A year ago I joined a gym. I’ve joined gyms before and had sporadically gone but starting last year I was determined to not lose ground in the winter after a fruitful and fit-full summer. The problem is that going to the gym for an hour and working out was an hour I wasn’t working. Frankly, I can’t stand that. So I needed to “work” during my work out. That’s when I found Dan Benjamin’s 5by5 podcast network and Marco Arment’s Build and Analyze podcast, in particular.

Marco, if you are not aware, is formerly of Tumblr and currently of Instapaper and The Magazine fame. Marco did talk about development but mostly Marco talked about running a business in the iOS App Store ecosystem, the profits and costs, the decisions that affected his business everyday. Marco, as one would say, is opinionated. He cares deeply about his products and the people that use them. He also cares deeply about coffee and cars.

Deciding to listen to Build & Analyze each week was a no-brainer decision. Barely a week went by where some insight didn’t help my own business. Deep discussions about servers. Thoughts about using PayPal for subscriptions. In-depth discussions of design decisions. An on-going analysis of his own business and the choices he made. I’ve been doing this a long time now — 15 years plus — and I didn’t agree with everything Marco said and did, but much of it was so thoughtful, the decisions made so deliberately, that I always understood his logic and could decide whether that logic applied to my business or not.

I have listened to more than 50 episodes now, about half the shows run, and still feel like I am eavesdropping into an incredible conversation between two friends. Marco has a special talent for discussing his craft.

Marco is hanging up his Build & Analyze microphone on December 17. My workouts will never be the same again.

On Friday I talked about my personal approach to rating movies, a system that revolved around price, immediacy and convenience to watch. To refresh your memory:

• 5 Stars: Full-Priced Movie at the Theater
• 4 Stars: Matinee-Price Movie at the theater
• 3 Stars: Netflix Discs/Rental
• 2 Stars: Netflix Watch Instantly/Amazon Instant Video/Cable
• 1 Star: Couldn’t pay me to watch the movie

Today I want to talk about the expectations game. We saw Mission: Impossible 2 this past weekend. My expectation was a 3-star movie. After watching it, I’d rate it 2-stars. Pretty mediocre movie all the way through. A week ago we saw a movie called The Lives of Others. Had no idea going in but we did wait for the Netflix disc so I would rate this one a 3-star movie. Once watched, it was easily a 5-star, one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time, and I would have paid full price to see this in one of the local theaters.

While I can’t take full credit for this observation (Joe Posnanski wrote about this ages ago and helped solidify my vague thoughts on the concept) the real value of a movie is the difference between the expectation and reality. A 1-star expected movie that turns out to be a 2-star movie is actually a better value then the 3-star expected movie that turns out to be 2-stars, even though they were both rated 2-stars at the end.

So Mission: Impossible 2 was a disappointment. It rated out lower then I expected. The Lives Of Others was a huge success. Not only did it turn out to be a great movie but so far exceeded expectations that I talk about it every chance I get.

For most of my life I’ve escaped into three things: technology/code, movies, and books [1]. Movies were always the hardest in my mind simply because the value-to-price ratio is way out of whack. $10 buys two hours of entertainment where buying a book costs the same and the entertainment lasts for days. (Technology costs a lot more but I get years of enjoyment for it.)

When I was in college, a matinee was $3.25. A delayed rental at Blockbuster was $2. Given that we had nothing else to spend our money on, my future wife and I saw a lot of movies in the theater. Anything that looked remotely interesting we’d go see. But as we’ve gotten older and our time more sparse, as our money has been designated for other things, as matinee prices have tripled, and as we have accumulated large screen tvs and surround sound systems that rival the best theaters, going to the movies is now something we only do a couple of times a year.

