In 2007, the fine folks at the Maker’s Mark distillery in Loretto, Kentucky were placing their recently distilled whiskey into white oak barrels for the aging process, a practice they had perfected over the last 60 years.

Now despite popular opinion, in order to be called bourbon, a whiskey does not have to be made in Kentucky. It does however have to be made from a mixture that consists of at least 51% corn and then aged in new charred oak barrels. While there is no requirement on the length of time that the whiskey must be aged, Maker’s Mark determined that 6 years was sufficient to pull in the flavors and colors of their charred oak and quite frankly, I agree. But because of this aging process, the Maker’s distillers had to forecast the demand for their whiskey six years in advance and produce just enough to meet that demand. While they might make delicious whiskey, they aren’t great economic forecasters. A global recession occurred less than a year later, a recession the world is just now climbing out of, but the demand for bourbon, particularly the well known and premium priced Maker’s Mark brand, has managed to explode recently.

It’s an unfortunate situation that leaves Maker’s Mark with limited options. With excess demand and not enough inventory, they can raise their price, capturing more margin per bottle and still sell out. That would likely upset their most loyal customers though, so the other option would be to just bite the bullet and run out of inventory, hoping that those who missed out on this batch and chose to buy a competing bourbon decide to switch back when more is available.

So which option did Maker’s Mark go with? Neither. They chose instead to dilute their liquor, reducing the alcohol by volume from 45% to 42%, thus increasing their supply at almost no additional cost. Now any parent that has a teenager in their house will tell you, watered down liquor is a most unpleasant surprise. While Maker’s claims their “expert tasters” couldn’t even notice the difference, the uproar that loyal imbibers have lashed back with has been a PR nightmare for the distiller. In hindsight, it was probably a bad idea to let the initial cat out of the bag to their “ambassador” fan club. They probably thought if anybody would understand their dilemma, it would be their most loyal drinkers.

So what will be the effects of this dilution and supply increase? Well I haven’t formally studied economics since 2007 (the same vintage in question), but I do love observing real world applications of it, so I decided to craft a very inexact “Maker’s Model of Supply and Demand”.

So what are we looking at here? The red lines are the amount of whiskey that Maker’s Mark is willing to provide at any given price. With Maker’s deciding how much they are going to supply six years ahead of time, they can’t increase or decrease production to move up or down their curve to hit different prices, so their supply curve is therefore vertical. The blue line is then the amount that we drinkers choose to consume. Since we are sensitive to price, our curve slopes down and to the right (higher price/we’ll drink less, lower price/we get drunk).

Given Maker’s fixed supply of 2007 bourbon, P1 represents an equilibrium price that Maker’s could charge (let’s say $45 for a 750ml bottle) and still clear inventory, i.e. where happy drinkers polish off all of the 45% oak aged bourbon. However, six years ago, Maker’s filled up their white oak barrels with the assumption that customer demand would look more like the AngryFace Curve than the HappyFace Curve, so they produced just enough (Barrel Line) so they could sell out at $30ish per bottle. With demand actually being higher (HappyFace curve) and Maker’s leaving prices at $30, the distance between P1 and P2 represents the excess demand problem.

So Maker’s pours some water into their liquor, thus shifting their supply curve to the right, assuming customers won’t really care and will just gobble up the extra bottles when they hit the shelves. This theoretical situation is represented by P3, which is the intersection of the WaterJug supply line and the HappyFace demand curve. Maker’s then sells more bottles with almost no increase to costs, which drives higher margins and profits. Everybody wins right?

Wrong. I believe that (A) some traditionalists, (B) some alcoholics, and (C) every alcoholic traditionalist, will scoff at the idea of a further diluted drink, instead choosing to sip on one of the other fine bourbons that we Americans should be proud of. Some may even switch to my drink of choice, single malt scotch whisky, a whisky (with no e) that so happens to typically spend its aging process in spent bourbon casks. If this revolt does indeed occur, the demand curve will shift to the left, represented by the AngryFace Curve. Due to the decreased demand, Maker’s would then have to actually drop their prices down to P4 to clear inventory. If that’s the case, I’ll happily stock up on 42% ABV Maker’s Mark (since I like my whisky with a splash of water anyways), but I highly doubt that will happen. What is more likely is Maker’s Mark will leave prices at $30, leading to customers buying the amount found at point P2, which is the supply Maker’s originally planned for to begin with! So by trying to meet excess demand with a splash of water, Maker’s could possibly end up selling no additional bottles while simultaneously tarnishing the brand they have built over the last 60 years. Not only that, but all that extra whiskey between P2 and P3 will sit on the shelves unsold!

Talk about a hangover.

While the majority of this is user generated content on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and the likes that typically adds little value to society (Example #10,287,358,439 here), I am guessing I am not alone in feeling overwhelmed by the amount of high quality content that is readily available for binge consumption. Just take a brief look through my Jumpdog Tumblr and you might immediately come to the conclusion that I spend all day searching for funny videos of dogs or amazing basketball shots. It’s bad enough that there is a limitless supply of online-only content, both written and recorded, that can be fine tuned for every possible personal taste graph out there, but now traditional media sources are stepping up their games as well. It seems that every week a new TV show premiers that has both movie-like production value and casting. So we as habitual consumers are torn between two clear choices: go off the grid or drown in a never ending river of media.

So which path did I choose? Initially the latter, but in the past year or two I have developed some habits that now allow me to tame the wild beast of content. Considering how often I get asked “Where did you find this?” after sharing a link, I think it is working. If you feel as overwhelmed as I once was, I encourage you to give a few of them a try!

Content Discovery

Before you consume, you must discover. To me, efficiently reviewing quality feeds of content is crucial to staying on track and not getting lost in an endless sea of browsing. Once you implement a few easy systems to review, you can browse (but not consume….yet) a week or more worth of new content in minutes. My go-to resources for content discovery are as follows:

1. Google Reader

This one is key to me. There are a slew of RSS aggregators out there, but I like the simplicity and features of Google Reader. On the iPad and iPhone however, I use FeeddlerPro, which easily syncs up with your Google feeds and is more optimized for mobile devices. So how does it all work? Basically, if you come across a blog you enjoy (or any online news source for the most part), just find this icon  somewhere on the page (normally near the other social media icons) and click on it. From there, it allows you to select your preferred RSS reader, which for me is Google Reader. Sometimes it takes you to a page that is filled with programming language (i.e. gibberish to most of us). If that is the case, then just copy the URL, go back to Google Reader, and click the big “SUBSCRIBE” button. Just paste the URL into there, and click “Add”. Once you have added an RSS feed to your reader, you can categorize it. I put all of the tech and entrepreneurship blogs into one basket, with sports, news, economics/finance, and randoms getting their own grouping. Once you get a few content sources added, now the fun begins. Either click on “All Items” or a specific category (or even one specific source within a category) and you are then shown an easy to consume feed of news and media relevant to you.

From there, simply scroll down the feed, clicking on headlines that seem interesting and voila, the window expands and you are reading articles or watching video from within Google Reader. No need to visit 20+ different websites to get your fix. If you aren’t ready to read it, you can save it for later (I’ll show you how in the next section). As you scroll through, your reader should (might need to tinker in the settings) mark items as read so you don’t ever have to scroll past old articles you already passed on. It’s up to you which sources you subscribe to, but since I often get asked “Where did you find this?” I’ll list a few of my favorites:

• Lifehacker: Simple tips and tricks to make your life easier. Since this is a series of posts on my “Lifehacks and Luxuries”, this one is a must.
• Mashable: Initially focused on technology (with a specific focus on venture-funded tech companies), Mashable now covers a wide range of news. They post lots of viral content including YouTube videos and the major stories in tech & social media.
• Deadspin: A great sports blog that posts interesting, funny, and viral sports related content. They broke the Manti Te’o fake girlfriend story.
• Longreads:  An aggregation of the internet’s most interesting long form articles from a variety of sources. The RSS feed includes a brief description of each.

Other great feeds include Buzzfeed (viral, funny, sometimes too out there for me), theChive (hilarious photo blog with a loyal following) or just any top or popular news feed from your favorite news sources (CNN, WSJ, etc.).

2. Social Media

Ok. The Google Reader instructions were pretty in depth. These, not so much. If you are on Twitter and (to a lesser extent) Facebook, you can follow people that constantly share items that are relevant to you. Sports? Pretty much every sports journalist is active on Twitter and shares team-specific links. I highly recommend Jay Bilas and Darren Rovell. Finance? Same idea, but if you want stock specific information, just throw a $ sign infront of the ticker and search on Twitter. For instance, look at all the info if you search for $AAPL. Build a network that is interesting to you, engage with them (or don’t), and you will have an endless supply of interesting links.

3. Reddit

Sometimes I think that blogs like Mashable and Buzzfeed just go to Reddit to find content. Reddit is known as the “front page of the internet”. Users submit links, those links are up-voted or down-voted by other users, and the cream rises to the top. Did your content make the front page? Congratulations. You have gone viral. But the front page is just the beginning. Sub-Reddits are incredibly granular communities of users that share similar interests. Like Harley Davidsons? Well go to the /r/Harley page. Like cooking in your crockpot? The /r/slowcooking page is for you.

Reddit has so many other unique features (Ask Me Anythings, the incredible comment section engagement, Redditors banding together to do awesome, etc.) that I could go into more detail on, but if you are interested, just head over there and start browsing.

