connecting*the*dots

I’ve got one bullet left in the chamber, so this had better work.

This is a pissed-off customer rant. Proceed with caution.

To make a very long, frustrating story as short as possible, I lost every contact from my Treo 600 added over the past 5 months. There was some kind of a sync corruption that actually busted my phone — turning it off when receiving incoming calls from non-Sprint networks.

The same thing happened last December and the local Sprint store gave me a substitute 600, which worked fine until I tried to sync it this past week.

After it busted on Thursday while I tried to sync up my new contacts from last week’s Beyond Broadcast conference, I spent a good deal of time on Friday, Saturday and today in the local Sprint store, with the culmination of the first two days having me walk out of the store with a “reset” phone.

Today, I skipped the pleasantries. Within minutes I was vociferously arguing that they needed to make me happy or I was going to cut my contract. After 3 hours in the store this afternoon and speaking to what seemed to be the entire corporate ladder to approve a buyout of my contract termination fee, the store manager finally worked out a deal with me to receive a free 650 upgrade.

Fine.

But what a God awful, painful process to get there.

Even though it was obvious to everyone I spoke with that my phone kept busting/erasing data during the Palm sync process, they wanted nothing to do with my sync log sheet. Both their internal tech folk and the folk on the other end of the phone, kept recommending a reset of my phone, which had already been proved to be a useless approach. At one point, the manager started to lean towards it being a network issue or an issue with my computer… something they could do nothing about; you know, “time to go home Mr. Coon and search the web for answers”… Well, that’s when I lost it, diving into a tirade how:

• I’m locked into a two-year contract with Sprint (like the rest of the cellphone customers of the world!)
• They branded my Treo 600, so I can’t use it with another carrier (therefore I’m holding you responsible for *any* problems. Screw hunting down Treo or Palm or Mac tech support!)
• I’m standing in their brick and mortar customer touch point (and you can’t help me!? wtf!)

I couldn’t help it, I got Jersey on their asses. And that must’ve been the language they understood.

So yeah, the long-story short is that I now have a new Treo 650… and a new 2-year contract. Fuckers.

Prepare yourself for my soon-to-be-written email asking for your contact information… again.

/end rant

UPDATE: My new 650 is working like a charm. Next time Sprint folks, just give a seven year-long customer with an unfixable problem a free upgrade. It’s good business.

Tompkins and Adamson at the Austin airport

Well, it took me until today to be able to write my goodbye to Austin. Man, that town and conference kicks some serious ass. Some of my favorite moments from this past week:

• Bruce Sterling’s closing remarks on the state of the world. I’ve never been moved to tears by a public speaker before… I’ve a new favorite author.
• Running into Doc Searls after the Sterling presentation, and chatting with him for an hour about everything from our shared past in Jersey and Greensboro (my current residence) to our love of basketball to our vastly different experiences with the KKK (mine is through my brother’s documentary, you gotta ask Doc about his) and then hitting up a BBQ joint with Doc, Marc Canter, Nancy White and Jerry Michalski.
• Experiencing Kirby Dick’s This Film Is Not Yet Rated and Alan Berlinger’s Wide Awake at the greatest theatre experience I’ve ever come across, the Alamo Drafthouse.
• Adam Greenfield’s ubiquitous computing presentation. (Adam is so very articulate and cultured, I can only hope that experience design is taken more seriously within the world of ubicomp than it is within the web) and Peter Morville’s Ambient Findability presentation. Two very similar topics, yet two very different presentations.
• Finally meeting Tish Grier, Will Giese, Thomas Vander Wal, Peter Merholtz, Tara Hunt and Chris Messina in person after months of blogging, commenting, plazing and flickring each other (did I say flickring?). And yes, I can confirm without a doubt that missrogue and factoryjoe are the web 2.0 version of Bonnie and Clyde.
• Hitting up the town with Khoi, Chris, Ralph and Jeff. We were robbed of the SXSW Web Award for Best Green / Non-Profit site (mediamatters.org) damnit! So we drank more.
• I only ran into one former collegue/friend at the conference — Dan Saffer — but I think I made a handful of new ones along the way.

I had a blast. And I’m looking forward to next year already.

If only the 9 hour trip from Jersey to Greensboro were so quick…

I didn’t grow up with Johnny Cash on my record player or in my tapedeck. I guess that’s probably the case for most guys coming of age in Jersey in the mid-80’s. The bands that introduced me to rock ‘n roll were The Cars, Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. Johnny Cash was a blurry legend, a few generations before my time, falling into the class of Elvis and Hank Williams. Sure, I heard him, but I never really felt him. He represented a completely different universe of emotions.

