daverea.com

Music seems to be an inseparable part of most memorable experiences for me, and that includes my favorite season. Fall.

And so, I present the inevitable and official daverea.com Fall Playlist:

John Mayer – Stop This Train
Don Ross – No Goodbyes
[The] Scott Thomas Band – Happy
Jackie Greene – Just as Well
Gavin Degraw – Meaning (acoustic reissue)
John Mayer – 3×5
Maroon 5 – Sunday Morning
Eric Clapton – Change the World
Huffamoose – [I wanna] Buy You a Ring
Guster – So Long
O.A.R. – Dakota
Treehouse – Allison’s Sky
Vonda Shepard – The Wildest Times in the World
Cary Pierce – Home
Dave Matthews Band – Joyful Girl (Ani Difranco cover)
Norah Jones – Sunrise
The Wallflowers – Three Marlenas

Perfect background music for autumn cruising, carving pumpkins or cozying up on those few (in my opinion great) nights of the year when you don’t need the AC, but you don’t really need the heat either.

Suggested additions are welcome! Just leave a comment…

In case anyone cares to actually use the comment system, you might notice that daverea.com now sports sexy threaded comments – you can reply to others’ comments, and subscribe to comment threads to receive an e-mail if someone replies to your comment.

No need to thank me – it’s just another way we at daverea.com are staying just far enough ahead of your expectations to keep you coming back one more time…

…Notes from today’s cruise through my newsfeeds:

There’s a big difference between surviving and thriving, as this entry’s title ever-so-simplistically states. Surviving is something families, companies, organizations, governments and small woodland creatures do every day. They’re “doing it”, but in the vast majority of cases they seem not to be doing anything to set themselves apart from the crowd – to thrive. As the open source software movement has proven, this is something that communities of software developers (and users) can do too.

Surviving seems to be something that the community developing OpenOffice.org is doing quite well. They’ve rolled out a formidable competitor to Microsoft’s Office suite. OpenOffice.org gets the job done for most users, and has a pretty-damn-decent feature set. But, I’m sad to say, it just doesn’t stack up against Office.

Meanwhile, the OpenOffice community just finished up OOoCon, a big international get-together held in Lyon, France. Now, they’ve got all sorts of new ideas for what’s coming next. Wait up guys – here’s an idea: How’s about you make what you’ve got work, first? OpenOffice.org is a great suite of software, but there are still nearly 8,000 open issues (a.k.a. bugs) awaiting fixes according to their issue list.

While OpenOffice.org is “doing it”, another group whose name appeared in my feedreader today is “doing it right”. That group is a company called Gumstix Computing, and they’re a 6-employee operation that started in 2004 and hasn’t stopped growing since.

By “growing”, you might think I mean “adding employees”. Not so much.

What I really mean is that they’re thriving in a rare embodiment of the American Dream™ – the six employees of Gumstix are expanding the company, shipping ever-increasing quantities of product, rolling out new designs and reaping the rewards without increasing their headcount. Rather than add employees, the team at Gumstix develops systems to accomplish the things they need done, and they keep them tightly integrated to avoid waste – wasted money, wasted commodities, or wasted time.

Personally, I don’t necessarily agree with this business model 100%, because I’ve always seen (in some twisted altruistic surreality) the creation of jobs by a successful company as a way for that company to “give back” to the community that supports it. But in reality, Gumstix embodies the changing model of business as the world’s transition from an industrial economy to an information economy draws ever closer to completion. If doing more with less spells survival, count me in.

If I get to realize my dream of starting my own business, I hope it’s one like Gumstix – a “brains over brawn” shop where the creativity and ingenuity of people come together to build the systems that make the business run.

If it’s a question of survive versus thrive, I’ll take “Doing it Right” any day.

We’ve just entered the eight o’clock hour as I write this, and it’s pitch black outside. That, and the fact that (holy crap!) September is almost over, can only mean that fall is nearly here.

