Crossfit at The Lab. Jan's first!
Mar/11/10 16:48 Filed in: personal
Last night, Jan and I went to try out The Lab: Eastlake Crossfit. I’m just coming off of 6 weeks of inactivity due to a broken ankle from snowboarding in Park City (lame!) and I’ve hesitant to reactivate my membership at “Level 4: Seattle Crossfit” until I am certain that my ankle can hold up to the Crossfit love. Luckily, Eastlake just opened up, I’ve heard good things about it from my friend and co-worker, Roger, and to top it all off - it’s free for the month of March! This also means that I had the opportunity to chide Jan into trying Crossfit without any of those pesky up-front (and ongoing) hefty monthlies that have so deterred her in the past. (I think that getting married is also a powerful motivator for getting in shape. Right Jan?)
We had an excellent first experience with Eastlake Crossfit. We were met by the owners within seconds of getting in the front door; signed the medical release forms, and were warming up, all inside of 2 or 3 minutes. After a group warmup with hurdles focused on opening up our hips and overall flexibility, Jan and I were taken to the beginner room for the Elements class (beginners are separated from the herd until they learn all of the movements necessary for entry into the normal class) and our Workout of the Day (WOD) which you can see in the photo I attached to this post. This “beginner room” is a major change from most Crossfit gyms that ask you to go through a series of up-front classes or personal training sessions that raise financial barriers to Crossfit right up-front. It’s been enough to keep interested friends from trying out Crossfit. I hope that this Elements/Beginner model ends up working for Eastlake as I think it gets people into the feel of actual Crossfit much more quickly.
I’m happy to say that my ankle held up for the running and the jumprope although I’m paying for it with a bit of pain today. I’ll take today off and hopefully get in with Jan for another workout tomorrow.
If any of my Seattle based friends wants to try out Crossfit without having to pay for it, Eastlake is definitely a great option but you’d better get in there fast. The facility is awesome, overlooking Lake Union, they have free parking (in the Diamond lot across the street), and they have real lockers and showers, which is kind of a rarity for a Crossfit gym. I really enjoyed having a Crossfit class with fewer than 18 people in it, but given what I saw last night, that may not always be the case for Eastlake. This place is going to get really popular.
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The week in review
Mar/06/10 17:19 Filed in: personal
Finally made it back to a Saturday after another eventful week at work and on the social front.
Sunday: Kutta crushes Samsa: After crawling out of bed, I headed over to Uptown Espresso to get out of our condo before the city switched off the power for a few hours. Evidently, they needed to replace some sort of fuse or something. On foot on the way to the coffee shop, I ran into this behemoth parked on Republican St. (oh, the assumed irony).
Yes, that’s right, “Universal Freedom Films” does “Outerspace, Kung Fu, Rock-n-Roll, and Comedy.” Ladies only on the tour bus! I tried to find out more about Universal Freedom Films online but have failed so far. If anyone knows anything, feel free to pass it along. I’m curious.
After Jan joined me at the coffee shop, Kutta and Lera swooped by to pick us up in Kutta’s uber sporty Sube so that we could go out and grab a little dim sum at Jade Palace in the ID. We over-ordered on the first pass and wolfed down the food as quickly as we could, while it was still warm. Nearing the end of the meal, the site of a crawling cockroach on the counter over Jan’s left shoulder sort of stopped us cold. While the insect quickly disappeared under the ledge of the counter, Jan was spooked and I changed places with her for the last 5 or 10 minutes until we got out to leave (how chivalrous). The cockroach did eventually reappear but Kutta nabbed him with a napkin and ended his life. I’m sure there are more where that came from.
After breakfast, we walked up the hill to the Panama Hotel so that we could grab some tea and I could introduce Kutta to the most excellent spicy hot chocolates. I’ve forgotten what we spoke about but it was nice. We finished our little excursion with a stop at REI.
Monday: There is momentum in taking action: Left work right at 5 to jet across town to Bedlam Coffee for a financial advising appointment with Marc Maurer. The largest item of business at this meeting was figuring out what to do with the funds that had been rolled over to Ameriprise from my Amazon 401(k) but we also spoke about some things that are going to need to change once I get married.
I tell you what, most people rue dealing with their finances or talking with their financial advisors; for me, it’s the exact opposite. I feel energized every time I deal with Marc and over time, as the leverage over my financial life has grown, the meetings have become more and more empowering.
I’ve found that when you have areas of doubt in your life, the best thing you can do is take action, any action. You need to start feeling like you are controlling the situation rather than being controlled by it. This has something my mom and I have spoken about a few times. While it may sound hokey to say, there is power in movement - period.
After the meeting with Marc, I met up with William and Jason (two Australians) for some food and drink at “Mexico” followed by a guys night at the movies watching “The Crazies.” “The Crazies” = meh. Standard plague/infestation/government conspiracy plot that’s been done better by the “28 days” movies.
Tuesday: More of the same: Worked all day and then hit up pub trivia. Not much more to say other than I came home and Jan and I watched our weekly episode of “24” on Hulu. Always riveting.
