The Future Home of Important Things

I've played some football, I've passed some classes but I have passions off the field and outside the classroom. I suppose I will delve into them here.

Home Sweet Home

Foregoing alarm clocks, we left waking up to our bodies own biological clocks. Yesterday’s drive felt like we bought those Sharper Image body massage pads for chairs except they were full of ball bearings and being operated by a chimp with severe ADD. Well after the sun graced the Central American sky with its presence our bodies decided they were sufficiently rested for another day in paradise.

Anxious that Ben and the Darma Initiative were already crafting a plan to indoctrinate us and trap us in the hotel forever I voted to find new habitations. Whether or not my gut was right about the Costa Rican Ben of Lost we shall never know, but my gut was right about one thing: I was hungry. Not only that but a wi-fi connection would definitely help in the search for another place to stay.

Up the dusty road was a new looking place called Combo that was everything we were looking for; they served food and had wi-fi, sold! The interior had everything befitting a beach town and air conditioning. Obviously this day would start like most others for me, with a cup of piping hot, fresh off the plantation coffee. Recharging with caffeine I jumped on AirBnB while Kerry crawled Google for suitable places to stay. Kerry’s brother had stayed in Santa Teresa recently so we were looking for something in it’s sister city Malpais. It’s beaches weren’t as inviting and thus was the less developed of the two neighboring cities; I like to think of them as Pawney and Eagleton (extra points if you get that reference).

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The Rivers

If yesterday’s morning I had a hangover I’m not sure what to classify this day’s ailment, a minor case of death? Thankfully we only had to drive to Mal Pais/Santa Teresa that day, a couple hundred kilometers on unknown Costa Rican roads. Apparently Joe and I had failed to notice Kerry stopped drinking at some point last night and felt significantly better than us. He had gotten up at a reasonable hour, ate breakfast, sent a bunch of emails and generally had his life together AKA the opposite of Joe and I.

As it was nearly 10 o’clock hotel breakfast was over. In need of sustenance and a lot of road ahead I would describe my ensuing shower and packing method as haphazard and chaotic. We had promised Adrienne we would visit her at Cafe Milagros yesterday but ran out of time so we’d make up for it today. I crossed my fingers we wouldn’t have to be in the presence of Lance today, my frail state wasn’t in the mood for his negativity.

Just my luck this morning, Lance was busy typing away on his laptop at the breakfast bar. I think he had an irrational fear we were going to have an impromptu orgy with his business partner in the middle of the restaurant or something. In any case neither of us were fans of the other, a sentiment he forced.

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Good Accent

In Joe’s defense I sprang awake at about 3am and donated my lime beer to the local wildlife below as well, and boy oh boy it tasted even more limey the second time around. When our alarms eventually went off at a bright and early 7am I was more than ready for a little coffee. My fingers were crossed it would punch my hangover right in the face.

Breakfast didn’t take long to eat, after all Joe and I had empty stomachs. We packed everything important in my camelbak and off to the beach near the national park we drove. The town and beach workers were still mostly asleep and, after passing a number of people offering cheap parking, we ended up parking right next to the beach for free. Lesson learned, just cuz they’re selling it doesn’t mean it isn’t free.

While there are many paths to the park entrance the locals all make a coordinated effort to send tourists down the path that runs by a hooverville of knick knack shops, selling all sorts of touristy things that could never fit into our bags. As we approached the park a number of officially dressed individuals informed us we needed to buy tickets, kind of like how we had to pay for parking right? Apparently Costa Rica does manage their national parks and after being turned away at the gate we took the walk of shame to the ticket office.

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Rdio FTW?

I’m really tired of owning music, just the other day I found my sister’s old CD collection. Aside from the monumental amount of space all those jewel cases took up they represented an existential inconvenience. Granted I’m on a disownership kick right now in search of an Aristotelian “freedom” but owning music is on some level dysfunctional. If anyone ever found those mixes I made back in middle school I’d probably be a little mortified. Just as everything else our tastes evolve as we grow and I’m not terribly eager to relive my white, privileged, I-hate-my-parents, heavy metal days. The music I would own today I likely won’t use in a number of years and so it seems logical to rent my music instead of buying it outright.

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Microsoft buys Vizio

I wrote this last Spring and never published it. I did buy a Chromebook and I still think Microsoft should buy Vizio but I think we’ll see Facebook buying XBox before long and then Microsoft will be gone. Enjoy:

I don’t want to write very long on this subject. I feel pretty confident with this prediction.

