Life 2.0

Life 2.0

Definitions, sort of, according to me:

Web 2.0 – think of this as the front end, consumer facing interface that folks use to connect with other folks. The terms "community" or "social network" are applicable here. It means – a place where folks hang out electronically, connect with peers or experts, friends or foes, with some commonality of interests. MySpace and Facebook are perfect examples of true end-user applications of web 2.0 technologies. LinkedIn is a business oriented example of such.

    What's the difference between web 1.0 and 2.0? 1.0 was about extending the reach of people so they could connect with others far away, electronically. For business, it was about a new "virtual" storefront where customers could find you and spend their dough without having to physically drive to your location. It was about my ability to communicate with colleagues and cohorts around the planet in semi-real time. Web 2.0 uses the entire 1.0 internet infrastructure but does so in more of a matrix –instead of a point-to-point (person to person, or person to place) way of thinking. 2.0 is about connecting me with someone or something else because I was connected with you – and you were connected with them. It's sort of a 6 degrees thing. The main difference financially is that with 1.0 if you came to my web store and it sucked, you might have gone away, but you really couldn't extend the damage that you might have done. In a 2.0 world, you now blog about how bad I suck, you participate in forums and chats and generally have a much louder voice. The sphere of influence of someone in the web 2.0 world is frightening to many – one person can directly alter the opinions and actions of a lot of folks now.

Information 2.0 – when a CoP (community of practice – or like interested people) exists, a wealth of information is generated. For example, it would be good to know all you can about Chuck the antagonist in your CoP to try to understand his power in the community and then how to keep him on the team. There are huge amounts of very fine hunks of information created constantly in this way, so understanding it and using it is critical. Most "legacy" companies are afraid of this web 2.0 phenomenon because people say bad things – but that's asinine. Knowing is much more important than hoping. People are going to find a way to use their new found power whether you like it or not, so encouraging it and building a legitimate partnership with the community – both good and bad – will be paramount. Ignorance or hope will lead to death. Adaptation and embracing change is how survival works. You don't have to like it on day one, but you will learn to love it. The way people buy your products, use your services, research alternatives, tear down real or artificial "wall of confusion" elements that you've successfully used and relied on for years are gonna end. Knowledge is power, my brothers and sisters, and the wisdom of crowds will not be contained or restricted in the new world order. Understanding the data is the key to the kingdom for capitalists. This is not easy stuff – so if you are terrible at harnessing all the corporate information assets you already have, then you'll most likely be bad at this new stuff – but don't fret, for unless you are given the ability to hop on this bandwagon from a high level strategic sense, your company is going to perish anyhow. You might as well milk it until you can find some forward thinking alternative.

    Side Note: this is the pot of gold for IT. Embrace the movement and get yourself smarter about this stuff. This is how IT becomes completely relevant and strategic again. Companies will slowly come to grips with the fact that if they don't participate, their customers are going to leave – and I don't care if it's a local hairdresser or General Motors – eventually the power of web 2.0 will change everything in business. The folks who were hip Internet 1.0 HTML coders were all the rage for a few years – but this is a far more long lasting, far reaching wave to ride – and it ain't about code per se – it's about the business of information .

Infrastructure 2.0 – The overwhelming majority of those considered web 2.0 companies are considered such because of their market perception. The overwhelming value that will come out of this wave for every company will come in the form of behind-the-scenes Infrastructure 2.0. Infrastructure 2.0 is simple to understand – since the web 2.0 phenomenon has hit it has largely been predicated on building a community – ideally to huge levels – in a completely unpredictable way, with some assumptions of the value created but no hard dollars to bet on. Advertising to eyeballs remains the primary value driver in this world, though folks like Amazon also exact a small toll for their efforts. Because of the unknown, or at least wildly variable, elements associated with "how do we make money" with web 2.0, using traditional business models and traditional practices on the back end made no sense. What the early folks wanted was infrastructure that scales forever, in whatever chunks I want, in real time, dynamically, and is based on absolute commodity components – that a monkey can manage. And oh yeah, it really should be orders of magnitude cheaper than what I can buy today. The IT industry said "we can't do that" so folks like Google did it themselves. No matter what you think, the model has been proven – and it's only a matter of time before every company starts insisting on having the same kind of thing in their data centers. The argument that you get what you pay for isn't true anymore. The presumption that cheap or free means inferior is baloney. How many of you run Gmail or yahoo Mail along side your expensive, enterprise caliber Email system because that same expensive, enterprise caliber Email system is down at least twice a week? When is the last time Gmail or Ymail were down? Sometimes free is better.

