What's Up With LunchClub?

In February 2000, I started a company called LunchClub.net LLC, with William Carey. We had actually been working on getting things set up for the business since mid-1999 (the domain lunchclub.net was registered June 1, 1999) but we didn't create the company till February 2000. The premise of LunchClub was simple: Anyone could come to our website and sign up to receive lunch coupons from restaurants in their zip code. Coupons were sent out daily, by email.

I worked on LunchClub pretty much full time from the get-go, even though I still had another full time job, but in 2002 I quit my other job and started focusing on LunchClub.

LunchClub has now been the focus of my entrepreneurial efforts for over seven years, so many of you were surprised to learn that a few months ago LunchClub was acquired by a company called Scottsdale.com. Some of you probably have not even heard about this development yet. I decided to write up this little post to let everyone know what's going on with LunchClub and what my future holds.

Why Did We Sell Out?

We decided to sell out for a couple of reasons. The first reason was obviously financial. But along with that, the plan is for Scottsdale.com's connections with other city sites throughout the country to greatly accelerate LunchClub's expansion and growth. Our plan all along was to perfect the model in the Phoenix area, and then expand it across the United States. The hope is that Scottsdale.com will be able to make that happen. Will and I are still part owners, so we have a vested interest in seeing LunchClub continue to grow. And we also want to see our "baby" succeed.

Are You Still Working At LunchClub?

Upon hearing about the latest developments, most people ask me are whether I'm still working at LunchClub. The answer is that I'm not working at LunchClub anymore except part time to help in the transition. Despite my many titles I was always the "computer guy" for LunchClub, and now the computer stuff is being done by a company called Contact Designs, so I'm just helping them get things figured out so they can continue maintenance and development of the LunchClub related products and services.

What Are You Going To Do Now?

For the last five or so years I've been doing some part time real estate investing. I've never had much time to put into it, but I've always found it intriguing. Now that I don't have another full time job, I am going to put a bigger focus on real estate investing. I've recently gone to several seminars to improve my knowledge, in San Diego, Dallas, Detroit, and Phoenix.

So that's what I'll be working on. I'll let you know how it goes...

First First

Flying back from Detroit on Saturday night on US Airways, the flight wasn't very full, and I managed to sweet talk the ticket agent into upgrading me to first class. It was my first time in first class, so I thought I'd better share my impressions.

• The seats were quite a bit more comfortable, with more leg room. This was my favorite perk.
  
  
• We got a decent dinner, as well as dessert, all complimentary. (On US Airways you have to pay $5 for any meal now when riding in coach. I'm not sure if it's the same on other airlines.)
  
  
• We got complimentary headphones, instead of being dinged for another $5. I didn't really care about this since I rarely watch the movie, and I wouldn't have bothered paying the $5. But I did watch it this time, since they were showing Invincible, which was on my list of movies to see. Pretty good show, although I'd like to know what the hot blond chick was doing working in the run down bar with all those loud, grungy guys. Why wasn't she in first class on a flight from Detroit to Phoenix where she belonged??
  
  
• The beverages were refilled frequently. The University of Michigan fan next to me had 2 Ginger Ales mixed with some sort of hard liquor, and then about 8 Heinekens. Ever time the attendant came by and asked, "Would you like another Heineken?" he said "Sure!" I figured he'd pass out by the end of the flight, but he seemed fine. I had several apple juices.
  
  
• Being the first to get on and off the flight was kind of cool but not a huge deal.

Overall, it was a pleasant experience. It was nice to be treated like you're someone special. But at the same time it made me a little uncomfortable. I'm too used to being back in couch with the huddled masses. It still boggles my mind a little that people will drop an extra grand (or 3 or 5) for a couple (or 4) hours of comfort. I guess if you've got it to burn... The most I can see myself paying is about $50, for the bigger seat, so I'll probably be back in coach with the rest of the poor saps next time.

My Favorite Movies

Editor's Note: Due to a glitch in Blogger, my previous "favorite movies" post from November 4th has disappeared! And since Blogger's customer support person is not an actual person, there's no way to get any help fixing the problem. So I am re-posting. But you don't have to re-read it. Although I did make one change to the list...

I often get asked what my favorite movie is. Why? Because I'm often in "get to know you" conversations, which is the funnest part of being single.

I had already started keeping a list in my palm/phone of movies that I wanted to see, and at some point I started adding movies that I really liked, and eventually it morphed into a list of favorites. So now when I get asked what my favorite movie is, I can whip out my phone and display them. Perfect for looking like a big nerd, which is usually my goal.

Most of the movies in this list could already be seen in my blog profile, if you had bothered to look. But the movies there are in alphabetical order. In this post I decided to list out my top 25, in order of preference.

Deciding on the order was tricky. And I'm sure I'm probably forgetting some movies that should be on the list. And I may not have gotten the full effect of some of the R-rated ones, since I watched the Cleanfilms versions (before they were forced out of business by lame-o Hollywood interests). But anyway here goes:

25. Casablanca

24. Monty Python and the Holy Grail

23. Mission Impossible (Part 1)

22. The Naked Gun

21. Love Actually

20. Dave

19. O Brother Where Art Thou

18. Groundhog Day

17. The Mask

16. Unbreakable

15. The Scarlett Pimpernel

14. The Godfather

13. Pirates of the Caribbean (Part 1)

12. School of Rock

11. Indiana Jones

10. The Terminator

9. Napoleon Dynamite

8. The Wedding Singer

7. The Matrix

6. Star Wars

5. The Incredibles

4. Happy Gilmore

3. Lord of the Rings (Part 1)

2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

And...

1. Back to the Future

There you have it! Let me know what I missed...

Nate Doggggg

For as long as I've gone by Nate, which is about 15 years now, certain people have called me "Nate Dog." They always say "Nate Dogggggggggg!" like you might say "Dooooooooooood!" or "Wazzzzzzzzzup?!"

Well, I was never aware of it, but it turns out that the source of this greeting is that there is an actual rapper named Nate Dogg! He's Snoop Dogg's cousin. I don't know how I could have not known about this all these years. So much for my street cred.

Apparently Nate Dogg is "said to be one of the most soulful artists in the hip hop scene." Amazing, since I've always been said to be one of the most soulful non-artists in the non-hip hop scene! It's like we're related.