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Hey Apple, Buy App.Net. Love, Brad

Following my thoughts that Twitter should buy Kik to bolster their pre-IPO offerings, I figured I’d swing for the fences on another acquisition.

Who should Apple really buy? Dropbox, like yesterday. But I don’t think Tim Cook et al. will make a purchase like that and admit their cloud services are a mess. It’s no secret Apple has lost some of their mojo since the passing of Steve Jobs. But I think they’ve also grown their own set of issues when they built the simplest phone OS to use.

As an Android user I often find solving the simplest of issues actually takes a lot more steps but I can always solve them and I’d never think of switching my parents off the ecosystem. Apple, you’re still cool but unless you get a little Eddie Haskell in you your user base is going to get older and less tech savvy with each passing hardware iteration.

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Hey Twitter, Buy Kik. Love, Brad

Twitter is gearing up for an IPO. Folks are looking for some liquidity and Twitter is looking to diversify their revenue streams. After all, nobody wants to repeat that Facebook pre IPO roadshow where their lack of a mobile strategy nearly screwed everything up. Facebook has a great mobile strategy now and they nabbed a (seemingly non integrated) Instagram from under Twitter’s nose for a cool $1B.

So you’re Twitter, you’ve gone and acquired Vine which is doing great (unless you’re on Android that is), oh, and you’re working on some high level deals with broadcasters to include video in tweets. Life is great! All this ties into your push to cardify the Twitter experience and become the realtime portal to the rest of the web. Great strategy, especially since cards work really well in the mobile space. Odds are good you’ll be getting a great deal on those stock options when the IPO rolls around.

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Beach Dog

Simply put, it is impossible to overstate the beauty of a Manuel Antonio beach sunrise. Having the sun as an alarm clock is a pretty cool experience as well. 5:30 came faster than I might have hoped and with it came one big, bright ball of burning gas glowing off the calm surf of the Pacific. I scratched my sacrificial ankles that the bugs of Manuel Antonio seemed to really enjoy and stretched out in the backseat. Slipping on sandals and sliding out the back seat I gave our guardian angel a thumbs up. He returned the gesture.

The beach was completely deserted. We had beaten the locals to paradise this morning. Sand between the toes has a calming effect, making it all the more simple to enjoy the dwarfing power of an endless sea alight with the most natural colors and waves casually breaking because they’re in no rush, they’ll be back.

Parched and hungry, the three of us piled back into our Hyundai and headed back over the hill. Quepos was still asleep as well, aside from the occasional bicycler pedalling slowly, knees straight out to the sides. Most shops were closed aside from the few local breakfast spots and supermarkets.

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Radio Tower

No ifs, ands, or m-effing buts about it, we were three big ass GRIN-GOS (please pronounce in a thick Texas accent). But that’s not where this story starts so let’s back up.

In describing my general state leading up to the trip, prepared would be a pretty big overstatement. In hindsight I packed too much for the 1.5 week excursion. My gym bag was packed full with 3 pairs of shorts, a swimming suit, 1 long sleeve and 3 short sleeve shirts, 4 pairs of underwear and socks and a windbreaker. Oh and my camelbak, a toothbrush and a beach towel. But there’s more that goes into traveling to a tropical nation than packing. For starters, having at least some skin pigmentation is a good idea and thanks to my Irish ancestors plus a snowy winter I was sorely lacking in this area. Additionally some semblance of “in-shapeness” isn’t a terrible idea as 80 will be a cool day and humid doesn’t even begin to quantify the amount of moisture in the air.

I was framing this vacation as a bookend. Starting a new life path in May meant finally coming to grips that my athlete first lifestyle was sunsetting; the time had come to give up college life for something more purpose driven. What the trip became however was so much more.

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Amicus’ first bizdev hire? Yes please

Seth!

I thought about reaching out through a friend of a friend of a friend but the world wide web is more efficient than that. I wrote you this beautiful note so that you would hire me!

This job listing was on Hacker News! Woah I must be like 1 of 1000 applicants in the last hour so let’s make this interesting because lord knows you’re likely bored of cover letters. I’m Brad and I love to talk to people. Let’s cover all the bases, first and foremost, I’ve only sold 3 things officially in my life: Dairy Queen blizzards, self-designed t-shirts and myself. No, I am not a prostitute! Not only was I the face of the program to donors and the media but nothing feels like selling yourself more than during the college football and NFL recruitment process.

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