These last few weeks have been fruitful in that just about everyone is looking for good design people. Visual designers, interaction designers, design managers, web developers. If you read my blog and want to explore other options, there are startups out there looking for great talent. Email me at dshen@yahoo.com if you’re interested…

…or aspiring to be like Lance.
These last three weeks of watching the Tour De France were simply amazing.
Lance Armstrong, back to win his seventh record setting Tour De France, was just an unconquerable force in the Tour. Looking at the man, it wasn’t all just brawn and power; it was strategic thinking and brain usage that also won the Tour for him.
It’s true that the guy is a freak of nature. You should see his power output on Lance Armstrong’s Website and note that he scores way above my average wattage output on any given ride. He has gone as high as 450 watts on a 30 min time trial, performed to predict his finishing time during the Tour. (It’s why one of my goals is to see how close I can get to his power output…before I die….! But also, one aspect that is also important is his power to weight ratio, so being about 157 lbs. I am about 6 lbs lighter than him…helps a little but not much in reaching his power to weight ratio.) He can definitely generate more power on the bike than just about anyone else out there today.
However, it isn’t just raw power which lets him win. He paces himself, notes who are the true rivals from a time perspective, and rides to keep ahead of them, knowing that he probably could win the entire Tour without dominating a single stage. This knowledge of how the game is played and strategizing around how the Tour is won, which makes him unique amongst the other cyclists. He uses his brains as much as his power to win the Tour.
Yes we can all look at the controversy surrounding the guy. Arrogance, divorce, cancer, lazy this, not enough training that. What do you expect when the tabloids get hold of anyone?
We are all human. We have our foibles. Some of Lance’s are exploited by the tabloids and that sucks.
But I would argue that we all need more heroes. I push aside the controversies and think about what makes Lance great. I take his power output and make it my goal. I think about his conquering a health condition which could have killed him. I think about his melding of intelligence and strength to win the most prestigious bike race in the world. And I do see the unforgiving grimace on his face as he powers to the lead when I’m racing to the finish line. The mystique of Lance drives me and gives me something to aspire to, something impossible to strive for. Yes, Lance is human, but he is also my hero.
If only I could find a rock star girlfriend too….

OK so I’m doing this “living in 3 places” thing and I’m discovered that in order for me to keep each place supplied, I need to shop for one of my living places in the other 2.
How strange that is, in a world where you would think that globalization has made every product available every where else, and especially in the U.S. The reality is that it ain’t true…OR…it’s just too hard to go and find.
When I’m in NYC, I was looking for aerosol contact lens solution. But the Duane Reade drug store across the street from me doesn’t carry any. Neither does any other Duane Reade that I’ve visited. Now, I’ve noticed there are other pharmacies around, like CVS and maybe some local ones. But am I going to truck around NYC looking for some damn aerosol contact lens solution? No way. I’ve become the quintessential lazy New Yorker – it’s too much effort to walk beyond a 2 block radius to go and get something.
So I go to California to buy it and throw it in my rollerboard and bring it back with me to NYC.
There is a Cingular store around the corner from my apartment in NYC and I find this cool Motorola Bluetooth Speakerphone HF800 which I desperately need for my stick shift PT Cruiser. Without something like that, I am really really risking crashing because I don’t have total control over the car while I try to talk on my mobile phone. But with this doodad, I can just talk freely. BUT….it’s too easy for me to get this thing in NYC and truck it back to California with me. In LA, I have no clue where the nearest Cingular store is. In SJ, I do, but then I gotta take some time to drive over there and get one, which I do anyways because now I love it so much that I want to leave one in LA.
It’s definitely a time thing as well. Not being in one place for long means I need to do things for that place while in my other 2 places. But I still can’t help wishing that I could just get what I need in that place so I don’t have to cart it around thousands of miles….

Some kind of nerve thing in my right trapezoid is sending pain down my right arm.
How this could happen when I’m not sitting all day in the office typing away on a keyboard, I have no idea.
But it is limiting the amount of time I can publish to my blog. Stay tuned. I may try to type some stuff up soon….