    Side Note: This is a tremendously interesting (if you are a loser such as myself) space to watch. Just like the way in which a YouTube or MySpace was able to divert billions of dollars in value from traditional media players, if our little $100 Billion annual IT infrastructure industry doesn't change its stripes, even the biggest of the players will ultimately die. Not possible you snickering executive? It wasn't conceivable that ATT would be broken up, nor was the fall of the Soviet Union – but they were no longer able to control the masses, and eventually knowledge and desire will get out – so you either adapt to the new generation or you too may find yourself the subject of stories lumping you with "Ken Olsen said why would anybody ever want a computer in their house?" kind of stuff. Don't ever think you have been so successful for so long that it means you have a right to that success in the future. You don't. The only civilized way to travel was by train for a long, long time. The automobile was crap, and no one would ever really use that to replace the train – or so thought a billionaire or two. What happened? Infrastructure was put in place (roads) and the economics were so dramatically changed with the Model T that there was no stopping it. To this day the train has never recovered, and fortunes that were handed down for many generations stopped in their tracks.

Infrastructure 2.0 includes Storage 2.0, Server 2.0 and Networking 2.0. Everything 2.0. Most of where we are in all this is 1.5 at best – and mostly 1.0. True value of this whole 2.0 phenomenon won't be realized until company X is creating new exciting bonds with its constituencies via web 2.0 initiatives, and making decisions based upon the intelligence derived from their Information 2.0 architecture, which all executes on an IT back-end that costs pennies vs. dollars and effectively runs as a self-contained, self-healing, self-expanding entity. I want to invest in that company – but I don't play the market.

There are a bunch of folks who are starting to think this way. I watch guys like Ibrix with their file system being implemented to enable Infrastructure 2.0 inside a lot of their customers. I see what Google and Amazon have done and know it can work. I wonder how the legacy big folks are going to react. I understand how hard it is to forgo cold hard cash that your customer really wants to give you in lieu of pushing stuff that contradicts everything you've ever done. I really think that we'll see some very large, very old, very established companies not able to make the transition, and be marginalized into the land of Wang, Prime, and DG. Fun stuff.

Dave Hitz Has Reproduced

Congratulations to Dave and his lovely wife (who I have never met) on the birth of their first – Mira. This is all that I know at this time, so I cannot answer questions such as – did Dave conceive the old fashioned way or did was there some super-genius "lab experimentation" type science going on in the basement? Is Mira really code for something else? Is her middle name 011001010? Will her birth require a new file system branch on the Hitz family tree?

How would you like to be in her second grade class at science fair time? It would be like having to play in the field day waffle ball tournament with David Ortiz's kid or a little kickball with young Master Beckham on the other team. I can see it now – little Joey McPutz tied a string between two cans and you can hear him talk through them, while Mira unveils the cold-fusion reactor (using only milk cartons and grass clippings) which she developed at recess that now powers half of Palo Alto.

I hope Dave can code himself some sleep.

Boring Rocks

This was published (I think) in Storage Magazine recently.

History is littered with products and technologies that were "nice to have" but you didn't really "need to have" them. With all the fires that are fought daily in our storage shops, we just don't have the time or energy to deal with "nice to haves" – we have too many "need to haves" on our plate. As Bob Brennan of Iron Mountain once told me, "You don't paint the house when it's on fire." I love that line.

 

It's because of this phenomenon that technologies languish on the sidelines, sometimes forever, even though they seem as if they'll provide obvious and immediate benefits. SRM (storage resource management) is a classic example. No one thinks SRM is a bad idea. What could possibly be bad about a tool that provides visibility and insight into the deep, dark recesses of your storage? SRM turns the lights on. Who wouldn't want to know if they have 87 copies of the same illicit pornography sitting on their tier-1 storage? Why would you go buy new capacity if you knew that you had tons of space you aren't even using?

