Val's blog - thoughts, pictures, ideas

Layer Cake

2007-01-27T11:57:00.000-05:00

Now that I have blockbuster online, I'm finally catching up to the movies that I've wanted to see. One of the best ones so far has been Layer Cake. The idea of a gangster movie has been tried from many angles, but I found the approach in Layer Cake to be unique, fresh, and intriguing. The ideas of revenge, lust, and corruption add many layers, hahah, to the movie. Sienna Miller's lingerie scene is a big plus. And the alternate endings really expose a hard choice that directors had to make with the conclusion of their story, and I enjoyed getting a glimpse into that thought process. Overall, this movie has been one of the best surprises.

Holiday pictures.

2007-01-11T00:07:00.000-05:00

An awesome picture from a great birthday brunch for my mom in Baltimore. I call it - the Elberts.

hmm, diet soda... Doh

2007-01-08T13:22:00.000-05:00

well, it's official. I got used to drinking diet soda to avoid the carbs, but that may have been to no avail.

Check out the report from UT SA that concludes that people who have diet drinks may in fact be gaining more weight.

A bubble is a Bubble

2007-01-08T12:48:00.000-05:00

A response to a great post by sean

Determined by the size of the bust. (hehehe, size of the bust) however, given the points can be counteracted by a qualitative figure in comparing the .com bubble to the current 2.0 boom - the economy is not driven by 2.0 boom as it was by the .com bubble. When was the last time you saw a commercial for digg (a la monster.com)? Either 2.0 boom has not reached the bubble status, or the Entrepreneurs and vc's learned their lesson and are bound to avoid the mistakes from the history.

Psyched for Elections

2006-11-09T09:28:00.000-05:00

Over the last two days, I have been all about tracking the elections in US. The exciting news is that there seems to be a change of guard in Congress, so I look forward to new controversies to arrive from newley re-established checks and ballances system in DC.

"go bubble, go" or "am I in the right industry?"

2006-10-30T15:09:00.000-05:00

I was shocked to see the ammount of money that advertisement platroms are raising from funds these days: 40M to spot runner??? http://gigaom.com/2006/10/30/spot-runner/

The figures are remeniscent of the late 90's and the model of advertising is very web 1.0. But maybe there is some substance behind this?

Anyway, there is a lot of money to be made.

no more meetings?

2006-10-01T00:56:00.000-04:00

Even smaller companies have to fight the the problems of excessive and disruptive nature of meetings. Plaxo, as reported on OM Malik, has adopted a plan to schedule all meetings on Tuesday, and leave the rest of the week meeting free... hooray. As added bonus, management brings in luch and dinner. While I think that Plaxo can get away with such plan, once a company reaches a certain size and geographic diversity, meetings and confrerence calls become harder to manage uniformally.

Generation shift

2006-09-30T21:27:00.000-04:00

This evening I was hanging out with my and Carolyn's families and we reached a very interesting realization. Having grown up in Soviet Union before "westernization" my childhood was closely resembling to the childhood of the previous American generation. One visible comparison are photographs. Much like the pictures of kids growing up in America during the 50's and 60's, most of my photographs are in black and white. Color photography was only available for special ocasions, but very rarely. The other interesting parallel involves the electronic diversions. Growing up, my generation was not exposed to Attari/Jaguar/NES or any other console games. I remember playing table fooseball, and thinking that it was the greatest thing in the world. How about TV? Once the iron curtain was lifted, I finally got to see Disney cartoons for the first time. We had a flurry of old russian cartoons, but those hardly stood up to the production quality of what children in the western countries saw. Once again, we were behind.

Hanging out with Thanos

2006-09-25T00:21:00.000-04:00

A bunch of current and former verizoneese made a trip to Boston to send off our dear friend Thanos to Greece. The night began with mucho sushi at Typhoon. Vineet, once again, had to endure constant pressure to "abandon" his vegetarianism, but he withstood the pressure and overprized veggie curry. Afterwards, we partied VIP style in exclusive Boston club - Underbar. We cut through the velvet rope and had a personal waitress serve us at the table. Dancing carried us through 2am when we finally made our way back to Aman's for some after-party flip cup action. All in all, it was a terrific night. To top things off, Amish somehow managed to oversee a production drop and Aman successfully concluded the SIT e2e order.

Check out more pictures from the party at my picasa site...

