Dan Weinreb’s blog

It’s fun to buy presents for friends. But what if it’s a friend whose home is already too cluttered? Or what if they have as many cool mugs, plates, vases, etc. as I need.

A solution? Cards! That is, cards in the sense of birthday cards, only blank ones that you can use for anything, including just a letter. They always come with suitable envelopes.

Consider all the benefits:

• Good ones are not easy to find, but not so hard to find that you just get frustrated, so shopping for them is fun.
• Choosing which card to buy, and which card would be good for whom, is a fun way to exercise your aesthetic sense and contemplate what would make your friends happy.
• They are gifts, so they don’t clutter up your own house.
• They’re inherently ephemeral, so they needn’t clutter up the recipient’s house.
• Nearly anyone can find a use for a nice card. Their own friends appreciate getting real cards; they mean a lot more than email.
• Often you are supporting real artists, sometimes even artists you meet in person at craft fairs selling their cards, or even people you know personally.

You can find interesting and pretty cards at fairs such as The Cambridge River Festival, or at book stores, especially independent book stores (which, in the face of web commerce, need all the help they can get these days).

I rarely post about day-to-day events, but this is an exception.  My family is travelling out west.  My wife Cheryl, and my son Adam (almost 18, going into his senior year of high school), are first going to Seattle so that Adam can attend residential Cybercamp for two weeks.  We had planned to do this at Bentley College, as we did for the last two years, but the parent organization (Giant Campus) has shut down about half of the Cybercamps across the USA this year due to lack of signups.  (Presumably this is due to the recession.)  Adam very much wants to stay on his promotion track (counselor in training, etc) so that he can be a counselor next summer.  Cheryl spent a long time researching alternatives, and this one works the best.

Cheryl and I spent all day yesterday getting her and Adam all set to leave.  At noon, Cheryl said that she wanted a netbook to bring, so I went to Staples, bought one, and spent hours removing bloatware, and putting in a new firewall, anti-virus too, and the apps she needs.  They left this morning at 4:00 AM for their 6:00 AM flight (she scheduled it, so don’t blame me).  Adam is doing two weeks of Cybercamp, and Cheryl is having a good time and picking Adam up for the weekend a week from now (Cybercamp ends Friday afternoon and resumes Sunday).

I’ll be here through Thursday (8/6).  On Friday (8/7) I have a 7:00 AM flight to San Jose.  I’ll be staying at Bill York’s house for a week.  Then Cheryl and Adam will fly down from Seattle on Sat (8/15), and we’ll see friends around S.F., the Bay Area in general, and Santa Cruz.  We’ll all see the Hearst Castle for the first time, and we’ll be staying in San Luis Obispo (at the Madonna Inn, although they didn’t give us one of the best special rooms).  We’re also signed up for the special nighttime tour of Alcatraz (Cheryl and I did the regular tour about 20 years ago).  We have a long list of places to visit, some of which we’ll get to, including the Computer Museum, the Intel Museum, and the Winchester Mystery House (Cheryl and Adam have already been there, but Adam very much wants to go back and show me).

We will be back on the evening of Tuesday 8/25.  Adam’s first day of school is Thursday 8/27.

To my friends in California, I want to see every one of you, but I don’t think I’ll manage to pull that off.  If you would like to get together and have not already communicated with me about it, please send me email so we can try to work out a meeting.  See you soon!

For those of you who got the “Change in status” mail from LinkedIn: no, I have not changed jobs.  When I do an angel investment, I create a new “Current Job” item so that I’ll turn up in LinkedIn queries by company. LinkedIn does not provide a way to control the order in which these items appear; it’s sorted by how recently you added the item.  I could remove and re-add ITA Software, but I’m not entirely sure that there would not be some undesirable effect.  I’ll say more in a subsequent post about how I use LinkedIn.

Daily Grommet is a web site that tells you about one cool product every day. There’s a video showing all about it, as well as a written description, and you can click through if you want to buy it. Some of the products tend to be oriented towards women, but not all of them. The “product” also also sometimes a worthy charitable organization. Jules calls each product a grommet.

The company was founded by my friend, Jules Pieri. She and her team carefully test each product. In fact, Jules once recruited me to help test out a new kind of American caviar. (She provided champagne as well; it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.) The only other member of the team I’ve met so far is Nataly Kogan, the Chief Community Officer and a great entrepreneur as well. I’m looking forward to meeting the rest of the team; their office is very close to where I live.

I have bought four or five products through Daily Grommet, some as presents for my wife (shh, don’t tell her yet!) and friends, and some for myself. The coolest one I’ve bought so far is the “foodloop” Trussing Tool, which is like a reusable cable tie (sorry, I’m an engineer) that you can put around food, instead of using twine. I gave these to my wife, and my friends Ed and Scott, all of whom are experienced cooks, and they all liked them a lot. You can buy past grommets (click on “Past Grommets”).

If you know of any product that would make a good grommet, please send mail to them.

(Note: I have no financial interest in this company, nor any business ties at all. I just like it, and Jules is my friend.)

Jeannine Mosely has created the world’s largest business-card origami structure ever: a model of Worcester’s Union Station. It has even more cards in it than her order-3 Menger’s Sponge.

The basic work of making modules was done by many kids in many public school classes in Worcester, who had a lot of fun doing it, under Jeannine’s supervision. Many people helped her with the final assembly.

There’s a very nice web site about the project. My family braved the wind and snow yesterday to drive out to the Worcester Art Museum and see it. Up to the last day, Jeannine was worried that it wouldn’t be finished in time for the First Night (New Year’s Eve) celebration, but she got it all done. (Technically, there’s a bit more to do but it certainly looks finished.) It was a huge amount of work!

Here are the photos I took.

To help the builders remember how to do all the steps, Jeannine and I made two videos: Part 1 and Part 2.

Congratulations, Jenny!