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The mantra of running a successful business in the 21st century is to “connect with fans and give them a reason to buy.” Successful companies take the time to provide quality service to each of their customers, knowing that building loyalty is more important than short-term bottom lines. Zynga, the startup responsible for the majority of those Facebook games your friends are always inviting you to join, still has a ways to go. Continue Reading »

I saw the movie 9 on Saturday night, after being sufficiently excited for it by the trailer. As the title of this post reveals, I left the movie with a richer understanding of its 56% on RottenTomatoes. The animation and action sequences were great; in fact, the movie was oozing with potential. Unfortunately, thanks to some horrible writing, what was teased as being “a new era in animated storytelling” unfolded more like a rejected screenplay for Madagascar 3. Potential spoilers follow. Continue Reading »

Writing essays for med school secondary applications has been “cramping my style,” so to speak (if one is speaking as a bit actor in a late-night infomercial). The necessity of completing these assignments takes priority over a number of other activities I would much rather be doing. I often wonder if anybody actually bothers to read these essays, or if they are merely an exercise, a justification for charging exorbitant secondary application fees. Continue Reading »

It’s been eight years to the day since nineteen Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial jet airliners and crashed them into the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville Pennsylvania, killing 2,993 people. Every American watched in shock and horror that day, an event and subsequent response that has defined my generation. Let us not forget.

After the tickets sold out practically immediately, I didn’t think was going to get to go to VirginFest. However, earlier last week one of my friends gave me a tip that a few thousand tickets had been made available directly from the Merriweather Post Pavilion box office (limit 2 per person), which kicked off a mad rush involving Rachel leaving work, picking up my brother, and ending up with six tickets. Continue Reading »

I think the best thing you can do for health care is have a baseline option that is given to everybody, and make the private people compete for customers to switch to their service instead. That’s the general idea behind having a “public option,” and why it’s so important. Creating competition is a way of partially sidestepping the insurance lobby – the government forces them to change their way s not directly, but indirectly by leveraging the free market. Continue Reading »

For some time now I’ve been feeling like I’ve been busy all the time and working hard but not really getting anywhere. Yesterday, Rachel and I took a much-needed break from our typical rushing around and just slept in and hung around the house. Unlike some other times when we each do our own thing, we made a special effort to spend this time with each other, watching True Blood episodes until we started talking in southern accents.

That evening we had reservations at Pazo in Baltimore, the restaurant I went to for my bachelor party that I have been meaning to take Rachel to for some time. As expected, the food and atmosphere was wonderful.  I enjoy upscale restaurants when I can afford them because in addition to expertly prepared food, the staff provides quality service. I’m no connoisseur, so perhaps my referring to Pazo as “upscale” reveals my plebeian existence. Still, I think it’s a nice place, and I’m definitely somebody who is willing to pay for good service.

It was on the drive home, talking to Rachel about our day, that I had a transformative moment. Spending a day just hanging out and enjoying the company of my wife helped me to refocus my outlook and remember that I already have everything I ever wanted. The rest is part of the adventure.

I’m sure everybody has had a similar experience at one point or another: you reveal something marginally embarrassing but common about yourself, and those around you react as if they’ve never encountered such a horrible thing before, and good heavens why are you so strange? Continue Reading »

So far, I’ve only navigated the first few of the many  frustrating and agonizing stages of the med school application process. I’ve already submitted my  centralized application via AMCAS (using IE8’s compatibility view since no other browsers work). While I wait for AMCAS to get around to looking at my application and verify that I didn’t lie about my college transcript, the schools you designated have the opportunity to send out secondary applications. Continue Reading »

I had an amazing time at the Silversun Pickups concert at Rams Head Live in Baltimore this past Monday night. Perhaps a little too much of my enthusiasm went to twitter, and ultimately to Facebook, because several Facebook friends were upset on Tuesday about my flood of status updates. I’ve since switched to the Selective Twitter Status application, which allows you to send only specific twitter updates to your Facebook status. Some of the amazing things that happened: Continue Reading »