Mi Casa

2006-06-01T23:18:00.000-04:00

ipod - another great Cornell product

2006-01-14T22:58:00.000-05:00

I discovered today that a Cornell alumni is one of the main drivers behind Apple's ipod . The story goes on to praise Apple's focus on making great products for consumers. While leading the iPod hardware team, Cornell's Jon Rubinstein gives credit to his team for making the product. The inscription on the metal backs of iPods is directly attributed to Jon.

I guess 5 years in the frigid Ithaca air has taught him a lot.

Beyond Reason: read and learn

2005-11-08T22:25:00.000-05:00

I recently finished reading “Beyond Reason” by Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro. The book is centered on an idea that emotions play an important role in negotiations and provided an analytical view on how to best manage the emotional side of negotiations. While I was aware that emotions can have a big impact on a negotiation, or even a conversation, I really enjoyed the perspective that the authors offered on dealing with people who “abuse” the power of emotions, ranging from coercion by threat to playing on sympathy.

Although the advice of the authors was generally helpful, I sometimes questioned practicality of following the guidelines in day-to-day affairs. For example, the authors encouraged the readers to document and discuss each of the negotiations as part of constant learning process, often spending sixty to ninety minutes in follow up discussions. As a manager of a development team with frequent meetings, such analysis would put a significant damper on my productivity. However, I realize that the book is not intended to be followed as a “manual” and each person may have to make practical adjustments.

Overall, the book is a “must read” for everyone, not just frequent negotiators. In the book, I found a lot of advice on how to respect the emotions that govern the meeting in many different settings. Since I learn best from seeing complex concepts in action, the case study that concluded the book put a neat “bow” on a very enjoyable and valuable read.

Halloween

2005-10-31T21:22:00.000-05:00

We did not have Halloween in Soviet Union, and I did not get many chances to get any crazy dress ups. However, I think that my recent string of costumes definitely makes up for the years of inactivity. A few years ago I was David Beckham, with blond hair. And this year, I was an underwater scrub. Most people would assume I was a regular scrub (a medical intern), but I added a twist in the form of swimming gogles - thus an underwater scrub. Carolyn was dressed as a pumpkin - notice the green hair - and we were accompanied by a bubble bath girl, a navy seal, and a mad doctor.

Overall, I think that I missed out on the Halloween experience. Carolyn loves Halloween, and I saw a lot of cool holiday decorations in our yuppie neighborhood.

On the final note, I just learned today, from my friend that we, Jews, are not supposed to celebrate Halloween due to its Christian roots. After consulting wikipedia, I determined that although it began as a Christian holiday - an eve before All Saints day, it has become so comercialized that all races and religions are safe to celbrate it. And I'm also a bit upset that I don't live in Ireland, where they call this holiday Pooky Night.

ESPN Soccer Coverage

2005-09-03T21:23:00.000-04:00

This is the letter that I sent to ESPN and US Soccer Federation:

As I am watching today’s historic USA v. Mexico soccer game on Telemundo I feel I must express my deep regret that I cannot watch the game on of the two ESPN channels that I get and hear the commentary in English. Although the game between #4 and #6 best teams in the world presents viewers with world class soccer action, the game has been bumped down to ESPN Classic channel which I do not get in my home. There are several reasons why I feel that the game deserves much bigger coverage.

First, as mentioned above, the game features two of the world’s best teams playing a game that actually matters. Second, the two neighboring countries have one of the most underrated rivalries, offering as much “color”, animosity, and scale as some of the most treasured sports rivalries. The many evidence of the rivalry are abundant. US knocked out the Mexican squad from the most recent world cup. Mexico exacted revenge in the explosive game in front of 100,000 in Mexico City. Now it’s our turn, and the game had a huge buildup. As featured on ESPN SoccerNet, Landon Donovan has reached a status of a villain in Mexico – an angle that I would have loved to hear dissected by the commentators. Finally, Bruce Arena’s plea for fan viewership, as featured on ESPN, roused the interest in many of casual viewers.

I hope that this letter does not get mis-labled as an “angry viewer” soliloquy. I think that I am more disappointed then anything else. In addition to being disappointed that I cannot view an exciting soccer match, I am disappointed that the ESPN missed a great opportunity to benefit from the spotlight that the match is receiving nationally and highlight the excitement of the rivalry to the widest audience.

Two books to add to a Reading List

2005-09-02T10:45:00.000-04:00

Here are a few books that Tim Sanders recommends for building up the knowledge base.

