11 Days to Go

It’s amazing how Facebook has completely dominated the competition in social networking. It’s just so easy to use, it’s not completely dirty like Myspace, and it’s completely addictive. That being said, I’m not sure I am the biggest fan of the whole concept of “applications.” By making the Facebook platform completely open source, any hack developer can create an application in a pretty short amount of time. There are tutorials online that teach you everything you need to know to create a Facebook application, and there are large chunks of code for existing applications that are publicly available.

I only mention this because we’ve been giving serious thought to developing the rest of the site using only open source software (i.e. using pre-built community structures, etc, etc, etc….). Ok, I’d better make this blog a hell of a lot funnier quickly, or I am going to lose you.

Right, so I was at the mall today and there is this place that gives half-hour massages for $20. You are outside for the entire mall to see, and your neck is bent onto one of those “mouth” pillows that doesn’t look terribly comfortable. The people who run the place look pretty shady, and I seriously doubt they have any experience other than mall massages. Yet somehow, EVERY SEAT was full! You walk by, and they point to you and basically do their sales pitch in a few seconds, and boom, you’re off and running. Who would EVER do this? Are you so stressed from shopping that you need a half-hour massage from a guy that looks like he hasn’t taken a shower in at least a week?

Fortunately, everyone except Ryan on our team showers regularly.

12 Days to go

Hello again everyone – hope you’re having a nice night wherever you are. I took a picture of my favorite Spanish treat while I was visiting my sister in Barcelona a week ago – it’s called a “Turron.” The Turron pictured above is extremely special – not only is it very pricey (25 euros), but you have to special order it, and it is considered the best Turron in Barcelona. When you bite into it, it literally tastes like you’re eating pure sugar and Creme Brulee. Great combo – trust me on that one.

Twelve days to launch and it feels like I accomplished very little today. I started off the day by trying to contact publicists to get press for the upcoming launch event, but my emails yielded very little in the way of results. Fortunately, the event is basically full at this point, so we do not have to worry about showing up on the day-of and having an empty room.

Entrepreneurship is a strange thing – I talk to some of my business school friends about this from time-to-time, but you either ride on these incredible highs, or just feel like you accomplished nothing some days. That being said, I still feel like things will go well on the 8th….

One thing I did manage to accomplish was to delegate, and put other people to work. My girlfriend is a lot more thorough and organized than I am, and she has been helping me think of every possible detail that I could miss prior to the event. She’s super. My sister, and fam have also been reviewing the site thoroughly for copy errors and things of that nature. I’ve been trying to create instructional videos for the application itself, and I’ve been using this program called Camtasia Studio – I highly recommend it.

I managed to eat pretty well today. I’ve been eating well this entire break as a matter of fact. My whole goal has been to experiment by mixing different/new foods as much as possible. I ate liver for the first time every a week ago (without knowing it) and it actually tasted pretty good (until my brother-in-law told me it was liver).

Ok, back at Coffee Society and turning the focus back on…. It is absurdly loud in here today and there is a group of pretty annoying high-school kids talking about their exploits right next to me. One is wearing a Transformers T-Shirt and they are playing chess.