 

Boring "vision" tools that provide insight and report on things like data types, asset utilization, mission success or failure, root cause analysis, change management, etc. seem as necessary to me as making sure the system you run is getting power from the wall. But somehow these things haven't managed to make it onto the sex appeal list. It seems the only time we ever decide to turn on the lights is after a big problem. We buy backup reporting tools only after we find out we couldn't recover something important -- since it hadn't been backed up successfully in eight years. We buy change management tools only after we spend four days trying to figure out why our production system is now running 90% slower even though someone else swears the only thing added over the weekend was a new laser printer.

 

I get the human nature aspect of why we do some of the stuff we do – because most of these tools expose things we might not want exposed. It can be potentially embarrassing to let everyone know that your bullet proof security schema has a hole the size of Guatemala in it, or that you just insisted you needed $300,000 for new capacity only to find out 60% of your current capacity is consumed by Brittany Spears photos. I also get the thought that if we put this stuff in place, it might jeopardize our "importance" within the organization – which is completely wrong. Being strategic and solving problems that prevent future problems is never considered anything but good by intelligent business folks.

 

The "green" phenomenon might just change everything. The traditional answer to storage management (an oxymoron) has been "just buy more." Managing is hard, adding more of what you know isn't. That won't work when you've run out of physical room, or can't add a 40-watt light bulb without dimming the entire building. It won't work if the next "wafer thin" server that rolls in makes the data center four degrees hotter than the sun. These events will require us to do things differently – and once you're forced to do things differently, the floodgates of possibilities open wide.

 

Money solved all problems historically – but it won't anymore. It doesn't matter how rich you are if there's no more power to buy, or if you can't physically put one more pound of gear on the floor without creating another leaning tower of Pisa. The good news is that the boring tools that shine the light are really good, usually really cheap, and will expose obvious goofy things that we can fix almost instantly to buy us time. As a matter of fact, I contend that the average data center could probably save 25% to 50% of your green costs by simply changing processes, being smarter about how you use the stuff you have, and cleaning up silliness. Put that in your carbon-free emitting pipe and smoke it.

You Can't Fix Stupid

My recent CW ditty follows.

Q: Steve, how can an IT executive expect to bring “strategic value” to the business if the business itself does not value IT, and also shows no real business acumen?  P.B. Redondo Beach, CA

A: You can’t.

“Stupid is as stupid does” is about the most accurate statement you’ll ever hear.  You can fix most any problem, except stupid. 

The bottom line is we are in a vicious circle – IT hasn’t been able historically to prove its true value to the business,  and as such is treated as a cost center, which are the first things to lose funding when a business downturn or hiccup happens, which always happen in poorly run companies.  There isn’t much you can do about that, except to find a better company who values the strategic possibilities of IT and does so while actually running the top line business better than a six monkeys driving a mini-van juiced up on tequila and Jolt.  Easier said than done, unfortunately.

The good news is that for every well run business, there appear to be 10-100 more entities that are either about to succumb to Darwinism or have somehow bypassed the evolutionary process temporarily.  Eventually the Dodo became extinct.  The better news is that as the natural laws of business are slowly doing their thing, the businesses who withstand the test of time tend to be the ones who have the brains and adaptability to move on to the next plane. 

The really good news is that the next plane will be dominated by data.  “Gut” instinct will be valued, creativity will be sought, but data will drive decisions.  When that happens, IT becomes what it always should have been – the keeper of the crown jewels.  I just hope we’re all around when it finally happens.

I’m seeing signs of intelligent life.  If you are not up to speed on what the web 2.0 phenomenon really means for you, IT, and business in general, you should start paying attention.  I think I’m even going to write a book on it (I’ve threatened that many times before, however, so don’t hold your breath).  Web 2.0 is all about pushing new business agenda’s while completely dismantling traditional methodologies for performing corporate functions and turning the economic models of all that we know about technology and infrastructure on its head.  There is too much to cover on this topic, but suffice it to say that when the dust settled on web 1.0, the guys left standing have turned the world of IT infrastructure as we have known it into a shambles. What was never possible before is suddenly possible – and what cost a million bucks a year ago might cost less than a tuna fish sandwich next year.   All the assumptions that you hold about IT and the business of IT should be put on notice – change is in the air.

