Jeff Judge

Illinois (and Chicago) is pretty great

2024-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

Going through some recent cost of living data, I was struck by how well Illinois fared:

#4 in disposable income (only New York, Washington, and Massachusetts were higher)
#12 in average salary
#37 in real estate costs
#22 in housing costs
#22 in rent costs
#33 in food costs
#27 in healthcare costs

On the flipside:

#12 in average transportation costs (ie - more expensive than 38 other states)
#8 in average annual taxes

Good food for thought in that data above.

As a Chicago resident, I have to say - the state is pretty great for our family. Our kids receive a high quality of education, participate in strong youth sports programs, and can easily traverse the city via train (or ride their bikes). Our family has access to amazing public parks, world class entertainment, restaurants, coffee shops, libraries, and much more. The downsides are high property taxes, heavy-ish traffic, and a couple rough months of winter (typically January and February).

47

2022-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

I always write these things well after the fact. Nonetheless, it’s nice to be alive and be 47 years old. Here’s a recap of the past year:

Survived COVID. I tested positive at the end of March 2021. Five days later 5 of the 6 remaining family members tested positive. Three days after that we were 7/7. It hit me the hardest, beating up my lungs. Erin lost her sense of taste and smell. Kids were asymptomatic, though a week after we thought we had all recovered our daughter Avery spiked a 103 temperature for 10 days. That was scary, and thankfully her fever eventually cleared.
Closed the merger between Arrive and FlashParking, subsequently adopted the name Flash, and acquired two more companies (on top of a few companies that were acquired pre-merger). In the year since we’ve been focused on growing the business, investing in people, process, and systems, and charting the path forward together as one unified team. It’s been messy at times, but it’s a lot of fun and I’m really enjoying the opportunity. I am also really enjoying spending time in Austin (shout out to Lady Bird Lake - you host the best morning runs).
Took family trips to Rhode Island and the Northwoods of Wisconsin.
Made the journey to Cooperstown NY with Jack and his 12U Chicago Warriors baseball team. I had a blast watching the team play in the tournament and seeing how well the team worked together after a full season together (the year prior was shortened given COVID). Jack and I drove and stopped in Ann Arbor (to try and inspire Jack with the University of Michigan), Detroit (to see the Tigers play), and Cleveland (to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) on the way. It was nice to hang out one on one.
Took both boys to a week long hockey camp in Lake Forest, plus summer camp in Michigan — nice to see them survive on their own for a bit.
Ran a bunch — 376 miles in 2021! Only rode 1,496 miles in 2021 (stepping that up in 2022).
Invested in OpenAxis, plus a bunch of public market technology stocks. I’m also dollar cost averaging into the market each week (huge fan of DCA).
Joined the board of the Old Town School of Folk Music, the largest community school of the arts in the U.S.
Did hundreds of loads of laundry and countless loads of dishes. Honestly can’t figure out how to optimize this as we just have a ton of people in our family, many of which are active with sports (baseball, softball, hockey, basketball, cross country). Not an accomplishment, more of a survival feat per se.

Thanks for reading 🙏

46!

2021-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

What a year! Here’s a look back:

Survived a pandemic. Goodness.
Started running a lot more. I’m having fun, but I’m not fast.
Adopted a dog (also my running buddy). Hello Scout!
Lost my father-in-law. We did not see this coming and the family is still hurting. I miss you Fred. We all miss you. Thanks for always being there for us, and your massive heart.
Celebrated Erin’s 41st, Jack’s 12th, Caelin’s 10th, Evie’s 8th, Eleanor’s 5th, and Avery’s 3rd birthdays. A few more weeks to go until Eleanor turns six, and then we’ll start it all again in November.
Launched a bunch of cool new stuff at work (highlighted at WWDC) and supported a pending merger.
Joined the board of the Welles Park Parents Association, a parent-led volunteer organization teaching baseball and softball fundamentals to over 1,600 neighborhood children. As part of my role, I’m managing equipment and uniforms for the league.
Coached two baseball teams, and helped out with two others.
Invested in LongJump, a Chicago-based fund started by friends to invest in early stage companies and founders.

To celebrate, I took the day off and started it off by talking (and some texting) with friends and family. We’re capping the night off with a big peanut butter and chocolate pie.

Thanks for reading 🙏

Health screening app

2020-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

I built a lightweight health screening app that you can use to record temperature readings over time. It’s a step up from paper and pencil I’ve been using to track my family over the last few months.

Super simple. Gets the job done. Here’s a look:

We use the app and a forehead scanner to log measurements each morning. It only takes a few minutes.

I hope others find this useful. This could easily be iterated on to track larger groups of people (i.e., companies). The app can be found at healthscreen.io. Feedback is welcome!

UPDATE: This experimental app has been shut down. Fun project, but stopped using it after after a few months and we all learned more about COVID.

Tracking COVID-19

2020-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

I created this post to track COVID-19 in the US, starting on March 2, 2020, through September 23, 2020. As time progressed, I developed some tracking fatigue and stopped adding daily stats and links to related stories that I thought were interesting.

March 2, 2020

March 13

March 15

March 16

March 17

March 18

March 19

March 20

March 21

March 22

March 23

March 24

March 25

March 26

3.28 million people filed for unemployment in the last week

We’ll be ahead of China overnight

March 27

March 28

March 29

March 30

March 31

April 1

April 2

6.6M more unemployment claims filed last week

April 4

April 5

April 6

April 8

~12p

EOD

April 9

From https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/investigations/coronavirus-hospitals-data

6.6 million more people lost their jobs:

Unemployment Ranks Up by 6.6 Million as Coronavirus Hits Jobs - The New York Times

April 10

11:54 AM

10:55 PM

April 11

How the Virus Transformed the Way Americans Spend Their Money

April 14

April 15

Transit ridership down 78% in Chicago

Chicago’s COVID-19 Case Growth Slowing, New Data Show - WBEZ

April 16

Thursday

Coronavirus Live Updates: A Loans Program to Save Jobs Runs Dry; 22 Million Americans Have Filed for Unemployment - The New York Times

5.2 million workers added to unemployment tally

There’s nowhere to hide,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton in Chicago. “This is the deepest, fastest, most broad-based recession we’ve ever seen.

4:42 PM

April 17

Friday

Jobless claims soar by 5.25 million to push coronavirus-tied layoffs above 20 million - MarketWatch

The status of COVID-19 antivirals and vaccines https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-coronavirus-drug-vaccine-status

April 18

Saturday

9:03 AM

April 20

10:20 AM

9:49 PM

April 21

9:39 AM:

9:21 PM:

April 22

Illinois Coronavirus Map and Case Count - The New York Times

11:21 PM:

April 23

1:38 PM:

4.4 M more unemployment claims in the past week - 26.5M total

Unemployment Permeates the Economy During the Coronavirus Pandemic - The New York Times

Another look:

11:03 PM:

April 24

10:25 PM:

April 26

We’re quickly approaching 1M cases and 50K deaths in the US:

April 27

R_t is a key measure of how fast the virus is growing. It’s the average number of people who become infected by an infectious person. If Rt is above 1.0, the virus will spread quickly. When R_t is below 1.0, the virus will stop spreading.

Illinois is currently measuring R 0.89 - which makes me very happy as a Chicago resident:

More information on R_t can be found at rt.live.

11:07 PM:

We hit 50K deaths in the US today – a sad milestone.

April 28

Some trend headway in Illinois:

We broke one million cases in the US today:

April 29

When Congress passed legislation mandating paid sick leave during the pandemic, it exempted 80% of American workers (the requirement does not apply to any business with more than 500 employees). Some lawmakers say their top priority in the next relief bill will be a liability shield for companies as states reopen, while others focus on worker protections.

April 30

60K deaths:

New reported cases by day appear to be trending down while we’re seeing an uptick in reported deaths (given lag time):

3.8 million more unemployment claims in the last week (30.3M in total in the past six weeks):

Interesting reads:

May 3

1.1M cases in the US:

Illinois trending:

May 4

7-day moving average of new reported cases appears remains consistent:

Illinois continues to grow - though the number of people tested daily continues to grow:

10K Americans reach 65 each day, and many are getting caught in the country’s broken retirement system. Notes:

Over 30M Americans have applied for unemployment benefits since the pandemic struck - many will lose their jobs permanently and retire earlier than planned.
50% of Americans between the ages of 56-61 had less than $21,000 in retirement savings in 2016 - and not much has changed since (source).
40% of Americans over the age of 60 who are no longer working full-time rely solely on Social Security for their income — with a median annual benefit of ~$17,000 (source).

May 6

1.2M cases in the US (0.3% of the population), 72K dead:

Reads:

May 7

Illinois trends:

Reads:

Bloomberg’s state reopening tracker
The Ugly Truth - A whistleblower report released Tuesday documents corruption and dysfunction inside the Department of Health and Human Services
US shelves detailed CDC guide to reopening

May 12

Some positive Illinois trends:

We also had our highest number of tests in 24-hours:

Today is a new high for cases (4,104) but also a new high for tests (29,266) says IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike.

via https://twitter.com/KristenThometz/status/1260308220658286594

May 13

Where people started leaving home again - a look at movement patterns using cellphone data:

On first glance, I thought this was an article on relocation trends – something I’m following as the pandemic continues to change how we all live.

May 14

Almost 3M U.S. workers filed for unemployment last week:

There has been a total of 36.5M claims since the pandemic started – or 23.4% of the estimated workforce (155.7M in 2018).

Currently at 1.4M cases and 85K deaths in the US:

Thankfully, the number of new cases has continued to trend down:

May 17

Approaching 1.5M cases and 90K deaths in the US:

A look at trends in Illinois:

2,088 new cases were reported yesterday.

A look at Chicago cases - the NYT notes the city’s status as flattening:

Currently at 3.49 new cases per 1,000 people (or 1 in 286).

“Your daily commute won’t ever be the same” - a good article from National Geographic

May 18

1.5M cases and 90K deaths:

We’re seeing some week-over-week day of week improvements in Illinois:

May 19

A Congressional oversight committee released a report on the CARES Act’s s $500 Billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Funds. Highlights:

More than one quarter of the U.S. economy has been idled — a fall in output equivalent to what occurred between 1929 and 1933 during the Great Depression.
Over the eight weeks ending on May 9, 36.5 million Americans filed unemployment claims. When combined with the 7.1 million Americans already unemployed as of March 13, the total equals more than 40 million. Between people who are unemployed and underemployed, some experts estimate that the real unemployment rate is actually 22.8% or as high as 25%.
A Federal Reserve survey found that among people who were working in February, almost 40% of those in households making less than $40,000 a year had lost a job in March.
Of the $500 billion allocated, the Treasury Department has dispersed $37.5 billion to the Federal Reserve.

Elsewhere:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to support a 500 billion-euro ($546 billion) aid package to help the European Union recover.
Covid Patients Testing Positive After Recovery Aren’t Infectious, Study Shows (phew)
Notre Dame announces its plans for reopening, including testing, contact tracing and mandatory mask wearing.

May 20

All 50 states have begun to reopen to some degree - many states require masks and for folks to social distance when gathering.

A prototype vaccine has protected monkeys from the virus. Small numbers (8 monkeys), but a great development nonetheless.

CDC releases guidance for reopening. A 60-page document that is similar to the draft version that was shelved by the White House, but with toned down guidance and section on ‘communities of faith’ removed.

June 2

A look at US aggregate trends:

New cases slowly declining.

Zooming in on Illinois, we are thankfully seeing a sharp decline in new cases:

Mayors, public health experts and other officials worry that the risk of new coronavirus cases will increase with protests.

June 4

Illinois opens up community-based testing sites to all. Cases in the state are trending down to stable:

June 6

CNN reports we’re pacing over 100K new cases per day worldwide, and growing:

June 11

The US has officially crossed the 2M mark in cases (0.59% of the population):

Fears of a second wave (or extension of the first wave) of cases are making the stock market skittish, with the Dow and S&P 500 both losing roughly 5% in value so far today.

June 15

Illinois continues to trend down, currently running at a rate of 600-900 new cases per day:

473 new cases were reported today. Let’s keep this momentum. 🤞

Nationally, we have flatlined at around 20-25K new cases per day:

The FDA revoked emergency authorization to use two malaria drugs to treat COVID-19 promoted by the President.

June 19

It’s not looking good for the US as cases start to increase again:

Many believe this is the first wave of cases continuing to extend in areas that were less severely impacted early on and decided to either forego or pursue less restrictive preventative measures.

Illinois continues to see cases decline:

The big test will be to see how these case counts change as the state reopens.

June 25

The US is officially getting crushed. Yesterday we saw the highest number of new cases reported in a single day yet:

Complete failure of leadership at the federal level. Cases are currently rising in 29 states.

You can see how we compare to the rest of the world through the European CDC’s COVID-19 reporting tools.

June 26

New York Times with a nice, abridged look at the US:

A look at Illinois - cases have been unfortunately rising the past three days:

Digging a bit deeper, I thought I’d look at aggregate stats in Cook County (home of Chicago, where I live):

Total population: 5.15M
Total cases: 88,650 (1.72%, or 1 in 58)
Total deaths: 4,500 (0.087%, or 1 in 1,145)

In my neighborhood, Lincoln Square, or zip code 60625:

Total population: 78,651
Total tested: 9,198 (11.6% of the population)
Total cases: 1,496 (1.9%, or 1 in 52)
Total deaths: N/A

I’m not sure why the deaths are not being reported on a zip code level. If we use the COVID-19 mortality rate of Cook County (0.087%) above, we can infer roughly 68 deaths in the neighborhood.

June 29

A look at case growth per week adjusted for population from the NYT:

China and South Korea’s line would look similar to Japan’s.

Here’s a look at death count per capita:

We’re bad at this.

June 30

A helpful tool to view and filter on time series data for the city of Chicago. For example, my neighborhood:

How Much Testing Do We Need? Great analysis from NPR on state by state testing. Two thirds of states are not doing enough testing, a big reason (coupled with reopening too early) as to why we’re seeing a resurgence in large parts of the country.

I thought it was helpful to see a case study view of a mitigation strategy in Tennesse:

Contrast this with a supression strategy in Italy:

The key difference is that cases are detected and isolated before they lead to outbreaks. Extremely logical.

July 3

FT video on impact of stay at home orders. Some notes:

In April, daily global C02 emissions down 17% compared to same time last year
Millions adapting to working at home. Investment in London office state market dropped by a 1/3
Air quality has improved by 1/3 around prime London real estate
Peak rush hour traffic in Chinese city Shenzhen is 10% higher than 2019 baseline

July 10

Is Your State Doing Enough Coronavirus Testing? - 12 US states are meeting their target, 5 are near their target, and 34 states are below their target. I’m proud of Illinois.

July 14

We blew past 3M cases a few days ago and are approaching 3.4M in total:

Scrolling up, I notice we crossed the 2M case mark roughly 30 days ago. It’s hard to see where this ends. Everyone needs to listen to medical experts and do the part. We are all in this together.

5.4 million people lost health insurance after losing their jobs.

July 23

We crossed the 4M mark today:

On a per capita basis, we are the nation with the seventh highest amount of cases over the last 7 days, wedged between South Africa and Israel:

It’s getting harder to log these updates given the case counts in the US are so grim.

September 23

July study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows 29 million adults (or 1 in 8) in the US report not having enough food to eat. 1 in 5 renters behind on rent. Data shows that families are being hit particularly hard. Thank goodness for programs like this in Chicago.

The US hit 200K deaths in the past few days – a grim figure.

44

2019-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

Yesterday I turned forty-four years old. I’m a huge fan of retrospectives, thus a quick a look back at the past year.

Accomplishments

Coached four baseball teams (two in the spring, two in the fall) — playing 48 regular-season games plus playoffs.
Supported three kids playing hockey — two in a house league, another in a learn to skate program. Roughly 60 games, plus a President’s Day tournament in Wisconsin, and playoffs. I often run the scoreboard at home and help with the penalty box on the road.
Competed in the Chicago Triathlon along with my son Jack.
Rode 4K miles. Enjoyed riding the North Shore Century (Evanston, IL), Apple Cider Century (Three Oaks, MI), and Levi’s Granfondo (Santa Rosa, CA).
Read hundreds of stories with the kids. This time is truly a treat.
Celebrated 14 years with the one and only Erin Marie Judge.
Enjoyed Thanksgiving in Wisconsin, Christmas at home in Illinois, and New Years in Florida.
Celebrated Erin’s 39th, Jack’s 10th, Caelin’s 8th, Evie’s 6th, Eleanor’s 3rd, and Avery’s 1st birthdays. Our cakes baked per year (CBY) metric in the Judge household continues to move up and to the right.
On a community front, saw progress on two big initiatives: (1) completion of the Chicago lakefront trail split to help make biking, running and walking safer and easier along the lakefront, and (2) completion of the first phase of the Navy Pier flyover. We’ve been advocating for these projects at the Active Transportation Alliance (I’m a board member) for many years as part of our mission to make biking, walking, and public transit safe and easy options for the 10M folks that live in the Chicagoland area.
Continued mentoring startups as part of Techstars. To date, I’ve worked with 24 companies going through the Techstars Anywhere program. I’m currently a lead mentor for StoryTap, a great Canadian company bringing video to online reviews. I’ve recently started helping Parabol too.
I haven’t invested in any companies in the past year but excited to see momentum with Draftbit. Check them out if you’re building a new app…I’m happy to make an intro.
Work-wise, we launched in Canada, raised a round of financing, rebranded as Arrive, and continued hiring great people. After 18 months, I finally feel like we have the right people, processes, and plumbing in place to grow the way we want to. It’s an exciting time for the team.

A year in pictures

Here were some of my favorite moments:

Erin and Evie celebrating my 44th at Cafe Selmarie

Eleanor drawing me

A pair of brothers — love the support here

Caelin’s class before a school play

First dance with Eleanor

Caelin’s first (Mite) hockey season

A coworker grabbed this shot in Seattle — I was texting Erin about the amazing view

Onesie from the University of Michigan College of Engineering

Taken at the Google office heading up to my first ORD Camp (woot!)

Celebrating Avery’s first birthday

My nephew Joe and his girlfriend Claire helping us celebrate Caelin’s birthday

Erin and Avery — early morning on the beach

Evie showing off her newly assembled Ukulele

Dinner with our growing extended family — extraordinary folks to boot

Touring the Everglades

Walking with Avery

Rinsing off after a morning trip to the beach

Isabelle (cousin), Evie, and Eleanor baking one of the birthday cakes

Evie took this photo and I love it— it’s a good representation of me

Taken at the Fullerton el stop before ‘The Fantastic Mr. Fox’ play

Decorating the office— we’ve since swapped out all of the lights (a big upgrade)

Watching the Bears play the Rams

Family day at the MCA

Celebrating my nephew Jerzey’s birthday

Adorable moment. Gotta watch out for these young bucks and their savvy french fry tactics.

