When we were having our pre-purchase house inspection last year I was sure to ask the inspector about water pressure. We had renovated our house in Watertown and added a bathroom on the third floor in which the water pressure was decent but not as strong as we would have liked. He just laughed and told us we’d never have a problem in Belmont. And sure enough, the pressure is amazing here compared to our old house just a mile away.
I just read the article about water conservation in the latest Belmont Citizens Forum newsletter, which includes a table of average water usage for surrounding communities. It says that in Belmont used an average of 73 gallons/person/day, considerably higher than Lexington, 65, Waltham, 68, Watertown, 59 and Cambridge at 49. Summer lawn watering doesn’t explain it since all the towns have fairly similar summer/winter use ratios. My guess is that people in Belmont use more water because every time they turn on a faucet the water comes blasting out like a firehose.
There’s been lots of research on whether computers actually decrease productivity/efficiency but I figure a little more anecdotal evidence never hurts. After struggling to get Ilyse’s new Treo to sync with her Mac Address Book, discovering that it required another $40 piece of third-party software, buying that and still not geting it to work correctly without dedicating a couple hours that I haven’t had time for, Ilyse and I had a conversation about whether her new smart phone was a smart purchase. She had been carrying around a Handspring and a phone for a while but when we upgraded the Mac OS it was no longer possible to sync the Handspring with her computer. So it seemed to make sense to get one device to replace two. In hindsight it probably would have made more sense for her to return to using a paper Filofax. The time spent moving data off the Handspring onto the computer and then from the computer to the Treo, parsing it for duplicates, was bad enough. On top of that add the time to make email work on the phone, to set it up to sync with the mail server and with mail on the Mac. Then there’s the time spent trying to figure out how to sync address books and calendars between Ilyse’s Mac and mine - another task that requires research into third party software and much trial and error. That’s a lot of time that could have been much better spent reading a book or watching a movie or playing a game.
At the same time Ilyse started using a Treo I started using a BlackBerry and also had trouble syncing it with my Mac’s address book and calendar. The first time I tried I wound up with a ton of duplicate entries in my calendar that took lots of time to delete.
I justify this time investment by the fact that I can instantly find any contact in my address book. Search is the critical time saver that makes it all worthwhile. But recently I’ve started encountering a problem in which search doesn’t find things that I know are there. Thus began another investment of time researching whether others are encountering the same problem (they are, as reported here and here and here) and whether there’s a solution. The suggested fix for this particular problem is to edit the entries that aren’t being found. But since I rely on search to tell me whether the entry is in my address book, that requires me to browse manually - just like I would do with a paper address book - whenever I search for something I think is there but search doesn’t find, then edit it (that is, pretend to make a change to it) so that it gets found next time.
It’s the attention these things require more than the absolute time they take that is of issue. If I have a paper address book and I search for an entry, it’s either there where it’s supposed to be or it’s not. I never have to wonder whether it’s there but I just can’t find it. I never have to think about whether it’s broken and I how I should fix it or what I should replace it with. And I certainly wouldn’t spend any time blogging about the problem. That’s time that could be better spent.
Ilyse and I saw The Clean House at The New Rep last night and I highly recommend it. It’s a stellar cast and a funny, poignant play. It only runs through next Sunday so hurry.
Tonight I was doing some research for a multinational client that needs to provide its young employees with advice and strategies for managing a global corporation. My searching led me to My Global Career, which provides timely info and a comprehensive set of resources and is written by Rusty Weston who blogs on Fast Company. Perusing the career resources I linked to Dave Lefkow’s blog on recruiting. And there I discovered…Bacon Salt!
Now I haven’t tasted this stuff yet but I may head over to Jake’s Dixie Roadhouse in Waltham to buy a bottle. I’ve been a vegetarian for about 18 years and the flavor I still miss is bacon. None of the vegetarian imitations I’ve tried does the job. Most of the time I substitute arugula, which was really good on a yukon gold pizza at Stone Hearth the other day. I’m considering myself warned by this review though.
Better than the seasoning was the story itself. I’m wishing the Bacon Salt entrepreneurs the best of luck and thanks for the reminder that good ideas can come from anywhere. My seven-year-old is full of them and I’m listening more intently than ever.
A little more than ten years ago I saw David Mamet’s Speed the Plow at the Lyric Stage and it remains one of the finest productions I have seen of any play anywhere. Phil Patrone was stunning and I became a fan - trying to see any production he was in. I later met him socially through my wife and he was one of the nicest people you could know.
Phil passed away this weekend at a very young age leaving his wife Betsy and 6-year-old daughter Grace. He will be terribly missed by colleagues and fans.
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