Amazon didn’t start by wanting to be in the IT infrastructure business – they had a different idea.  YouTube or MySpace sure didn’t desire to be in the infrastructure space either, and nor did Yahoo or even Google – but they all are.  The only reason to build your own stuff, if it isn’t the business you are in, is because you can’t buy the stuff you need or you can’t get the functionality you want at the price you are willing to pay.  There is value to the video of my kid shoving the cat into the toilet, but how much?  Not enough for me to pay YouTube to keep it.  Yahoo and Google will give you unlimited space now – gratis.  Those models are simple to understand from an IT perspective – they want infinitely dynamically scalable infrastructure with an absurdly low (or no) real cost to acquire or manage.  Otherwise, their models fail – and none of those models seem to be failing just yet.  Since the entire IT industry is predicated upon the very opposite of this model, it is no wonder that web 2.0 companies had to grow their own ways to provide that functionality at the required economic level.  Free means crap, right?  Wrong.  How many of you keep Yahoo mail running on your blackberrys along with Exchange because you know Exchange will be down sooner or later?  When is the last time Google mail was down?  So my enterprise caliber application running on enterprise caliber infrastructure with enterprise caliber IT talent is less reliable than my free email?  Yep.

What’s most interesting is that the model has been proven internally to these organizations and only is now teaching the rest of us what that means.  The email example is perfect – Google or Yahoo are not providing us these tremendous services for zero dollars by simply running enterprise applications on enterprise infrastructure more effectively than we do.  They are doing it 100% differently.  The question is - who will be the next wave of vendors to take that movement and apply external commercial viability to it.  That’s when all hell is going to break loose.  I can’t wait.

Now, not to get you all bummed out, but as cool as all this is, there is still way more dumb than smart out there.  For example, I have a neighbor that for years has been the CIO of a “direct marketing” company – a glorified pyramid scheme really.  This company has been as big as $650-700 million bucks – currently plummeting down to sub $400 on their way to oblivion.  They are one of these “party in the house” marketing organizations – the kind we all hate but feel compelled to attend from time to time in order to maintain civility in the neighborhood.  Anyhow, these guys sell candles.  They have made a ton of dough selling candles over the years by having Marge host a little candle party and getting my wife to stop in and place an order for $37 worth of the smooth smelling wax jars.  The issue is that once my wife gets the candles, she likes them.  She wants to buy more candles, but she has absolutely no desire to attend another candle party with Marge.  She’d like to simply log onto the company's website, and order some more.  The company, being stupid, has decided that would be bad for them.  They fear that somehow that would break their allure with Marge – or somehow hurt the mystique of the home party.  So instead of assigning my wife a customer ID that automatically pays Marge every time my wife orders something (which tends to be a lot), they decide to not allow my wife to order anything on-line.  Remember Julia Roberts in the Beverly Hills boutique that looked down on her and lost a fortune in sales in Pretty Woman?  “Big mistake.”  My wife doesn’t care.  She goes to the mall, CVS, or any other on-line store and buys candles.  Marge is out a commission, and the company is out a customer.  By not only ignoring the evolution of their own market dynamics, but flagrantly disregarding basic customer desire, they are destined for the scrap heap.  What did they do when they started to lose customers and piles of money?  Did they mine their data to find the root of the problem?  Nope, they slashed costs, killed every IT project, fired developers, and made sure the only folks left were political allies without a clue. 

I love Darwinism.  Keep the questions coming.  Ciao.

Lessons Learned In Italy

A few years ago I had cancer.  When you get cancer, or probably any "oh my god" disease, you make the "list of stuff I'm going to do if I don't die".  Hanging out in a villa in the middle of nowhere Tuscany was one of the things.

So a year ago I decided that it was time.  I found a ridiculously large pad in the middle of Chianti - slept 29 or something - and rented it.  (FYI, when you look for a ridiculously large pad in Italy you search the Internet - which brings up tons of these pads.  What I found is that EVERY real estate rental company on the planet represents the exact same pads.  They also promise "concierge services" and tour arrangement etc.  Some are probably good, but not mine.  Luxury Retreats is not a good one.  Downright awful, actually.)

