Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Author: fish1964

  • Office Space

    Things have been picking up for Origami Risk. There has been a lot of sales activity so I’ve been helping on that front. And I suddenly find myself busy with client implementations. All good stuff.

    Suddenly, taking a phone call from a client or prospect in the coffee shop doesn’t seem so great. I love the coffee shop and the walk across the street commute, but it’s getting problematic.

    So I bit the bullet and found myself some cheap office space in Brooklyn. I’m trying out Green Desk office space in DUMBO Brooklyn. They have a variety of sizes of spaces, they rent month to month, it’s walking distance from my apartment and it’s cheap. And it’s quiet.

    I spent my first day there today. It was very interesting. First, it’s just a big change not having the hustle and bustle in the coffee shop, both in a good and bad way. It’s also in a different neighborhood. DUMBO is close to me, but not my neighborhood. It’s a good 15-20 minute walk. So there’s some of that fun excitement about figuring out a new place.

    The space overall is very interesting. It reminds me that there are lots of small companies with 1-5 people. I just walk around my floor and see a dozen companies. Some spaces are sparse (like mine) and seem to be one guy freelancing. Some have a few people collaborating on something. A few have real signage up.

    Green Desk overall seems to be doing very well. I’m sitting in their second space which they are still finishing building. They are then going to build a third one in Downtown Brooklyn, which is even closer to my place. I’ll probably move once that is ready.

    I don’t have to go there every day. I could still work outside from time to time. And I’m definitely still wearing shorts and t-shirts.

    And amusingly, one of the entrances to my space is by walking right through this bar. We’re in the same building in the back (it’s a big old warehouse). I haven’t tested it yet, but I bet Green Desk’s WiFi reaches the bar just fine…

  • Swype

    Well, I did a post using voice to text, so let’s try one with Swype. Swype is a keyboard replacement app that has you type by touching the first letter in the word and then dragging your fingers across all the other letters in the word without lifting your fingers. You swype, you don’t type.

    So presumably the app takes the first and last letters and computes what words are possible given all the letters you touched. Sometimes it offers you choices when there are multiple possibilities.

    It works amazingly well. And it’s kind of fun, especially on longer words.

    Homepage

  • Could it be?

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    Have we reached the point where we can have adult evenings with our kids present? Is it finally getting easy?

    Tonight my wife and a three of her friends decided they needed drinks. Working for Marsh will do that to you. It was a beautiful day so they decided that our roof deck was a perfect destination.

    I get the word around 5:45. They show up around 6:30. These are the kind of friends that you don’t need to clean up for and they know our kids. So that part is easy. So we get some wine, some glasses, some music and some snacks for the kids and we head to the roof.

    And it was easy. Our kids just hung out. Sure, they wanted me to flip them upside down and other similar things, but they didn’t just hang on me. They hung out with everyone. Of course I let them play with my phone (Tori is still into that stupid Gummy Bear song on YouTube) but entertaining them wasn’t an effort. There was even limbo.

    It was a gorgeous night. We drank wine, we ordered pizza, the kids played and everyone had fun.

    Maybe it was a fluke, but I’m getting the idea that adult evenings may start happening again…

  • voice to text

    i find myself taking advantage of the voice to text features of my phone quite frequently these days.

    it works really well.

    for a quick google search it’s ideal

    as a test this entire post was dictated via my new phone.

    no capitalization or punctuation but otherwise perfect.

  • Brooklyn Dark Matter

    Been asking every bartender I know. No one knows if there will be more. Much sadness…

  • Mom’s Rings

    Those who know me or follow this blog know that my mom passed away last summer. She had been in a nursing home for a while with Alzheimer’s so she didn’t have that much stuff left. My oldest brother is the only one still living in Wisconsin but when she passed he was in no shape to go through her stuff so his wife Diana (who is very nice), did it for him.

    They have a grown-up daughter and my other brother has no kids, so Diana decided that I should get my mom’s rings so I could give them to Danielle or Victoria. My parents had no money, so none of these rings have any monetary value, just sentimental.

    Just recently, my wife has been letting Danielle wear some of the rings.

    My mom was 5′ 2" in two inch heels and weighed 95 pounds after a good meal. She had tiny fingers. Her rings fit my 7 year old pretty nicely.

    It’s kind of amazing how happy seeing your mom’s wedding ring on your daughter’s finger makes you feel….

  • Pier 6

    I’ve discussed the plans for Brooklyn Bridge Park before. Today, Pier 6 opened. This portion has its entrance on Atlantic Avenue, my street, right on the river. Among other things, Pier 6 has a 1.6 acre playground for kids. And oh my, what a playground.

    It’s broken into sections. Slide Mountain has a bunch of 20 foot tall slides and various jungle gyms. Swing Valley has 10 different sets of swings. Sandbox Village, which is a 6,000 square foot sand area. And finally there is The Water Lab, with three different water sections.