So last week I’m sitting in a small office in Oakland, probably in a not so good part of town, in a meeting with Impact Bay Area, a non-profit who teaches a unique form of self defense to women. It’s an organization I’m thinking of getting more involved in as I think it does some great work in the community.
As we’re talking through some tech stuff with respect to their website and digital operations, we hear a huge crash. We all whip our heads around and see some guy and some woman try to blow through this intersection at the same time and of course they hit.
Both cars don’t look too good and neither do the people…they are shaken but at least not too badly hurt.
This intersection is one of the worst around. It has 2 crossing streets and one that takes off at a diagonal. How are you supposed to know if someone is supposed to go and get to the diagonal road or not?
So then, we see a police car pull up, and then wow, fire trucks pull up, the paramedics are there, and 2 more police cars pull up.
Remember this is Oakland. Where no cops respond even to a car break-in. Or a traffic accident. They have more important things to deal with like drug killings and gang problems.
But here we are, with 3 cop cars and the whole fire department sitting outside our door. We’re all thinking what is up with this?
So a cop comes over and asks if anyone saw the accident. One of us did happen to look out the window when it happened so she gets picked to go outside to talk to the police.
She gets questioned and then comes back and tells us that the guy is the Chief of Police for Oakland!
Geez.
So if you see the Chief of Police of Oakland, and you live in Oakland, and you know your name is on the police report, and the police asks you who was at fault, and you want continued police support in case something happens to you…. what do you say when you see the Chief of Police in your city get into a car accident…?
Hmmm….

Blink Blink…
I’m probably the last person to read Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink” but I just finished it.
What interesting insights I have found in this book. So many examples of thin slicing, or gathering huge amounts of information and attempting to process it in a millisecond and make a snap judgement, or using your intuition and fine tuning it. It’s something that I’ve always been interested in as I try to follow my intuition on all aspects of life.
One of the most interesting topics came out of a discussion about thin slicing which was done by a researcher named John Gottman on couples and the ability to tell if couples were in trouble in their relationships. It was a classic example of fine tuning his thin slicing by cutting out the clutter of information and only focusing on the important ones, and then being able to make a snap judgement on that information.
Beware the Four Horsemen
Out of his research came something very remarkable to me. Gottman was able to determine four behaviors which will put a relationship substantially at risk. If one or both parties exhibit these traits in their interactions with each other, he is able to predict with chilling accuracy whether or not the couple will stay together.
These four behaviors are: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. Given their deathly effect on relationships, he has perhaps termed them accurately as The Four Horsemen.
After videotaping hundreds of couples, Gottman got really good at seeing the subtle and the overt actions and reactions each person has during a conversation topic, chosen to provoke some sort of discussion between the test subjects.
Certainly language and large body movements are easy to discern. But he was also able to catalog small and fleeting reactions – with the help of videotape, he and his researchers could zoom on in subtle facial expressions and see their contribution to the overall conversation. Sometimes, these reactions only last a few milliseconds, BUT our subconscious is able to pick up on these actions and we gain feelings about how the other person is receiving and understanding what we’re saying.
How many times have we been in a conversation with another person and as we talk about something, we get more and more uncomfortable about continuing what we’re saying because the person we’re talking to doesn’t seem to be listening, or validating, or making us feel good, or maybe even showing subtle signs of….contempt.
The Big Daddy Horseman
According to Gottman, defensiveness, stonewalling, and criticism are all important destructors of a relationship. However, the one that stands out above all the rest in tanking a relationship is contempt. While criticism is a global denigration of character and certainly in its destructive form very harmful, but doing it from a superior level where you make someone feel inferior for what they are saying or what they have done really takes the cake.
Think about those times when you’ve said something, and then the other person laughs in disbelief. Or when you tell them you would like to do something and they roll their eyes, or their tone of voice shifts to one of ridicule. How did you feel?
Sometimes the reactions can be very subtle, as Gottman found out and you may not even be able to articulate what exactly happens. BUT, your subconscious knows and you start to gain feelings that the other person is disrespecting you for what you’re saying.
It was a remarkable chapter that resonated hugely with me. It reinforces my desire to continually fine tune my ability to thin slice and interpret my intuition, and *especially* as I gain insight into how my internal feelings develop during my interactions with other people…
For you brainy people, read more about research from the Gottman Institute.

