How to win and iPad or just spend and hour writing about it…

I just spent sometime entering a contest  to win an iPad…much like the Sony contest I stand no chance but what the hell…what else is lunch hour for?

enjoy…

inHabitat: Win and iPad Contest entry:

I will be honest, I stopped being a “reader” when I started working full-time years ago. I have read plenty of books of all types over my life but lately I have been getting bored or I let work/life get in the way.  I end up carrying two and sometimes three books around because I think I am going to find time to read but I never do. That may sound like an excuse for some but it’s the reality in which I live.

My girlfriend, however is a power reader. In all the years we have been together for every one book I have read, she has read six and it’s getting rather ridiculous.  I’m falling behind.  We’ll go out to hang in the park and while I am mentally chasing butterflies she is blowing through Atlas Shrugged like its a child’s book.

I really need this iPad.  I want to enjoy reading again, but I also want to explore several different genres at same time.  My focus jumps all over the place which is why I currently lug around “The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World”, “Towards and New Architecture” and “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”.  Three great books that are getting to know each other better inside my bag than I am getting to know them. I am also carrying around at least one magazine I have delivered and it will never make its way out of the plastic. After a couple of months the books and magazines just pile up in our living room. How much am I wasting?

I do what I can for the environment…I ride my bike to work everyday, rain or shine, I check out books from the library when I can (although lately have had to buy them because of the length of time I keep them) and I recycle my gadgets when I get new ones. I know I am not blazing a trail here but I am trying and this iPad will only multiply my efforts.

If I win, I can’t guarantee I will never buy a book or magazine again or demand that the hotel I’m staying in not deliver me a copy of USA Today.  I’m new at this whole save the world thing and for an Architect in California, I shouldn’t be admitting such things but it’s true.  I’m a one-step-at-a-time kind of guy and getting the iPad would be a very large step for me and I am ready for that challenge.

Peace.

-DjD

Friday Morning Bus Ride Post

Cops are funny, when they see the potential of having to write a lot of tickets they always opt for the verbal warning, typically. This is true unless, as a comedian on Def Comedy Jam once put it when talking about dealing with the cops, “You ain’t gonna have nuthin’ but a conversation unless you fuck it up!”

So, it’s about 6pm and it’s also the middle on rush hour for trains, planes, automobiles and bikes here in San Fran. We bikers for the most part, follow the law. However there are many of us that happily break the driving laws because we can. We shouldn’t be allowed to weave between cars, ride against traffic, run red lights, etc. but we do because well, what the hell, its fun and gets you through traffic a lot faster than being obedient.

The more I ride the more I have become very aware of my surroundings and riding home in rush hour traffic your spidey-sense is going off constantly.  You are always looking out for danger not so much looking out for the cops.

The wiggle is well known by bikers as the fastest way to get from Market street to the Panhandle.  Drivers know this route as well and for the most part avoid it which makes it rather stress free most days.  Well this past friday was like every other one and the ride home  along the wiggle was uneventful until we hit Scott and Fell Streets.  There was about 4 of us that made it to the intersection and like every other day, every biker makes a left onto Fell Street, a oneway,  whether the light is green or red.  Remember, we break laws cause can.

We all turn left completely ignoring the “no turn on red” sign and halfway down the block stood one of SF finest waving at us to the curb and doing his best to pretend that what was about to happen wasn’t going to be 1omins of his life that he’ll never get back.

We pull over and get off our bikes and the cops proceeded to ask us one at a time, “Do you know why I stopped you?”

Guy #1: Red light

Me: “We turned against the red”

Guy#3:  “I don’t know.”

Girl#1:  “Red Light.”

Cop: “Let me see your ID. The rest of you can go.”

Like I said, we break the law because we can, that doesn’t mean we don’t know that law.  Well most of us anyway.  So you are all smart people no need to tell you who got the ticket.  It was a very large waste of time and all I learned two things: 1-my theory about Cops is extremely true and 2 – from now on I will turn my  spidey-sense up to 11.

DjD

Dreamin’ On…

So I resubmitted for the Sony blogger contest (had to for technical reasons) and ever since I have been thinking about how I really stand no chance just because of one (or two) major reasons.

1) my blogging skills are not up to par
And 2), I haven’t written one post about a gadget yet.