I have to be honest here though. The purpose of this post is to describe how to efficiently consume content and Reddit can sometimes be the opposite. You can get lost for hours in sub-reddits or reading the sometimes hundred+ long comment threads. But Reddit is a force that has to be mentioned in any content discovery discussion.

4. Spotify

I can’t stand FM radio these days. I pretty much only listen to NPR or sports talk radio if the FM tuner is on. As someone who enjoys pretty much any genre of music (besides the twangiest of country and the heaviest of hard rock) it’s amazing that the popular songs pushed on the radio almost always underwhelm me. Which is precisely why I love the way the music industry is heading. While building a laser-focused Pandora station and discovering new artists is fun, Pandora’s method of song tagging has led them to only have a library of ~1,000,000 songs. Spotify on the other hand has a catalog of over 18 million songs. It costs $9.99/month to get the service on mobile, but in my opinion it is well worth it. There are two excellent ways to discover new music on Spotify.

The first is Spotify Radio, which essentially is Pandora on steroids. When you hear a song you like, just click the radio icon and a new adaptive station is set up. After a few thumbs up or thumbs down, your new station will be on point with its playlist.

The next is ShareMyPlaylists.com. One of Spotify’s best features is the ability to create and share playlists (more on that in a bit). While your friends might put together a good playlist once in a blue moon, you can browse over 120,000 curated playlists on this site. Sorting by popularity or genre is a great way to find a good playlist, but the service’s featured playlists typically contain winners. “Best of” the month, year, and decade playlists are great as well.

5. Instant Watcher

This one is for you Netflix users. In 2009, Netflix ran a million dollar contest to beef up their recommendation system. They paid out $1,000,000 to a team that designed an algorithm that bested their in-house recommendation engine by 10%. For a million bucks, color me unimpressed. I have gone through and rated plenty of shows, movies, and documentaries, and I still hear people discussing Netflix titles that I had no idea were available to stream. Enter InstantWatcher. The best features in my opinion are the “New & Noteworthy” and “Most Popular in the Last 24 Hours” lists on the homepage, but you can also filter the entire Netflix catalogue by genre, Rotten Tomatoes score, year, etc. When you find something that suits your fancy, you can add it to your Netflix queue from the InstantWatcher website. Which brings me to my next strategy of efficient content consumption…..

Content Caching

Alright. You’ve now got a system that is constantly populating with interesting material just waiting to be consumed. You have gone from wading aimlessly to now getting incontrollable unread anxiety. If you are like me, you just don’t have time throughout the day (or sometimes at night) to catch up on the day’s interesting tidbits. Well much like any problem that inter-webbers encounter, there’s a startup for that…..

Pocket

There are many web apps that perform the same function as Pocket (Instapaper the most notable), but I have found Pocket’s features and user experience to be the most robust. So what does Pocket do? Well anytime you come across an article, video, or any other type of online media, you send it to Pocket, where it sits until you are ready to consume it. Pocket has built integrations for almost every place you browse (Twitter, iPad, Chrome, Firefox, etc.), making saving items for later as simple as one click. Throughout the day, as my Google Reader unread count climbs sky high, I’ll open up my feeds in Google Chrome, and if I see an article that looks interesting, I can send it to Pocket without even expanding the title; the rest get marked as read. The bookmarking feature is great, but consuming your saved content within the app is amazing. Text is presented in an ad-less, easy-on-the eyes-format, almost as if you are reading a book on your Kindle. After using a few other bookmarking services, I pretty much only use Pocket for aggregating content I come across throughout the day for evening reading.

IFTTT

IFTTT can be used for so many awesome applications, essentially automating actions that you never thought were such a hassle, but I’ll focus on the bookmarking for now. Essentially, IFTTT allows you to create a “recipe” that will perform an action IF you trigger it with another action (hence the acronym: If This, Then That). Since I rely on Pocket so heavily, I only have three recipes set up, but much like Ron Popeil, all I had to do was “set it and forget it.” My only bookmarking recipe is integrated with Youtube, so anytime I mark a video as “Watch Later” on Youtube, it just sends it to Pocket, keeping everything in one place. The other recipes send any favorited video on Youtube or Vimeo to my Jumpdog Tumblr, cutting out 2 or 3 steps for keeping my Tumblr populated with the best cute dog videos.

Spotify

While listening to Spotify’s radio, I’ll often come across an artist I’ve never heard of before. If I like what I hear, I’ll click through to the artist’s page and all their entire discography to a “Listen Later” playlist. I then continue enjoying my fine tuned radio, returning to clear out the Listen Later playlist, categorizing it into other playlists if it makes the cut.

Shazam

While Shazam’s most well known feature is for those tip of the tongue, “who the hell sings this song” moments, I enjoy using it as a bookmarking service as well. If I hear a song I like, even if I know who it is, but don’t have it in my Spotify library, I Shazam it and it is automatically added to the “My Tags” folder. When I then have more time, I can go through and add those songs (or artists) into my curated Spotify playlists.

Other

If you are using Google Reader and don’t want to use Pocket, one way to mark items for later is to simply star (or favorite) them. Then, when you are ready to digest all that material, just display your favorited items in Google Reader. The same can be done with Twitter’s Favorite function, but again, Pocket is just a more seamless bookmarking experience. For Netflix users, there is the Netflix Queue, which needs no explanation. And in this day in age, if you aren’t using a DVR to save shows and fly through commercials, you sir or madame, are a lost cause.

Content Consumption

You’ve set the table (content discovery), cooked the meal (content caching), and now you get to grub out. But you still don’t want to get your meal all over your face do you? So how do I maximize my consumption time?

Reading

I’ve only the iPad for about a year, but no device has changed my routine more than Steve Jobs’ parting gift to the world. While Pocket has a great desktop application (just go to GetPocket.com and your queue pops up), it was born to be used on the iPad. I essentially can filter hundreds of items from a few days (if not thousands when you include Twitter) into an hour or two’s worth of reading and viewing while I’m in bed, on the couch, or even on the elliptical. If I wasn’t able to clear my Google Reader feed while at work, I sometimes just consume content within Feedler (which is just a more optimized Google Reader on iPad/iPhone/Android).

iBooks and Kindle are equally appealing on the iPad screen. While I order quite a few books each year, I actually prefer the shorter-form writing that is exploding on blogs and traditional news sources’ online offerings.

Movies and TV Shows

We use AT&T uVerse for cable and internet and while I think it blows Time Warner out of the water, it’s still cable. We have a Vizio smart tv hanging over our fireplace and it is probably turned on way too much. With Netflix and Amazon apps, if I can’t find it on uVerse, I can probably find it on one of those. Now don’t get me wrong, DVR and OnDemand are great, but video on the iPad (especially those with retina displays) is simply phenomenal. Apps for Netflix, HBO, Showtime, YouTube, Vimeo, and Amazon offer almost any title you can imagine in ridiculously detailed HD format. I almost prefer watching titles on the iPad, since I can pick it up and take it around the house (kitchen, elliptical, hammock). Don’t have an HBO subscription? There are some potential solutions…..

Live Sports

If it weren’t for my unhealthy obsession with UNC basketball, I probably would not be paying the obscene monthly rates for cable. I can’t stand watching sports on delay (my thoughts on the matter here) so I can’t consume sports as efficiently (sans commercials) as other options on the small screen. However, using the WatchESPN, March Madness, Masters, and Olympics apps on the iPad over the last year, I’ve at least been able to be unchained from the receiver and HDMI cable. I particularly enjoyed the Olympics app, as it allowed me to watch medal events that were untelevised. In what backwards world does NBC think people don’t want to watch the world’s top women’s field hockey team on 50 inch High Definition TVs?

Audio

Like I said earlier, I can’t stand FM radio. Once I got my hands on my first smartphone, I immediately began searching for the best way to hook it up to my dumb-car. Without an aux-in cable, I stumbled across this beauty on Amazon…..

What this amazing piece of technology does is slings any audio from my smartphone to my speakers, via Bluetooth and my car’s FM receiver. This means if I’m driving down the road listening to music, any incoming calls or instructions from my phone’s navigation will momentarily pause what I’m listening to while I take care of business. My 30+ minute commutes to and from work have now become a time when I can decompress and catch up on news, rather than listening to Heart’s Barracuda on repeat, which seems to be the broadcast strategy of my local classic rock station. I also listen to my phone or iPad nearly all day at work, so what am I listening to?

• Spotify: As I’ve mentioned, I listen to both Spotify radio and my curated playlists (some of which I pluck from Sharemyplaylists). I mainly listen to electronic, jazz, and funk at work, since I like to avoid lyrics when I’m in the zone, but I pretty much have a playlist for every genre other than country and death metal. 
• 8tracks: Much like Sharemyplaylists does for Spotify, 8tracks allows you to play curated playlists that people spend a painstaking amount of time putting together. If you like indie/folk, dubstep, or electronic, you’re likely to find something you like here.
• Stitcher: the MVP of my ears. If you love podcasts or NPR, you absolutely must download Stitcher. Instead of having to download each podcast that you enjoy on a daily basis, you can just open it up in Stitcher and stream it in lo-fi (less data) on your phone. This one has revolutionized my commute. In the morning, I just click on my “Morning” playlist, and the most recent Marketplace and BBC News podcasts queue up, catching me up on the current financial and world news in a very entertaining format. In the afternoon, I select whatever I’m in the mood for, which many times is either This Week in Startups, NPR’s from Scratch, The Dinner Party Podcast, Stuff You Should Know, or This American Life. If you are one of the millions of Americans that has to deal with a lengthy commute and from work, I can not recommend Stitcher enough for actually getting some enjoyment out of a normally terrible aspect of your daily life.