The first book I think you should read is Give Your Speech, Change The World by Nick Morgan. Many of you have heard me talk about Nick's book, Working The Room at one of my events. Harvard Business Press has just released Give Your Speech, Change The World as a paperback and it is a must own. You will learn the secrets of audience based presentation, how to tell a single story through your talk and how to listen with your eyes and leverage your second brain. All of these skills will make you a terrific speaker. According to Morgan, "the only reason to give a speech is to change the world." I could not agree more.

The second book I recommend is Think Big, Act Small by Jason Jennings. This is a great book on how organizations, of all sizes, can lose their effectiveness as they grow. This book is researched in the manner of Jim Collins' Good To Great in that it isolates specific companies that retain the innovative nimble culture as they grow to be great in size. You will learn from this book, even if you are not yet part of a sprawling empire.

Skype to add software certification for plug-ins

2005-09-02T10:26:00.000-04:00

Skype is really doing a good job to leverage the buzz and the developer community to improve the feature set for their product.

Interesting quotes:

Pryor, (developer platform product manager at Skype), said that Skype now has over 400 developers. This week the company announced the winner of its first developer competition, Jyve, for its eponymous plug-in. Jyve adds call-forwarding and auto-responding to Skype, as well as synchronisation between Web browsers on the machines of two users who are talking over Skype, and several other features. Skype launched a beta on Wednesday with call forwarding. "[Jyve] beat us to that," said Pryor. "They are very innovative."

Another weekend, another wedding

2005-08-10T23:48:00.000-04:00

I'm not kidding - Carolyn and I have been invited to ten weddings this year, and I must say I'm looking forward to each one of theml. Not only that, but I'm also saving all the wedding invitations so that I can compare them at the end of the year. But that's a topic for another entry.

However, there was more to this weekend then just a wedding; at least there was supposed to be more. My crazy Saturday plan included being picked up by my brother from the wedding and heading to Long Island for party at Conor's house. My plan was timed perfectly, and if I was picked up at 7:30 pm in DC we could make it to Long Island in time for the last ferry at 12:30 and party with the rest of the night away. I even put together a mix CD for the party that I could not wait to show off.

I knew that my day may not go as planned when my brother, still reeking of beer, showed up at my apartment at 1pm on Saturday. Since I had to leave for the wedding, I showed him the bags to pack, and told him to finish the mix CD with his songs. I am no longer certain that his silent nodding indicated that he understood all the directions.

I was ready to make my "good-byes" round at 7 pm when I got a call from my brother telling me that he just started burning the CD and that he may be a little late. I told him to abandon the plans for the CD and come straight to the reception place, but his cavalier attitude prevailed and he convinced me that we’ll be in Long Island on time.

An hour later, as the last of the guests were departing from the wedding and I was assuring everyone that my ride is only minutes away, I received a phone call from Vitaliy telling me the gates were locked. I knew for the fact that there were no gates where I was standing and realized that Vitaliy drove to the site of the ceremony by mistake. Another thirty restless minutes past before my brother picked me up to begin our journey, which turned out to be much shorter then we expected.

As I was taking a break from lecturing my brother on value of accountability and punctuality, apparently he was late due to a hang-over that took him out of the commission for a few hours, I got a call from a very "relaxed" crowd in New York. Apparently, they were partying late on Friday and the tones of Conor's and Vineet's voices told me that my hopes of finding an "Animal House" like party upon my arrival were just as good as my chances for meeting Becka 2.0 (Verizon inside joke).

So, I told my brother to turn around, and we headed back to Baltimore. As it turned out, Saturday night was the "slowest" time of the "Conor Weekend," and the real fun times happened at high seas earlier that afternoon. On the other hand, my evening in Baltimore turned out to be quite fun. It included having great Sushi, teaching my brother how to use "training" chopsticks and watching Wedding Crashers.

And of course, we concluded the evening in the Elbert fashion. When I dropped my brother up at my parents’ house, we realized that neither of us had the keys. So as my brother was climbing to the balcony, and I was trying to find the "imaginary" spare key under the welcome mat, my parents woke up. Luckily, they were more amused by the site of their children trying to break into the house then frightened by a possibility of burglars. Thank GOD!

Harry Poter coundtdown

2005-07-13T10:41:00.000-04:00

I don't know if everyone is swept away by the Harry Potter craze as much as the Elbert household. Our devotion to the stories of the teenage wizard is not as deep as during the days of my frequent participation on the mugglenet.com, but both Carolyn and I are pre-reading the Harry Potter books. Also, our weekend is planned around going to the near-by Barnes and Noble to pick up a fresh copy of the book and reading it.