All my post as DjD and Nappilicious are all about “clever” observations of crap the happens to me or pops into my head.

Oh well, it was good to be a dreamer.
DjD out.

BwB: Update

My friend Jeanie ,

see here:

read the post BwB and called B.S. on me.  She didn’t say this to my face but I gathered as much from what happened next.

Jeanie sent out the word about riding Critical Mass here in SF and I was going to ride to work anyway so I said why not.  If you never heard of Critical Mass well, shame on you.  In short, its when a lot of bikers “take over” the streets  right at rush hour the last Friday of every month.

Sounds like fun? Then you are a biker.

Sounds like a nightmare? Then  you are one of the hundreds of drivers that are trying to figure out if you would be convicted of murder, involuntary manslaughter or hailed as a hero for running over a few bikers that are purposely laying their bikes in the middle of the intersection to make you stop when you have the green and letting a 20min caravan of bikers run the red light.

On with the vindication…

Jeanie was running late and the Mass waits for no one so my buddy and I started off.  We called from different intersections  to give her a chance to catch up but after about 15 mins we figured that she would never find us and we’d just meet up at the bar later.

5mins after that thought….”Hey guys! I can’t believe I found you!”   When I asked how she found us.  She said “I read your Biking while Black blog and thought it wasn’t true but then, damn I found you…maybe you are right!”

Point, Set, Match.

DjD.

Do you wanna be the next person to switch careers? Why yes, yes I do.

About a 2weeks ago I was perusing the Sony Style Blog and they announced a contest to be one of their guest bloggers. So me being me, I freaked out because I have bought, used and abused Sony products since my first paycheck. Now here is an opportunity to be a guest blogger for a company that no one I know actually likes anymore…thanks Apple.

Naturally, I went for it.

Part one of this blog is the final submission. The basic rules of the contest were simple, in 200 words tell Sony why you should be their next guest blogger. I started with basic brainstorming, scribbling down a bunch of things that in the end didn’t make it in the final submission but helps just flex the brain muscles.

It was a grueling couple of weeks because I learned 2 major things about my writing-self:
1) I love to drag out a topic when I’m writing about something. Especially if I have some personal connection to it, there is always a story and I have to tell it. That part of my writing-self I have to work on.
2) Summing up why I want to be a Sony blogger was next to impossible in 200 words.

Final Submission:
I have been glued to the Sony Style blog page for years and when the “Are you the next Sony Blogger?” post came out I read it and calmly thought to myself, “Well now, that sounds like a swell idea. I’ll give it a go.”

Not even close. I read the post, then fainted.

Dream opportunity meet mind…explosion!
Now I can justify my girlfriends tireless efforts to shut me up!

Objectivity: My reviews will compare like products. We owe it to the potential tech buying consumer to show our product next to the competition.

Point of view: You don’t need a guest blogger to regurgitate snippets from the press release. You need someone that going to say, “Now that you have read what the folks in PR wrote, let me tell you what it’s like to really use this thing.”

Experience: People want to read about your personal experiences with the products you own, will own or are testing for the future. Right now this is missing from your Blog and I want to bring that in a way that entertains the reader and makes them say, “holy crap, that’s the same thing that happened to me!”

Part 2 of this post is the raw notes for my contest entry. A bit of a warning, its unedited and there are a lot of unfinished sentences and if I am not mistaken, the whole things just stops. How I got the final submission from this glob of goo, I will never know.

Raw Notes:
I would love to write about how I have been glued to the Sony Style blog page for years and when the “Are you the next Sony Blogger?” post came out I read it and calmly thought to myself, “Well now, that sounds like a swell idea, I will give that a shot.”

Not even close. Here is what actually happened.

Most mornings I get to work before eveyrone else in my firm and I proceeded to ease into my work day the same way I have for about a year now. I fired up Google Chrome and hit my tabs in order, Fixed Gear Gallery, Gmail, Engadget, iGoogle, Twitter and then SONY. Yes, you were last, but don’t take it personally. I read the post about the contest and I am pretty sure I blacked out for about a minute. When I came to I couldn’t believe you were offering me chance to work for you. Yes, at this point I felt the post was directed just to me. I had no choice but to contain my excitment as people started to come into work so I immediately started scribbling notes, rambles mostly of all the reasons Sony needs to hire someone like me to blog for them.

So on the way home I filled my girlfriends ear about this contest now I am not going to say she didn’t care, but she has already had to live with years of me drooling over the next hot Sony product I wanted to buy. If I won this contest I’m sure she would be the happiest for me because then I could direct all that Sony attention towards people who really wants to hear it.

To pull one piece from the post that I continue to come back to is the line about “…chances are there’s been that moment when you thought you could do something better than how’s it done.” Well, in all my brainstorming, note writing and outlining I came to realize that the one thing I can’t find on other tech sites is descriptions of gadgets in way what was easy for the average tech loving person to understand and be able to make a educated decision as to whether they actually buy the gadget. Sites like Gizmodo, Engadget, etc. are great sites and very thorough but they lose me when they break gadgets down to the inner workings and go really deep into the “tech” language. On top of that they review so many different types of gadgets it gets really hard to find the focus on their site for one product.

This is why I keep going back to the Sony site. With all the new gadgets out there, I still believe Sony makes a superior product in just about every category. If I’m being honest, the Sony Reader is still lagging somewhat behind the Kindle in its appeal for me. Thats what i am going to bring, a lot of common honestly about the Sony products. No, I will not rag on a Sony gadget for the sake of not appearing to be a fanboy just because I work for you. But yes, if I’m asked to review a product I will take time to compare it to like products and write that comparison in the review. The average tech buying consumer will not run down the specs of gadget and make their decision to purchase because the X10 has a 1GHz Snapdragon core and the iPhone uses a Samsung ARM. Walk into your favorite electronics store and ask anyone looking at the cell phone wall if they know what a Snapdragon processor is and they will probably call security on you. Majority of the folks who are going to buy your products want to know if it is bigger, better and faster than some other product they know well because they already own it or they know someone that owns it. Not giving them that comparison is not only unfair to the customer it also doesn’t paint Sony in the best light.

Lets face it, as a Sony employee I will be required to always place Sony on top of other companies in my post. Given the product Sony produces, that particular part of the task will not be the hardest. The challenge will be balance. The tech world is on fire right now and everyone has 3 of everything. And with some confidence, I can say that Sony has either already done it or has done it better. You don’t need a new guest blogger to regurgitate snippets from a well written press release. You need someone that going to say, “well, now that you have read what the people in PR wrote, now let me tell you what its like to really use this thing.”

And what about the SONY products you own? I can write for days about how many pairs of Sony headphones I have owned and worn out (mostly because I am a DJ by hobby I will kill a pair of headphones) but no matter what I always come back to the MDR Series. People want to read about your personal experiences with the products you own, will own or are testing for the future. I believe that is missing from your Blog and I want to bring that in a way that people really engages the reader and makes them say, “holy crap, thats the same thing that happened to me!”

Quick note: Dont use phrases like “I think” “In my opinion”. Everything is my opinion, I dont need to actually write that out.”
being honest doesnt waste peoples time with all the things they can find on a press release.
Think of breaking the essay in the 3 major things I am going to bring to the position. About 66.6 words per point

So there you have it, I have no idea whats going to happen with the contest. I fully expect to not make it anywhere near winning the contest but what the hell, it cost me nothing and I learned that I really like this blogging thing.

DjD

Quick thoughts…

How much time do we spend wishing work wasn’t “work”?
I didn’t do the math but I’m sure it’s more time than our bosses would want to know.
DjD out.

BwB – Biking while Black

A few days ago right after lunch, I was thinking of things I need to blog about. And much like Nappilicious I have all kinds of random things running through my head. But unlike Nappilicious I want to go a lot deeper. So, what does that mean? I really don’t know yet, but what I do know is that this is the first entry of the deeper version of Nappilicious.

I have recently took up biking and not just any kind of biking, fixed gear biking. Taking up biking in itself shouldn’t be that big of a deal right? Well, when you are Black, it seems to become a really big deal. Now at this point in Nappilicious I would have started talking about the funny ways White people look at me when I ride my bike, as if they have never ever seen a black person ride a bike before and that would have been the end of the post. Not this time because I have really being giving this some thought and I decided to ask myself a question.

