Author Archives: Todd Gehman

During today’s lunch at Ballet, Bob lost again at CCR. Whereas last night, at our first SCUBA class, he won second place in the six-lap pool snorkeling exercise. I hadn’t noticed this achievement, but he informed us of it over lunch. Go Bob! Thing is, it wasn’t actually a competition. So I informed him of that over lunch as well. I’m hoping Bob doesn’t invent another race tomorrow, because I’ll be his novice diving buddy in the cold, vast waters of the Puget Sound. Did you know that I coined my standard username to combine “Puget” with “fugitive” and refer to being a solitary transplant to Seattle? This was circa 1994, but I’ve still never been in the Sound. Did you know that it was Jacques Cousteau’s second favorite place in the world to dive? True story. I hope Jacques knew what he was talking about, because it’s going to be cold as hell down there, and damn lonesome if I can’t keep up with Speedy McScotlandbound.

Hodel lost the lunch gamble and purchased Korean food for us yesterday. We explored how dual-government taxation works when a U.S. citizen is working overseas for an extended period, as Bob will be doing when he skirts off to Scotland. We dreamed of a world in which everyone who wants one can have a network-hosted music collection. We covered the latest developments in Rails. We also celebrated our half millionth 43 Things user, who created his account on Tuesday to notify the world that he endeavors to watch every single episode of Law & Order. To which we can only respond a) to each their own and b) best of luck.

Without gambling a penny on advertising, we are halfway to Leroy’s folks.

As lunch conversations go, Tuesday’s was rather a dud, as we never landed on a cohesive topic. We chatted a bit about 2-stroke versus 4-stroke engines. We chatted a bit about the Merlin Mann detente. We talked about wrapping up the latest 43 Places projects before we run off in all directions, trying to live our lives as if we’re on vacation. Then, during the stroll back to the office, Josh tried to convince us that modern-day grudge-holding can be supported by classical views on justice. We sipped our iced coffees and weighed the notion.

Today our lunch conversation involved everybody briefing each other. Josh briefed us on the history of Israeli wars. Erik briefed us on the ill health of Maggie’s cat. Ivan briefed us about the ongoing bullying between his chickens. Bob briefed us on the cleanliness of his condo for sale. I briefed Erik on how strange last night was at the Rendezvous, including the part about the band fights but omitting the part about the burlesque dancers. We all reviewed last night’s brief conversation with the nice waitress at Havana. She is named Rachel and she is from Upstate New York. Incidentally, while at Havana last night, we talked about how to maximize the philanthropic side effects of our company, should we succeed. And we attempted to define each of our purposes in life. Now that would have made an interesting blog post.

Yesterday during lunch we talked about exploiting the occasion of a major move to radically reduce one’s possessions. Pretty much everyone at the Co-op has gone through some transformative event in their lives, be it a major geographical move, a divorce, a career change, or what have you. And we’ve all decided to simplify at the same time. We suggested that Bob get rid of everything before he goes to Scotland. The jury’s out on whether he’ll go for it. We joked about buying his fancy, barely driven Mini and sharing it as the company Flexcar.

We also took another pass at the “how much blah do you need to be happy” discussion. Josh proposed that asking for a monetary value is no more sensical than asking how much air, or how many calories, or how many friends. I think what he means is that there’s no correct answer, not because each person has their own scale, but because the idea of reaching happiness quantitatively is absurd.

One of the rules of Credit Card Roulette’s new blogging amendment is that the person assigned to write a blog post gets punished if they renege. Yesterday, Bob flaked on summarizing our lunch conversation. Today, he paid. My enthusiasm for enforcing this rule earned me yet another blogging assignment. Touché, Bob.

There was no central theme to today’s chatter. We covered the philanthropy of Warren Buffet, the politics of Seattle University, and the exclusivity of Mormon temples. We also discussed life at Development Center Scotland, the Amazon.com subsidiary at which Bob will be leaving the Co-op to work. That’s right, our senior software developer is officially leaving the company this summer. We like to think of it not as losing a robot, but gaining a free place to crash near Edinburgh. Still, just like Bob’s old clothes, his shoes will be hard to fill. If you know any really, really, really smart software developers willing to amplify their own and others’ lives via the code they write, send them our way.