So what about you?

What devices, services, and content sources are your favorite? I’m always on the hunt for increasing my waking hours’ productivity, so any and all recommendations are welcome!

A quick look at my Facebook newsfeed makes it abundantly clear that I’m right in the wheelhouse of life where friends are getting married and having children. A few weeks ago I spent the first of many-to-come weekends driving to and from an out of town baby shower, this particular one occurring in Lynchburg, VA. During the ride back, while listening to a new album on Spotify that was being pushed to my cars FM radio through a handsfree bluetooth receiver, Amanda’s good friend Andrea said she has always been impressed by my use of technology and would enjoy running updates on what new tech I’m using and enjoying. After noodling on it for a few days, I began to realize that small infusions of the right technology into my certain aspects of life has made my days much more efficient and more enjoyable. So over the course of the next couple of weeks, I am going to write up a few posts that focus on the tips and tricks that I’ve come across that have worked their way into my daily routine. While many of these are simple infusions of recent or not-so recent technological advancements, any lifehack that makes my life easier will be described in full so you can take full advantage of my countless hours of web/trial&error/dumb-luck research. And please let me know in the comments if you have something simple that has changed your life that you want to share!

The summer of 2005 was “The Summer of Thomas”. I was just coming off ACL reconstructive surgery and thanks to online poker and Ben & Jerry’s, my weight ballooned to the highest it’s ever been. Without the ability to play basketball,  the only real exercise I got was a few rounds of disc golf (or “Frolf” as it was described in Seinfeld’s “Summer of George” episode). 

It took a summer of spicy food and sweat in Bangkok for me to bring my weight back to the right side of 240, but after graduation, the sedentary life of the real world kept me from getting back to that skinny-faced, slam-dunking physique I once knew (I can still throw it down on a good day).

Six months before I married my beautiful wife Amanda, my dad challenged me and my sister to a “get fit” challenge while on a trip in Puerto Rico (I believe it was immediately after I devoured a quarter fried chicken). We determined percentage of total body weight lost would be the easiest and most fair way to determine the winner so like any red-blooded American on vacation, we walked into our resort’s fitness club, stepped on the scale to determine our starting point, and then walked right out to the beach with a bottle of rum to drown our sorrows. I weighed 218 lbs.

When I got back state-side, I got to work. In my previous job as an equity trader, I was able to take extended lunches since the market hit a lull between 12-2. I used this time to use our office’s gym or even squeeze in a walk with my dog Huntly back at home (I lived one mile away). After work, I would go play pick-up basketball or do a P90X workout in my basement.

My main focus was on eating healthy though. Since my then-fiancee and I were still subjecting ourselves to the hassles of a long-distance relationship at that time, I was able to eat as healthy as I wanted without inconveniencing her taste buds. Grilled chicken and steamed veggies became a dinner-time staple and I cut out sweets almost entirely. I limited alcohol consumption as much as possible, but honestly….I really love beer.

In less than six months, I was able to lose 25 lbs, and walked down the aisle as a sub-200 pound human being, a feeling I hadn’t experienced since before my knee injury.

After the wedding, I enjoyed settling down, literally and figuratively. The workout schedule became more sporadic and the wedding-gift cookbook recipes provided us with some tasty newlywed weeknight eats. Over the last two years, my weight hop-scotched all over on it’s way back up to 215 lbs. In that time, I’ve made a career change, purchased a house, and am now working on launching a new social venture (details on that in the coming weeks). Between a 30+ minute commute each way, sitting down at work all day, and watching entirely too much TV, I’m probably sedentary for 80%+ of my waking hours, which apparently is slowly killing me. I’m starting to get back pain, my knee is acting up again, and sometimes after slamming a Bojangles Chicken Supremes Combo, I refuse to look at myself in the mirror.

All of which brings me to the point of this whole post. I’m making a public commitment right now to establish a set of healthy habits that will put an end to my fluctuating weight and physical endurance, using technology to help me along the way. While I intend for these changes to last a lifetime, I will meticulously track them over the next 15 months and I invite you to follow my progress via frequent updates to this post (I’ll spare you the before and after photo shoot of a shirtless Schroder).

The end goals are simple and specific. By January 1st, 2014 I want to

1. Weigh less than 190 pounds: because I have and I should
2. Bench press 225 ten times: because I never have, and I want to
3. Be in good enough shape to finish the Krispy Kreme Challenge: because honestly, what better way is there to celebrate getting in shape than running 5 miles and eating a dozen donuts in less than an hour?

Those might be the what, but the how is what I’m really focusing on (and where the technology aspect comes in). I will track each of these metrics in a Google Drive spreadsheet that I can access on my PC, iPhone, or iPad at any time. I am also joining GymPact, a new smartphone app that charges you a set dollar amount for missing each workout that you commit to, but pays you a little if you keep to your guns. By January 1st, 2014, I will:

• Walk/Run 1,000 miles. Take 1,000,000 steps. Recently, Square 1 (my employer) gave out a FitBit to employees that participated in a healthy living campaign. I just got mine yesterday and will be tracking my steps/distance daily from here on out. In order to walk or run 1000+ miles by 2014, I have to average ~2.2 miles or ~4,500 steps/day. (I initially set the goal at 1,000,000 steps, but after a few days of having the FitBit, I started to realize you how much you walk even without truly exercising).
• Do 10,000 pushups, 10,000 sit-ups, and 5,000 pullups: I have a pull-up bar at home and a flat floor, so no reason not to.
• Keep calories consumed to under 15,000/week: This will be tracked using either MyFitnessPal on my iPhone/iPad. I recently visited a nutritionist who measured my resting metabolic rate and told me in order to maintain my current weight (~210) I could consume 2300 calories per day. Since 3500 calories equates to one pound, in order to lose 20 pounds I need to cut 70,000 calories out of my diet in the next 15 months or ~150 fewer per day. 2150 calories X 7 days = 15,050 calories.
• Weight training 2X week: I have a YMCA 50 feet below my desk. No reason I can’t make it down there for one upper body and one leg workout each week. I think in 60 bench press sessions I should be able to hit my goal.
• Take Huntly on 2 jogs each week: This will help with the 1,000 miles goal, my Krispy Kreme pace, and making sure GymPact doesn’t hit my wallet. I have set up a pact of 4 workouts per week with a penalty of $5 per missed workout. I synced GymPact with my RunKeeper app, so both YMCA visits and 30+ minute jogs will be logged.
• Sleep more: I’ve always been a bit of a night owl. Now that I get woken up by my wife’s alarm clock at 6AM, I’m averaging 6-7 hours of sleep a night. There are tons of studies that suggest 7.5 hours of sleep are needed each night and anything less has a dramatic effect on metabolism. I’m going to start trying to be in bed by 10PM, giving myself 30 minutes or so to read on the iPad until my melatonin kicks in. I’m also going to give the FitBit’s sleep tracker feature a go, just to see if it gives me any insights about how I’m sleeping at night. I’m guessing it will, considering I woke up a few weeks ago, stood straight up in bed shouting about snakes, got clocked in the head by our ceiling fan, flew off the bed, rolled around in agony for ~10 minutes on the floor, and went straight back to sleep, not remembering a thing until my wife mentioned it the following morning.
• Wrap it all up with 90 days of P90X: This will likely be the hardest to see through, but I’ve got the videos on a jump drive so why not finish with a bang?

I’m going to make a conscious effort to add or eliminate some other habits that will improve my overall health such as watching less TV and getting up from my desk more often, but I’m going to focus on hitting these metrics each week and see where it takes me.

Update #1 (12/18/12): I decided to ditch the GymPact idea and focus on hitting the FitBit steps. We recently purchased an elliptical machine for home use and I’ve been playing basketball outside, both of which can’t be logged as GymPact activities. I challenged a co-worker who also has a FitBit to a weekly steps challenge, with the loser buying coffee, and it has helped me get more active by fueling my competitive spirit. However, while laying in our rec basketball league’s playoffs last night, I think I tore my calf muscle. When making a simple turn it felt like somebody beamed me with a 90 mph fastball and I currently can’t walk without a serious hobble, so I’m visiting my doctor this afternoon. I’m definitely behind pace to hit my goals in each category besides steps, mainly because of forgetfulness, so I’m planning on catching up on the strength training while my leg recovers.

• Steps: 404,412 taken vs 353,845 needed to stay on pace. 
• Pushups: 1020 vs 1700
• Pullups: 530 vs 853
• Situps: 255 vs 1700
• Weight: 207 vs. 204.5

I’m exhausted. Normally this feeling is reserved for a Friday afternoon around 4:30PM. But no, it’s Monday. The reason? Startup Weekend.

Startup Weekend is a 54-hour event where entrepreneurial minded people come together, form teams, and go from concept to company in the course of a weekend. Over 5000+ people have participated in one of the 450+ Startup Weekends around the world. This was my first time, so I thought I’d give a recap of the weekend and my thoughts on why everybody should attend at least once.

The Pitch

Every Startup Weekend begins with Friday pitches. Anybody with an idea has 60 seconds to persuade the crowd that their concept can turn into something awesome in just two days. Many people had fully-baked ideas and pre-rehearsed pitches. Others, well, did not. I was somewhere in between.

