Everyday, when I walk from the train to work, I pass a long line of taxis cuing up outside the Hilton on 6th ave. This morning I noticed something different. The long line of Crown Victorias was now almost half hybrid SUVs.

At first I was angered by what I saw. Hybrids have been cleared for use as cabs for awhile now, but seeing all those SUVs got me heated. It appeared to me that in the rush to look eco-friendly, the city had allowed the fleet to be overrun with big, clunky, gas guzzlers. Sure, they’re hybrids, but how full efficient can an SUV be?

What I found online surprised me.

As it turns out, the full efficiency of the Ford hybrid is considerably better than the standard crown vic (34 mpg vs. only 17). It also does better than those Toyota Sienna minivan taxis.

Of course, none of these cabs are as efficient as most other hybrids. Or the subway. Or (god forbid) a bike. But then, maybe that family of tourists from Indiana isn’t ready to pile in a Prius. Maybe, dare I say, an SUV can be a baby step towards a better world.

Personally, I’ll stick with the subway.

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

Well, the time has finally come for me to move on. Starting now, I will no longer be updating this blog and instead will be writing over at http://www.stirlingmclaughlin.com/blog.

I hope to see you all there.

Love,
Dr. Manhattan

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

Why are so many business and marketing books written by successful people? I know it sounds logical, but let’s think about this for a minute.

We read all these books to gain insight from other people’s knowledge. But, how does one get this “knowledge?” Typically, you learn from your mistakes. So, if you’ve never made any mistakes, how can you teach anything?

Let’s say you studied hard in highschool, got into an ivy league college, then you went on to a first rate business school before scoring the perfect internship. Then you where on your way to being a CEO of a Fortune 500 company before turning 35. Hmmm, I’m guessing you haven’t screwed up very much.

If you really want to learn something, you want a book by someone who’s screwed up often, and really bad. When you get advice, you want to know its from someone whos done it wrong, and can hopefully tell you why it didn’t work. Really, you want someone who lacks the common sense to have done it right the first time.

What you want is a book called “Marketing for Dummies by Dummies”. So, to all the book publishers reading this, how about dropping me a line. I promise I have no idea what I’m talking about.

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

This afternoon, as I was working on my blog, I got up to go to the bathroom, only to return to an all too familiar site. My Apple G5 had unceremoniously crapped the bed.

I noticed that the cursor wasn’t responding, so I checked to make sure my Wacom tablet was connected properly. All good there. I hit a couple of key commands trying to force a restart. Still nothing. I held down the power button on the front of the machine for a few seconds until everything went dark. Ok. Finally we are getting somewhere. I pushed the power button again, listend to the fan whirl back to life and…

Blink, blink, blink.

Uh oh. The computer isn’t booting up, but it looks like it’s trying to tell me something…

Blink, blink, blink.

What the computer was tying to tell me was that I had installed incompatable RAM. Simple mistake. It must happen all the time. At least, it happens frequently enough that the machine knows how to tell me about it in morse code. There was only one problem. I’d been using the same RAM in that machine for the past 3 1/2 years.

Uh oh.

What I appeared to be dealing with was a sudden absence of logic. Sometime while I was in the bathroom, my logic board had decided to shuffle off, leaving me with a rather large, and rather heavy, doorstop.

Of course, I’m only assuming at this point that it’s my logic board. To find out I’ll have to take my 4,000 lbs. little friend to a Mac Store and pay to have them take a look (my AppleCare ran out last February). Still, my gut is telling me logic board, which means my gut is telling me I’m about to make a very expensive decision. Either I spend somewhere in the neighborhood $800-$1,400 to repair or replace the logicboard, or I scrap the whole thing and replace it with an entirely new computer. This is a decision I’ve had to make before… on more than one occasion.

Through all of this I can’t help but wonder why I still have to make these kinds of decisions at all. Web 2.0 was supposed to put an end to the software adoption cycle, but what about the hardware adoption cycle? Why am I still buying bigger and faster machines to do simpler and simpler stuff? Last I checked, the program getting the most use on my computer was Firefox. Some days the majority of the programs I use, (wordpress, mediawiki, etc.) aren’t on my machine at all. They’re on a server farm somewhere in California!

Thankfully I have a backup. It’s a 12″ Macbook that, quite frankly, does everything my tower did except take up space and make funny noises. Maybe I’ll hold off on repairing my tower until I can figure out why I needed a big workstation in the first place. Or until I want to access my 70 gig itunes library…

Uh oh.

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

It was the summer of 1999 and my band The Esquenot was playing at a bar in Northern New Jersey. Between songs I did what I could to keep the crowd entertained. I said “Hey it’s 1999! I was pretty sure we’d all have flying skateboards by now!”

Nothing.

“Flying Skateboards! Anyone? Heyyooo!”

A hush fell over the crowd. Actually, to be honest, the crowd was pretty hushy to begin with. My flying skateboard routine was going over about as well as our set. Our bass player Wade, perhaps sensing my panic, grabbed a fistful of handmade stickers and flung them in to the crowd.

With his face twisted into an odd mix of fear and glee, Wade called out “Stickers!” and we all watched as they fell, slowly, like autumn leaves, to the beer soaked floor of that beer soaked North Jersey bar. I turned to Wade and said the only thing I could think to say in a momment like that..

“Thats just littering.”

The crowd erupted in laughter. Actually, it wasn’t the crowd. It was our drummer Zach. Zach thought it was hilarious. In fact, he still talks about it.

The internet is a stank bar floor in North Jersey. This blog is a handmade sticker for a crummy college rock band from Western Massachusetts that never recorded an album.

And this post? Well, this is just littering…

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio