Churbuck.com

Update: “Officials at the state and county level declined to comment on the Cape town that has reported a salmonella case, or the individual who was affected, citing privacy laws. The only detail provided was that the sickened individual is a 49-year-old man from Barnstable County.”

I was sitting at a picnic table near Gay Head Light in the town of Aquinnah, on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, when I did the oh-so-romantic move of checking my Blackberry for messages while my poor wife tried to find something endearing about me to behold.

The voice mail icon begged to be acknowledged, so I listened to messages and heard the on-call doctor at my internist’s group tell me the results were in from my lab tests from last week, the ones ordered up after I returned from India with a hellacious case of Montezuma’s Delhi Belly.

I paged the doc and she told me I was positive for salmonella — basic garden variety food poisoning. She also told me I was part of a national epidemic, brought on by the consumption of infected tomatos (mostly Romas, or Italian Plum). When I got home I did the hypochondriac move and googled the bug. I found this newslink (up yours, Associated Press) about the spread of salmonella in Massachusetts.

County – Age – Sex

Middlesex – 33 years – Female
Middlesex – 39 years – Female
Middlesex – 5 years – Female
Middlesex – 29 years – Female
Worcester – 38 years – Male
Plymouth – 23 years – Female
Norfolk – 36 years – Male
Norfolk – 26 years – Female
Norfolk – 18 years – Female
Norfolk – 23 years – Male
Suffolk – 19 years – Male
Suffolk – 20 years – Male

I was disappointed not to see anyone from Barnstable County — and that led me to wonder why there isn’t a social network for people with gastic distress brought upon by tomatos. I want a badge to put on my blog, dammit.

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Originally uploaded by dchurbuck

It was my friend Woody’s 50th surprise party this weekend on Chappaquidick, so the wife and I popped across Vineyard Sound on the Pied Piper ferry for a night in Edgartown. We arrived early Saturday morning, rented a convertible Mini Cooper, and headed directly for Aquinnah and Gay Head. A quick tour of my favorite village — Menemsha –

then up to Oak Bluffs for a burger and a beer before checking into our room at the Charlotte Inn in Edgartown. If there are better things than driving Middle Road in Chilmark in late June in a convertible, I would like to know (okay, pedaling down Middle Road in Chilmark in late June on a vintage Italian steel bicycle).

At the Inn I did not read anything into the presence of a painting of a woodcock over the bed, nor did I feel the Victorian lithograph of a lady lanquidly leaning on her suitor’s big brass machine gun was out of place. But I digress. The Inn was total Interior Designer Porn, so my wife was occupied analyzing the subspecies of wall paper and window treatments while I wished I had packed a fly rod and some Deceivers.

 

The party was literally a luau. Wife and I had to leave early as I am still recovering from what the doctor told is an official case of salmonella (which has also swept my wife and two eldest, leading us to believe we may be victims of the evil tomato plague sweeping the Nation).

Finished the trip this morning on the town pier in Edgartown, where we were treated to a most excellent re-enactment of the Rodney Dangerfield yachting scene when a gentleman in a large power catamaran blocked the Chappy ferry in order to board his guests and two pugs despite the vigorous complaints of the harbormaster and ferry captain. Unfortunately I was not quick enough on the ol’ FlipCam to get the better parts.

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Originally uploaded by dchurbuck

Today was varnish day — one coat of Epifanes on everything that needed varnishing.

Fisher helped me with the skiff, then we moved onto a new coat for the Shaw & Tenney oars, the boom crutch, the tiller ….

That big rhomboid thing is the centerboard. It needs its bottom half coated with anti-fouling paint.

A few more days and I should have the skiff ready for the water and the first race on Friday the 4th. Short week ahead, I’ll be on the Cape. Tempted to declare the whole thing a vacation week but I’ve got too many things on my schedule to churn things around.

All Things Cahill » Blog Archive » The Shine is off Social Networking
Very smart post by Mark Cahill that echoes my current irritation as the hype pendulum swings waay too far toward hyperbole over social media. Very much worth the read.

