Richard Huff's Seattle Social Blog

While in New Zealand I ran across a company that makes, arguably, the best umbrella on the market.  I'm not saying that lightly.  As a resident of Seattle, I have to give rain more respect than the average American.  There are days when it rains so hard that just the splash-back will soak your clothes to the middle of your thighs.  I've been through hundreds of umbrellas that performed more like a disposable trinket than a shield.  Moderate wind would turn them inside out as if that were their natural state.  The fabric detached from the ribs and the ribs crumpled like dry grass.  Generally useless.  The whole lot of them.  Small, compact, golf-sized -- they all were designed with the lowest common denominator as a goal.

But then I read about the Blunt Umbrella in a magazine on my flight back to Los Angeles.  Blunt appeared to have solved all of the failure points typical in existing umbrella designs.  They attached the canopy to a set of ribs with expanding anchors inside of sown pockets -- not just a single thread snaking through tiny eyelet.  The ribs are several times the diameter of those on a typical umbrella, and I can't imagine that they would buckle under any wind force still within a person's ability to keep hold of the umbrella.  To top all that off, the Blunt Umbrellas are aesthetically pleasing.

I've been using one of the Blunt Umbrellas since late October 2009, and I couldn't be happier.  Don't let the NZ$110 (~US$77) price tag frighten you away -- this will be the last umbrella you'll ever need to buy.

[Full disclosure: Although I've never received any monetary compensation for my product endorsements, Blunt gave me a second umbrella for free after I ordered and paid for the first one.  The second, free umbrella was an unexpected gift for the help I provided them in debugging a foreign payment problem with their online storefront.]

We've all heard the predictions that one day our refrigerators and microwaves will be connected to the Internet.  I've always been a little skeptical about the benefits in those particular cases, but the smart people over at Withings created an Internet-enabled bathroom scale that I really, really love.  I've been using it for the past couple days, since UPS so kindly delivered it from Amazon.  Once configured, you use it like you would any other bathroom scale.  The pure magic happens when -- in addition to displaying the data on its built-in LCD screen -- it automatically senses which of the family members is stepping on it at that very moment and transmits (via WiFi) all of the readings (weight and body composition) to Withings' Internet service.  The data is instantly available through an account at Withings and through an iPhone application (WiScale).

Why would anybody want such a device?  If you're like me and you're working to regain some of the fitness lost after years of working behind a desk in the technology industry, the scale is a godsend.  Trending data is extremely valuable and the only alternative is hand documenting each weigh-in.  Plus, the data is now available for other Internet applications, such as Google Health and RunKeeper.  Who only knows what future applications could use the data in life improving ways.

I've been remiss in my posts about races.  Excuse: the 2009 Royal Victoria Marathon occurred shortly after the wedding and just before a three-week honeymoon in New Zealand.  None-the-less, 2009 was my sixth metal for the Royal Victoria race: five half-marathons and one full-marathon.  It is my favorite race -- there's just no question about it.  As I have posted in the past, we make a weekend of the race event.  At least six of the running crew went this last year.  It's a time for the creation of found memories.

The other reason I felt the need to post about RVM is that a bunch of us are running another race this next weekend.  I'd hate to end up with a log jam of race metals. ;)  In all seriousness, congratulations to everyone who ran the RVM in 2009!  I hope to see you all later this year (October 10th) in Victoria for Dim Sum, Lululemon shopping, carbo-loading at Il Torrazo, and the race.

Pick your poison now: 13.1 or 26.2.

It's the beginning of 2010.  I'm approaching the beginning of middle age.  It's a good time to evaluate many aspects of my life, especially career.  But what's the best approach?  Do I buy the latest edition of What Color Is Your Parachute?  Should I meet with my mentors to ask for their wisdom and insight?  What can be learned from looking back at the jobs I've held over the past two decades?  I don't have a fully formed plan, but I can start by giving some critical thought to what my past jobs may have to say about future career opportunities.

Below is a collection of all the business cards from my various roles since college in the early 1990's.  They make it look like I've had a lot of different jobs, right?  The fact is that there are far fewer roles than the business cards and company names may suggest.  For example, Pacific Rim Network was acquired by VERIO (which did result in a title change from President & CEO to General Manager).  The design division at Media Access was shuttered during the dotcom crash, but Peak Systems picked up the hosting division and I transitioned from a President & CEO to a Director of a division.  Geckowerx was a company I ran while also getting a Sociology degree at the University of Washington.  Following receipt of that degree, I joined an analytics group at Atlas almost to the day that they were acquired by Microsoft.  So, the last four business cards are technically the same company with some variation in roles as I advanced.

In reality, there isn't a great deal of variation over the past twenty years.  In fact, a case could be made that there has only been two real roles over that period: business leader with deep technical involvement and researcher with medium technical involvement.

Another quality that all the roles share is that they are entirely dependent on the existence of the Internet.  The Internet wasn't publicly available when I entered college in 1990 and, yet, all of my jobs have been Internet jobs.  Sure, there was business management and research disciplines before I started -- they just weren't associated with this "new economy" that was enable by the advent of public access to a global computer network.

What else can be divined from the cards?  Well,...most of the roles have been entrepreneurial.  I was a founder at Pacific Rim Network, Media Access, and Geckowerx.  Only my latest role has required that I be a little more of a passenger than a driver (which hasn't always been easy).  Luckily, I've had the good fortune to work in that latest role under somebody who commands my utmost admiration.  Unluckily (for me), that person has recently moved on.

If the past is any indication of the future and my job choices any indication of my preferences, I will be working in some leadership capacity with an Internet-related business.  I guess I just need to translate that into the terminology hiring managers use when writing and posting job descriptions. Or, I need to start a new business.

This year's Holiday card is ready to be addressed, stamped, and mailed.  We designed the card ourselves and had Owosso Graphic Arts make the magnesium dies for printing.  The letterpress printing was done at Pratt Fine Arts Center on one of their antique platen presses -- the one named "Franklin" to be exact.  Three ink colors (Red, Green, and Black), six dies, and three lines of hand set type required a total of five passes through the press.  I may not have to go to the gym next week after the amount of exercise Franklin gave me over the past two days.

The Santa Claus artwork was purchased from ClipArt.com (#998915).  ClipArt.com is a surprisingly good place to find black and white imagery for use in letterpress printing.  Since the image only had four of the eight reindeer mentioned in Clement Clarke Moore's[1] "The Night Before Christmas" poem, we decided to only refer to four of the reindeer on the front of the card: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen. 

The typeface used throughout the card -- except the three lines of hand set type on the back -- is American Scribe™, purchased from OldFonts.com.  American Scribe™ provided a critical piece of the vintage holiday aesthetic we were trying to achieve in the design.  Script typefaces look exceptional on the Crane Lettra™ paper we used[2], which is still my favorite letterpress paper even though Crane screwed up one of my paper orders so bad that I almost swore off ever using it again.

The card's inside contains the message "A Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year To You" -- the same message printed on the very first commercial Christmas card (circa 1843).  A separate block of text for our names, the month, and the year are printed in green. Not only did that approach cost less to craft the magnesium dies, it also enabled the flexibility to change out the year if we decided to use the design during future holidays.

[1] There is a controversy over who actually authored the poem.  It's possible that Clement Clarke Moore took credit for a poem that was actually authored by Henry Livingston several years earlier. See: http://www.iment.com/maida/familytree/henry/xmas/livingstonmoore/index.htm#author.

[2] We used the Crane Lettra™ 110lbs Pearl White for our wedding stationary. The Holiday card was made with Crane's 110lbs Fluorescent White Lettra™.  Lettra™ is readily available and has matching envelopes.