My idea was ScholarSeed, a platform that allows the general public to invest in college entrepreneurs. The idea had been brewing in my head for a little while but two recent developments made me decide to pitch it at TSW.

1. The JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act. This law, approved by Obama just a week before Startup Weekend, is going to allow early adopters to become early investors by making it legal for anybody to use up to 5% of their income to purchase actual equity in startups using sites like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, and WeFunder. Proper incentive is huge for early user adoption and there is no bigger incentive than a financial one.

2. The Carolina Challenge. Put on every year at UNC, the Carolina Challenge is a business plan competition for student startups. I judged at this year’s finals and was blown away by the amount of brilliant students describing what they could do with just ten to fifteen thousand dollars. Without the credit history or collateral needed for a bank loan or the track record most VC’s look for, college students have limited options when it comes to seed funding.

I was one of 60 people that pitched to the crowd of 300 that night. 60 seconds isn’t much time, but I thought I did a decent job explaining the value a site like ScholarSeed could provide. After the hour of pitches, each person with an idea was given some time to walk around and give a few more details on their concept and expectations for the weekend. Ideas were then voted on using a smartphone app and then the Top 20 were revealed.  ScholarSeed was included.

I had big plans for ScholarSeed. We would develop a simple to use platform over the weekend and then populate the site with ambitious college entrepreneurs needing a few thousand bucks to follow their dreams. However, things don’t work out as planned. I lacked the technical skills needed to build even the simplest crowdfunding platform and others that were interested were similarly lacking in programming knowledge. Without the ability to actually build a Minimum Viable Product, I figured I would gain more out of the weekend by joining up with another team.

Lesson #1: While anybody and everybody interested in startups should participate in Startup Weekend, having technical skills is invaluable. Even if it means just knowing how to use photoshop, editing a CSS, or having basic HTML/javascript skills, teach yourself something and you will be rewarded. This reward extends well beyond Startup Weekend.

The Team

Luckily, there were some awesome ideas that wanted all the help they could get. There was even one that aimed to tackle the problem I observed at the Carolina Challenge. Unfundable aimed to be a crowdsourced venture capital firm that allowed everyday people help fund and fuel big ideas. While I was unsure of the exact legality of the idea, the pitch was energetic and ambitious, the team was excited and talented, and they were walking away to get started.

Lesson #2: Be quick on your feet. Had I not realized I wasn’t going to build a “rockstar” team quickly, I wouldn’t have bumped into Team Unfundable as they were heading out the door to get started. “Fail Fast” and “pivot” are all-too-common phrases in entrepreneurship, but they apply in the Startup Weekend microcosm as well.

The Execution

By the time teams got started working on their ideas, it was nearly Saturday. We had a team of roughly a dozen, which is larger than most, but included a good mix of developers, designers, students, and experienced entrepreneurs. Instead of building a robust pitch deck with unrealistic projections and detailed marketing plans, our team spent the next 36 hours building an actual product.

Lesson #3: The most impressive teams built a deliverable product. Team Truxie and Team Wanderful demoed actual working mobile apps and were rewarded with top honors because of it.

After a day that spanned 20 hours and numerous operating bases, we went to sleep with a site full of kitten image placeholders and no users.

We circled back up on Sunday, the developers hammered out some kinks, and we pitched our refined idea to a packed house. While our pitch was a bit off the cuff, it had more enthusiasm than some of the more prepared teams.

Lesson #4: The pitch is all about passion. If you are reading a set of notecards or a powerpoint presentation word-for-word, you are doing it wrong. Slide decks are great, but only if they act as an accompaniment, not the main course.

We didn’t win, but I was damn proud of what we accomplished.

Takeaway

While I might be in dire need of a solid hibernation, I already can’t wait until next year’s Startup Weekend. In the course of 54 hours, I saw hundreds of bright and friendly people give up a weekend of leisure (including Beerfest) to tackle big ideas and promote the Raleigh/Durham entrepreneurial scene. I experienced tons of firsts, including a plate full of spicy bulkogi served out of a food truck, pitching an idea to a crowd of 300 people, and “failing fast” when the taste of victory was still fresh. Maybe next weekend I’ll fly through some lessons on Codecademy or watch some of MIT’s Computer Science courses. Or maybe I’ll continue refining my idea of ScholarSeed. One thing is for sure though: after seeing what can be accomplished in just one weekend, I won’t be taking Saturday mornings for granted for a while.

UNC basketball. Bojangles biscuits. Much like any sane North Carolinian, I am enamored by each.

The word “Fan” stems from “Fanatic”: a person whose enthusiasm or zeal for something is extreme or beyond normal limits. While I love football Saturdays with bourbon soaked Coca-Cola and pro-style offense (welcome to the Hill Larry Fedora!), UNC football just doesn’t bring me to that “extreme” level of fandom. Sure, I’ll watch Tar Heel football, men’s and women’s soccer, field hockey, baseball, and pretty much anything else ESPN will televise, but none of those sports can bring such elation or anguish to my life as UNC basketball. For instance, I dislocated my knee the night UNC beat Illinois to win the 2005 NCAA  national championship. That summer I went through extensive arthroscopic surgery on my ACL to repair the damage. Despite all the pain, swelling, and roughly 30 pounds of weight gain associated with the recovery, that April night still ranks as one of the best of my life. On the other side of the coin, 8 and 20 (if you don’t know, don’t ask) was probably the worst year of my life. Disclaimer: that year was only terrible until (after UNC’s season was finished) I went on the first date with my future wife Amanda in April.

Now, Bojangles, for the uninitiated, is a southern fast food staple. Founded in Charlotte in the 1970′s, franchises can now be found as far north as Pennsylvania and as far south as……..Honduras (news to me as well). There isn’t anything particularly unique about Bojangles’ menu: fried chicken, buttered biscuits, cajun-spiced fries, dirty rice, sweet tea. But much like any business success story, the success doesn’t stem from the idea, it is a result of the execution. For you northerners that “just don’t understand those southerners’ obsession with sweet tea,” I can’t explain it; just go buy a 32oz. sweet tea from BoJo. Problem solved. So many fast food joints offer up breakfast biscuits it’s hard for the average obese American to choose from, but if you asked me, the only choice would be between Cajun Filet or Bo’Berry, both of which are solely ‘jangles offerings.

If you held a gun to my head and made me choose between UNC basketball and Bojangles? Well, I would choose UNC hoops every time, but don’t kid yourself if you didn’t think it would be close. Now, some higher-up in the Bojangles marketing department must have witnessed such an inner-battle occurring within a gluttonous basketball fan like myself and like any good marketer, decided to exploit the hell out of it. Since before I stepped foot on UNC’s campus as a freshman, Bojangles has run a promotion that if UNC scores at least 100 points during any home game, everybody (ticketholder and non-ticketholders) gets free biscuits the next day at participating Bojangles.

Talk about the perfect storm. I’m not sure when this promotion began, but it caught on like wildfire thanks to Roy Williams. Good ole’ Roy returned to the Hill in 2003 and went on to win 2 NCAA Championships in the next 6 years. Along the way, his “aww shucks” high-octane fastbreak-based offense finished in the Top 5 nationally for Points Per game all but one of those years. In other words, there were lots and lots of biscuits to be had.

In 2007, the promotion had gone so viral that fans started calling Dewey Burke, a rarely utilized reserve player, “Biscuits” Burke because he so often found himself taking the last shot of the game when UNC was blowing out inferior opponents; the shot to eclipse that oh-so-sweet 100 point mark. While UNC’s average Points Per Game has fallen a bit since those days, the Biscuit is still on everybody’s mind. Just search for #Biscuits on Twitter the next time UNC is playing, if it isn’t already trending of course.  Even inept sports announcers have caught on to the act, besides Len Elmore of course, who famously stated on ESPN that fans were chanting “FISHSTICKS” because a local restaurant gave free fish to all comers when the Heels scored 100.

To me, a lover of behavioral and applied economics, the best part about this whole Biscuit frenzy is the underlying financial benefit to consumers originally offered by the accidental geniuses at Bojangles. Bojangles offer is simply this: If UNC scores 100 points while playing in Chapel Hill, you can drive to one Bojangles that isn’t even in Chapel Hill (thanks to an odd municipal ban on drive-thrus) and if you make it that far, you can buy 2 Sausage Biscuits, normally $1.89, for the amazing price of just $1.00. So by offering an 89 cent discount on two sausage biscuits at just one location, maybe 5 times a year, Bojangles has created one of the best viral marketing campaigns I have ever witnessed. This is coming from the marketing gurus who centered their entire TV advertising strategy on Jake Delhomme:

The funny thing is, I don’t even like Bojangles’ sausage biscuits. If you want to truly experience Bojangles in all of it’s southern-fried fast-good gloriousness, go for a Chicken, Egg AND Cheese biscuit, side of bo-rounds and a large sweet tea. You’re heart won’t thank you, but your soul sure will.

I hope you all had as great a holiday as Huntly did.

The K-Mart Lay-Away Angel is one of the most feel good stories of the year: anonymous do-gooders are paying off needy families’ toy filled lay-away balances. Now this might just be the best stealth marketing campaign ever by K-Mart (“Let that usury-like interest accrue in the hopes a random stranger will pay it off!”), but I’m in the school of thought that there are still decent human beings out there that love to help those in need.