You know, I’ve always heard about Tuscany and the wonderful rolling hills scenery that marks that region, the fine wines and food but I’ve never been there until last week. Spending a week in the countryside away from the crowds, basking in the sun with vineyards surrounding you, and taking in homemade pasta was truly a treat.
Whenever I travel outside the U.S., I go into observation mode and start seeing all the differences between the U.S. and where I’ve gone. These impressions stay with me and range from good to annoying. So in order to make sure this post won’t come off sounding like a bitch session about Italy, I will alternate between the good things about my trip and the truly annoying things as well.
GOOD: Rolling Green Hills
It is such a peaceful land in Tuscany. Everyone moves at a slow pace, stores close up for hours for lunch, and the people are genuinely a happy group (drinking tons of wine notwithstanding).
Every day we would open a bottle of wine around lunch time, eat a home made delicious lunch, and just relax and stare out into the countryside behind our villa. As the sun moves across the sky, along with the clouds, the shadows and light play a visual dance across the green hills and provides yet a new view of the vineyards and crops which fill the hills. Tall spruces pop up singly and in groups in and around the hills and they remind me of the sculpted grounds of an ancient Roman city in some movie I’ve seen.
I am reminded of the book I was reading, “In Praise of Slowness” by Carl Honore where he talks about the Slow movement which has huge roots in Italy. I can feel myself slowing down and not worrying about where to go next. It really doesn’t matter. I am glad to be away from the allure of the touristy stuff to see because it always makes me want to rush around and see everything. Instead, I just remind myself that if I really want to, I will be back and be able to see all art and history, and hopefully in a less-crowded non-tourist ridden time.
By dinner time, we’ve probably polished off 3-4 bottles of excellent red wine and eaten some of the best fresh pasta money can buy. It is truly a mellow and recharging experience.
ANNOYING: Showering
We are wondering why the towels in Italy are these super thin sheets of cloth that barely do anything. Perhaps we are spoiled in the U.S. with our lush, plush Ralph Lauren towels which we wrap ourselves luxuriously after a nice shower (yes, men do this too hahah)?
And the shower in the place we stayed in Florence – I think there must have been about 6 inches around me once I got in there. How one is supposed to soap down and rinse off in there, I just don’t know. Woe to the overweight person who tries to get clean in there!
Why would showers be so tiny in Italy? I just don’t get it.
GOOD: FOOD!!!!
Every day we would hit the market and buy fresh pasta and vegetables and fruit and cook it all day long. The pasta is all handmade and it is delicious! Much better than the dry kind you find back home. We bought regular noodles and gnocchi and would stir in green onions and garlic, and always with fresh olive oil. So simple and yet so tasty!
The bread we get is baked fresh every day. It is a staple for us as we sip our wine out behind our villa. We break off chunks and dip it in olive oil and sea salt – one of the things they don’t do in Italy is put salt in the bread. Thus, the sea salt gives the bread an added zing which I just love.
Another interesting thing is that the fruit and vegetables are grown very organically there. It was very interesting to taste the spinach because it was actually sweet! You won’t find that at Albertson’s! Also, we had canteloupe which was about half the size of the melons you get in the U.S.; but, they were twice as sweet! Instead of the hormone pumped mega melons we get, these small petite melons get to concentrate their sweetness in much smaller volume and they taste wonderful!
Even pizza tastes good here. I think it’s more than just the food. I think it’s the environment, the air, and feeling of ancient-ness in the ground where civilization has been for centuries that makes the food taste extra special. When you are relaxed and your mood is enhanced by the positive around you, then the food just tastes extra good.
ANNOYING: Rolling my R’s
OK so I try some Italian and I just can’t roll those damn R’s. My tongue can’t make that motion and sound. Yet another muscle I haven’t developed…? How does one weightlift with my tongue?
FUNNY: Tanning
My buddy Ricky and I turn on the equivalent of the shopping channel on TV. We watch this 20 minute long ad on this portable tanning light that you can use just about anywhere. These girls in bikinis, or lack thereof, are displayed at various angles throughout the ad. Ricky and I just sit there sipping wine and watching our real live Italian soft porn.
I am now reminded of some of the women I’ve passed on the street and remember that they looked extra brown. For me, this dark brown tan isn’t attractive. It’s too dark for me. These days I am out training so much that I get way too much sun and slather on SPF 48 no matter what I do. I definitely try to avoid the leathering of the skin as it ages prematurely in the sun. It just ain’t worth it speeding up that process by sitting under a tanning lamp.
But I guess it’s a Euro thing because there sure are a lot of women walking around with that dark brown tan.
GOOD: Wine tasting
I’ve started learning a lot about wine tasting and about wines in Montalcino. Certainly there are so many factors governing the taste of a wine and I’m trying to take it all in. One of these days I’ll have to develop the vocabulary to describe wine as I taste it.
I walk into a wine store and the lady there gives me a glass of Cupano Brunello di Montalcino to taste. WOW. It was fabulous! It is real smooth, no harsh tastes anywhere, and there is a hint of vanilla aftertaste which I just love. I ask her how much this superb wine is – 95 euros per bottle! I buy 4 bottles and ship it back to the U.S.
But then I am stuck. All wines I taste after that I compare to that Cupano and nothing comes close. This is what happens when you start at the top.
ANNOYING: Top-ing Up
Ricky and I go and buy some Vodafone SIM cards. We both add in 50 euros to talk and surf the net with. But within a few days, we run out.
Then comes the adventure. We can’t find anywhere to top up our Vodafone cards! We walk into everywhere that posts some sort of mobile phone sign but no one can help us.
We try the ATMs where supposedly you can add money to your SIM cards but for some reason when I put in my ATM card, it doesn’t give me the menu option. What the hell. I figure it must be that I have a U.S. ATM card and it doesn’t let me do it! ARG!
Then we get to an internet cafe and try to do it online. We wade through forms written in Italian until it asks us for some tax ID number. What is this? No idea. We try typing in all sorts of numbers but it doesn’t take any of them. Foiled again!
GOOD: Giro D’Italia
On Friday we head out to Grosetto and watch the Giro D’Italia. It was my first pro cycling race and it was pretty amazing. We were extremely lucky to have found a stage where the cyclists actually loop four times through the city. Thus, we were able to see them four times as they whipped through the city streets at 30+ miles per hour! Lots of great pictures and we got to see a big pileup as well.
These guys are so buff. I was watching the stage prior to this one on TV. They had slow-motion on the leader and I could not help but notice this weird little muscle bulging above each quad. Ricky tells me this muscle is the muscle used on the uplift motion of pedaling and when you do it a lot, it grows huge. I need this muscle.
More amazing was the fact that we bumped into an ex-Yahoo Lawrence with his wife and some friends riding with Trektravel and following a week of the Giro. How funny to see him there and somehow we knew we might!
ANNOYING: Driving confusion
I could not believe how confusing it is to drive in Italy. We found so many signs which pointed ambiguously in opposite directions to the same place! Also, I remember distance markers where it would say one distance on one sign and then we few KM down the road the sign to the same place would show a greater distance! Are we getting closer or are we getting further away? Who knows.
People also always drift across lanes. I have no idea why. You see someone driving and all of a sudden they just start drifting right. No particular reason. It just happens. So Ricky and I decide there must be something to this so we start straddling the lane too. Nobody cared. No polizia pulled us over. It was the normal thing to do. When in Rome….
FUNNY: Polizia picture opportunity
My friend Brian points out the polizia cameras which time you and then shoot a picture of you if you drive by too fast. You then get a nice 8×10 glossy plus speeding ticket in the mail from the local polizia a few days later.
Of course Ricky and I can’t resist. Every time we drive by this camera, we give it our best funny face and flip it the “bird” and wait for Avis to get a nice 8×10 glossy of us.
ANNOYING: 2 pt Font
Why do they fill their street signs with so many words? And they write everything in 2 pt font! You don’t even have time to read the signs to figure out where to go! And join that arrows that point in ambiguous directions and you’re toast.
GOOD: Davy Crockett
But I feel lucky to be driving with Ricky because he is freakin’ Davy Crockett. He tells me to drive with the moon on my right and says that this road feels right (yes use the force, Luke). By doing this all the way from Florence back to Montalcino, we make it back in one piece. Amazing!
Pictures here:
Montalcino where we mostly stayed.
Inside Florence and the Duomo.
Fiesole, outside Florence with my buddy Brian.
Biking around Florence.
Giro D’Italia 2005 in Grosetto.
Biking from Montalcino to Pienza, last day.