“Say it ain’t so, Joe! Over the past few weeks, it’s begun to look like Social Networking, the current darling of the conference and consultant set, might have jumped the shark. I personally would peg the exact point where it went careening off track as the day that Waste Management (the guys that probably run your local honey truck) opened their own social networking site.”

Reel-Time.com joins the NameMedia Inc. family of niche community sites – Reel-Time Forums

I won’t get all weepy and sentimental, but my first web project — Reel-Time: The Internet Journal of Saltwater Fly Fishing, has been sold after 13 years of private operation by myself , my co-founder Thorne Sparkman, and editor/webmaster, Mark Cahill.

The site goes to Name Media, the Waltham, MA domain company founded by IDG’s former CEO, Kelly Conlin.

I was a founder-emeritus for the past five years, backing out of the partnership with Thorne as my interest in the site waned and my ability to fund it declined along with my interest. I came up with the concept and name in 1994 when Chris Locke (co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto) asked me to write a series of columns on the impact of the Internet on journalism for Internet-MCI, one of the first major portal plays. In that column I basically made a version of the Long Tail argument, saying the infinite scalability of the net would lead to the dominance of niches. The syllogism was that a website about fishing would not be as successful as one about fly fishing, which in turn would be less valuable than one about saltwater fly fishing, etc.

So, as a strawman, I discussed the theoretical business plan of a site called “Reel-Time” as a play on “Real Time” — another business plan I had kicked around with Mitch Kapor in 94 when we thought there would be an interesting place on the net for a 24 hour, real-time news site.

So, over sushi one night in NYC, my fishing buddy Thorne Sparkman (who worked in digital at Time Warner Electronic Publishing) and I agreed to launch an actual site called Reel-Time. We registered the domain, spent a week at my place on Cape Cod coding the first HTML, hacked an email archive tool into a crude discussion/community forum, and launched via word of mouth on the USENET fishing forums.

Was it a success?

Sure. Here’s what I got out of Reel-Time:

1. I never got paid a dime. Seriously. 13 years. Not a penny. I suck as an entrepreneur.
2. I met a ton of great people.
3. I was given the challenge to launch Forbes.com on the basis of my experience launching Reel-Time.com
4. Everything I know about dealing with online dickheads, flamers, lusers, and the tinfoil turban club I learned at Reel-Time
5. The knowledge that if you want to ruin something fun, make a business out of.

Mark Cahill, the man who kept Reel-Time ticking, helped broker the sale with Name Media and will continue to drive the site. Me? I watch on, glad that something that started in my bedroom in 1995 will continue to live on past my inept management.

“When Reel-Time.com, the Internet Journal of Saltwater Fly Fishing was started in 1995 by Thorne Sparkman and David Churbuck, the internet was still in its infancy. Over the years, Reel-Time.com has grown to become the premier destination on the web for Saltwater Fly Fishermen, offering vibrant forums, up to the minute fishing reports, and informative articles.

“That success came at the expense of a lot of work and investment by Thorne. Indeed, over the years there were a great many people who put in a lot of hard work, from David and I spending many a sleepless morning in front of the computer cranking out Fishwire reports, to the Forum Moderators, whose selfless efforts are one of the prime reasons for our success.

“I’m pleased to announce that today begins yet another stage in the Reel-Time.com journey. The site has been acquired by NameMedia, Inc. of Waltham, MA, a major player in the emerging field of niche community media.

So, what’s it all mean to you”

Check it out. Thanks to Tim S. for the pointer.

Meet Tech Star – Dave Churbuck, VP of Global Web Marketing for Lenovo | @Bar
More about my favorite person.

Me.

“Who are you and what do you do?

I’m David Churbuck and I am the Vice President of Global Web Marketing for Lenovo”

The dog has discovered a herd of chipmunks has infested the grape arbor and bird feeders. All day, from dawn to dusk, the dog stands at the window and stares at the rodents. The chipmunks are now in full taunt mode. I fear for the dog. It is slowly slipping into madness. This is all it does, all day long.