Thanksgiving at the office

Taken on a run with Caelin to Metropolis Coffee. 100% correct.

Evie started playing hockey this year as a River Pup

Avery during her nine-month check-in

Midnight Circus in Chicago

Grabbing a burger with Caelin after a baseball game — always laughing with this kid

The Chicago lakefront path separation in progress

Riding with friends

Levi’s Gran Fondo — Santa Rosa, CA

The first day of 4th grade, 2nd grade, kindergarten, and pre-kindergarten (those cheeks!)

Jack at the finish line of the Chicago Triathlon — so proud!

Caelin learning how to sail in Newport, RI

Evie, Sam, and Eleanor. Cousins!

The kids with their Uncle Joe, Aunt Liz, and cousin Emma

Grabbing hibachi with Jack and Caelin

Hunting trolls with Evie

Celebrating Jack’s birthday

Thank you to all my friends and family for your continued love and support!

Previous editions: 43, 41

This post was originally posted on Medium

43

2018-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

I turned 43 years old on March 4, 2018. I love putting together retrospectives as it’s a good way to focus on perspective over time.

On March 14th, Bright launched on ProductHunt. The product was upvoted 498 times and 232 companies created a beta account that first week - it was awesome!

That excitement was short-lived though as we failed to raise money by our own self-imposed deadline. We agreed to put the business on hold shortly after, and eventually decided to shut it down. I wrote a post about the experience, but still frustrated by the sequence of events. I wanted to keep building the company, but we didn’t have enough capital to do it the right way. A lot of good lessons learned, but I’ll just say I’m thankful that I was able to recognize things weren’t working and made the decision to call it. Thanks to everyone who supported us on our brief, but fun journey.

On March 17th we celebrated Eleanor’s 2nd birthday. I baked this cake for her:

Vanilla cake with strawberry buttercream frosting

In April, we visited the good land of Colorado to ski in Breckenridge and spend time with friends in Boulder. Oh, how we love Colorado! Here’s a picture we took outside of Colorado College after attending an interactive demonstration called Raptors of the Rockies:

80% look-at-camera rate

On May 21st, I rode in the GFNY with friends Matt, Jordan, and Dana. GFNY is a cycling championship with 15 rides across the world - the New York ride departs at base of the George Washington Bridge, traverses north through New Jersey along the Hudson River, and then back again. While I enjoyed the ride, my favorite part of the trip was hanging out with these friends in New York City - riding bikes, looking for good coffee, and eating a lot.

Lining up for GFNY

At some point in the spring, Jack moved up from Mites to Squirts in hockey. He’s on the River Dogs, a team playing out of McFetridge, a park district rink a mile from our house. In June they won their division in the playoffs:

Caelin also played at McFetridge with the River Pups, a scrimmage league that feeds into the River Dogs. Evie also started skating too:

I coached baseball in the spring and fall. This was my third season coaching and I continue to love it despite not playing it growing up. At some point these kids will expand beyond my capabilities, but they’re still young enough that me showing up with the right attitude (and drills taken from YouTube) is what matters. Related, I love seeing all the kids I’ve coached around town. The phrase “Hey coach!” is always a wonderful head turner.

Jack Judge, Colorado Rockies - Welles Park Juniors, 2017

Caelin Judge, Arizona Diamondbacks - Welles Park Rookies, 2017

In July, I joined ParkWhiz as CTO after several months of getting to know the team. If you think about how the world of transportation is changing over the next 5–10 years with autonomous vehicles coming online, you’ll understand what piqued my interest. I’m to build an API layer on top of the world of parking and push this industry forward in the same way that Uber and Lyft removed friction from the ride-hailing experience. Here I am four months in talking with Charlie Wojkowski about the release of our Alexa skill on NBC:

“Alexa, ask ParkWhiz to book parking”

FWIW, avoid crashing your bike the day before you’re scheduled to go on air. Charlie powdered me up a bit before the camera started rolling, but you’ll notice my head still appears banged up.

In September, we drove to Iowa to attend a family reunion. We broke the trip up by staying one night at the Adventureland Resort (which I have fond memories from when I was a kid), and the next night at my father’s. On the way to my father’s place, we stopped in at the Des Moines farmers market (which was massive in scope and incredible). Here’s a picture of my dad, his wife Donna, our kids, and a bunch of my nieces and nephews:

Cousins!

In October, we returned to Iowa to see my younger brother get married. Here’s a photo from the big day:

In November, we celebrated Evie’s 5th birthday, and Jack’s 9th birthday. Evie asked me to make a unicorn cake, which you can see below. Though I failed at my first multilayer cake design, it was delicious nonetheless.

The “unicorn” head fell of shortly after the picture was taken

In November we celebrated Thanksgiving with my family in Milwaukee. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday - hands down.

In December we stuck around Chicago as Erin was due in January and it didn’t make sense to travel. We invited family over for Christmas:

Christmas day!

Winter vacation for the kids looked a lot like this (running out for hot chocolate):

Hot chocolate not pictured

For New Year’s Eve, I made a lemon pound cake to ring in 2018 (#dadswhobake?):

Erin fell asleep early, but the kids and I powered through:

Hello, 2018!

I closed out the year with 4K miles on the bike (56% via commute) and 2.8M steps:

On January 17, we celebrated Caelin’s 7th birthday at the Chicago Fire Pitch:

Caelin’s birthday party

On January 22nd, we welcomed Avery into the world:

Hello, Avery!

That, plus a bunch of fun travel for work, is a wrap.

This post was originally posted on Medium

Hello Avery!

2018-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

Erin and I welcomed Avery June Judge into the world at 12:45 PM on January 22, 2018 at Northwestern Medicine Prentice Women’s Hospital. Here she is:

Avery weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces, and measured 19 inches long. She was delivered by Dr. Anita Levin, who also delivered her brothers Jack and Caelin, as well as her sister Evie.

We debated on the names Avery and June for days, finally realizing that we loved both words together (though her dad may still just call her June).

Bright is shutting down

2017-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

My journey with Bright started in April 2015, a year after the company I cofounded, Signal, was acquired. My tenure had come to it’s logical end, thus I immediately started thinking through what was next. One idea in particular — an engine to help companies grow faster by ingesting their data and providing descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics — got me really excited. We had spent years building the descriptive bits of this at Signal, and had made significant progress by the time we were acquired (in fact, it helped convince the acquirers we knew what we were doing).

I collected my thoughts and sketched a proof-of-concept:

I shared this with Paul Maeda, a fantastic designer I had recently met, and he turned that into this:

This was a nice visualization of a complex problem. Merging marketing attribution, spend, and revenue data in a cohesive view is hard. Most companies struggle with each data set alone. I quickly built a pitch deck and sent it to a local VC for his feedback. We sat down for coffee and talked through everything — and he loved it. He told me his firm would be able to invest 500K to get things off the ground, or could wait to write a larger check once the product was in market and getting traction. Though n=1, I took this as a good sign and decided to get to work. Around this time, my friend Doug joined Earth Class Mail as its new CEO. I talked through the idea for Bright and Doug offered up their data as a test bed, as they were struggling with understanding customer acquisition and retention. Questions like ‘who are our best customers?’ and ‘how do we find more of them?’. He also wanted help with a few projects, thus I worked with his team for a few months, and then shifted gears to focus on Bright full-time in August.

Integration with the first billing system was fairly easy. I had spent seven years working through different data models at Signal as we experimented and changed our pricing, thus already had an ideal structure mapped out in my head. I started ingesting the data and building views on top of it and had a proof of concept ready by October that showed subscription billing analytics like monthly recurring revenue (MRR), customer churn and MRR churn. It also provided some insight into which discounts and pricing plans were most effective. I didn’t have any other types of data yet, but had enough to show that Bright was valuable.

The next six months felt like a blur as I continued to iterate on the product. I integrated with a second billing system and started to add beta users. I flew to San Francisco in February 2016 to attend SaaStr Annual and drum up interest in Bright. I met the CEO of the company that I built the first integration with and gave him a demo of the product. We hit it off and he invited me to join him for dinner that night. Over dinner he relayed that their customers were demanding better tools for insight, their team could not move fast enough, and we should join forces. We agreed to continue building a relationship, but the timing was off for such a move.

After returning to Chicago, I ran into Troy Henikoff in the hall at 1871 and told him about Bright. I had considering applying to Techstars and was curious to get his feedback. I gave him a quick demo and walked him through the progress I had made over the past six months. He encouraged me to apply, and I submitted the application just under the wire (see videos 1 , 2 — oh so bad!). Techstars Chicago Managing Director Brian Luerssen subsequently reached out, and I worked through three rounds of interviews with successively larger amounts of Techstars folks. Surprisingly, the acquisition conversation resurfaced as the company I met with at SaaStr Annual was being acquired themselves. I flew to Texas to meet with the team leading the acquisition as they realized this was a hole in the company they were acquiring. While there, I received an email from Troy and Brian to jump on a call — a few hours later they gave me the fantastic news that Bright been accepted into the 2016 class of Techstars Chicago. Woot! At this point, I was faced with the decision to sell early, or keep moving. While I had a huge amount of respect for the folks offering to acquire Bright, I didn’t want to sell — I hadn’t even brought the product to market yet. The opportunity cost was too high, and Techstars would be a massive accelerant. I chose Techstars— and spent three months (July through September) working on the business with 9 other companies.

Techstars was broken into three 30-day chunks — mentorship, growth, and demo day preparation. I came into the program with what I felt was a strong product roadmap and plan to tackle it. Troy and Brian relayed that it’d be a challenging summer as a solo founder. They told me I needed to hire at least one person before the program started as I wouldn’t be able to tackle more than 10% of what I wanted to accomplish during the program. Now that I had a small amount of capital to work with, I posted a job to AngelList, started interviewing engineers and found someone the week before the program started.

After things kicked off, I also reached out to my friend Fredrik to see if he’d be interested in helping too. I had worked with him while helping Earth Class Mail and loved working together. He and his fiancee Emma had planned to go on holiday for three weeks, thus he offered to help for a few weeks if I’d pay for their flights and lodging. We spent the next three weeks cranking — Emma on customer development and market research, Fredrik on customer acquisition attribution. The product was starting to come to life. The interface was rough (and admittedly disjointed), but customers could see how their marketing efforts tied to recurring revenue, lifetime value and churn. A company could evaluate all this by connecting to their billing system and deploying a few lines of Javascript to their site. It was awesome!

Shockingly, the engineer that I initially hired didn’t work out. He left to start his own company — one month in Techstars and he had the bug. I talked to Fredrik about joining the team as cofounder and CTO before he left Chicago, and he was in. I could not have been more thrilled…he was the perfect fit as CTO. We also agreed that we needed our friend Brian Flanagan to lead product and round out the team. I had already been trying to recruit Brian for months, but he was resistant as he was building out a bookstore and focused on that. Nevertheless, we kept asking him to help and he eventually ceded :)

I then recruited Tim Grace to the team. Demo day readiness had become a full time activity, and I needed help. Tim and I discussed him joining as cofounder and COO, but would later agree that this role didn’t make sense given our early stage and limited capital.

In September, Fredrik and Brian flew to Chicago to help Tim and I finalize everything for demo day. On Thursday, September 29th, I pitched to a full house at the House of Blues in Chicago:

Techstars demo day

Super mentor, investor, and now friend Jordan Buller introduced us. Tim was clicking through the presentation back stage while Brian and Fredrik sat in the balcony building the new marketing site. After a month of preparation, the day felt like a big success.

Fredrik, Brian and I at demo day (missing: Tim)

My wife joined us for dinner afterwards, and the team talked through next steps. We agreed that the product that I had initially built was a good start, but not what we wanted to bring to market. You can see the stark difference between the application and demo day videos above, and the launch video below. What I had built was a concept to open up insights into revenue metrics. What we wanted to bring to market was a product that consumed all your data to provide your team with actionable insights — a helpful copilot if you will. With demo day done, Fredrik and Brian flew home, Tim took some time off, and I flew to California to ride in the Levi’s Granfondo with friends.

Once we regrouped, I focused on fundraising and Fredrik started building a new backend for data processing.

Tim and I hosted #BrightConf in Chicago on October 14th:

Over 23 speakers from around the midwest shared their knowledge in the 1871 auditorium throughout the day. It was awesome! Tim and I were relieved that the day went so well (we really pulled it together in two weeks), and we learned a ton about planning a conference.

Brian joined the team full time in November as cofounder and CPO and went to work building the new frontend. The team spent the next four months building, and fundraising.

We finally launched Bright on ProductHunt on March 14th and finished the day in third place:

Here’s a look at the product in action:

Over 200 companies signed up to try Bright out. It was awesome! These companies were excited and providing a ton of helpful feedback. This is when things started to fall apart.

I had focused my fundraising efforts in Chicago figuring it would be ‘easy’ given the problem set Bright was tackling, and the sale of my last company. Investors weren’t convinced — they either wanted to see more traction (we had none as we stopped selling the proof of concept that I built and agreed to not yet charge for the product we launched in March), weren’t convinced that the market was big enough, or weren’t convinced that we could compete against the big analytics players (Google’s investment arm had just invested $81 million into Looker). I was frustrated that people weren’t willing to take a chance on us at an early stage, but that was the reality of where we were at. The team couldn’t keep working without covering our basic needs — this was especially true for me with four young children. We knew bootstrapping Bright wasn’t realistic given the infrastructure and team required to build the product people were excited about. We did have a strategic investor interested, but the term sheet they sent over would render the business DOA as they wanted too much of the company early on.

Fredrik, Brian, and I had previously agreed if we couldn’t raise money by the end of March we’d all take a break to figure things out. We hit the deadline without success. I continued to fundraise and work on the product for a few months, but decided to call it after not making much headway. It’s hard to admit to failure here, but that’s what happened. In the end we couldn’t get everything lined up — we just couldn’t make it all work.

Brian opened Marrowbone Books in June. I joined ParkWhiz in July. Fredrik joined Parity in August.

Thank you to everyone that helped Bright along the way. Your support has, and will always be, invaluable.

This post originally appeared on Medium

On founders and initial sales

2017-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

A friend reached out to let me know he was giving a talk at the University of Michigan business school re: startup founders making their initial sales, and sent along four questions which I enjoyed answering. I thought I’d republish those thoughts here:

1) How far along in the product development cycle do you think startups should start engaging with prospects?

Startups should absolutely engage prospects from the very beginning. It’s all about solving the customer’s pain, and validation of the market opportunity. You should be able to pre-sale the product you’re building to prove there is a need. You don’t have to actually start charging a credit card or send invoices, rather collecting signed LOIs is a strong enough proof point. This also forces you as the founder, and your team to work through your value proposition early on. This is surprisingly harder than most people think.

2) What advice would you offer founders with no sales experience about making their first critical sales?

Sell your product! No one can beat the founder as a salesperson, as you know your product and business better than anyone. Selling your own product will also prove out the need for a sales hire, and help you navigate the type of person you’d like to hire.

3) What did you learn in the process of making your first sales?

It’s hard. People don’t respond. Persistence pays off.

4) What (if anything) would you do differently if you had it to do all over again?

Raise money right away. We had the opportunity to raise a seed round before I started working on the product. That would have been a signal of early validation and helped us as we progressed.

This post initially appeared on Medium

Tracking your commutes

2017-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

If you’re a cyclist using Strava to track your daily commutes, Trackernaut now makes it easy to see how much time you’re spending commuting each week.

You can also see how much of your riding is done via commute within your profile:

Finally, there is a year-by-year view of your commutes:

A ride is identified as a commute in Trackernaut if you have (a) marked it as a commute using Strava, or (b) included the word ‘commute’ in the title. You can see which rides are marked as commutes in the activity log.

Happy commuting!

This post initially appeared on Medium

Weekly view of your activities

2017-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

Trackernaut now provides you with a dashboard of your weekly activities. Here’s a look:

This update helps you more quickly see week-over-week changes.

Goal tracking is next! If you have any questions or feedback, I’d love to hear from you. Message me on Twitter or email me.

This post initially appeared on Medium

What I'm saying yes to

2017-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

Some of the best advice I’ve heard recently is to take a stronger stance on saying no. If you’re not aware of this school of thought, it can be summarized as: it’s hard to say no to people, thus we end up doing too much. Instead, we should strive to minimize our commitments and invest time where we can make the biggest impact. On that note, here’s all the things I’m saying yes to right now:

My wife
My kids
My company
My health (eating right, exercising, cycling, etc)
ActiveTrans (I’m a board member)
Mentoring startups (ex: helping the first batch of Techstars Anywhere)

That feels right to me. I’m committed to my family, building Bright, and giving back to the community.

I wrote this down to periodically remind myself to filter. If it’s not on the list, it’s a no.

This is a good exercise for you to run through too.

This post initially appeared on Medium

Bright on 'Tech in Chicago' podcast

2016-12-14T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve long been a big fan of Colin Keeley’s Tech in Chicago podcast, thus was honored to be a recent interviewee.

In this episode, I sit down with Colin to talk about how Bright got started and what’s next for the company. You can listen on techinchicago.co, as well as iTunes and Google Play. I hope you enjoy!

Bright on 'Bootstrapping in America'

2016-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

Thank you to Tom, Tony and Jules for inviting me to talk about Bright on Bootstrapping in America!

Bootstrapping in America - Jeff Judge of Bright

Lessons in recruiting

2016-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve recently started another company, and here are a few things I’ve been reminded of while recruiting people to join the team:

You can’t be boring. I know that sounds obvious, but it took a dozen iterations to get a product engineer job post to a point where it sounded really compelling. Initially, I tried to be as concise by providing a few background sentences on the company and the problems we’re solving. I spent time talking through the technology stack and what types of projects this engineering unicorn would be working on. I sent the post to a friend and he replied “Some overall feedback on the post: it’s boring :) There’s nothing separating it from the rest of the RoR posts for engineers.” I give him points for softening the blow with that emoticon. I revised the post add more about my background, further elaborating on the pain point and market size, and adding a list of people I’ve worked with in the past (to serve as references).
LinkedIn messages will go unnoticed. A candidate told me this morning over coffee that he had not seen my message on LinkedIn (a mutual friend made the connection). “I get hit up by recruiters all the time. I just don’t check that inbox any more.” Others have confirmed this. As an early adopter of LinkedIn, this shocks me (people forget what professional social networking was like before LinkedIn) but it makes sense.