Wednesday: First Things First, a Work Lesson in one part: While I am not going to speak of work in very much detail on this blog, this was a hyper productive day. I had been fighting with Powerpoint as a mockup tool and was told by Mark that I could try a faster wireframing tool that I had used a bit in the past called Balsamiq. All I can say is “whoa.” If you use these two tools for wireframing back to back - even if you are significantly experienced at using Powerpoint for wireframing - I think you’ll find that you are at least 2-4x faster on Balsamiq. And even better yet, Balsamiq doesn’t lure you into a phony rat-hole of trying to get the wireframes to look as much like the eventual site as possible. Black and white, that’s what you get, and it’s the appropriate resolution and polish for getting initial flow and UX pulled together. I highly recommend the tool if you need to communicate specifications to designers and/or developers.” You’ll get an appreciation of the details that designers futz over and you’ll be a hero to any developer that is used to having completely nebulously defined work.”
Another lesson for the week: “First things first: Don’t focus on the fit and finish until you get the raw piece cut.”
Thursday: Art Walk: Woot! Art walk time. Jan came downtown and we went and hit Flatcolor and ArtExchange before Mark met up with us to hit the big ones in Occidental Square. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to a ton of places and there was very little I saw the blew me away this time. It seemed like all of the main galleries this month went abstract and decided to show me stuff that I just didn’t really appreciate. Gallery IMA, however, was a bright spot. They’re exhibiting an abstract painter this month that, while I don’t “get it,” intrigued me. I went to their site to try and get the artists name but their site is still showing last month’s exhibition and I couldn’t find out who he was. Hopefully, that will get updated and I’ll be able to put it here.
The real highlight of this evening was the Nord Alley Party a block from my work. The city held a “Green Alleys” competition and was showcasing the proposals and handing out prizes to the winners. They served up some food that was ravenously consumed by Jan.
The alley hung plastic bottles which when lit, made the alley quite attractive from the sidewalks at either end. The bottles read” WASTE NOT” when you got directly below them.
The winning proposal was called Alley 2.0 and used the concept of Apple’s App Store to create a visual icon dictionary of enhancements and improvements to alleys which could be subsidized by the city and improve their quality.
How many times have you eaten in an alley? Be honest...
Later in the evening, Jan, Mark and I met up with Ernest, Geoff and Lin for a bite out at Purple Dot in the ID. I wish I had a picture of the egg sauce scallop noodle dish I had while Jan regaled us with how spit turns the gelatinous noodle sauce into liquid. Yum and slurp!
Friday: Jan and I met up at “Mexico” after work for some dinner and then went to GameWorks where we played “Extreme Big Game Hunter.” I went moose hunting and elk hunting; Jan went hunting for bears. We then had a really good game on “House of the Dead 4.” Jan was quite good at it and lasted longer in the face of the undead onslaught than I did.
As soon as we got off the trolley and got home, we got a call from Geoff, Lin and Nathalie, who were out front and wanting to grab some drinks and food at Seastar. Even though we had just eaten, we, of course, complied.
Saturday: So Saturday is really just getting underway. Jan had to get up and get out the door to go hiking and I came down to The Little Red Bistro to examine my week, write this post, and have some crepe and coffee. I met a guy named Roland who is the CFO for this place and we talked about the possibility of having a wedding reception here in this fantastic space later this year when Jan and I get back from Belize. I think it may serve our needs perfectly.
While here this morning, I took a few minutes to read a short piece in the March issue of Harper’s by Philip Levine, called “Nobody’s Detroit.” It’s listed as a eulogy the author’s hometown of Detroit. Among other things, it explores how leaving one’s hometown can lead to the creation of a strengthened sense of nostalgia - one tends to forget the negative and only remember the positive. This is why, when you go back to your hometown, it can lead to a sense of loss for a place that never really was in the first place. “Nothing lasts.” And on that ever so negative note, I shall end this post for now.
Thinking through your use cases
Feb/24/10 17:21 Filed in: thoughts
So I am very excited to be living in the up-and-coming neighborhood of South Lake Union with my fiancee; and we’re both really excited about the new businesses that are trickling into the area - especially the restaurants. A few weeks ago, we noticed that a couple blocks from our house, the Flying Fish cafe was going to be coming in. They have their windows all covered up with paper and a big sign facing the street showcasing their URL - flyingfishseattle.com.
I was excited to learn more, so I punched it into my readily available iPhone and got the website you see in the photo above. There are two major problems with this experience:
- The site size displays at barely larger than a postage stamp and relies on flash content in the middle - content that doesn’t even render on the phone.
- Nowhere on this site can I find a place that gives me any information about the restaurant that is going to be opening. Are they moving or opening a new location? What date will I be able to check things out? Is there a grand opening?
I don’t bring this up because I really care that much about the Flying Fish. I bring it up because they’re making it difficult for me to care. If you put your URL front and center out in public to announce a major move for your business, you should make the experience useful for people who want to get information quickly - and that means making it available to people on their mobile devices as well as the computer crowd.
Suggestions:
- Create a very simple page at http://flysingfishseattle.com/SLU to promote your new establishment and get the neighborhood excited.
- Allow that page (and all pages on your site) to be rendered simply on mobile browsers. It is trivial to have your site detect what browser agent is coming to your site and alter the display based on it. In fact, even my other blog has this feature via a free plug-in. For instance, you could have the iPhone page render your images not using Flash and have a simple HTML page displaying your hours, contact information, map and important links. That would be a good start.
If you show that you care about the experience of people connecting to your restaurant’s site for the first time, you’ll earn a little more trust from me that you also care about my dining experience when I eventually come to eat there.