The lab. The first thing I hear when I get up. The last thing I hear before I fall asleep.

“Dr. Faulseit will be expecting you,” she says in a voice too sleepy to sound sexy. “You know what will happen if you’re late.”  Or threatening.

But, yes, I know what she means.  And I haven’t stopped regretting my association with Herr Doktor Faulseit since the day I found out. The contract seemed so innocent when I signed it. I shudder a bit and am fully awake.

And hungry.

I step out of the sixth floor single where I sleep when I sleep with her and make my way to the elevator.  The vomit inside reminds me that someone had a more eventful night than me. So I take the stairs, two at a time.

The cold air hits me like a brick wall.  It snowed again last night.  Shit.

I trudge across campus, the first footprints in six inches of new, wet snow.  Making the journey in the usual 15 minutes means I’m working hard, my head full of sweat and my heart racing. The door is difficult to open against the drift, but once inside I know I’ll make it.

I catch my breath.  No sense in letting the bastard see me this way.

With fifteen seconds to spare I enter.  Faulseit is there looking at his watch.  Something like regret shows in his face. He glances first at me and then to his left.

Next to him, a steaming bowl.  Of oatmeal.

I always smile when I see oatmeal.

1. Google+ gets it largely right.  If you call Twitter generation 1 of micromedia, and Facebook the gen 2, it makes sense that gen 3 would fix what didn’t work before.  And the good news now is that we have a ridiculous number of people trained and ready to use social media, especially a better social media.

2. Google and the Google+ team have an opportunity to solve a persistent problem: how to follow someone, but only follow the posts that really interest you.  I tend to post a fair amount, and the people interested in Oatmeal aren’t necessarily the same ones interested in my day job over at salesforce.com.  It would be interesting to have a subscribing mechanism that helped people interested in what I have to say find the posts they really want.  Google should be able to do this better than any other provider on the planet.  Posts that are of interest show up.  Posts that are probably not of interest get clumped together.

3. Another interesting opportunity, and this is probably something for a 3rd party developer to handle once G+ has an API, is to provide counter points to crazy posts.  Here’s how it would work.  Your crazy aunt likes to post political non-truths about her least favorite party.  When it pops up in your stream, it shows a link to FactCheck.org or Snopes.com where you can in near real-time figure out what the truth. Again, Google should be able to do this better than anyone else.

4. Finally, since social media (and let’ face it, media in general) is getting us way more comfortable than we should be in our own personal bubbles, what if you were able to see both sides of issues that pop up in your stream?  For example, your crazy aunt posts something about how we should bomb [insert bombable county here].  Wouldn’t it be interesting to have an immediate counterpoint presented at the same time from outside your normal sphere of influence?

That’s it for now.

Blame this post on @BColmer. And my over abundant enthusiasm for oatmeal.

This question came up at work today:

If you’re going to eat oatmeal, is there a significant qualitative different between the $3 oatmeal you get at The Green Monster and the $16 oatmeal you get a someplace like Luce?

It’s a fair question. Let’s look at some pictures and see.

First, $3 oatmeal from Starbucks (courtesy of @ramarnat):

It’s not bad, but I have to admit it’s been inconsistent. I **really** like the nuts they include. A nice touch.

Now let’s go to the $16 oatmeal from Luce:

I think it’s clear there’s a difference. The Luce oatmeal definitely looks better and I can tell you for fact it tastes better. And it’s not just a reflection of the bowl or the flower — the oatmeal is better, the berries are fresh — it’s awesome.

But is there a middle ground? I think so. Consider if you will the middle ground of making good steel cut oatmeal at home. If you don’t buy the Whole Foods McCann’s Irish Oats tin at Whole Foods for $7.99 (incidentally, the exact same tin can be bought at Trader Joe’s for $4.99) and you have 15 minutes you can make some damn good oatmeal at home.

Yeah — that’s Trader Joe’s quick cook steel cut oatmeal, dark brown sugar and apples. Total cost would have been about $1. Do I have any more pictures? Why funny you should ask — of course I do!

The astute among you may have noticed that the last picture — that’s not TJ’s quick cook — that’s McCann’s Quick Cook. I know — I should have warned you.

What about instant at home? When I only have 4 minutes, and not 15 (or, like right now, I’m out of the quick cook), I like Kirkland Signature Organic Instant myself. You can nuke some frozen berries and pile them on and BOY OH BOY are they good.

Do I have a picture of that…. surprisingly, no, I don’t.

My verdict: yes, there is a difference between $3 oatmeal and $16 oatmeal. However, in general, my strong preference is to eat the oatmeal I prepare myself at home.

The end.