While I may not be kind enough to buy your kid that PS3 he’s been asking for, I have gotten into the holiday spirit, despite North Carolina’s unseasonably warm December. On an early December visit to see my family in Georgia, we visited the Atlanta Botanical Gardens inaugural Christmas light exhibit. My step-mother had recently been given a Mickey Mouse antenna figure that she had no use for, so on the way into the gardens, we found the most family-friendly minivan around and popped Mickey and his big shiny ears on their antenna. I’d like to think it brought a smile to a kid’s face wondering how Mickey made his way from Orlando all the way to their Dodge Caravan.

Then, the other day at work, I was playing a game of pool in our break room when I returned to my desk to see that I had been “Elf-ed”: somebody had anonymously left me some Christmas cupcakes with an Elf-y poem asking me to pay it forward. The next day, I returned to work to “Elf” some people up with a candy cane and this image:

While neither of these acts are particularly Earth-shattering, they still made me feel just as festive as Charlie Brown’s wimpy tree does each year.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

It seems like just yesterday that Groupon and Living Social were opening shop in Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill. Discounted bowling, dinner, massages, movie tickets. All things I love. Then came the clones with names like Twongo and MyUncleVinny. Even local radio stations got in on the madness. I willingly obliged and was soon spending the first half hour at work weeding through limitless emails offering the same Teeth Whitening and Mani/Pedi offers that had no possibility of ending up as a charge to my debit card. I even saw a Groupon for half off $4000 lasik surgery. Because everybody loves a good deal on getting their eyeballs lasered. When I actually purchased a deal that interested me, you know how I found out about it? Through my social network connections, all jonesin’ for some free vouchers. I very quickly was experiencing “Daily Deal Fatigue” and decided it was time to trim the fat. I cut my daily deal quota to the original gangsters, Groupon and LivingSocial.

Soon, I was rewarded for my loyalty. These two behemoths that were surpassing $5 billion valuations went back to doing what they initially did best, innovating. LivingSocial launched Living Social Escapes and soon offered amazing national deals with Whole Foods and Fandango. Groupon launched Groupon Now, a fabulous way for restaurants and other businesses to drive business in non-peak hours. Groupon even sent me an email letting me know I would be receiving $15 to spend on any Groupon Now voucher. I happily bought myself a doner kebab and felafel at a middle eastern restaurant I never even knew existed. Life was good again.

Groupon’s IPO quiet period soon came and went in surprisingly loud fashion. I remained loyal through all the bad press coverage, all the while my actual voucher purchases began to tail off. Two daily emails from the companies were still worth it if I picked out a diamond in the rough here and there. This Thanksgiving, I was still thankful for the group buying model for good reason: I heard a Wall Street Journal podcast discussing Living Social’s upcoming Black Friday/Cyber Monday extravaganza, offering another batch of killer national deals. I woke up that Friday, still filled to the brim with turkey and stuffing, only to discover that my inbox had expanded more than my stomach.  I emptied my inbox that morning with no discretion, much like I emptied the squash casserole leftovers later that evening.

The next day a funny thing happened. I was having a beer with my wife and her brother at a Charlotte sports bar, watching some rivalry football games.  At half time, while I was waiting for an old friend to arrive, I decided to check in on Foursquare. The bar carried the new Guinness Black Lager, so I posted my check-in to Twitter and Facebook, with my beer snob critique of the new brew (I approved). Foursquare then notified me that I had unlocked a special for “Small Business Saturday”. Within a minute, I linked up my AmEx to my Foursquare account, and just like that, my $25 bar tab was paid for via an AmEx credit. I was so impressed with the concept that I sent out a second tweet, not only about Ed’s Tavern, the pub we were imbibing at, but also mentioning Foursquare and AmEx’s unique partnership. Synergy at it’s finest. I said bye to friends and family the next day and returned to Raleigh, but not before systematically emptying my email of daily deals yet again. Still looking for that diamond in the rough. 

It wasn’t until that Monday, when I got to work after a wonderful holiday break, that my weakening love affair with Groupon came to a screeching halt. I sat down at my desk, opened my Gmail, only to see this string of emails from Groupon, all within 40 minutes of eachother.

Four emails? Seriously? I went from being relaxed and content (maybe the tryptophan was still having an effect on me) to being red hot mad.

I’ve even taken my time on some no brainer decisions. Deciding to propose to my wife after 8 years of dating. Choosing to accept an offer to go to UNC after months of anticipation. Easy. Other times, when an opportunity presents itself, I commit without even considering the alternatives or repurcussions: “Unpaid internship in Bangkok? Free flight you say? Sure!” / “It’s my first trip to Vegas, why would I not play in the World Series of Poker?” / “Of course I’ll try deep fried pizza!” It was this impulsive side of my brain that said yes when my dad asked if I felt hopping on a flight in a few days to go to a remote area of Honduras to do some volunteer work with the Wilderness Team. After the scariest plane landing I can imagine (see below) and an 8-hour bus ride over dirt roads with crater-esque potholes (sans shock absorbers), I began to question my decision-making philosophy. However, after seeing some of the living conditions in Tegucigalpa, Honduras’s most “cosmopolitan” city, I knew whatever minor inconveniences I experienced over the next week would pale in comparison to the feeling of helping those in need.

We were being escorted through a third-world country with machine-gun wielding private security, I was going to miss a week of NCAA March Madness, and the previous day’s 8 hour bus ride was just the first leg of our journey to the ranch we would be staying on. Now I’ve traveled by myself through South East Asia and some seedy Eastern European regions, but even with a group of uni-lingual gringo Americans I started to stress out a bit. After meeting our team and having a few Honduran brewed cervezas at our hotel in Juticalpa, I decided the best course of action was to just set my phone’s alarm clock and get some sleep while I had the chance. We had to be up and out by 9AM, so I decided to give myself some Murphy’s Law cushion and set my alarm at 7AM.

5AM the following morning: my alarm goes off. I get up, take a shower with the only available water temperature, 55 degrees fahrenheit, put on some clothes, and walk outside to sleeping roosters. Damn! International time-zone changes, coupled with the fact that Honduras doesn’t observe daylight savings, put me two hours ahead of schedule. Well, the freezing shower had me up, so I just spent the next couple of hours trying to connect to an elusive third-world wifi signal. A few rounds of off-line Angry Birds later, I was introduced to the Honduran breakfast we would be eating all week: beans, some type of mystery sausage, tortilla, a mixture of fruit (some familiar, others not so much), and coffee that was stronger than any illegal substances exported from Honduras’ neighbors to the south. After a quick walking tour of Juticalpa, we all loaded back onto the bus for another half day of extreme bus riding. Needless to say, we were all relieved when we arrived at Honduras Outreach’s Rancho el Paraiso, our homebase for the week.

Education, something that every American takes for granted sometimes, is a scarce resource in Honduras. Prior to Honduras Outreach and HAVE (Honduras Agalta Valley Education Foundation) establishing a presence in the Agalta Valley, children were not learning how to read and write, farmers were using inefficient cultivation methods, malaria was rampant, and nobody understood the dangers of open fire cooking without proper ventilation in their primitive dwellings. It was amazing to walk around the valley and see the effects that a few impassioned people had on such an economically depressed area. I was a bit reserved my first day there because I thought perhaps these simple rural people didn’t appreciate comparatively wealthy Americans coming in and telling them how to educate their children or how to farm their land. The schoolchildren’s welcome reception for us on the first day assured me otherwise: they lined the school road waving and holding “Welcome” signs and sang us songs. They were so grateful to have the opportunity to go to school everyday, and were even more grateful when the gringoes passed out western candies amongst the elementary students.

The prior year, the Wilderness Team had built a library that was now filled with books and colorful, uplifting murals. Our mission for the week was a bit more modest: to build a few sidewalks and repaint the school. The first day, I spent a bit of time wanting to work but not having a paintbrush or shovel to help out. You see, when you are in the Agalta Valley, you can’t simply go to Home Depot to pick up supplies.

By the second day, my sister Sally and I were jonesin’ to get our hands dirty. We therefore volunteered to tag along with the Floridians that were residing at the ranch. Instead of working with local schools, the Florida church-folk were focusing their efforts on a single impoverished village. Sally and I spent the day with Walter, an incredibly jovial Honduran who assisted us in building clay doughnut  chimneys. The two chimneys we completed would ventilate primitive mud huts of toxic smoke resulting from indoor cooking fires. There wasn’t a single bit of linguistic communication possible between the homeowners and us Schroders, but they expressed their gratitude through body language and smiles.

The rest of the week was spent back at the schools, interacting with amazing children, painting both schools, and building sidewalks. The Hondurans had their own style of cement mixing, and subsequently, the work of one Honduran rivaled that of four Americans. Still, despite the language differences, they understood that we came to help as much as our bodies and manual-labor skills allowed and did their best to work alongside us.

Two things about the trip truly amazed me though. First was the idea that “when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.” It doesn’t exactly work that way in Honduras. A history of political turmoil and a lack of proper infrastructure has made rural Hondurans realize that when life gives you lemons, you turn those lemons into whatever the hell will raise your quality of life. Years ago, when the Wilderness Team helped build a kiln in one of the local villages, the expectation was that they would create authentic pottery that could be sold to both locals and infrequent tourists. Fast forward a few years, and now that kiln employees half a dozen people that pump out those very clay doughnuts that Sally and I were stacking to make chimneys. At one $USD a piece, those doughnuts are now saving peoples lives as well as creating an economy previously unknown in the remote Agalta Valley.

