I’m sad that the blog has been a little stale lately but I’ve got a lot of stuff going on recently. First off - I’m traveling to Israel for 10 days on a birthright trip through Sachlav. The entire trip is paid for by Taglit-Birthright and we have an outrageous itinerary planned that will take us throughout the entire country and on trips such as kayaking in the Jordan River and visiting the Kotel (Western Wall). Also, I decided to rent a cell phone in Israel so I won’t use use my BlackBerry while I’m there. As I mentioned in this post awhile back I want to enjoy my vacation and stay away from e-mail and Twitter.

For those of you that haven’t heard, when I return from Israel I’ll be moving out to San Francisco to pursue internships at both a PR firm and a software startup for the summer. I’ve visited the city by the bay several times over the past few years and fell in love. I can’t wait to get a feel for the lifestyle out there and figure out if it’s somewhere I’d want to be when I graduate next year.

I plan on taking an unbelievable amount of pictures in Israel and I will be sure to post them here when I return.

This is a guest post by Becky Clawson.

Peter Spellman of Music Business Solutions talks about the impact of negative word of mouth in his latest newsletter:

I listened to a story on NPR this afternoon about the negative impact of bad word-of-mouth. Very scary. The basis for the article comes from research by the Wharton School of Business. They found that 1 out of 2 customers has a customer service problem when they shop. Worse is the fact that they then tell friends, family, and colleagues about it and embellish the story in the retelling. The overall result is that 1/2 of those that hear the bad news story won’t shop at those places they heard about. Ouch! Those that improve on the situation certainly create a business advantage.

This is so true–at least as far as I can relate. Last summer, my hard drive crashed, and after searching the Web for a nearby certified store, I found a shop and took it in for repair. They were friendly, informative, and timely in their turnaround. Great. But a few months ago, my hard drive crashed again, and this time, I asked my peers where they recommend. I told them about my prior visit to the local repair shop–no complaints to speak of–but everyone I talked to insisted that I definitely should not bring it back to Shop A. “They’re terrible. They’re always messing things up. Everyone knows that. Go to Shop B.” And so even though I had no bad experiences with the Shop A, I went to Shop B because I trusted that their bad reports were legitimate, and I just didn’t want to take a chance that I might suffer the same. Am I any better off? Who knows. Shop B did an adequate job, so I’m no worse off.

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Four of us have been growing our facial hair out for the past 2 months to participate in the annual Stache Bash ‘08 here at work. The above pic isn’t very good but we’re going to take some finals for the company blog. Just wanted to get this out there now.

The entire office is voting on the ’staches in the following categories: Most Disgusting, Bushiest, Most Interesting Style, Most Sex Appeal and Best Overall. The winner receives a hefty Starr Restaurants gift card and manly honor.

Wish me luck.

Update: Unfortunately I didn’t take the grand prize but I did win honors with “Sexiest ‘Stache”. Booya.

Blogs, Digg, Twitter — my entire day revolves around getting the news and having dialog with my friends at an instantaneous rate. I rarely ever sit down and watch TV by channel surfing, all of my favorite shows are recorded on my DVR so I can fast forward through the commercials and get on to the next segment of Iron Chef America as fast as possible. As it becomes easier and easier to achieve this, I’ve been thinking about the evolution of our need for instant gratification.

I’ve got this idea for a blog, mostly as a hobby but definitely something that I’d want to spend some time on and see become successful. The reason I haven’t gotten it together yet is because I don’t have the patience to work on it diligently and at a steady pace, piecing things together until it all falls into place. I don’t mean to come off as a brat because I don’t always get what I want, but I am very used to getting things I want immediately. With a lot of things going on in my life (work, school, family, friends) it’s hard to deal with all of the pressures and not slow down a bit to work on this one thing that I’m really interested in.

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This may be a recurring post which displays my mood or emotions in some creative form. Tonight it is a song. I’ve decided to not mention the artist because I think it detracts from setting the mood, I don’t want you to go into it with a bias. I’m sure you can figure out who it is if you really want to.

Download it here » (7.0MB)

Just want to thank everyone out there for the birthday wishes. This past week was a strange one, first Valentine’s Day and birthday as a bachelor in over five years. My parents took me out to dinner at Marc Vetri’s Osteria last night and the meal was a divine experience. You can read my review which shouldn’t be considered an epic piece of writing by any means.

Enjoy the tasty pictures:

A midterm today and two tomorrow. Normal life will hopefully resume tomorrow night when we go see There Will Be Blood.

Exams are usually the time when I completely gnaw my fingernails down to the bone but I haven’t had the urge once yet. Going on two weeks now without biting, pretty exciting.

See you soon.

Just shaved my face with a razor for the first time in almost a year. I typically use a beard trimmer because well, when I’m completely shaved I look like I’m 15 years old. So why did I do it? We’re having a mustache growing contest at work which officially begins tomorrow, Feb. 1. Points are awarded on thickness, overall style and creativity. We’re allowed to keep a full beard until the final judging in April so I don’t have to walk around looking like a pedophile.

I think I’m going to shoot for the handlebar. Also, I’m going to snap a picture of my face every day so I can make a time lapse video when this is all over.

Headed out to the TLA on South Street this past weekend, (mind you it has been renamed ‘The Fillmore’ which I will never, ever accept) to see three great bands: MJ Project, Grimace Federation and The Benevento/Russo Duo. Just to get it off my chest, when I hear ‘Fillmore’ the only thing that comes to mind is Bill Graham’s magical auditorium that was home to the greatest bands of the 1960’s.

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I usually am right with my predictions but this year I’m seriously a little baffled. There is more hype than ever and a lot of speculation going on. In the end I just hope my stock goes up.

Here’s my final list:

• Talk of iPhone sales, mention of SDK (will save more for WWDC), release of 16GB iPhone and Steve will showcase the already leaked features of 1.1.3 update.
• New redesigned aluminum MacBook
• Slight possibility of an ultraportable MacBook (hopefully with built in AT&T 3G)
• One more thing: AppleTV 1.5 with ability to download direct from iTunes and introduction of movie rentals