3 Weeks In: A Report

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Well, Hunter came into the world three weeks ago.  A few people have asked how it’s going.  Here are some initial thoughts:

There are some new experiences. Here’s one. Never in my life have ever not been able to go to sleep when i’m tired.  If i’m really tired at the end of a day and something comes up, i’ve always (if I’m really tired) been abel to push that item off till  the morning or do some small action to appease it enough where i can still go to bed.  Even in college, i’d take short power naps when i got really tired in the middle of the night. I’ve never been forced to stay awake, ever.  Until now. Not being able to go to sleep because a baby is just crying its face off is a new experience and it’s quite painful.

 

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The B-17 Bomber and the Checklist

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Life has gotten pretty complex. Especially in hospitals. I just read this New Yorker article and found it really fascinating.  It’s about a genius doctor that got obsessed with process and devices a checklist that is saving hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of lives.  If it is so useful for them, just think of how else it could be useful.

The article also shares a pretty cool ancedote about the B-17 bomber and how it was the first plane that required a checklist on takeoff and landing.  He writes:

On October 30, 1935, at Wright Air Field in Dayton, Ohio, the U.S. Army Air Corps held a flight competition for airplane manufacturers vying to build its next-generation long-range bomber. It wasn’t supposed to be much of a competition. In early evaluations, the Boeing Corporation’s gleaming aluminum-alloy Model 299 had trounced the designs of Martin and Douglas. Boeing’s plane could carry five times as many bombs as the Army had requested; it could fly faster than previous bombers, and almost twice as far. The flight “competition,” according to the military historian Phillip Meilinger, was regarded as a mere formality. The Army planned to order at least sixty-five of the aircraft.

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Welcome Hunter!

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We had a big change in the Lewhouse family this week.  On Monday afternoon at 5:25, we welcomed Hunter Lewis into the world. He’s definitely keeping us busy and now that we figured out how to actually get food into him. We’re rolling – at least so we think.  If you’re interested, you can read below for a timeline log of the actual birth and how it went down.

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Thoughts on the iPhone 5

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At the Kapost office yesterday, about half the company was glued to live-blogging of the iPhone 5 announcement.  What we saw was only a blog but watching it was quite a show.  A few things stood out for me:

 It’s all about the LTE.  Most people don’t realize what LTE is and what it means.  Forgot the ads you see for 4G right now – those are lies.  What most people are getting as 4G isn’t really 4G. LTE is wireless internet that is 20-50x faster.  Once you get it, you won’t need to upgrade for speed for a long time.  It’s like going from a bike to a motorcycle.  Sure, in the future you can get a faster motorcycle, but the major upgrade has happened.  (more info on LTE here)

The magic of Apple.  Only two companies make money in the mobile phone business: Apple and Samsung.  You could read that as Apple and the people who are best at copying Apple.  Apple make money because they convince us to buy something that we didn’t know we need.  The iPhone 5 is really just the same phone, but they go out of their way to show us how it is both the same and something totally different.  It’s thinner (ooohhh), it’s faster (aaaahhhh) and has more and better bells and whistles than ever before (applause).  I don’t know of any other company that asks and gets an hour of my time for them to explain to my why i should buy their product.

Desktop to Mobile.  The transition from computing being a desktop/laptop world to a mobile world is totally complete.  The graphics on the iPhone 5 now rival console gaming units.  There was a demo of a race car game and the rearview mirror on the car was showing accurate graphics.  At this point, the phone is literally just a smaller computer. Sure, not everyone has a smartphone yet, but they will and it will be a fascinating world when companies start taking advantage of the fact that everyone in the world is carrying out a crapload of computing power in their pocket.

I’m still rocking the iPhone 4 and plan on preordering a new phone at midnight on the 14th.  In fact, everyone I know who has a 4 or older is planning on upgrading to the 5.  Are you?

Two Funnels, Two Types of Content Marketing

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Note: I wrote this post on Kapost but thought I’d republish here as lots of people, especially those who read this blog, don’t really know what I do or what Kapost does.  Here’s an attempt to explain.

The term “content marketing” has been hot in 2012 and is often heralded as the best new marketing tactic.

“Sure, there are still other ways to get in front of your target audience, but content marketing is proving to be an indispensable tool to complement traditional communications strategies,” writes Brian Aitken, director of new media for the Foundation for Economic Education, on CNN’s iReport.

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Simulacrum and Beck’s New Release

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Simulacrum –  an insubstantial form or semblance of something. Example: a unicorn

The musician Beck this week announced a release a new album and he did it was really inventive way.  He released it only as a big book of sheet music.  Thus, it will only be played by other musicians.  Thousands of bands will have their own version of his album.   Really cool.

Ready for baby and the related highs and lows

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As many of you probably know, there’s a new member to the Lewhouse family joining us in September.  For the past 7 months, we’ve been getting ready in all the typical ways: buying a crib, reading about the development, deciding on birthing and breast feeding strategies.  I’ve also been getting mentally prepared for a dramatic change in my lifestyle.  

One recent TED video recently caught my eye.  The video, which is great, is about all the myths around children.  One chart in particular stood out.  It charts marital satisfaction over the course of your life.  One thing I immediately noticed is that the height of satisfaction – where you are most happy throughout your entire life – is right before you have your first child. Then things plummet: 

Looking at Diane’s belly and then back at this chart as I watched this video on my iPad made immediately made me feel as if i was sprinting towards a cliff.  Thankfully, the folks in the video dig into that chart a little more.  There’s more to it than just that one line.  The reality of the situation is that in our lives, we have control over our actions and what will make us happy.  After adolescence, where we’re not really in control of our ourselves and surroundings, we grown in happiness because we are able to control what we do  – and we do less of what we know we dislike and more of what we know we like.  This is especially true for me these days I generally avoid anything where I know i’ll be uncomfortable or possibly have a good time, such as heavy metal concerts. 

We become masters of doing what we like in our 30’s – especially if you don’t have kids.  What the next chart shows are the emotional highs and lows one feels at various stages in their life.  You can see that we have big highs and lows as teenagers and then they gradually shrink as we get a handle on the world.  Then you have a kid.  And the highs and lows become monstrous.

From what i’ve heard this is true. I hear stories of how amazing it is, and i also hear stories of how tiring and bad it gets.  I’m expecting both are true  I’m expecting to be shaken out of my lovely comfort tree into some madness. I’m expect to hate it at times, but i’m also expecting for some of the biggest highs i’ve ever felt.  I’m ready for it.  Just two more months to go. 

 

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