Rion Morgenstern, my co-worker, ran the Rock & Roll Marathon yesterday. He’s so hard core he decided running the marathon wasn’t enough of a challenge for him and instead he would tumble the entire 26.2 miles.
Jokes aside, this is Rion taking a tumble at the halfway point of the marathon. Apparently he was really excited to see his co-worker Sarah.
NOTE: No Rions were injured in the making of this blog post. Rion did finish this marathon making it his first. š WAY TO GO RION!!!!
Knowing my affinity for burritos, Rion has been recommending Lucha Libre. I finally had a chance to sample the fare. The California Burrito was great, the salsas excellent and the decor unforgettable.
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The in-laws are visiting from Duluth, MN. My father-in-law is attending a conference and they’re staying at Paradise Point. We spent the day at the beach and pool. Unfortunately, it was unusually cold and overcast in San Diego today. We still had a wonderful time. I was able to grind through a few hundred emails that had piled up form last week’s travelling and spend time with the kids too. Ashby is so much fun.
This kid is hilarious! She’s only three and she is smart well beyond her years. Her wicked intelligence and amazing sense of humor aside she is scared of homeless people. Not a bad thing really; although, I think Tara has over done it a bit. In Tara’s defense, there are a lot of homeless people in San Diego. Anyway, we’re at the pool and Ashby wants to use the restroom, but she’s concerned and asks: ‘is it clean’. She is somewhat discerning when it comes to bathroom cleanliness and was assessing whether she should use the bathroom nearby or wait to use the one in the room. Smart, right? š So, I told Ashby these bathrooms were clean because they make homeless people clean them at this resort. LOL. She thought that was hilarious. Of course, she totally knew I was full of it.
In other news. My body has healed remarkably fast from my recent bicycle mishap. Case in point, the day of the accident:
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Look at me here about a week later:
Everyone, including myself, is amazed at how quickly I’ve healed. I believe the rapidity of my convalescence is due in large part to taking Vitamin E. I started taking it when I was running and since I damaged my knee I’ve just kept on taking it, most days. Today, I’ve had almost two weeks of healing and most of the road rash is gone. Gone from my face at least. Alas, I do have two hard nodules under my skin. One is on my chin and the other on my right cheek. They’re noticeable if you know what you’re looking for. If I were clean shaven the one on my chin would definitely be noticeable. Hopefully these too will heal.
Happy Mothers’ Day Tara. We all ā¤ you very much.
According to the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) May is National Bike Month. Moreover, Bike to work week (#B2WW) is May 11-15 with National Bike to Work Day (#B2WD) being Friday May 15. Never heard of any of this? Neither had I. Nor had I heard LAB, but you can follow them on Twitter at @BikeLeague. I first learned of B2WD when I was driving to REI yesterday and spotted a highway traffic sign that announced the event. I was going to REI to return a shirt. I left with a brand new bike for Ashby.
A little context first. Ashby has been asking for her first big girl bike for a couple weeks now. She brought it up yesterday morning and the day before. I was putting off making the purchase because Tara and I have so many damn medical bills from Roe being born, plus property taxes and I need to fix my bike from my recent accident because I rely on it for transportation to work ; so, I’ve been trying not to spend any money. At REI Ashby immediately spied a purple and pink bicycle and ran to it. She was smitten. She had been asking for a purple and pink bike. “Daddy, it’s a purple and pink big girl bike!!” Wow, what now? Like I said, I did not want to spend any money. I tried to talk my way out of it, but she was so damn excited! I relented. Thankfully all bikes at REI are 15% until May 10 and I have an outstanding 20% off any one item for being an REI co-op member that I hadn’t used, which would expire May 10 anyway. $107 later I was leaving with Ashby’s big girl bike and new bike helmet. Not bad! I thought it was going to cost much more.
As for B2WW, what a great idea! On May 15 San Diego RideLink is actively involved in making the event a success. They are asking participants to register now. Already a record number of participants with 5,200 riders have registered.Ā RideLink is providing many resources including: a getting started guide, bicycle route maps, pit stops with free water and snacks (see map ), and you can ride FREE on MTS and NCTD services, which can accommodate bicycles.
