Results tagged “running”

Yesterday and early this morning, while talking about our impending move to a new apartment a few blocks away in a much bigger building (and no longer on the ground floor), my wife and I talked about how being in a larger complex essentially acts as a fairly effective form of security through obscurity. Unfortunately, as always seems to be the case, the conversation was prescient.

I was at home this morning in the bedroom of our tiny apartment when someone just walked right into our place. At first I thought it might be my wife and then a guy's voice said "real estate agent" to quiet my dog's barking. That explanation seemed plausible because we're about to move and our place is up for rent, so a ton of agents have been by to show the place.

Then I realized the agents don't have a key to our place. How did this motherfucker get in my house?

I pulled on some pants and came out to the living room, but the guy was already gone. I grabbed my keys and went outside after him, barefoot. "Hey, what are you doing?"

He was about 30 feet in front of me and didn't turn around, just said, "It's cool, I'm with the real estate agency." I found out later he'd even nodded at our building supervisor on his way out to say hello. I said "what agency?" (the sort of silly question that always stands out in retrospect) and he just repeated his line about how he was with a real estate agency. I shouted "STOP" and then he took off running. At that point, I had just noticed he had both my wife's and my MacBooks under his right arm. Despite being in my bare feet, I gave chase.

We sprinted down to the end of our block, and then around the corner onto 1st Ave, and I started screaming "STOP THAT THIEF! CALL THE COPS!" over and over. We covered one block downtown pretty quickly, and one friendly guy at the end of the block joined in the case as well. The three of us rounded the corner onto the next street. Halfway down the block, the thief cut in to a skate park that is next to the neighborhood high school. The samaritan saw that the thief had tossed the laptops into a plastic trash can in the park and peeled off to (as I later found out) tell the cops down the street what had happened. I had just caught up to what was going on and saw the laptops sitting undamaged in the trash can. Absurdly, he'd even taken the time to unplug the power cord and take it with him, which I had noticed at the start of the chase, and the cord was sitting on the ground next to the trash can. As it turned out, his pausing to get the power cord probably made up for the time it took me to get my pants on, and is what ended up making the difference of me getting our stuff back.

The samaritan disappeared without me being able to thank him; I did thank the little kid that tried to follow the thief through the skate park though. I came back home with our laptops under my own arm, and found nothing else missing, and realized that the kid had probably done the math -- two guys chasing him, and him carrying 10 or 12 pounds of gear, he wasn't likely to get away scott free. And I got an interesting taste of that uniquely male, testosterone-fueled rush that comes from scaring away the intruder who comes into your cave. That was an adrenaline buzz that lasted most of the morning.

Our super changed the lock on the door, and the young cops whose patrolcar had been flagged by the samaritan came by to take my report. One of the cops was just shakng her head. "That thief, " she said, "Was pretty ballsy. I'm glad you got your stuff back." It seems, upon reflection, that this was probably at least partially an inside job, with the rental office for our current building loaning keys to agents, one of whom probably tips off this kid about where to go. (The escape path the kid used to run away reveals that he knows the neighborhood well.)

So, that was today's adventure. We're moving out of here in a little over two weeks, just a few blocks away. Because this post is public and I know people might share the link, some important points: New York City is safe. Safer than ever. I've never had a single other issue of getting anything taken from me for any reason in the dozen years I've lived in this city. I'm still gonna live in the same neighborhood, and hope to do so indefinitely. Had any guns been introduced into the mix of what happened today, the situation would only have been worse. NYPD's new generation of young, multiethnic and increasingly gender-balanced recruits are professional, thoughtful and truly representative of our great city.

There weren't a whole lot of really new things announced at the Web 2.0 conference, mostly large companies saying what you'd expect. But one of the launches that stood out was stikkit. There are plenty of reviews of the service; I'm not here to talk about that.

I got a chance to talk to the folks behind Stikkit a bit at the event, and I've been friends with them for years. So instead of "hey, what does it do, what are the features?" we ended up talking a little more generally about what starting a business, and launching a product, actually means.

Michael sums it up well on his blog:

Talking to Anil at the conference, I realize something now that I only sort of had at the back of mind before. He described how he just got back from watching the NYC Marathon, and how gruelling it can be just to arrive at the starting line. You need to fly there, take taxis, ferries, subways, then register, warm up, and finally start running. He said "You've just now arrived at the starting line, and your marathon has just begun."

And there's no doubt he's right. I see much more clearly now that we've launched that a lot of attention has to be paid to pacing ourselves, and making sure we're tapping into the collective intelligence of our rapidly growing user base. Some of those little things we put off prior to the launch are now beginning to take center stage, and we're spending good quality time getting things right.