Side Bar: Why did I decided to take up biking in one of the hilliest cities I have ever lived in? Bike to work day, thats why. The company I was working for at the time organized a group to take part in the event which is huge here. From the email and links that went around it seemed like an easy way to chill, ride around the city, make some friends, have a couple of beers and get some bike swag. None of this happened. Here is the long version of the story. The short version is simple, I had a 200 dollar mountain bike and jeans, my co-workers had 1,500 dollar road bikes and spandex. Add to this that it was the hottest day in a long time in SF, around 98 degrees at 4pm…well, you get the point. After that day I headed to bike shop, bought my self a fixie (I never change gears anyway so, why spend the money) and never looked back.

Back to the post.

Why is it a Black person riding a bike is see as alien to the natural order of things?

Being the “alien” I couldn’t answer that question and stopping and asking the white people that are staring at me would only cause the issue to be seen as hostile aggression towards the “natural order”. So I asked the one entity that wouldn’t talk back, call the cops nor fail in given all the right and wrong answers at the same time. Google, you are on!

Straight away I type “African American and Bicycle” in the Google machine and the very first result was Major Taylor Iron Riders. I had no idea who Major Taylor was and the Iron riders thing was a close second. I clicked, started reading and the 1st line: “Major Taylor Iron Riders is an African American New York City based recreational cycling club that was formed in 2005”

What the what?!?

We have a organized cycling club?! I continued to read…“Our name is derived from two historic African American cycling milestones. The first is Marshall “Major” Taylor ; in 1898 Major Taylor became the world’s first African American cycling champion. The second name “Iron riders” comes from the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps at Fort Missoula , Montana .” At this point I knew two things, 1 I was done (mentally) working for the day and, 2 I was pretty sure I heard the crackling sound of a fuse, unbeknown to me I was about to have my mind completely blown.

I continued to read about the Iron riders bike club and look at all there pics. Lots of middle aged Black men (and some women) a few White people sprinkled in for flavor, that get together for short training rides and long brutal rides. Seeing and reading all this was getting a bit much. I mean, I went from me being the only one I ever say like me that rode a bike for exercise and for fun, getting stared at like I was a rainbow colored unicorn riding on a tandem bike with Lockness herself to being floored by the fact that I was never alone…my bike riding people were in NYC.

So I thought.

I will save what I learned about the Iron Riders and Major Taylor for another post, I promise. For now I have to continue exploring the splattered remains of my currently blown mind. The MT Iron Riders of NY didn’t have links to other groups like it so I thought it was a the only one of its kind and with no plans to move to NY, I was left to believe that I had to live vicariously through my peoples on the east coast.

GOOGLE MACHINE TO THE RESCUE!!

Back to typing away online, hunting for more of my people Biking while Black. Major Taylor Bicycling Club of…what this can’t be right…Minnesota?!? I didn’t waste time reading about this particular group, I head straight for their links, hoping I would find exact what I did find, a lot more groups named after the great Major Taylor. Sadly the closest MT Cycling Club to San Francisco is in LA so I couldn’t leave work early and ride down to my local MT Cycling Club office and sign up. That’s probably a good thing because my nose was open so wide I probably would have offered up my first born if that was the entry fee.

So what does all this mean for me?

As I am gathering up the last bits of my brain off the floor I realize that my company just paid 4 hours (and I am not that cheap) for me to learn about my heritage. Are these things I should have already known? Perhaps, and I will have plenty of posts dealing with the things about my heritage i just don’t know. For now, here is what I do know. Riding a bike in a city with very few people that look like you has nothing to do with your skin color. That fact alone will have people staring. I would love to see the Black people in this city riding bikes around, I would also like to take a ride without being watched like a UFO flying over an obscure part of Arizona at 3:30am but you can’t force people to experience something they don’t want to. I will have to deal with White people and their children staring at me. They don’t see this kind of thing where they are from. I will also have to deal with my people not riding bikes, it’s not something that enters into our daily lives. I have had 36years worth of conversations with Black people and never once has riding a bike for fun or exercise ever come up.

One Black guy won the one-mile track championships 111 years ago, there are several African American cycling clubs throughout this country. Two great things I am happy to explore more. That doesn’t change the reality in which I live but it does allow me to ride with the confidence that I am not the first and under no circumstances am I alone.

And now, My Black History Moment: The Plow, who knew it was invented by a Black Man? Not me, did you? Enjoy
Andrew Jackson Beard (1849-1921)

DjD