Fall has always been my favorite season, and Kelly’s too. I think it’s the time of year when the world around me most closely approximates the idyllic scenes I’ve stored away from seasons passed; Memories waiting to be triggered by the smell of leaves or the sight of pumpkins and cornstalks bathed in that crisp autumn sunlight that’s unduplicated outside the Great Northeast.

I love buying pumpkins, picking apples and holding hands with Kelly in the car, weaving on twisty country roads between freshly-harvested cornfields and stopping for hot cider. I love going to the fall Sportsmen’s days at the DEC, and taking trips to the range with Dad to sight-in hunting guns. I love that Kelly and I have revived my family’s tradition of visiting Power’s Farm Market on a chilly evening to walk through the teepees filled with hand-carved jack-o-lanterns, and take the “haunted” hayride through the woods. And, a treat that I got to enjoy today: I love stepping out of the house on a chilly, clear morning as the sun streams through the fall air and illuminates the dew just right – and taking a big “all-is-right-with-the-world” breath to start my day.

It’s a good time of year, y’all. Pass the toasted pumpkin seeds!

To some degree, even if it’s only a tiny sliver of their personality, I think everyone wants to be part of something big. Maybe it’s just a facet of human nature – some people just seem genetically predisposed to being in-the-know. The more outgoing among them write gossip columns. And the introverts? They’re frequently among the hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of names and faces that stand quietly behind the glitz of press conferences, the glamour of award shows or (as is the case here) the excitement of the unveiling of a new product.

The important part is that everyone – from the visionary leaders to the techs who turn the wrenches – has a reason to be proud as this new car sees daylight for the first time…

It’s easy to think of a car as a cold, mathematical sum of components – steel and plastic, leather and nylon, wires and sheel metal. It’s just as easy to conjure up life in a car as you drive your way into an emotional bond with it – you feel the power of the engine, and the exhilaration of accelerating through a curve with the windows down, and you begin to believe there’s more to the machine than the sum of its parts.

But until you witness the army of people who are dedicated to every facet and fraction of that car, I don’t think you get a true sense for the life it has. Every person contributes a few strands of DNA that ultimately join to become the organism that breathes as you press the pedals, and speaks as you turn the key.

I’m a relative newcomer to the GM fuel cell team, but after a little more than a year there, I genuinely feel a part of it. I may not have been there to witness the start of the first engine for the Fuel Cell Equinox, but I’ve stood over plenty of them since, and realizing the macrocosmic implications of the power being generated beneath my hands never ceases to amaze me. Before the dressed-up vehicle you see here ever saw sunlight, I had the honor of driving one on a test track in rural Germany. And when GM hands over the first set of keys to the first customer, a little bit of my DNA will be in the car they drive away, too.

Sometimes, being a part of something big gives us opportunities to draw attention to ourselves. But that’s not the point here. The attention here should be where it belongs – on the first member of the world’s largest fuel-cell-powered vehicle fleet to date – with my hat firmly tipped to the hundreds-strong group of make-it-possible people that I’m honored to be a tiny part of.

Remember that “upcoming business trip” I mentioned about a week ago? Well, I just got back.

I spent the last week volleying between Wiesbaden and Darmstadt, Germany with my friend and colleague Mike. We were visiting on behalf of General Motors, to work with a supplier for the week and visit our Opel counterparts at the Mainz office. Without getting into the nitty-gritty, suffice it to say we feel it was a success. We had good flights, did good work, got to relax a bit, and we’re home safe.

We saw a lot of beautiful things during our visit. We saw beautiful buildings, drove through gorgeous landscapes, ate dinner on the banks of the Rhine river, and strolled through the cobblestone streets of the Wiesbaden market district nearly every evening. We got to experience some new things, too – like driving a 6-speed Passat on the autobahn (you can ask me in person just how fast) and going for our biweekly runs in a German city park instead of Honeoye Falls back roads.

