As I wrote earlier, I went to Pittsburgh recently for Spring Carnival and the 50th anniversay of a computer arriving on the Carnegie Mellon campus. Some of the big highlights included: visiting the restaurant Eleven, seeing most of Run Lola Run with a friend, meeting Charles Geschke (the founder of Adobe and creator of Postscript), and going to a reception honoring my college advisor Mark Stehlik.
Charles Geschke and Me.
Mark’s hands fly too fast to be captured by any normal camera.
I wrote a letter to the Public Editor responding to his column regarding the coverage of the Duke rape allegations. The New York Times published my letter in today’s paper. I found out it was going to be published on Friday. It was edited for space, but we negotiated for a few minutes so that the gist and context of my letter was not distorted.
I have now shut off registration requirements for commenting on my blog. Because customer service is my goal at samgreenfield.com.
From the inside of a Hershey’s bar (Milk Chocolate with Almonds):
Candy is a treat. Please consume in moderation.
Frank Bruni seems to have realized that a blog post allows him the freedom to write a review of a mediocre restaurant. Negative reviews are sometimes more fun to read than positive reviews.
Recently, Doonesbury has been brilliant and should not be missed. I recommend reading the strip from two weeks ago, when the current story line started. This series of strips is a continuation of the story arc collected in the book, The Long Road Home. Another book will collect the strips since this collection.
Gene Spafford wrote a critique of obsolete best practices using rotating passwords as an example. It’s fairly interesting.
The New Yorker has had some phenomenal writing recently. This week alone, there was a fascinating piece by Bill Buford on learning how to butcher and a shockingly intense story by Daniel Raeburn on his stillborn daughter. I can’t recall a recent issue of The New Yorker that has not impressed me.
As I wrote the other day, my friend Anne is leaving Time Inc.
I started working at Sports Illustrated in 1995, shortly after graduating from Carnegie Mellon. One of my first assignments at SI was working on the Power Mac 7500, one of the earliest Apple computers that used a PCI bus. Several new technologies were introduced with this machine, including MacOS 7.5 and Open Transport. It was a rocky start. MacOS 7.5 didn’t work very well, and QuarkXPress 3 barely functioned. As I recall, I only started to get the machine working with pre-release builds of MacOS 7.5.2 and QuarkXPress 3.3.2r5.
Peter, my boss at the time, stopped by my desk one day with a slight woman with a short dirty-blonde haircut, a pixie grin, and a cheerful demeanor. He introduced her as Anne; she was responsible for technology on the publishing side of SI. (At the time, the editorial and publishing divisions of SI had two different tech support departments. The editorial operations group had close and technology responsibilities for the editorial division, and the corporate group provided technical support for the publishing division.) Anne had just bought a bunch of 7500s and was having some trouble getting them working. She gave me her card, and we discussed what was required to get the machines minimally working. As I recall, she couldn’t wait for a working OS and ended up returning the systems for computers that actually worked.
Less than a year later, I learned that Peter was leaving his editorial operations position to become head of SI’s online efforts. When I asked who would be replacing him, he smiled and said, “I have someone on the publishing side in mind.” By the time we all went to the Olympics in Atlanta, Anne was working by my side. It was Peter’s last event for the printed magazine, and Anne’s introduction as a manager on the editorial side of the house.
SI produced a daily magazine at the Olympics, and the magazine production went very well. I would like to be able to say that the Olympics went smoothly as well. However, on Day 9, an evil lunatic set off a bomb in Centennial Park across the street from the main press center. I remember the bomb going off; it sounded as if someone was moving around on the ceiling above but the ceilings were 20 feet high. More importantly, I remember the concern Peter and Anne had for my welfare. Even though I wanted to dash outside with a camera, they held me back because they were concerned for my safety. SI considered changing the cover to an image of the bomb site, but decided to stick with the original. Anne had a color photocopy of the cover that never ran in her office. And now it is on my wall.
The Olympic daily was certainly a great way to start an editorial career at Sports Illustrated. It was high pressure and high profile. During the Olympics, I learned several facts about Anne that are as true today as they were then: she is wicked smart, she cares about the brand, she knows what is important to produce a magazine, and she cares about people.
Anne is wicked smart. She has an ability that is unique to intelligent people: if she doesn’t know a fact or a figure, she asks a question. She isn’t shy about asking, and she remembers the answer. She draws a distinction between making a guess and stating a fact, but her guesses are rarely wrong. This isn’t to say that Anne is overly cautious when speaking. She just knows what to say.
Anne cares about the brand. Anne knows the Sports Illustrated brand as well as anyone currently at the magazine. She had her 16th anniversary working at Time Inc. with Sports Illustrated on Monday, and she used that time to get to know the people and the culture. She has done almost every support job at the title, from orchestrating huge projects to taking care of guests at hospitality events. Anne has been a shining example of the work ethic here at SI. She understands the decisions we make from both an editorial and publishing point of view, and has acted as a bridge between the two distinct organizational cultures.
Anne cares about people. Anne is one of the most compassionate people I know. Not only does she follow basic rules of courtesy (she doesn’t miss a thank you note), but also she provides comfort to people in need. She has volunteered to read to children in schools, and she volunteered around the city in the aftermath of September 11. She has always been available for her staff at any hour of the day, and she understands what is important in life.
