Sep 24
Sep 07
Yes, it’s a reference to a somewhat annoyingly catchy 80s tune - but it also refers to Chinese belief in the mystical power of music. Well, I can’t tell you much about that as we didn’t have time to hear much other than some funk emanating from the hotel bar on our arrival and the cheesy ‘zen relaxation’ CD in our Mandarin Oriental rooms, but I can say that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Hong Kong this past week. I’m writing this post as dawn breaks over the tarmac at Seoul’s Incheon Airport, where the Korean Air 747s are lined up like pale blue birds sunning themselves in the morning light. We have a five hour layover here before the 13+ hour flight back to Atlanta - although my ticket says I leave at 10am and arrive at 10:30am. Too bad that’s just a deceitful lie! I’ll write more about the trip when I return, but for now, check out the slideshow of photos I’ve uploaded so far. I have a few more from the Mong Kok market area to add as well. See you in a seven thousand or so miles.
Aug 25
This year’s Admonsters excursion (to conference #17 to be exact) took me out to the environs of Albequerque and Santa Fe at the Hyatt Tamaya resort in Bernalillo, New Mexico. We decided to make this a family affair since very soon Amy will be on a no-travel regimen (due date is October 31, only 10 weeks away). Amy’s parents also joined us for a bit of R&R&Sam. To top that all off, Amy’s aunt (who is from Albequerque) and uncle came down from Denver - and their son Jonathan came out from LA. So all in all it turned into a little Handelman/Siegel/Gardenswartz reunion.
We had a great dinner with Bobbi’s 90-year-old father and the rest of the clan on Friday night, headed up to Santa Fe on Saturday along with 100,000 of our closest friends for the annual Indian Market and Art Show. It was a madhouse, but a great way to see the full scope of what the area’s artistans have to offer. One celebrity spotting, Curtis Stone of TLC’s Take Home Chef. Despite rumors of both Oprah and Dennis Hopper being seen around our hotel, neither was confirmed.
Check out this photo gallery of our time there.
Tags: advertising, Family, new-mexico, santa-fe, Travel
May 15
Meant to post this a while back. I was in San Francisco for the recent Ad:Tech Conference. This was the view from the hallway of my hotel- an amazing panorama from the Golden Gate Bridge (far left, out of frame) to the Transamerica Building, Coit Tower, Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge (far right, out of frame). A truly amazing view. The show was excellent as well, and I spoke to some very bright folks involved in the burgeoning ad business. DoubleClick was showing off their Exchange product and new logo (very Web 2.0 green), there were more ad networks than you could shake a stick at, and video ad syndication plays were everywhere.
Tags: advertising, Photography, san francisco, Travel, Video, web2.0
Mar 07
The blog has been unusually quiet of late, owing mostly to the fact that we’ve been extremely busy on all fronts. 2007 is shaping up to be a very busy year, and the first few months have been spent on the professional side planning and preparing for many many projects. That made last week’s getaway to San Juan, Puerto Rico all the more wonderful. The photo gallery is here.
Amy, Sam and I took advantage of a slew of frequent flier miles and jetted off last weekend for a week in the sun. Sam got sick, as did his proud papa, and the long time out of his own element seemed to be too much for Sam, as he demonstrated some of the very first full-blown tantrums we’ve ever seen. The cure was just getting him home - as we pulled up to the house in our taxi, he said ‘Home!’ and was just super happy to be back with his toys, crib and kitty cats. The people in Puerto Rico were super friendly, the food and drink was great (although they didn’t seem to offer many veggies), and the beach was just gorgeous.
Speaking of which on the cats front, we had a little scare with the elder statesman of the house, Chaos. He got a case of mild pneumonia while we were away, and ended up at the vet on IVs and what not, but is now home and doing much better.
Oct 22
So this post is more about food than anything else, but let me highlight the beautiful little dumpling morsels seen above, caught through a window of a joint in Koreatown. As far as work goes, I spent most of last week at meetings in the city, punctuated by a couple of fun dinners with coworkers and friends. First up on Tuesday and Wednesday were a couple of Internet Advertising Bureau events. I spoke on a panel discussing ‘New Mediums, New Challenges - How Ad Operations is Being Redefined.’ Former coworker Mike Stoeckel (now of Fox Interactive) was the moderator, and Tim Messier from Weather.com, Jared Iwata from Microsoft and I had an energetic discussion on podcasting, vodcasting, mobile, video syndication, AJAX and the general implications of Web 2.0 technologies on existing counting, ops and reporting methodologies. Wednesday featured more IAB meetings, including a joint publisher-agency ad ops summit at the NYC ‘Googleplex’ which only opened recently - with quite the cafeteria, let me tell you! Thursday and Friday was a return to all things Turner as we kicked off several major ad technology projects that will keep my team busy through January. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the awesome dinners I had while in NY. First at a great Argentinian steakhouse on 9th Ave with my fellow AdOps council members, then a great selection of gourmet pizzas featuring lobster and bacon on one and a white clam topping on another delivered to my old coworker and friend Hart’s place in Chelsea. And finally, a fun outing with coworkers Lauren Gardner and Beth Kuenzi to Koreatown for some hardwood charcoal goodness. That evening was topped off by cheescake (multiples for some of us) at a 100+ year-old bakery in the East Village. Yummy. Photos are here for your salivating enjoyment.