Enjoy Bike to Work Week and hopefully I’ll see some of you on the road on, at least, May 15. I’ll be the guy with road rash. š
photo by jenzwick via flickrI can’t seem to find a task list that works for me. I’m probably not alone, but I have a running task list of thirty to fifty items. These are work and pe rsonal things I’ve got to get done. I also write down at least a few ideas a week that inspire me orare things I want to write about, blog about, business thoughts, things to do for the family, etc…. I’ve tried Remember The Milk, Moleskines, paper, iPhone apps, MindTouch pages and more. The problem with digital solutions is I don’t have them with me wherever I go. Even when I do it’s tedious to capture tasks digitally. On the other hand I always lose paper based solutions. Most recently I had a paper “pocketmod” that was working really well for me. I kept it in my wallet. Surely I couldn’t lose this! I did. š¦
I wonder what people think of of my task lists and Moleskines. I suspect some of those I’ve lost have been found. I’ve written down some things that surely would appear crazy to someone reading them without context. Or perhaps even with context. I recall one such item I captured was a series of ideas Steve and I tossed back and forth to pass the time when we were talking to a lot of venture capitalists. We would come up with fictional scenarios that we found hysterical. I wrote them down because I had a dream of writing them into a story or even living out the scenarios in real life at a time that it wouldn’t be damning to my career. I’ll share a sample scenario to give you the flavor. Whenever you meet with a VC you’re always lead into the conference room in advance of the partners you’re meeting. The conference room always has a white board in it. Most often these are hidden in a cabinet. One of our fictional scenarios consisted of a giant phallus drawing on the white board. There were several variations of this. In one it would be revealed during the presentation. There are a couple ways you could play this out. You could act shocked, feign anger and disgust. Or, you could just ignore it and work around it on the white board. Perhaps you could treat it as an unveiling and have it as a primary signpost of the presentation. A modified version of this had the drawing on the white board, cabinet open with your back to it. In this one you could act as though you never saw it. Another variation, and this is really my favorite because I’ve unintentionally done this before, included a phallus emerging from a diagram as part of the presentation. I think I had seen the movie Superbad around the time we had dreamt this series up. These ideas were decidedly off color, but they weren’t all related to phalli. It just so happens the few I remember are. Alas, the others are likely lost forever as I lost the Moleskine and so too did I lose the more than a dozen or so silly scenarios like this.
I always write my name and email in my Moleskines and notebooks, but I’ve never had anyone return one to me. Maybe it has something to do with the content. Well, if you have a no fail way of managing tasks please feel free to share.
San Diego has a plethora of Farmers Markets. It’s really wonderful. I usually go to the Hillcrest Farmers Market on Sundays, which is open between 9am and 2pm (rain or shine). This market is currently voted the best Farmers Market in San Diego. It really is amazing and has an impressive diversity of vendors. However, the last two weekends I’ve visited the Little Italy Farmers Market. Today the whole family went along with me. While the Hillcrest Market is located at the DMV the Little Italy market is in a much more scenic and beautiful location. The latter isn’t as large and isn’t as diverse, but it’s a lot easier to park and the location is really scenic. The Little Italy market is open on Saturdays between 9am and 1:30pm. As such you could make both markets in the same weekend.
I’ve been told by several parents the largest and best Farmers Market is in Ocean Beach. This is open on Wednesday from 4pm-7pm (4pm-8pm in summer). I haven’t been, but I hear it’s great for kids because it has clowns, balloon animals, etc….
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Mozilla Labs has some interesting projects. Personas is one such project. It’s been around for a couple years now, but I just became aware of it today (RWW). My browser skin: 
I ā¤ Robots.
A web development and design firm has asked to purchase the right to use one of my photographs commercially. This is the photo in question:
I took it at the Stephen Birch Aquarium in La Jolla. This is flattering. I’ve never had anyone want to buy one of my photos. Although, I have had my photos used in several online publications including, most notably, The Wall Street Journal. I license all my images under Creative Commons, Attribution-Share-alike.
I suppose I should donate the money to the aquarium. I have no idea how much to charge. Thoughts? I do not know how they’ll be using the image. I’ve asked for clarification.
I traveled to San Francisco today for a few meetings. Primarily I was going to visit Larry Augustin. Larry is a professional adviser and is someone I have the highest respect for in business and technology. He’s also just a wonderful down to earth guy who is very generous with his time. IĀ have not written about Larry previously, but he has had a significant impact on the success of my business. I could go on and on about how great Larry is, but I’ll save that for another post on another day. Anyway, Larry had to back out of our meeting last minute due to some pressing business of his own. This meant my day was far less productive than I desired, but I did have a valuable meeting with a gentleman named Lars. Lars is a seasoned open source VP of Sales that recently left a prominent open source CRM vendor for an open source BI software company. In this meeting I benefited from having our new MT VP of Sales, Mark, pick Lars’ brain. Mark and me left with some valuable insights and I was gladdened to have made the acquaintance of such an accomplished and intelligent person. Thanks Lars, you single-handedly made the trip worthwhile. š
On the flight home to San Diego the Captain roused me from my power nap with an announcement over the loud speaker about the Santa Barbara fires. I snapped a couple photos:
In the event the photos don’t convey it, the fires looked really bad. The smoke plume traveled out to sea and seemed to go on forever over the Pacific. The smoke was visible for the remainder of the flight to San Diego.
Aaron Fulkerson 