This weekend, we celebrated Olivia’s birthday early. I also shipped off Melissa’s birthday present and then worked on a secret project! No, unfortunately, it is not teetarsauce.com… I still need to get to that.

Ultimate was good especially since the weather was still pretty nice, but I’m not fully recovered from the previous week, so I didn’t feel quite 100%. I finally played a little bit of Black Ops, which is pretty fun so far, but I haven’t gotten too far along into the single player yet.

I think that’s it? Oh, congrats to Ochs and Weishan. =)

November is the first month of our new quarter, so BV flew in our international team for our All-Hands. Because they were here, we also had an early holiday party at the Austin Music Hall. I don’t have pics of the latter event, but Anne-Marie was there in photographer capacity so I’m sure she’ll post awesome photos shortly. =) Here are some of my shots from our All-Hands featuring new BV band, FEEDBACK:

Also, congrats to the culture award winners, especially the TS folk!

On Saturday, we played an early game of ultimate so that Simon could join us. We ended up playing for around four hours because the weather was so awesome and Jonney brought us Krispy Kreme donuts to fuel us through the game. It was pretty awesome, but now I’m sore. Luckily, my shins aren’t too bad this week so I guess they’re getting stronger. =p

Sunday was not all that eventful except I met up with the Tings and co for brunch at Tacodeli to see Alex again before he goes back to California. After that, went around eating/snacking with peeps then throwing frisbees around. I think my throwing technique could still use some work…

Oops, I just realized I didn’t make my obligatory weekend update post. Well…

• We played ultimate again and it was splendid weather and had some new comers that were pretty good. Enjoyable! My shins feel a little sore now though… recovering…


• Didn’t do much for Halloween… for work, my team was Office Space themed, but I forgot to bring my camera, so I don’t have photos. If I get unlazy, I may track down some shots other people took…


• Watched UT lose to Baylor. Good. They deserved it. We should not be nervous our guy can’t catch the ball on kick-returns. I swear, I probably watched UT botch this at least once every game I’ve watched this season.


• I finished A Game of Thrones, but I’m not sure I’ll continue with the series… we’ll see. So far, I’ve read about five or six books that start series but have not yet read the next yet. I guess I’m kind of noncommittal.

I didn’t do much this weekend except play ultimate I think. There was great weather and we had a good turnout, so it was a lot of fun. I’m kind of sore still… I think I gave myself some minor shin splints again. =)

For some reason I was reflecting on one of my past work experiences. During one of my rotations at Freescale, I spent a few months at Metrowerks. Back in the day, they were known for CodeWarrior and dominated the Mac development scene before Apple started to release their own tools for free. At the time I was there, they provided the development tools for Nintendo and Sony (maybe still do… not sure) and even had a development Wii at the time (this was before the Wii was out). I got to play with a pre-release Wiimote by moving a bunch of dots and lines on the screen. How exciting! ;)

Anyways, I ended up not getting an offer to stay full time from the group primarily because I didn’t put in a lot of effort into meshing with the team there. I basically did my own thing siloed away and though I completed my project with positive reactions, the team ultimately decided that they’d hold off on the full time offer because they wanted me to integrate into the team more. Although they did a lot of cool things there, I wasn’t exactly convinced it was the right fit for me, so I wasn’t too disappointed with the outcome of that experience. However, I did learn the lesson that I need to engage at a level other than just delivering what’s asked of me to be successful in certain environments. I’m glad I didn’t get the job offer as I’m not sure I would be where I am today if I had. I look back at my rotation there positively, influencing me for the better, and helping me to be successful at BV.

So, here’s to you, Metrowerks. RIP.

Yes, I turned 27 over the past weekend. I didn’t really do much though… mostly sat around and read. There was some eating involved, though. On Friday, the usual gang went to Austin Land & Cattle, Saturday, I went to Asia Cafe with the family. Then finally on Sunday, Heather arranged for a small birthday thingy with a few peeps at Eddie V’s, then we went to a couple of coffee shops until we found one that was open and not packed.

Did something else happen? I can’t remember anymore… oh, I have cancelled my WoW account and we played Heroes of Newerth instead last night.

Oh yeah, and Melissa made me a website in the fashion of Andrew Approved: Things Owiber Wuvs!

Okay, so I returned Friday night, but my schedule’s pretty much back to normal now. For a while over the weekend, even though I seemed to have quickly returned to a normal sleep schedule, I think my eating schedule was still off. I felt like I wanted to eat even though I had already eaten and felt full still. Hungry and full at the same time. It was weird. Anyways, I’m good now.