Or so I thought.

I just got back from Walk The Line, and I’m still caught up in the afterglow. I’m going to shut up now and go find my Cash album and drift off to sleep.

I was catching up with my good friend Jonathan Daniel last week–he just returned from an African, Middle Eastern, Asian solo hike–and he managed to bring the war in Iraq much closer to home.

The plight of abducted journalist Jill Carroll has been covered extensively by Xeni Jardin on Boing Boing over the past few weeks. I never made the connection before, but apparently Jonathan and I are only separated by a few degrees from Jill, as we grew up with former Montclair, NJ resident Dan Murphy, Jill’s colleague at The Christian Science Monitor.

Jill’s captors have made demands for her release. Please help keep this story active.

When I walked into the Jersey City office of Big Brothers/Big Sisters in the Spring of ‘04, I had no idea what to expect. I had tossed around the idea of becoming a Big Brother ever since my boy, Derek Haley, did it a few years after we left the ‘cuse, but I kept rationalizing my decision to not do it due to me having a hard enough time getting my own shit straight in my 20’s.

That was where I was dead wrong; for the longest time, I thought it all was about me.

Wendy, the director of the office, gave me a form with an inordinate amount of personal questions for a background check. After I completed the paperwork and she disclosed the rules of the Big Brother/Little Brother relationship, she then asked me the most obvious question, one which I had never even considered.

“What type of kid are you looking to match up with?”

Not knowing what to say, I quickly blurted back that I didn’t have any preferences, I mean, what kind of person would I be to shop for a specific type of little brother? Wendy expertly paused and explained that there were kids as young as 8 and as old as 16 looking for a Big Brother, but the older they got, the harder it was to place them. “As a matter of fact” I told her “the older the better.” I was looking for a brother, not a son. My answer seemed to please her, as she quickly dipped into her paperwork, searching for a case file. After a few minutes of licking fingers and opening dusty file cabinets in her ceiling fan cooled office, Wendy told me to come back in a few days. She thought she had found a potential match.

When I returned for my next appointment, I passed Branden and his mother, Felicia, sitting patiently in the hallway. Before I knew it, Branden — a 14 year old kid from across the tracks — and myself were in the midst of documenting our own shared rules of our relationship, the most important being that there was to be no lying. This was real. This was surreal. I had another little brother in my life.

Here’s the thing… and it may be the most used cliche’ of all, but it’s the most truthful statement I think I’ll ever make; Branden has taught me more about myself than any girlfriend or friend I’ve ever had. Sure, I’ve exposed him to a lot of new things; like Sushi dinners downtown or a Mos Def concert in Central Park, even a late-night showing of Sin City (sorry, Felicia). I tried to keep him focused when focus was needed and a kid the rest of the time. I know I’ve made a difference in his life, but I can’t even begin to express how much he’s changed mine. Not my perspective on life mind you, but my life.

When I was coming up in the ‘burbs of Montclair, NJ, I thought I was less off because the kids on my block had a new pair of Jams for each day of the week, while I had to cycle through mine every other day. After watching Branden watching his own back, both in school and out, spending his afternoons at his grandmother’s house because it’s not safe enough to go outside and hang out with his friends, well, shit becomes real. The kid has more street smarts in his first 16 years on this planet than I’ve garnered in my 35. As for how he changed my life, just take a look at the thin postings from 2004 on this blog and take a guess how career-focused I was; how consumed I had become about bettering me and mine.

I’m now volunteering my time, efforts and money with numerous causes as a direct result of our relationship.

Back in July, I was forced to make one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made in my life. I decided to leave Jersey City and move to Greensboro, NC. Felicia understood what was happening; the woman I loved was here and I needed to step, but Branden and I had just hit our stride, and he was in JC, still a few years away from the end point of the commitment I had made to him through Big Brothers. Yet, here I am, posting away from my village townhouse apartment, smack dab in the middle of the bible belt.

Words can’t express how tough that decision was.

But here’s the thing… Branden and I don’t relate to one another through the lens of the Big Brother program, we haven’t since the first time we hung out. We’ve shared enough special moments together that we consider ourselves brothers, for real.

A few weeks ago, Big B promised me that for my birthday, he was going to drop lyrics on his blog, Prestylin’, and dedicate his flow to me. Tonight, during my nightly ritual of Bloglines info-digestion, there it was, the Prestylin’ feed was black and bold, reaching out for my eyes to behold.

Check it.

What can I say? I miss ya’, kid. Keep it real up there, mind your mom and keep on doing your thing in school. I’ll be back up there in the New Year, kicking your butt in Madden quicker than you can say “That’s dope.” (haha)

To my friends and fellow web travelers, if you have a moment, stop on by and show Big B some love. Not only is he keeping it real, but he’s keeping it right.