But now that I’ve been doing some more business travel, I think I’ve come to a pretty safe conclusion: now matter how beautiful the things you see are when you’re away, the true beauty is when you come home…

Beauty is hearing a friendly “welcome home” from the customs agent as he stamps your passport. Beauty is sprinting for your connecting flight through a 40-minute layover, and arriving breathless at the gate to see that the plane is still there. Beauty is looking down from that 737 and seeing the patchwork of heartland fields slide by, and smiling as the pilot spends a few extra seconds skimming the clouds on descent, just because it’s so pretty up there.

And, even more than any of this, beauty is feeling your key in the lock of your own home, luggage in tow, as you realize you’ve only been away for a week but it feels like it’s been so much longer. Beauty is falling into the arms of your beaming wife and being thankful that you’re done spending your nights missing her, and spending your days looking forward to the moment you’re in right then.

Home. Family. Love. Beauty.

It was a good trip, and it’s good to be back.

They say that smell (and, by association, taste) can be one of the strongest triggers for memories for humans. I’d tend to agree – if I dip pretzels in apple juice, I’m greeted with a flood of memories of after-school snacks with Mom … and if I catch a whiff of fixer or stop bath, I’m instantly transported back to days spent at the RIT darkrooms with my Dad, developing black and white photos and learning about printing.

But today, I found that music – even just remembering an artist or a song – can have the same effect. While loading up my iPod for an upcoming business trip, I took a quick tour through my music archives, searching for past favorites to enjoy while airborne. What I found, though, was a lot more than just music…

To start, I scrolled past a copy of Falling Into Place by the Candy Butchers. And I immediately remembered walking through the streets of Kowloon, just outside of Hong Kong, with my brother Andy. While Dad lectured, we explored the narrow market streets singing out loud what lines we could remember from the song “All I Have”.

Then, I saw a handful of albums from The Counting Crows, and thought about a photography workshop that Kelly and I attended in the Adirondacks. The instructor had all sorts of music, but when he found out we liked the Crows, he pretty much stuck to their CDs all weekend. We got plenty of exposure to Hard Candy and This Desert Life while heading to shooting locations in his Pathfinder!

After a few more minutes, I started finding tracks from the mix CD I made for Kelly and my first date. And as I continued to explore, other songs reminded me of times we’ve spent together, parties we’ve thrown, trips we’ve taken and conversations we’ve had.

The memories just kept on coming: An album from Scott Thomas reminded me of car trips with my great friend Andy, canvassing New York state in his Dodge Omni. A disc by Underworld took me back to trips to Wegmans and the ambulance base with my roommate Brett and his Taurus SHO. The soundtrack to the movie Bringing out the Dead? Ambulance shifts and red-runs to the tune of TB Sheets by Van Morrison. The Hot Java Jazz CD from Starbucks? Rainy afternoons spent drinking tea with my roommate Mel and talking about – well, just about anything.

I could go on. In fact, I could probably come up with some kind of memory to go with just about every album on my hard drive. And knowing we’re capable of so many wonderful memories? That’s a true blessing.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about mobile geekiness: installing cool computational or otherwise electronic gizmos in your car. Whether it’s just for the sake of doing it, or the stuff serves some practical purpose, it’s still fun. I still kinda miss it.

I think doing car electronics projects will always be near the top of my “list of things I’d do if I had unlimited fundage and all the time I ever wanted”. Stephen, N5AC’s super-sweet install job is what has me thinking about this again…and a nice install it is! I can’t say I really dig the antenna farm growing off the top of his Chevy Avalance (I go for the discreet antennae myself) but damn, I do like the look of that interior.

So how about some groupthink? I know we’ve got some geeks lurking in here, even if you’re closet-geeks, so it’s time to put those thinking caps on. Punch that comment link and tell me what you’d build if you could install any gadget you wanted in your car. And make it look classy. Would you go for GPS nav? Internet connectivity? A WiFi-syncable music library? Roadcasting?

Of course, now that I think about it, maybe doing the electronics projects and tinkering with my car isn’t what I miss. Maybe having any practical capacity to do it is. But even passions have to be prioritized, and I don’t count it unfortunate at all that there are other, stronger passions for this geeky curiosity to take a backseat to. Long-live the Important Things in Life!