Thanksgiving 2006

For Thanksgiving Benj and I went up to Salt Lake and stayed with Hyrum's family. I was responsible for olives and jello, but I didn't remember to bring any along, so Kim picked em up for me. This might have been the first time I ever made jello. I'm not sure. But I made a fun multi-colored version, with mandarin oranges and pears included. Too bad I forgot my camera, or I could show off some pics of my extreme jello skeelz.

On Thanksgiving we had me, Benj, Hyrum's family, Mark and Sarah, Matthew, and all of Amy's family, all at Hyrum's house. So it was pretty full, I think 18 people total. But there was plenty of food, and lots of fun.

Friday morning Mark, Sarah, and I went jogging and we took Caz in the stroller. I think she enjoyed it, but by the time we got back she was asleep. Little sleeping beauty. Friday night we headed to Provo and Springville to visit the grandparents. At Grandma B's, Benj played some stuff on the guitar, and Sarah played a couple things on the violin, so I think Grandma enjoyed that. Then we headed over to the Tanners' and played our usual game of progressive rummy. Matthew was victorious, so as Mark would say, he must have cheated.

We stayed at Mark and Sarah's Friday night, and then Mark, Benj, and I infiltrated BYU and played racquetball for a bit before the big game -- BYU v. Utah. We all went over to Matthew's to watch the rivalry football game. Mark, Sarah, Matthew, Benj, and I were there along with some of Matthew's friends and roommates.

BYU dominated the 1st quarter, then didn't do much of anything in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. We were down by 10 before we decided to start playing again. In the 4th quarter we scored two touchdowns to take the lead 27-24. Then Utah came back and scored to go up 31-27 with 1:19 left in the game. Quarterback John Beck took over and made an amazingly poised drive down the field, including a nice pass into tight coverage on 4th down to keep the drive alive. We were on the 11 or 12 yard line with three seconds on the clock, and one more play to go.

The video below doesn't do justice to what an amazing final play it was. Beck was running right, all the defenders were rolling right also, and as he was being tackled, he managed to throw across his body the entire width of the field to a wide open Johnny Harline, for the win! Pandemonium ensued in the apartment, and probably in much of Provo and Cougar Nation.

Update: The video originally posted here has apparently been removed from Google Video. I'm not sure if it was for copyright infringement or something. Too bad, it was a cool montage of the game.

The Dallas Mafia

I was in Dallas this last week from Thursday till Saturday for a real estate seminar, about how to wholesale property. To "wholesale" property means to buy and then sell quickly for a small profit, as opposed to keeping and fixing up and then selling for a bigger profit, or keeping and renting out.

I didn't get to experience much of Dallas, since I was in the hotel 95% of the time I was there. I stayed at the same hotel where the seminar was being held, so I didn't have to rent a car. The hotel was the Crowne Plaza, which was a pretty nice hotel, except they don't have the capability to schedule wakeup calls more than one day in advance, and someone set off the fire alarm our first night there by smoking in their room, and there were no restaurants within 100 miles besides Jack in the Box. Actually 100 miles is an exaggeration, but there were no other restaurants within walking distance. Although technically I could walk 100 miles, but probably not in one day, and definitely not in time to be back for the seminar. Unless I just walked on the treadmill in the hotel workout room. Which was not the nicest workout room I've ever seen, but having somewhere to work out in the same building where I was sleeping did motivate me enough to get up and work out every morning, which was good.

But anyway, we did go to Jack in the Box a lot. At least once a day in fact. For lunch on the first day, and for breakfast also on the other days, since we didn't want to pay $16 for the hotel breakfast buffet again like we did the first day, even though it was pretty good. But at night we got the hotel shuttle guys to take us to another restaurant for dinner. The first night we went to Jason's Deli, which I used to go to a lot when I worked in Scottsdale. I didn't realize it was a national chain, but apparently it is. The next night we went to Pappa's BBQ. It was quite excellent. So good, in fact, that we went back the next night as well. But there was one little problem: Every restaurant in the area started with "Pappa." There was Pappa's BBQ, Pappacito's, Pappadeaux, Papa John's, Pappa Bros, and Pappa's Cowboy Pickins! (OK I made that last one up, but all the rest were real, and I think I left out a few.) Apparently the Dallas mafia Dons go by "Pappa." Or something. So when the shuttle came to pick us up, of course he went to Pappa Bros instead of Pappa's BBQ. So we got stuck waiting for hours, or at least 45 minutes. But it was worth the wait, that mafia can really cook BBQ!

***

Totally unrelated note: On the Snide Remarks website that I commented on recently, I ran across this column that I found pretty hilarious. You should check it out (if you're bored and have nothing better to do than read random Internet posts, which you just proved to be true by reading this one).

Nathaniel is currently the 65th most popular baby name

I ran across this fun little site, where you can view the history of your name popularity across the last 100 years.

And then there's this one, where you can find out where you rank in salary.

Want to crash on the couch?

I spent most of last week in San Diego, California, for a real estate seminar. The seminar was at the Marriot in Del Mar, which runs about $300 per night. So I didn't want to stay there. I checked the other hotels close by, and they were all in the $150-300 range. I figured it would be no problem to find someone through friends or social networking sites that would let me sleep on their couch for a few nights. But surprisingly, no one I contacted was up for a stranger in their home, except for this one guy on LDS Linkup who said, "I would love to help but I just got transferred to Fallujah, Iraq." Dah!

So I ended up booking a hotel on Hotwire. I got it for about $60 per night, and it was only about 15 minutes away from Del Mar, so I was pretty happy with it. But then I showed up Monday night to the hotel, and they had no record of my reservation, AND they were sold out! I showed the printout to the lady on duty, but that didn't help, so we called up Hotwire, and they said, "Hmm... they have no record of it, well sorry, there's nothing we can do. Why don't you try calling hotels.com?" Losers! Hotwire is LAME! So I called hotels.com, I called other hotels in the area, and finally about 1 AM I ended up at a Holiday Inn about 5 miles down the road, for $120.

Then today I was on cnn.com and I noticed an article entitled Need a place to crash? Try a stranger's couch. Since I had just spent some time fruitlessly trying to find a couch to crash on, I clicked on the link. The article was about several networks of low budget travelers who crash on each other's couches! If only I'd known a few days before. The article profiles a guy who's been traveling for 1000 straight days sleeping on other people's couches!

I went ahead and created an account on couchsurfing.com and hospitalityclub.org, both of which look pretty legit. Of course there are possibly safety issues, etc., but it looks like a great way to save money while traveling. I've got another seminar coming up soon, so I'll have to try it out and see what happens.