I grew up across the Hudson, about 13 miles west in a town called Montclair. Our home stood on a hill on the western side of town, with my bedroom resting on the eastern side of our third floor Victorian.

In the winter months, when the leaves of the Oaks and Elms dropped throughout town, my eyes could skip over Anderson Park, past downtown Upper Montclair and over the thin tree tops in neighboring towns, catching the very tips of The City skyline.

As a young boy that daily exercise both excited and enticed, as my minds eye continued on and landed me farther, way beyond the skyline, deep into the midst of Manhattan, my perceived gateway to the world.

My parents are both artists and educators who met at Columbia University in the 60’s. As a child in the late 70’s, they’d take me and my brother to gallery openings in old Soho and to the West Village to experience (off) Broadway shows.

Our days in The City were wild, fun, provocative and inspiring.

When family or friends came to town, we’d enter tourist mode and scale the Empire State Building for a die-cast statue and snapshots of the view down or dine at Windows on the World, pretending to fit in with our fumbled, New Jersey appearances and mannerisms.

The City was as big as the world; they were one and the same to me.

Life Lessons

From an early age, my parents allowed me the freedom to explore my surroundings in our neighborhood and around my suburban town, but on their terms, making sure to teach me the basics before letting me out the door — to always look left and right before crossing the street and call home collect whenever I needed a ride.

Times in the suburbs were much simpler back then. Conversely, the late 1970’s/early 1980’s streets of The City had a different lesson in tow.

Whenever I visited, The City schooled me that a world filled of vertical cities lived above street level, while below the streets, the world was connected, full of roaming individuals whom I couldn’t engage with by conversation or by sight.

The City’s rationale (it spoke to all of us), was that in those pre-Giuliani times — the Bernard Getz era of NYC and only a few years removed from the Son of Sam and the craziness of the NYC blackout — you’d be pegged a tourist simply for looking 45 degrees higher than your line of sight and that transparency could open yourself up for a con or a mugging.

“That’s how people are taken advantage of,” the wisdom of the City would tell me, and I listened, because I trusted The City.

Why wouldn’t I?

So I learned to glance and frame the moment of people, places and things. Take it all in, but mind my own business was the lesson I learned.

These two sets of extremely bipolar rules — my parent’s light schooling of linear confrontations and the hierarchical laws of The City — represented the checklist of street smarts I owned at age 10.

Now 34, though schooled by many more life lessons of much greater complications, I continue to think, dream, plan and move about my life with these early lessons in tow.

Why?

The City gave me Don Quixote and Starlight Express and George Segal pedestrians and giant, 5-foot pencils and toothbrushes on West Broadway. It gave me the Bronx Bombers, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and hot dogs on the sidewalk. It even gave me Yellow Cabs with mini, fold-up seats facing away from the driver, which perfectly fit my smaller frame.

The City bought my complete trust with the allure of growing up to possess a soul similar to the Great Grid and all that lay in-between.

So I walked between the buildings and never looked up; I glanced at the people and never saw a face.

All Grown Up

In 1996, my first gig in The City had me commuting in from Jersey City, where I lived with my girlfriend at the time. I worked just below Canal Street in a multimedia shop set above a Futon outlet; one of the twenty Futon stores on the block. Though I had a substantial commute with the PATH schedule, my daily trek proved to be a nice contrast to my previous reverse commute deep into the Western expanses of New Jersey.

Once I landed in Manhattan at the WTC PATH station, I’d ride the packed escalators to ground level and walk the twelve blocks to my job, breathing in the fresh air of downtown Manhattan. Often, I’d stop at the same street vendor for fruit and juice to enjoy as I settled into my desk overlooking the rooftop water towers of Soho.

As the long day of animating cartoon characters and chilling in lunch meetings at spots such as Fanelli’s and Bar 89 came to a close, I looked forward to the walk back to the WTC, and the ride under the river to my affordable existence.

I was finally living my dream within the gateway.

The Turn

Just as soon as I felt my dreams of experiencing The City coming together, my daily trek began to take on a uncomfortable vibe.

I started to loathe my commute, with the crowds of suits on the PATH and our long escalator ride up into the heart of the WTC underground mall, squashed together like sardines. Innocuous moments became unbearably annoying, simple things, like passing the WTC Disney Store each morning as I approached the exit to street level.

The commercial and business epicenter of downtown Manhattan started to eat away at me; more and more, I actually became upset watching three-quarters of my fellow travelers disappear every morning like worker ants into this building, a structure that I now only used as a thousand foot-tall roof twice a day and a directional beacon while uptown.