The other thing that amazed me was how quickly I could befriend a group of strangers. Seven or so team members were under 40 and had never been on the trip before. Our first two nights into our excursion, nights were spent lounging in hammocks, reading or messing around on ipads, laptops, and smartphones in airplane mode. Technology allows us to detach ourselves from unfamiliar situations. I’m sure everybody has experienced getting on an elevator with a stranger. Instead of striking up a friendly conversation, 90% of us would instead pull our phone out of our pockets pretending that we need to send out an important text or check out some vital Twitter updates. That’s why I found it so funny that technology, albeit a AA-battery operated game of Catch Phrase, is what brought together the under-40 Wilderness Team members on our third night on the ranch. After one late night of shouting erratic clues to a group of strangers, we were suddenly great friends. We bonded with eachother, and then we bonded with the older members of the team. We were sad to leave the Agalta Valley at the end of the week, but a night filled with cervezas at Tegucigalpa’s Hotel Maya was a grand send-off.

My trip to Honduras made me appreciate the simple things I take for granted in America. Comparing what you have to what others have is a treacherous practice. Humans have risen to the dominant species that we are because of our spirit. No matter what situation we are in, we can make the best of it, and no matter what, maintaining a smile on your face is a way to welcome amazing strangers into your life.

Last June, she said “I Do” when asked if she would marry me. Between those two points in time we’ve shared lots of laughs, but last Saturday’s might just take the cake.

With both of us being 26 years old, we are right in the wheelhouse when all of our friends start pairing off and getting hitched. In fact, it’s getting a bit ridiculous. On the way to my friend’s wedding last Saturday, Amanda actually got, not one, but TWO phone calls from good friends that wanted to let her know they just got engaged. Ever since we tied the knot in June however, we’ve seen weddings in a different light. Now, we not only get to celebrate good friends expressing their love for each other, but we get to reminisce about our own nuptials, both amazing whirlwind of a wedding day all the way to the frustrations of planning it. We always remark how truly unforgettable our day was. Everything was perfect and went off without a hitch.

We were in the midst of one of these strolls through memory lane last Saturday. Our friends Jase and Carrie were smack dab in the middle of their first dance when someone asked “What was you guys’ first dance?”. All of a sudden, a wave of sheer terror washed over me. I couldn’t remember the most important song of my life. I had been so proud of our first dance! We had taken a few lessons and I hadn’t stepped on Amanda’s feet once. Later, family members even praised our dancing skills, including my impromptu “worm” that occurred near the end of the evening. But here I was, less than a year later, stumped when someone asked such a simple question. What was I going to do?

I sheepishly turned towards Amanda and let her answer. But what was this? The look on her face was the same as mine! “This is embarrassing but I can’t remember!” I told her and our table-mate. “I completely forgot too” she said. We both laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation but sat there in momentary silence trying our hardest to remember.

“The Way You Look Tonight?”

“No, that was the last song.”

“At Last?”

“Closer, but no.”

It was one of those tip of the tongue memories that was frustrating the hell out of the two of us. We knew it would eventually come to us, but I needed instant gratification. As always, my solution involved technology. A quick text to my dad, one of those that was so proud of our dancing skills that day, would quickly resolve the issue. As soon as he replied I was expecting one of those “AH HAH!” moments followed by a brief chuckle at our mid-twenties forgetfulness. Instead, I saw the reply from my dad and began bellowing with knee-slapping, irony induced laughter. Amanda gave me a look that seemed to say “Maybe I made a mistake marrying this guy.” Then I showed her the text. It read: “Too funny.” Followed by the one word title of the song that we will never forget again……..

“Unforgettable”

As a child, my mother, sister and I frequented a Blimpie’s in Atlanta so often that the employees would begin making our order as soon as we walked in the door. When I got to the age that my parents trusted me with sharp edges, I began exploring my own style of sandwich expressionism. After seeing the franken-sandwich creations I concocted using leftover french bread and our toaster oven, my stepdad began asking me to make two. I knew my sandwich artistry was just beginning to blossom as I packed my bags to head off to UNC.

It takes effort and money to always have fresh ingredients on hand though, so as a budget-conscious college student, I often found myself eating out. However, when it comes to sub shops, I am quite picky. Subway offers a good selection of fresh toppings, including green peppers, cucumbers, and spinach, toppings rarely found at pricier competitors. Their meat and bread leaves something to desired though: their bread has no taste and their cold cuts remind me of those overly processed and watered-down slices of meat found in Lunchables, a childhood favorite. However, Subway recently passed McDonald’s as the world’s largest restaurant chain for good reason, mainly their pricing strategy. When you want cheap, fast food but don’t want a spike in blood pressure, nobody beats Subway, especially with their wildly popular “Five Dollar Footlongs”. My sandwich snobbery doesn’t allow me to enjoy Subway though, so I gravitate towards the incomparable Jersey Mike’s. While Jersey Mike’s has all the necessities for a good sub, it is their bread and sliced-to-order Dietz & Watson deli meats that distinguish them as the Rolls Royce of submarine sandwiches. With prices almost double that of Subway’s though, I sometimes wondered if the marginal benefit of Jersey Mike’s was worth the higher price tag.

My search for the perfect price-to-palatableness sandwich thus began. Quizno’s took after Subway by offering large subs for $5, but their “toasty” niche sandwiches lost their flair after a while. Firehouse was a worthy competitor to Jersey Mike’s, but their pricing strategy was very similar. It was around my sophomore year however, that in the words of Will Smith, “my life got flipped turned upside down”: Harris Teeter began offering made-to-order subs using fresh baked bread filled with their deli meats and cheeses. Not only were the subs made using quality ingredients, but they were priced at an absurdly low $1.99 for that day’s 6-inch special. As a sub enthusiast/economics major, I knew their foray into subs was genius for three reasons:

1. Harris Teeter’s marginal revenue on each sub was insanely high. The grocery industry is all about inventory and margins. You have to have enough inventory on hand to meet demand or customers will begin shopping elsewhere: nobody likes having to make two grocery stops. However, if you become overstocked, your race against the expiration dates begin. Prices have to be temporarily lowered to clear out inventory in order to avoid waste. The genius idea with the subs is that Harris Teeter already had incurred a cost basis for the meats, cheese, and produce. By using soon-to-expire products on their subs, Harris Teeter essentially pocketed 100% of each sub’s sale. All they had to pay for was labor to make the sandwiches and make a few extra loafs of bread.
2. Brand loyalty. Along with the made to order subs, Harris Teeter launched the “Sub Club” promotion. By swiping your Harris Teeter VIC (Very Important Customer) card at checkout, you earned a point for each six inch sub purchased. After 15 purchases, boom, free foot long. Also, Harris Teeter has always been at the higher end of grocery store pricing. By bringing in a new, budget-seeking demographic that typically shopped at cheaper groceries such as Food Lion or Bi-Lo, Harris Teeter didn’t even need to break even on the subs to make money. If HT could convert just a few sub-patrons into regular customers, the sub experiment would be a huge success.
3. Extra Higher Margin Purchases. Americans are used to the fast food combo. You get an entree, but it comes with a side and a drink. Well, Harris Teeter’s side item and drink selection is limitless. By placing individual serving potato chips, pickles, cookies, and drinks well within eyesight on the pathway from sub counter to check-out, Harris Teeter made sure to entice those $1.99 customers to become $3.50 or $4 customers who were buying high margin items. Again, genius.

Soon, as I expected, the “Teet” sub phenomena exploded. The $1.99 daily special sub became a staple of my social circle’s dietary routine. You could see the effect wasn’t limited to my peers either: the lines were growing at a constant rate. We would try to hit the local Harris Teeter before noon to beat the crowd. We never grew tired of eating subs because each day of the week offered different specials, from Philly cheesesteak Friday to Any Sub Tuesday. The only concern we had was beating the 7PM deadline when we wanted subs for dinner. Life was good.

Knowing they were on to something big, the higher ups at Harris Teeter knew it was time to capitalize. No longer were they satisfied with capturing all that extra revenue at such little added expense. They decided now was the time to raise prices from $1.99 to $2.49. The drop in demand was going to be minimal since they were still pricing themselves under the competition. My friends felt betrayed. It was almost as if their child-hood baseball hero had been caught using performance enhancing drugs. Oh wait. Now buying two 6-inch $2.49 daily specials resulted in a $5 Foot Long. Sounded eerily familiar. Harris Teeter knew their throngs of loyal “Sub Clubbers” needed to be retained at all costs, so they introduced the infamous “Foot Long Fridays”. Any sub, hot or cold, would cost a mere $3.99 on Fridays. While this led to some very lethargic Friday afternoons for me, I was appeased. Years went by. I graduated college, got a job, moved to Raleigh, but Harris Teeter was one of the few constants of my life. My new co-workers had a similar love for the ‘Teet”.  We would often draw straws to see who was making the sub run that day while the rest of us remained glued to our screens, trading stocks.

