Last night, Denver and I broke up. Thats right, the city of Denver is on the outs with me.

The following is a chat session I had with some friends where I explained basically what happened. There is a lot of cursing, so if you are offended, you might want to close your eyes or have someone read you the following.

Imagine this was a company or store. I had a horrible experience. With social media, I am directly touching more than 12,500 people through Twitter, this blog and facebook. Imagine if that group of 12,500 shares this with their followers and friends. How many people are going to hear about how awful the experience I had with the city of Denver was? 100,000? 1,000,000? Seems cities, like companies, should do their best to listen to their customers (residents and visitors) and act accordingly.

In my discussions of influence I always say influence is just a one to one activity where I can affect the actions of another. What if this is just the beginning of an “influence chain”?

Must of the following is humorous, but scary for businesses. It no longer matters if you are a store, a city, a state or a country. Your customers and residents not only have a voice, they have INFLUENCE.

I challenge businesses and governments to be better. If you are unsure how to, call me. 720-231-7120. or email me. micah [at] currentwisdom [dot] com. or tweet me @micah. But dont allow your lack of understanding or belief to stop you.

I might be one person, but there are 30,000,000 people just like me on twitter, 75,000,000 of us blogging and 200,000,000 vocal users on Facebook. The power is truly with the people.

Here is the chat discussion uncut. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Except mine.

Me: ok

Me: so here is the story

Me: Im at a coffee shop with friends

Me: ok one friend

Me: I dont really have friends

Me: I walk out of the shop at 5:30, car is booted

Me: I call them

Me: $600 later, I pay for tickets I already paid for

Me: they say you have a default boot

Me: I say you are a fucking retard, because there is a keypad, so give me the code so I can take it off

Me: they say there is no keypad

ST: lol

ST: “ok one friend”

Me: I say, I am not blind you stupid motherfuckers, there is a keypad

Me: we argue about the existence of the keypad for like 5 min

Me: finally, I give up.

ST:this is funny

Me: They say by 7pm, some one will come to take the boot off.

MP: I’m writing the screenplay now.

Me: its 5:30, so I say fine.

Me: I will wait

Me: at 6:45pm, I call back

Me: I say, hey, so no one has come to take off the boot

Me: they say, oh, we meant 7pm EST. You are in central time, so you will have to wait until tomorrow.

Me: I say, stupid motherfucker, I am in mountain time. go get someone to take off the boot.

Me: they say, sorry, everyone has gone home.

Me: I hang up the phone

Me: I call back

Me: I tell my story

Me: I mention that there is a serial number for the boot on the citation. I read it to them

Me: they say, oh, that boot is on another car

Me: I say

Me: well, I dont say anything

Me: because clearly they dont believe I have the ability to see that there is a boot on my car

Me: I say, nicely, there is a boot on my car

Me: the serial number is 9743

Me: they say thats impossible

Me: that boot is not on your car

Me: I hang up

Me: I call back

Me: I tell my story

Me: the lady says, Im sorry for the inconvenience

Me: I ask that she apologize for the stupidity as well

Me: she doesnt find it funny

Me: I stop a meter maid

Me: (except its a dude who is clearly a douchebag)

ST: im cracking up

Me: he says, booting is not my department

Me: I say, you put it on there, take the fucker off

Me: he says, I am only trained in putting them on

Me: I said clearly

Me: he calls the dispatch

Me: they say everyone went home, and I will have to wait until the next day to get my car

Me: I said I hate you all and I hope you die. Except I said it like this

Me: “thanks very much”

ST: lol

Me: then I called a friend who picked me up and drove me to boulder

Me: we grabbed dinner

Me: since I had no car and he drove me

Me: he dropped me off at my house

Me: I get a call from new jersey

ST: how far is boulder from denver??

Me: “hello mr. baldwin, this the supervisor of the boot removal department”

Me: 40 miles

BH: apparently Denver is now in NJ

ST: ah

Me: “and we have removed your boot”

ST: hahaha

Me: I say, thats great, since its 9pm, and the meters run until 10pm, I better not have a ticket.

Me: so danny drives me down to denver.

Me: it starts to rain

Me: thunder

Me: lightening

BH: oh shite

Me: I get to my car

Me: the boot is gone

Me: there is no ticket

BH: THERE’S A TICKET

Me: I get in my car

BH: oh

BH: fuck

BH: change the story

Me: and I drive up in a torrential downpour

Me: and now I am finally home

ST: that was quite an ending

Me: after paying $610 in parking fines I HAVE ALREADY PAID

Me: and waiting 7.5 hours for the boot to be removed.

