• On his previous visit to Costa Rica, Josh drove two hours before realizing he and his fiance had left their passports in the safe back at their hotel.
• Erik is the only TXIer with anything close to a useful grasp on the Spanish language. A bunch of us know how to say “hola”, “gracias”, and “arroz con pollo”.
• When Ellen was 20 she read The Joy of Cooking cover to cover.
• Samantha can name all the books of the Old Testament in order.
• If you tie a bunch of $60 video cards together, you can build a processor as fast as a supercomputer. -Byron
• John Gore likes pina colodas.
• There are over 20 state parks within driving distance of Lucas’ home in Victoria, B.C.
• “Mr. Bean” in Spanish is “El Senor Frijole”.  -Daniel
• Matt once programmed Blackjack on his TI-82 calculator while sitting in church.

And…. we’re back.

We had a great trip to Costa Rica on all fronts.  Tropical weather, beautiful accommodations, productive discussions, exciting excursions, and delicious meals.  We’ve got a bunch of stories and pictures to share… too much for a single summary post.

In the meantime, meet Bert, the new Table XI mascot.

Sadly, we did not see any leatherback turtles, but we found someone even more appropriate.  Bert is green, eight years old and likes to goof off, eat lunch and play with computers.  Fits Table XI perfectly.

Katie Gore, John’s wife, swung by the Table XI office today.  She is getting a masters in speech pathology at Northwestern and as part of her studies needs guinea pigs on which to perform “Oral Mechanism Exams”.

Part of the exam includes measuring diadochokinetic rates.  This is a measurement of how fast one can articulate distinct sounds like “puh”, “tuh”, “kuh” and the combination of the three.

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I sometimes worry that the gratuitous praise I heap upon Ellen’s kitchen exploits may be perceived as inauthentic.  So in an attempt to present a balanced perspective and to add credibility to the descriptions of the incredible food she prepares for us, I offer this picture.

Alinea serves a dish called “Black Truffle Explosion“.  This is Ellen’s variation on that theme:

Broadly speaking, Table XI makes its living solving organizational problems.  Here is an example of “the management” applying those talents to our own internal challenges:

I have tried for two weeks to write this post but couldn’t figure out how to do so without gloating.  It’s hard enough to humbly write about the daily meals we have cooked in-house… but when your boss flies the entire company to Costa Rica for a week, how do you say that without sounding smug?

I decided the best way is to pretend I am objective news reporter.  So this is me, as unemotionally as possible, reporting the facts:

On Saturday February 27, the 13 members of the Table XI team and five of their significant-others will fly to Costa Rica. The hope is that a reprieve from the Chicago winter and a week of rejuvenation, strategic planning, team building and corporate reflection will make Table XI more successful as an organization and better able to serve our clients.

We will be staying near Playa Grande and the town of Tamarindo.

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The opinions expressed in this post are the sole opinions of its author and are not representative of Table XI as a whole.

That’s because I seem to be the only one around here excited by the iPad. Most of the time (well, all of the time) when I’m in disagreement with everyone at Table XI over a technology issue, I’m wrong.  But it was an article from Paul Buchheit, creator and lead developer of Gmail, that finally gave me the courage to go public with my beliefs.

His post, entitled When your product is great, it doesn’t have to be good, argues that the iPad’s success will be because of it’s limited functionality, not in spite of it:

I believe this “more features = better” mindset is at the root of the misjudgment, and is also the reason why so many otherwise smart people are bad at product design…  What’s the right approach to new products? Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else. Those three attributes define the fundamental essence and value of the product — the rest is noise.

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