The Sponge Bob II

To commemorate Kim's masterpiece, Benj has contributed the first annual replica of The Sponge Bob:

The Sponge Bob II

Maricopa House

Here's a very professional video I made of my house in Maricopa. I hope watching it doesn't make you sick like the Blair Witch Project.

The Sponge Bob

At this season filled with predictable ghosts and goblins, it's time to commemorate the unique and memorable masterpiece, "The Sponge Bob," by Kim Tanner! Click Bob for more photos of Halloween 2005.

Halloween 2005

My first foray into Google Video

As the two avid readers of my blog will recall, I lost my digital camera back in May, and I just now got around to buying a new one. I got a Canon Powershot SD600. Testing out the video capability on my new camera, I made a video of the LunchClub Office. But what good is a video if you can't show it to the world? So I posted it to Google Video, my very first video post. Google Video is cool in that it doesn't limit you to 100 MB per video like YouTube. (But Google just acquired YouTube, so that limitation will probably go away soon...)

Mark's Wedding

I just got back from a trip to Missouri for my brother Mark's wedding. He got married in the Nauvoo temple (Illinois), then we had a reception in Kirksville (Missouri) and another one in Cedar Falls (Iowa). So I put plenty of miles on the rental car.

I had my camera only at the Iowa reception. But they had a photographer at the wedding and I'm sure Mom took plenty of pictures at the other reception. Click below to see my photos:

Mark and Sarah

No I Can't Fix Your Printer!

I'm not as bitter as this guy, but I can definitely relate.

Hitting for the Cycle

Yes, it's true, I did it... sort of.

In my first 2 games of church softball, I've batted twice in each game, and I'm 4 for 4 with a single, double, triple, and home run!

I'd probably better retire now before I get translated, or enshrined in the church softball hall of fame in Cooperstownville, Utah.

Snide Remarks, for free

Back in "the day" (college) I used to read a column called Snide Remarks, which was published in the BYU paper, and written by Eric D. Snider (Get it? Snider? Snide Remarks??). Funny stuff. Then I graduated and forgot all about it.

I hadn't heard or thought about good ol' Eric D. in a few years, till I ran across his book, also called Snide Remarks, at Hyrum's house a couple months back. I read through it and it brought back fond memories of the Titanic Parody and Police Beat, among others.

Then a day or two later, by complete coincidence, I was reading a movie review that happened to be written by none other than Eric himself. So I shot him a quick email to see what was happening, and he was kind enough to respond.

Here's an excerpt from my email:

"...just wanted to say that I still find the snide remarks columns very funny despite a few years going by. I still love the references such as "the Stephen E. Robinson & Gerald N. Lund Building for People That Everyone Thinks Are General Authorities Because They Write a Lot of Books" and "the J. Golden Kimball Center for Religious Swearing." And the letter to the editor column is classic material."

And from his response:

"...and those ones you quoted are two of my old favorites, too. Sometimes I think I'll never be that funny again...."

Anyway, here's the point of all this: Snide Remarks was originally free, but after Eric became a freelancer, he started charging for it. But, as of a few days ago, Snide Remarks is free once again to the general public. (Hallelujah, amen!)

From the column:

"So I finally did some weighing and balancing. I could make X dollars a month and have Y readers, or I could make zero dollars a month and have potentially thousands and thousands of readers. I ultimately decided it was better in the long run to have more exposure, even if it meant making nothing from "Snide Remarks." And so on Aug. 23, two days after this column appeared, we officially liberated "Snide Remarks." It was a lot like when Paris was liberated at the end of World War II, but without the stench of Nazis everywhere."

So now you can waste hours of your employer's time perusing humorous material here.

And you can read my favorite column of all time here. Enjoy!

My Trip to Havasupai (Grand Canyon)

If you haven't been to Havasupai (in the Grand Canyon), you need to repent and go immediately. It is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

We set out on a Wednesday night, the fearsome foursome -- Nate, Cami, Sharice, and Patricia. It is about a 5 hour drive from Mesa, so we were planning to leave around 6:30 or 7 PM, but it ended up being more like 10 PM. We arrived at 2 or 3 in the morning, and slept in the parking lot for a few hours.

We woke up around 6 but didn't get going till almost 8, I'm not sure how that happened. The hike down was fun, not too strenuous, but it seemed awfully long. After 8 miles we arrived at the village. I'd been there once before, but I couldn't remember how far it was from the village to the campground. It turned out to be another 2 miles. (Ugh!) We finally arrived and Sharice had a big fat blister on her toe.

The trip was planned by another friend named Melinda, so we looked around for her group and finally found them after fording the river. Cami tried to throw her shoes across and one of them ended up floating downstream but thanks to my cat-like reflexes I was able to quickly fish it out.

That afternoon we went and played around in Havasu Falls, an impressive 100 foot waterfall which was close to the campsite. Then Cami and I went to check out Navajo Falls, which was less than a mile from camp. I somehow didn't know about Navajo Falls on my last trip, but it was definitely worth a visit. Navajo Falls isn't as spectacular as the others, but I rated it as the most enjoyable of the falls, because you can play around in it without getting pummeled too badly.

Friday we hiked down to Mooney Falls, which is probably the most spectacular waterfall I've ever seen (although it's been a while since I was at the Columbia Gorge in Oregon, and since we didn't have digital cameras back then, I pretty much have no record of anything). Getting down to the pool below the falls requires a hike down a steep cliff, the warning signs said things like "Extreme Caution... Don't Go Any Further Unless You're Crazy... If You Die It's Not Our Fault... etc." But we made it down without incident.

After playing around in the falls and the nearby rope swing, we headed down the river. About 3 miles down is another falls called Beaver Falls, but we didn't make it more than 1 or 1.5 miles. We found another rope swing and played around some more, then decided that we were tired and headed back.

Even though we were pretty exhausted by the time we got back to camp, Sharice and Patricia hadn't seen Navajo Falls, so we went back there. I love that place! (Só faltava a namorada :). We played around a while again, and I fought through the current and climbed up into a nook on the left side where the falls are coming down on you from all directions. Very cool.

Back to camp by dark for some more tasty freeze-dried camp food. (It actually was pretty good.)