ST: so are you going to fight it?

Me: the end

ST: fight city hall!

ST: that sucks man

Me: I will never enter the city of denver again

Me: so the boot was invented in denver

Me: but its a new boot called the smart boot, of which the operation of it is outsourced to philadelphia

BH: Better than being outsourced to some foreign country

MP: another change in the story… outsourced to NJ

Me: fuck me

Me: http://learntoduck.com/humor/first-denver-smart-boot-recipient

MP: Thank you very much

Me: I wrote that the first time I paid the tickets

Me: is that unbelievable or what?

Me: then I was having fun writing horribly vitriol tweets about denver, so I went with it.

MP: For you Micah, a thousand times more believable.

BH: the best part is where they keep telling you that you’re a lying muthefucker

Me: lol

Me: I KNOW!

Me: my favorite part

Me: the lady says “According to our records you have a default boot”

Me: I say “according to my eyeballs I have a smart boot”

BH: Micah: I’m a Jew

BH: Boot: No you’re not

Me: lol

BH: Micah: No, I’m looking at my circumcised dick right now

BH: Boot: Sir, our records indicate that you are a woman

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I have a folder in my Google Reader called “Friends”. It has blogs that are written by people that I have physically met. Often, I will add a person’s blog soon after meeting them, and then over time, depending on the subjects they write about, I will continue to read them or return them to the blogosphere, and keep an eye out for them to be mentioned in other places.

Right now, I think the blogs in that folder number around 200. Of those, there are about 10 I check out first. My friends Rana, Tyler and Michael always share interesting images, quotes and posts, so I usually check their feeds first. Then I read Meg, Jeffrey, Grace, Darcie and Eric’s blogs each for different reasons, but mostly because I enjoy the writing.

The final two I check are David’s and Brad’s because they are in a space that I want to be part of and know more about: investing and venture capital, and they both write extensively about the subject.

Of those first ten, there are often threads of ideas that I pluck to contemplate posts of my own. Sometimes, there is a concept that just screams for me to think, and perhaps, write about.

Today was such a day. Brad wrote in his post Deep Calm:

While my life is frenetic, the world around us is chaotic, and as I like to say “something in my world somewhere is totally fucked up every single day”, I generally achieve a very deep calm.  On the surface I appear to be extremely busy, but at my essence I hear the birds chirping and think of fields of golden retriever puppies.

I am on vacation. I am staying home for two weeks after spending 50% of the last 45 days traveling. I am trying to learn how to be organized. I am trying to learn how to properly prioritize my activities. I am learning how to use a to-do list.

Here is what I have done (or will be doing) my first three days of vacation:

Monday: Run errands, clean the house, go into the office for a meeting, and meet with a techstars team.

Tuesday: Rearrange my office, clean some more, run some more errands, get blood tests, go in to the office for a meeting, write a blog post for the lijit blog, work on a lijit project, meet with three different techstars teams.

Wednesday: Meet with one of my mentors, clean up my back yard, run some more errands, go to the doctor, meet with two techstars teams. Clean up my basement and my master bedroom. Complete a Lijit project. Figure out my strategy for Learntoduck.tv.

My life is in a constant state of movement. I have ten things I should be doing, twenty things I am doing, and thirty things I wish I could be doing. I take every phone call and meeting that comes my way.

Within all that “stuff” that is going on, there are things that are falling down; things that are breaking; things, as Brad says, “are totally fucked up every single day.”

Yet, while I am intense, loud and passionate, I never am concerned that the outcome will be anything other than good. (Not specifically successful, but educational. Learning is as good as winning most of the time).

Unlike Brad, I dont have thoughts of fields of buttercups and golden retrievers, but I do have the utmost trust in me. I know that if I was given a single oar and dropped in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I will get to the shore.

People who are anxious or worry about their ability to produce at the heart of it dont trust in their own ability to generate a positive outcome.

Perhaps its narcissistic; perhaps its arrogance, but all I know is it keeps me calm like a ninja.

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Its Fathers Day.

For the rest of the year, I tend to not dwell on that fact that I have a biological father and an adoptive father, but today, I always take a bit of time to dwell.

When I was about a year-and-a-half old, my parents got divorced, and my mom moved from Fort Collins, CO to East Palo Alto, CA. I never knew much about the circumstances of the divorce itself, but what I do know wasnt pleasant. My mom was 21 when I was born, my father 23. He was in veterinarian school, and the two of them were really hippie poor. He delivered goats milk and cheese for a living, my mom (I think) did odd jobs, secretarial work and the like.