I’ve used my Kindle pretty heavily and I read three books on my London trip: Ender’s Game, Hunger Games, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I’m also now about 90% through the first Wheel of Time book. That one starts pretty slow, but it’s finally picking up now.

On Saturday, I was really looking forward to playing ultimate again and it was pretty fun. Last night, we skipped WoW (didn’t have enough people to raid) and played DotA instead, which was also good to get back to. We need to start HoN sometime soon… =)

Oh, and as usual, Flickr (but not my account!) has photos from the London Summit.

Apparently the US decided to warn against traveling to Europe after I arrived. Oh well. =)

I spent most of the flight reading Ender’s Game, which I enjoyed. I’m liking my Kindle so far! Unfortunately, because I was reading instead of sleeping, I was not prepared at all to stay awake so I crashed once I got to my hotel (morning UK time). I ended up sleeping way too long and woke up at around 11PM. I lounged around a bit until it was early AM when I realized I was pretty hungry, but everything was closed (that I was aware of). I waited until around 5AM and found a McDonald’s. Never been happier to see one.

On the flight over, I sat next to a super cobra pilot who was flying to London to watch the Ryder Cup before going back to Afghanistan. He told me that the GPS, maps, and screen on the iPad are so much better than what’s installed in the cobra, that he carries one along with him (they hack it to hook it up to their GPS antennas on the cobra). Plus, he told me, they can play music and play games with it while they wait around. I thought that was pretty amusing.

I’ve managed to stay out of the rain so far, which I was actually a little surprised about. I had to wander around a handful of stores before I found a grounded/3-prong power converter I could use. I’ve left my camera in the bedroom safe because I didn’t want to risk getting it wet (in hindsight, I wish I’d taken it out since I lucked out not getting rained on), but I went to visit Kensington Gardens and ate at an indian place called Zaika which was well rated on Yelp UK. It was not bad, but pricey. Probably wouldn’t go back.

Oh, and there’s a tube strike now. Woo! Mind the gap!

So that game was pretty terrible. I’m kind of glad I’ll be in London for the OU game cause I don’t think I want to watch anymore UT football until they stop beating themselves.

Besides that, the weather was pretty good for a fun ultimate game, we played a decent amount of DotA, I got a haircut, went to Parkside for Tiff’s birthday, skyped with Melissa after she returned from Thailand and… what else… maybe that’s it. I slept a lot probably. =p

I ordered a Kindle to prepare for my upcoming international flights (London at the end of this week and Hong Kong for New Year’s). I’m thinking I’ll finally read Ender’s Game and maybe start on the Harry Potter books. We’ll see.

Update: Oh! I almost forgot… I also watched Sharktopus, which was horrible and awesome.

This weekend, we had a pretty sweet game of ultimate. The weather was great and we ended with a pretty good 4v4. After ultimate, we watched the really unenjoyable UT/Tech game and then Saturday night was really boring after that. Viraj and I just sat around watching dumb TV until Mark showed up then we played a few games of DotA against computers.

Sunday was not much more eventful, but I went to campus Torchy’s and ate with Sam, Oriana, Steph and Laudie. After that, I repeated the sitting around bored at my house with Sam. Eventually, I remembered that I got loaned a set of Planetary comics so I started reading those again. I finished it not too long ago. Pretty enjoyable.

At Bazaarvoice, we like to think we’re changing the world by making the “voice of the customer” readily available when you choose to spend your money. We’ve seen that having content such as ratings and reviews have many positive impacts both to business and consumers - lower return rates, higher conversions, etc. We may not be as media facing as the likes of Facebook, Twitter, etc. but due to the sheer number and caliber of clients we have, we actually serve our good share of user generated content.

We also have our Bazaarvoice Foundation that is focused on doing community service, matching donation contributions, etc. However, I don’t really intend on talking about how Bazaarvoice as a company in changing the world. Rather, I’d like to do my part in sharing about how individuals at the company I work at try to improve the world we live in. Andrew Geonetta, a relatively new project manager on the team I work on sent out this email on Wednesday of this past week:

Hi all:

I’m pretty amazed by the number of people at BV that are compassionate and seem inclined to lend a hand when it’s needed. I’m hoping to make a difference here for a pretty devastated local family that could really use a hand.

On Monday, my wife Christy, a 2nd grade teacher at Del Valle, was driving home from work. She saw a wreck on the side of the road so horrifying that it seemed impossible there would be a positive outcome. A car had come off of an exit ramp, ran a stop sign, clipped one car, swerved and t-boned another vehicle. The devastation to the vehicle that got t-boned was absolutely unbelievable.