Introducing Bright

2016-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

I’m excited to announce that Bright is now live in beta.

What is Bright?

Bright is an analytics product to help subscription-based companies grow faster by surfacing valuable metrics and insights. We do this first by connecting to your company’s billing system and ingesting revenue data. This data is used to create a high level dashboard of key metrics, and a set of helpful reports to further dig in. You can setup Slack, email or text message notifications to receive real-time reports of important activity. Bright also sends helpful performance recaps at the start of each week and month to give you context to how your business is growing. Setup typically only takes a few minutes. We’ve added integration support for Stripe and Chargify, and will be releasing more integrations in the coming weeks.

You can get started with Bright for free today at bright.io.

Why Bright and why now?

The root of Bright came from the time spent building my last company. In short, we hit an inflection point four years in that changed the trajectory of the business and made us rethink everything. While I took pride in being transparent as the CEO, I was frankly communicating the wrong things. I’d send out monthly recaps to the team that included our financials along with my overlay of how things were going. The problem was, we had 2M run rate but didn’t have a clear grasp on where we were going. We eventually lost two large customers, losses that created a significant hit to the business. After the fall out, I was determined to find some predictability in our data. We spent several months building an internal dashboard with just enough baseline data to redirect our efforts and build a healthy, growing business (one that would ultimately become acquired a year later).

Post-acquisition, I started helping a friend with a business he recently joined post-bankruptcy. While digging into their revenue, I found myself disappointed with their ability to zero in on key metrics. Their billing provider was great but didn’t give them any visibility into core metrics like monthly recurring revenue. The sole analytics product that integrated with their billing system provided a nice snapshot, but not much depth. I started digging in to their data and having a lot of fun. Full circle, Bright is not only providing visibility into the performance of plans, add-on components, and discounts, but also layering in helpful context around key events like churn. Bright’s helping their team better understand their business, and that’s super exciting to me.

While I realize there’s no shortage of dashboards and BI tools in the market, there’s a gaping hole in visibility. SaaS and subscription-based companies need tools that will help them see how growth translates to revenue, and how that revenue translates to making decisions. We see an opportunity to help companies grow faster by giving them context, insights and recommendations vs. charts, tables and exports (though we have those too).

Who’s behind Bright?

I’m Jeff Judge, and I’m the founder of Bright Labs, Inc., the company behind Bright. I started working on Bright full-time this past August and have been lucky to get a bit of help from folks like Paul Maeda, Greg Reda, Jack Kent, Q McCallum, Tim Grace, Patrick Algrim, and Brian Peacock along the way.

What’s next?

We’re building a team and raising capital to tackle the opportunity. We’ll be releasing several more integrations in the coming weeks. There will be bugs! There will also be a lot of happy people as Bright frees up time by killing their internal spreadsheets one tab at a time.

If you’re interested in this mission, follow Bright on Twitter (@bright_io) and stay tuned! If you’d like to chat one on one, please reach out to me via jeff@bright.io.

🚀

This post originally appeared on the Bright blog

2016 Ravenswood Run

2016-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

I was fortunate to be able to run the Ravenswood Run this last Sunday for the second year in a row. I say fortunate because I’m not a runner, but thankful that I can signup to run a 5K and enjoy it.

Here’s a look at the field lining up before the gun went off:

It’s a huge neighborhood run - I believe there were over 3,200 people this year.

I was really happy to get a PR!

41

2016-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

One of my favorite communication tools is the the retrospective, as it’s a nice way to snapshot what was accomplished during a specific period of time. Today is my 41st birthday, thus a perfect time to reflect back on the past year.

What I did:

Welcomed the beautiful Eleanor Jane Judge into the world on March 19th
Left my job on March 31st, closing the chapter on the company I cofounded long ago
Celebrated my son Jack’s 7th birthday, my son Caelin’s 5th birthday and my daughter Evie’s 3rd birthday
Walked 781 miles over 1.6M steps
Ran 94 miles
Rode 3,881 miles
Built Trackernaut to help me aggregate and report on the data above
Helped the good folks at Earth Class Mail re-kick their business post bankruptcy by launching a new marketing site, creating a new customer acquisition strategy, cutting over to new billing, customer support, and content management systems, plus other growth oriented projects
Helped coach baseball and soccer (2x)
Taught 11 kids how to ride a bike with my friend Peter (I’ve dubbed this program Kids Love Bikes)
Created Bright Labs, Inc. in order to start working on Bright, a new product to help SaaS companies quickly understand and optimize customer acquisition, recurring revenue and more (beta testing started in January — woot woot!)
Rode in the Banff GranFondo, North Shore Century, Apple Cider Century, and Levi’s GranFondo
Vacationed in Alberta, Canada with my family and friends (we loved it — felt like Colorado, but with less people and more bears)
Celebrated the 11th anniversary with my amazing wife Erin. We also hit a steady cadence in date nights, averaging one per week.
Skied in Breckenridge, CO with my boys
Visited San Francisco for the SaaStr Annual conference in February. I met and reconnected with a lot of great people.
Built a computer with my boys

What I didn’t do:

Apply to YC. I started putting the intro video together and wasn’t happy with how I was communicating the value of Bright. I started reading up on their preference for multiple founders (which makes sense) and decided to punt on the submission. Looking back, this was a mistake as you never know what could happen. The rule of showing up.
Spend time with my parents. I saw my mother a 3–4 times, but didn’t get a chance to see my father. My father hasn’t even met my two daughters. This is a wrong that I’m going to right.

A friend once told me that he had always loved March fourth because the date is so expressive. I’m proud of the past year, and excited for this next year. March forth!

Note: This post was originally published on Medium.

Hello world — meet Trackernaut

2015-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

Hi there, my name is Jeff Judge and I’m building a new personal dashboard called Trackernaut.

At some point in 2013, I broke a second Fitbit wristband and replaced it with a similar model from Jawbone. Though it was easy to switch devices, I was disappointed that I lost visibility into my historical data, or at least the ability to see it all in one place. This problem compounded over time as I started to use other devices like the Basis watch to track additional data points like my heart rate. My frustration continued to build with an inability to see a cohesive view of my data, so I dug in and found that most of these wearable devices had APIs I could use to fetch my data, and thus the idea for Trackernaut was born.

In December, I started off by building a bare bones web application to fetch cycling data from Strava. I captured basic data points like distance and riding time for each of my rides, stored them in a database, and built a view to look at each ride and year to date mileage. Admittedly, it was easy to get this started using Ruby on Rails, plus the omniauth and omniauth-strava ruby gems to authenticate against the Strava API. I got the proof of concept up and running locally and was happy with the win. Around this time, another company approached with interest to buy the company I had co-founded, thus I put this project and many other things on the back burner to focus on working through the due diligence process. The sale of the company closed in April 2014, and I worked with the acquiring company for the next year to make sure the transition went smoothly. I left the company earlier this year and decided not to rush into anything too quickly. I found myself thinking about this problem and decided to circle back to continue working on what I had started. I cleaned up the code, added support for tracking weight using the Withings scale, and added support for tracking steps with the Moves app. At this point I was at a good place to get the application up and running on the web, so I created an account with Heroku and deployed it. Woot!

Once I had data flowing in, I started to see value right away. For example, here’s a look at my step data over the past 30 days:

My daily steps over the past 30 days

Looking at this chart, I can see when Moves released a new update to their iOS app that effectively broke it (they released a bug fix the next day). With that, I decided it was a good time to pick up my third Fitbit band and integrate that data too. You’ll notice the spike in number of steps on December 12th and 13th. I had always had a hunch that Fitbit tracked steps more aggressively than others, so it was good to see this new data come in and use it to compare against the Moves data. I reinstalled the Moves app on December 14th and I’m now tracking both sets of step data on a daily basis — something I look forward to writing more about in the future.

Here’s a chart showing my run data from Strava:

My runs over the past 30 days

There’s only a three data points, but it’s still helpful for me to see them as I can tell when I picked up a foot injury in November and temporarily stopped running. Looking further back, you can see my runs have picked up towards the end of the year (perhaps why I injured my foot):

Here’s a chart showing my ride data from Strava:

My rides over the past 30 days

Looking at this, I know winter has arrived in Chicago.

Stretching back a bit further in time, you’ll see that I’ve visualized my weight over the past year:

My weight for the past year

I wrote about charting this data in a blog post from May. Below this chart you’ll find two additional charts that show body fat percentage and lean muscle mass, a helpful way to see if I’m gaining, or losing muscle.

While these visualizations have been a fun way for me to spot trends and see the big picture, I’ve also built a low-touch way to keep track of my activities over time through the use of email. At the start of each day, week, and month, Trackernaut sends me a helpful summary recapping the previous period. For example, here’s an email looking back on August 2015:

I can see totals and some highlights for each type of activity. I’ve also added some basic goal tracking to show progress against each goal for the month.

Since that initial push in April, I’ve been chipping away at little bits here and there — adding new features, cleaning things up, and trying to add polish where possible. Here’s a look at the Github repo:

Commits on Github

I now see the formation of something very useful and I’m excited to see where it goes. Please sign up for a Trackernaut account if you’re interested in seeing what your own data looks like (and if you do, send feedback to hello@trackernaut.com). I’ll also be posting updates here and on Twitter (@trackernaut) if you’d like to follow along.

A final note — this is all in fun project mode right now and I don’t yet have any commercial aspirations for this. I built Trackernaut because I wanted to understand more about myself, and didn’t want to rely on others to do this for me. Hopefully it can be helpful for others too.

This post initially appeared on Medium

Pour over coffee starter kit

2015-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

I was both impressed and curious with the recent launch of Kit, so I decided to create my first kit.

Pour over coffee starter kit

This kit includes everything you’ll need to make pour-over coffee at home, plus a set of simple steps to make your first brew.

To all the makers

2015-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

I recently picked up a new helmet for my daily commute. Here you can see some tentative reservation before wearing it for the first time:

Thankfully, I’ve found it to be the former. In fact, this new helmet has completely changed the way I think about protective gear for my head since it offers three distinct advantages over any previous model:

Visibility — the helmet is bright yellow and has front and rear facing lights embedded into the helmet. There are four different light functions, including slow and fast flash. The lights sit so much higher now, it feels like I’m easier for drivers to see as well (no evidence on this yet though).
Simplification — Given that the helmet has built-in lights, I no longer have to worry about front and rear bike lights. Did I bring them to the office? Did I take them off my bike so they won’t get stolen? Do they have enough battery power? No longer a worry. I’ve left my charging cable at the office and can plug it into for some quick juice after I arrive. The helmet charges via USB, and my helmet is usually sitting on my desk a few feet from my laptop — no behavioral changes needed.
Comfort — I really enjoy wearing it. In fact, I don’t even notice I’m wearing it at all (which makes for laughs as I look like I could start shooting laser beams out of my head with it on).

It’s been a few weeks, but this helmet has already brought me much joy. It’s funny how a product can change the way you think in retrospect — why wouldn’t you have lights in a helmet? It’s so obviously better.

Thank you to all of the wonderful people out there working on new ideas, creating products, and building businesses that immediately set the bar and shift expectations.

This was originally posted on Medium

Scale Matters

2015-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been building a new application to track my personal fitness data. I’ve always loved thinking how to best represent data in visual ways, and not surprisingly it’s easy to get excited when you’re playing with your own data. While looking at my body weight this morning, I was reminded of how much scale impacts perception.

First, here is a look at my weight in kilograms using a line chart:

Next, let’s look at that same data using an area chart:

These two charts are kind of hard to follow since there’s not a lot of variance in the data, and there are periods of steep drop-offs for days where there weren’t any measurements available.

Finally, let’s look at the same data with a few tweaks:

There we go, that’s helpful. I converted my weight to pounds, tightened the scale of the Y-axis, and smoothed the chart out by removing the ‘0’ value measurements. Now, I’m able to see a couple of distinct patterns over the past five years:

I gain weight in the winter and lose it in the spring (not surprising, I live in Chicago)
I’ve progressively reduced my body weight year over year

I’m really happy about that second trend! I attribute it to healthier eating and exercise (cycling, strength training, and running).

One final note – if you’re looking for a charting library, check out Chartkick (it’s great). The Withings scale is also great.

2015 Ravenswood Run

2015-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

I’m happy to say that I ran the Ravenswood Run this last Sunday. Here’s the summary of my run from Strava, plus a wee bit more:

My official time was 29 minutes and 52 seconds, though they clocked me in as a guy named Peter. I was stoked to finish my 5K since 2002, and happy to see my friends Tim and Julian after the race:

A couple of notes:

Running a 5K was one of my goals for 2015, so I’m happy to check this off the list
I was excited to see that my time yesterday was close to a 5K I ran thirteen years ago - woot woot!

Going forward, I’d love to get my time closer to eight minute miles.

Update

2015-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

It’s been a while since I’ve written about what I’m up to, so here it goes.

First, my company Signal was acquired in April 2014. At some point I’ll write about that process, but I’ll summarize for now as a nice win and lots of lessons learned (seriously, if someone is interested in acquiring your company, let’s grab a coffee). I recently left the company and I’m excited to turn my mind towards what’s next. In retrospect, the past eight years have been an incredible experience, and I’m thankful to have been a part of it all. Here’s a nice photo of the team taken before I left:

Next, we welcomed Eleanor Jane Judge into the world on March 19th - she’s doing great and growing quickly. Her brothers and sister have been a big help around the house and it’s fun to watch everyone figure things as we’ve grown from a family of five to six. I think it helps that she is adorable:

I’ve also created a new company to explore some product ideas that have been top of mind. I’m excited to dig into these ideas and see where they go. I’m also available to help with short term projects on a consulting basis. I’ve learned a lot over the years and would love to help others accelerate their product, marketing and operational efforts. If you’re interested, email me at jeff@judge.io.

Finally, spring is here and everyone in Chicago is excited for the beautiful weather. Erin refers to this period of transition as fishbrain given how quickly we forget the Chicago winter experience. Seriously though, Chicago offers three amazing seasons that make you feel lucky to live here. I’m excited to take advantage of all the parks, neighborhood festivals, free concerts and movie nights that the city has to offer throughout summer.

Onward!

Hello Eleanor!

2015-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

On Thursday, March 19th, Erin and I welcomed Eleanor Jane Judge into to the world. She was born at 8:36 AM, weighing 6 pounds and 12 ounces, measuring 19 1/2 inches long.

I brought Erin and Eleanor home on Monday afternoon, and everyone is doing great. Jack, Caelin and Evie are really excited to have their new sister home, and everyone has stepped up to help out.

Managing your time

2014-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

I had the good fortune to look at my calendar this morning and see that I had zero scheduled commitments for the day. I generally try to keep my schedule light, but it’s rare to have a weekday where nothing is scheduled. I tweeted my excitement, and my friend Harper replied asking me how I did it. I thought it was a red herring at first, but looking through my schedule over the past six months I realize I’ve done a better job managing my time.

I thought it’d be helpful to make a list of changes that have helped me better manage my time. Maybe these will help you too.

1. Don’t respond to every email

As a startup founder, here’s an example of an email I frequently receive:

Email #1: “Hi Jeff, I run X software development firm that helps companies likes your supplement their team with additional resources. We specialize in Ruby, Python, Java, and .Net development and are available immediately for your most challenging projects.”

Email #2: “Hi Jeff, I haven’t heard back from you. Just wanted to send a reminder that I run X…”

Email #3: “Jeff, I haven’t heard from you. Your response is requested. Please let me know your thoughts.”

I use to respond to that first email to thank the person for contacting me and and let them know we didn’t need their services. 100% of the time this led to more email.

Lesson learned - don’t respond to email that is a waste of your time.

2. Clear up the clutter

On that topic, you no doubt receive a lot of email. When going through it, take action as quickly as possible. If there’s no action to take, delete it. If you need a copy for your records, archive it. If a response is required, provide a brief response. Take action and take it quickly. Using a tool like The Email Game makes this even easier.

Of course this behavior applies to more than just email. If you manage projects, move these to a tool like Trello. If you need to manage and collaborate with clients on a project, move it to a tool like Basecamp.

You need to break things up into chunks of effort and move them to the right system for processing.

3. Reduce your commitments

At some point you realize the unfortunate paradox that time has an inelastic supply, while you do not. The solution here is to simply commit to less. I prioritize my time around my family, my business and my health. By no means am I perfect at time management, but I make it a point to spend the bulk of my time on the three things above and cut everything else out. This means saying no to grabbing beers after work, and yes to heading out for a morning ride.

Be judicious with your time and prioritize wisely.

Q: Are trust badges worth it?

2014-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

A: I don’t know, but I’m going to find out in 2014.

If you’ve ever run a website where you use credit cards as part of the signup process, you no doubt are familiar with the perceived importance of using trust badges to help solidify your online presence. If you’re not familiar, trust badges (aka trust seals) are widgets you add to your website for consumers to get third party validation of your product or service. There are several flavors of badges:

SSL certificate provider badges to verify your product employs the necessary encryption to protect data (ex: Verisign, Geotrust, Trustwave)
Payment provider badges to verify your product follows payment processing industry standards (ex: Authorize.net)
Customer satisfaction badges to show customer happiness collected via surveys and other feedback mechanisms (ex: Bizrate)
Business accreditation badges to verify your company is free and clear of consumer complaints (ex: Better Business Bureau)
Privacy accreditation badges to verify your company has a privacy policy that is well written and protects consumer privacy (ex: TRUSTe)

We’ve used several of these badges at Signal since 2008 when we added support for self signup. In large part, these badges have always operated in the mode of ‘set it and forget it’. We’d renew the service each year after grumbling a bit about the cost, then forget about it for the next 10-11 months until we received notice that it was time to renew. I recently renewed one of these badges and found myself thinking “It’s 2014, why I am not tracking these things”. So with that, here are three things we’re doing to track effectiveness of these badges going forward:

Measure ROI. We foolishly have not tracked click throughs for these badges until yesterday. Solving this problem was easy, just add trigger a Google Events upon click. Now we’ll be able to measure impressions, clicks and conversions for each button. My guess is we won’t see much data here, but we’ll know soon enough.
Measure conversion. A series of A/B tests should help us understand conversion for signup pages with and without the badges.
Ask for feedback. We’re already asking customers why they chose Signal when they first sign up, why not take a random sample of these respondents and ask them about the badges. I’d like to understand whether or not these badges played a role in their evaluation criteria, or gave them any additional confidence during the signup process.

