Offermann.us

Starting a big project can be tough. Especially, if we’re talking about me starting that big project.

Since I’m naturally predisposed to the paralysis that comes from over-thinking, I’m always on the lookout for stories that inspire me to Just Start. Don’t worry so much about making a mistake. Don’t try to figure out optimal path. Just Do Something.

The life story of Greg Mortenson, as told in Three Cups of Tea, contains a great example.

Greg is a mountain climber who comes back from his failed summit attempt on K2 determined to build a school for a remote village in Pakistan. He has no money, next to no possessions, and no idea how to begin. For his first step, he decides to type a letter to anyone he can think of who might be willing to donate money.

He doesn’t use a computer, because he doesn’t know how. Working away on an old typewriter, he takes all day to complete his first 6 letters. All in all, he writes 580 letters.

He sends the letters to Senators, to rich people, and to various celebrities. Oprah might help, he thinks.

For all that effort, he gets only a single response (from Tom Brokaw), netting him a total of $100. A hugely unsuccessful fundraising effort.

You could argue that sending the letters was a complete waste of time, but it got him started. He took that first step towards his goal. And now, fifteen years later, his organization, Central Asia Institute has built over 60 schools that provide education to over 25,000 students throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan

Got a big project and you don’t know where to start? Type a letter to Oprah.

Another favorite phrase of ours is “The Crux Move”. This comes from rock climbing, where, in a given climb, the crux move is the one rated hardest to complete. Master that move and you can reach the top. Otherwise, you fall.

I’m not exactly a climber (among other reasons, I’m getting increasingly more and more afraid of heights as I get older), so how we use it in our house is a little less life-and-death:

“To get the kids to bed on time, we’ve got to eat dinner early. That’s the crux move!”

We’ve used this phrase for so long and so often, I forget it’s a bit obscure. But, recently reading about a phrase with a similar meaning made me think about it again.

The new phrase came from a profile of Lenny Dykstra in the New Yorker:

“The one-one count is another of Dykstra’s baseball metaphors for life, meant to illustrate that some moments, and the choices they bring, are more fateful than others (i.e., the next pitch makes all the difference), or, in this case, that circumstances set in motion during the early stages of development are difficult to overcome later on. If a batter falls behind, one ball and two strikes, he’s in a hole from which, the statistics augur, he will not recover, even if he is Barry Bonds; and if he gets ahead, to two balls and one strike, he wrests control from the pitcher and takes charge of his own destiny.”

Have we been using our beloved “Crux Move” for too long? Perhaps it’s time to phase it out. Should “One-One Count” be the one to replace it? Can my wife stand to hear me quote the wisdom of Lenny Dykstra on a regular basis? Time will tell…

Losing momentum is a dangerous thing for me. Once I set something aside for more than a few days, there’s a good chance I’ll never get back to it.

Which means that my short-lived blog is already at a critical stage. My last post promised updates “in the next few days”, and now here it is, almost two months later, and I haven’t posted a thing.

Clearly, I’ve lost my blogging momentum.

Let’s try to pick up where I last left off and pretend like none of this happened. And, I’ll try not to lose the “Big Mo” again.

Sometimes it feels like we speak our own language at our house. But, I’m guessing that that’s not unusual. Don’t inside jokes and obscure references make up the bulk of most conversations?

Over time, we find that some phrases fall by the wayside, but others, often the unlikeliest ones, become conversation shorthand that we use again and again.

Consider the next series of blog posts to be a phrase book, useful for decoding the strange expressions you might hear us say. Today, we’ll start with a golden oldie, then in the following days, move onto more recent additions.

Squash in the Fridge

Ten years ago, my brother-in-law overheard me call out:

“Honey! The butternut squash—do you store it on the counter or do you keep it in the fridge?”

Oh, no! Crisis!

At the time, he was in a relationship that was going through a period of high drama. What kind of a future did he and his girlfriend have? Should they even stay together? (Ultimately, they didn’t.)

The contrast between their relationship and ours was too much. Obviously, my brother-in-law concluded, my wife and I were leading a ridiculously pampered life, since the most pressing issues we had to deal with in our relationship involved the proper storage of fruits and vegetables.

So, now anytime my wife and I find ourselves nattering endlessly about some everyday minutia, and we need a reminder of just how inconsequential our argument is, one of us will stop, look at the other and say:

“It’s like squash in the fridge.”

“I’m just trying to figure out this audience…it’s all dudes…Google is run by dudes!”
—Bret McKenzie, from Flight of the Conchords, as he surveyed the crowd during their performance at Google IO last week.

Google Put on Quite a Show Last Week

In my last posts that focused on the developer sessions and keynotes, I didn’t really capture the overall feel of Google IO, leaving out a few key details…

Like the Food

Google is famous for pampering its employees with their gourmet fare, and they went all out to pamper their conference goers as well. Full breakfasts, numerous lunch choices (I went with the grilled skirt steak myself), and an endless sea of snacks. There was a wall of candy bins, freezers full of Haagen Dazs Ice Cream bars, and constantly replenished sodas.

And, strategically placed throughout the Moscone Center were Googly colored bean bags upon which you could plop down and enjoy the bounty.

The Evening Party

Where there was even more food. And everflowing beer and wine…and molten chocolate. (Yes, there were fountains of molten chocolate, in which you could dip your marshmallows and cakes on a stick.) But, there was more than food. Everywhere you looked: Dozens of video games. Foosball tables. Billiards. Air Hockey. Big screen Wiis.

As I overheard one conference goer describe the scene:

"It's like a sixth grader's wet dream."

Did I Mention the Band?

Now, understand that I’m old. And, I don’t have HBO. So, I’d never heard of Flight of the Conchords. (When I looked them up on YouTube, I was shocked that each of their songs had over 1 million views. What do I know?) It turns out that this “folk-comedy duo” from New Zealand is kind of a thinking man’s Spinal Tap, with a gift for deadpan, hipster patter.

