Mental Tumbleweeds

O is for Overboard

2006-08-01T14:03:00.000-05:00

Why haven't I kept up with this blog? Well, its simple really. I got a boat. Working on and sailing a boat is much more fun than, say, posting to a blog. So, I guess it doesn't happen.

Unfortunately, I've had a hard time keeping my passengers on board. I've dunked three people so far. One intentionally. The other two... less so. But, on the bright side, I've learned a lot about the handling of my hobie cat, and can say with some certainty that I might not dunk anyone else this season.

Actually, I took it out yesterday at dawn. Started out kind of leisurely and slow, but the wind picked up, and I had a screaming good time! Sitting out over the edge of a hobie cat, when the windward hull lifts off the water by a few inches is one of the most exhilarating things ever. I got a really good feel for the correct fore/aft balance that is required to do that correctly. Its that balance that keeps the whole thing from capsizing. I'll see if I can post a few pics as well.

N is for NVC

2006-05-26T15:56:00.000-05:00

Ok, its not a Wikipedia word, its the New Venture Challenge at University of Chicago's Business school.

And GrubHub won it. We beat out 55 other teams to take first place along with a little dough. This should really help us on our way to financing. Matt and I have been getting the financing ball rolling for the last 2 months, and this should give us a real competitive advantage to getting the deals closed. Heck, we've even met with a lawyer to get the corporate structure set up correctly.

The class was really great. I learned a ton. I'm thinking about the possibility of applying to their evening MBA program. Might be a lot of fun and very challenging.

M is for Metadata

2006-03-25T01:08:00.000-06:00

Metadata is "data about data". It is usually a very strictly formatted way of keeping track of larger amounts of data: a card catalog is a good example. Most of the time one sees reference to it in the computer world.

An excellent example of Metadata is Wikipedia's article on Wikipedia. Its a very long article that discusses the philosophy, history, praises and criticisms of the site.

I didn't actually look any M words up this time because i wanted to talk about Metadata and Wikipedia itself. I've been amazed by the number of people who have told me that its an interesting site, but the accuracy is not very high. I've been stunned by the fact. The Wikipedia article itself is very unbiased and discusses the open source philosophy that "Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow". The premise is that the probability of 1,000 users spotting an error is more likely than the editor of a print encyclopedia will pick an expert that would not make those errors.

The doubt about the accuracy of the articles comes from two main sources:
1)Academia: who suspect that non experts will incorrectly contribute information they don't know fully
2)An anti-web bias: People suspect that if its published on the web it will be less accurate than print because of less peer review, less strict citing of sources, and that guy who is trying to sell us all Viagra pills.

To all this I say: WHAT THE HECK! People complain about the accuracy of the largest collection of easily available information in the most languages ever collected, and then they go log on to myspace.com. Good thing thats another M word: here is a definition for you:

Myspace.com: A website that gained prominence in late 2005 and rose to become the 5th highest trafficked website. They achieved this by providing the same features and abilities that have been available from countless web sites for the last 10 years. The web site encourages long periods of engagement by being one of the slowest and buggiest websites ever created. Finally, users flock to myspace to see lots of coloful, dazzling ads and get messages from "friends" who have "webcams" and want to "chat".

Myspaces has further frustrated 74% of all employees who work in website related fields as the other 26% are trying to see how they can make their website like myspace. Programmers are told: Well, myspace uses such and such a system, and we also want to have a slow site. It turns out all of these fast sites are just encouraging low attention spans. Why don't you just make me the Sunday drive of websites. "

Hey, maybe I'll try a new feature. Mail me some words that start with O, and I'll see if I can do some research and find a common thread between them all. Go ahead, make it tough. (I've already started N, so you've got a couple of days to email me)

GrubHub Rocks Out!

2006-03-23T15:36:00.000-06:00

So, we finally got GrubHub up and running in San Francisco, New York, and Milwaukee. The San Francisco and Milwaukee sites have about 25% of the menus for all the restaurants that deliver in those cities. Not a bad start. We're hoping to get all the menus by late Spring.

Also, a fan of ours wrote a song. Check It!

L is for Leprosy,Lymes Disease, and Lesch-Nyhan syndrome

2006-03-21T16:47:00.000-06:00

I've been reading about the idea of plumbing vast amounts of data for useful or interesting articles. The idea of reading about what I'm reading about comes under the idea of Meta-data, so I'll probably talk about that tomorrow. But, since today and tomorrow are not accessible as data points in a doubly linked list, I can't say for sure. Anyway, I've come across a cautionary note a several times that warns me that I'm to be besieged by an unfathomable number of diseases. Any possible apect,function, or trait of the body can be abnormal,broken or uncharacteristic because of some truly horrible and rare disease. In fact, the more rare the disease, the longer the article. Doubtless to the medical community, finding a new disease and viciously defending it as different from all other diseases is analogous to a religion major coming up with a "new idea" about God.

