Summer of Grey: Parts 1 & 3

Well, that doesn't look good. 🎵 Intro music 🎵 Hello, Lucy Liu. I am in North Carolina. It is the start of what is going to be five long weeks of business travel and business meetings. I'm trying to get better at business meetings.

Also, while I'm here, I'm setting for myself the goal of escaping from America not fatter than I arrived because I've fallen off the health bandwagon a bit lately, and I really don't want to make things worse. But that might be impossible given that in America, the streets are paved with donuts. But I'm gonna try, and right now that's future Grey's problem. Current Grey is on the porch with a dog visiting family, so no more vlogging.

And let's skip to Denver, Colorado. Just stopping off to get some coffee and use the restroom and tornado shelter, and eat bad food strangely. More details later, on to San Jose, California, just south of San Francisco. Work travel is never fun, but it's extra not fun when you arrive at the hotel to find out that they don't have your room that you booked months ago.

The reservation they have, but not the room. Suspiciously, it seems many people who booked the hotel rooms at a super cheap price before the hotels realized that WWDC had changed location to a new city. Those people don't have rooms. The rooms had been re-rented at a higher price. So what happened to the people who do have a reservation? Why conveniently, they put you in a hotel on the other side of the city! A hotel with the douchiest "privacy please" sign I have ever seen.

But I didn't fly across an ocean and a continent to be 45 minutes away from all of the reasons that I'm here. So I was rather ... 'firm' ... with the hotel, and suddenly like magic, they did have a free upgrade to a better room. But not for tonight. So I still have to be at this place and I can't set up any of my work, and it won't be 'til I drive back tomorrow morning that I can actually get started on the reasons that I'm here.

In fairness, the apology suite is quite nice, and it comes with an apology letter and apology chocolates that I can't eat because I must escape from America not fatter. Travel pro tip: you could have stuff delivered to the hotel so you don't have to pack it.

::box opening sounds:: ::more box opening sounds:: This is only half the boxes I have to unpack, and I didn't unpack all of the boxes in the boxes. But, as I switched hotels this morning, I'm running out of time before WWDC begins, so I need to get outta here. WWDC is a conference where Apple brings developers from the wide world to announce new features of their software so programmers can implement them.

Announcer: Welcome to WWDC.

Grey: A ticket inside is a front row to the future.

I don't have a ticket; I've got a hotel room and a wishlist, which is far more funny for crowd reactions anyway.

Many: Ohhh! Woooww! Oh! Shots fired! God!

::chuckling:: And fooling around on Twitter during the boring parts.

TV: HomePod

Many: ::surprised laughs:: What? Hah. Wow.

Keynote's over, now it's time to set up my mobile office. 🎵 Musical notes 🎵 Watch some technical talks,

Speaker: ... customizing your cheeseburger is way easier when someone steps you through the process, one decision at a time.

Grey: Attend tech podcasts to discuss the tech, sometimes with singalongs. 🎵 Podcast singalong 🎵 Which brings us to... Why am I here? At the end of WWDC, it’s to record a podcast about WWDC. The podcast is called "Cortex", on a network called "Relay", and that's another reason that I'm here, 'cuz there's a big Relay listener meetup that I'm going to.

Past Grey didn't film anything at the event, but to be fair to him, he was running on low power mode at that point. I really find jet lag so frustrating. On this trip, I'm trying to acclimatize to west coast time. I was out last night at the Relay podcast meetup; I was just talking to people and then, POW, I was hit with that "I am going to fall asleep immediately" feeling.

So I come back to the hotel to get a good night's sleep, but no, of course, here I am, it's 4 in the morning, and I know I'm just gonna be awake for a while like a zombie.

::sigh:: Thanks, jet lag. I was on my way to go find some coffee. I think this is uhh, this is what I need to do today. This is Goal #1. But later, coffee first. All right, time to do this.

I tried to do some fancy camera work, but then this happened, so forget that, no more recording in gyms while I'm doing weight stuff. It feels super weird to vlog then anyway.

