Euro Trip 2024 – Milan

The entire family took a spring break trip to Italy and Ireland. The trip was pricey and tiring but we had a fantastic time and made some memories that we’ll remember forever.   This post is just the start of our trip.

Given that this was our first real trip as a family, my main goal was for everyone to just have a good time and want to travel more. On that front, it was a huge success. We had no arguments, meltdowns or even disagreements.  We had a blast.

It was also huge for the kids. They were able to experience being in another country where they saw new cultures, new languages and people who didn’t look or talk like them.  You could tell it was eye-opening.  Hunter especially loved it. He said that if there’s one place he wants to live in the world it’s Rome.

On to some day-to-day details. I’m doing this (below) mostly so I remember exactly what we did.

Thursday (24 hours before the trip)

We were supposed to leave Thursday morning but Diane and I went out of breakfast on Wednesday and we discovered that Italy won’t let us in with Diane’s passport as it expires in 74 days.  This is news to us. After initially panicking and thinking about cancelling the entire trip, Diane hustled her face off and got to the passport office and managed to get a passport turned around in 24 hours.  We pushed our flights back one day and were off on Friday.

Friday

We’re off.  It’s a long flight but everyone’s pumped.

At SFO. Note that Hunter's jacket won't actually make its way home

We do one flight to JFK and then another red-eye flight to Milan. Continue reading “Euro Trip 2024 – Milan”

Puppies for Everyone

We have some new additions to the Lewhouse (and Teubner) families.  Here’s what happened…

My brother-in-law, The Boss (aka Mike Teubner), has been researching dog kennels and breeders.  He and Liz previously had a German Shepard and loved him. They loved the intelligence of Moose but didn’t like the killer instinct and protectiveness. Sometimes it was too much. There was a period where Moose wouldn’t let anyone, even Liz’s best friend, into the apartment.  So, Boss wanted to find a German Shepard type but a bit sweeter, a bit more like a Golden Retriever but still with high intellect. It turns out that he found a place that has dogs just like that. It’s on the border of Colorado and Kansas, a 2.5 hour drive from their home in Denver.

Over Christmas break I was talking with The Boss and he mentioned that he was headed out there just after New Years. I said it sounded interesting and decided to book a ticket to tag along with him.  Maybe we’d see a dog we like too as we’re in the market for a new dog. Worst case scenario is that I learn more about dogs and spend some good time with my family.

When we got to the location, we saw all sorts of dogs. Some are a bit older (1 and 2 years) and well trained. Mike was looking at those dogs and getting to know them. While that happened, I was introduced to a 6-month female puppy who I immediately fell in love with. She and I connected immediately (at the time I used the word “imprinted”) and it was game over. I had to take her home with me.  We’re calling her Leia.

At the same time, my niece had a dog who came up and adopted her. For the remainder of the trip, these two were inseparable.  It was clear to Liz and Boss that if they wanted to get a dog that they liked, it would be in addition to this dog as Reagan was never going to let this cute little puppy go (she also got the name Waffles).

We thought we were done and heading home.  But before we go we saw a cute little 4-month old puppy that was super friendly and well behaved. We asked about him and it turns out that it is Leia’s half-brother (same dad, different mom) who has a tail that was messed up at birth and had to be docked (cut off) as it was rat-like.  The kennel-owner said that nobody really wants him due to the tail issues.  All his siblings have been adopted and now with Leia, he’s out of siblings. Well that was enough for us to hear. Diane and I talked briefly and both immediately agreed, we’ll be taking him too!

We left with 3 adorable puppies.

The next challenge was figuring out how I get my two puppies home.

Continue reading “Puppies for Everyone”

Paris Attacks at the Stadium

I’m here in Paris for a work event with about 600 other co-workers. Last night we all had the night off and me and 2 colleagues decided to go see the France vs. Germany soccer match.  We bought some tickets online and thought we were in for a super fun night.

Little did we know what would happen. In the morning, this would be the headlines from the papers:

The match started and our seats were fantastic. We were right on the left sideline with a great view of Martial. He was incredible and scored a great goal.

About 10 minutes before half, at 9:15pm, everyone in the stadium heard a massive BOOM. It was loud and I immediately said to Jon, “that sounds like a bomb.”  Even the players noticed.  However, everyone went back to watching the game and the players kept playing.  Here’s how it sounded:

About 5 minutes later, right before half, another BOOM. It was loud. Having never been to a soccer match in the French stadium, i thought that maybe it was something that happens regularly.  Nobody seemed to be miffed about it, so i thought it was just part of the scene.