That night a group of about 10 or 12 of us played a game called Mafia. For those of you not from Utah, Mafia is an intriguing game in which 2 people are secretly assigned as Mafia members, 2 as policemen, and everyone else as townspeople. Then the Mafia tries to kill the policemen while the policemen try to discover who the Mafia members are and convince the townspeople before it's too late. Naturally I was assigned as a Mafia member (I am 25% Italian). Normally the game ends after either the 2 Mafia members or the 2 policemen are both killed. However, this time, the moderator either forgot to stop the game, or didn't feel like it, so I ended up having to kill off both of the policemen and then at least 5 more townspeople after the policemen were already dead. I also threw my Mafia partner under the bus, so I ended up killing everyone in the town. Too bad the Guiness Book people weren't there. After the first game I went to bed. ("That's it for me, I'm out of here!")

Saturday morning we got up "early" and headed out. It was already 8 before we really got going. Patricia took the helicopter from the village, while I, Cami, and Sharice trekked the last 8 miles. We ran into a lot of the other people from the group as we were hiking out... mostly as they were passing us. My friend Jill fell on the hike out and chipped her front tooth. (Yikes!)

At one point I got a ways ahead of Cami and Sharice, so I decided to stop and wait at the next shade I found. But I kept going and never found any shade for maybe another half mile or more. I didn't want to get too far ahead, so I stopped right there in the blazing hot sun and sat down on a rock. I put some sunscreen on, then draped a sock over the back of my neck, and actually fell asleep! A while later (I have no idea how long) Cami and Sharice caught up, along with a friendly dog that was accompanying us up the trail.

We finally made it up after several hours. And then went to Chili's.


• • •
(I still haven't bought a new camera since I lost it in NYC, but here are all of the photos that I've mooched from other people so far.)

Prologue: At one point on the hike out I was trying to think if we could get my whole family to Havasupai, because it should definitely be a mandatory trip. For the less agile, the helicopter costs $80 per person each way, which doesn't seem too unreasonable. Then there's an easy 2 mile hike to the campground after getting dropped off. So I think even my mom could make it. Let's shoot for next year!

Sculpture Cycles

A couple weeks ago my roommate Marcus had a bike show in LA. He has a company called Sculpture Cycles that builds custom Harleys. I figured it would be a good way to celebrate my birthday on the beach, so I went along. My buddy Dave also came along, and a friend of Marcus's named Mandy came to help with the show.

We left at 6:30 AM on a Friday morning. We were in a big Ford F-250, hauling a big trailer in the back holding 3 big bikes and 1 big frame. It was about a 6 hour drive. The show was actually being held in Long Beach, right on the water, and we got there in the early afternoon. It took us a couple hours to set up the booth. Marcus has some "easy up" tents which took us about 20 minutes to put up. We later saw some other guy do it in about 20 seconds. The booth was 10 x 20, just big enough to hold everything.

Me on Steroids!"

Marcus has his own frame, that he designed, called the "Steroid Frame." I screwed on a couple of plates on the wheels of the display frame that he had there, so I could officially call myself a bike builder. Dave helped out with
a little spray painting. The rest of the show we talked up our professional bike building skills.

Me: So, how long have you been the head of painting at Sculpture Cycles?
Dave: Pretty much as long as I've been working here at Sculpture Cycles.

After we got everything set up, we zipped up the booth and headed to our hotel, the Holiday Inn. Then we headed to the beach for a little bit. Dave and I tried out his skimboard. Our skimboard skills were somewhat akin to our bike building skills, but it was fun.

That night Dave and I drove around looking for something to do. We had heard there was a big singles activity, but we couldn't find it, so we finally ended up at In 'N' Out Burger. I saw a guy with a couple of girls at a table outside...

Me: "I bet those guys are Mormons."
Dave: "You think?"
Me: "I dare you to go ask them if they're Mormons."
Dave: "Shut up... all right." (Walks over to their table.)
Dave: "I was wondering if you could settle a question for me. My friend over there thinks you guys are Mormons."
Them: "What??" "Naaaahhhh!!" "Why??"
Dave: "I guess you look like Mormons."
Them: "What??" "Naaaahhhh!!" "Get out!!"
Dave: "OK... thanks anyway."

That was our entertainment for the evening.

On Saturday morning we finished setting up the booth, and prepared for people to come by. We all had our Sculpture Cycles T-shirts on, and I picked up some of the relevant info about the bikes so I could act like I knew what I was talking about.

Passer-by: "This is some pretty trick stuff!"
Me: "Yeah, this is the steriod frame, we designed it ourselves. The back wheel is a 360, it's the biggest wheel currently available on the market. We've got a 120 inch merch engine in there. The price starts at 48K, and you can go up to about 80K depending on what options you want. This particular bike goes for 68K. The stretch is 4 inches..." (etc.)

I sold one T-shirt for $20, but no bikes.

After working the booth for a few hours, we walked around and checked out the other booths. There were a lot of really intense bikes.













Then Dave and I headed back to the beach. First we stopped off and Dave bought a boogie board. The waves were big and we had a fun time trying to catch them.

That night we went to a "VIP party" on the Queen Mary, a former cruise ship now serving as a hotel right close to where the bike show was being held. After 10 minutes of the loud party, Dave, Mandy and I headed out to explore the ship. Marcus stayed to schmooze with bike vendors, or something. The ship was pretty cool, and it was nice to be right there on the ocean.

Sunday was my birthday, but I didn't really do anything official to celebrate. We went back to the show for a couple of hours, then Dave and I went to church, at the Eldorado ward. After church we went back for the end of the show. The show winners were announced in the various classes. Unfortunately, they switched locations for entering bikes in the show, and so our Franken-Buell didn't get entered. It likely would have won the Sportster class. The winning bike for best-of-show was a crazy looking over-the-top cowboy themed chopper, which I didn't get a picture of unfortunately.

After the winners were all announced, the show was pretty much over, and we spent a couple more hours tearing down the booth, and loading up the bikes. We had dinner at Red Brick Pizza and some ice cream from Coldstone. We went back to the hotel and relaxed in the hottub.

Monday we slept in, then went to see one of Marcus's suppliers, called American Suspension. The owner, a guy named Vince, who Mandy said looked like an older version of Fabio, gave us the tour. They have a pretty big operation there, where they build the motorcylce front ends. I ran some rough numbers and figured out that they are probably a 10 to 20 million a year company.

As we were driving away I saw a house-for-sale sign in a yard, so I called up to check the price. It was a paltry 700K for a 1300 square foot house in about a 20 year old neighborhood. Maybe Phoenix isn't as expensive as I thought...