Because, it wasn’t so much their songs that had me entertained, as it was their rambling stories that they interwove into the music. They told tales of traveling in time, and being locked in David Bowie’s bathroom with not one, but two Tina Turners (one from the future, naturally), and fathering tiny, imaginary children.

At least that’s what I thought as I walked back to my hotel on Wednesday night: funny shtick, funny stories, amazing delivery.

But, I was wrong. Their music made more of an impact than I first gave it credit for, because it is now 5 days later, and I still have their closing number going through my head. You know, the one where the entire audience rose from their Googly bean bags, waved their hands in the air, and sang along:

  Brown paper, white paper
  Stick it together with tape
  The tape of love
  The sticky stuff.

(Or, An excuse to compile a bunch of links about myself for Mom…)

These days, you don’t even have to make an effort to be on the Internet. Even without starting a blog, you’ll find that your name, or your photo, or even a video of you, will somehow make its way onto the Web.

• All you have to do is work out at a gym.

  My gym is called Crossfit HEL. (Add an ‘L’ for an even more appropriate name…) Every time I complete a “Workout of the Day” (WOD), my time or score is posted on the CrossFit HEL blog. Sometimes, my photo is even posted.

• Or, you can just take an Olympic Weightlifting class. (I’m in the back row.)

  
  

• Or, you can take a class on making strawberry jam. (I’m the only guy in the video.)

I guess nowadays, there are no offline activities. All offline activities inevitably wind up online.

Five years ago, a story made the rounds of Slashdot and Ain’t It Cool News that seemed too impossible to be true. A tale of inspiration, and obsession, and pushing way past any preconceived notions of what is possible for three 12 year-old boys to accomplish.

The story: In 1983, Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb see “Raiders of the Lost Ark” for the first time and fall in love with the movie. So much so, that they decide to recreate the movie, with themselves in the starring roles. They star as Indiana Jones and Belloq. They direct. They create their own sets, make their own costumes, do their own special effects, and do their own stunts, all the while filming with 1980s era video equipment. (No digital editing for them.)

The boys work for seven years before they complete their project: a shot-by-shot remake of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.

Very few people have seen this film. Due to copyright issues, it’s never been issued on DVD (and probably never will), so it’s only been screened at a few film festivals and special charity events over the years.

On Friday night, “Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation” got its Portland premiere.

It’s an amazing thing to see. Sure, as the makers admit, the video quality is not-so-great, and the sound quality is worse. Instead of Amazonian natives chasing Indiana Jones, you see blonde boys in grass hula skirts. An “Arab native” rides a bicycle instead of a motorcycle. And, they didn’t have a monkey, so a small dog fills in the part nicely. But, as you watch, none of that matters. You really are transported, just like watching the original. And, at the same time, you can’t believe how they are able to so faithfully recreate these famous scenes.

The shootout in Marion’s bar as the the bar is set ablaze? It’s in there. How about the stunt sequence on the moving truck? The one where Indiana Jones is hanging off the front of the truck, lowers himself under it, and then lashes his bullwhip to the back of the truck so he can pull himself up. Yep, that’s in there too. They even borrowed a submarine from the US Navy to film several scenes.

Don’t believe me? See for yourself. Here are side-by-side shots from the original and the remake.

After the lights came up, Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala answered some questions from the audience, where we learned:

• They had to create the giant rolling boulder five times before getting it right. The first was created in their bedroom, but when they finished, it was too big to roll out the door. One was an unimpressive three feet tall, while another one made of chicken-wire blew away in a hurricane. Working with fiberglass turned out to be the key to getting it right
• The scene where they open the Ark of the Covenant and Belloq’s face melts required a plaster mold of Eric’s head. While making it, Eric nearly suffocated, since, instead of using dental plaster, they mistakenly used industrial plaster. Eric was rushed to the hospital with his head encased in plaster, where doctors sawed and chiseled and cut it away. Eric gave up one eyebrow and all his eyelashes for that scene!
• Chris’s cabin scene with Marion was not only his first kiss on screen…it was his first kiss ever.
• The boys were fearless with fire, and it’s a miracle they didn’t burn their house down, or seriously hurt themselves. Not only did they light numerous fires with rubbing alcohol in their basement, but once Eric lit himself on fire with gasoline.
• Steven Spielberg watched their version two times. When the filmmakers met Spielberg, he paid them a huge compliment: “Even I was inspired by what you accomplished.”

UPDATE: I just realized that I left out my favorite part from the Q&A.

• When they started this project, they didn’t have a copy of the movie on videotape, so to plan out their version, they created 600 individual storyboards. Mostly they were working from memory, but they also had a copy of the script and had a comic book version of the movie. These storyboards guided their work for the entire project. When the laserdisc version of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” came out a couple years later, Eric and Chris checked their work, and discovered that their storyboards were largely accurate.

Video from Eric and Chris’s Q&A are now posted on Youbube: (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). Also, someone else has uploaded the first 10 minutes of their remake.

How timely. The NY Times just happens to weigh in on the “Google Twin” phenomenon today: Names That Match Forge a Bond on the Internet.

So, I was wrong…My Aussie “Tom Offermann” friend isn’t my doppelgänger. He’s my Googlegänger!

Why start a blog now? Well, here’s one reason:

For far too long, when you search for “Tom Offermann” on Google, you don’t find me. Instead, the top results for that query all belong to a real estate agent located in the “Holiday Capital of the Sunshine Coast” in Noosa, Australia.

If I no longer wish to be overshadowed by my Aussie doppelgänger, then it’s time to create my own presence on the Internet. Gotta get me some of that “Tom Offermann” Google search traffic.