At halftime, i was standing in line for the restroom with Jon. We saw all the security guards start to close all the gates to the stadium, locking us in. We thought that was pretty strange. We told our other friend Marc, who has lived in France before, about it. He said that it was typical so they can route everyone out a central exit when the game is over. Seemed like a logical answer. We went on watching the game. You can see from this picture that we weren’t yet aware of what was happening:

I really started to think things weren’t right when i noticed there were about 10x more security standing between the crowd and the field. At this point you would think we would be freaking out, but we weren’t. We asked the people behind us if they knew anything. Nothing. Nobody knew a thing and the game continued. Nobody knew that the two blasts were bombs exploding outside the stadium at a fast food restaurant and a brasserie.  Nobody knew that the French President who was at the game was secretly evacuated.

About 15 minutes into halftime, at 9:40, there was another BOOM.  Again nobody paid it any attention and continued to watch the game. When the game finished, we were walking out of the stadium when there was a general announcement that there was an incident outside one part of the stadium.  There was a collective “hmm, that’s interesting,” and they continued to the exits. It was calm but you could lots of sirens going on outside the stadium.

As we were exiting, you could see hundreds of police and hear lots of sirens.  Then, the stadium something happened. I’m not exactly sure what it was but the people at the front of the crowd turned around scared shitless and started running as fast as they could back into the stadium. Everyone else started doing that too. It turned into a stampede. Older people and kids fell to the ground and were getting trampled.  We ran too.  After getting away (about 400 yards) from the area that people were running from jon and I reconnected with Marc and walked the opposite direction. At this point, kids were bawling and sirens were blasting. It was clear that the world was not right. We were very scared, but still in the dark about what was happening.

We finally got out of the stadium and called an Uber.  Miraculously one got to us and we told him to take us home as fast as possible. We got a call from another colleague was at a hotel.  He was walking to dinner when he came across a man in the middle of the street waving a gun. He then saw someone who was shot pouring blood. He ran to a restaurant to get cover, but they weren’t letting people in so he kept running. Eventually he got inside and called us.  Our Uber arrived about 15 minutes later to grab him and we all continued back to our listing.

My night wasn’t nearly as scary as his or some of my other colleagues but it was still unnerving. Not knowing whats happening and seeing fear on the faces of everyone in the crowd is terrifying.

When we got back to our apartment, we got online and devoured the news for hours.  It was then that we learned the facts of the night. The scariest event being the massacre at the Bataclan music club.

At that club, a few gunmen entered with AK rifles and opened fire on the 1500 people.  Most people ran to the exits. Many fell to the ground and tried to cover themselves.  The gunmen continued to fire for 10-15 minutes on the people who were laying on the ground. They reloaded 4 times. Here’s a quote from one survivor,

Ten minutes … 10 horrific minutes where everybody was on the floor covering their head. We heard so many gunshots and the terrorists were very calm, very determined. They reloaded three or four times their weapons. They didn’t shout anything. They didn’t say anything. They were unmasked and wearing black clothes and they were shooting at people on the floor, executing them.

What we know now, the next day, is that there were killings in 7 different locations and about 160 people are confirmed dead. It’s still unclear how many are injured. We also learned that the stadium bombs were supposed to go off later, when we were exiting the stadium and not during the match.

We found out today that there were 3 terrorist outside the stadium.  The first tried to get into the stadium and when security discovered the bomb on his chest, he backed away and detonated. Then the 2nd one went off 5 minutes later.  The police then found the 3rd person and as they pursued him, he donated himself.   This is why the police at the stadium wanted us to stay in the arena. I’m so thankful that their plan failed.

My company picked Paris in November as the time and location for our big annual conference to send 600 employees. We also choose Friday night as the night to spend out exploring the city. Almost everyone spent the night in and around the areas of the shootings. Talk about bad timing. While many of them were next to the events, luckily nobody was harmed.

I feel extremely lucky and now all my thoughts are around getting home and getting back to my family.

Looking back at 2011

Some things i’ll remember about 2011:

Steve Jobs’ Death & Legacy. As Esquire says…

No one ever died the way Steve Jobs died. Other people have died of cancer. Other people have died in the public eye.  But no one has ever died with the inexorable logic of their mortality feeding into a logic of expectation that they themselves created and aroused.

Reading about Steve Jobs in 2011 was a terrific experience.  He inspired me to take my passion in products to the next level.  He was truly a special individual and will be missed.