So, if it strikes your fancy, read a little bit about Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome Its a pretty nasty, incurable disease that effects one in 380,000 children. Think about the trait you value in yourself most highly. If you are truly exceptional, that trait will be shown in about 1 in 1000 other human beings. But, you start to get the feeling as you are reading this stuff that there are so many rare diseases out there, that if you totaled up the probability of having one it would be over 100%. Shouldn't the CDC have a statistical branch that whacks researches into line:

"Yes ma'am I'm sure its a very nasty disease, but neurological disorders are only allotted .002% of the human total. We just gave Hodgkins 7% of that and Lou-Gerric took me out to lunch, so he gets 8.5%. So, I'm sorry, but you are going to have to split a 1.4% with tourrettes YOU LOUSY ASSHOLE. Actually, nevermind, I have that, so they get the total. Go beg some probability from another disease, I hear that 'floating appendix' is out of fashion these days"

No, seriously, what I was really thinking that made me want to write this post was that what do you do when your child starts chewing off his fingers and its because of a disease that no doctor could possibly diagnose correctly. I wonder if we don't come in contact with the reality and pain of these diseases more often not because of their rarity, but because we have a very strong bias towards the opinions and feelings of the living. Actually, that bias is also apparent in war. In a war where 25% of the soldiers die, you still hear so much about the nobility of brotherhood,courage, and honor. The fact is, you aren't getting the other side of the story, you know, from the dead guys.

Li-Froumeni Syndrome Causes several types of cancer, at a young age, and repeating throughout life, basically a fully automatic version of cancer with a big clip

Ligamentous LaxityLoos e ligaments can cause uncordination, or on the flip side flexibility. Depends a lot on musculature

Lupus ErythematosusAn auto-immune disease known as "the great imitator" because it looks like so many other problems. A face rash associated with the disease gives wolf-like features. This bizarre feature, along with its difficulty to diagnose has made sufferers of it the subject of ridicule and suspect of hypochondria

LymphangioleiomyomatosisAn incurable lung disease that affects 'women of childbearing age'. It has no known cause (not even smoking!), but is definitely not cancer.

Ok, maybe something less depressing tomorrow, what do you say chaps!
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A couple of people were excited about reading my blog everyday. What the heck! I never said every day! But, you can subscribe to the google group here
and you'll get a daily email.

K is for Krazy Popes

2006-03-19T23:50:00.000-06:00

So, here comes the first Wikipedia attempt. I hope you didn't expect I'd start with A.

Recommended article for K:

Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara

HOLY COW! I expected this to be really tough. There is a lot of information in the Wikipedia, and on my first try, I hit a really interesting article. Edgardo Mortara was a son in a family of 8 in a Jewish family. He got sick at 6 years old, and a serving girl baptized him to keep him from going to hell if he died. The pope got wind of it and ordered that the child be kidnapped because church doctrine said a Christian must be raised by Christian parents. The event catalyzed the rejection of the Papal authority and the annexation of the Papal states leading towards the formation of Italy as a modern nation state. It would be an exaggeration to say that the whole thing was caused by this one event, but to think that 1500 years of Papal rule in Italy was ended by events that were sparked by this is pretty amazing.

Edgardo went on to become a catholic priest, but was told by the Arch-Bishop of new York that his efforts to evangelize the Jews were an embarrassment to the Catholic Church.

Other articles:

Kiana, Alaska: A city of 244 in Alaska. Check out the map

Kia ora: means be well/healthy in Maori, the name of the language of the natives by the same name in New Zealand

Kickboxing: Japanese Kickboxing officially outlaws the use of Thai Music.

Kid Dracula: Video game character: Kid Dracula is half human, half vampire, as his mother was a mortal. Although he loved his father, he soon learned that spreading his father's evil was wrong. Even as a youngster, he fought for good against evil monsters who threatened humans. Even then he knew how to use a Ball of Destruction

A beginning

2006-03-18T19:05:00.000-06:00

We'll begin with a question. Actually, we just began with a statement. Actually 3 statements and then a question. Do I have anything to say worth reading? Well, I've thought about recording my thoughts from time to time and have only now come up with the motivation to make a commitment. Partly, it came from a realization that I indeed had content that others may enjoy reading. What new development was it that prompted this? Well, lets take a step back and review what subject matter might be discussed here and who might find it interesting.

1.GrubHub. I founded this business about three years ago. It started as a hobby, then became a job, and is now showing promise as a corporation with national scope. I've often thought it would be valuable and interesting to document the transition from humble beginnings to the final destination: either abject failure and bankruptcy, or national success. I'm afraid I'm never able to envision a middle ground. Who might read this: Well, certainly people to whom I'm personally connected, but potentially also others who are starting businesses of their own. Unfortunately, we've developed quite a few ideas that are better left unpublished to the world at large, so I've always been a little hesitant to lay it all out there. But I've decided it might be interesting.

2. My personal life. Plenty of people right about their personal lives. And that's interesting to those who know them. A very few have poignant or funny enough comments to merit a more general audience. I'm thinking specifically of David Gandy at http://byscuits.com/ I think I'll try to focus on this in terms of travel writing as I've had some success with that in the past.

3. This is the new idea I've been thinking of. I recently read Know-It-All by A.J Jacobs. He undertook to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. I've had a similar idea of plumbing the increasingly fathomless depths of Wikipedia on a daily basis. But his book inspired me to this idea: I'm going to try to read 5 topics in a single letter per posting and comment on the single one I found most interesting. So, even if my personal life and business don't suit your fancy, You'll be getting an interesting fact that has been selected from a pool of 5 interesting facts every post. Think of it as a combination of Readers Digest and American Idol.