Too often, I see people, especially in the new wave of startups, treating their launch as the finish line. Or putting all their eggs in a single basket -- a big press story or coverage on a prominent blog. Maybe a partnership or endorsement from some company. Any of these things are great (hell, I work on that kind of stuff every day) but none of them, on their own are enough.

Launching something meaningful is about every day, every minute, that happens after that start. Honestly, it makes me feel a lot like when I was talking about getting married: "If you tell people you're engaged, they start talking to you about that one day, and almost never about the other half century you're signing up for."

I am, frankly, tired of reading reviews of new technology that omit the commitment of the team, that don't mention how the success of the product almost feels like life-or-death to the people making it, or ones that ignore the people who make the damn thing happen. I'd settle for one product review that said, "we're not sure which direction this service is going, but the people behind it have a history of making magic happen". The technologies I use most every day were almost all conceived as something else entirely, and evolved into their current, indispensable forms through the dedication of people who were interested in running the marathon, not just entering the race.

(Thanks to David for the photo.)

Yesterday was the 33rd NYC Marathon. Every year since I moved to New York, I've tried to get out there to support the runners, but watching the race this year was even more fun in the past. So I've compiled a list of ways that people who are lazy slobs like me can have as much fun as I did when watching the race.

How to Enjoy Watching the NYC Marathon

• Assemble a group of distance runners to accompany you while you are watching. I was fortunate enough to have two marathoners and a triathelete with me. Your inner skeptical defensiveness about the incredible act of athleticism that you are witnessing will be no match for their casual identification with the runners. Listen for, "Yeah, when I ran my last marathon...".
• Pay careful attention to the runners in novelty costumes. This year didn't just feature the usual parade of funny-colored wigs. There were people wearing capes, a couple of Santa suits, and at least three separate runners in full-body rhinocerous suits, complete with giant rhino heads. Remember, while you laugh at the guy in the pink tutu with the parasol, that he's running twenty-six goddamn miles today, you lazy slob.
• Yes, you're there to show support. That doesn't mean you can't think to yourself, "Oh, yeah? Well how fast can that sinewy bastard type?" as each person passes.
• Prep for the race. Training, and lots of it, is the key to being able to participate in an event of this magnitude. Try re-reading your junior high school yearbook, especially the comments that say, "your [sic] not so bad for a lazy slob". Then, for the four weeks prior to the Marathon, chant softly to yourself, "My worth as a human is determined by my ability to perform physical feats." Over and over. If it hurts deeeep inside, you're doing it right!
• That cowbell you got during a rush of Tomba Fever during the '92 Winter Games is just gathering dust, so you might as well dig it out and ring it for these people as they run by. Unlike when you were watching the Albertville Olympics on TV, they can actually hear you.
• They schedule the race for the first weekend of November for a reason: Because it's ass-numbingly cold. Dress appropriately. I chose a light turtleneck, thus assuring my appearance of wussiness when I had to go scamper away from my distance-running compatriots to get a warm drink to keep my teeth from chattering. ("Yeah, it's really grueling to watch other people run, isn't it?")
• Position yourself near the volunteers who staff the first-aid stations. Because they are Marathon Enthusiasts, they have boundless energy and endless interest in each runner who passes. We spent three hours listening to one small woman shout "You're the best! You're a champion! You're doing great! We're so proud of you!" in an endless loop, at the top of her lungs, to each participant, no matter how pathetically demoralized and demolished they appeared or how poorly they were performing. After the race, make sure to seek the Enthusiast out, so she can specifically say, "I didn't mean you. You're a lazy slob."
• Blame your parents for not being Kenyan. "If you guys were Kenyan, I'd be out there in that race right now!" If you are Kenyan, blame your parents for raising you to be a lazy slob.
• Take solace in the fact that poorly-prepared marathoners will have bleeding nipples, due to the chafing of their shirt against their chest. Not only does that indicate their membership in the group of People Who Are Poorly Prepared, they are participating in a hobby which causes their nipples to bleed. Chalk one up for the lazy slobs and their intact, unendangered nipples.
• Phidippides ran the first Marathon, according to mythology. And then he died. Healthy sport, my ass.
• A long race is won by thousands of small efforts. We were standing right near the 59th Street Bridge, where runners enter Manhattan for the first time, at roughly the 16th mile of the race. This meant that I could focus on the small effort of gleefully shouting at each exhausted, straining runner, "There's only another ten miles left!"
• Finally, resort to the tactic favored by demoralized baseball fans since time immemorial: "Marathon? Oh, yeah... I'm still in training for the next one. Next year's my year!"