Wedding in Colorado

2005-07-11T11:32:00.000-04:00

This weekend I flew out to Colorado for a wedding of Carolyn's cousin. The event was pretty fun and we partied late into the night. Here are the
pictures.

More to follow...

The ghost of "Wedding Task"

2005-06-28T13:43:00.000-04:00

Even after we said our "I do's" and flown half-way around the globe for the honeymoon we still are being chased by the ghosts of "wedding tasks." Most of you are pretty familiar with my systematic approach to dealing with the wedding tasks, as my Microsoft Project plan for the wedding has been discussed at great length in the months leading up to April. However, all of the tasks and flows on the Gant chard had a very important end date - April 23rd, 2005. You might imagine what shock it has been to me to spend entire Saturday, including Saturday night, working on a Wedding related task, and still have a growing list of tasks to complete.

I learned about "Thank you" notes sometime in March, when I received it from one of the weddings that I have yet to attend, and at that time it seemed like a pleasant afterthought to a much bigger and more strenuous activity. After learning about it, I recall doing a few things, here and there, to aid the completion of them, but mainly I was under the impression that it will get done. A few weeks after returning from Australia, I was reminded of the "notes" when I stumbled on the Wedding Etiquette Site that insisted that all the Notes should be mailed six to eight weeks after the wedding. And that's where the cycle began. Now, the Notes were hanging over our heads, like a ticking clock that may set off an alarm so loud that you will just want to smash it with a hammer. So last weekend, exactly nine weeks after our wedding, ahem, we sat down to write the notes. And sometime after eleven, when I could not hold the pen any more and my fingers were aching from moistening so many the envelopes, we were done!

At this point, we just have a few more notes to mail out, but I'm already starting my new post-wedding task list. In addition to thank you notes, it includes sending a bunch of photo's to the videographer for the DVD, meetings with photographer to finalize the albums, making the albums for the wedding and the honeymoon, planning the "First Anniversary", etc. Well, the last one I might actually enjoy, but the rest of the items make me feel like I'm in a horror movie.

Shock and awe

2005-06-22T10:37:00.000-04:00

I was recently interviewed by a quarterly publication about my work project at Verizon. At the end of the interview I was asked a question about my career aspirations. After giving a very well-rounded response, sighting desire to work on more technical challenges, inspire innovation, and drive operational excellence, I began to sense that the interviewer expected a more "colorful" answer. In fact, she mentioned that one of her previous interviewees replied with a response that he wanted to become an astronaut in five years, a drastic change from his current position of a mechanical engineer.

This got me thinking that in some key moments in your life, one needs to be able to step away from the "normality" of well-roundness and make a strong impression through "shock and awe." In the boardroom or in any group setting, it always helps to be the one who makes a lasting impression. Of course, a positive impression is better then just any impression or abnoxious impression, but one needs to be able to stand out somehow.

So, going back to my interview, I imagine that my response was very very non "shocking"and non-sticky and I expect that my interview will just be a footnote in the article.

Comments?

Curb your enthusiams

2005-06-19T11:38:00.000-04:00

Some of you may know of a great show on HBO called Curb your enthusiasm. It is a great show about a man, Larry David, who speaks his mind and has very obscure and ironic things happen to him. Such was my day yesterday.

It began with a four hour shopping trip to Tyson’s corner. I bought a boatload of clothes – new linen pants, a Lacoste polo, and a few other pieces. I felt pretty happy with myself so I decided to wear those pants out. And that’s when the fun began.

I met up with G and Leah and we headed out to a Mexican restaurant. As I was having my third margarita, I spilled a huge blob of guacamole on my new pants. Guacamole landed two inches above the napkin that I had on my lap. Strike one!

After dinner, we went out to meet up with G’s co-workers at a bar in Adams Morgan. It was my first time in that area, and I really liked it. It felt like a college-town. After a few hours of drinking, we were spent, at we decided to for pizza at a local place. For four bucks, they give you a slice that has to fit on two plates, and it still spills over. Well, as Carolyn and I were sharing the pizza, it fell over making streaks on both of our clothes. Strike two!

Finally, we were heading home. But before we got to our car, we stopped by McDonald’s for a bio-break. While I was going into McDonald’s I almost started a fight with this guy who tried to touch Carolyn’s butt. I started yelling at the guy, but he just walked away. While I was yelling, I was shaking the soda that Leah asked me to hold. When I realized that the soda was all shaken up, I tried to be sneaky and let out the gas. Well, it backfired, and added soda stains to my new white pants. Strike three!

