How Long Should I Keep That Paperwork?

I have recently been spending a lot of time cleaning out my house and going through old paperwork and junk. I came accross this article which proved to be invaluable in helping me make the all important decisions about which documents to shred and which to keep. I hope you find it helpful as well. Enjoy!

TripIt Launch, 1.5 Weeks Later

It's been a week and a half since we launched TripIt. We're getting an incredible response from folks who are using the site and loving it! We've collected some of the blog and press coverage here.

This week has been so busy I haven't had a lot of time to post anything here, read blogs, or respond to non-work related email. I promise to catch up shortly and apologize if I've got email from you that I haven't answered yet sitting in my inbox.

TripIt Launches!

It's been a long time in coming and I'm so happy to say that TripIt launched today at the TechCrunch 20/40 conference in San Francisco. We are now finally, fully, open for business!

So far the response and attention has been both gratifying and a little overwhelming. Who could imagine so many folks would be interested in our little project?!?!?

It's been an amazing amount of fun building TripIt so far and I can't wait to embark on the next phase of development as we scale and improve the service with a much larger audience.

We've still got a long way to go, but we've got a great start. Now, back to work!

Oooops...

The first big hole I've seen in San Francisco that doesn't seem to have been PG&E's fault.

HEADLINE: Duplex Mismatch Strands Travelers at LAX

So maybe that's a little dramatic, but my friend AquaRapid forwarded this NY Times article to me today that discusses complexity in computing systems and networks and how the complexity itself is often a greater threat to the stability of the system than a malicious hacker might be:

Who Needs Hackers

From the article:

NOTHING was moving. International travelers flying into Los Angeles International Airport — more than 17,000 of them — were stuck on planes for hours one day in mid-August after computers for the United States Customs and Border Protection agency went down and stayed down for nine hours.

Hackers? Nope. Though it was the kind of chaos that malevolent computer intruders always seem to be creating in the movies, the problem was traced to a malfunctioning network card on a desktop computer. The flawed card slowed the network and set off a domino effect as failures rippled through the customs network at the airport, officials said.

It's hard to imagine how a computer on someone's desk could be depended upon by such an important system for anything, but there you go. Duplex problem? Broadcast storm on a production non-properly segmented network? Who knows, but complexity is a very real problem that the maintainer of a large scale system has to deal with.

Sound Advice From the Guy in the Kitchen

For those who know me personally you will know that I love to read but I am a pretty slow reader and therefore rarely have the time to actually read a book cover to cover just for fun. When I do get the opportunity to read a book, however, I really enjoy it and was lucky enough to just that during my recent vacation. I read a book that's been sitting at the top of the ever growing pile on my nightstand: Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. I've been a fan of his work for a couple of years now mostly through his T.V. show No Reservations on the Travel Channel. He is a phenomenally entertaining storyteller and the book was a lot of fun. While I wasn't directly involved in the grizzly underbelly of the restaurant world while I was living in New York, the context in which he told his tale was very familiar and rang very true to me as I knew people who were in that world.

The penultimate chapter of the book is entitled 'So You Want to Be a Chef? A Commencement Address' and is his attempt to dissuade those who aren't really serious about a career in the restaurant business to not follow that path. For those who do end up choosing "the path" he provides some advice that seemed generally useful and wise. Here are his 14 points with my commentary.

1. Be fully committed.

This is so true and doesn't just apply to your professional life, but life in general. You can't, and shouldn't, do anything worth doing unless you are fully committed to it. If you're not fully committed then don't bother, go do something that matters less and requires less effort. You will just end up disappointed.


2. Learn Spanish!

This doesn't necessarily apply to my job but a LOT of people on this planet speak Spanish and if you believe that a good percentage of them have valuable ideas to share then you better learn how to communicate with them. Growing up in New York you learn a little through osmosis but I really should brush up.


3. Don't steal.

This is obvious and should require no further explanation.


4. Always be on time.

This is for some folks, including myself, very hard to do sometimes. It is, however, very important and something you should work at simply because being on time shows respect to those who are waiting for you. Do your best and if you're late, apologize.


5. Never make excuses or blame others.

This is, in my opinion, one of the more important pieces of advice on the list. If you screw up, just own up to it. Trust me, in all the years I've been working, nobody remembers the occasional mistakes of the guy that owned up to them and corrected the error. The guy that tries to make his mistake someone else's fault will eventually gain a reputation as being a slippery and untrustworthy character. These guys are the worst because they infect organizations with mediocrity and make others work harder to pull up the slack. It has been my experience that over time the best run organizations weed out this behavior and the worst organizations deal with it by becoming mediocre themselves.


6. Never call in sick.

Come on, this is something we should have all learned was not cool back in grade school. If you're doing this, re-consider your place of employment because you probably just don't want to be there.


7. Lazy, sloppy and slow are bad.

This is pretty obvious but I will disagree slightly with Tony that slow is always bad. In a kitchen he's probably right although I can't really say that with a lot of confidence since I've never worked in a professional kitchen. I do think, partly because I generally do things a bit more slowly than a lot of my faster friends, that being slow isn't always a bad thing in that it can sometimes help you be more precise and can often given you the opportunity to obtain a deeper understanding of a problem.


8. Be prepared to witness every variety of human folly and injustice.

People are sometimes very bizarre and when you're thrown into a pressure-filled situation weird things happen. I do think, however, that the restaurant business brings out a much more bizarre crowd than I see in my line of work. You'll have to read his book to understand what I mean by this.


9. Assume the worst.

He goes on to warn you that you must be careful to not let this seemingly negative outlook poison you and I completely agree. You need to think of this piece of advice as developing the ability to realistically calibrate your expectations of people and situations so that when things get messed up you aren't so surprised that you can't function effectively. Sometimes people and situations surprise you in a positive way and then there's nothing but joy.


10. Try not to lie.

This should be obvious and is very good advice. It's an underlying value that you should try to adhere to when dealing with other people as well as yourself. Everyone slips up here once in a while but it's important to try to make it right as much as possible.


11. Avoid restaurants where the owner's name is over the door.

I'll have to trust him on this, he's in the restaurant business and I am not.


12. Think about that resume!

A friend of mine at Opsware once gave me some extremely good advice that is a complement to this wise nugget from Tony. To paraphrase, my friend said "Do good work and the rest will come." What he meant was work on things you believe in, work on things that matter, work on things that are hard, and all the good things (satisfaction, money, respect, learning) will come. In the process you will build yourself a nice resume.


13. Read!

I don't follow Tony's advice too well here as I am often short on time. I'll have to work on this.

I really enjoyed this book and if you like food, his show, or the stories associated with a completely dysfunctional work environment that is somehow at the same time addictive you would probably enjoy it too.