Dave Morin

Family heritage is a pretty cool thing. But, I feel like a lot of the time the family story is lost in only a couple of generations. Either the family forgets to pass it down, or the story just doesn’t get transfered to the new generations. Leaving everyone with just saying: “Yeah, I’m like, 1/4 german, 1/4 english, and like 1/2 irish.” I have a good buddy working to fix the family tree problem web 2.0 style. Think social networking meets friendster for the family tree. I’m excited to see what comes of it.

In the meantime, I’m in Boston for work this week. Boston’s cool, because almost all of my mother’s side of the family is from here. One of the coolest parts about this is that my great-great-grandfather built one of the coolest buildings in the entire city. Right on the corner of Boylston and Tremont.

The Little Building.

What’s cooler? Emerson College uses the building as its basic hub of operations. The bookstore, dining hall, student union, and dorms. I can’t help but have a little bit of pride that something that my lineage created is not only in one of the coolest locations in Boston, but that it lives on as an intergral part of a higher education institution.

I love higher education, and I can’t help but think this is just pretty incredible that my family’s building is being used to house a college today.

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So, I had to start MySQL from the command line in Mac OS X Server this morning. I don’t usually blog on super technical topics, but I had a hard time finding the answer to my question with Google this morning of how to do this. So, I’m blogging it in hopes that I can answer this question for the masses in case they need it.

To start or boot MySQL from the command line in Mac OS X Server:

sudo ./bin/mysqld_safe

Enter your sudo password. And, you’re back up and running. Brilliant!

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You know you’ve got a problem when people don’t want to fly your airline because of your equipment.

Another quote from Kelly. And, right on the money. American Airlines has problems. Their new ad campaign claims to have insight into why a person flys. The quote on the splash page embodies everything that is wrong with spending thousands, if not millions, of dollars on an ad campaign rather than infusing the money into the customer’s experience.

It’s the destination, not the flight. It’s why you fly.

American’s right, we fly because we can’t wait to get to the destination. Some of us can’t wait to see a loved one, or get to the next business destination. But, we also care about what happens in flight. We care how comfortable your seats are, what amentities you provide. Even if those amentities are the “little things.” We care.

Right now American’s entire fleet is littered with some of the worst airplanes developed in the last 20 years. The customer experience is a tragedy. Frontier is a little airline run out of Denver, Colorado with an entire fleet of the best planes on the market, Direct TV in-flight, great snacks, and pilots with a sense of humor.

You can jump up and down screaming at your customers all you want. Even if you’ve got a brilliantly designed ad campaign, the product matters. Design matters. The experience matters.

Why not spend that ad money on keeping pillows on your planes? Changing the snacks? Giving your pilots a comedy class? Maybe even evolving your brand (that aluminum look has to go) and the old-school MD80s all of your customers hate.

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Adobe+Macromedia is a scary (scary) thing. Adobe is the principle player in the print market, playing around a little in web development technologies. Macromedia is the principle player in the web development market, playing around a little in print technologies.

This morning Adobe made a move to acquire Macromedia. This concerns me on an alarming level as an objective and involved individual in the technology community.

I’ve never been a fan of mergers on the highest level. And, predominantly they tend to stifle innovation throughout entire industries (case in point: Microsoft). This one really worries me. And, it should worry you too. Many of the top web professionals love and revered Macromedia products as the standard. Period.

This could be either good or bad depending on what Adobe chooses to do with key parts of the Macromedia product line. I suggest they leave the Dreamweaver/Fireworks/Flash line alone. If they, say, shut it down in favor of the far inferior GoLive, they’ll have angry mobs with pitchforks in San Jose.

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I figure, since I created the category, that I should start knocking out a few blogs on the fabulous restaurants that I run into coast-to-coast. I’ve got a thing for eating out, and even more of a thing for finding great places to eat out. I am also lucky to live in one of the greatest cities on the planet for diversity of cuisine. So, that being said, if you find yourself in Chicago, you have to check out Wildfire. I’ve been there twice now, once with Jill back in January, as well as this past week while in town again for work.

Its ridiculously good.

They specialize in basically anything wood-fired, specifically some of the best steak I have ever encountered. This tends to be a pretty high mark, especially coming from someone with Montana roots. They even accent your dining experience with vintage Chicago jazz.

Check it out if you are ever in the windy city. Your appetite will thank me.

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