We concluded the night by sharing a ride back to our apartment. As we were pulling into our driveway, Leah was telling us about the songs she wants to use in the wedding. As she was telling us about a super creative idea of a Hawaiian version of “Over the Rainbow, I blurting that the song is played at every wedding and is totally over played. She did not take it very well. She abruptly turned away and stopped talking.

So all in all, I had a pretty fun day. I almost started a fight, put three very different stains on my brand new pants, and pissed off fiancé of one of my good friends. Oh yeah, I fell asleep on the couch. HBO can totally pay me for this script!

MTV Movie awards

2005-06-10T12:13:00.000-04:00

MTV Movie awards have been a long established favorite of mine, since the early days of cable. Lately, the actual show has lost a lot of its appeal and I haven't watched it for a few years. This year, my TiVo recommended recording the show, so I was delighted to ablidge. After returning from work, I decided to tune in and watch the pre-recorded version of the show. My viewing was full of disappointments. Jimmy Fallon is not nearly as funny hosting an award show as he is performing SNL skits. The glitzed out Lindsey Lohan and her potsy of Mean Girls dominated the show. The commericals were so long, that a two hour show lasted well past it's scheduled time. The one highlight for me was seeing Dusting Hoffman immitating Eminem's crotch-grabbing antics. Overall, definitely a waste of my two hours. I did like Foo Fighter's performance at the end, and I'm now listening to the accoustic side of their 'In your honor' album.

Verizon's G-Unit

2005-06-01T22:11:00.000-04:00

This post might be only for my Verizon homies...

So while working out the last song that played on my ipod was "This is how we do" by The Game featuring 50 Cent and Loyd Banks. As I was listening to the words of that song, I was having a "moment of truth" - we are Verizon's G-Unit and this is our theme song. We are those guys that people dismissed in the early days - "they say I'm no good cuz I'm so hood rich folks don't want us around." People did not think we could launch HotWire, saying "those crazy guys in Waltham, what do they think they're doing." 50 goes on to rap - "It took two months, but Fifty got it done, signed with G-Unit, had homies like, huh?" We are breaking all kind of records in Verizon and now people are starting to recognize it. And finally, the song concludes - "My flow sounds, betta than average. On tracks I'm a savage, i damage any homies tryin' to front on my clique (G-Unit!)" That's so us, baby! We are a strong team and we get things done as a team - Voice-Wing!

So ok, one really needs to make a huge leap to compare launching products in Verizon with the rap game, but we are the guys "who came up to fast" and now people "don't try to front." Just substitute all the 'pistol wippin' references with architecture calls and 'ridin' low' with writing really good code and the comparison becomes much more real, and it doesn't sound so unrealistic. Hmmm...

When in Rome...

2005-05-31T15:50:00.000-04:00

Psychologists in Stanford have confirmed the old addage - "When in Rome, do as Romans." According to the results of their study, the subjects recieved a message from either a recorded or mimicked VR bot. Participants registered much better responses when a messenger mimicked their appearacne, actions, gestures, and body language. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67659,00.html I looked at the data, and even though the sample size is pretty small, and the standart deviation is pretty high, some definite trends emerge.

First of all, it's very very cool that the Stanford students were able to hack this together. (Sean you should check it out sometime) Secondly, it explains why whenever I go to a different country, or a region, or even watch a movie, I seem to want topick up the manerism and accent. It annoys and ammuses that people that are with me, but perhaps my brain is responding to the natural urge to mimick the people in your surrounding to be accepted quicker. Or maybe I'm some sort of a super-human and I can transform myself to make the most favorable impression? I might just need to work on that a little bit in my spare time.

Am I smiling?

2005-05-19T01:01:00.000-04:00

Well, over the past two weeks Caroly and I were in Australia for our honeymoon, during which we took about 800 pictures. One of the most difficult things about posing of so many pictures is making a smile! What we found most useful in posing with a pleasant smile is trying to generate a "genual" smile, rather then forcing a fakie. It was quite hard to make a picture look good with a fake smile

As it happened, I just finished reading new Malcom Gladwell's book - Blink, which has a chapter on mapping of facial reactions. As it turned out, facial reactions can be mapped to some 30+ variables, combinations of which generate emotions. Thus a fake smile may have some of the imotions that correspond to a real smile, but not all or with some distortions.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a survey that tests one's ability to distinguish between a real smil on a stranger's face and a fake one. Having gotten 14 out of 70, 40% better then a coin flip. It's pretty cool test and can help in many social and buisness settings.