What’s your experience? Are they worth it?

Planning exercise

2013-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

Over the weekend I took to Excel to try and plot out the next 20 years. I use to do this more frequently when I first graduated from college, but stopped doing so at some point - probably when I paid off my credit card and student loan debts (my planning was really just old fashioned budgeting).

Things are different now. I have three young children and a business. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I spend my time, and how much time I have left to make an impact. So, this exercise was pretty fun for me as mapped out things like how old I’ll be when the kids go to college (52, 54, 56), how much money we’ll need to save to send them to college (a lot), how many miles I’ll ride based on recent mileage (100k), and how many more years I think I’ll be working (32). All really fun stuff for me to think through and put into perspective.

I encourage you to run through the same exercise - I guarantee you’ll be surprised at the outcome(s).

Google Authorship for your blog

2013-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

You may have recently seen profile images appear next to a link within Google’s search results. If not, here’s an example:

As you can see above, a picture really speaks a thousand words, especially when compared to search results without one. Google enables this through what they call Google Authorship, or the process of associating your Google+ profile with content you publish to the web. You may or may not care about Google+ as a network, but that really doesn’t matter here - if you tag your content with your Google+ profile you’ll get this association and a big leg up within Google’s search results.

Now, if you have a blog where you’re the only author (like this one), the easiest way to configure authorship is to stick a code snippet in the head section of your website:

<link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/107165108271054381833/"/>

This tells Google that all content created for this site should be attributed to the person with that Google+ profile URL (in this example, me). You’ll of course need to replace that URL with your own Google+ profile URL. If you’re confused where to stick the snippet, just view the source of this page to see where I’ve placed it.

There are a couple other ways to set up authorship:

If your email address contains the same root domain where you frequently post content (e.g. - jeff@signalhq.com and blog.signalhq.com), then you should add your email address to your Google+ profile and verify it.
If you infrequently contribute to a site (e.g. - guest blog posts), then simply reference your Google+ URL in the author section of your post and append rel=author to the end of the URL. This post from Andy Crestodina does a nice job walking through how to do this with example screenshots.

Authorship for a specific page can be validated here:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

Buying Facebook fans for 36 cents

2013-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

I finally took the time to set up a website, Facebook page and Twitter account for Judge Chiropractic, my father’s business. As you can see from the site, it’s pretty bare bones but does a nice job of covering the basics for a local business (services offered, hours of operation, address, contact information, and an about section for the business). If you search for “Judge Chiropractic” you’ll see that the site already shows up in the first page of the Google search results, ranking #8. I was pretty excited to see this as it has only been up for a week (perhaps that points to value of a domain that directly matches your search term). Equally interesting to see the Facebook page sitting two spots higher (#6) in the search results.

Given how powerful a tool a Facebook page can be for a local business, I thought it’d be fun to test an ad designed to generate page likes (or fans). If you’ve never built an ad in Facebook before, they make it incredibly easy and give you a set of rich targeting tools to work with. Here’s a look at the ad I created:

I thought this targeting made sense - show the ad to folks who haven’t already liked the page, live within 25 miles of Albia, IA (my father cares for patients from other nearby towns), and are 18 years or older. I set the daily budget to $5 per day (the Facebook minimum), and here are the results of after running the ad for five days:

The ad generated 81 new fans for a total cost of $28.84, or $0.36 Cost per Page Like (CPL). This cost felt like a no brainer to me given the ability to target people I assume were already familiar with my father but not yet following his page on Facebook. He can now communicate with these folks at no additional cost, in a place where they’re already use to spending a lot of their day.

Next, I plan to run some tests with Twitter and Google, and also tweak the site so it looks great and is responsive. I haven’t told my dad about the Facebook ad yet (or really any of this), but I’m sure he’ll be happy with the results of building his online presence and running experiments like this over time. We just have to get over that “What is Facebook?” conversation :)

Indianapolis Cultural Trail

2013-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

I was really impressed with a recent project that Indianapolis completed to add 8 miles of protected bike and pedestrian lanes through it’s downtown area.

What excited me most was that this project was done by a team of people that simply wanted to make things better and took action to make it happen. They knew that the project would never happen if they were to depend on tax dollars to fund it, so they raised capital through a mix of private and public donations.

Watch this video, I think you’ll enjoy it. The lesson here is think big and take action.

The Indianapolis Cultural Trail: The Next-Gen in U.S. Protected Bike Lanes

Operators Like Us podcast

2013-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

My friend Griffin Caprio and I just released the first episode of Operators Like Us, a podcast dedicated to interviewing entrepreneurs from all walks of life to find out how they got started, what they’ve learned and where they’re heading. In this first episode, we interviewed Len Kendall from CentUp, a really cool platform for bloggers and podcasters to get paid for the content they create. It was fun to learn about the transition from agency to startup life for Len.

I have to say that the process of creating content like this has been really fun for me. I’ve always enjoyed the stories of what drives other folks to start their own business and appreciate hearing about the lessons they’ve learned. I can certainly rattle off dozens of things I’ve learned building Signal over the past six years and perhaps I’ll speak more to those lessons in the near future.

If you do listen, please let me know what you think. Enjoy!

Biking to Milwaukee from Chicago

2013-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

I noticed a post a few weeks back regarding Chicago’s stated ambition to be the best big city in America for cycling. I just love the message there, and thought it made sense to share with my cycling friends on Facebook. There was some immediate snark from a few non-cycling friends (not surprising), but in general everyone is excited to see big plans come together.

While sharing the post, I noticed someone had left this comment:

I've always been interested in finding a bike route from Milwaukee to Chicago.

To which I thought “YES, I can help you”, since I’ve made the trip up a few times. Here are your options:

Option 1: Bike paths

There are a great series of connected bike paths nearly all the way up to Milwaukee. Google Maps does a great job with directions (see route). In summary, you’ll hook onto the North Shore Channel Trail that starts on the NW edge of the city. This will take you through a few suburbs until you hit Highland Park, at which point you’ll make a few turns and then jump on the Green Bay Trail. The Green Bay Trail will lead you up to the Robert McClory Bike Path, which takes you all the way up to Kenosha. You’ll then follow the County Bike Trail through Racine, and finally end up about 5-10 miles shy of Milwaukee. You’ll ride in on open roads with extra-wide shoulders from there, a truly nice touch.

This is a fun ride to do with friends. Some friends and I rode up to Milwaukee (and then back the next day) in July of 2011 and had a great time.

Option 2: Open road

I know it sounds too simple to be true, but you can follow the Lake Michigan Circle Tour signs all the way up to Milwaukee (really).

They appear frequently, mark the route around the lake, and will guide your way if you follow them.

I chose this option in July 2012 and really enjoyed it. You can move a lot faster on the open road and you get to see a lot of great views while riding along the lake. I tracked the ride with my Garmin and posted it to Strava if you’re curious:

Which ride is right for you?

I think this really depends on what your goals and level of riding experience are. If you’re not comfortable riding on the road alongside fast moving cars then definitely take the paths. On the other hand, if you do a lot of group riding (which usually follows busy streets) the paths will drive you nuts because they slow you down.

There’s also a post on ‘the chainlink’ with helpful notes and commentary.

To anyone venturing up their this spring, summer, or fall - have fun! Let me know if you have any questions.

Hello Evie!

2012-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

On November 12th, 2012, we welcomed Eva Marie Judge into the world at 8:58 AM. Here she is:

Eva weighed in at 8 pounds and 1 oz, and measured 20 inches long.

It’s been just over three weeks now and we’re having a ton of fun figuring everything out with a new baby girl at home. Her brothers are taking great care of her, and keep a keen on eye on whatever she’s doing at all times. We’ve also started calling her Evie.

If you see her, say hello!

Wisconsin Triple Crown complete

2012-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

Over the weekend my friends John, Jordan, Kyle, Sam and I completed the Dairyland Dare, the third and final endurance ride in the Wisconsin Triple Crown series. Here’s a look at the ride on Strava:

The five of us rode the 200k course, which was shortened from the official 124.2 miles to 120. Lucky for Sam and I, we were able to make up the extra miles by missing a turn and adding nine additional miles to the ride. We were thrilled :)

From here, it’s on to a few more centuries, fall and winter riding and potentially some cycle cross racing.

Two down, one to go

2012-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

Over the weekend my friends John, Jordan, Kyle and I completed the Kickapoo Kicker, the second endurance ride in the Wisconsin Triple Crown series. This ride was much smoother than the first one (Arcadia’s Brute) in that the weather was perfect (a cool day with a small amount of wind) and the hills were a bit easier. I also think a lot of it could be due to timing and expectations since the the first ride was early in the season (May) and the first time three of the four of us rode categorized hills.

Here’s a look at the ride on Strava:

If you’re not use to riding hills with significant elevation gain (10-20% grade), the key is to make sure you’re got the right gearing and you ride at a steady pace (these are things I’ve learned this year while riding with these guys). I’ve got a compact crank in front, which I highly recommend if you’re going to ride a lot of hills or like to hammer away in the big gears like I do (a compact crank is easier on your knees). In the back, I switched out my 11/25 cassette that I rode with in the Brute for a 11/28 cassette in the Kicker and felt this made a huge difference. In the Brute I walked up the second half of a few hills toward the end of the ride, while in the Kicker I had no problem (other than hills being a physically grueling).

I’m really looking forward to the Dairyland Dare. We’ve got two months to train and I’m excited for the change of pace that we’ll find near Madison, since the hills are more rollers vs. long climbs. I’m also going to cut down from 235 to 225 pounds, which should provide some additional climbing punch.

Don't make me work for it

2012-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

Rule #1 in sales, make your product easy to buy.

I was having a conversation with one of our product managers yesterday where we thought it would be interesting to add the ability for someone to send a text message to our platform and lookup that person’s location. With this geographic data, we could help someone find the closest retailer and do all sorts of other nifty things. We already do this for a few customers like Redbox, except we ask for a zip code and perform a location lookup using the central point of the zip code area. Looking up someone’s actual location could help make this process more effective.

There are a couple of companies that provide this type of data: Location Labs and BLA-BLA (both in the bay area). Note that BLA-BLA is not an actual name of a company, I’m using that since I’m under NDA. I had received a capabilities overview and pricing from both companies in the past and thought it’d make sense to check back in with BLA-BLA to see if I could get access to their API to prototype the enhancement I described above. Here’s a quick look at that email conversation with the sales director of BLA-BLA:

Checking back in, any chance you offer an API that we could play with for a bit?

His response:

Thanks for checking in. If you have customer demand and a project pending a successful evaluation of location services, I can probably get authorization to issue a week-long evaluation, but as a practice we do not issue free trials. And our pricing increased as of January 1st, so the set-up is now $299 plus $199 per month. The demand has been high on our side, that's why we do not issue free trials. Let us know if you have an active project, and we'll do our best to craft attractive pricing.

I wasn’t asking for a free trial, just wanted the opportunity to play with their product to see if was a good fit to integrate with ours.

I replied:

Wasn't asking for a freebie, only to try your product. I'd like to test out what you offer and see how it could fit into our product and product roadmap. Is there an amount of money I could pay to play with the API myself?

To which he replied:

Thanks for your response. The price for our Developer Program is $299 set-up, plus $199 for 500 monthly lookups. This would give you access to the API and documentation to see if it would make a difference in your business. Then if it does, then we can craft special pricing for you. Please advise and we'll get the paperwork over.

This reply really irked me. In order to try their product (which again I wanted to check out because I was excited about the possibility of incorporating their service within our product), he was asking me to commit $498 just to try it out. By try out, I mean send a handful of requests against their API as a proof of concept.

I replied:

As the co-founder and CEO of a product company that services companies big and small, it's tough for to get excited about a company's product when I can't try it out to see if there's a good fit. $498 is too much to spend to try out an API and see if it's a good fit. If you look at the technology service marketplace, it's nearly universal to offer either a free trial or more limited version of the product. You see this with companies like Twilio (free to try, $30 to get started) and Salesforce (free to try, $15/mo), who've made their products super easy to try out and done well by this strategy. Perhaps your product team could add this ability to your product so that these conversations don't have to route through a sales director initially, and then when a prospective customer has tried out your product are happy with their initial tests they'll follow-up with you and you can drop them into your sales funnel.

To his credit, he replied and said they tried this in the past and it didn’t work, but frankly I just can’t fathom why giving someone instant access to your product (free or otherwise) wouldn’t work as a method of evaluation. This got me thinking about how utterly annoying the sales process can be for software companies. I don’t understand why I’d even have to talk to the sales person here…I should just be able to sign up for a developer account, try their API (I’m fine with paying a nominal fee to try it) and see if it works. This is exactly how I signed up for Salesforce and pretty much every other product we use to run our business.

So I took a scan back at the previous conversations with this person to get a context of how we crossed paths. Here’s a recap:

Cold email from a contract sales person (I could tell by looking at this person’s profile on LinkedIn) asking to talk about working together
I replied asking for written overview of capabilities, specific ways we could work together and pricing
I received a reply asking for conversation via phone
I replied that I was pretty busy but familiar with segment and their primary competitor, and was curious to obtain pricing and try out their API
Received reply to sign NDA (come on, seriously?)
I replied sure as they’re easy to do, at which point I was handed off to the real sales guy at the company
Quick call in which I asked for pricing and API access
Received pricing via email ($99 setup, $99/mo) and asked to sign 12-month contract
Replied that I wasn’t interested given the commitment level

This whole buying process was inefficient. This company could have saved tons of time by sending me a well written email introducing their product and giving me a chance to try it out. At that point I would have signed up for an account, played with their API, built a quick prototype and tested with a few people on the team. If we liked it, we would have shared it with some of our customers as a way to brainstorm ideas and incorporated into our product roadmap accordingly. Instead I had to waste my time, they wasted theirs and I still can’t try their product unless I spend $498. No thank you.

In contrast, my company Signal offers a free trial that never expires and if you’re happy with the product all you need to do is pay $29 per month to get started. You can try us out for as long as you’d like and if makes sense to pull the trigger it only takes a few seconds. We have large companies on large contracts, but these companies also require high throughput/scale messaging, along with hands on integration support and account management. There’s simply a different level of service required and we give it to them for the corresponding price. This is not to say that any of these companies can’t (and haven’t) started with us online and moved up to that higher level of service.

Food for thought…deliver value in your product and make it easy to get started and you’ll find that the customers will come.

Fatherhood

2011-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Erin fell asleep earlier tonight with Jack while putting him to bed. I was downstairs busy catching up on a few things when I heard footsteps scampering down the stairs and immediately knew what happened (my wife turns into a pumpkin after 9 pm). Jack found me in the kitchen and made sure to let me know that mommy fell asleep and he needed water before going to bed. I filled up his cup of water and walked with him upstairs. I laid down with him in our bed to avoid disturbing Erin, and he nodded off in after a few minutes. While he was sleeping I leaned down to his chest to listen to his heart beating and just felt so lucky to be his father.

It’s the tiny moments like this that I’m thankful for every day.

First century

2011-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

I’m happy to say that yesterday I completed my first century ride, the 2011 North Shore Century.

I rode with a group of friends that I’ve been training with through Chicago Endurance Sports. Our ride stats:

106 miles total
5:33:21 on the bike
19.1 mph average

Here’s a shot taken at the finish line:

This has been a long standing goal of mine. Thanks to John, Jordan, Kyle and Tim for being great riding partners. Looking forward to even longer rides next summer.

#108

2011-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

I’m excited to post that Signal earned the #108 spot on 2011 Inc 500 list of the fastest growing companies in US. This is a huge achievement for any company, and one that is incredibly rewarding to me personally as I’ve been reading Inc. cover to cover for over 15 years now. I posted a few pictures over at the Signal blog.

I’m so proud of our team and thankful for all of our customers that have supported us through the years. It’s going to be a big year for the company, as we’ve a ton of great product releases queued up and are celebrating our fifth year in business in September.

Woot!

Hello Caelin!

2011-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

I’m excited to welcome our son Caelin James Judge into the world. Caelin was born on Monday, January 17th at 8:31 AM, weighing in at 7 lbs, 11 oz and measuring 20 inches long. Here he is:

Erin is feeling well and recovering quickly. Jack was thrilled when I brought him to the hospital to meet his new brother – it was adorable (“What’s that? What’s that!”).

I can’t wait to bring Erin and Caelin home, and for the four of us to start the next chapter in our lives together.

First snow

2010-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chicago received it's first snow of the season over the weekend - this is my son Jack running around in it

Orbitz mafia?

2010-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Great analysis from Leon Chism on why there is no “Orbitz mafia” (Google “Paypal mafia” to understand that term). Simply put, the early employees didn’t make the kind of money from the initial Orbitz IPO and subsequent sale transactions to create this type of reinvestment cycle in Chicago. Orbitz was never a startup, it was a heavily backed (100M) investment on behalf of the airlines and such the airlines took the returns.

Here’s to wishful thinking that the Groupon transaction (assuming it happens) will create hundreds of new future startups within Chicago and beyond.

<3 Apple TV

2010-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Following up from my post from August, it certainly did get interesting, at least in our living room. I bought an Apple TV for $99 and have been streaming content to my heart’s content. Not directly related to the Apple TV but on topic, Netflix has been so successful with their streaming service that Comcast is threatening to block the service. Comcast can’t expect to control both ends of the pipe like this - if you’re in the business of providing broadband to consumers in 2010, online streaming is part of the big picture. I cancelled our Comcast cable service because we really don’t watch cable and Comcast doesn’t offer an option that is competitive to Netflix. If Comcast spent more time innovating, these types of services wouldn’t rise up so quickly and eat up their content share…but hey, good for me :)

Ditching cable

2010-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s a great New York Times article about the upcoming content battle for your TV between companies like Google and Apple vs the cable companies.

We ditched our Comcast service a few months back and have been using the Apple TV ever since. It’s been great so far, but you do miss out on live TV (comedy shows, news programs, sports, etc). The rumor is that the new set top boxes that will be coming will be able to solve this problem through relationships with the content providers.

I’m optimistic that this problem will be solved by these guys but also think that they’re going to have a tough time given that the same people they’re fighting (cable companies) also provide the pipe to enable them.

Chirpy

2010-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

That’s what I told my dentist’s wife today when she asked me how my son is doing. It’s true, he’s running around and making all sorts of noise. For example - he loves to hum along to nursery rhymes that he’s heard at daycare while playing his toys and chasing the dogs around the house.