On the Cape — for the most part — this week. Got some more medical stuff to do late in the week related to the Crash de Velo of ’06, was supposed to be in Stamford this morning, but don’t feel up to it.

So ….

Monday – Cotuit

Tuesday – day off

Wednesday-Friday – Cotuit

Weekend – Vineyard

Thanks to Uncle Fester I am sporting a monster Nikon D200 Digital SLR. Here’s one of the first shots — just waliked into the fishing garage, aimed and shot.

This is epicenter of my universe. Three dozen fishing rods, waders, clam baskets, bait buckets, lures, reels, hooks, sinkers, fly tying materials, etc. etc. etc.

The Secret Diary of [Steve Jobs] Jerry Yang: Advice from Scoble
Fake Steve Jerry gets a note from Scoble:

“You’ve started blogging. That’s a GREAT start. You should be PODCASTING too. Have you considered that? I’d be happy to help you. I’ve got cameras, editing software, etc., and could be at your place in an hour. Also if you need help writing scripts or whatever. Though honestly I think you’re better off just doing what I do and saying whatever comes into your head, just speak the way you naturally do. Yes it’s disjointed and rambling and even incoherent but it rings true and comes across as honest and transparent when when it’s totally not.”

The home office ….
1. Twitter is sliding ever backwards in terms of usefulness. I am about to declare it done but will continue to let it run in the background.
2. The Blog Council demonstrated some value late yesterday, but like Fight Club, I can’t talk about it. Let’s just say a good question was asked and answered.
3. New 18:200mm lens came for Uncle Fester’s Nikon D200 body loaned for the Games. As soon as the post office opens I will have 8 gigs of compact flash and a USB reader. New toys are good and now I get to take bad pictures on a more expensive camera.
4. A nasty exercise called a Walking Lunge has me feeling like I have been beaten with a 2″x4″ on my perineum.

5. Tokyo trip is coming together for July 7. I now need to insure that the team and I get to see a baseball game while there.

6. Must work on a PowerPoint to build the argument that social media team needs expansion and support. (not blogging aimlessly would help)
7. Must paint Cotuit Skiff

8. Must curse IT security policiy which restored alphanumeric password to Blackberry, thus rendering it useless while driving.

9. The simpler and more basic the goal, the more important it is. In my case — a pull up. That’s right. Hang from a bar, palms facing away, and pull myself up from a dead hang until my chin is above the bar. Second goal — jump rope for two minutes without messing up.

10.  Nice NYT piece this morning on our Olympic efforts. Wish it had mentioned more details about our Olympic blogging program, Federated Media’s involvement, but hey …..

Word of the day is regurgitalith. Fossilized vomit. Seems to work well in a sentence in association with “PowerPoint.”

“Boy Chuck really pulled out the stops with that 143-slide regurgitalith in the KPI meeting this morning.”

Yesterday I posted on the occasion of my 25th anniversary and made mention that my wife and I never had a formal honeymoon (in the Niagara Falls sense of the word).

Lo and behold, I get a comment in the moderation queue of this blog offering me an opportunity to make up for lost time and get that honeymoon.

I was initially impressed that Northwest Airlines had either really good detection, or a subscriber and local reader of this blog (highly unlikely). After realizing I had no mention of the Northwest brand in the post, I started to suspect just a smart spam blogger, but on backtracking to the original URL: blog.nwaworldvacation.com, my intuitive radar went off, indicating that the blog was indeed a splog set up, perhaps by an affiliate of NWA, in an attempt to gain booking commissions.

But further digging showed this was ostensibly a corporate owned and controlled blog (the content is pretty banal, but doesn’t have the usual dada language that is the true hallmark of a splog).

So, what’s the big deal about a little comment spam?

1. Here is a case of a brand monitoring the blogosphere for key word hits not associated with its brand. In other words, Northwest Airlines is scanning for hits on “honeymoon”, as opposed to Northwest Rocks or Northwest Sucks.

2. Northwest is detecting key word hits and has developed either an automated mechanism for posting a spam offer, or has a live human posting offers.

