My brother rocks!

My talented brother designs movie posters in LA. His latest is getting acclaim. Congratulations little bruv.

Posted at 05:22PM Jan 18, 2007 by sarad in General  | 

Prejudice

My husband doesn't have a “real” job. (He hates it when I say it that way, so I say it that way a lot). He takes care of our two small children and manages our real estate investments. Part of our decision to move out of California and into Austin, Texas was to take the equity from our home there and invest it in real estate here. We currently have 5 rental properties around town that we rent.

After he finds, buys and fixes up a place, he places the ads, interviews perspective tenants and rents it out. My husband, we'll call him Charlie, is the face of our real estate empire. Our empire looks like an athletic, white, 6'1” bald man with a goatee.

I have been reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blog lately. He has a piece on Pervasive Prejudice. In it, he talks about how car salespeople pre-judge their buyers based on race and gender. That lead us to thinking...

In our quest to live the lifestyle that we have chosen we have given up our love for nice cars. Instead of the Land Rover and Audi that we owned in California, we now have a VW van and 2 old Saabs. And I'm talking old, one of them is an unkept 1968 9-3 wagon. It's a very rare car, but we've never gotten around to fixing it up. Which makes it perfect for lugging around tools and the lawn mower fits conveniently in the back.

When a tenant has a problem, Charlie shows up in his beater old car in “work clothes”. Likely, he is unshaven. To our tenants, that is their landlord. One of our houses in particular has been a problem. Or the tenants that have lived there have been. So, we are wondering, if instead of showing up in a battered old car, unshaven and in grubby clothes, he showed up in a nice car (we'd have to borrow one) and dressed up, would the tenants treat the place differently? Have the tenants that have lived in that house so far treated it so badly because they feel that their landlord doesn't care about such things as a clean house and timely rent? Are they reacting, like the car salesperson, not to him, but to his appearance?

Posted at 02:06PM Jan 12, 2007 by sarad in General  |  Comments[1]

Women's fitted tshirts are cool, but...

In a recent blog entry, Kathy Sierra talks about the qualities and benefits of the fitted women's tshirt. I whole-heartedly agree. But I think that my vendor, Antics, the one who made the FUD Fighters shirt Kathy is shown wearing, has outdone us all. Knowing that I had little kids, and knowing how much I like the shirts, they produced kid sizes and sent them to me for my kids.

I think that is worth bonus points. Thanks Antics.

Posted at 04:14PM Jan 08, 2007 by sarad in General  | 

What I did over my holiday break

I recently got back in touch with an old friend after many years. We worked together, both for my father, at a software start-up in the late 80s. The company, Pre-Press Technologies, offered one of (if not THE) first color separation software available on the personal computer – it revolutionized the publishing industry. Publishing was the Web 2.0 of the late 80s. We were the cool kids on the block. Part of the in-crowd that revolved around Apple, Adobe and Quark. And let me tell you, the parties that Kai's Power Tools would throw at MacWorld conferences were "leg-on-dary".

Now, after so many years of not talking, we've picked up exactly where we left off. Through each other we have caught up on the rest of the team that we worked with. We didn't stop talking for any particular reason, our lives just took different paths. He now lives in Connecticut outside of New York city and over Christmas break, he asked me if he sent me a plane ticket, would I fly to NY to catch up over dinner? Hell yeah I will!

A friend joined me, just because it sounded like fun. And by extraordinary coincidence, my father, who still lives in San Diego where we all worked together, also happened to be in NY the same night.

We began our adventure by touring the NY offices of DC Comics – since that is where he is now VP of Business Development. Superman, Batman, and Wonderwoman – oh my! And we went out with a small crowd of toymakers and animators. We visited the largest animation studio in Manhattan. A friend from high school came and joined us for a while before her band went on. I had every influential part of my life represented and sitting around a table – father, high school, career, and present.

We ended our whirlwind tour of all things fun and alcoholic in Manhattan in a private room at a Karaoke bar with me, my friend from Austin, the friend I had rebonded with for life, and my Dad, singing 80s power rock ballads.

I really couldn't have planned it that way or that well. Sometimes you have to just let life hit you in that back of the head and see how you feel afterward. I feel great.

Posted at 05:41PM Jan 02, 2007 by sarad in General  |