Inbound Thinking

Last Friday I was lucky enough to have dinner with a friend at Oleana in Cambridge. Oleana has a great reputation and a beautiful outdoor patio that was the perfect place to enjoy a meal in the early Spring weather.

Oleana has been on my list of restaurants to check out ever since I found out they had a vegetarian tasting menu. I’m not a vegetarian but my friend is, also I’m a much more adventurous eater when it comes to vegetables. We both ordered the tasting menu. The normal tasting menu is five courses plus desert, but since we both ordered it, each course came with two different dishes instead of two of the same. I’m not sure if this is the standard practice at Oleana or unique to my experience.

All of the dishes were delicious, but the thing that really impressed me was not just the individual composition (which was excellent) but the progression of all the dishes. They built ever so carefully from light and fresh to deep and developed flavors. Since I was trying to enjoy myself I did not keep detailed notes on each of the dishes, but I did jot down a rough description after dinner, here it is:

1. Whipped feta with red pepper and aleppo peppers; Warm buttered hummus; Spicy carrot puree & dukkah; Warm nicoise olives; Bread basket
2. First of spring salad with garlic cream; Mason jar layered with green grapes, cucumber and yogurt, topped with shaved ice
3. A leafy salad and a lentil salad, each with different artisanal cheeses and crispy cracker-like bread with herbs and Parmesan, one had a citrus dressing and the other a garlicky-yogurt dressing
4. Grilled asparagus with oyster mushrooms, topped with Parmesan; Cooked barley topped with roasted tomato jam
5. Ricotta and bread dumplings with red wine, porcini and kale; Vermicelli concoction with crazy assortment of vegetables and spices
6. Fragrant (rose water?) nougat glace with pistachio and rhubarb; Vanilla ice cream with brittle, ganache wrapped in apricot leather

Oleana was one of the best dining experiences I’ve had in recent memory. The waitstaff was attentive without being overbearing and very knowledgeable about both the food and wine list. I was unsure of what to drink with the tasting menu so our waiter suggested a French Gamay ( Domaine Diochen, Moulin-ã-Vent, Beaujolais) which was a great accompaniment. It started out light and fruity but stood up well as the dishes got heavier. The runner explained each dish in detail when it was delivered, and we were given plenty of time to enjoy each course before the next.

Overall, it was a fantastic meal full of adventurous flavors and I would certainly reccomend it to friends and family. I will probably be going back again later this year to try the tasting menu with a different season of produce.

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Boston and jam-packed with activities and fun.

Sunday morning I met up with a bunch of HubSpotters for dim sum at Hei La Moon in Chinatown. I’ve been to dim sum before, but not at this venue. The place was absolutely massive: Two floors with tons of tables. We had a big round table downstairs and it was plenty large for our group and all the food. Luckily we had our dim sum experts Yoav, Jordyne and Jonah there to explain each of the dishes. Most were very tasty, a few were approaching strange but I didn’t have anything that I didn’t like.

After dim sum, a group of us headed over to Boston Common for Ultimate Frisbee. We warmed up by tossing the disc around casually for an hour or so while people arrived. There was a really good turnout, around 30 people. We broke into groups and played games on three separate fields. It was my first time playing Ultimate and I had a lot of fun, it’s a serious workout, too.

I left Ultimate around 2pm and headed back to Cambridge to change clothes and grab my golf clubs, then it was off to Red Tail Golf Club in Devens for a late-afternoon round. I played with my co-worker Kyle, and Jared (husband of another HubSpotter). We teed off at 5pm and managed to play 11 holes before it got too dark. I played fairly well for my first outing of the year, and even managed to make par on my last hole.

After golf we all headed back to Jared and Karen’s in Somerville where Karen fed us amazing turkey burgers with her famous home made BBQ sauce and two tasty summer salads. It was the perfect end to a perfect day and hopefully just the first of many this Spring and Summer.

I read Ellie’s post of this same subject and it was such a great idea that I had to try it myself.