Then something odd happened. I was checking out one day when I noticed my check-out total was 50 cents higher than normal. The next time I was at the sub counter, my modest fears were realized. They had raised their prices to $2.99 for 6-inch specials, $3.49 for any other sub. Again, those profit-seeking “suits” at Harris Teeter corporate knew that amongst it’s loyal sub-clubbers, this pricing “agression would not stand, man”. They introduced a toaster oven to their sub-making operations. While I was skeptical, the idea of enjoying all of my old favorites with a new toasty twist blinded me to what was truly happening. Then, half a year later, the prices rose to their current $3.49 for a special. Not only that, but $3.99 Footlong Friday was now $5 Foot Long Friday. I felt betrayed. This once glorious sandwich love-child between price and satisfaction had now become just another brick in the sub-sandwich wall. I knew the tough economy and rising commodity prices were probably hurting Harris Teeter’s bottom line, but not this much. This treachery knew no bounds. They had roped us in like crack cocaine addicts: offer us an addictive product at can’t beat prices and then jack up the prices when they knew they had us.

Gone are the days when I can get a toasted turkey and swiss on wheat that fills up my stomach without emptying my wallet. But you know what? You can keep that toasted turkey Harris Teeter, because I’m going cold-turkey. Unlike smokers who use nicorette gum or heroin addicts that use methadone, I am going to ween myself off of your subs by using a substitute that is just as satisfying and suddenly, economically competitive.

I just hope the fine folks at Jersey Mike’s welcome me back with open arms.

The disparity in college basketball is at an all time high. The Final Four participants seeds were 3, 4, 8, and 11. That comes to an average seed of 6.5, a full point higher than the previous high mark. Compare that to 2008, when four #1 seeds made it. So I ask, what is so different this year?

People always compare the college game to the NBA. While there are some qualitative arguments made why one is better than the other (“There’s no defense in the NBA” or “The college game has more passion”), certain quantitative facts stand out. The average NBA team puts up around 99 points during those “boring” regular season games. Since 2005, the college game’s two best teams face off in the NCAA championship game and they average 68 points each. Accounting for the fact that the NBA plays for 48 minutes a game (as opposed to 40 in college), we get 2.06 points/minute/team in the NBA versus 1.7 points per minute for college’s best teams. To put that number into perspective, it comes to this: The average NBA team would outscore the best NCAA team by 18 points a game. Again, what is so different?

I believe there are two crucial factors that contribute both to the low scoring nature and the current absence of elite teams found in the college game.

“One and Done” Rule

This is the largest factor causing the current state of college basketball. In 2005 the NBA prohibited players from jumping to the pros straight from high school. But long before that, the best players in college basketball were not been sticking around for 4 years (thank you Tyler Hansbrough for being the exception). Players like John Wall, Blake Griffin, and Derrick Rose get to live the college life for one year, get up the hopes of their respective fan bases, and then get selected as the #1 NBA draft pick, picking up millions of guaranteed dollars in the process. All three of those players just mentioned left college without a degree, and without a championship.

This talent drain of the most gifted athletes contributes to the lower scoring nature of college hoops as well as giving the little guys a fightin’ chance. When a team full of role playing seniors and talented freshman mesh each year anew, there are bound to be hiccups and setbacks to team cohesiveness, especially in the pressure filled month of March. In step teams like Butler, VCU, and even Notre Dame that feature experienced 20-somethings that know the ins and outs of the college game and know how to react to situations they’ve seen before.

Some coaches thrive on the one-and-doners. John Calipari seems to have a completely different team every year at Kentucky. Out goes one class of talented freshman to the NBA (last year five, yes, five UK players got drafted in the first round) and in comes another herd of 18 year olds with baby faces, NBA dreams, and AAU handlers that bring a black cloud to the program. This black cloud may result in NCAA-sanction-rains, or perhaps a tornado will appear and suck up the programs coach just before the rains fall down. That was a direct reference to Coach Calipari, who has been taken three different teams to the Final Four, yet has had two of those runs vacated due to controversy surrounding Marcus Camby and Derrick Rose. This season has just come to a close, so maybe he still has a shot of getting this year’s appearance wiped off the record books.

I think the best formula for championships lies in between. Each year, bring in a couple players that will have to work hard for a few years to make it to the NBA and bring in one “Diaper Dandy” that would have gone straight out of high school. I think Roy Williams has done a great job with this recruiting style. He’s had his fair share of one-and-done players, but many have been on Championship teams (Marvin Williams in 2005, Ed Davis in 2009). The trick is to get an elite level talent that needs a few years to really mold into the prototypical NBA GM’s fantasy. Sometimes you’ll get that diamond in the rough that is incredible at the college level but the NBA scouts say “His game won’t translate”. The Hansbrough brothers are perfect examples. Tyler spent four years at UNC, averaged 18+ppg each season, yet never got the respect from NBA mock drafts. Last month, he averaged 17 points/game for the playoff bound Pacers. His brother Ben spent a couple of up and down years in the SEC before transferring to Notre Dame. This year, as a senior, he was picked Big East Player of the Year over Kemba Walker, the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player and projected NBA lottery pick.

Until this rule changes to something similar to the NFL’s or MLB’s eligibility rules, the experienced mid-major teams will continue to have a shot against the big guys, but I think they will continue to falter at the finish line, like Butler has done two years in a row.

Fouls and Physicality

The NBA is certainly a scorers league. The creme rise to the crop and the world’s best players end up spread out amongst the league. While this fact alone leads to the level of skill on display in the NBA being far superior to that of college, the NBA rulebook has helped along the way. Some things, such as the shortened shot clock and automatic double bonus free throws automatically lead to higher scores. Others are a bit more subtle. Key differences in the rulebooks have kept the games high scoring and kept their stars safe. Some of these NBA-specific rules include the “Defensive 3 Second Violation,” hand checking, and prohibiting certain zone defenses. Calling “ticky-tack” fouls on the perimeter has led to a smoother, less physical style of play in the NBA compared to when Alonzo Mourning and Charles Oakley were roaming the paint looking to lay down some pain.

Those rules seem subtle, but I think the NBA and NCAA have it backwards. The college game is incredibly physical. With less talented athletes, poorer shooting percentages, and a shorter three point line, the college game should gear their rules to be less allowing of physical play. Meanwhile, the better skilled NBA stars should be forced to work a bit harder for each open shot. It’s no coincidence that the Lakers and Spurs have dominated the NBA Playoffs for the last decade or so. Each year in college meanwhile, more and more contact is allowed to pass as natural play. That’s why a league like the Big East can be anointed the best in the nation in a year in which they have very few standout stars. Teams like Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, and Syracuse had few NBA-skillset players, yet they won by grinding out tough, physical wins. Yet when they made it to the NCAA tourney in which familiar Big East officials didn’t oversee each game, they underperformed in epic fashion. Sure UConn won it all, but that was more based on a magical run rather than acting as evidence that the average Big East team is better than the rest of the country’s best.

Having physically assertive players is by all means good for the college game. My problem is when this physical play lies right on the fringe of the rulebook. I blame Duke. They don’t necessarily cheat (although as a Tar Heel I should be required to say they do). But what they do is take full advantage of the rules that are presented to them. All teams are guilty of seeking every legal (and sometimes illegal) advantage in their favor to win, but Duke does so in such an egregious manner that it must be commented on. They play tenacious perimeter defense, hand-checking and slapping at ball handlers at every opportunity. When roles are reversed and they are being defended however, they make damn sure that the officials are put to a decision: when a Duke player falls down or flails his arm wildly about after having a ball stolen from him, the ref can’t simply look the other way. And screens. My god the screens! A legal screen, by definition, is one in which your feet are set, those very feet are no more than shoulder-width apart, and your elbows/hips/knees aren’t extending beyond your body. Due to the increased physicality of the college game, Duke is able to violate all three of those criteria and almost never get called. Whatever masculine brownie points Duke gets for playing physical, they lose all credibility when it comes to flopping. If somebody drives down the lane, you can be sure as hell there will be a Duke player waiting under the basket for him to draw an offensive charge. Sometimes they attempt to draw the charge even without any contact. If a defender is nearby when a Duke player is shooting meanwhile, he’ll just fall like a fainting goat trying to draw the shooting foul. Now I’m sure a lot of you are discounting my argument due to my Carolina heritage. Allow me to retort with some YouTube evidence.

Not only does Duke flop at any possible inkling of contact and get away with moonwalking, but their fearless leader, Coach K, is constantly in the referees’ ears with his patented arguing. It amazes me that referees give Coack K any respect after he allows the style of play demonstrated in the videos below. Coach K’s reaction to the first blatantly intentional elbow was “there was no intent” and that “it was unfortunate those people were in the game” because “the game was over before that.”

But despite my obvious disdain for Duke, there is a serious problem arising from the “race to the bottom” in college officiating. As more and more fouls slides by as “good physical play,” the actual quality of basketball in college will continue to suffer. Players will continue to push the boundaries of what is considered fouling until a flagrant foul evolves into what is considered a simple foul and a bar-fight cheap shot becomes a flagrant foul. Big men will continue to get abused down low and guards will get open-hand slapped on the perimeter. Meanwhile, teams understand that in certain situations, they can force the officials to make a decision when a charge or flamboyant-arm-flailing has occurred. I love a good defensive minded team, but one that gets defensive stops the right way: by moving their feet, working as a team, and cleanly blocking shots.

The Solution

So what can we do to make the college game elevate to a skill level similar to the NBA while keeping the spirit and tradition we all love? Here are my suggestions, in order of importance.