    Danielle and I went there today for about an hour. They are still building out other parts of the pier, but the playground is spectacular. It was hot today, and it’s still a bit shade challenged (since most of the trees are young), but it’s the best park in Brooklyn.

    Enough talk. Pictures.

    Two of the slides in slide mountain (Danielle going down the first one).

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    The Tarzan Ropes in Swing Valley:

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    Part of Sandbox Village.

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    And Danielle enjoying parts of The Water Lab:

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    Seriously, this is one rockin’ playground.

  • Couldn’t put it any better

    Credit to Hugh MacLeod.

  • Memorial Day’s Weekend in the City

    Our typical plan for Memorial Day’s weekend is to go to my wife’s sisters place in Wappinger’s Falls near Poughkeepsie. They have a big backyard and we grill and it’s all good.

    But this year my wife’s younger nephew had something like 57 soccer games over the holiday weekend (I exaggerate perhaps, but not by much) so since we would be able to just hang out in the backyard, we decided to just stay in Brooklyn.

    The nice thing about the city on a holiday weekend is that it’s unusually quiet. But what to do with the kids for three days?

    Saturday: 

    Danielle normally has a swim class on Saturday, but obviously it was cancelled. Victoria suffers from classic second child syndrome. She wants to go with Danny for swimming, but she’s too young (except to watch – we want to put her in classes in the fall).

    The previous Saturday, Danielle had a birthday party with her best friend that included a sleepover, so I had quality time with Tori. So I took her swimming at our local YMCA, which has a nice pool and family swim on Saturdays. So Danielle decided she wanted to swim with Tori this Saturday. For the record, Danielle is mostly a very good big sister.

    So Saturday was a busy day. Swimming, McDonald’s, then our favorite park. That was with me solo while my wife did other errands. Then she met us and we went to the new Shrek movie.

    This is kind of funny because Tori loves Shrek. Danielle does not. This is a source of conflict when Tori wants to watch Shrek, which is pretty much always. So Danielle begrudgingly agreed to see this movie (largely because she’s get popcorn, candy and Diet Coke).

    If you haven’t seen the latest Shrek, it is not really a movie for 3 year olds. It’s a bit scary at first. The premise is that Shrek is now married with kids and starting to get tired of no longer being a scary ogre. So he’s tricked by Rumpletilskin to give away one day of his life in the past to get one day where everyone is afraid of him in exchange for a random day from his past. Of course Rumplestilskin tricks him and the random day is the day that Shrek was born.

    So it turns out that Shrek was never born so he never saved Fiona and apparently that causes her parents to sign over their kingdom to Rumpletilskin (because he tricks them). So you end up with the kingdom gone, Rumplestilskin in charge with witches helping him, rounding up ogres and overall a very scary place. Again, this is not a young kids movie. At the beginning Danielle wanted to go home (but for the record, she hates conflict in pretty much all movies).

    So the movie is amusing in that Shrek meets Donkey who has never met him before in a world that is totally messed up. But this is not amusing to a three year old. Of course everything works out at the end, but at the end I had Danielle liking Shrek and Tori not liking Shrek. So if you have young kids, be careful with this movie.

    After that we went out to an early dinner at my wife’s favorite Brooklyn sushi joint (my wife eats the best Manhattan sushi, so this means something).

    Sunday:

    Sunday, we wanted to mix it up a bit. The forecast was for hot so we looked for Manhattan parks with sprinklers. Not that the Brooklyn parks aren’t good, but we go there all the time. So online I found the #2 most recommended "park to travel to" in Timeout New York. This turned out great. It was a very nice park. Danielle made a friend and played with her all day. Tori is so crazy independent that she just went out and played and had a great time. We followed it up with a trip to our favorite local Mexican joint for dinner.

    Monday:

    Monday the girls weren’t pushing to get out of the apartment but as they got a bit snippy with each other I grabbed them and took them back to our favorite Brooklyn park in the morning. Sometimes you just have to get outside. We always have fun at the park.

    There’s a New Orleans style restaurant two doors down from us that just remodeled and changed their name so we’d been thinking about going there. So my wife grabbed the ideal widow table and I brought the gang to meet her. We all ate, my wife and I drank and a very good time was had.

    Then the girls wanted to swim again, so again we went to  the YMCA. After that we finally ate a dinner at home and the weekend was done.

    Frankly, I was exhausted, but it was a good weekend.

  • A Night in NYC

    I just finished having drinks with Dan Song, Aaron Shapiro and Linus Concepcion in Manhattan. A nice night and great to see Dan. (side note: that would be an interesting start-up)

    As I’m waiting for the subway at 42nd street I hear a beautiful women’s opera voice. That’s not unusual in New York, you hear great musicians in the subway.

    But then I see this goofy looking white guy. Fishing cap, pants pulled up way past his stomach. He’s singing. He has a beautiful voice. A beautiful woman’s voice. He was the one singing. Gorgeous voice, but seriously? Only in New York…