Archive for May, 2007

I’m calling Bullshit

Tuesday, May 29th, 2007

No way. I don’t believe it. If this were true it would be cool and we all know I would want one. Click to see the “Microsoft Surface” that is being announced today.

BUT… it can’t be true. Well, if it is then screw Microsoft. The specs wouldn’t support Windows Vista:

(3) CPU: Surface uses many of the same components found in everyday desktop computers — a Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM and a 256MB graphics card.

To be clear, my computer is better than this and it still only rates a 4.5 on the Vista love scale.

Anniversary dinner

Monday, May 28th, 2007

Yeah, who knew 2 years would fly past so fast?!? So, we celebrated our 2nd anniversary tonight with a great dinner at La Fondue in Saratoga.

Alice did a great job with the gift selection by picking up a first edition Atlas Shrugged for me (she even used eBay!). She still hasn’t read the copy I gave her after our first date but at least she knows I like it!  ;-)

Sunday

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Had a fun brunch with a few folks and then pretty much crashed all afternoon. Man, I think my body is moving to sabbatical mode faster than my brain.

So, not much happened today. I did get warcraft fully reinstalled on the old PC so there will be some of that in the near future.

OK… a few things I liked about Saturday

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

Woo hoo… quite an “active” day:

  • Got twitter hooked up to gtalk and also to the Twitter Notifier plugin for Firefox
  • MTV is bringing the Las Vegas Reunion out on Wednesday and they aired the casting show today
  • Got some naps in :-)
  • Went to Danny’s dinner party and hung out with some fun folks
  • Reactivated my Warcraft account… looks like sabbatical is moving into high gear!

Fascinating thoughts about Google

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

I was reading a Twitter message from Scobelizer about Google’s developer day and then clicked over to his blog where he had an interesting post in response to a Robert Cringely article. Below are the two articles for you to read if you want:

Robert Cringely: The Final Days of Google: It is going to be an inside job. 

Scobelizer: Googlers going to do themselves in?

I liked both but I think I fall someplace in the center. I think people probably aren’t leaving Google right now but it is only a matter of time. The stock is still high but not moving a ton. The true entrepreneurs will flock to a place like this that encourages creativity but ultimately they will want to move out from the big company and try their own hand at running a business.

I also think there are only so many ideas that a company will spin out or develop in an way that can be interesting to an entrepreneur. From my experience, it is generally the business people that benefit from these kinds of micro-businesses (not sure if that is the right term- I’m trying to call out relatively autonomous groups or companies inside bigger companies so if there is a better term, let me know). Business people want the thrill of being having General Manager on their business card but to the technology folks they generally only benefit if funding or freedom follows.  

Ending work and starting sabbatical

Friday, May 25th, 2007

eBay has a policy where an employee that works for 5 years gets a month off. Since my FairMarket time counts I just passed my 9 year anniversary and I’m eligible for time off! I haven’t really taken any amount of time off since Alice and I went to Bermuda years and years ago. This is going to be a “tough” (first world definition of the word that is) transition.

Well, I wrapped up the day at work and headed to the Outback for drinks with friends. It is sooooo odd to try to imagine not going to work for over a month. I still need to make plans and figure out what I want to do but that will come tomorrow. For now, I’m going to hang out and just relax and NOT log into email.

Wish me well!

Password protected posts

Friday, May 25th, 2007

I’ve protected a few posts with passwords and will do some more as this month goes along. If you want to read these posts, ping me and I’ll send you the password.

NBC’s “Age of Love”

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Wow… a new kind of craziness. The trailer says it all so click here to see.

Office Space

Monday, May 21st, 2007

Was watching Office Space on DVD during the flight home and here are a few of the things / quotes that caught my eye:

Peter: “So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that’s on the worst day of my life.”

Peter: “Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.”

Got Junk, fajitas and the flight back

Monday, May 21st, 2007

Today was the wrap up of the cleaning effort and the hauling away of my junk from Grandfather’s. We had the “got junk” folks stop bye and make it all go away. It was exactly what I had hoped… made a call and the rest was easy.

And again I got to eat some of the best fajitas ever. Thank you Border Cafe for being as good as I remember! 

Then I made my way down to the airport and hours later I was in California and having dinner with Alice at A Bellagio. Nice to be home.