Her feeling of dread was not unfounded. Later that night, Christy got a phone call from a teacher at school telling her that one of the students she taught for two years had gotten killed in a car wreck. His name was Francisco Baccera, and he was 8 years old.

I’d stop there because that’s pretty horrifying by itself. But that’s not quite the end of it. Driving the car was Francisco’s mother who was also killed. Finally, his his older sister (11) and his older brother (13) were passengers. The sister was killed and the brother was thrown from the vehicle. He has thus far survived, but is in a coma at the hospital.

There’s the 13 year old who is now without his mother and his two siblings. And there’s the father who has had his world completely devastated.

These are not well-to-do people. Del Valle is a fairly low-income area. It’s a very small community in southeast Austin, and the majority are blue-collar workers that work very hard to support their families. Unfortunately, most of these families don’t have access to some of the things we take for granted, like good health insurance, 401K savings plans…or life insurance. Such is the case here.

The father now has not one but three funerals to pay for. $10,000 is a huge sum of money for anyone, and the reality is that this is what he has to pay to bury his family. Until he is able to pay that amount, they will not be able to be buried.

I’ve decided that I’d like to try and help.

As most of you know, I used to play music quite a bit. I moved to Austin from Cincinnati and wasn’t able to continue on with it, but I still have a box of CDs left.

I would like to ask you for a donation to help pay for the cost of the coffins. I will be happy to take whatever you can give, but if you donate at or above $10.00, I will give you / send you a CD. I will also make sure that the father knows the contributions came from Bazaarvoice.

You can click here to go to the Paypal site I set up: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=UZYTMKEDJGSRA or you can just come down to my desk where I’ll have CDs for you.

I appreciate your time and whatever you can give. Every once in a while, we’re given opportunities to make a direct and immediate difference for someone who truly needs it. I believe this is one of those times.

Thanks for your time!

Andrew

This Saturday evening, I got an update email from Andrew:

Hello friends:

I hate the fact that I can’t respond to each and every single last one of you personally. I guess this is a good problem to have because it means there are so many of you that have donated that I’m a little overwhelmed!

I want to share with you an e-mail that I wrote to my wife on Wednesday morning of this past week. This was after I had written my message on Facebook on Tuesday night around 10.30 or so:

This morning, I woke up to $330.00. That doesn’t include the generous donation from Brett (our CEO).

I think we can make more than $1000.00 [sic?] no problem!

It’s now Saturday…not even a full 4 days after writing my note…and we now have a little over $8000.00. You’re reading that right…$8000.00. That includes a very generous $2500.00 matching donation from my company Bazaarvoice.

Besides the donation I received from employees at my company, I’ve received donations from as far and wide as Ontario, Canada, Colorado, Phoenix, New York, San Antonio…

What’s amazing is that the ingredients here were not that complicated in order to make a serious difference. It was one e-mail, one Facebook post, Pay Pal, some sharing of info…and most importantly…a lot of caring, love, empathy and compassion.

All of this for a person you don’t even know. That takes immense amounts of courage, trust and ultimately, humanity.

Today, I am very, very proud to be a human being. That sounds ridiculous, but sometimes it’s hard to watch the news, hard to watch some of the awful things we do to each other, hard to listen to some of the manipulative, awful things we say to one another, and not feel a little bit ashamed.

But these past four days have been very, very different. You’ve proven that you can and will make a difference to a man and his son that need it so badly.

And for what it’s worth, I’m so very proud of you.

He and his son will know who his benefactors are. I promise you this. I’m already working on it, and I will let you know just the second I’m finished. And from there we can come full circle and you can know exactly who and how you’ve helped.

Again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Though we don’t know a large number of you, it doesn’t feel at all strange to say that we love you.

Don’t forget what you’ve done, because this is the stuff that changes the world.

More to come!


–
Andrew & Christy Geonetta

I know there are tons of awesome organizations out there to donate money to. From a utilitarian perspective, perhaps your money is even “better spent” on other entities aimed at “improving the world.” However, I think one of the most awesome showcases of love and humanity is when we show compassion and grace in unexpected ways and places. This father and son have had their lives devastated in a way that I can’t even imagine. Sometimes, probably even often, apathy gets the best of us. If you didn’t “tldr” this entire post and it moved you to feel like making a positive impact on the world, small or large, feel free to do what you can by donating via Andrew’s donation link.

Cheers!