Today I picked up my usual bi-weekly parent’s packet of information. It had the typical newsletters and announcements from my daughter’s school, but there was another surprise in there. It had some letter writing exercises done by my daughter.
I looked at the work and saw that she was writing her letters very very well. The repetition and copying of the letters was very consistent and looked great.
As a parent, I felt a wave of pride go through me. And I shared it with her. I could not stop telling my daughter how proud I was to see her doing her letters so well, and that she was learning and growing and that I was so happy to see that.
It also made me think about praise and acknowledging others’ accomplishments.
It got me thinking about how sometimes we don’t get any praise or support for all the things we do, and some of these things are important to us in little and big ways.
Sometimes we do things that are important to others. Then we get our thanks (sometimes or never) for the things we did.
Sometimes we do things that are only important to ourselves. In some cases, we get praise for these accomplishments when we make it known how important it is to us. Other times, we find that others minimize what we have done no matter how important it is to us. Have we not all had parents who could not see this?
Having experienced all this, and now experiencing the accomplishments of my daughter, I think back to all the instances I did not congratulate someone for a job well-done or acknowledge someone’s goal(s) being reached and I feel ashamed. Ashamed that I did not give them a little bit of praise for what they did, either for me or for themselves. Ashamed that I did not give them even a little bit of support whether they asked for it or not.
But now I realize the value of this praise and support. I want my daughter to grow up knowing that her father values everything that she does, as long as she values it. None of this “my values are her values” crap – is it fair that we force what we value onto someone else? She needs to grow up as an individual knowing that her father supports her in whatever she does and not be constantly fighting and wondering whether her father approves.
Aren’t there other people out there that deserve this bit of ourselves as well? Colleagues? Friends? Children? Girl/boyfriend? Spouse?