I know that I’ve said this before - but it’s just really fascinating for me to watch (and be a part of) the new layers of Jack’s personality unfold every day.

35 years old

2010-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

I turned 35 today (well, technically yesterday since it’s 12:23 AM right now). It was a pretty ordinary day for the most part, except that Erin came down with something at the end of the day and had to go to bed early, plus Jack and our two dogs were extra surly tonight after she went to bed. I was pretty wiped out by 8 PM and actually a little annoyed since I didn’t get to grab anything tasty to eat on my birthday. I even tried to pick up a slice of Cafe Selmarie’s bread pudding while walking the dogs with Jack, but they were all sold out. As I walked back into the house I noticed a birthday card from Jack sitting on the table and an internal mental switch instantly flipped inside of me. I was just so happy to see that card with Jack’s scribbles all over it that I couldn’t help but smile and laugh at how foolish I was being.

I think that is the best thing about being a dad - all of those tiny little things mean so very much to you because you’re able to see your child go from infant to toddler, toddler to monster (ha) and as a parent you’re the foundation for that growth. I’m just so excited to watch him grow and be a part of it all.

On negotiating

2009-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been reading How To Outnegotiate Anyone and read a paragraph in particular that made me laugh:

The "off the record" comment

In negotiations, whether you are making an offer or not, there is no such thing as an "off the record" comment. If the other side hears it, you might as well write it in your own blood or, perhaps more appropriately, have it engraved in your tombstone. As with the informal proposal, the simple rule here is to never say anything that you haven't thought about carefully. In other words, don't open your mouth before you engage your brain. This is a common problem with American negotiators. We love to talk talk. In fact, we can't shut up. As such, we tend to easily overstate or understate our case, or otherwise miscommunicate our position to the other side.

So true - I’ve seen this first hand many times.

Comments on Paul Graham's "What Startups Are Really Like"

2009-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

Just finished reading Paul Graham’s essay titled What Startups Are Really Like that he wrote after soliciting feedback from YC cofounders on what surprised them most in starting a startup. It’s a great read and if you are thinking about starting a company, have started a company, or are interested in startups go check it out.

I’ve picked out a few points that really hit home with me (not all of them did, especially the points regarding investors since we haven’t take on any funding and don’t plan to at this point):

Be Careful With Cofounders This is critical. You need to trust the person (or people) that you’re running the company with and have confidence in them that they’ll want to head in the same direction. Sure you’ll disagree, but you need to be able to work things out together. Communication is key to a strong relationship. The comment is PG’s article is 100% true - it’s like marriage without the fucking.

Startups Take Over Your Life + It’s an Emotional Roller-coaster I am always thinking about our business. I stay up late working on things, I get up early to work on things, I work on the weekends and I wish I had more time every day. I go to bed thinking about problems and wake up thinking through solutions. I love it, I hate it, I’m excited and I’m beat down. I get super fired up for the wins and crushed for the losses. It’s definitely all consuming.

With that said - it changes. You’re business grows and you with it. You start hiring the right people and stop doing everything. You role continually changes and allows you to focus on doing the next best thing for the business. It’s fantastic.

Persistence Is the Key Things add up over time. Every iteration of your product/service/business is forward progress. The key is to keep at it. If you can get 2-5 things done every day to impact the business, just think of what that adds up to over time.

Think Long-Term You’re a very short term thinker when you first start your business. It hasn’t been until recently that we’ve started to really think about the long term direction of our business and define where it’s heading.

Lots of Little Things Starting and operating a successful business is no small task. There are thousands of little things that need to be done at any one time. You have to trust that not only your team is going to get things done, but that they’re also always thinking about how to do things better.

Don’t Worry about Competitors The number one biggest thing that I’ve been surprised at is the notion of “Well there is already X doing Y”. About a year after starting the company, a person I met networking at a local technology meetup recommended that I talk to the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center to see how they could help us out. I got ahold of them, completed some paperwork and spoke with one of their advisors over the phone. He suggested that I come into present an overview of our business to a few members of their team. I remember the day well - I sat across the table and walked through 10 slides about the fundamentals of our business, followed by a demo of our TextMe product. At the conclusion, I asked for their feedback to which they told me that they thought the product was great but that we were in a tough market with a lot of competitors, an assumption they based on knowing one local company that had gained credibility in the Chicago business community for doing the sames things that I was talking about with them. They also wanted me to join the Chicago chamber of commerce (which seemed odd to me since the membership was expensive and they were here to help me as a small business owner). I walked out of the office thinking about what a complete waste of time the meeting was and how the CEC wouldn’t help a company unless the company already had connections or the pitch was blatantly obvious. I also thought about how much work it would take to get funding and dreaded the idea. Fast forward two years later and we’ve built a successful business that is profitable and growing. Revenue wise, we’ve seen over 100% growth every year in the last three years and expect to continue do so in 2010. In fact, we’re just now getting to the point where we’re investing in the “business” side of our business by hiring people to focus on sales and marketing. Bottom line, there is plenty of competition out there but we’ve carved out our own niche and are doing great. Had I listened to all of the people who thought we couldn’t or shouldn’t do it…well I’d probably be getting ready to conduct year end reviews right now and having my direct reports put together goals for their team, which would need to map to goals that I put together for my team, which map to goals that my boss put together for his team, etc. I definitely do not miss working for a big company.

There are a few other things that I want to add to Paul’s list:

It’s all about the people Everyone we hire brings dramatically impacts our organization. With each team members comes not only a new skill set, but also new energy and new perspective. As a business owner, you need to have a solid mental map of the culture that you want to build and incorporate this into the foundation of your hiring. The 80/20 rule doesn’t apply to growing a team - always hire the best.

I care a lot more about my team than I did when working for a company That might sound presumptuous, but I’m always thinking about the people on my team and doing my best to make sure they’re 100% happy. I’m very aware of what people are working on and always performing a mental litmus test to understand how satisfied they are with their job. I am extremely proud that we’ve created a business entity that supports seven full time employees (eight as of 11/2/2009) and their families. Things like health insurance and time off are a big deal and important to get right. When I was at Orbitz, I left managing a team of 20+ that I cared about, but definitely not in the same way that I care about our team. It’s just totally different.

I’ll continue to update this post as think more about it.

Parenting advice from Bill Gates and his father

2009-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

From the July 6th issue of Fortune:

One of the best pieces of advice I ever had is related to what you just asked about, and that is the business of getting along with and encouraging the right things with your youngsters. Bill's mother and I early on were involved in parent effectiveness training, an activity at the church we went to. And the thing that the people there taught us and emphasize, which is so central and so significant, is that you should never demean your child. When you think about the centrality of that, in terms of the relationship with an offspring, you're off to a really good start.

That’s Bill Gates Sr. with what I think is a critical piece of advice for any relationship, especially parenting. I can’t fathom ever wanting to demean Jack. I love him so much and think every day about the impact that Erin and I have on him as he’s growing.

If you have any parent advice that you think is helpful, please let me know.

Looking out toward Bainbridge Island

2009-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

Jack and Erin looking out over the Puget Sound as we ferry back to Seattle. We absolutely love the Pacific Northwest.

Wounded limb

2009-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

I tore the labrum in my left shoulder while studying martial arts last October. I finally fixed the issue yesterday by having the operation to repair it. I’m now out of commission…saying it is painful is definitely an understatement. Luckily I am married to an amazing woman who can single-handedly take care of her gimp husband, a seven month old baby whose growth is off the charts (and starting to crawl!), and two 80+ pound labrador retrievers.

First father's day

2009-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

This was a great weekend. My mom came down from Milwaukee to spend the weekend and help Erin out with a few things around the house since I’m temporarily out of commission.

We enjoyed a late brunch this morning, followed by a run to Home Depot to get some cages for our tomato plants that we have growing on top of our garage (tip - if you want to grow vegetables but have limited space or knowledge of gardening, an Earthbox is what you need. We have five Earthboxes that have cranked out monster plants in little over a month.

Sick kid, tough mom

2009-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

Jack has been fighting ear infections left and right. First he started with a double ear infection, followed by his right ear, and now finally his left ear. One of the most bizarre things about him getting sick is how his symptoms transpire - typically he’ll have a fever and/or become congested. Each call to the pediatrician ends with “he probably has an ear infection, bring him in”. I guess it’s just surprising to me to know that that is the root cause of these things.

Throughout each of these bouts (they’re really not that bad), I’m continually reminded at what an amazing person Erin is. Jack and I are really lucky.

Spring is here

2009-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

I was walking with Dylan and Roscoe earlier this morning and noticed patches of green grass sprouting up through the top of the soil. Soon the trees will be flush with leaves, the family will be making weekend trips to the Green City Market and and Jack will be crawling. I’m excited.

Erin is heading out of town this for a meeting this Friday, which means Jack and I will be hanging out. I’m excited about that too - just look at how big he’s getting:

Personally, there hasn’t been a more exciting time in my life then right now. Jack is growing at a rapid pace, Erin and I are having fun, and work-wise we’ve been very busy at work with continued development of our core product, as well as iPhone and BlackBerry mobile applications. We’re even going to start digging into Google Android applications.

It’s become a lot harder to go out at night, so Erin and I have been cooking more and trying a lot of different beers. My current favorite beer is Pliny the Elder, a nice hoppy IPA from Russian River Brewing Co. If you’re reading this and want to grab a beer sometime, let me know - I’ve been buying up plenty of good stuff while we’ve been out running around here and there. It’s amazing how many good beers can be found in different stores throughout Chicago (Mandy’s Liquors on Lawrence, Armanetti’s on Lincoln, Whole Food’s on Ashland and of course the bigger stores like Binny’s). I can’t wait for the farmers markets to start up so that we can try new recipes and pair up in-season locally grown food with the tasty beer and wine we’re finding.

Two months in

2009-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been thinking about about how I dropped off writing on this blog a lot of over the past year, and feeling like I want to start writing more since so many things are happening and I’d really like to keep track of them. I just finished reading Dean Wareham’s book Black Postcards - and I was amazed at how much detail he could recall throughout his lifetime. I noticed in the acknowledgments that he thanked his father for making him write things down in a diary, and I thought ‘of course!’.

Jack and Erin are doing great. Jack is growing an incredible rate - he weighed nearly 14 lbs and measured 25 inches long at his two month check-up appointment last week. That means he has gained 3 lbs and 4 inches since birth!

I am amazed by him every day.

Tips for newbie parents

2008-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

On 11/15 at 7:50 PM, my son Jack Judge was born into the world:

He’s a beautiful boy with lots of energy, a healthy appetite and keen interest in everything that comes within one foot of his face :) I’ll spare you the words cannot describe how I’m feeling part, because I can easily sum it up by saying: I’m a father!

Given that Erin and I have had two weeks to get to know him now, we’ve learned quite a bit about being new parents, and I thought it’d make sense for me to start writing a few things down in the hope that it’ll help a few people out. Two caveats: (1) I’m two weeks into this, and (2) when it comes to medical advice, your doctor will know best.

So let’s get started.

It's all true You're not going to get as much sleep, the baby eats a lot, and they (of course) pee and poop a lot.
Little dudes like to wizzer on stuff (including you) When Jack was born, he peed off the heating lamp table onto the floor not 30 seconds out of the womb. It was awesome. He peed on the wall in his room the other day. It wasn't as awesome, but still funny. The simple solution - cover it up.
Breast feeding isn't as simple as putting the baby's mouth on the breast If you want to breast feed, start doing it right away. It takes some time for the breast milk to come in (2-3 days), but the baby will still be chowing on Colostrum. This initial period of breast feeding can be tricky since the baby likes to move around a lot and is not use to working for their food. The latch is key to not only successful feeding, but also avoiding pain for the mother. Go to YouTube and look for an instructional breast feeding video before birth. Ask lots of questions while in the hospital. Understand that this is going go to take some time to get right. If you don't want to breast feed, don't. If you want to breast feed, be prepared to feed with formula too. We like to keep bottles around the house for quick feeding times (late at night). Breast pumps are also helpful as they'll keep the mother on a regular schedule, and can quickly help relieve engorged breasts by expressing extra milk
It's ok to feed the baby formula while breast feeding No one told us this. We thought it was an either/or situation, but the fact is that the baby is hungry and needs to get it's feed on. The baby will lose approximately 10% of it's body weight while it's getting adjusted to being outside of the womb. The hospital will give you 2 oz bottles of food and temporary nipples to feed with. This formula is great because it's packed with a punch of essential nutrients for the baby. This is also how the baby stays hydrated.
Head outside Walks are great for mom and baby, even in the winter. We invested in a JJ Cole Bundle Me, which is basically a super warm baby stroller sleeping bag. We tend to cover his head right now since it's cold out. Getting out of the house during the first few weeks is important.
Be prepared for early maintenance Bring nail clippers to the hospital, as it's likely that you'll clip his/her nails right away. Some parents have told us that they bit of their baby's nails. That seemed super weird to us. Jack's fingers are tiny, I'd probably chew off one of his fingers trying to get at his nails. No thank you.
Slow down The last two weeks away from the office have been wonderful. I thought I might have some time to catch up on things and pay attention to what's happening with the business, but that didn't happen at all. Don't commit to anything, just enjoy your time.
Things you'll need
1. Infant car seat We bought the Graco SnugRide, it works great.
2. Stroller(s) We bought the BOB, and friends lent us the Graco SnugRider. The BOB is good for walks around the neighborhood. The SnugRider stays in the car, and is good for doctor's appointments and shopping. The SnugRide drops right into the SnugRider.
3. Portable crib, changer, etc We were given the Graco Pack 'n Play, also known as the space ship. This device provides a place for the baby to sleep, to hang out, and to be changed. We use this on the first floor of our house, and when traveling overnight.
4. Diapers w/indicator We're using Pamper's Swaddlers, and like them a lot. Get the diapers that have the pee line, a yellow line that run the length of the diaper that turns green when wet.
5. Binks Get a bunch. You'll lose them all. Have plenty on hand for the baby to try. Figure out which one the baby likes the most and buy more of those. We like the ones where there is a hole in the tip, and you can see the mouth action as the baby sucks.
6. Changing table, baby wipes and lots of baby towels You'll be changing the baby a lot, it's helpful to have a changing table with a pad insert for the baby to lay on while changing. You'll want to put a towel underneath the baby, as well on top (if you have a boy).
7. Hand sanitizer Anyone that comes in contact with the baby needs to be germ free.

Other than that, try to get as much help, advice and hand me downs as you can. Everyone has an opinion, but listening to them all will help you think through things in different ways and chances are you will get at least one really useful thing from everyone.

I’ll write more tips as I remember them this week.

Hello Jack!

2008-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

I’m excited to welcome Jack Joseph Judge into the world! Jack was born at 7:50 PM on November 15th, 2008 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He weighed 8 pounds, 9 ounces and measured 21 inches long with a full head of brown hair. Erin is doing great and we’re excited to head home once Erin recovers a bit. Here they are:

I’ve posted tons of pictures up on Flickr too.

Block party

2008-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

After weeks of planning - our neighbors, Erin and I wrapped up the first annual block party. The party was a ton of fun and gave us the opportunity to get to spend a day really getting to know many neighbors, their families and to chill out with a lot of our friends.

Block parties rule, hands down. I really think everyone should shut down their block once a year, as it really gives you a whole new perspective on your micro-community. The party brought the block together, and as a result we’re pushing for some help with traffic control (speed bumps) and zoned parking.

Erin hates this photo…but I think she looks really cute in it:

Can’t wait until next year’s block party :)

It's a boy!

2008-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

Erin and I had her 20th week ultrasound yesterday, and yep, it’s a boy! We would have been happy either way, but it’s good to know that much more about little baby j :)

Vacation log

2008-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

We are back in Chicago. Erin and I spent eight days away, and it was exactly what we needed. I could actually go for a few days of downtime in Chicago, but I’ll take Friday’s off here and there for the rest of the summer.

What did I learn while away?

I work to live, not live to work. This is obvious to some, but I've been working hard for the past 18 months without time off, and this trip made me realize that I need to shift some things around to not only be happy, but keep my sanity. Downtime is important.
Air travel still sucks, but I don't mind that much really. United recently implemented a policy where they're charging for extra baggage, similar to what has been done by European budget airlines for awhile. This will definitely go away, as there is no way the major US airlines can stick to this trend if low cost airlines like Southwest aren't charging these fees. I'm sure this made sense in a boardroom, but in practice this is just going to piss people off. Also, United is charging $5 for snack boxes. These snack boxes are full of processed garbage that offer little nutritional value. It would be great if they offered an apple as an alternative to pretzels or shortbread cookies, and alternatively charge $10 for something that will satisfy travelers vs pissing them off. I looked around at people eating stuff in the snack boxes, and they weren't happy.
I love San Francisco. I think it's the perfect city for me, as the weather is cool and perfect for jeans and a fleece, the area is strongly rooted in technology, and there's abundance of options for doing stuff (wine country to the north, great hiking all around, lots of foodie type places to eat at, etc). Erin on the other hand likes the city, but is frightened by the thought of raising a child there ("imagine trying to train the banana how to ride a bike or rollerblade on these hills")

What did Erin learn?

Pack less
Pay attention to the weather at the destination. We've always been to SF in the winter when it is warm and sunny. SF in the summer, it's often foggy and sitting at 60 degrees during the day (which is again, perfect for me)

And we both learned that we like to bargain shop for hotels.