After the tour we all went to the beach and tried some more boogie-boarding. The sea was angry that day, my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli... so we (or at least I) got pretty beaten up by the waves. But it was still fun. And we of course did some obligatory frisbee tossing for a little bit.

After the beach we headed home. I drove for a couple hours. Not very fun, too big of a rig. But I got used to it after a while. We got home around 1 AM.

As we left the show on Sunday, the guy selling sunglasses at the booth next door, Tim, said, "Hope to see you at the next show." So I guess I'm going to have to go to Sturgis!

A Tragic Day (Pronounced in a high pitched voice like in Babe The Pig)

For many years, I have had an infinite number of email addresses. For the domain names that I manage, I have generally used a "catch-all" email address, meaning that any email that wasn't assigned to someone else would go to me. Certain people have had fun with this and used email addresses such as NateIsTheCoolestManAlive@lc.com or NateMustDie@lc.com.

However, those happy times are behind us now. Due to the ever increasing flood of spam, I can no longer handle all the email that goes into the catch-all's net. I do have a good spam filter, but spammers send to hundreds and thousands of made up email addresses (e.g. 1@lc.com, 2@lc.com, 3@lc.com, etc.) in the hopes of guessing valid ones. With the catch-all in place, all of them go to me. So even if only .1% of spams are getting through, it's still too many to deal with.

This was a tough decision to make, because I've been haphazardly making up and using different random email addresses here and there over the years, such as amazon.com@lc.com. This allowed me to see who was selling my info, and it was also just a nice convenience. Now a lot of those emails will no longer get through. But unfortunately that is a price that has to be paid to cut down on all the stinking spam.

I know you were probably on the verge of sending an email address to NateShouldRunForPresident@lc.com or possibly IDesperatelyWantToGoOnADateWithNate@lc.com, but it was not to be. To quote Milli Vanilli, "It's a tragedy for me to see, the dream is over."

Serious About Making a Contribution

This guy will attend 180 baseball games at 180 different ballparks, over the course of 175 days. He's visiting every major or minor league park in the country. He's doing it to raise money for cancer research.

That's a lot of baseball... and a lot of driving! I hope he reaches his goals.

Super Z

This past Wednesday night I went to see Superman Returns with my almost-4-year-old nephew Z.

First we loaded up his cool Spiderman backpack with candy and bottled water, so we wouldn't have to shell out big cash at the theater. (Don't want security to get suspicious. Mr. Pibb and Red Vines equals Crazy Delicious...)

As we were leaving my little niece Caz kept repeating something, and Kim interpreted it as "I want to go with you." So we had a heart wrenching little scene where we had to desert my sweet baby. But she's not quite old enough for a movie.

As expected, the theater wasn't very crowded on a Wednesday night; we climbed to the top of the stadium seating and sat in the middle of the row. The previews started, and Z got a little confused with the plot. He kept asking me "What's happening?" and I told him "Just another commercial for a different movie."

Finally, after about 20 million previews, the studio plug, the producer plug, the sound system demonstration, the turn-off-your-cell-phone ad, etc., etc., the movie started. Z did pretty well for about half the movie, but then he started getting antsy. I think he was just bored since he didn't understand the plot enough to know what was going on. I tried to explain what was happening but I must not have been very effective.

After we ate all the candy and he didn't have anything else to do, he said the dreaded words... "I have to go potty." So we climbed over everyone and ran to the bathroom. I kicked over some poor guy's popcorn on the way out. After we got back Z was good for a few more minutes, but then he got bored again. "I want some popcorn." So we climbed over everyone again and went and bought some popcorn. Then five minutes after we got back... "I have to go potty."

At that point I gave up on the movie, so after visiting the potty again we played a few video games and then headed out. AMC was kind enough to give me a free pass so I could come back and see the end sometime.

We walked by Cold Stone on the way out, so we decided to get some ice cream. Z chose Reeces for his "mix in," but then after we got it he decided he didn't like it. That was OK because I didn't mind finishing it off. We tried again and this time he chose "the blue one" which was cotton candy. We took it to go, and he ended up not wanting that one either when we got home, but Hyrum and Kim pitched in and finished it off.

In the future I think I'll stick with Pixar movies for kids under age 5, but it was fun times nonetheless.

Why?

My niece is going through a cute phase where she asks "Why?" whenever you say anything. Apparently she got it from my nephew, although I don't remember him doing it.

So a conversation might go something like this:

Caz: "What's that?"
Me: "A tie."
"Why?"
"Because I went to church."
"Why?"
"Because it's Sunday."
"Why?"
"Because it's the first day of the week."
"Why?"
"Because of the Romans or the Gregorians, I'm not sure."
[ponders...]
"Are you busy?"
"No."
"Daddy's busy."
"I see. Are you busy?"
"No, I'm Caz."

This guy traded a Red Paperclip for a house.

This guy started with a red paper clip and kept trading up till he got a house. Looks like he's moving to Kipling, Saskatchewan. Hmm... maybe I don't want a house THAT badly, eh?

read more | digg story

No More TV

I get on a weird cycle of TV watching lately, where I don't watch any TV for a couple of weeks, then I come home late on a Friday or Saturday and sit down to watch a few minutes, but then it turns into a few hours, and after multiple infomercials and Elimidate episodes, I end up sleeping in till noon the next day and throwing off my schedule for the entire next week. So then I vow to stop watching TV "for good," only to repeat the same sequence a few weeks later.

I figured the best way to overcome this habit is to go public with my plans to quit. So as of today, July 2, 2006, I am committing to no longer watch any TV, (except possibly for pre-planned social situations such as major sporting events).

By telling the world, I'm hoping it'll make it more difficult to slip back into the Carleton Sheets cycle. Your job is to keep me honest, so next time you see me, feel free to follow up!

World's second richest man to give richest man almost $40 Billion!

This is quite a story. Warren Buffett, the world's second richest man (worth approximately $40 Billion), has decided to donate most of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates is the world's richest man, worth approximately $50 Billion.

Read More: Article | Interview with Warren Buffett

A lot of people in my field (technology) think Bill Gates is the devil, because of the monopolistic practices of Microsoft. And I do agree that Microsoft has done a lot of unethical things over the years. But nonetheless I have a great respect for the way both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are attempting to do some good in the world with the wealth that they have acquired. All reports that I've heard about the Gates Foundation have been positive -- it sounds like their efforts are mostly focused on fighting disease in third world countries.

Hopefully the efforts of Gates and Buffett will motivate other wealthy people to follow suit and try to improve the lives of the many underprivileged people in our world.

