Where am I now? Here I am!

 Hello, old friend. Every 5-8 years, I enjoy the ritual of trying to remember which ancient relic of an account I started you with, then figuring out who owns Blogspot now, then having to delete all the accounts I made with wrong guesses. It's great!

Anyways, here we are. I recently started something new. It's called ChangeLine, and it helps you figure out what changed on your graph or in the history of your company or organization. It's basically a change log for your entire business that you can magically lay over any graph in a Chrome browser as useful, causation-seeking annotations. It's kinda rad -- I'm proud of it, at least.

Taco check: yep, still like tacos.

Hi, mom!

Still Circling

Someday I will venture off on my taco quest again. Someday.

At the moment, I've decided to work on three startups. At the same time. Which is a dumb idea. But they all kinda relate back, so we'll stick with the circle theme.

These days I spend most of my time at Everfest, trying to take over the exploding festival industry (the industry is exploding, it's not an industry of exploding festivals). There really should be a definitive authority at this point, and we're trying to take that position. We're not localized yet, but the global nature of festivals is such that we already have festivals from all over the world, well beyond our favorite Austin festivals. I will return to tacoland soon. Soon.

In my spare time, I'm also helping a friend expand Startup Games, which is one of the more ridiculous team-building/charity events you'll ever see. And then there's TacoPass, the ultimate culmination of tech and tacos. It's a hibernating bear, or bear taco perhaps, which will awaken soon. It's coming.

Full Circle

Well, we're going to see what happens here - it's been six years, so for all I know, this blog is still set to post to all sorts of places. It will probably email my mom... we'll see.

It's fascinating reading back through these old posts. As a writer, I can't get past the change in tone - I can tell it's still me, but it's obvious that it's a much younger me. Also struck by how little of an idea I had of what I wanted to do with myself.

In any case, it's been a while, I've lived a little, and now my attention turns once more to Mexico and South America. I've spent nearly five years working for uShip.com, a local Austin startup, and I've recently been tasked with launching and growing our Latin American sites. uShip Mexico launched in mid-July, with uShip Brasil and five other South American sites launching a couple of weeks later (we actually launched six sites in ten days - it was a little intense). The launches followed the LATAM premiere of 'Guerra de Envios', the Spanish version of 'Shipping Wars', which airs on A&E and features uShip transporters.

I actually dusted off the old blog trying to find my exact address on Calle Tokio, because a potential partner we are talking to offices on Reforma, and I wanted to see how far they were from my former residence. Turns out it's less than a kilometer, and a walk I made almost daily. Nuts. And by the way, I never really thought about it, but man, it would have been great to have had Google Maps when I lived down there - would have made the daily life of an ESL teacher considerably easier.

Maybe I'll write some more when I make it down there. Hoping to make it to Mexico, Brazil and perhaps Chile (big startup scene) in the not-so-distant future. Perhaps those new adventures will get their own stage.

Hi mom.

Hiatus

Well, the Mexican adventure is over for the moment, and I am enjoying living in a redwood forest for the summer. Life is good, though not terribly interesting from a blogging perspective. I may pick it up again at some point, but for now you can stop checking this every fifteen minutes (mom). Thanks for reading, commenting, cyberstalking, etc.

Adam

The Gas [expletive deleted]

I hate the gas man. We have a name for him which I will choose to omit for my younger (older?) readers. The gas man gave us a leaky gas tank. The gas man said he would be right back with a receipt. It is at this point that he became the The Gas [expletive deleted]. I hate him. We called him. He didn't come. We called the next day. Again, he didn't show. Sometimes he would say "treinte minutos," and then hang up before we even finished our sentence. So we went to the school to get a Mexican to call. No dice. Lots of yelling. Little dice. They called again the next day and again got the runaround.

At this point we realized that this was getting quite childish, and I decided that the only way to respond was in the most childish way possible. This also led to my proudest "en espanol" achievement: a successful prank phone call. I nailed him. I don't really know what else to say. Honestly, I was shaking for about five minutes after it, and my roommate practically couldn't breathe from laughing. I feel like I have truly accomplished something on my Mexican adventure.

My roommate also brought up an interesting (though now thoroughly debunked) point that maybe some cultures don't have prank calls. I decided that that was absurd. In what culture will a 13-year-old kid with access to a telephone, telegraph, or smoke signal system not make prank calls, beeps, or puffs. The Boy Who Cried Wolf was a prank caller without a telephone. That was a long time ago, no? The moral of that story is that if you make prank calls, wolves will come and eat your family. Or you... I can't remember. Anyway, wildlife can't survive in this environment, so I'm not so worried about the wolves.

Oh, another highlight of my week occurred as I was walking home from my last class on Wednesday. As I was about to cross the street, a police escort appeared followed by five full-size luxury buses. I was confused at first, but soon realized that I was in the presence of five buses worth of Miss Universe contestants. Traffic was moving slow enough that I seriously considered throwing myself in front of one of the buses on the off chance that forty of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen would rush out to help me. That could be worth a broken rib. Or two...

The Crazy Guy on the Roof

So there is this guy that comes out on the roof sometimes. He is generally unshaven and poorly dressed. He comes up the stairs carrying a pillow, a shiny silver box, and an umbrella attached to an old broomstick. The umbrella contraption is lashed together with a telephone cord. He puts the broomstick through one of the holes in his plastic pool chair, opens the umbrella, sits on the pillow, and pushes the chair as close to the edge of the roof as possible, putting his feet up on the raised ledge. Then he opens his shiny silver box and just stares at it, sometimes for hours. He will sit there under the protection of his umbrella through rain and the blaring sun, always staring at his silver box, and periodically shifting a few feet to the right or left with no discernible pattern. Then, without warning, he will close the silver box, gather his umbrella and pillow, and go back into his house, only to return a few hours later. You can try to talk to him, but he is so focused on the contents of the shiny silver box, that we will likely not even notice.

His name is Adam, and he now has no excuse for not posting regularly since he has discovered a wireless signal on his roof. I am flying to Austin on June 3 and then to Cali on June 6 for the summer. Don't know if the blog will survive. Maybe it will go on hiatus for a bit and perhaps return in some other incarnation when I deem my life to be interesting enough again. We shall see. Oh, and it seems likely that I will be in Austin in September if anyone feels like finding me a job. I have degrees in business and Spanish and am good at making ridiculous rooftop umbrella devices.

This pleases me:

- roommate located and brought back two boxes of matzo ball mix from Ohio, where there are apparently enough Jews to require matzo ball mix

- baseball

- quote from student: "For the first time in my whole life, I actually enjoy my English classes."

- students still being on break means less people on the metrobus, the metro, and basically everywhere

- ice cream

- baseball

(editor's note: there was an earthquake last night, but all is well. it was pretty benign. kinda cool actually.)