So here is a quick run down of what we did while away:

Saturday, June 21: Arrived SFO, spent day dorking around Palo Alto. Stayed in a Marriott Residence Inn in Sunnyvale near Yahoo. I forgot how Residence Inns hook you up with actual living space. It was oddly nice.
Sunday, June 22: Drove up to Healdsburg (wine country north of Sonoma), ate at Willi's Seafood and Raw Bar. Food was ok. Visited a bunch of wineries with the highlights being Lambert Bridge and Seghesio (I think we'll sign up for Seghesio's wine club, Lambert Bridge was ridiculously overpriced). Stopped in San Francisco on the way back to Palo Alto and ate at the House of Nanking. Man I love that place. We didn't even order anything, they staff just kept bringing us killer food. Yum.
Monday, June 23: Woke up, went for a run. I then spent the morning at Cafe Del Doge in Palo Alto, while Erin and her father took a client out for lunch. Picked up a couple of city and hiking guide books. Moved to the Residence Inn in Los Alto (using points). Ate dinner at Zibibbo.
Tuesday, June 24: Woke up, worked out, checked out. Stopped in ElephantPharm, a great drug store that seems to be a combination of Whole Foods, CVS and one of those stores that has all the yoga stuff. Drove up to 92 to Half Moon Bay. At lunch and had a beer at Half Moon Bay Brewery. Food was pretty good, beer was super tasty. Drove south to Santa Cruz. Stopped at strawberry farm along the way. Met up with Dave, Amy, and Tyler Thomas (what a cute little dude). Toured their place, then head south to some town (name forgotten) with a killer fish house (also name forgotten). Headed south to Monterey, used one of the guidebooks to call all the hotels in the area in search of best rate. Holed up at the Otter Inn, near the water, for $110 (a huge value when neighboring hotels were going for 300-400/night).
Wednesday, June 25: Breakfast a crepe place along Wave St. Spent a few hours at the Monterey Aquarium watching the sea otters swim and play, jelly fish pump rhythmically through the water, and a bunch more. We had a great time at the aquarium, and I'm sure will go back one day with soon-to-be baby J. Called down to Big Sur to check the status of a fire in the area, and unfortunately most of the area had been evacuated. Big time suck. Decided to leave frigid Monterey (it must have been 50 degrees while we were there) for warm and sunny Santa Cruz. I sat in Santa Cruz Coffee Roasters enjoying a cup and wifi, while Erin walked around shopping. We grabbed dinner at Malabar (probably the best meal of the trip), then saw The Promotion. Checked into the Seaway Inn, which was just ok for the money.
Thursday, June 26: Woke up, went for a run. Checked out of the hotel, went to the Santa Cruz boardwalk so Erin could see the sea lions. She loves seeing those guys. Again I went to a coffee shop while Erin shopped. I'm perfectly happy doing this because I don't get enough time to sit in coffee shops, drink coffee, read and do catch up on stuff. Ate tacos at Tacos Moreno (the taco stand, not restaurant) and then took Highway 1 all the way up to San Francisco. Stopped in Whole Foods to grab some essentials and a light dinner of break, prosciutto, and cheese. Checked into the Pacific Heights Inn for $110 per night, free parking and a nice light breakfast. Left the hotel to walk around and grabbed some sushi at Okoze Sushi.
Friday, June 27: Breakfast part 1 at the hotel, breakfast part 2 at Noah's Bagels (yep, we're big eaters). Grabbed a cup of coffee and then headed north for a hike in Muir Woods. Hiked a 5 mile trail, then drove up Mt. Tamalis (beautiful!), ended up in Fairfax, stopped into the Iron Springs Pub and Brewery. Great beer! Started to make our way back to the 101, then stopped in San Anselmo to grab a cup of coffee at Marin Coffee Roasters. Stopped in Sausalito on the way back to SF, checked out a local farmers market and a jazz festival, then grabbed pizza and sat outside at a place called Poggios. Finally, back to the hotel to relax.
Saturday, June 28: A light breakfast, followed by a few hours of chilling in Peet's while Erin shopped. More shopping, more Peet's. Then the Japanese Tea Garden for a walk around (amazing!), followed by some tea and Japanese candies (yum). Back to the hotel - I hit the gym, Erin caught up internet action. We finished of the night with a couple of amazing burgers at Polkers (complete with curly fries and killer ranch...I forgot how much I love ranch, and there ranch was perfect with the fries) and a movie (Get Smart, which was not good).
Sunday, June 29: A full day of travel (flight home to Chicago, then a drive up to Milwaukee to pick up Roscoe and Dylan. Thanks again for watching the boys Mike, Deb, Joe and Jerzey).

I’ll probably add more as I remember.

Big news

2008-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

It’s been tough holding this back (and as my wife will tell you, I’m not very good at it)…Erin is pregnant!

She’s currently 14 weeks along and doing fantastic. She has been a little sick, but hasn’t experienced any of the raw sickness that I’ve heard about other women going through. We’ve been reading a few different books that are pretty helpful…especially a book called ‘Your Pregnancy, Week by Week’.

I am excited to be a father and proud of our growing family :) If you’re interested in watching Erin go from little to big, we’ve put up a blog at judgefamily.org.

How to make a great cup of coffee

2008-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

I promised this post to a friend a fews weeks back after I wrote my steaks are for lovers post.

Quick caveat - I’m no coffee expert. I did buy a big fancy espresso machine five years ago and plumbed a line into the wall for convenience. I even posted photos to this site at the time, and all of my coworkers had a good laugh because the photos were akin to espresso porn. In truth, I’m really just a dude who loves a good cup of coffee, and a great shot of espresso.

So here’s the skinny on coffee - it’s all about freshness. You can brew a cup of coffee a lot of different ways, but if you don’t start out with the right beans the end product won’t matter. Figure out how many pounds of coffee you brew up in a week, and buy that fresh every week. Erin and I buy about a pound per week.

You ask: Where can I procure high quality coffee? Well, if you live in any decent size city, you’re sure to have a local roaster. Track them down, figure out what they’re all about and try lots of their coffee. If you don’t like their stuff, then have a chat with them to see how they can help. You probably won’t have any problems though. Here in Chicago, we’re lucky to have two fantastic coffee companies: Intelligentsia and Metropolis. These guys both offer a hearty selection of beans, all of which are roasted daily. Intelligentsia’s roasting facility is over at 1800 W Fulton, and Metropolis roasts in their store up in Edgewater (although I hear they just hooked up a big Andersonville space). I remember riding by Intelligentsia’s roasterie a few years ago and thought it would be cool to stop in and check it out. I dropped in and they were happy to give me a tour, they even pulled me a world class shot (I mean this literally, they’ve won lots of awards) in their tasting room. So you get lucky sometimes - this was pure happenstance but problem not uncommon.

If you don’t have a local roaster, then look for an organic grocery store. I often buy from Whole Foods (who sources from Intelligentsia and Metropolis locally).

If you can’t buy local, then buy online. Try Zoka out of Seattle, WA - in fact I just ordered two pounds from their website two nights ago and got the UPS delivery receipt email a few minutes ago. I’m super stoked.

Get a nice grinder. Don’t use a grinder at the grocery store. Don’t buy beans from a grocery store unless you know their fresh. You can pick up a nice starter grinder for $20 from wholelattelove.com or Amazon. I’ve been using the same grinder that my three sisters gave me for Christmas during my freshman year of college 10 years ago. If you want to step it up for finer control of your grounds, get a burr grinder.

On to the brew…there are many great ways to brew coffee at home:

Automatic drip This is a fine way to go as you’ll get super consistent coffee every time. Don’t spend any money on a fancy machine, just get a $20 jobber at target. $10 more buys you a machine w/a timer so you can can wake up to a fresh cup.
Manual drip I’ve been digging this lately. Buy a pour over cone like a V60, paper filters for the cone, a metal latte foaming picture and an electric water kettle. Wet the paper cone with hot water and set on top of the V60. Fill the kettle half full with cold water and turn it on. Pour out any water that has left the paper cone and dripped into the metal pitcher. Use your grinder to prepare enough coffee grounds for the amount of coffee you’d like to make. You’ll want to grind the beans more finely here. Once the water is ready, pour the hot water over the grinds until the water is about two thirds the way up the paper cone. I keep repeating the pour until I have the right amount of coffee desired given the amount of grounds I’ve prepared. It’s easy to over think this one…the trick is experimentation until you’ve figured everything out.
French press The ultimate in easy. You can buy a french press at any coffee house. Coarsely grind your beans and dump them in the french press. Boil water. Let the water cool for a 30 seconds after it’s begun rapidly boiling, and then pour into the french press. Stir with a spoon, knife or some other utensil for a minute, then let site for 3-4 minutes and press. Voila!

Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions.

How to cook a good steak in the winter

2008-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

I saw a post tonight on food tips, and it reminded me to publish my take on how to cook a good steak during the winter months. Of course it’s possible to fire up the grill while it’s cold and snowy out, but the point of this post is that you certainly don’t have to.

In my opinion, a great steak only needs three things: (1) high heat, (2) garlic salt, and (3) black pepper. Heat makes or breaks steak. If you want to make someone cry, give them a great piece of meat that hasn’t been cooked with the right heat. It’s seriously night and day.

The other prerequisite is that you’ll need quality meat your local butcher or a higher end store like Whole Foods. I recommend the New York strip cut as I think it really nails the amount of fat you need in a steak. You get what you pay for, so don’t be cheap.

Now that you’ve got what you need, let’s jump into the play-by-play:

Preheat the oven to 425° F.
Season both sides of the steak with garlic salt and pepper. Remember, salt is good. Garlic is good. Garlic salt on a nice peace meat with pepper to taste…fuck yes.
Grab a grill pan (these are usually square and have ridges) or cast iron skillet, set on the stove and turn the burner just shy of high. I like the grill pan because the fat can run off to the sides via the ridges in the pan, but it’s not critical.
Once the pan is hot enough (run your fingers under the kitchen sink and flick water on the pan to test, it should sizzle away), throw your steaks on. After three (3) minutes, flip and cook for another two (2) minutes on the other side. You want to get a nice sear on both sides. Don’t screw around here…stick to the schedule!
Now throw the pan in the oven and cook for another four (4) minutes or so. The best way to tell if a steak is done is to press on it with your finger. There is some trick about how to test for how done it is by doing the same with your finger and your palm, but that’s just over thinking it. Medium rare (dark pink in the middle) is the way to cook a steak: the meat should be soft, but not spongy. If the meat is firm, game over. It might take you a few times before you get this down, but you will.
Pull the pan out, let the steak rest for 4-5 minutes while you prep up the rest of the meal and enjoy. Don’t get too excited here, you need to let the steak rest so the juices will distribute and the meat will finish cooking.

Pair this with a nice bottle of red wine (cab, zin, pinot) and a quick salad of heirloom tomato, buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil, olive oil and cracked pepper.

If you’re reading this, I’d love to know how things turned out.

Enjoy!

I love the goat

2008-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

I call my wife the goat, she calls me the fish. I don’t remember how we get these nicknames, I think off of an astrology place mat at a Chinese restaurant. I just saw on the goat’s calendar (we share calendars via Google) an entry for GNO on Friday night, which I think means ‘girls night out’. That made me smile, she’s so cute with her acronyms.

Good read on the downside of a home office

2008-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s a good article (via svn) from the New York Times about the downside of working out of a home office. I think it’s especially difficult for couples where one person works in an office and the other one works from home. I’m going to speak in generalities here, but I can since I’ve experienced this personally. The person working in the office has been through a long day at the office often combined with a commute, and a lot of times that person loves to come home, grab some dinner, hang out and relax. In contrast, the person working from home has generally been couped up in the house all day, isolated from other people, and is looking forward to getting out of the house after a long day. These two opposing forces creates an issue for sure, one that takes a fair amount of balance to overcome.

I tried working out of the house for a few months after I left Orbitz in May 2006, but I didn’t like it for the reason I outlined above. I got an office four months later and will never look back. I’ll occasionally work from home, but it’s pretty rare.

I think what we’ll see as our society continues to become more mobile, is that a lot more communal work centers will develop - either the kind of place where you pay to have your own office and that office has common amenities, or the kind where a bunch of people literally share an office. I’m really interested in both concepts, and at some point I’d like to be involved in the development of such facility. I bought the domains workspacecoop.com, workingcoop.org, chicagoworkingcoop.org in anticipation.

A year in cities, 2007

2008-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve noticed a few of these posts so I thought I would do my own:

Las Vegas, NV: Tradeshow in March
Iowa City, IA: College recruiting trip, hanging with my younger brother, who goes to school at the University of Iowa
Fall River, MA: Easter with Erin's extended family
Milwaukee, WI (a lot, too many times to list sequentially): The usual to and fro to see my mom, and my older brother's family. I love watching my nephews grow, they're so cool.
Albia, IA: One of my sister's wedding. This is the town my dad lives in.
San Francisco + Sonoma, CA: A mobile industry convention and a quick day trip to wine country
Las Vegas, NV: Another tradeshow. Getting better at going to Vegas and getting out quickly. Still need to shave a day off.

So looking back on the year, I barely traveled outside of the midwest and Erin and I took zero vacations together. I have a good reason for this, but let me tell you…2008’s list is going to be a lot better!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Happy new year to my family and friends - I hope you all have a fantastic year. I’m looking forward to traveling more, scaling a business and spending more time with the people I love the most.

Funny conversation from last night

2007-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Erin and I went to Sepia (123 N Jefferson St) last night for dinner to celebrate her birthday with her brother Eli, and his girlfriend Lizzy. I remembered earlier in the day that Erin had added our dogs Dylan and Roscoe to Facebook via an application called Dogbook. I started laughing about that, and told Eli and Lizzy that they should join Facebook. They both kind of laughed and asked us why they should join Facebook. Funny thing is - Erin and I didn’t have a solid answer for them. Our best answer was: “so we’ll be connected”. Wow, that’s a pretty soft sell to two people that we should be connected to on a social network. The more we talked about Facebook, the more we came to a conclusion that Facebook albeit interesting at times, is pretty much a waste of time.

Here’s a daily sample of our interaction with Facebook:

Receive a request to join Pirates vs Ninjas (huh?)
Receive a request to join Vampires vs Wherewolves (again, wtf?)
Receive an animated plant grow over time (i do like flowers though)
Watch an animated egg hatch over time (wait, let me finish watching baby einstein first before i watch this miracle of life)
Receive an inbox message (you get notified via email when you get these messages, except the email doesn’t actually tell you what the message is)
Play a game of hot potato (similar to those old emails where you’re asked to forward the email to everyone you know, but less spammy)
Join a group (with a name that is funny enough to be on a t-shirt, but group activity that is interesting enough to capture your attention for about 30 seconds)

Don’t get me wrong - the people behind and involved in the Facebook ecosystem are brilliant people - and there are some interesting things being done that can only be done with a community as large as Facebook - like contextual advertising and forcing developers to massively scale their applications. And there are a lot of good, simple things about Facebook too - it’s interface, the birthday updates, the ability to post articles to friends, etc. It’s just that in the whole scheme of things, Facebook falls somewhere between getting my oil changed every 3000 miles and cleaning out the garage.

Jeff is currently planning on wasting less time :)

New phone: BlackBerry Curve

2007-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

Wow, I’m not sure i can get more excited. I just ordered the BlackBerry Curve (which is an upgrade from the 8820 that i have in that it has more natural keys and a camera), plus i will now be able to make VOIP calls from home and the office using my phone. thank you, T-Mobile.

10/31 update: I love this phone. It’s the lightest BlackBerry I’ve had to date and works great. I also like that it has a lot of great apps pre-installed, like gtalk.

In Rainbows

2007-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

I paid $7 for In Rainbows, Radiohead’s new album at inrainbows.com. That $7 equates to 3 pounds for the music itself and .45 for the download service. Go get it, it’s damn good - pay what you feel like it will be worth.

Getting an early start on 2007 taxes...

2007-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

…and a late start on 2006 taxes :) We’ve blown way past April 15th, 2007 and now it’s time to get them done. On the upside, doing this now is getting me extremely organized and ready for an easy filing of our 2007 taxes.

Tip: get a Fujitsu Scansnap to scan all of your docs and organize them by date. Our filing cabinet’s useful life is quickly winding down, and I love it.

Apple's iPhone price drop

2007-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

Just read this article from the New York Times in regard to Apple’s iPhone price drop. In Steve Job’s words:

"We have the chance to 'go for it' this holiday season"

I totally agree from a business perspective and as a shareholder to drop the price of the phone - it’s perfect timing given the proximity to the holiday season and Apple will do very well for dropping the price. Price drops happen all the time - usually not this quickly - but it’s just a nature of a capitalist economy. Just step back for a minute and think about the decision they just made from their position, it’s definitely the right one.

And besides - that’s what all you fanboys get for running out and spending $600 so that you could be the cool kid on the block :)

New office chair

2007-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

I just ordered a new chair for the office, the Steelcase Think. I will post a review once I receive it and have had some time to use it. My posture and general comfort at the office lately just sucks.

Update 8/6 The chair is here and it’s amazing. Steelcase accidentally sent me the leap v2 model, which is a higher end ergonomic chair. So i totally scored.

Does age have any bearing on entrepreneurial success?

2007-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

There has been a lot of debate in the blogosphere lately about whether or not age has any bearing on entrepreneurial success - Mark Andreesen is taking it a step further and getting down to the data. This is definitely a thread that you’ll want to watch.

Overall, I think the outcome will be - age doesn’t matter, it’s more about hard work, innovation, and putting in the time to make things happen. This jives with a recent video interview I saw with Randy Komisar, partner at VC company Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (summary: startup success is about baseball statistics - less batting average and more home runs, and you’re not going to hit the home runs without swinging a lot of bats).

VOIP at home, where art thou?

2007-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

I just read in the New York Times this morning that Sunrocket, the VOIP service that we use for our home phone has gone out of business. That totally sucks, we loved their service as it was super cheap ($199/year unlimited long distance, etc) and flawless in voice quality.

That’s it, we’re done with having a home phone. It’s totally worthless anyway.

Had fun at Tech Cocktail last night

2007-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

We powered the living voting via text message for favorite product last night at TECH Cocktail #5. Interestingly enough, the company that wasn’t formally demonstrating their product walked away with it.

The event was fully stocked with good people and free drinks, and it was a ton of fun. My only regret is that I don’t take enough time to meet new people. You see, it’s at stuff like this where our whole team can get together and hang out, thus I really just want to talk with them more than chatting it up with people I don’t know. It’s so the anti of what I should be doing, but I just love our team and don’t feel like I get to spend enough time with them as it is.

On to a weekend full of pitchfork, food (hello new farmers market at Southport and Grace) and family.

Crust

2007-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Every Sunday night, Erin and I get together with her family for dinner. This Sunday, we chose Crust (2056 W Division), the second restaurant from Michael Altenberg (his first being Bistro Campagne in Lincoln Square). Crust is one of five restaurants in the country that is certified as organic, and the only restaurant in the city of Chicago (or state for that matter). Crust features pizza style flatbreads, sandwiches and salads, plus a ton of really tasty mixed drinks, micro brews and wine. There’s an assortment of juices and teas, but I didn’t pay much attention to that portion of the menu.

