Gary Sheynkman dot com

When you travel, bring a power strip. This is something that I practice. I often have a laptop, a camera (or two), and a cell phone (or two) with me when I travel (iPod can be USB charged, so can phones…but that’s extra nerdy ?). On average that is four devices that need to be charged just for me. Four outlets in a hotel room are hard to come by. At the very best you will be running around the room collecting (and forgetting) chargers when you pack up. Save yourself the hassle and pack a 5-6 outlet power strip in the front pocket of your suitcase. You will save yourself the headache (I’m big on “headache savers”) and drastically reduce the number of plug adapters you need to carry (to 1). Yay!

I recently discovered that I have a funny spelling habit. I can not make up my mind on how to spell words.

For example, I will spell labour, colour, and other “o” vs “ou” words the English way… but I am dead set on spelling specialize, and other “se” vs “ze” words through “ze”.

My spelling checker hates me. If I set it to UK English, I am stuck with the rage inducing red squiggly lines. If I set it to US English, I face the same prolem.

I spell it like I hear it. I can’t help it.

The worst part, is that I cannot decide how to remedy the situation. Go all UK, all US, or continue my funny way of going about it.  Knowing me I will go with the latter option and continue writing silly…

I wonder if anyone else has this problem…

When I tell people I eat every meal out, they often look at me like there is something wrong.

“You spend a fortune on food that you could use to buy subscriptions to dirty magazines,” they say.

True. My budget for dirty magazines is $0.00 as a direct result of eating out everyday. There are some benefits to eating out everyday though:

1. By eating lunch and dinner out, you can maintain and constantly expand your social circle. Today, for example, I had a great lunch with Baher from CloudAppers. Tomorrow I’m having dinner with a fund manager from Marseilles. Both 100% social. Yay. I did this in college to maintain relationships with people who I wasn’t spending most of my time with and it allowed me to keep a large circle of friends.
2. By eating lunch out, you open yourself up to meeting even more new people! …someone ordering the same weirdo coffee combination in Starbucks? …also getting pomegranate juice at your local food joint? …speaking a familiar foreign language? All are opportunities to strike up a conversation and meet someone new.
3. Most importantly eating out with other people sparks innovation. Only suicidal geniuses come up with ideas sitting by themselves in a basement.In my experience, the best ideas are formed when concepts fly around at a dinner table and something cohesive and at the same time groundbreaking emerges through that.

In short: spend less money on dirty magazines and more on eating out with people.

EDIT: As per this tweet I forgot #4… Eating out is Fun!!!