Well, it's April Fools Day but this isn't a joke post.  I've never been very good about posting to my blog but I've decided to make another run at it.  It probably won't be daily but I'll get something up here at least once a month.  Now that I've got a halfway decent camera in my 3G phone, I might even do a little mobile blogging.  I may also do some cross-posting of stuff around IPTV to a msdn or spaces blog since our global subscriber acquisition rate for services running Microsoft's IPTV software is ramping rather quickly now.

I've got to figure out what I want to do with photos.  I may either use my Windows Live Spaces site for that or I may share some of them out publicly via Orb.

I was reading this SFGate article on BART to SFO ridership being well below estimates this morning.  Having used both BART and Caltrain to get to SFO, I have to admit that it's no surprise that ridership is so low.  I have ridden train to airport links in a number of other cities and there is a clear distinction between planners who "get it" and those who just want to spend a bunch of money (and probably get kick-backs) and check off another campaign promise on their list.

Issues I have with taking public transit to SFO:

1. The link between Caltrain and the airport, a BART train, only seemingly runs every 30 minutes and it NEVER aligns with the caltrain schedule.  In fact, the train often just sits there in the station with its doors closed, taunting you with the view of the airport in the distance.
2. The BART train uses BART fare cards (a separate and overpriced transaction) just after you got done paying caltrain with your caltrain pass/fare.  There is no "get me to the airport" single payment mechanism.
3. When going from San Francisco to SFO on caltrain, you have to go through a maze of escalators and elevators to go over the caltrain track and into BART.  Didn't anyone get the memo that we have luggage when going to/from the airport?
4. There are no clearly posted BART or Caltrain schedules ANYWHERE in the airport.  The odds that I take BART to Caltrain or BART to the city would go up sharply if I knew when the next train was and the rough estimate of when I would arrive.
5. Most people have to take the AirTrain (little airport shuttle on rails between terminals) to get to the BART train to get to CalTrain to go home.  Not only are the schedules for BART and Caltrain not posted but they are not aligned, as mentioned earlier.
6. Taxi to SF: 15 minutes;  Public transit to SF: 45 minutes to an hour depending on time of day.  Don't plan on using caltrain link after 9pm due to Caltrain schedule.
7. The AirTrain station has a bunch of STAIRS you have to use to get connected to the terminal.  Again, did somebody not know I would have luggage?
8. To address low ridership, they decreased the frequency of the BART airport link.  Brilliant.

So here are the rules for a successfull rail / airport link - almost all of which do not apply to SFO:

1. Minimize stairs and escalators between train and airport
2. Have trains actually arrive AT the airport, not one or two stations / transfers away from it.  Extra credit if there are multiple airport stops that the train makes (such as the R1 in Philly)
3. Have trains to the airport run frequently or at least at highly reliable and predictable intervals (like on the hour and half hour)
4. Make it easy and inexpensive to use the payment mechanism and have only one mechanism.
5. Have the total trip time be competitive with driving/taxi - not just for the people in the boonies when compared to rush hour but for those who want to get to/from the major cities (SF, Oakland, San Jose in the case of SFO versus Walnut Creek).
6. If the airport link does require transfers from other lines/modes of transportation, synchronize them.

Having said all this there may still be 1 or 2 times per year when taking Caltrain/BART to SFO will make sense for me, but there are so many boneheaded design decisions that got made with the Caltrain/BART/SFO link that I think they should probably scrap it, take the money they are losing daily and just run a shuttle bus from the caltrain and bart stations in the city (SF) to the airport at a lower cost.

For those wondering, my favorite rail/airport links are Washington, DC and Philadelphia.

Those two people who follow my blog have probably given up on following it since I haven't posted in ages.  The caltrain love poem didn't happen and instead I've been having a very time consuming relationship with my work now that I am responsible for the applications, user experience and server components (metadata mostly) for Microsoft's IPTV and cable products.  The good news is that I really enjoy my work, the people I work with and many of those extra things that don't fall cleanly into either of those.  The bad news is that the long hours have come at the expense of many other non-work things in my life. 

In catching up with my blog feeds today I came across a FT article about "tribal workers."  I think this article describes many things I identify with (beyond just my age).  While I don't believe that the number of hours worked alone is a sign of "success" I do feel the challenge of having too many options and the focus on my career.  I've got the Georgetown undergraduate degree (double major in Econ and English with honors) and the UC Berkeley MBA not to mention some good career experience.  I've worked in DC and Silicon Valley, live in San Francisco and have had some great travel through my job at Microsoft.

I have to think some more about whether or not I fall in this new "class."  I probably do -- I had a pretty good streak of 80-90 hour work weeks in the past few months and I just got off the phone (via my parents' VOIP service) with my relatives in Italy who were watching the World Cup game at the same time I was.

Italy won and I think I probably felt like more of an Italy fan than a US fan as far as the world cup goes.  Don't tell that to the Germans I work with on IPTV. :)

My little brother got a nice writeup in the Milwaukee Journal about his business, Sconnie Nation, LLC.  The entrepreneurship bug still runs in the family!  Check out his site if you want to pick up one of those cool Wisconsin T-Shirts.

