RVANews posted today about Relay – a Charlottesville-based company that lets you order food and products from a variety of local/regional farmers and producers through a website, and pick up your order at a single location. Well Relay has expanded their service to Richmond, offering products from merchants around the greater Richmond metro area.
The site is a little janked as of this posting (I think they had a recent redesign), but I hope to try it out this week.
First person, self-referential introductory sentence that only hints at the full content of the blog post.
Another sentence that, still self-referential, connects the introductory sentence to this paragraph after an extra line (Parenthetical statement pointing out that the extra line was for dramatic effect. No mention of the amateur nature of this writing contrivance). Further explanation of the situation couched in a personal anecdote that has the tone of whining complaint. Rhetorical questioning of mutual understanding with readership – a readership that is, assuredly, small.
Here is where the blog post begins to collapse on itself. Tangentially-related point that causes this paragraph to devolve into self-pitying, half-coherent platitudes. Self-conscious recognition of derailed original intentions for this post. Obsequious yet still self-pitying apologies to hypothetical audience.
Dismissive valediction.
I always see this moped when I stop by the butcher shop, so it was only a matter of time before I photograph it, right?
Tonight I made it back to Secco for the first time in a few weeks (I know, I go there all the freakin’ time). I was pumped, particularly, to be able to try one of the new dinner items: olive oil poached halibut. According to Chef Tim Bereika, the dish is elevated to it’s tasty state using an almond crust, parsley sauce, corn cream, charred melon, prosciutto and halibut noodle. That “noodle” appears to be made by piping a halibut paste of sorts directly into the fryer. It adds a pleasant crispiness and a striking visual impact when the dish is delivered.
All components worked in concert to produce one of the tastiest dishes I’ve eaten at Secco. I’m already a huge fan, but this was a big deal. Richmond should be proud to have food of this caliber and creativity coming out of Carytown.
Hey, remember when you had to worry about skip protection on your portable CD player? If you were riding in the car with somebody you’d often have to hold the device gingerly on your lap because, despite said skip protection, the vibration of the car would eat that up in a hurry.
Hey, remember when you could buy the old formula of NyQuil over the counter without anybody suspecting you of being a meth head?
Hey, remember when you could, as a little kid, enter the cockpit of a commercial aircraft and greet the pilot? I got a little pair of American Airlines wings during a flight when I was six years old.
Hey, remember when the soles of flip-flops used to be made with an isotope of a rare-earth metal that would faintly stain your heels if you wore them every day? You had to alternate between your flops and some other kind of shoe every day unless you wanted folks to think you walked barefoot and didn’t shower often.
Hey, remember when you could collect the UPC codes from cereal boxes and send them in to General Mills for gold coins? It took a whole lot of UPCs, but it was a way for a young boy to build his own gold stockpile.
Hey, remember when you could buy human organs on the open market? I don’t know why they stopped doing that – they made for nice decoration in the middle of a coffee table, or a centerpiece at Thanksgiving.
Hey, remember when calling the right phone number just as the clocks were changing over for Daylight Saving Time would result in super powers? Well, maybe mediocre powers. I still don’t see anything quite so super about triple the normal level of mucous production or the ability to cook soup in the can just by thinking about it. Although “shave your face by thought” was pretty sweet. I still miss it.
No? Wait – did all three of your eyes just blink in sequence?
Today The Impossible Project started selling the first new color instant film in years: PX 70 Color Shade FF (the “FF” means first flush – their first edition).
The examples look a little rough, but it’s exciting to see new stock out there. It would appear this film is less temperamental than the Silver Shade variety, at least where heat is concerned. I’ll know soon enough since I purchased a 3-for-the-price-of-2 pack this morning. I can’t wait until it arrives!
Small businesses and entrepreneurs hold a special place in my heart. I believe small businesses contribute greatly to our economy in mostly localized ways. Entrepreneurs are those daring individuals who turn their ideas into businesses, often innovating along the way. There’s a great deal of overlap between the two groups, of course.
My idealistic goal for my business education is to find a way to help small tech businesses and entrepreneurs succeed – to achieve and maintain profitability without sacrificing their ideas or what drew them into running a small business in the first place. This means I’m wary of the popular venture funding model where often cannibalistic firms trade large sums of money for sizable equity stakes and influence; where ROI and an exit strategy are more important than nurturing the idea that attracted the financing.
So I’ve always been encouraged and impressed by 37signals, a firm that achieved stable profitability, growth on its own terms, and complete ownership of its operation. The company has since accepted funding from Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, but not before already establishing itself as a healthy player in the marketplace. 37signals believes in the path it took to success, so they have an entire series of posts on their blog about other firms that built themselves up without venture funding. “Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud” shines a light on other firms that have over $1 million in revenue, accepted no venture capital, and are profitable.
Not everybody with an idea has the money to start working on their great idea right now, however, so some source of funding is still required. You only need a computer to start your own software development business (and most Americans have computers now). But not everyone has the equipment lying around to start hand-making high quality photographic prints, for example. That’s where Kickstarter comes in. Kickstarter allows users to create fundraising projects. You set a financial goal to be paid out in an all-or-nothing basis. If you hit or exceed your target, you keep what you raise. If you miss it, even if it’s by a dollar, none of the contributors pays. This method has been used to fund albums, films, and even hosting for Whiskerino. Fundraisers seek money in different tiers and typically offer some reward in exchange for pledges.