Chessboxing

I can't believe this is actually real, but apparently there's a new sport called chessboxing.

From the article:

"Two competitors face each other in 11 alternating rounds, six of chess, five of boxing. A bout begins with chess, which is played on a board placed directly in the middle of the ring. Each round of chess lasts four minutes. After each chess round, the bell sounds, and workmen remove the chessboard for a two-minute round of boxing, the gloves go back on, the punching recommences. Participants win by way of knockout, checkmate, referee's decision, or if his opponent exceeds the allotted total of 12 minutes for an entire match on the chessboard. Those are the basics, but they do little to answer the overriding question: Why?"

If you're really interested you can read the rest of the article here...

Score more GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLS!

I've caught a little bit of world cup action lately, and I've come to the following conclusion: Soccer, the most popular sport in the world, is a little silly. Sure, it's a fun game, but some of the rules are really bugging me. I think it could use a few upgrades to make the game more interesting and bring it up to date.

Here are a few of my suggestions for improving the game:

3) Three words: SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME!
Two 15 minute overtime halves? Are you kidding? Why don't you just start the game over from the beginning and play another 90 minutes?

2) Off sides has got to go.
"Off Sides" is a silly rule. There's a way to teach people not to cherry pick -- utilize your numbers advantage and score a goal! Getting rid of off sides would open up the game and make it more exciting. And anything to increase scoring would be great!

1) And my number one suggestion for soccer nation... STOP THE CLOCK!
Every other timed sport in the world stops the clock when play stops. In soccer, the clock that everyone sees keeps running, but the the clock in the ref's hands is stopped. So no one except the ref knows how much time is left in the game. What can possibly be the advantage to this? It makes no sense. It's annoying. Stop doing it!

Thank you for listening, and now that the U.S. is out of competition, may I just say: VIVA A SELEÇÃO BRASILEIRA!

Gotta be part of the experiment...

OK. Here's my link: Linkie Winkie. Please explain.

You cannot do that here! I do not understand that!

I ran across a link yesterday that took me back a few years: A free remake of King's Quest III, an early computer game that I used to play about 15 or 20 years ago.

I downloaded and installed it... unfortunately I don't have much time to play it right now, but it definitely brought back memories.

New York Doll

I saw an interesting movie on Saturday, called "New York Doll." At first I wasn't even paying attention to it, it was just on in the background at a party, but it gradually sucked me in. I definitely recommend it.

It's about a punk rocker who converted to Mormonism.

Here's the Synopsis:

New York Doll relates the meteoric rise, resounding fall, and recent all-too-brief resurrection of the seminal New York glam-rock-punk band, the New York Dolls, but it is foremost a story about the band's amazing bassist and leader, Arthur "Killer" Kane. With empathy, respect, and humor, director and friend Greg Whiteley follows Kane and interviews key musicians, friends, and colleagues to uncover the legacy of the Dolls and their significant impact on the London music scene in the dizzying heyday of the early 1970s.

After Kane and his band bottom-out on drugs and alcohol, he disappears from music, embracing a surprisingly different path when he becomes a born-again Mormon. When rocker Morrissey organizes a London reunion of the New York Dolls, Kane buys his guitar back from a pawnshop, takes leave of his Family Center library job, and heads back to New York City to prepare for an unlikely comeback.

Google maps is the best. True dat. (Double true!)

I haven't watched Saturday Night Live in a few years, since it isn't very funny anymore. In fact I don't watch much TV at all, except for a few sporting events. But a couple months ago I read on the net about a funny "digital short" on SNL, so I checked it out here. Hilarious stuff. Almost made me want to watch more TV.

At that time I sent the link to a few friends and family members, and I figured it was pretty old news by now, but I was talking to my friend Ryan on Saturday and he had inexplicably never heard about it. So I thought I'd better add it to this blog for the benefit of anyone else who was overlooked.

My favorite lines:

1. Google maps is the best. True dat. (Double true!)
2. You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we're dropping Hamiltons.

In case you can't make out all the lyrics, here they are:

Lazy Sunday wake up in the late afternoon
Call Parnell just to see how he's doing

Hello?
What up Parns?
Yo Samberg what's cracking?
You thinking what I'm thinking? (Narnia!) Then it's happening.

But first, my hunger pangs are sticking like duct tape.
Let's hit up Magnolia and mack on some cupcakes.
No doubt, that bakery's got all the bomb frostings.
I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling.

Two, no six, no twelve, baker's dozen!
I told you that I'm crazy for these cupcakes cousin.

Where's the movie playing?
Upper West Side, dude.
Well, let's hit up Yahoo! Maps to find the dopest route.
I prefer Mapquest. (That's a good one, too.)
Google maps is the best. True dat. (Double true!)

68th and Broadway (Step on it sucker!)
What you wanna do Chris?
Snack attack ***!

The Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.
Yes, the Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.
We love the Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.
Pass that Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.

Yo stop at that deli, the theater's overpriced.
You got the backpack? (Gonna pack it up nice.)
Don't want security to get suspicious.
Mr. Pibb and Red Vines equals Crazy Delicious.
Yo reach in my pocket, pull out some dough.
The girl acted like she'd never seen a ten before.
It's all about the Hamiltons baby.
Throw the snacks in the bag and I'm Ghost like Swayze.

Roll up to the theater. Ticket buying what we're handling.
You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we're dropping Hamiltons.
Parked in our seats, movie trivia's the illest.
What Friends alum starred in films with Bruce Willis?
We answered so fast that we're scary.
Everyone stared in awe when we screamed Matthew Perry.

Now quiet in the theater or it's gonna get tragic.
We're about to get taken to a dream world of magic.

The Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.
Yes, the Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.
We love the Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.
Pass that Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.

Me as an old Asian

I ran across this face altering site that lets you morph your photo into a different age or race.

My favorite was me as an Asian:

And here's me as an old person. Not the best likeness but still SCARY!!

The Amazing Race

(Easily bored? Illiterate? You can skip straight to the photos here!)

There's a popular TV show that most of you have probably seen, called the Amazing Race. I assume most people have seen it, because whenever I tell anyone that I haven't seen it, they're always shocked. But anyway, even though I've still never seen the show, I participated in a local version of the Amazing Race on Saturday night. The TV show version has a prize of $1 million. Ours was only half a million. :)

A girl from church, Rebecca Barton, decided to put it all together, just because she's cool like that. I'm sure it was a ton of work.