My father was also a heavy drug user. He would disappear days on end, and generally not treat my mother extremely well. I would assume that the same went for me. (Having dealt with drug addiction, regardless of what I do or do not know, I do know that had to true.)

After the divorce, my mom, who had friends in California and Oregon, decided to move west. (well, west-er, I guess) She took our belongings, jumped in a car, and drove out to Oregon, stopping in California on the way. Except, she never made it to Oregon. She stopped in California to visit friends, and just stayed.

She moved into a small apartment in East Palo Alto, and got a job at a local company. My earliest memories are of that apartment, but most of it is dark and hazy. It wasnt a great time for us; my mom tells the story of my sitting on her lap, wiping away her tears, telling her everything would be ok. It seems that the time between the move to California, and her meeting my adoptive father (ok, he is my step-father, but that has such negative connotations. Adoptive–he did legally adopt me–paints such a better picture of him) was kinda dark and a blur. There are few pictures and stories of that time.

When I was two or three, my mom met a guy that lived in the same apartment complex. The story goes that she was dating his roommate, and being the vixen my mom was (I guess), quickly realized she had picked the wrong roommate. Of course, if you ask my grandmother, she introduced my mom and dad. (Given that my grandmother was living in Korea at the time, this is probably not the case. A stretch maybe.)

My mom and dad quickly moved in together, and when I was 5, my dad, Rich, asked if it was ok if he married my mom. While I did say yes, I do regret not negotiating a better deal for myself, such as free ice cream or tv for life.

When I was seven, I told my mom and dad that I didnt like having a different last name, Silver, and I wanted to be a Baldwin. I knew then, as clearly and strongly as I know now, that belonging to a family was the most important thing for a person.

Over the course of two years, Rich and my mom worked through the court system to finalize the adoption. The final step was that my biological father had to approve. He came out to California, and while he and I were sitting on a beach, I explained to him that I wanted to be adopted by Rich, and almost without any delay, I got his permission.

That was the last time I saw my biological father until I was eighteen and a freshman at University of California, Davis.

I often juxtapose the decisions that both men made over the course of my life. Rich was 19 when I was born, he was 24 when he married my mom, and 26 when he adopted me. By 30, my sisters Marissa and Natalia had joined our family.

My biological father on the other hand, continued to struggle with drug addiction until he was 35 (I still think he has his issues), and finally remarried when he was in his late 30s / early 40s. Recently, he and his wife adopted a child from China, and they are a happy family. He is a successful, brilliant vet.

When you look at the two men and their beliefs about the importance of family, its clear that my dad, Rich, puts family first. Here is a great example: Rich was working at Stanford University, and in his early 30s was asked by the founders of Cisco to join them. When they had 4 employees.

I know. It would not be a question. I would have jumped at it. Rich didnt.

When I asked why, Rich, in his easy pragmatic, Michigan way recounted how Cisco was being sued by Stanford for stealing the idea of the router, and having three kids, he just couldnt take the risk.

When I didnt hear any tinge of regret, I was surprised. Just as quietly as he explained the reason for his decision, he explained that for him, there could be no regret in making a decision that was best for the family.

There are many examples of Rich’s decision making process of putting the family first. He turned down a job at UC Berkeley, because the move would have been too traumatic for my sister, Natalia. When Marissa finally found her true calling in musical theatre, Rich was a stage hand for all of her plays, and drove her around the country looking at colleges (until she settled on Western Michigan in Kalamazoo, MI).

What is amazing is that all of this has been his choice. He does it because he loves it, and its the right thing to do.

Often, there is a debate about nurture and nature. Am I who I am because of Rich or my biological father?

I look a lot like my biological father (which caused my mom many times to assume that I was just like him. Especially when I was screwing up, which was quite often. Cant be awesome, unless you break a couple laws, I always say).

And, there are pieces of my personality the stem from him. I know that my bipolar and addictive personality certainly can be traced back. My quick thinking and clear understanding of complex problems are also very similar.

Yet, I act, often, especially when problem solving, like my adoptive father. I think pragmatically, because thats what he taught me.

My absolute believe in doing right comes directly from Rich’s influence.

I suppose, at the end of it all, at the beginning, I was who I was because of my biological father, but I am who I am because of Rich.

The greatest gift my biological father gave me was a start.

And, Rich? Well, he gave me the framework for my future.

Happy Father’s Day.

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