With that in mind, I absolutely enjoyed reading Craig Mod’s essay on using Kickstarter to feed his entrepreneurial appetite (via Daring Fireball). Craig emphasizes the use of Kickstarter as seed money for a direction rather than a single project. That is, contributors often believe in the work of a fundraiser, not necessarily limited to one project. So why not use the fundraising power of Kickstarter to get your business off the ground? This is already happening, of course. Kickstarter has projects open for starting a food cart, a community biotech lab, and a college media website. Sure you can raise money to prepare for a photo gallery exhibition, but why not try raising money to launch a photography business?
Kickstarter has only been around for a bit more than a year, so I’ll be interested to observe the limits and heretofore unimagined uses of its fundraising capabilities. Here’s hoping Craig’s Kickstarter tips find a broad audience and his essay/results encourage many would-be entrepreneurs to take the next step in making their ideas into realities.
I wouldn’t exactly consider myself to have OCD, but I’m certainly a man of quirky routines. It’s not always about the comfort of familiarity, either. Often, for me, it’s about creating a process. Once I have my process, I can improve and compete against my own past performance. This silly business allows me to turn mundane portions of my day into games and minor achievements.
All of this to say that one of my main routines is the drive back from class (I’m still a graduate student) to the house twice a week. I’m not the type to require a lot of “me” time, but this semi-weekly trip is about right for my needs, so I stretch it out by taking a slightly longer route than necessary. I get enough time to hear an extra song or two, think over whatever’s coursing through my head, and decompress from a long day of work and school. Most of the “game” portion of this routine comes from trying to beat traffic signals, make it off the line faster than my neighbor in the next lane, and time my braking/downshifting so that I infrequently come to a complete stop. I assure you I do this within the bounds of posted speed limits and I always use my turn signals.
The latter stage of this drive takes me down Overbrook Rd. underneath Interstate 95. The weather has finally come down from its woeful high temperatures so I’ve been comfortable driving home with the windows down for the first time in recent memory. So I’m driving along Overbrook as usual and head underneath I-95 where I smelled the familiar stink of city-provided hydrocarbon.
Overpass gas.
So yesterday was pretty busy. I spent half my day puzzling over a PL/SQL issue at work, then I had my finance class in the evening which pretty much drained my brain of any remaining useful cognition. It seems, however, that I missed something. A milestone, if that really means anything around here. Yesterday, July 19th, marked 5 years since my first post on this website.
In May of 2008 I hit 1000 posts after what was probably the most concentrated period of blogging this site has ever seen, but in the 2+ years since that time I’ve only managed another 541 posts (including this one) and I’m now barely posting more than monthly. Truth be told, prime blogging time for me used to be at the office. But as my responsibilities and workload have continued to ramp-up and I’ve gone back to school (in the past year), my chances to sit down and find interesting content, let alone create any, have greatly diminished.
My readership, too, has dwindled. Most of my daily hits come from indexing services, and even those folks who I can tell are real people check infrequently. I’m sure there’s a fairly direct relationship to my posting rate, of course.
I’m still here, though. No more vacuous promises of a design change or coding adventures or whatever. Just the occasional photo that I took or random question/opinion/review/what-have-you.
That’s that, I suppose.
I grew up in New Jersey where Dunkin’ Donuts are as ubiquitous as 7-Eleven. I’m no donut junkie, but I do enjoy them and appreciate quality. Living in Richmond, however, means a comparative dearth of donut shops. There are a handful of Dunkin’ Donuts franchises around, but too far outside the city for practical travel. We have a lone Krispy Kreme that’s reasonably close, and they’re pretty solid. There is, of course, the excellent Country Style Donuts out by the airport on Williamsburg Rd (you can find their goodies at the fantastic Lamplighter coffee shop, as well).
So imagine my surprise when I drove past a new donut supplier yesterday on my way home from dinner in the West End. In part of the space once occupied by the Richmond Decorating Center I saw the bright blue and yellow sign for Daylight Donuts:
This morning I decided to check it out, and while it wasn’t bad it wasn’t really anything special, either. The chalk-written menu boards over the counter didn’t indicate what donut varieties were available. Nor were there any little signs in the case by each donut. Sure, some were self-explanatory, like the cake donut with chocolate frosting and chopped peanuts, or the glazed cruller. But the filled donuts? The donuts with different glazes? I received quick responses from the staff to my inquiries, but I could see this missing basic information causing a slow-moving line during the morning rush. At any rate, I settled on the orange-glazed cake and a powdered donut filled with custard:
The donuts were okay. The orange-glazed cake donut had a decent texture, but the glaze had only the slightest hint of citrus and tasted, for the most part, like generic sweetness. My custard-filled powdered donut fared worse. This approximated, to my memory, Dunkin’ Donuts’ “Bavarian Kreme” variety, but with less success. The so-called custard had the same unfortunately fake flavor, but the donut itself was inferior to the yeasty baked goods from Dunkin, Krispy Kreme, or otherwise.
The shop itself felt too empty and boring – cheap and generic decor gave the impression that they’d set up in a hurry on a limited budget (perhaps they did). I understand this is a donut shop and not a fine dining establishment, but nothing about this place invites you to stay, let alone come back. I may return once more to try the aforementioned donut with chopped peanuts on top, but I’m honestly not that intrigued.