America is a place where you can really double down on your eating mistakes. I really want to avoid that, so my plan while I'm here is just to cut out as many carbohydrates as I can from my diet. This means no pancakes, no bread, no pastas, no pizza, no crackers, normally the kind of stuff I would eat an enormous amount of when I'm under a lot of pressure and doing a lot of work.

And since I'm also traveling at the same time, it's kind of doubly hard, but it is possible to do if you can eat the eggs, but not the muffin. So I'm going to the supermarket to load up on all the kinds of things that I'm going to be eating lots of. Meat and cheese and eggs and emergency almonds and emergency jerky.

It's not fun, and it's not what I want to do, but this is the most simple and effective thing that I have found in the past for dropping or maintaining weight, and if there's one thing I could use this summer, it's a bit of simple. Thank you, Check Out Robot; you don't ask any questions, and I really appreciate you for that.

Check Out Robot: $5.99

Grey: Conferencing is mentally taxing, but I find it helps to map the outlines of the day and try to specify what objectives for time well spent are, what I need to do, who I need to see, what sessions I should go to, and as a personal development point, I'm trying to get better at meeting with interesting people while I'm business traveling.

These conferences can be a crazy overlapping puzzle of everyone's schedules. Right now I am on my way to a meeting with someone. The only time we could find for both of us that overlapped is while he's packing his bags to go. Laughs So that's where I'm headed.

All right, packing meeting over, on to more stuff. The no carbohydrates health plan is going pretty well so far, but now during business meetings, I'm the weirdo who's not eating the burger bun and has to explain why.

Do I recognize the model of truck? I do not.

::Car mates laugh:: I've been lucky enough to be invited to see some interesting headquarters in the past including Dropbox and Facebook. This time it's Google, with their "Why is there a dinosaur over there?" and "This is a sad dystopian graveyard of androids past."

And office interior, they really you rather didn't film. Then on to the computer history museum with "So many buttons." "I want to press them all" and remembered fun things long forgotten, and traumatic things long forgotten. 🎵 Hamster Dance Music 🎵

And got totally distracted by seeing my first Tesla charger in real life.

Oh god, Tesla's, Tesla's as far as the eye can see.

Oh, this is the X! I am pretty tired and I really don't wanna; it's been a long day, but I'm going into the gym. Man, everywhere you go in America, screens, screens, screens. But you know what? Thank you, but no thank you.

All right, I'm doing this. Pretty pleased about that. I had just, I really didn't wanna do it, but I'd only just barely started a streak of exercising so I wasn't gonna quit on the third day.

::Shower noises:: But yeah, not a thing that I wanted to do. but I'm very glad it's done, and now it's shower time. 🎵 Lovely Cello Music 🎵

I've yet to be at a conference that doesn't feel like it's just one day too long, and this is the last day. The big responsibility today is to record Cortex, but before that happens, I want to try to fit in just a little bit of exercise. I'm gonna get my bicycling in while I prepare for Cortex.

So I've got the bike. It looks like, on the map, there's a park along the Guadalupe River, so I'm taking the bike there; I'm gonna go for a little bit of a ride. Now I've gotten into the habit—oh there we go; Guadalupe River park—uhh, I've gotten into the habit of not listening to music while I do aerobic exercise.

It makes exercising a good time to think, and like today, I'm going to be combining the exercise with preparing for Cortex. So I've taken a look at the show notes, I've loaded them up in my head, I'm gonna go for a little bike ride, and think about what I'm gonna talk about on Cortex today. Just as soon as I can figure out how to get down into the park.

Now it's time to attach the GoPro. Perfect. Feels like Terminator! 🎵 Terminator style music 🎵 Thanks, little buddy, that was way better than cycling indoors. Time for shower and podcast.

(oh no) (this is the worst) (I have to hide now for a little while) (I'm gonna be late to the podcast) can't do a podcast unless you have enough coffee to get through a podcast. I'm bringing the coffee.

Myke Hurley: I finally did it...

Grey: What'd you do?

Myke: We're in the same place.

Grey: Yeah...

Myke: We're working on something together in the same place.

🎵 Cortex Theme 🎵

Mike: We're at WWDC again.

Grey: We are.

Myke: But last year you made me record in a hotel room.

Grey: I did.