Tags: advertising, Food, nyc, Travel
Oct 22
We headed off to Blue Ridge, GA, a small community about 90 miles northwest of Atlanta the weekend of the 13th to catch some color (in terms of foliage), 
relax with some great friends, eat some great food (courtesy of Joel’s deft touch in the kitchen) and let all our kids get to know each other better. We joined three wonderful families - the Silvermans, the Newmans and the Simons - and had an awesome time. Lessons learned - Apple Festivals can be ‘apples optional’, I still don’t know what a ‘jacket of legs’ actually is, and either my GPS is faulty or I am. Click here for a photo gallery of us chillin’ by the lake in the mountains. If I ever get around to it, we plan to let the town of Ellijay know they really don’t have the whole concept of running a shuttle bus to their event working all that well -but Sam does love the little wooden car we brought home! We plan on making this an annual event - perhaps in our fave little neck of the woods (literally) around Highlands, NC - next time around.
Tags: friends, Geocaching, Travel
Aug 22
In traditional Admonsters fashion, Tuesday afternoon was an 
outdoor excursion for the attendees. We had a choice of mountain biking (called ‘more strenuous’) and hiking (allegedly ‘less strenuous’). I picked the less strenuous option. Well, unlike what I’d expected, we began our hike right at the hotel and headed up to the Mt. Sanitas loop trail, which - for the record - is listed as strenuous on ProTrails.com, dammit. There were two groups - one taking a slower ’smell the flowers’ pace, the other heading some 1,400 feet up with almost 900′ of elevation change in less than one mile. Well, I had great plans to head to the top with all my photo gear in tow. The first 1/2 mile kicked my butt, however, and I had to pause for about 15 minutes to get my head clear - the altitude was just too much for yours truly. I wasn’t the only one, and we had a jolly group of six taking it quite easy on the shorter path in the valley below Sanitas, which was still a 3 mile hike all told with some tough elevation changes. After returning to the hotel, I made a big mistake of taking a warm bath and shower, which seems to have totally overheated my system, giving me the chills and putting a damper on my plans to join tonight’s dinner at the Flagstaff House restaurant. I’d been there a few years ago, but felt it better to skip this time. Oh well - a couple of advils and a nice meal of pasta from room service, and I feel much better, thankfully. Check out the updated Admonsters XV gallery with images from the hike. And next time, someone remind me not to carry 15 pounds of camera gear on this type of hike.
Tags: advertising, hiking, Travel
Aug 22
So like half of the country’s media, I’m in Boulder, CO this week. 
No, not to camp out and wait for John Mark Karr to arrive, but to attend the fifteenth Admonsters conference. This is a gathering of ad operations staff from a wide variety of online businesses, ranging from Napster to the New York Times to good ol’ CNN.com. We’re staying at the one-year-old St. Julien Hotel, and despite a power outage last night duirng dinner affecting much of downtown, this is a wonderful place to stay. I’ll post more photos after our traditional ‘field trip’ this afternoon, hiking in the Flatirons area, but here are a few images I shot the first few days, including a few at a park at the trailhead.
Tags: advertising, Travel
Aug 13
A few weeks back I was lucky enough to take a quick trip to Colorado Springs 
Broadmoor resort. I was attending a conference of DoubleClick clients, and had a great, although short visit to learn about upcoming product releases and confer with other users. The resort has quite a bit of history (Wikipedia), having been founded back in the heyday of the railroads and was at one time the home for major figure skating training and competition, and is just a lovely setting. Have to bring the family back sometime. Gallery of photos is here. I shot the photo at right (click here or on the image to view larger) of a black and white swan on the lake at the resort, and the image quickly reached page three of the Flickr ‘interestingness’ pages on August 2nd.
Tags: advertising, flickr, Travel
