Ed Gutman

Times flies by so fast when you’re having fun.

The time is April 2005. I’m still working on my thesis. More importantly, I’m five months into “perfecting” my Lindy Hop. Jesse had been repairing the damage done from the previous four months. Sometime in May, he starts teaching a line dance called The Big Apple, and me having a voracious appetite for all things jazz and dance related I’m the first in line to learn it. A couple of weeks later, I’m (pathetically) attempting to dance the damn thing at our local swing dance venue, with Jesse and his wife, Candy.

July rolls around and I guess I had gotten the attention of another dancer, (other than the one’s going, “What the heck was that?”) and being only one of three others up on the dance floor, I guess it wasn’t hard. Emily was cute and had quite the personality, we went on our first date. At Trader Joe’s (romantic!). But before I knew it, I was helping her move (unfortunately) to Long Beach.

Four months of a long distance relationship and a job offer at Google, we move up together to the Bay Area make ourselves a (very) tiny home in Mountain View, CA. We’ve lived up here for almost four years now and we’ve been so lucky to have them together. Now with Emily launching her successful wedding photography business, she’s also inspired me to do great things. Forget about waiting until tomorrow. While we’ve had our ups and downs, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Although I’m taking offers.

Just kidding!

Thanks for everything, babe… and Happy Anniversary.

Ever wondered why that website you visit has a weird name that ends in ‘r’ or ‘oo’ (Tumblr, Squidoo, come to mind)? Are they being intrinsically creative and edgy with their name choices? Well, yes and no.

You see, when the world wide web picked up in traction around the early 90s, less than 12% of the US had access to the web with that a small fraction of today’s websites were in existence. A few people saw the growth potential in the web and started buying domains left and right by picking: words out of the dictionary, prominent company names, famous names, etc. Since relatively no one was paying attention it was easy to claim them.

Fast forward several years and now there are over a billion people on the net. Domain names are at a premium, and now those cheap purchases in the 90s have turned into a million dollar industry. For example, business.com sold for some 7.5 million USD.

Somewhere around the beginning of the so-called “web2.0″ revolution, instead of capitulating to domain squatters, most web properties went with a more creative approach: create words (or alter them) to a point that no one has heard of it before. Hence, we now have Flickr, digg, and Twitter.

Necessity, is indeed, the mother of invention.

Those of you who know me know that I’ve been doing the P90-X fitness program for the last four months or so. Like many Lindy Hoppers, Nick Williams introduced me to the pain and agony of this program, but honestly, it’s done wonders for me. There are some things, though, that you come to accept once you’ve been doing it for that long.

• You can explain where the P90-X acronym comes from.
• You can recite Tony Horton quotes on the spot. Not only that, but you’ve got his voice down, too. Here are some gems:
“Making Gumby look like the Tin Man.”
“Don’t smash your face!”
“German potato soup (in a sappy german accent).”
“Do your best and… forget the rest!”
• You wonder where you can get a copy of “Downward Dog Magazine”.
• You know that there’s exactly a one minute interval where Tony manages to remain quiet throughout the entire set of videos.
• You know the assistants (on and off video) and have given them nicknames:
Pam, The Blam.
Phil, the Smart-ass.
Dreya “thanks for your painful contributions to P90-X” Webber.
Karen, the Pot-stirrer.
Sophia, the Chiclet teeth girl.
The Horton Triplets: Tony, Bobby and Joe.
• You’ve made a made a drinking game for whenever…
… Tony hits on Dreya.
… Katie moans in agony.
… someone does huggers and shakers.
… someone makes an “X” symbol with their arms.
… Tony says he’s “done chattin’.”
• You know that banana-boat is more than a tanning oil brand; it’s something much more painful.
• You get withdrawals when you miss a workout.
• You find yourself excited when finding other P90-X users and talk for hours about it, forgetting the dance altogether. You’ve become a walking salesman for it.
• You’ve bookmarked beachbody.com, even though you’ve never visited the site.
• You equate the “modified” moves as the loser moves.

*sigh*, I’ve thought too long about this.