A
cold walk home
This morning I went down to the Renaissance Hotel for a breakfast meeting where an enthusiastic young Hugh Grant look-alike tried to entice us to drink the Google kool-aid. The topic was Google@Work, which translates into a set of Google online applications they'd like everyone to use.
After pigging out on hash browns, sausage, bacon and eggs, I felt like I needed to work off a few calories, so walked home afterwards. It's about a 20-minute walk, and the sun was shining brightly. The temperature and wind combined for a wind-chill of about 10 degrees, which made me walk even more briskly than usual.
But back to Google@Home. 10,000 Google employees are working their butts off to make our entire world run on Google applications. Software as a service. The particular ones discussed today were Docs & Spreadsheets (challenger to MS Word and Excel), Calendar, and Google Earth (if you haven't seen this, you've gotta try it).
Most of the demo explained the underlying Google principles:
simple, easy to use, centered around searchability. Their suggestion: save
everything digital, make it searchable. Also part of the Google approach is
making collaboration easy and integrated with everything else.
My meeting notes - pg. 1 | pg. 2
All in all it sounded interesting enough that in my office today I tried importing the schedule for Fall 07 that Angela & I were just working on. Seems like it would be a good thing if we could both access it remotely via Google Spreadsheets. The result? After several tries at importing the Excel document, a cheery dialog box told me "Server error." Maybe not quite as good as it sounds.
But the swag was pretty good.
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What's wrong with this picture?
Wow. I like to think that I'm pretty accepting of style trends aimed at rebellious youth, but this display of snowboard graphics in a clothing store at Tower City downtown shocks the hell out of me.
"Death from Above"?
"U.S. BOMBS"?
This is why much of the world considers us arrogant. Anything for a buck.
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New
meets old. Literally.
On the left is a spiffy new condo building under construction in the Flats, part of the big Stonebridge development.
On the right is one of the graceful arches of the old Superior Viaduct.
The red steel beams are the structure of a walkway that will connect the two. Given Cleveland weather, maybe it will be enclosed, not an open-air walkway.
I used to like the sleepy, run-down flats of 20 years ago, with its empty warehouses and falling-down buildings. It was a quiet place to walk or ride a bike. It's gone through its "entertainment mecca" phase and is now becoming a place to live more than a place to party.
Hard to argue with new housing being built in a city that desperately needs new, more affluent residents to help pay the bills, but I can't get too enthused about these changes to the Flats. And the fact that virtually all new housing is tax-abated for 20 yrs, meaning they're not helping all that much to pay the bills, makes it even less appealing.
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Pretty fancy
Saw this leather jacket in another store window at Tower City.
Pretty cool, but there aren't too many people who can wear this and make it work.
I'm sure not one of them.
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Tuesday, 10:20 a.m.
I don't know, just made me smile.
A storefront on West 29th near Detroit.
Not sure what's inside, and I guess I'm not going to find out.
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Another addition to the collection.
I don't bring home as much junk that I find on the street as I used to, but every now and then I just can't resist. In this case it's another example of what I'm calling a land crab.
This one, rusty metal with a center piece about 3" in diameter, seemed like it would look better on my wall than the last one.