Anyhow, I drank a little too much wine one night and started inviting all of my wife's relatives.  Thankfully, some wimped out!  I ended up bringing my 6, my sister-in-law and niece, father-in-law, The Clark family of Washington, D.C. (6 - cousins), The Prigmore clan (6) and the Bowker (3.25 - she's preggo) bunch. 23 Americans and a preggo Italiano (which was brilliant planning on my part) to translate.  We piled onto a Lufthansa airplane for an 8pm departure to Munich then Florence.

When you buy 24 plane tickets, a year in advance, you'd think an airline might be appreciative, and toss a little upgrade or two my way, but no.  I'm only 4 foot 2 but apparently airlines design coach class to accommodate people who either have legs shorter than 12" or for sadists.  Having no butt isn't helpful either, as being the 11 millionth person on that seat meant I'd have been better off duct taping myself to the bathroom door and sleeping standing up.  The good news is my wife is 6 feet tall, 5'8" of which are legs.  The better news is between my 3 and 5 year olds, the young 3 year old Bowker sire, and the 5 year old Princess Leah, there were lot's of unhappy campers.  The crew of nice young Germans were very diligent, making sure that everyone was woken up to see if they wanted coffee every 14 minutes.

The only flights that ever land early are the ones you don't want to land early because you are asleep.  We landed early in Munich and slumped our way through the airport, got on a euro airport diesel bus, drove to France it seemed, and ended up at our twin prop 1947 sea plane bound for Florence.  Everyone got on the plane (most ducking) and I was last as I had to gate check my fanny pack.  (Took plenty of ribbing for the fanny pack, but when handling 6 passports, boarding passes, and dough, it's all about function over form).  The plane held approximately 28 people.  I had 24.  As the last one on the plane, I said hello to Helga the Beast flight attendant who promptly yelled at me to take a seat immediately as "ze flight vill leev now!".  Trying to accommodate her request, I sat in the single seat in row 2 - avoiding my seat in row 17.  Helga almost spit out a lung.  "Das ees bizness class!  Go to yur zeet!"  First, let me say I love Germans - just not Helga.  Second, let me say that this could have been a scene from Meet The Parents.  There was absolutely no difference physically between the business class seat and the "normal" seat.  They were both 40% smaller than the one I just got out of, which was 40% too small for me.  There did appear to be a napkin with something embroidered for a headrest, but otherwise, they were the same.  I was dying to find out if they got two bags of pretzels up front, but I passed out instead - only to awaken to hear the pilot announce the good news - we were going to land in Genova instead of Florence - no extra cost!  Genova is a good 3 hours from Florence - if you have a car, which we did not, as they were in Florence.

A few minutes later we were informed that we were not going to Genova, but to Bologna instead.  Since I'm a huge fried Bologna (the food) fan, I was pretty psyched.  Plus, it was an hour closer to Florence.  The crew let us know that the good folks at Lufthansa would provide us bus transportation to Florence, now while inconvenient, we could think of it as a free tour.

The Bologna airport is the approximate equivalent of the Albany, NY airport - but it seems nicer because it's in Italy.  So 24 of us wait for our bags - which only the Clark Family of Washington, DC had checked because the rest of us are so smart we sent our Fed-X.  We ended up having to check 4-5 of our carry on bags as Lufthansa has a policy that apparently says if your name is Steve and you buy 24 tickets you can only take one carry on per person and yes, that knapsack is a carry on.  (Nice side note:  my niece, Erica - age 14, knew we'd be in Italy over the fourth of July, so she wisely packed up a box of "sparklers" and a lighter in her carry on, thankfully found by her mother prior to her arrest).  Every bag except one made it out.  That was my 15 year old Daughter's bag.  Very bad bag to be the lost bag.  Very, very bad.  The good news is that apparently Lufthansa never flies to the Bologna/Albany international airport and as such has no employee's there, so there was no way to report the bag being missing.  The better news is that a local was nice enough to tell us that I had a better chance of dating Sophia Loren than getting a bus to Florence, as there are only 11 buses in the city and they have all been booked by Ferrari for their 60th birthday extravaganza.  I swear as he is telling us this (not really us, mostly Patrizia my Italian plant) I can see Lufthansa crew scurrying like rats through a secret door.  Oh well, what can we do?