We opened up with a few salads, the Sun Salad and Sweet Basil. I liked the Sun Salad, as it’s similar to the Seaweed Salad at Indie Cafe (and that is my favorite salad in the city). The Sweet Basil salad was pretty much your standard caprese salad, and it was also tasty. We also ordered a Brown Derby Salad, which contained roasted chicken, bacon, egg, cheddar, avocado, green onion and some russian dressing. That was pretty good too…I’m not sure how you can go wrong with those ingredients :)

We skipped past the sandwiches, as we really wanted to tear into the pizzas and our waiter told us that all the sandwiches except for the pulled pork were pretty boring. We tried a bunch of pizzas: Clambake (clams, bechamel, mozzarella, onions and wild herbs), Mexicali Blues (shrimp, chihuahua cheese, pico de gallo, heirloom peppers and cilantro), Flammkuchen (onion, bechamel, caraway seed, bacon and black pepper) and Italian Sausage (sausage, provolone and tomatoes) w/pepperoni and some other pizza with a lot of blue cheese. Mind you these are smallish pizzas, so this sounds like more food than it actually is. The pizzas were all pretty tasty, but I really thought that they were missing out on some spices. For instance, the Clambake could have been a little better with some added garlic.

We also tried their carrot cake, and that was damn good. Our waiter told that this was from the Bleeding Heart Bakery, which makes sense since their stuff is totally killer.

Overall rating: good stuff. I’m looking forward to seeing how this restaurant grows, and I bet that they will have nailed their pizzas after a few more months in business.

See Sicko

2007-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

Erin and I saw Sicko at the Davis last night. Michael Moore did a great job of getting right down to a few basic issues with the health care system in the United States:

Insurance companies are corporate entities and exist to make money, as such insurance companies have setup a system in which saving the company money is rewarded. For example, insurance companies define a threshold of claims that must rejected, and hospital medical directors are rewarded financially for exceeding that threshold.
Drug companies charge too much for drugs. In once scene, a woman pays five cents for a medication in Cuba that costs her over $100 in the US. This drug might have been generic, nonetheless, this is a gigantic savings.

Also interesting is that countries like Canada, England and France provide universal health care to citizens at no cost (I knew Canada did, but didn’t know about the UK or France…I’m sure there are more). Moore interviewed dozens of citizens from each of the countries, and the suggestion of paying for health care was generally laughable. I thought that one gentleman from the UK did an excellent job of explaining why universal health care was provided - the country suffered horrific losses at the end of World War II and the government, in an effort to boost moral, decided that health care was a universal right to all citizens. The Canadians even struggled with this concept until one man (I forget his name, I’m sure it can be easily Googled) make the case for free universal health care, and the people listened.

I have never really thought about universal healthcare as being a service provided to all, free of charge, because I’ve been using to being part of the our system for so long. Moore points out that lots of public services are socialized: the police, our postal service, firefighters, libraries, etc. Why can’t health care be approached in the same way? After seeing this movie, I can honestly say that I don’t know what the other side of the argument is. We should provide health care to all citizens, free of charge. I’m fine with paying higher taxes if that’s what it takes. A conservative gentleman from Canada nailed it in the film when he said that health care has no relationship to politics, political parties, or beliefs - it’s about taking care of each other and helping people that can’t afford it, as he knew that he’d be taken care of if he couldn’t.

On another note, I just added the ability to post comments back on my site last week, so if you have anything to add to this, dispute, etc…have at it.

hmmm. sushi.

2007-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

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I guess I need to start taking sushi more seriously. Thanks Dave for sending it to me.

Marc Andreesen on the pros and cons of startups

2007-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

Great read. I found this article through Fred Wilson, a VC who also writes a bunch of great stuff.

The bottom 10%

2007-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

No no…this is not a blog post about GE’s Darwinistic approach to people management, this post is about a bet I made with my wife. What’s the bet you say? I bet her that I could lose 10% of my body weight (or 25 lbs). Actually it’s a pretty weak ass bet since we really didn’t agree upon the terms of the bet.

I know, you must think this is a crazy bet. I can hear your thoughts: “But Jeff, you’re in great shape…how could you possible cut 10% of your body weight?” I’m sure my brothers are laughing right now.

The whole thing started after Erin and I finished working out yesterday, and I stepped on the scale. I tipped in at 248 lbs, about 13 lbs more than my average weight over the past five years. The thing is…I’ve been working out harder than ever. Now that I’m my own boss, I can usually tweak my schedule to lift weights or go for a run 5-6 days a week. But, I’ve also felt that I’ve stepped up my total food consumption at the same time.

225 pounds, here I come. It should take me a couple months. I’ll let you know how it goes. This bet reminds me that I need to build an application to track this stuff.

Today

2007-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

…was a perfect day in Chicago’s history. Summer is here.

Add to your calendar: Dummy @ Double Door 5/30

2007-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

My friend John Barnicle’s band Dummy is playing at the Double Door on 5/30. If you’re in Chicago, check them out.

Trying out Amazon Marketplace

2007-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve decided to start selling off a few things that I no longer use on Amazon.com. I’m starting off with a camera lens and a few books. Does anyone have experience with this? If so, send me an email: jeff at jeffjudge dot com.

5/23 update: Sold my first item! It’s working pretty well so far.

New phone - blackberry 8800

2007-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

Just got the new BlackBerry 8800 today (through T-Mobile). So far, I love the phone. I’ve been looking at a bunch of phones lately, and trying to figure out the perfect fit. It came down to what I use my phone for…and that’s email, text messaging and making phone calls.

The 8800 uses the 4.2 version of the OS…by far BlackBerry’s best one yet. I love the interface, and I especially love the trackball.

I’m excited to test out the new iPhone when it comes out, but my gut tells me that this is the best solution for the next year.

Come here Chicago...come on

2007-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

If you live here, you know exactly what I’m talking about

It was turned out to be a pretty nice day today. Co-worker, friend and fellow 3pm coffeeist Dave made note of the great weather as we stepped outside this afternoon (at 3pm) to grab some coffee across the street. He asked me if I thought the cold spells had finally come to an end, to which I stated that I felt in my gut that the cold weather was over for the season. I should have known…I should have recognized my short sightedness and thought about the midwest weather patterns that I have experienced for 32 years of my life now. We’re getting close to warmth, but we are not quite there. Today’s high was 62, tomorrow’s high will be 42. Of course!!

It’s not that bad though. All we need right now is a good solid streak of mildy warm weather. Once we get that going, the summer will roll in and then chicago becomes Chicago! for the next six months, and we enjoy living in one of the finest cities in the world again.

Hamburger madness, week 2

2007-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

We chose to visit erwin (2925 N Halsted) for the second round of the hamburger challenge. This place seemed like erwin was a no brainer, as it received the top spot for classic hamburgers in TimeOut Chicago a few weeks ago.

Boy were we wrong…

Let me tell you, erwin doesn’t even hold a candle to the Grafton. First off, erwin’s burger was smaller than the size of the bun, much smaller in fact. I ordered my burger cooked medium rare, with white cheddar cheese. The burger comes standard with fries and horseradish coleslaw. The fries were pretty tasty, although slightly cold. The coleslaw was fine. The burger was trapped in this weird state between raw and medium rare, and it didn’t have a ton of flavor to it. Bummer…we had pretty high expectations for this place given it’s excellent service and high ratings.

Hamburger madness

2007-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

Except for a few days when we’re traveling, Erin and I have dinner with her family every Sunday. Whether it’s going out to try new new restaurants, or staying in to try some new recipes…we are a family that loves to eat. Tonight we decided to hit The Grafton (4530 N Lincoln), a great Irish pub in our neighborhood. If you ever get a chance to go there, do yourself a favor and have one of their burgers, complete with a fried egg, cheese and bacon on top. They also serve their fries with curry sauce. Yum.

So all this hamburger goodness, combined with the recent issue of Time Out got us thinking that it would make sense to hit a hamburger joint every Sunday for the next four weeks. Any suggestions?

It’s also worth noting that the Grafton was awarded second best bar hamburger in the city of Chicago.

Call To Action! - Help Dummy finish their next album

2007-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

My good friend John Barnicle wrote me this morning to tell me that I’ve been a complete sack for not writing in awhile. He’s right, I should definitely write more. I usually have plenty of things to yap about and I’m always excited about one thing or another. So…

Let’s talk about John’s band Dummy (website, myspace). This Chicago band has been playing around town for over a decade…and playing with some pretty cool people like Iggy Pop and Henry Rollins. These guys have recently started working on their next album (which is also rumored to be their last)…problem is, I don’t think they’re making it fast enough. So please do me a favor and take 30 seconds to send John an email of encouragement/harassment. Let John know that he (and Dummy) need to spend more time in the studio. You can reach John via JOHN dot BARNICLE at GMAIL dot COM. And if you have time, check out the band’s website or their myspace page.

Finally learned how to roll some fish

2007-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

Erin booked a hands on sushi class for us last night at the Chopping Block. We had a ton of fun learning how to shop for sushi grade fish, select ingredients, and prepare some of our favorite maki, nigiri and even hand rolls. We were really surprised at how easy it is to sushi. A couple pointers:

1) Take a class - you’ll have access to a lot of ingredients that you probably don’t know about, or have easy access to. 2) Use rice sparingly - you’ll thank me for not ending up with a bunch of godzilla sized rolls!

My wife is so cool. I’ve wanted to learn how to make sushi for years, and this class was a total surprise. Thanks baby.

Tips for keeping a healthy immune system

2006-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Tips from a recent Men’s Health article:

Consume enough calories - it takes calories to form antibodies to fend of germs. If you're consuming the right amount calories, your body weight shouldn't move more than 1-2 pounds per week.
Make sure you're getting enough rest - insufficient sleep depresses the immune system. Avoid excessive caffeine.
Take 5-15 grams of L-Glutamine (they recommended GNC Pro Performance) after a workout - good for your white blood cells.
Make sure you're not exercising too much and giving your body time to repair itself.
Drink lots of water
Get a flu shot, especially if you have respiratory problems, heart problems or asthma.

Bobby Bare Jr @ Double Door

2006-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

Erin and I saw Bobby Bare Jr. at the Double Door last night. The more shows I see at the Double Door, the more I love the venue (though it still has nothing on Schubas). Opening for BBJ was David Vandervelde (sounded good!) and Centro-matic (terrific).

Be sure theck Bobby Bare Jr. if you get the chance. Here’s a couple videos:

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Customer intelligence - a no brainer

2006-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

I just received an email from Ticketmaster reminding me two upcoming Wilco shows on 11/24 and 11/25 at the Auditorium Theatre here in Chicago. This is a great example of simple intelligence in which Ticketmaster is proactively alerting me of an upcoming show for a band whom I’ve bought tickets for in the past. Problem is - I already bought tickets for both of these shows at 10 AM this morning!

Having worked at a company who sends millions of marketing emails daily, I understand how difficult email marketing is to get right. Although I didn’t check the message header, my assumption is that Ticketmaster is likely outsourcing their message processing to a company who specializes in that type of service. If you’re using one of these companies, you’re scheduling your campaign hours, if not a day or two ahead of time. Regardless, I doubt that Ticketmaster performs any checks like this to see if the recipient’s email address already has purchased tickets associated to it. To me, this type of service is a no brainer…and it’s this type of “I know who my customer is” intelligence that will help companies continue to strengthen their customer base (great products helps too).

An example of someone who does this pretty well is Amazon.com. The last time I bought a camera from the site, I received an email a month later that checked to see if I needed an extra battery. I’m sure the recommendation algorithm was pretty simple to build (check to see what I’ve purchased, recommend related accessories)…but man was I excited when I saw this message because I really did need an extra battery.

I think this type of marketing is going to get really interesting over the next few years.

Fine...I'll start blogging again.

2006-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

It’s not that I don’t have a lot to write about, it’s just that I’ve been struggling with how much and how public. It all started early this summer when someone kicked in our garage door and stole my car along with Erin’s bike. It definitely wasn’t a random break in either; someone was watching our house and knew that I left the house to go for a run. This made me reluctant to post anything personal up on this site, but since this is such an easy way for friends and family members keep tabs on me (and vice versa), there is no point in going incommunicado.

So I’ve been cranking away on two businesses during the day, and spending as much time as possible with Erin, Dylan and Roscoe at night. Roscoe is weighing in at 37 pounds and will soon be too heavy for Erin to pick up and walk around the house with (she enjoys treating him like a lap dog). Dylan’s adjusted pretty well to Roscoe, although he barks more frequently (he’s beginning to sound like an angry old man). Snow touched touched down in Chicago last week - the earliest for which I can recall. We’ve been seeing a lot of live music lately (Sufjan Stevens, Yo La Tengo, Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah), and i’ve been buying more new music than ever. we’ve also been cooking it up lately and trying lots of new recipes.

How do you manage your digital photos?

2006-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

I’m curious, how are you you managing your digital photos? What’s your setup and why do you like it?

For those of you familiar with Gallery, I have been using it for several years now and I think I’m ready to move on. Even with a complete overhaul from Gallery1 to Gallery2, I think the interface is slow and not very user friendly.

I’ve been playing around Flickr for some time and love the toolset that they provide to manage and tag photos - but have mentally fought transferring my albums since I no longer have complete control over them or the interface.

Introducing Roscoe

2006-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

Here is a photo of our new puppy, Roscoe, with Erin. He was one of eight brothers and sisters, all named after characters on the Dukes of Hazard. We had considered changing his name, but it fit him so well.

Pretty cute, huh?

Two examples of customer service (good and bad)

2006-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

Now that I have a lot more flexible schedule these days, I’m getting more of the annoying life tasks done during the week so that Erin and I can fully enjoy our weekend and not have to run a bunch of errands. For example:

(1) Fixing my laptop (good) My laptop crapped out recently, so I took it over to the Apple store on Michigan Avenue. I like the Apple store because there is always a lot of cool gear to dork around with and try out, and they have a walk-up service counter on the second floor to help you diagnose any issues. The service technician (or ‘genius’) quickly diagnosed that my power chord had fried and that i needed another one. Problem solved. He was knowledgeable, helpful, and thoroughly explained the issue - which helped me minimize any of my frustration. While waiting, I overheard that Seu Jorge, a Brazilian actor/musician famous for his roles in ‘City of God’ and the ‘Life Aquatic’ would be playing an in store performance in 10 mins. Sweet - my problem was solved and got to see a musician that i really enjoy perform for 30 minutes - a great customer experience.

(2) Fixing my car (bad) My brakes recently started to shake when approaching stop signs and while slowing down after exiting off of the expressway. Erin made an appointment to take the Jeep into Napleton’s, a dealership off of Western Avenue pretty close to our house. When i got to the dealership, I explained the situation to the service technician and asked him why I would have an issue with the brakes being that the car is only a few years old. He went on to say “it’s a pretty well known fact that Jeeps have horrible brakes” and that had i done “any amount of research I would have known” this. So he talked shit about his product, and then he belittled his customer for not knowing that the car I paid 30k for two years ago has less than stellar reputation for it’s brakes. Lesson learned - I will never buy another Jeep again, and i’ll go out of my way to avoid Napleton. I’d sell the car, but prefer to keep my monthly cash outflow to a minimum while starting up the business since the car is paid off.

It’s all about the customer - if you treat them like shit, they’re not going to come back to you. there will always be another product or service to help solve their problem or fulfill their need, so you better treat them like they’re important.

You decide: Best coffee in Chicago

2006-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

If you’re a Chicago resident reading this and enjoy coffee, take a few seconds to vote for your favorite coffee shop via Citysearch: http://chicago.citysearch.com/bestof/winners/coffee

On one hand, you have Metropolis Coffee Company, a great shop in Edgewater (I’m actually writing this post from Metropolis right now). You can’t beat their coffee, nor the energy that Jeff and Tony Dreyfuss have created since opening shop on Granville. Erin and I love the coffee so much that we gave out 1/4 lb bags of it at our wedding.

On the other hand, you have Intelligentsia. Intelligentsia is clearly the more established of the two, having three shops: their flagship on Broadway, their second shop on Van Buren, and their newest shop near Millenium Park. Intelligentsia is well known for it’s Black Cat espresso and dedication to the farmers that grow their beans in Central America.

Tough vote - Intelligentsia edged Metropolis out in 2005.

I also love The Grind (my neighborhood favorite) but I am not counting them as a contender since they don’t roast and serve their own beans.Â I don’t know…is that fair?Â It just seems like the roasters should take the prize.

Point/Counterpoint

2006-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

“I’m not a vegetarian because I love animals. I’m a vegetarian because I hate plants.”

–A. Whitney Brown

Back from the PNW

2006-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

Erin and I are back from our trip to Seattle and San Francisco. It was a lot of fun roaming around the Pacific Northwest for a week - eating, drinking, hiking, running, etc. We took a lot of photos (over a thousand), and I’ll be posting a few of my favorites this to Flickr week.

Heading to Seattle and San Francisco

2006-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

Erin and I heading to Seattle and San Francisco for a week and we’d like to eat some tasty food, drink coffee, hear great music, see some art (and hopefully learn more about the history of each town) and spend time outside enjoying nature. Any recommendations?

Google Calendar fills a major void

2006-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

If you haven’t checked out google calendar yet, give it a whirl: http://google.com/calendar

Major pieces of functionality that I like:

1) Calendar publish/subscribe: Erin and I are already sharing our calendars and have access to each other’s schedule. You can publish your calendar privately or publicly. You can subscribe to public calendars like US holidays, cubs schedule, etc 2) Meeting invitations: part Evite, part Outlook/Notes - you can create an event and invite participants. You can respond yes/no/maybe with comments, etc. Invitation comes in the form of an email or sms message. 3) Usability: like Gmail, it’s simple to use…it’s even fun.

Check it out:

You can also import calendars (.ical or .csv) from popular calendaring software like Microsoft Outlook, Apple Address Book, Palm, etc.

I’m sure that Microsoft will do something interesting with calendars one day…but Google made a gigantic leap ahead of them in functionality, usability, accessibility and cost (free). Looking forward to seeing google clean up their syndication of calendars (published as xml now…would like to see RSS feeds) and integration with mobile phones.

Snowboarding in Vail

2006-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

I had the good fortune of spending four days in vail, colorado last week with a small group of friends and a whole lot of powder. Word on the street was Vail was enjoying the best snowfall in over 15 years (some say 25). Woot!

This was my first winter vacation in which I did not head somewhere that was warmer than Chicago…actually a ski trip never crossed my mind as something that i wanted to do (you try living through a Chicago winter!).

Before I left, erin summed it up nicely by saying: “as you get older, you run out of things to try for the first time”. I came to Vail to snowboard, and that’s exactly what I did for four days. I had considered both skiing and snowboarding…but after a lot of mental ping pong and nudging from the clerk at the equipment rental shop, I made the wise choice of snowboarding. I had a blast boarding (picked it up after a few days and a lot of falls)…by the end of day four I had a lot of confidence (and a very sore ass).