3. This is spam and makes me personally think less of Northwest.

4. This is spam but makes me wonder if the shoe was on the other foot, and I were a marketer responding to the word “laptop” what would be the right and proper way to arrive on a stranger’s blog with an offer in hand?

5. Can SMM be used to detect expressions of desire: (“I need a vacation” – “I need a new car”) and then reward those expressions with an offer?

6. Is the detection and reaction to expressions of desire the kiss of death for SMM?

Stayed up far too late watching the Celtics bag number 17. Brought me back to the glory days.

I met my wife in a bar.

Great line, guaranteed to get a laugh, but it’s true. I was a non-violent bouncer at a fern bar (Please sir, stop choking your girlfriend and leave the bar without striking other patrons with your beer bottle) in San Francisco’s Marina District (The Balboa Cafe, run by a colorful gentleman named Jack Slick) and she was a waitress. We were both woefully young, recent college graduates stranded by the Carter recession in an economy where English lit majors aspired to be bartenders. On first meeting we played the “do you know?” game to vector in a common friend who became the basis of a platonic friendship enforced by Mister Slick’s warnings to kill and woodchip any employees of his establishment who dated and therefore in his eyes became co-conspirators who would rob him.

Photo: Thomas Hawk
One day I quit in a fit of 23 year-old stupidity and became eligible to date my wife, which I did, inviting her to a BB King concert. I cooked her dinner. A month later I moved in with her, abandoning my Haight & Masonic basement apartment (next door to the San Francisco Beer Pong Arena) for her former bordello apartment in the far cooler North Beach neighborhood. Proposed a month after that, she accepted, I asked her father for her hand in marriage, he asked me what I did for a living (poor man, the first time he met me I was asking the ultimate question), I told him I was an unemployed bouncer/bartender and unpublished novelist who specialized in maritime historical themes. He was great, he said yes.
And that was that. Dragged the poor woman out of San Francisco to Boston, where I promptly found a job as a dishwasher in a Cambridge jazz club. Big break was getting a newspaper job that paid $113 a week. We had no honeymoon.
Patience does not begin to describe her.
Twenty-five years and it seems like yesterday. Expecting that this is not the Formica nor appliance anniversary, I need to pull a major rabbit out of the hat. She won’t read my blog, so I’m safe making that admission here in public.

Went to the doctor yesterday, asked him how his tropical medicine chops were. Told him about Bengaluru two weeks ago and my intestinal health ever since. Let’s just say it’s an effective diet, but a heck of a long way to go to lose ten pounds. Poor doctor, he spends his day listening to people beef about their hay fever, and I come in and start conjuring up symptoms of Dengue Fever.

Oh well, just a way to make an excuse for a) not blogging a lot, b) not going to RTP this week (I swear it is not the heat) c) not exercising.

Side note, was watching Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations on the Travel Channel last night (his Kitchen Confidential is a fave, as is his NYC bistro, Les Halles). He was in Ghana and Uzbekistan. He ate some room temperature lamb brain, made a comment about “bleeding out into a toilet,” and I realized what I want to be when I grow up — a travel dude to weird places. If my stomach permits that is.

Associated Press expects you to pay to license 5-word quotations (and reserves the right to terminate your license) – Boing Boing

Oh dear. From Boing Boing comes this piece of news,  like IDG’s infamous anti-linking edict of a few years back, one of those dumbass King Canute edicts destined to be swept away by the tide of progress. Here’s the deal: The Associated Press, a coprolite concept of a global news syndicate used by newspapers to fill their editorial holes with standard news (bus plunges, fungible coverage of the world’s events, items from outside of the local circulation foot print) and to share their original reportage back into the pool in return, has decided that bloggers must pay by the word when they quote from an AP article.

To me that’s like asking me to pay a toll to get off the superhighway and visit a dying town that time has forgotten.

“In the name of “defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt” the Associated Press is now selling “quotation licenses” that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that “fair use” — the right to copy without permission — means “Contact the owner of the work to be sure you are covered under fair use.”).”