In most modern browsers when you start typing an address there are suggestions offered. Here are the top suggestions from Google Chrome (my browser) for each letter of the alphabet. It’s a meme in the making!

A. abdinoor.com
B. blog.hubspot.com
C. cornerhub.com (this is my local development environment a.k.a. localhost)
D. digg.com
E. etrade.com
F. facebook.com
G. google.com/analytics
H. hubspot.com
I. is.gd
J. jira.atlassian.com
K. kyle-james.com
L. login.salesforce.com
M. maps.google.com
N. netflix.com
O. order.beautys-pizza.com
P. [none]
Q. [none]
R. riseclub.us/boards
S. search.twitter.com
T. twitter.grader.com
U. usaa.com
V. video.google.com
W. websitegrader.com
X. [none]
Y. youtube.com
Z.  zipcar.com

Karen, Biz, Me

Last Wednesday Rebecca Corliss came by my desk at work and asked “Did you know Biz Stone is coming to Boston?” This question was the start of a hectic couple of days (for Rebecca, not me) to organize a Biz In Boston Tweetup. Luckily, Rebecca is awesome at this sort of thing and she pulled it off beautifully.  However, going into Friday, the day of the Tweetup, we had no idea if Biz would even be attending. Luckily we found out about 20 minutes ahead of time that he would actually be coming by for a short while.

Around 3pm the Tweetup kicked off with beer and local burger chain B.Good brought a ton of tasty sliders.  Biz was there early and chatted with everyone for a while. It was very cool to meet Biz; just the prior week I had seen his interview on The Colbert Report, so to be having a beer with him the next week was kind of surreal.  We even managed to snag him for a quick interview for HubSpot TV (embedded below).

Thanks to the Tweeple of Boston for coming out to the Tweetup, thanks to Rebecca for getting it organized and thanks to Biz for being the guest of honor.

At around 7pm tonight I was working at my desk  when one of the HubSpot sales managers, Heidi, came over and asked “Do you want to go to F1 go-karts tonight?” Obviously, I jumped at the offer. So a group of 8 HubSpotters headed out to Braintree and F1 Boston for a little fun and competition.

The F1 facility was surprisingly cool. I figured it would be some sort of warehouse with a track, but it was much more. There’s a huge entrance area with actual race cars and a collection of tricked-out go-karts on display. There are also a billiards room, a bar, and a few function rooms.  Since HubSpot booked a corporate outing, we had our own function room along with a buffet of pub grub. After eating and filling out waivers, we got a little presentation about F1. Our speaker, Tom, walked us through the whole process and explained the flags and track signals. He was totally hilarious and mentioned that he’d been doing this for 9 years, he really had the presentation down to a science, if he ever wants to join sales at HubSpot, he’s hired.

After the presentation we got suited up: racing suit, head-sock, helmet and neck support. We were on the track and in our karts a few minutes later.  There are a total of four races, three 10-lap races to qualify and a final 15 lap championship race. Each race starts with a full caution lap and then the green flag comes out and you start racing. The karts are quick, they can get up to 40mph. I managed to clock the fastest lap of the night in 21.166 seconds at a top speed of 39.12 MPH. The track record is 19.780 seconds, so I still have a long way to go. The HubSpot team is rather competitive so there was a lot of bumping on the track but, as they say in Days of Thunder, “rubbin’ is racin’.” Unfortunately, I got penalized in the championship race for bumping another kart in a turn and lost my lead: I finished 5th overall. I didn’t feel so bad since there were a LOT of penalties handed out to our group. Katie Farrar won the championship race and is now the reigning HubSpot karting champion.

Overall, it was a great time: The karts are fast, the course is fun, and, if you bring the right group, it’s a serious battle. I will definitely be going back again soon.

Retired Llamas Lane and Chad

A couple of weeks ago I started reading Emergency by Neil Strauss. The book follows Neil’s journey toward self-reliance; being able to survive without civilization as we know it. At first I was skeptical; I didn’t think there was much chance of civilization breaking down entirely. But I began to think more about what we call civilization and just how quickly it can collapse, just look at the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, or the NYC blackouts. In a matter of hours the entire system can collapse.