Mavericks vs. Heat. The stage was set: a team of underdogs who lost to the Heat in 2006 vs. a team of selfish divas. Down 2-1 and nearly 3-1, the scappy Mavs fought back and took the title in the most exciting NBA Finals I’ve ever seen. Continue reading “Looking back at 2011”

Tools of the Trade

A startup really consumes your life. Luckily i have a suite of sweet tools to keep my efficient and productive.  My favorites: icons

Balsalmiq.  This is sick wireframing software.  It’s so easy and intuitive, it can allow anyone to make fairly decent wires.  It’s also a great way to get ideas across to other people.   Doing a full-screen demo of wires always seems to impress people.

YuuGuu.  If you want to share your screen to another person to either do a demo or just display a problem, this is the best way to do it. We’ve tried a bunch of different types (such as Vyew) and this is by far the best.

Dropbox.  We’re not the only one who loves this.   In fact, on the Balsalmiq blog they wrote, “If you don’t use DropBox, I will shake my head at you in disapproval.”  Dropbox is a network file times 1000.  It’s incredible.  We put lots of files into Dropbox as a way to share.   In fact, i’m about to start using it as a way to share all my files across my computers and my girlfriend’s.  A great way to just do backup to another machine.

Skype.  This remains the best way to do voice-to-voice communication.  It’s also a damn good IM client.  Haven’t experimented with the screen sharing yet.

Jing.  For debugging, there is nothing better than Jing.  If you don’t know Jing, here’s the use case it solves: (1) click a button, select an area of your screen, capture a video of that area for as long as you want, click to stop and here’s a URL of that video hosted on the Jing site.  Easy as pie and incredibly useful.

TripIt.  If you travel at all, this is a must have. When you make an airline or travel reservation, all you do is forward your email confirmation to tripit and they keep track of all the details.  Once you’re at the airport all you need is their iPhone app (or mobile site) to easily grab confirmation codes

Google Apps / Docs / Tasks.   Using corporate email through Google Apps is very easy to do and eliminates lots of effort of setting up Exchange or anything else – it’s both simpler and better.  Through that we get Google Docs which has always been a tremendous way to collaborate on documents with others.  For instance, i have a doc that i use that Nader (in San Francisco) can edit each day in real-time as i work on it.  I also use tasks as a great way to keep track of what i need to do.  I love that i can add tasks from the iPhone (great tasks interface) and then see them back on machine so i can knock ’em out.

Any other items that you use that you’d recommend?  What are your favorite work tools?

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My Love of TripIt Grows

I’ve been traveling a lot lately and for each trip i make sure to throw my airline, car and hotel details into TripIt as it does a great job of building an itinerary.  You can share the trips you set up with other travelers and all collaborate together.  It also gives you an iCal link which you can put inside your Google Calendar so all your trip information is integrated right into you digital life. It’s a great application and i’ve thought so for a while

I’ve always had one complaint for TripIt and that is it’s a horrible application to access on the road.  My iPhone interface takes a long time to load and i’ve had a few times where i stood staring at an Avis employee making small talk while my TripIt page loads on my phone so i could get my confirmation number.  Those days are over as TripIt Mobile just launched and now a custom, fast-loading site has launched.  I couldn’t be more excited

Cities of 2007

I was just reading these two blog (here and here) posts about where people have been this year. I thougtht i’d take a moment at look at my travels in ’07. Here’s what i did (below). Not too shabby. I hope to put some new cities on the list in ’08.

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  • Minneapolis, MN
  • Chicago, IL
  • Key Largo, FL
  • Boston, MA
  • Washington, DC
  • Philadelphia, PA
  • Pocono Lake, PA
  • Westerly, RI
  • New York, NY
  • San Francisco, CA
  • Los Angeles, CA
  • Denver, CO
  • Las Vegas, NV

International Cities:

  • Bucharest, Romania
  • Targu Mures, Romania
  • Budapest, Hungary
  • Vienna, Austria
  • Athens, Greece
  • Tréguier, France
  • Mykonos, Greece

Dopplr is really cool

I started using the site Dopplr a few months ago when it was in Beta and thought it was just okay. I recently went back to check it out and i’m blown away.  It’s a great site.  What is Dopplr?  Dopplr is a website that…

lets you share your travel plans privately with a group of friends and colleagues whom you have chosen. It then tells you when people you know will be in the same cities. It also reminds you of people who live in the places you’re planning to visit.

In short, it keeps track of your trips and your friends and provides some goodness around that information.  What i like about this site is:

  • It knows your flickr account and your travel dates so it can grab the photos from those dates for the trip.  This is MUCH easier than uploading photos for a trip.  Don’t know why Sidestep or others don’t do this
  • For each trip, it places a Google Map and any overlaps with other friends
  • It’s very simple to use.  The site doesn’t try to do to much.  It hides alot of little functionality until you need it.  The design is very slick.