Full disclosure, I am total copyleftist. I hate crap like this. Whenever an organization with an intellectual property axe to grind (MPAA, RIAA) starts getting “smart” about the digital world, they almost always put on the egg makeup.

I love Concept2. It’s a privately owned company in Morrisville, Vermont that was founded in a dairy barn by the Dreissigacker brothers in the 1970s to make carbon fiber oars and rowing machines. The brothers, both veterans of the USA national team and elite athletes, needed a way to maintain their fitness during the frozen Vermont winter so they cannibalized an old bicycle, nailed it to the floor, and figured out how to make a rowing machine.

That machine has morphed over the last 30 years into a simple, well-engineered, accurate and affordable piece of equipment known as a Concept2 Model D/E ergometer. It is the standard for most high school, collegiate and national rowing programs, and is the centerpiece of the growing sport of indoor rowing. Users can race each other over the internet by networking their ergs, and the exercise is acclaimed by everyone from firefighters to astronauts to radical programs such as CrossFit as the ultimate, full-body workout.

When I travel I try to pick hotels on the basis of whether or not they have a Concept2 ergometer. Very few do, tending to instead buy whatever the corporate headquarters purchasing agent has negotiated as part of a bulk buy for treadmills and stair-steppers, etc.. There are some rowing machines on the market which are complete and utter disasters. The worst of them is the Bally Life Rower, followed, almost below disdain, with any number of cheap rolling-seat-piston based contraptions sold at K-Mart. A WaterRower is an acceptable stand-in, and the other alternatives are almost never seen outside of an elite training facility.

What drives me nuts is the condition of the Concept2s in any given commercial gym. These machines are relatively cheap, but because they are so simple in terms of moving parts they tend to get parked in a corner and ignored until they completely fail. There is a relatively constant, but slow paced upgrade cycle on the machines, with new display monitors, handles, and small tweaks introduced every two years or so. Most gyms never upgrade and because Concept2 operated as a direct web/telesales operation, I doubt there is a large sales force physically calling on the big chains of gyms or hotels to push upgrades.

So Concept2 — here’s a simple idea. Print up adhesive-backed labels with your 800 number, your logo, and a short checklist. The headline should be: “Fix Me!” Put a picture of your latest erg on the sticker with your logo. Under the headline write: “One of your customers thinks you should … then add a checklist:

• Replace this machine with a new Concept2 Model D
• Upgrade this machine with a new Performance Monitor
• Replace the worn foot straps
• Oil the chain
• Replace the seat bearings
• Upgrade the handle
• etc.

Make the labels available on your site and let people like me stuff a few into our gym bags.  I’ve gone up to trainers and sundry attendants and asked them to fix the equipment, but a big sticker stuck on the frame would get their attention, spare me and them the confrontation of arguing over a machine, and give Concept2 a little branding.

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of master’s rowing (old farts above college age and before the grave) on Cape Cod, and I was graciously invited to make some remarks in light of my august position as the author of The Book of Rowing (which as you know is also celebrating its 20th birthday this year).

I appeared, on time, with a raging case of Delhi Belly picked up on Thursday somewhere in Bangalore, in full perspiration mode due to the high temperatures and general feverish condition. I sat, all muscles clenched, for two hours as part of a panel of extremely distinguished speakers who all entertained the crowd with history, anecdotes, and recounts of races from the past and those to be.

Being on a massive mid-life physical fitness crisis since April 1, I have not missed a single one of the insane CrossFit workouts of the day until yesterday, when I simply could not abide a single sit up. Today was much better, but not less torrid, and I just emerged from my garage gym looking like I had washed overboard and climbed back on deck. I tried, much as I might, to row the erg for 20 minutes, but made it barely 90 seconds when I threw the towel a second day, came inside and popped another Immodium A-D.\

Enough disgusting alimentary details for today. I was considering taking it off to further recover, but heck, it turned into a total free-for-all. Until tomorrow and not really caring that there is a new iPhone to be bought, I remain your humble correspondent.