Bill Watt’s Blog

With Alice on vacation visiting her family in Boston you might wonder how I cut loose when there is no supervision. While some wives worry about leaving their husbands alone because of strip clubs, gambling, or whatever else they imagine might go on… leaving me alone for a week finds me eating brisket (which I did last night), getting asian food (which I plan to do tonight and tomorrow for lunch), Italian at a placed she’s a little tired of at the moment, watching MTV on my big screen without interuption, watching Naruto on YouTube without commentary, and playing World of Warcraft. I have simple tastes.

I shouldn’t drink and read Fortune articles about startups that have recently hit it big. That always makes me feel like I am missing out on another round of possibilities. For those keeping track at home, I’m approaching 8.5 years doing FairMarket-related work. Yeah, I’m doing better than ever, I like the people I work with, my manager is totally supportive, the team is doing amazing things and the projects we work on are pretty rewarding (and high profile) but as Mangelo summed it up on our call last week, “where’s the cotton candy and pony rides?”

PS- Last week was the 5 year anniversary of the layoff round that claimed Jen and Amy, or as I like to call it, “The 5.4 release.” Where did the time go?

I know you like to think you’ve fooled us… we know your birthday is today.

I have two friends with birthdays today. Happy birthday to both!

This is as good as it gets… I give you Happy Chad.

Vote for Pedro!

This past weekend brought quite a bit of sad news.

First I heard on Friday that Bob Hebeler, a coworker at eBay, had been involved in a fatal accident while biking through Santa Cruz. The eBay announcement to the community is here and a tribute from Jordan Banks from eBay Canada is here.

Bob was a good guy and was very welcoming to me from the time eBay acquired FairMarket. I have a pretty simple world view and tend to put people into one of two groups: (1) those that make eye contact and say hello and (2) those that treat me like a potted plant and sometimes manage to pass through me like I’m a ghost. Bob was squarely in the friendlier of those two groups.

As if that wasn’t enough bad news for one week we also found out that Kenny Duncan, a long time friend and coworker from FairMarket, had also been in an accident. Kenny was only 35 and is survived by his wife and 2 kids.

We need more people like these two…. not less.

Check out how my friends opt to poke at those of us from FairMarket using the new eBay Matchups site.