We go and exchange piles of American cash into much smaller piles of Euro's and seek a lot of Bolognian cab's.  250 Euro's (each) later, 20 of us arrive at our villa and 4 of us arrive at Aeroporte Firenze in search of our rented vans.  The Firenze airport is akin to the Worcester airport, only with more people.  I had rented 3 of our vans from Europecar (I didn't, Amex did) which is much different that CarEurope - which is where I headed only to find a sign in Italian (we didn't bring the translator, big mistake) that said "come back Tuesday - ish".  Panicking, I found my car rental thing and called the number on my euro phone.  +11, +01,+, 1, etc. etc.  Finally I found the combination that made it ring.  Eurocar answered and I began explaining my situation - asking how I could get someone to come let me have my vehicles.  The very nice English woman was confused - her answer was "come to the window" - to which I replied "I'm at the window, and you are closed".  After a few minutes of that confusion, I heard an echo.  11 feet (approximately 3 meters) to my right, was the woman I was on the phone with - at the EuropaCar window.(Sort of like the Peoples Front of Judea, for you Python fans)  Whew.  10 minutes later we loaded ourselves into three of the sweetest diesel powered, 6 speed manual Milk Trucks you've ever seen. (Side Note:  There is something to this whole diesel thing, I drove about 8000km in a big, boxy Milk van and spent less than $100 bucks in fuel).

Mark Bowker became the leader for the 45km trek to our villa - mostly because his wife is Italian.  After only 3-4 wrong moves, we somehow arrived.  18 hours of hell, but we made it.  The place was a total pad.  Giant (80x35 foot) infinity pool.  Villa on top a huge rolling hill with no one around and 360 degrees of spectacular Italian landscape.  Plus, there were two cases of wine on the table.  It was show time - almost.

It turns out that Fed-X didn't exactly explain all the customs forms required, and as such, no one had any luggage but the Clark party and 3 of the kids.  3 days in the same getup I just flew across the world in couldn't have been nice for anyone.  I then got Amex to talk to Lufthansa, who told them I had to file a claim, which I couldn't do, etc. etc.  The next day I spoke to Munich headquarters, and a nice man told me I could do it online, which would have been great had I had an internet connection.  When I finally found an internet connection, it turns out my friend was a big fat liar, as you can't file a missing bag claim online.  I gave up. The bag ended up on my front steps a day before we got home - which is something I guess.

All in all, the trip was molto bene.  The Italians have it figured out.  No one is in a rush to do anything - ever - except when they are driving.  Then they become insane daredevils, driving cars that don't qualify as actual "cars", going 80 miles an hour on the wrong side of a 10 foot wide winding mountain road like the cops were chasing them - which they weren't, because the cops don't exist, let alone chase anyone. 

The food was simply superb - even the junk food was better.  The fruit and veggies were amazing, and don't even get me going on the Gelato.  We made it a mission to try every Gelato bar we passed (and every bottle of Limoncello and wine as well).  I don't think I had a lunch that lasted less than 2 hours.  We toured winery's, ate lunch with a wine maker (named Bruno Rossini - what else is someone named Bruno Rossini going to do in life?) who spoke zero English.  It was awsome.

My wife and I escaped for a night to Bologna - where we were dropping my home run hitting 12 year old son, Jason, off to spend a few days with his best friend Jesse (yes, they live a mile from each other) - who's folks happen to summer in the Italian Alps (because somebody has too).  Jess and I stayed at a fancy euro Grand hotel (which, FYI, there are 3 of in Bologna, so don't tell someone to meet you at the Grand).  We lunched with Jesse and his mom, and walked around.  Everything was closed because it was Sunday, or because it was Charlie Chaplin appreciation day, I'm not sure which.  (There were tons of Charlie Chaplin things everywhere, so either he is from Bologna or he is the Bolognese equivalent of France's Jerry Lewis).  That was fine with us.  We decided to stay in the fancy hotel for dinner.  We had the place to ourselves - an ornate room with a hand painted ceiling by some famous guy 500 years ago.  It was beautiful, and more importantly, the entire restaurant staff effectively worked for only us.  I scored a great Sassicia for half the dough that you'd pay here (a '99, which you probably can't even find anymore) and the Primi and snacks were outstanding.  Things were great, until the reason everyone hates American's arrived.