What happened to the romance of The City?

In my 25-year old mind, the WTC — my newfound entrance and exit point of The City — began to viscerally represent home to corporate yes men, guys who would just as soon knock over a woman stepping onto the PATH as they would verbally drool over her once they landed their prime positioning in front of the opposing exit door.

I mean, the PATH was so crowded at times, I actually witnessed smaller people get lifted off their feet in the shifting and shoving and cramming of bodies to get to work — or more directly to the point, to get to a pay day.

It was around this time that I was struck by a profound realization; not only had I broken one of the golden rules of The City by gawking at a vertical city, I’d been gawking at the epitome, the archetype of a vertical city.

For months on end, I’d been staring straight up into the WTC’s belly, observing its mechanisms and deconstructing its inhabitants, changing my behavior to match it’s very, particular pace and heartbeat. As I began to consciously ponder this realization, The City reacted in it’s best Don Pardo voice and reached out to quell my new found sensibilities the only way it could:

“Hey Sean, forget why you thought you loved me. Classic Yellow Cabs are gone, Soho is an outdoor mall, the eighties are done. Try on these duds for size!”

This time, I wasn’t buying.

Now that my eyes were truly open, prolonged, daily glances into the eyes of the people that surrounded me provided me with nothing but negative vibes in return. The pang of repetition, the exhaustion and the real-life scheming of men and women, desperate to keep up with the Jones’, made my shift in perspective clearer each day.

Now when I walked through the grid of The City, each of the vertical cities above ground began to take on a new representation to me. Hierarchy, wealth and confliction loomed over the masses of citizens, who were either explicitly or implicitly schooled to not look into the eyes of the beast as well.

I came to the conclusion that by not looking all these years, really looking at what was happening in those corner office expanses, we were each complicit in allowing these vertical cities to intimidate our lives with dangled carrots and unattainable conclusions of never ending pursuits.

At that time in my life, such a revelation was way too much for me to unravel and digest — let alone express — so I quickly jotted down a sketch (left) and moved on psychologically and physically. I shut out the very existence of what I had learned to be true, and let the representational presence of buildings disappear.

I left town.

Once clear of a visceral connection to these expansive, white collar, networked resources, only a matrix of interlocking paths of human relationships remained. See, back in the day, when my 10 year-old mind’s eye pictured the essence of The City, it romanced the Great Grid, but not the grid of city blocks and the office towers; it romanced the unknown personalities, diversity and creativity of the people of New York themselves.

It was criminal how long it took me to recognize that notion.

Moving On

Tonight marks the fourth day of the second week of my new life in Greensboro, North Carolina. The last time I left The City it ended up as a brief respite in the Birkshires — essentially serving as a pit-stop before heading back to reconnect with, and take on the vertical cities from within.

I doubt I’ll take the same path this time.

Maybe I’ve lost the passion, or maybe, just maybe, I’ve come to realize that seeing my passion to fruition can’t occur within a representation of the confrontational juxtaposition itself. Maybe I’m better off planning, expressing, and implementing from a room on the eastern side of an old wooden home, with a window overlooking the thin, slumbering Oaks and Elms of a quaint town, while the far off tips of a skyline glistens in the early morning sky.

Maybe now I’ll look directly into the eyes of my fellow travelers and explore relationships with the people underground and above, walking proudly with the roaming individuals themselves.

Today marks the four-year anniversary of the tragic events of 9/11. Bless the souls that were lost that day, as well as the ones that became lost as a result, but damn those souls to hell who haven’t learned a thing since.

I’m now two weeks away from moving down south and I’ve got to admit, the anxiety is starting to kick in. While I’m mad happy to be starting my life with Angela, I have a handful of conflicting feelings about moving from JC/NYC to North Carolina — from all-around accessibility issues and gas prices (I’ll have to drive with regularity for the first time in five years) to experiencing homogeneous culture shock to actually enjoying a cheaper and more relaxed/healthier lifestyle.

See? I’m conflicted, but in a very good way.

All in all, I’m ready for a change. And if you know me, when I make changes in life (or when life makes changes to me), it’s usually drastic. This time it’s a bit different; there’s some planning behind it all. And while I’ve never been one for planning life, I’m feeling pretty good about the course I’m undertaking.

In a few weeks, I’ll probably end up waxing poetic about leaving the area I’ve considered home for most of my 34 years, but for now, I leave you with the funniest worst-case scenario video montage of America; an America that’ll be much closer in proximity to me in a few weeks than ever before.

(via BoingBoing)