Had I tried skiing on the other hand, I’m sure I’d still be laying in the hospital with my crotch ripped in half. Man, skiing just does not look fun at all. Every time I watched people skiing, I got the distinct feeling that it i would have been miserable had I chosen to rent skis.

My recommendation: go to Vail! Go with a bunch of friends. Avoid icy sidewalks in front of grocery stores.

I am all about doing new stuff this year. Who’s with me?!

Happy new year!

2005-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve taken the whole week off to relax and stay local. It’s pretty nice.

It’s Erin’s 26th birthday today (happy birthday!). We’re heading out for dinner and a movie in a few hours. Jin Ju (Korean) on Clark St, not sure about the movie.

Tomorrow, we’re heading out to dinner with a bunch of people then heading back to Erin’s brother’s place for a new years eve party.

The year 2005 has gone by far too fast, and I suspect 2006 won’t slow down at all. Here are the top things that I want to do in 2006:

-Snowboard and ski for the first time -Travel to Spain, France, Switzerland, Holland and possibly Italy again -Receive scuba diving certification -Cycle a century (100 miles) -Spend 3-4 days in wine country (doesn’t really matter where, but probably back to California)

I hope that everyone has an amazing year in 2006!

Family champions

2005-12-25T00:00:00+00:00

My family is intensely competitive…especially my two brothers (Mike and Dave) and our mother. A few times a year, we all get together in Milwaukee to spend time together. Trash talking typically starts early, and we inevitably find ourself at a local bar name Skippys to play some pool. Thankfully, my brother Dave and I beat the piss out of my mom and brother Mike – crowning us 2005 family champs!

Interviewing people

2005-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

A coworker told me today that his favorite interview question is: ‘What is your favorite Miles Davis album?’. Interesting.

One of my favorite questions is: ‘Can you describe to me how a toilet works?’. It’s a great question that forces you through understanding how a toilet operates (and most people have no idea).

I’ve been doing a lot of interviewing lately (college students, experienced candidates, offshore workers), and I find that there is really no perfect question. It’s really best to run with the flow of the interview and try to get people to open up. I also find it fascinating that you can tell where most interviews are going within the first few minutes.

What’s are your favorite interview questions?

Long time no post

2005-11-13T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been pretty busy lately, and haven’t take the time to write my thoughts down.

Work has been consuming most of my time over the last few months. I went to Bangalore, India for 9 days to meet with a great team that we’re ramping up. I’ve also spent a lot time visiting college campuses, recruiting a bunch of smarty pants students. I’ve been very impressed with the people I’ve met on campus, there were even a few students that i wanted to hire on the spot.

My dad and uncle came to Chicago last weekend to visit Erin and I, and to see the Iowa vs Northwestern football game. My brother dave came too. Iowa choked in the last two minutes, which sucked.

Erin and I saw Wilco at the Auditorium Theatre on November 1.

Erin and I celebrated our one year anniversary on November 6th! I took her to see a play and we went to a new sushi place for dinner (Kaze in Roscoe Village). She bought this gigantic 23” inch monitor to use with our Powerbook at home - it’s really sweet. I’ve been digging around and planning our next vacation (a few weeks in Europe in the spring).

Thought for the day

2005-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”

–Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi

Happy 5th!

2005-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

This last weekend was a nice, long weekend. On Friday, Erin and I went to Milwaukee to visit my older brother and his family. While there, we saw the Black Crowes and Tom Petty at SummerFest. We came back on Sunday to see the Cubs play the Nationals, a team I didn’t know existed until I looked at the ticket stub. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lost my machismo, and that not only should I know who the Washington Nationals are, but I should be able to recite a long list of stats from the past fifteen baseball seasons. But I don’t, and it’s because baseball is just plain boring. I know that’s un-man, and un-American…but come on! Football, hockey, bicycle racing- all exciting. Erin even made a comment that it doesn’t seem like players were running hard enough. Hell…without beer, the sport of baseball might not even exist!

We finished the weekend off at a park up the street to watch the ‘unofficial’ fireworks ceremony at Winnemac Park. We were walking home from a dinner/movie date with our friends Seth and Katie when we noticed the enormous fireworks display going on up the street. Our neighbors had told us about the fireworks, but we thought that they were talking up amateur hour. No no, this wasn’t the case at all. Within the park, we saw a dozen or so groups of people that were setup. As different rounds were fired off, you could see all of the empty canisters lying about the park, it was like a pyro playground. The sky was full of brilliant color and lighting, the air thick with explosions and leftover smoke. We watched the show for about 30 minutes until the finale. I think the show lasted for about an hour and half.

Mayfest

2005-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

Erin and I started this last weekend off by seeing Martin Sexton at Navy Pier’s Skyline Pavilion. The pavilion is an excellent place to see a show, with nearly perfect sound and refreshing lake shore breeze floating through.

While Erin was co-hosting a tea party + baby-shower at the Drake (hotel) for one of her friends on Saturday, I had the guys over to get our chill and grill on. I tried my hand at cooking up some pizzas on the grill. I learned that pizza stones are not meant for super hot grills, and that the best pizza combination of ingredients is: dough, fresh mozzarella, sliced tomatoes and fresh basil. Add sauce and a little olive oil and you have the traditional recipe for Floretine style pizza named pizza margarita. We drank, and drank, and drank and then left my place to continue drinking.

Sunday started off very blurry, and somewhat painful. Shortly after waking at 7:30 am, I made a deal with myself to start taking better care of my body and mind. I then fell back asleep until 9 am, at which time I woke in considerably worse pain. Erin wasn’t bad at all, but I attribute that to her tea drinking frenzy and late start with us on Saturday night. We slowly recovered, and were back in action mid-day. We met Erin’s family over at a German fest in our neighborhood and went out for an Indian dinner at a local favorite: Essence of India

Good friday at OTSOFM

2005-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

Erin and I saw Bela Fleck (with Bryan Sutton & Casey Driessen) tonight at the Old Town School of Folk Music. We were both really amazed at the level of communication and understanding between the three artists. Although they spoke between songs, not a word was said while playing. The sounds were playful and curious, with lots of quick tempo shifts; the timing was measured and precise. Really cool stuff..

Give me the knife!

2005-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

Erin and I took a knife skills class last night at The Chopping Block. It was a lot of fun. When we first walked in, I felt like were walking into the set of Kill Bill…there were lots of big sharp knives. By the end of the night we were slicing up vegetables like pros.

I've lost a great friend

2005-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

My friend Dan Stephenson died in a car accident on February 4th in New Mexico on his way back home to Chicago from a visit in California.

I think about Dan all the time and still can’t believe it. I’ve never lost someone close to me. I got the news from Erin while I was sitting in a meeting the next day. I didn’t answer the phone the first two times, but I knew there was bad news when she called a third time. When I answered the phone, Erin was sobbing and told me the news. I didn’t believe her. I could hear the words she was saying, and feel the pain in her voice, but I wasn’t mentally ready to accept what she was saying. I was numb for the rest of the day…everything seemed completely meaningless. I wasn’t ready to accept it until the next night. Erin and I were sitting at our kitchen table talking, and I broke down.

The weird thing about the phone call was that I had been thinking about Dan that morning. I was driving to work on Lake Shore Drive, looking out upon the lake and thinking about all of the times that Dan and I swam in Lake Michigan together with our two dogs. Thinking of those memories made me happy, and I made a mental note to call Dan later in the evening to figure out when he was coming home from California.

Since I heard the news, Dan has been in my thoughts every day. I wonder why he’s gone. I wonder what his last thoughts were. I think about the time that we got into a fight over simple bit of miscommunication (and it was all my fault). We didn’t talk for months…and man, what a couple of jerks we were to each other. I think about all of the great food he introduced us to. I think about the first day we met and how I instantly knew we’d be friends for life. I think about the last conversation we had – Dan was leaving for California the next day and the last words he said to me were “I’ll see you in February J-bone”.

It’s just funny how things happen…how life moves so quickly. I just want to be honest with myself, and give everything I have to the people that I care about. To my friends and family, you have my unequivocal love and respect. I’m here for you when you need me.

2005!

2005-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Happy New Year friends and family. I hope you have a great year!

Here are a few things that I found interesting today:

The Way We Eat Now (Harvard Magazine) We’re fat, we’re getting fatter, and we’re ok with it. The best advice I’ve heard about slimming down: eat slow and decrease your portion size. If you’ve ever sat down to more than one meal with me, you’d have seen enough to know that I eat every meal like it is my last. So, it’s a new year and I’m going to slow down…and eat less.

An old beating on the hood of a cab I was walking to the gym this afternoon and I saw an old man blocking a cab from driving through the intersection at Wacker and Jackson. From what I could deduce, the cab driver tried to jump the intersection too quickly and almost clipped the old man. The cabbie noticed the old man just shy of an ‘old-man-on-the-pavement’ incident, and the old man flipped out on the cabbie. Go old man!

Smashing Pumpkins: Drown (bootleg) I haven’t listened to the Pumpkins in a long time, and this bootleg kicks ass. I love it when I listen to a CD that re-introduces me to a great band.

To all my family and friends

2004-12-24T00:00:00+00:00

Happy holidays to you all! Best wishes and big kisses….

Married!

2004-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

Erin and I tied the knot yesterday - and it was the happiest day of my life.

I’m excited, I want to make her smile every day. Just look at this face:

One more week!!

2004-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

We topped off our weekend by seeing back-to-back Wilco shows at the Auditorium Theatre. Tonight we’re going to cook up a big feast and scare the piss out of trick-or-treaters.

A picture from my phone

2004-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

~~A picture of my friends Seth and Katie, captured and published to this page by means of my cell phone.~~ Imagine where technology will be in a few more years…eventually the camera, mp3 player and cell phone will catch up with each other and produce one serious product. We’re still pretty far away from that, as evidenced by the quality of this picture.

Biking to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis

2004-06-28T13:30:36+00:00

Over the weekend, a few hundred friends and I rode a charity fundraiser bike ride to support Multiple Sclerosis. The ride was awesome, we rode 80 miles the first day, camped out, and then got up and rode back home. The ride is called the MS 150, but there were a few extra miles each way. I’ve never done a large group ride like this in which you camp out. The rider support was phenomenal. At every pit stop, cheerful volunteers were serving a whole array of food and beverage. Crossing the finish line felt great, people (many w/MS) were lined up cheering/screaming/clapping. One guy was flipping out with a bull horn every time a rider would come through.

I’m definitely going to do more of these rides; it was a ton of fun and for a great cause.

What's happening?

2004-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything personal. Usually I just post random news and and an occasional quip, but I’ve been thinking lately that I should just post a quick “this is what I’m up to” (besides working).

So, here it goes:

- Planning a wedding -
Erin and I are busy making plans for our wedding. We’re pretty sure it’s going to be in October. We did have a date and place nailed down…but the city of Chicago shut down that place a few weeks ago after an electrical inspection. That was definitely an annoyance, but I view it as a good thing. I’d rather keep my family and friends out of a potentially dangerous situation. So, now we’re scrambling to find another venue.

- Buying a house -
Erin and I are moving. Our new house is on my mind a lot. It’s sick how much I think about it. I keep thinking about the extra space we’re going to have, and what do with it. More info to come…we move in June 15.

- Trip to Hawaii -
In Early April, Erin and I took a trip with my family out to Maui, Hawaii. The warm weather was nice, and it was cool to spend the week with my family. I tried surfing with my nephews (they crushed me), hiked to some waterfalls with my brother, and spent a lot of time with the entire family near the ocean. My advice to those who are traveling to Hawaii (or any other islands with a 5+ hour time change)…stay for two weeks.

- Strumming guitar -
I’ve been playing guitar in the Grateful Dead ensemble at the Old Town School of Folk Music. For our last eight week session, we covered songs from the albums ‘Blues for Allah’ and ‘Terrapin Station’. On Saturday April 24, we got together and performed for a small audience of family and friends at the OTSFM in Lincoln Park. For our next session, we’re covering a live album, ‘Reckoning’.

- Learning to Ride -
I am learning to ride a motorcycle this upcoming weekend. A friend and I decided to sign up for a two day training course at Motorcyle Riding’s Cool. I’ll let you know how it goes…

I hope everyone is doing well!

Espresso, my espresso

2004-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

Here is an article that finely articulates the problem with majority espresso served in the US. You see, I find espresso fascinating, both in taste and preparation. With that said, I rarely drink espresso-based drinks outside of my home, and this article does a pretty great job of explaining why. It’s all about the taste.

RIAA lawsuits continue

2004-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

An article describing the continued RIAA filed lawsuits against people who download music via peer-to-peer applications. Their chief complaint is that users of a P2P service are causing the music industry to loses a huge amount of sales.

So, I’m not using any music swapping services, yet I’m not buying any music. I’m pretty disgusted at the music industry’s behavior towards it’s bread and butter (consumers). I bought a hell of a lot more music when they weren’t acting like arses. They’re prices are still too high, and they continue to pump too much money in to non-talents.

My point is that this is why music sales are declining. It’s not because of file swapping, it’s because of irrational behavior and resistance to change.

For Sale: Canon G3

2004-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

I’m selling my beloved camera, the Canon G3. I’ve owned it for one year, and have had lots of fun with it. It’s an amazing camera; photos have tons of detail and images are full of color. The only reason I’m selling is because I’d like to upgrade to a professional grade camera in which I can swap out the lens.

If you’re interested, you can read reviews on cnet.com, or email me at jeff AT jeffjudge DOT com.

Engaged!

2003-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

As of 8:30 AM this morning, Erin and I are engaged to be married!

One smile, that's all it took.

I love my (wireless) neighbors

2003-12-09T00:00:00+00:00

Erin and I are having the condo painted this week. I factored time vs. money, and it makes a lot of sense for us to have someone else do it. Besides, you should have seen our last attempt at painting the place….not pretty.

So, our place is upside down right now. Everything has been shoved/piled together in the center of each room. The upside is that we’ll have a great looking place in a few more days.

I wanted to send off a few emails tonight before i hit the sack, but our place is ‘unplugged’. I fired up my laptop out of speculation that one of our neighbors might have an access point for me to hop onto….and it worked! I did a quick search for access points with out-of-the-box settings and found one within 30 seconds. awesome :)

New espresso machine!

2003-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

A few things…

I bought an espresso machine that is just amazing. For years I have been looking for a machine that makes great shots, can froth lots of milk, costs very little, and has the ability to be “plumbed in” to a house water line. I’ve spent weeks doing very detailed research on the different features of semi-professional machine, and I found what I was looking for: the Isomac Millenium People have said I’m crazy, but this is something I love and it’s totally worth it. It’s pretty easy to rationalize a purchase of this machine, given that I spend $15 dollars (+/-) on coffee or espresso based drinks in a given week. I’m totally happy, and my shots keep getting better as I zero in on the right technique.

I celebrated my 28th birthday on March 4. I don’t feel like I’m getting older, nor do I feel like I’ve changed a whole lot in the last few years. Thank you Dan and Erin for taking me out on my birthday, despite the snow that was pouring down over Chicago.

One of my favorite photos

2003-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

One of my favorite pictures of all time:

My good friend Dan Stephenson, falling off of the Belmont brown line el (train) stop.

Hello from Italy

2002-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

Hello all, I am writing you from a internet cafe here in Rome. Erin and I have been away now for week, five days in England and two days in Italy. It’s my first trip here to Europe and to sum it up…it’s wonderful to be here. Eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, talking, laughing and witnessing everything; it’s all so exciting. I’ve taken a lot of good photos, met great people, and will have plenty of stories to share when I get home. I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying their holidays. Ciao!!

New camera...geek is happy

2002-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

I bought a new digital camera over the holidays , and I’ve been snapping up everything in site. Expect to see a lot of shots posted, both in my blog and under my ‘pictures’ section. Hope you all are healthy, happy and smiling brightly!

Ran my 2nd 5k race

2002-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

I ran this 5K race here in Chicago today. I’m very excited because I finished in 28 minutes, over 10 minutes faster than the first 5K I ran this last summer. My next goal is to break 25 minutes, then 20.

Mountain biking in Kettle Moraine

2002-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

I had a great weekend. It started off on Friday at a Borders where I spent some time looking for a good book about traveling to Europe. I picked up a volume of the ‘Let’s Go’ series and will be studying that for awhile. The current plan is to fly to London and spend 4-5 days there, venture off to Italy to spend 7-8 days, and then back to London to catch a return flight home.

Saturday was a day of mountain biking in Wisconsin at Kettle Moraine. I rode two trails, blue and orange, and my legs quickly gave off to how drastically out of shape they are. Regardless, the trails weren’t crowded and the my friends and I had a great time.

Sunday, as it often does, seemed like a day full of errand running. It was topped off by 2 out of 3 wins by my volleyball team in the season opener. The two wins not only started off the season for us on a good vibe, but clinched the team a free picture of beer afterwards.

Die bike thieves, die

2002-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

After putting in the finishing touches on a 6 month long project at work, I left the office at approximately 10 pm on Friday night to find that my bike had been completely violated. The handle bar, gear shifters, cables, brakes…all gone. Luckily the derailer and chain put up a fight and were still dangling from the frame. This just doesn’t make any sense to me, how do people come to the point where they think this ok? After having my saddle stolen last Thursday, I thought I was safe from this sort of thing for awhile. I must have some harsh karma swirling around. Scenes keep running through my head of this f*ck ripping apart my bike as hurried (and apparently oblivious) commuters brushed past the to catch the last train headed to the suburbs.

Why must you steal from me?

2002-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

My bike saddle (seat) was stolen on thursday. How ironic considering i threw out a somewhat mocking post of an over-paranoid bicyclist on 6/26 (see below). I don’t understand what would trigger one person to think that it’s ok to steal another person’s saddle. This all reminds me of a Kids in the Hall skit, Open Letter to the Guy Who Stole Bruce’s Bike Wheel.

Playing guitar at the Old Town School of Folk Music

2002-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

I just signed up to play guitar in a Grateful Dead ensemble at the Old Town School of Music here in Chicago. It starts September 5, and we’ll be performing Europe ‘72. I’m totally stoked for this… It should be interesting playing off of a live album with a dozen or so musicians.

Ran my first 5k

2002-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

One down 2002 goal down, six to go. I finished a 5k run in just over 38 minutes, which qualified me for a cold beer after the race.

Dylan, the man's best friend

2002-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

A picture of my good friend dylan.