Category: Philosophy

When I moved to Washington DC, one of the first things I did was scope out all the cool coffee shops and cafes.  I wanted to find where a place to hang out with and meet other cool geeks.   These places had to have free and easily accessible wifi, good coffee (or other tasty beverages), and a chill atmosphere.

So far I have found and hang out at the following.

• Murky Coffee in Arlington, VA – Probably some of the best coffee in the DC area
• Ebenezers Coffeehouse in Capitol Hill By Union Station
• Marvelous Market in Dupont

Depending on my schedule, chances are that during the week you’ll find me at one if not all of these places engaging in some kind of computer geekery.

I think its important for DC to have these places where people can go at any time during the week and hang out with like minded individuals.  It’s one step to creating the community and the culture of innovation that I think we’re all looking for.

Where do you go when you wanna relax and work on your side projects?  Where do you go when you wanna go some CSS but get an injection of caffeine?

The New York Times has a sad story, “In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich.”  It’s about how all these Silicon Valley executives, who are millionaires, don’t feel like millionaires because all the people around them are richer then they are.

These people are among the top 2% most wealthy people in the country and whats drives them is wanting more wealth.

If I ever got like this, I hope my friends would be grounded enough in reality that they’d beat me up or kick me in the head.

Some quotes from the article:

Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few…

But many such accomplished and ambitious members of the digital elite still do not think of themselves as particularly fortunate, in part because they are surrounded by people with more wealth — often a lot more.

…those with a few million dollars often see their accumulated wealth as puny, a reflection of their modest status in the new Gilded Age, when hundreds of thousands of people have accumulated much vaster fortunes.

“Everyone around here looks at the people above them,” said Gary Kremen, the 43-year-old founder of Match.com, a popular online dating service. “It’s just like Wall Street, where there are all these financial guys worth $7 million wondering what’s so special about them when there are all these guys worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”