Joe Hedge Fund Windbag the 4th and his wife were seated in the diametric opposite corner from us - about 40 feet away or so.  He proceeded to speak at about 4 times the appropriate decibel level, with full on F bombs every 6th word, about all things great and bad with regard to REIT's, the market, the private equity deal last week, etc.  His wife said zip for at least 30 minutes while the bag o wind belched forth his arrogant, annoying moronity designed to impress someone who wasn't there.  When she finally was allowed to speak, she said something to the effect of "the REIT portfolio that blah blah blah is carrying is suspect due to the exchange rate issues AND questionable lease holdings" which immediately made us realize that she was not his wife (no wife would tolerate that much blow hard b.s.), which made it worse, because now we knew all this bravado was intended to impress this poor woman.  She must have been subordinate to the blower in some way, as she sounded far too intelligent in the 14 seconds she was allowed to speak to listen to this clown.  As if that's not bad enough - in mid sentence he whips out a napkin and proceeds to blow his nose - making a 15 second sound that can only be described as the same noise a very heavy table (one with a marble top) being dragged across an unfinished tile floor by a grunting Steffie Graff would make.  At first my wife and I just looked at each other.  Then we busted out laughing.  He went right on talking.  The two waiters just stopped what they were doing - like they became cast members in the Matrix - and just stared.  It was excellent.  The waiters headed for the kitchen, where I can only hope they instructed the chef to poison the idiot.  He proceeded to perform this majestic horn honk about 4 more times, each time with a little more "oomph".  Two of the times I swear he didn't even stop talking during the act itself.

By that point I was liquored up, and really wanted to belch as loud as I could.  The high, arched ceiling was great for magnifying sounds like that, so why not take advantage.  Unfortunately I wasn't gassy enough, and Jess wouldn't let me try to make armpit farts. 

I took pictures of dead popes, which I think is OK.  The Sistine chapel and the whole Vatican are some amazing things to see - though you might have thought it was actual torture watching our teenagers.  I like the fact that the Vatican charges 13 Euro's (roughly $18 US with our crappy dollar value) - cash - to tour the joint.  In 2000, they had 30,000,000 visitors.  The Catholic church does OK - but they don't take American Express.  We toured Rome, in a bus, with a German tour guide who was adverse to walking and Sun, so that didn't go so great but it was OK because it was about 4000 degrees out, and we had a 2 hour lunch.

Florence is a great city except for the ridiculous array of street vendors selling the exact same stuff.  Pisa was similar - the tower was cool as anything, but to get to see it you have to walk by 1100 identical tacky gift places with the exact same stuff.  Jason did get some nice Pope rosary beads for no known reason.  The Gelato was good everywhere.  So was the wine.

Which gets me to the real problem - you can't drink Chianti anymore.  It turns out that 98% of all Chianti is junk.  The economics are such that the bottle, cork and label cost about 3 bucks.  Disregarding the cost of growing, harvesting, and aging the wine itself,let alone shipping and distributing it, let alone any profit for the retailer, it only goes to figure that if a store is selling a bottle for 4 bucks (which was about the average), the contents of the bottle couldn't be too great.  This was a sad realization.

Instead, you need to buy SuperTuscan's - which may be comprised of the exact same sangiovese, merlot, et al grapes, but don't have the bargain basement Chianti moniker so wine makers who care have an outlet to sell good wine.

I drank a bottle of 100% Merlot from Podere la Cappella (can't remember the name of the wine) that was simply unbelievable.  They also had a SuperTuscan that had the same 80/20 sangiovese to merlot blend as their Chianti Riserva that was approximately 11 thousand times better.  The good news is even the crappy wine is good in Italy - even when it's cheaper than the water.

There are lots of other little stories I could tell (like when Mark found the baby Porcupine and the kids all played with it, or when we came home to a herd of cows and bulls in our driveway, or when Tony Prigmore had a 60 year old Italian lady on his lap kissing his cheek while he downed his Limoncello) but I won't.

I can point you to pictures if you care - it's pretty easy to see where my pal's Leonardo and Michaelangelo got their inspiration.

Oh yeah, while the Italians may seem slower and better looking with nothing to do - they are one of the more advanced societies around in terms of adopting automation and ending tactical manual labor jobs.  You can't find a person working at a gas stations or most of the grocery stores in Italy - everything is computerized and automated - which would be great if you spoke Italian and could figure out how to actually use those machines.......