So I’ve decided to leave the rat race and get away from civilization as we know it. I’ve purchased a 100-acre parcel of land in northern Arkansas. It has a small lake on site and there is a reliable aquifer passing below the south-east corner of the property. I plan to move there this summer and start a non-profit retirement farm for alpacas and llamas. I also plan to plant a 10-acre farm growing soybeans, corn and carrots. With this plan I’ll have water, food and wool for clothing if (more like when) they system breaks down. I’ll be able to survive without outside food, water or electricity.

I’m still working on a name for the compound but I’ve got a few ideas: “Alpaca Acres”, “Llama Land” or “April Fools”.

Over the weekend I got a chance to visit the Museum of Science and see one of their new IMAX films: Roving Mars. The film was put together by Disney and Lockheed-Martin(strange bedfellows) and chronicles the construction, launch and missions of the two recent Mars rovers: Spirit and Opportunity.

The story begins at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California where you spend some quality time in the clean-room assembling one of the rovers. When they pack up the rover for launch the movie switches to mostly computer animation, including the launch and all the mission “footage” on Mars.

Watching anything in the Mugar IMAX theater is awesome. The sound system is a monster and it really got pushed during the rocket launch scene. The film was educational and entertaining, and, like most IMAX films, lasted just under an hour. If you’re into robotics or space exploration you’ll absolutely love it, if not you’ll still probably find it mostly entertaining.

Since moving to Boston a couple of years ago I’ve had the opportunity to attend lots of events and conferences about different (and usually nerdy) subjects. One of the most interesting events I attended last year was Barcamp Boston.

Barcamp is an “unconference” meaning that the sessions are not predetermined but rather they are assembled on-the-fly. So, if you want to talk about web-scale database architecture you can write that title in an upcoming time slot on the schedule, grab a room and start talking. Usually the person who created the topic will give a 10-20 minute presentation, sometimes prepared sometimes not, then there is a group discussion for the remainder of the time. Barcamp attendees are from interesting and diverse backgrounds so you get great insight from angles you haven’t even thought of. It’s a great opportunity to not only share your knowledge with others but also to ask for help or feedback from a very intelligent community.

If you are at all interested in computer science, robotics, or technology in general, you should check out Barcamp. It’s being held at MIT the weekend of April 25-26 and i’s free to attend (although making a donation is appreciated). Make sure to register for Barcamp so the organizers can get an accurate headcount.

Internet Explorer security warning

While testing a new feature tonight, I stumbled upon a very unusual and annoying Internet Explorer bug.

I have an ASP.NET page with a form on it, when that form is submitted the result is a redirect to another website. The website that I am being redirected to has an invalid SSL certificate and it causes a warning to come up in Internet Explorer. The bug is that when you click to allow the security error it re-submits the form. That means your form gets submitted twice. Data might be stored twice, it might mess up your conversion rate tracking, etc.  I have not tested this with a non-ASP.NET page yet but I suspect the platform doesn’t matter. As long as the result of your form submission is a server-side redirect you will probably experience this bug.

I have only seen this behavior in Internet Explorer 7 and 8, the same form works fine in Firefox, Chrome and Safari. The good news is that this is easy to fix: Don’t redirect to an insecure domain.

One of the fun things about working at HubSpot is our many chances to get together outside of work and enjoy some food, drinks and conversation. When you work with cool and fun people hanging out somewhere other than the office is a lot of fun.

Once a month, we take just the Development team and either have dinner or do some sort of an activity. A couple of days ago we had a take-out party at Yoav’s for the March Dev Team event. We ordered lots of different food (Thai, Chinese, Indian, Wings, etc.) and drank some beers, Cava and some Sake (Yoav always has great wine and sake on hand). The star of the dinner table was the insanely rich cake that came from Finale. It had layers of chocolate cake, fudge, ganache and caramel and it was spectacular. I ate way too much and had a lot of fun.