The race consists of different teams performing different tasks, and then at the completion of each task, finding the clue indicating what the next task or destination is. I was on a team with Cami Leeper, Ryan Wells, and Todd Bigelow.

To start off, we had to find a certain park, and then find a person at that park who had our first task, which was to tie the legs of all our teammates together and then run around the bases of a softball field.

After that, we had to go to Mesa High, run up and down the bleachers, around the track, over the river, through the woods, etc. Then we got "road blocked" which means that one of the other teams found a road block sign so they were able to call in an extra task for us to do. For the extra task we had to find a stranger and have him sing Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. Of course, the guy we found was Mexican and didn't know the song, so we had to teach it to him really fast and have him sing it along with us. Wish we had that on video. :)

After completing all the running and singing, the next clue led us to the Mesa Temple, where we received an assignment to go to Kiwanis Park in Tempe and find a certain small obstacle course and complete it. Initially we found the wrong obstacle course, so we ended up doing 2 of them. We definitely got our exercise for the evening.

After that we had to go to a certain ice cream shop. The people at the shop were apparently participating in the race, because they knew what to do. We ordered a certain large frozen yogurt, and at the bottom of the frozen yogurt was the next clue. We all got brain freezes from eating frozen yogurt too fast. Eventually I got impatient and stuck my hand in the frozen yogurt and pulled out the clue. Ryan kept eating what was left. Good thing my hands were clean. :)

The clue in the yogurt directed us to a swimming pool. But before we could get there, someone roadblocked us again, so we had to stop at a gas station and buy a soda. Cami ran in like The Flash and grabbed a soda as I took photo documentation, then she threw the money at the cashier and left. As we were leaving the cashier was saying, "I'm going to need to ring that up for you..." Hopefully she didn't call the cops. :)

We made it to the swimming pool and looked around for the next clue. But there was none to be found. We looked all over, we even made this young couple that was cuddling on the pool steps get up so we could look under them. There was nothing. After about 8 minutes another team showed up, and right after them the moderators showed up and threw some balloons into the pool. We were so fast we had beaten the clues there! :)

We had to jump in the pool (actually only Todd jumped in) and grab a balloon, pop it, get the clue out, find some dice on the bottom of the pool, and then have two people on the team roll two sixes in a row with the dice. It took us quite a while to get the sixes, and by the time we did the other team had left already. That was the last task, and we just had to race back to the home base. We made it just behind the other team.

I griped a little bit about having to wait for the last clue, so the winning team took the high road and declared us the winners, even though we really got second place. But either way, lots o' fun was had by all.

You can view my photos from the event here.

Improv Everywhere

I only really follow two websites, espn.com for sports, and digg.com for tech news. Yesterday on digg I noticed an article about Best Buy being invaded by improv artists. I glanced at the article, and it quickly led me to the Improv Everywhere website.

I am not that easily impressed by anything on the Internet, but I found Improv Everywhere to be fascinating and hilarious. It's a little hard to describe without seeing the site yourself, but they describe themselves as a group that "causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places." I know that sounds a little weird, but the missions are just plain cool.

A few favorites:

1. The hypnotist -- a phony hypnotist and assistant hypnotize a bunch of people in a park, and then flee the scene, leaving the people in their hypnotized state (kind of like in Office Space).
2. The time warp -- a group of people go through a series of intricate interactions in a Starbucks, and then repeat the exact same actions over and over in a loop.
3. U2 on the rooftop -- A phony U2 plays an impromptu concert on a rooftop (with a Korean-American as "The Edge." :)

Great, amazing stuff. I can't believe it's been going on since 2001 and this is the first I've heard of it.

Who is this Boris Diaw?

I've been in Arizona seven years now, and I've become a fan of the Phoenix Suns. I don't think I'll ever learn to love ASU, but I have grown to like the Suns. They have a quality group of guys, a great coach, and they're fun to watch. (And of course, Shawn Marion and I are tight!)

I was watching game 6 of the Suns / LA Lakers playoff series with a group of rabid Suns fans Thursday night. (The Lakers were up 3 to 2 in the series, so a win would have clinched the series for them.) The Suns were down 3 with 6 seconds to go, the Lakers were about to start their celebration, when Tim Thomas hit a big 3 pointer to send the game to overtime. And then who would score 6 crucial points at the beginning of overtime to keep the Suns in the game? BORIS DIAW! Who? The NBA's most improved Frenchman came through bigtime. Who even knew they played basketball in France?

Then with about 3 minutes to go in overtime, my friend Dave was fiddling with the remote, and he accidentally shut off the cable system. Not just the TV, but the whole thing. He turned it back on, and it said "booting up" and then did nothing. No one knew how to get it working. There was dead silence in the room. Someone muttered "I can't believe this is happening." Then after about another minute of everyone trying to help turn the TV back on, someone went and grabbed a radio and turned it on. The Suns were taking it to the Lakers. We finally got the TV back on with about a minute to go, and the Suns up 9. Despite a couple more lucky shots by Kobe, the Suns held on for the win. Pandemonium ensued. Game 7 in Phoenix on Saturday!

My brother the rock star

Well, I knew someone in the family would make it big eventually. And now it's happened.

My brother Benj just put out his first CD. Apparently his group is called Virginia. If I recall correctly he was born in Virginia, so that must be the connection.

I guess he's become somewhat of a celebrity up at BYU Idaho (the college formerly known as Ricks), because of a song he and his friend sang at a Guitars Unplugged event. The song is called Snow Fort Heaven, and chronicles their ill fated efforts to create a Snow Fort for the ages.

They have an even funnier song called "The Girl For Me (Polydactyly)," which includes such lines as "She's got a little something extra," "She has something other girls lack," "She's good for gathering nuts and berries in a primitive society," and many more. (For those not in the medical field, Polydactyly means having an extra digit, a la the six fingered man ("My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die..."))

The CD is entitled "She Usually Wears Mittens," which is another lyric from the Polydactyly song. The CD totally rocks, and it can be yours for a paltry $7.00 including shipping. If you would like to help support a new young talent, just send the money through paypal to "tannerb _at_ gmail.com" and put "CD order" in the instructions field. Enjoy!

Blog Alert gets some notice!

I noticed a little traffic starting to build on my Blog Alert page, so I checked the web stats, and I found out that Blog Alert was listed on a tech site called eHub that lists "next generation" web products. Pretty cool!

