best Samuel L. Jackson voice) “Pamanda is one hell of a MF.”
Yes, I went to Lilith Fair
If you hadn’t heard already, I actually won the concert tickets. Four of them. On the radio. Let the jokes commence.
A couple weeks back, Amanda and I were driving our regular morning commute when we heard on Warm 106.9 (her choice) that they were giving away four tickets to Lilith Fair to caller 10 who could answer the question: “What was made of steel instead of copper for the first time ever as the result of World War II?” or something like that. The answer was of course “pennies” (Who’s got a minor in history? This guy.) Amanda was excited that we agreed on the answer and suggested I call in, seeing as she was driving. I dialed, expecting a busy signal. I mean I have dialed into radio stations hundreds of times before, so surely enough… “Hello? What caller am I? 10? The answer is pennies!”
And just like that, I won Lilith Fair tickets – a concert I vaguely knew as a bra-burning ritual started by some angry chicks during the 90s – and I won them on live radio. The DJ asked for my first and last name on the air, which I unfortunately answered. Why I played along, I don’t know. Possibly because I was an on-air DJ in college and missed the limelight. Possibly because I was pleasantly surprised that I had actually won. Possibly because I was totally naive to the repercussions of being that guy who called into Warm 106.9 to win Lilith Fair tickets. Twas more of the later.
As the result of my self-inflicted humiliation, Amanda, Nina, Jaclyn and I drove east on Friday to see Lilith – an all-powerful womyn (not woman) whose parts are Colbie Caillat, Sheryl Crow, Erykah Badu, Sugarland, Sarah McLachlan, etc. Lilith announced the day before we left that it had to cancel 10 future tour dates due to low ticket sales. Lilith is a cruel siren and she did spare the Northwest leg of the tour, so off we were.
Before I kick off the photos, here are some key learnings from Lilith Fair:
- A lot of lesbians attend, to no surprise
- A lot of them choose to go topless, to my surprise
- Those chicks can really throw a football
- Sheryl Crow has some ancient, old pop songs. I mean, Wow. How old is she?
- Erykah Badu was really great. All of the old white people were totally perplexed by her savage beats
- Sugarland is some country band my sister likes, and they’re a really good Top 40 cover band
- Sarah McLachlan is like NyQuil because the second her set started I fell asleep. She probably clears congestion and sore throats. Too many lullabies. And that PETA song about angels
Drive-thru bride
Amanda got the munchies after our wedding reception in Seattle. So we got a group of people together and went to Wendy’s drive-thru. Here’s what happened…
Drive-thru Bride from Paolo Mottola on Vimeo.
Tyler and Aubrey engagement photos
Foto Friday: Tyler and Aubrey engagement preview
I shot Tyler and Aubrey’s engagement photos this week and they rock. Look for the full set shortly!
The commution solution
(Yes, I made up the word “commution,” but it works!)
Where have I been post-wedding? Figuring out my new job, remembering names and faces and exploring how to find the New World that is Bellevue – just like Christopher Columbus did! Like his trip, there have been casualties and other people have made the trip to the New World before me, but I’m taking credit for it.
My previous commute was a straight shot from Tacoma to Bellevue on the Sounder train. Yes, it took an hour, but I had all of the amenties of the train, including comfortable, spacious seating, tables with electrical outlets and (usually) WiFi. It was nice. Here’s what it looked like:
Old commute
When I started at Eddie Bauer, I had to hop off the train early at Kent to catch a bus from Kent up 167, through downtown Renton and up 405 to get to Bellevue. This basically sucked. Because of the not-always-perfect bus and train times, I was looking at 1 hour, 20 minutes at best and 1 hour, 50 minutes at worst – EACH WAY. Further, the bus doesn’t have WiFi, so there goes your blog posts.
Newer, sucky commute
Alas, who could save me from this commute dilemma? My wife, of course.
Amanda scored a job with her former employers again in Seattle, so now we drive together and she drops me off in South Seattle to catch a bus across the pond to Bellevue, and we reverse the route on the way back. The drive is a lot faster than the train because we have the carpool lane, and we’re getting back nearly two hours to spend together during the commute each day. It’s especially nice to catch up in the evenings at 5:30 p.m. compared to 6:30 or 7 p.m. Amanda drives in the mornings and I drive in the afternoon, which REALLY works for my need to zone out in the morning, like I did on the train. We’ve only seen one major accident so far, which happened the first day we started commuting together. Amanda cried, but once we got past that it’s been smooth sailing.
Newest, much better commute
So there you have it, the commution solution. Regardless of how I was getting to work and back home, I have two moments each day that made it all worth it – when I get to my new job, which is just fantastic and exciting. The lunch options around Bellevue ain’t bad either. That other moment is when I got home. I love my house and family. It’s not much more complicated than that. This must be adulthood.