1. Change the NBA Draft eligibility rule. Instead of having NBA ready talent disrupting college rosters on their way to riches, model the draft after Major League Baseball. If Lebron James and Dwight Howard type man-children are ready to step in immediately and contribute to an NBA team right out of high school, by all means let them go. Other kids have grown up in such extreme poverty that even a million in guaranteed money is worth the risk of falling out of the league after their first contract due to a lack of readiness. Let them get their money while it’s available. However, if a talented player feels he needs a bit more polishing and can delay his payoff by going to college, he needs to stay their at minimum two years. That way his college coach has adequate time (away from handlers and bad influences) to instruct him and best showcase his skills in a mutually beneficial manner within that basketball program’s system. Not only that, but after two years he should be half way along his path to a college degree (even more if he attends summer sessions). If he goes pro after two or three years, the probability of him returning to complete his degree improves exponentially. The one-and-doners simply stop going to class in their second semester because all that matters for the season is their first semester grades.
2. Stricter review/evaluation of referees’ performance. Conference tourneys and the early rounds of the NCAA were mired with referee error. If referees were held more accountable for their in-game performance, we would see the most astute and consistent officials working the most important games. Referees would be forced to call fouls by the book and as a result, we’d see the overly physically aggressive nature of teams decrease. They would be forced to rely on speed and teamwork for defensive stops rather than brutality.

1. Rule Changes. I love the game of basketball as it is and I don’t want them to mess with it too much. However, the fact that their is a rule stating their is an imaginary semicircle under the basket in which a charge can not be drawn is ludicrously stupid. Just paint the damn circle in. The fact that they have a rule but no line just leaves more judgement up to the officials for absolutely no benefit. I also think the game would be more fluid with an NBA 3-point line and defensive 3-second violations.

These changes would not only enhance the showcase of skill in the college game, but they would cut down on thuggery and the “race to the bottom” I described before. The little mid-majors might get squeezed out a bit but I’m willing to risk that happening.

Besides, if Cinderella’s slipper was a perfect fit, why did it fall off in the first place?

Al Gore’s “internet” pales in comparison. For a nation engrossed by television  (the average American watches over 28 hours of TV a week), this device allows us to efficiently consume an ever increasing array of entertainment options. You can watch numerous shows, minus commercials, all geared to your tastes regardless of the time of day (How does Ron Popeil still reach his target demographic?). At my house, we have two DVR’s for this very purpose: my wife Amanda consumes her “Real Housewives” reality fodder in the bedroom while I watch pubescent male favorites such as “Tosh.O” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” out in the den. “Jersey Shore” is recorded in both rooms, since it is both incredibly sophomoric and mindless reality rubbish at the same time, and we love every minute of it, together.

For all of its gloriousness, the DVR does have one drawback though: recorded live sports.  I can’t enjoy this remarkable love-child between technology and sports because of technology’s bastard son, connectivity. Sure, getting emails, tweets, status updates, text messages, phone calls, even live sports scores, all on one device can be an amazing thing. However, I derive no pleasure from watching a game in which I know the outcome (unless it’s a Duke-UNC game in which Carolina emerged victorious). When I’m watching a recorded game, I therefore have to dodge the minefield known as my friends. Whether that means a Dook fan trying to rub in a Tar Heel loss or a fantasy-football-opponent talking a little trash after Adrian Peterson scores yet another touchdown, I just get incredibly anxious when I have any means of communication nearby.

Both my father and step-father disagree with me on this point. My dad watches a full NFL game in roughly an hour, how can that be a bad thing? I call my stepdad at Tar Heel halftimes to discuss the game, but he still has some “juice” so I have to wait until the end of the game. What is “juice” you ask?

Everything to the right of the pause is “juice”, simply the difference between the current point in the game you are watching and its current live status. I love fast forwarding through half time, but to me, the risk is not worth the reward. Let me give some anecdotal evidence.

I recently took a trip to Honduras in which I built some school sidewalks, installed chimneys in rural homes, and ate 3 metric tons of rice and beans. It was a great trip. I made new friends, spent some great time with my dad and sister, and felt good for taking some time out from what I consider to be a blessed life to give back to people in need. The one problem was, it was March Madness: the week-long trip spanned over the ACC Tournament and the first week of the NCAA tournament. I am a rabid UNC hoops fan, and after last year’s disappointing season, I was looking forward to some mid-March relevancy. Fortunately, even in the remote Agalta Valley of central Honduras, connectivity reared its ugly/beautiful head and certain trip-members had BlackBerry coverage. I learned of all the scores as they happened, including Duke’s ACC Championship Game romping of my Tar Heels.

When the brackets came out, I learned I would be able to watch the Heels’ Friday night game, since our week was ending at the Mayan Hotel in Tegucigalpa. IF we won (#2 seed vs. #15 Long Island U. should be a cakewalk, but I’m not one to jinx my team), we would play Sunday afternoon. I would be State-side with my beautiful wife by then, so not only would I be able to watch the game, but she would be able to listen to me yell at the TV anytime the game was close, a favorite past-time of hers. Friday went off as planned; I sat by a nice pool, drank some of my favorite Dominican and Honduran beers, and then watched the Heels put up 102 points in a victory. Victory laps proceeded on the dance floor, followed by a brief choreography lesson to some Hondurans on how to do the King of Pop’s “Thriller”.

However, things don’t always work out as planned. Due to a late-originating departure of my Tegucigalpa-Miami flight, coupled with a double redundant carry-on bag security check policy,  I missed my connecting flight home to Raleigh on Saturday night. This meant, I would not be home in time for Sunday’s tip-off. Not only that, but my wife had to find somebody else to go see Blue Man Group with. This meant she couldn’t pick me up at the airport as planned and I’d have to take a cab home. Thanks a lot American Airlines. That $15 meal voucher was totally worth it.

The game dilemma I could solve, I simply had Amanda DVR it (+30 minutes at the end, just in case the Heels couldn’t TCOB in regulation). The day late arrival and missed Blue Man show on the other hand, would take a little schmoozing. It seemed like an easy enough scenario though; arrive in Raleigh, avoid all text messages, cab it home, flip on the TV, immediately navigate to my DVR recorded shows list, and I’d be cruising through commercials as the Heels cruised through another undermatched opponent.

Again, things don’t always work out as planned. While boarding in Miami, I ran into a fraternity brother I hadn’t seen in a couple years. I told him we’d catch up at baggage claim as I boarded and found my seat on the last row of the oversold plane. A few hours later upon landing, I heard people turning on their phones, making phone calls, and doing whatever else it is that people do on their smartphones. Thats when things got a little dicey. My thought process went as follows:

That guy is checking scores. That guy is wearing a Duke hat. This is no good. Where are those ear-plugs my dad gave me to sleep through the dormitory snorers? Plan B. Fingers in ear. That guy is looking at me like I’m an idiot. Farewell to you too captain. Ahh, Raleigh soil. NO! I forgot about terminal TV’s. Great, they all have the game on. Head down, power through. Phew. They were kind of loud, I wonder if it’s a close game? Oh no! 42nd Street Oyster Bar has a big crowd at the bar, they are all watching the game, it must be close. Veer right, avoid eye contact. Moving sidewalk or regular sidewalk? Duh. Easy Choice. Great! Stuck behind somebody who likes to loiter on moving sidewalks. Stairs or escalator? Not going to get me again fatty…..stairs it is! Alright, baggage claim. There’s Andy.

“Andy, don’t tell me the score, it’s DVR’ing. I was in Honduras. Yada-Yada job, Yada-Yada marriage.”

“Did you just yada-yada the best part?”

“Oh I mentioned the bisque”.

Great, bag didn’t show up. What else can go wrong? Is that the line for lost luggage? Ugh. I bet that airline woman hates dealing with all these people who blame her for losing their luggage. Especially that guy in the office with her right now, he’s flailing his arms all over the place. He looks like one of those wacky wavy inflatable arm flailing tube men.

Guy in front of me is looking at phone. Now he’s talking to guy behind me. “We should go watch this game. It’s….” Cut him off. “Please don’t tell me, I’m recording it.” He keeps looking at his phone and then giving me dirty looks. Finally, he leaves.

I talked briefly with the guy behind me. He understood. I let him go ahead of me so he could deal with his bag and go watch at the bar. I cordially dealt with the pleasant lost baggage lady and was on my way home, sans bag. In the cab I got a text message. I looked at who it’s from. Catherine, my step-sister, who went to Dook and loves to rub UNC losses in my face. I didn’t look at it but I was sure it’s bad news. It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I realized my keys were in my checked bag. Wait an hour for Amanda to get home from Blue Man? I couldn’t handle that. I called my landlord, a UNC fan, and asked if he could open the house for me. He lives a block away and was a lifesaver. Not only did he open the house for me, he didn’t once mention the game. I played with my overly excited dog for a few minutes before I assumed my game watching position on the couch.

The crowds at the airport TV’s were there for a reason. This game was incredibly close. It was neck and neck the entire game and my nerves were on end. Luckily, through the magic of technology, I was able to fast forward through the commercials and halftime. All the hassle was worth it. The missed flight, the fingers in the ear, the landlord telephone call, everything. I was experiencing March Madness. UNC was down by two with five minutes left when I heard the back door open……

Amanda is back! “Quick, DVR, what do I do?”

“Pause” it tells me. Thanks again! Such innovation!

I gave her a hug and then proceeded to tell her her how the trip went, how much I missed her, about my lost baggage, etc. The first thing out of her mouth?

“I hear your Tar Heels pulled out a close one”