I ride caltrain from my home in SF to work in Mountain View just about every day and unfortunately for me, my train is about 80% male.  That being said, every now and then there is someone on Caltrain who has caught my eye.  Just tonight, a neighbor of mine who is a new Caltrain rider asked "are there any hotties on the train?".

It's only appropriate that this evening I stumbled across an article in the Chronicle about a Caltrain love poem contest.  I may have to enter.  If I do, I'll post it here.

Today, in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to vehicular traffic.  Aside from the fact that my grandparents drove from Iowa to San Francisco on their honeymoon, the bridge was:

• Completed in 4 years
• Completed ahead of schedule
• Completed under budget

Ah, savor the days before lawsuits and politicians got in the way of bridge construction.  Sometimes I think that this country's government institutions have lost their ability to get things done efficiently (or at all).

Until I have breakfast, I'll leave you with this link to a hilarious cartoon from Trina's blog.

My Dad does organic farming on our family's Iowa farm.  He was recently featured in an article about organic farming in a local Iowa newspaper.

Most San Franciscans know that there are about five drop everything and have fun outside days per year.  Without fail, I'm out of town for most of them.  I think I'm going to start sharing my travel plans with weather forecasters.

In related news, it was a cold and dreary in Philadelphia and the red-eye flight out, all day meeting and late flight back were productive.

Okay, so in case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a geek (but a cool one).  I guess that means that I can attend “geek dinners.”  I dined with a bunch of cool people last night amidst spicy Chinese food and conversations of digital media, Windows, content and blogs.  It was good to see some old eHome / DMD people again.  Thanks to Omar for the invite.

... and yes Omar, I do post to my blog.  I even beat you on this one.

The college radio station that I revived has rolled out a new web site - http://www.georgetownradio.com/.

It's great to see that they are still going strong after almost 10 years.  I still remember one administrator saying that she didn't think it would last more than three years.

Check out their online stream.  Very eclectic Georgetown radio as usual.  The only thing they're missing is the Karl Marx classical music morning show we had one day a week.

Here's why:

• Sunday starts one minute after 11:59pm Saturday night.  Usually Saturday night is pretty good around that time and it tends to get a little better before it winds down.
• Breakfast - Simply put, I love breakfast food and on Sunday mornings I almost always make a frittata (an Italian omelet), coffee, juice, cereal and bacon or sausage
• I'm pretty much caught up from the past week.  I work a lot of hours during the week and have a fairly long commute between SF and Mountain View.  That means that a lot of stuff that people do when they get home from work gets put off to Saturday for me.
• Jazz - My Jazz group usually jams on Sunday morning.
• Football - Packer games at Zeke's, the main Packer sports bar in San Francisco.
• Sunday night TV - I record all of it on my DVR so I can watch it when I want to, but I usually watch some of it delayed on Sunday night.
• The Sunday paper - The Chronicle is a little weak as a newspaper (I prefer the WSJ or NYT) but there's just a ritual about reading my local paper on Sunday mornings.
• Heading to the coast - I try to get some time in at the coast, whether it be hiking, reading the paper, reading magazines or just relaxing.  That doesn't happen much during winter, but you did see the bullet about football above, right? :)

For a second year in a row I'm glad the previous year is gone.  2003 was hell for me thanks to school, weekly commuting to Seattle from SF for work, two new teams at Microsoft and my Haas MBA classes.  I thought 2004 would turn the page with school completing and me getting some traction with my new team.

Well, 2004 was better than 2003 but not by much.  I've never worked so hard in my life.  Those who know me will probably shudder at hearing that, given how hard I worked during the launch of WGTB at Georgetown.  60 hour weeks were looking like light duty last year.  If it wasn't for the quick trip to Italy with my family, short visits with family and friends and the launch of our MSTV product in Washington state, I probalby would have gone nuts.  Thank God I really enjoy the stuff I work on.

Then, there's the war, tsunami, sluggish economy, etc. to provide a gloomy backdrop for the year.

Here are my aspirations for 2005:

• Reclaim my personal life
• Get some more great people to work on my team
• Cook more
• Take care of myself and have more fun
• Volunteer
• Take a really long and restful vacation

I made some traction on these things in 2004 but it was either a late-breaking development or it was aborted due to varous reasons.

Here's to 2005 being what 2004 was supposed to be!

If someone hasn't coined this term yet, let me take the credit.  Retroblogging is the act of blogging about stuff that you've been meaning to get around to blog about.  Extra credit if your blogging software lets you set the date of your retro posts back to when you originally wrote or meant to write them.

I'm still digging out...

I think I'm finally starting to get back to the things that were put on hold for the past three years with my evening MBA at Berkeley and crazy work.  I was in Italy for a week, my desk and files are tamed, I'm playing more jazz, I'm going out every now and then on a weeknight, etc.

Here are the past three years in a nutshell:

• Work - several reorgs, big Comcast deal with MSTV
• School - Got my MBA in May
• Bought a loft in the city (SF) - 2 years ago, but hey, I'm catching up
• Lots of business, school and wedding travel