September 11 was a horrible time for everyone, but I will always remember the help Anne provided for me. As I have written before, I was in Paris during the attacks on September 11. Like everyone, I was upset and confused. I spent most of the evening trying to get in touch with everyone I knew. I reached Anne later in the evening; she was on a train from Chicago to New York City. She was the one who told me about a former coworker who had perished in the attacks. I didn’t believe her at first, but she made sure that I accepted the facts. I mentioned how hard it was to stay in touch with everyone as I was calling people from a pay phone on the street. Anne immediately provided her AT&T; calling card number and told me to make as many calls as I needed.
In the weeks following the attacks, like most New Yorkers, I was walking around in a haze. I remember sitting in Anne’s office on the spare chair reading the papers or simply zoning out. Anne never asked me to leave or gave me any kind of criticism. She allowed me to grieve and sit with her as a friend and as someone who also felt the great loss and pain from the attacks.
I have been trying to find a way to describe how important Anne has been to my success at Time Inc. It’s hard to figure out where to start. She has more than put up with an unbelievable amount of complaining from me; she has always taken the time to address my concerns and guide me towards finding a solution. Not to mention given me guidance on how to communicate concerns in an appropriate manner. From a purely work perspective, Anne has given me an environment where I can flourish and accomplish great things. (As one columnist recently wrote, Anne provided an abstraction so that I could easily complete my work.)
Anne’s help has gone beyond providing a good place to work: she has helped me become a better human being. The quality of her interaction with other is a metric I strive for in my dealings with other people. Her advice and talks with me have been honest, forthright, and spot on. Her perspective on life is mature and balanced. When I remarked last week how she must be a glass-half full type of person because she was dealing with the job change in such an upbeat manner, she responded, “The glass is not half-full or half empty; it just needs to be refilled.”
In one way or another, I have worked for Anne for almost ten years. We have seen each other several times per week; this is more than I see most other friends of mine. I believe Anne will succeed at any job she chooses to do, and I would be glad to work with her again. More importantly, I am glad that she will remain my friend.
I am reminded of Lord Polonius’s exhortation to Laertes in Hamlet. Anne has no need of this advice, but I feel it captures her personality and spirit:
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
I’ll be in Pittsburgh from April 19 through April 23 for the Fifty Years of Computer Science celebration at CMU and Spring Carnival. The lectures and events sound fun and interesting. I hope to see a lot of friends there.
[This post is mainly for me so that I can keep track of Del Posto reviews when I decide whether or not I want to go.]
As frequent readers know, I go to Otto frequently. I enjoy the food and atmosphere there. I’ve visited the bar at Del Posto once, and had one of the best negronis I have ever had. However, food is not served at the bar, and I have not had an opportunity to eat there. And while I know several of the people who work there, I am feeling very nervous about plonking down the amount of money required.
Here are a couple of reviews of Del Posto:
Of these reviews, only the New York Times review is extremely positive.
Life sometimes has a strange way of throwing many things at you at once. Alternatively, we only really notice synchronization because it is such a rare occurrence. Either way, this past week has certainly been a stressful week.
The week started out with regularly-scheduled job-related stress. As I wrote earlier, this past week was the Final Four NCAA college basketball tournament. On Monday, I arrived at the arena before 11 am and left after 3 am on Tuesday. I did some more work on Tuesday morning, and returned to the office in New York City on Wednesday. I’m going to write up a description of some of the neat technologies we use at the Final Four and a description of what my responsibilities entailed. Meanwhile, check out Shawn Cullen’s final diary on SportsShooter.com. There is a photo of me in the middle of the page; I’m in the purple shirt. Back in New York City, I have been working on a large editorial systems project. That work remains a challenge, and even though I was in Indianapolis, I spent a fairly significant amount of time working on that project as well during the Final Four. However, all of this is nothing new. It has also been a fun part of my job balancing the weekly responsibilities against project and development work.
Some of you might remember my post in December, “Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K,” where I described organizational changes at Time Inc. I have had two department heads, or bosses for lack of a better word, during my 10-plus years at Time Inc. For eight of those years, in one way or another, Anne was my boss. On Friday, Anne’s position as Director of Technology at Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly was eliminated. It is almost a certainty that after 16 years of service, she will be leaving Time Inc. I apologize for the corporate euphemisms, and I’ll very likely write more about Anne in a later posting. For those of you who are concerned, my job is probably secure even though it is unclear what I will be responsible for in the coming weeks.
Shortly after discovering the changes in my professional life, I received a call from my father that he was going into the hospital to fix a detached retina. He had waited a while after discovering the problem to see an eye doctor. Fortunately, last that evening I learned that the surgery went well and that he was fine. I was a bit worried, of course; and it makes me want to make sure that I visit my eye doctor and internist on a regular basis.
All in all, it was a slap in the face to make sure that my own life is in order. Whether I like it or not, I’m getting older. And in a single day, life can change dramatically. It’s good that I’ve kept my resume updated (both a pdf version and an HTML version.), but it’s also important to make sure that I have a will written and my life insurance policies up-to-date.