With that in mind, years ago I came up with a movie rating system to figure out what’s appropriate theater faire and what isn’t. Without further ado, the Freedman Movie Rating System™:

• 5 Stars: Full-Priced Movie at the Theater
• 4 Stars: Matinee-Price Movie at the theater
• 3 Stars: Netflix Discs/Rental
• 2 Stars: Netflix Watch Instantly/Amazon Instant Video/Cable
• 1 Star: Couldn’t pay me to watch the movie

The scale really comes down to three factors: price, immediacy and convenience. 4 and 5 really differentiate on price and immediacy. If there is a movie I really want to see right away, like when Lord of the Rings came out, I had to go to a theater. The only question was whether it was worth the full priced, evening ticket or the mid-priced, afternoon ticket. The next step down, 3 stars, is having to wait for the movie to come out on disc and then wait for it to show up in my queue or go to the rental place. The price is still a factor but the bigger issue is waiting for the movie to become available. 2 stars is the instant gratification. The price is good because it is included with the thing you are buying anyway (or used to be for Netflix) but the selection is mediocre and, in the case of cable, not within your control. Finally, 1 star is self explanatory. At some point, I hope that this at least becomes a four-tiered system, where we can combine 2 and 3. But for now they remain separate.

There’s an important second part to this post but that’s enough deep thought for now. We’ll pick this up again soon. 🙂

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[1] I used to escape into sports, too, but whether it’s age or the lack of cable or the frustrations with my favorite sports teams, I find my interest waining.

There are tons of election statistics that are fairly interesting coming out of this election. The fact that Nate Silver called all 50 states. The percentage of blacks and hispanics that voted for President Obama. That there were voting districts where Governor Romney didn’t receive a single vote. The fact that there are (finally) more Congressman who have not signed Grover Norquist’s pledge then have even while the Republicans maintained control of the House. (This, by the way, may be the most important statistic.)

But none of these are the most interesting statistic. The most interesting statistic, the one that leaves me going “huh,” the one that makes me wonder about all the data and all the stats and what they mean, is one simple fact: by the time we have another Presidential election it will be nearly 90 years since Republicans won the Presidency without a Bush or Nixon on the ticket.

The last time was Herbert Hoover, in 1928, whose Vice President was a man named Charles Curtis. Since then we have…

• 1932 to 1952: Democrats
• 1953 to 1960: Dwight Eisenhower with his VP, Richard Nixon
• 1961 to 1968: Democrats
• 1969 to 1976: Richard Nixon won the Presidency twice, which transitioned to Gerald Ford when he resigned
• 1977 to 1980: Democrat
• 1981 to 1988: Ronald Reagan won twice with his VP, George HW Bush
• 1989 to 1992: George HW Bush won the Presidency
• 1993 to 2000: Democrat
• 2001 to 2008: George W Bush won the Presidency twice
• 2009 to 2016: Democrat

That’s an amazing streak. All I know is that if I was the Republican nominee for President in 2016, Jeb Bush would be my first choice for VP. Otherwise, I might just give up and go home. 🙂

I was at a Mobile Portland event last night and introduced myself to someone who already knew me. It was unsettling, a little. I immediately started racking my brain for who he was and how I knew him. Of course I didn’t. He knew me through my Mobile Portland or blog posts.

I wrote about fame almost a year and a half ago. At the time I talked about being obsessed with recognition for my accomplishments and wanting to keep up with certain Jones’. I wouldn’t say I obsess about it anymore but I still like the idea of being recognized for my accomplishments. Given that, it is probably the idea of recognition that I like the most. Like my chance encounter last night, the oddity of people knowing who I am and me having to rack my brain to see if I know him or her is weird. Maybe you get used to this kind of thing; maybe not.

More importantly, I care deeply about leaving a legacy, making the world a better place because of my work. I don’t know whether this will happen or not. I get the sense it will, but I don’t want to be disappointed if it doesn’t. I’d like to be happy with the legacy I will definitely leave behind — my two daughters in particular, all those who have used and loved and had their jobs and schooling made just a little easier because of powerOne. And I am to a certain extent. But I want more. And, at least for now, it drives me to accomplish great things.

What’s the old prayer? God give me strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Then again, it could be said that great things are only accomplished by those that can’t tell the difference. So maybe my confusion is prescient.