Myke: and you were in your hotel room, and we used Skype.

Grey: Yes. That's true.

Myke: But this year,

Grey: mmmhmmm

Myke: you suggested "Why don't we record in person?"

Grey: ::sigh:: I didn't suggest it.

Myke: I feel like you did.

Grey: You suggested it.

Myke: OK.

Grey: And I agreed because I have a lot of audio equipment in my room right now that I really didn't want to unbox.

::chuckles::

Myke: Ahhhhh, that makes sense. Ok. Put the burden on me.

Grey: Everyone is gone. I'm still here because I need an extra day to prepare. There's a place I need to get to by a certain time and it's a bit-- It's going to end up being a bit involved. So I'm guessing this log, which I originally thought was just gonna be a short thing at some conferences, is going to end up being, ah, a much longer thing, like two or three parts?

I don't know; that's Future Grey's editing problem. Now Grey's problem is packing. For suitcases and stuff, the rule is: "Only bags go inside of suitcases, not things." Bags, in suitcases. Things can go in the bags, not in the suitcase.

All right, I got the packing done way faster than expected because, of course, I realized: I don't need to pack it "well", I just need to get it all boxed up so I-- ::censor beep:: --right now.

Sure it looks that way on the camera, but holy hell--

🎵 Slow String Intro 🎵 🎵 Cascading Horns 🎵

I'm here the day before VidCon starts. The pre-conference feeling is nice. I always like being in places before the action happens as it's being set up. It's the feeling of "potential."

All that potential of what could be before what actually happens empties you to the core. And this conference, this VidCon, is particularly draining because the longer you spend time near LA, the more desaturated your life becomes. LA is a dementor in city form.

But right now I'm still fresh. I like exploring, I like the feeling of solitude in places that should be full. It's peaceful. And it won't stay that way for long.

::loud conference noises::

Grey: It has begun.

::quiet:: ::LOUD:: ::quiet:: ::LOUD:: ::quiet:: ::LOUD:: ::very quiet:: ::VERY LOUD::

Ohh, stay close coffee. I need you now more than ever.

::more loud noises:: I'm so exhausted, and these cookies are everywhere, depleting my willpower in all of the lounges. Everywhere there aren't crowds, there are cookies. A cookie would feel so good right now. But I must resist.

In case you're wondering, I stayed off of carbs during part two. It's been about three weeks so far without carbs, and this is the final hard stretch as VidCon is such an assault on the mind, and to cope with it, I've chosen poorly in years past.

Someone: What?

Grey: You overestimate the power of this.

I don't understand why you even think this is interesting.

Someone: Brady's gonna wanna see the snap from you.

Grey: OK?

Someone: ::laughs::

I'm making better choices this time. But America really doesn't help when there's a pizza button on the phone and a sign for the pizza button. I think they really want me to eat pizza, but I'm going to stay strong.

Only two weeks left to escape from America not fatter. I feel like this place is the opposite of me.

::Screaming::

So much screaming and filming.

Casey: OK, so the question was: You guys with your cameras, everyone behind you can't see me. Amazing.

There's people everywhere. Well, almost everywhere.

Panelist: ...what the internet really killed is the mass media business model. We tried to take that scarcity-based model into this abundance-based world, prices go down, desperation goes up, we end up with cats and Kardashians, you see, as the ultimate clickbait. And it worked! Right?

So... How do we rethink the business model of News? Heh... Good luck with that.

Future Grey taking over here as, at this point, Past Grey was really pushed beyond his social limits. Suddenly there is no more talking to the camera. There is just simply no more talking.

This first summer of Grey was exhausting beyond my ability to explain. But it was also a great and hugely successful trip. I wanted to try to have more meetings with people. And boy did I ever...

But it was time to go. I needed a break, and there was a place I wanted to go where I could just be quiet and not have to see people and not have to do anything and just recharge for a while. So that’s where I went.

And there is perhaps nothing more uplifting to the human soul than taking a flight out of LA to a place where you actually want to be. So I recharged for a while, I went back to North Carolina to see my family again, and then I returned home to London.

And thus ended the Summer of Grey.

Oh right! I also came back not fatter.