The other day I was playing with the Yahoo! My Web Beta. I could not figure some of the functions out…at all. So I start pinging people up and down my Yahoo! Messenger list, people who still work at Yahoo!.
Nobody is there to help me, except for my buddy Alex. I ask him a few questions about it and even he doesn’t know how to do what I want it to do. He’s not on the search team so he’s not in the know.
As I conversate with Alex over IM, I realize this chilling fact:
I’VE BECOME ONE OF THE MILLIONS OF CLUELESS USERS…
As the head design guy at Yahoo!, I typically see a lot of their products at very early stages and build up knowledge of how they work as I see them get designed.
But hey, I’ve been outta that job for 9 months now. So between then and now, two products get launched in beta, My Web and Yahoo! 360.
Yahoo! 360 – another product which I can’t figure out. Trying to find messages, read them, use it as a broken email system, connecting with friends…all these blue underlined DHTML links were so familiar to me before and now they are…unfamiliar.
I think about all the users out there who use Yahoo! products. I think about how complex they’ve gotten over the years, chasing features over functionality – does the 51st feature in a site really make it that much better than the 50th?
And…we gave those users no help whatsoever. They were left to figure out these complex products on their own.
Now…like me. Especially when my buddies on IM won’t answer me. Is it because they know I’ve become clueless and don’t want to associate with me any more? Or maybe they are tired of hearing my incessant complaining…?
Somehow I know I’ve become a better designer for it. I am now unwed to any one company’s products. I use the best of breed for each thing I do on the Net. I compare and contrast freely without feeling any guilt about using my own company’s products. I take note of what works and what doesn’t and file it away for later.
It’s a complex world out there and Darwinian evolution is in full swing – the simplest products survive in the user jungle of the Net.

By popular demand, and by me feeling better about it ;-), I have turned on comments for the latest 3 entries and for all posts from now on…