In case there starts to be too much traffic on the Blog Alert site, I thought I would mirror some of the content over to here. (Google, who owns Blogger, can probably handle the traffic.)

For those of you wanting to add Blog Alert functionality to your own blog or site (allowing people to sign up for email notifications of your blog posts), you can use the following HTML. Just replace http://YOUR-FEED-URL-HERE with the URL of your RSS Feed, and paste the HTML into your blog template:

<!-- START BLOG ALERT BOX -->
<div style="padding-top: 16px; padding-bottom: 16px;">
<table style="border: 1px solid rgb(13, 41, 183); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" width="160">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<h3 style="border-bottom: 1px solid navy; margin: 0px; color: navy; display: block; height: 20px;">Subscribe</h3>
<div style="font-size: 9pt; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">
Enter your email address to receive notifications when there are new posts
</div>
<form method="post" action="http://www.shootthebreeze.net/blogalert/index.php">
<input name="formSubmitted" value="true" type="hidden">
<input name="fromBlog" value="true" type="hidden">
<input name="feedURL" value="http://YOUR-FEED-URL-HERE" type="hidden">
<input name="email" size="20" maxlength="200" value="" type="text">
<input name="submit" value="Sign Up" type="submit">
</form>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<!-- END BLOG ALERT BOX -->

When you add it to your blog, it should look something like this:

Subscribe Enter your email address to receive notifications when there are new posts

Get email notifications whenever I post something new!

A few days back I was complaining about how Blogger should have the ability for all 3 of my regular readers to get an email whenever I post something new to my blog. I looked around on the Internet, talked to some people in the know, and found out that there ARE ways to do that. My friend Blake pointed me to some good possibilities, such as Yahoo Alerts.

But I didn't really love any of the available options, so I created one of my own. I called it "Blog Alert." So, you can now experience the sheer pleasure of receiving email updates every time I decide to share my wisdom.

To sign up:

1. Enter your email in the "Subscribe" form on the right. Or you can use this link.
2. Submit the form.
3. You'll get a confirmation email to make sure it's really you -- just click on the link in the confirmation email and you're ready to go!
4. You will get at most one email per day -- if there were any new posts that day, you will get an email with a summary of the posts; if there weren't any new posts that day, then you won't get anything.

You can also use Blog Alert to sign up for email notifications from other blogs and sites. Here is a list of popular feeds that you can try out. Or you can try one of my favorites (after clicking on the link, scroll down to "My other recommended RSS feeds").

And finally, if you have a blog of your own, you can add Blog Alert to your own site so people can get email notifications whenever you post something new. You just have to know the URL of the RSS feed for your site (which will vary depending on what blog service you're using). If you're using Blogger it's http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml. Once you figure out the RSS feed URL, you can get the HTML for your site here.

Enjoy! And please let me know what you think!

Caz and Z

As you may have heard, I won a recent contest for cutest niece and nephew in the world.

Don't believe it? You be the judge!

(Kodak will try to trick you into creating an account, but you don't need to. Click on the above link and then go to "View Photos without signing in" on the bottom right. The only reason you might want to create an account is if you want to save the album for future viewing.)

(Yes I know flickr is better. But I don't feel like paying the $25 a year, as of yet...)

(No, I don't mind if you skip this section if you aren't in my family. :)

I know you want to subscribe to this blog... but how?

OK, I figured that a lot of you (i.e. my mom) would want to get notified by email whenever I posted something new to this site. And I figured that that would be pretty standard functionality.

Well, it looks like I figured wrong! I can't find anything about email notifications for blogger posts. If anyone out there knows how to do it, PLEASE let me know, nate _at_ lunchclub _dot_ com.

So I guess RSS is the only way to subscribe to my infinite wisdom. For those of you geek-tech-com-soft types, my RSS feed is:
http://natetanner.blogspot.com/atom.xml

If you're new to RSS, it's a way to get all your news and other publications of interest aggregated, using an (aptly named) "aggregator," such as Feed Reader (which is free, and the one I use).

(If you aren't already in the RSS game, then it would be a silly idea to sign up just for my feed. I'm pretty sure that I won't post to this blog often enough to make it worth the time. But if you're already an RSS person then it can't hurt.)

My other recommended RSS feeds:

1. The most popular sites that people have bookmarked:
   http://del.icio.us/rss/popular
   
   
2. The most "dugg" tech news and tidbits:
   http://digg.com/rss/index.xml
   
   
3. All that Web 2.0 craziness:
   http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch
   
   
4. The sports guy!
   http://search.espn.go.com/keyword/search? searchString=bill_simmons& page=espn&filter=null&feed=rss
   

Enjoy!

Shawn Marion at the car wash!

I've been meaning to start a blog for a while, and today seemed like a good "journal entry day."

After dropping my roommate off at the airport this morning, I went to Danny's Car Wash. (I had a voucher for a free car wash, since my company, DineSmart, has been doing some advertising trade with Danny's.) As I was in line at the carwash, I heard some old guy behind me say "So, are you guys going to take 'em tonight?" and I looked back, and he was talking to Shawn Marion!

I didn't say anything at that point, but when I went out to the parking lot (where they dry the cars) to pick up my car, there was Shawn again, so I sat down by him. I made some small talk, and then said, "So how's Amare doing?" At that point I think he might have grimaced a little, as in "Hey I'm an All Star, I'm CARRYING this team, stop asking about Amare!" But then he answered "He's coming back tonight." I said, "Wow, I guess I should read the paper. That's big!" Shawn sort of shrugged.

So then we sat there for a minute or two. Everyone that walked by would say hello to Shawn or nod or wave or smile shyly. I felt like I was sitting by Vito Corleone in the Godfather with everyone coming to kiss his hand. So I said "Shawn, let me ask you, does it ever get old having everyone recognize you everywhere you go?" He said "Hey, if I didn't want to be recognized I should have gone into something besides basketball." I said, "Yeah, or you shouldn't have been so good at it." He nodded, and went on to talk about how it's all good and positive to have people like you, but sometimes you don't want to be bothered, but if you come to a public place like a carwash without bodyguards or anyone to provide a buffer zone, then you have to expect people to talk to you and be cool with it.

Then one of the car wash minions came over and gave Shawn a quick bow to indicate that his car was ready. (For everyone else, they yell out something unintelligible from across the parking lot, but NBA players get a little special treatment, even at a car wash). Shawn said something like, "Hey, later man" and was gone.

So there you go. Shawn Marion -- nice guy, clean car. Go Suns.