Skullcandy and Sports Business Radio

Two things that I just had to blog about.

The first is Skullcandy - a company that makes headphones. Anthony just purchased a set of these. They are the full on headphones so that he can listen to good music and hear the full range of sound. He loves them. And the company is really cool. Great styles and some really awesome marketing. Even down to the guarantee that they have for their headphones.

If your product should fail in your lifetime, Skullcandy will replace it free of charge, but that's not all, if your product gets damaged by aggressive music listening, sliding a rail, running into a wall, sky driving, road biking, in fact just about any way (they say this means you were using them as they had hoped you would) Skullcandy will replace the product for a 50% discount from retail.

The second is a podcast that I just LOVE. It is called Sports Business Radio. You can get it from their website or from iTunes. It is totally entertaining and looks at sports from a completely different perspective. Check them out. And check out the clip from an upcoming documentary on Nike that they discussed on the last podcast.


That's it for now:)

After Christmas ... Back to WORK!

It is three days after Christmas. Back to work!!!

FreshBrain is about a month from our Beta release. There is a LOT to do. Just to give you an idea:

• Complete the development of the new freshbrain.org website
• Complete the work with the legal firm to create our Privacy Policy, Website Terms and Conditions, Copyright and IP Policy, Website Usage Policy and the Student Consent form.
  
• Populate the website with Activities, Projects, Tools and Training for the Students
• Find our first set of Advisors
• Create training for the Advisors and train them:)
• Complete background checks on all Advisors
  
• Create an invitation program for Students
• Implement the invitation program - get the first set of students for projects on freshbrain.org
• Market FreshBrain and freshbrain.org in order to get lots of visitors (note that ALL students will be able to do activities, use the tools and use / take training - but only those with an invitation will be able to do projects)

All the while we need to be building our pipeline for donations and increasing the number of partners that we are working with.

Of course once we get the Beta release out, we will take a day and get back to it. We need to make an update to the site no later than March and then provide new features no later than June!

Merry Christmas!!

Here is my Christmas 2007 slide show!



Hope you enjoy.

Thanksgiving Weekend Update

I am doing well in updating my freshbrain blog. Not as good with this one. Here is a QUICK list and a couple pictures:)

• Great progress with freshbrain.org and our Button & Icon design contest. We have about 100 entries. We have had over 2300 people visit the site. Getting ready to launch another contest, this time video in about a week.
• Both Nick and Anthony have finished their soccer seasons. Anthony also finished football. Now Anthony is wrestling and Nick indoor soccer.
• Twisted the crap out of my ankle last weekend paying indoor soccer. Doing well until I tried to step in front of one of the kids and rolled my ankle on his foot.
• While on medical issues ... found out what is wrong with my shoulder. I have a ganglion cyst. Took an MRI to figure out what the problem is. Not sure of the next step yet, but likely will go straight for surgery.
• Pacific Grove for Thanksgiving. Haven't been there in WAY too long. Enjoyed great weather. Took a long walk at Point Lobos. Mountain biked at Fort Ord. Played frisbee golf in Monterey. Hung out!

Talk to you soon:)

Sooooo Much Happening:)

With everything going on with FreshBrain - and the rest of life in general, haven't managed to get to updating my blog. I have updated my freshbrain blog a number of times. Please check it out. And check out the Preview Release of freshbrain.org!

So what has been happening lately. Here goes.

• I went on the yearly guys golf trip - this year to Myrtle Beach. The golf was awesome. The weather held out and was in the 80's. And I played really well (won most of my bets:))
• Nick has been playing soccer and just had a Halloween soccer tournament last weekend. Nick played well and the team is getting better and better.
  
• Anthony continues to play both football and soccer. No idea how he keeps up most often with two games on the weekend! The team has the best record in years.
• Even the week nights seem to be full. We went to the Color Purple in San Francisco earlier this week. GREAT PLAY!
• And of course this weekend was Halloween. Nick and his buddies dressed up in suites. Nick was the star and the other guys were his body guards.
  

And to end this blog entry ... one of my favorite cartoons growing up. Julie and the boys have heard me say this so many times, but they don't remember the cartoon the way I do:)

"Drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome; time for zis one to come home."

Quick Weekend Update

This weekend was winter come early. We had been preparing for the first Lynbrook varsity football team dinner at our house with swimming, the game itself, Nick's soccer game, Anthony's soccer game, my bike ride and Julie's art crawl - and it was suppose to RAIN!


Well, it all came off ok:) I only have pictures from the dinner and a short highlight video from the game:)



Nick's team really played well. No goals for either team. There were lots of chances but they just couldn't find the back of the net. Nick did get a chance to play some forward and loved it. We will see if he starts to play more there as the season goes on.

Both Julie and I got our activities in as well. And we managed to sneak out for a date - to see Bourne Ultimatum and have a quick dinner!!

Friday night

Friday night it was late
I was walking you home
We got down to the gate
And I was dreaming of the night
Would it turn out right?

How to tell you boy, oo
I want to build my world around you, yeh
Wanna tell you that it's true
I wanna to make you understand
I'm talking about a lifetime plan

Not at all sure why this came to mind. Well, maybe I am. What a week. A couple of fun and interesting events.

• Met up with Chris Iglesias (a high school football buddy) in San Francisco. He has responsibility for CityBuild, and project under mayor Newsome. Check out the video. But while this is awesome stuff that he is doing, that isn't the point. We were Reminiscing about high school football. Great memories!

• And tonight we had Anthony's varsity football team over for one of their pre-game team dinners. It was a total blast to have them here and watch them laugh and joke and do what a bunch of guys do together - get stupid. Long story short, they got into a belly flop contest off the diving board for what started out being $20 and ended up at $50 for the winner. We would have done the same (and just for kicks - Anthony won and has the welt to prove it).

• After they left we were hanging out watching football, looking forward to Nick's soccer game tomorrow, then Anthony's football game tomorrow night.

So back to the song. I totally remember high school when this song was popular. Julie was my girl friend. We were having a good time together, talking about being together - building a life long plan. And we are living it! (ok, kind of mushy)

By way of recognizing the artists - the song is Reminiscing by Madison Avenue re-released in our high school days by the Little River Band.

The IRS

I spent more than an hour working with the IRS to clean up an inquiry they sent me.

The all started with a letter from the IRS that said I owed a bunch of taxes from the 2005 tax year - roughly $17k!! When I received this there was a bit of panic. First was the amount, then it was a bit of embarrassment. You see - I do my own taxes, so how could I have screwed up that badly.

I went back through my taxes and found everything that they pointed out as missing with the exception of one item. So I went back, recalculated my taxes after adding this item in, found that I owed roughly $1,000. So I sent them all of the information and a check.

I then received a letter stating that the inquiry was closed. It didn't mention the check that I sent. It just said they closed it.

So I called them to ask what this meant. Did I actually calculate the new amount correctly? That seemed pretty amazing. Or did they decide that I didn't owe them anything? After a long conversation, the person from the IRS said that it looked like I owed $17. So I would either get the amount I sent less $17 or they would forgive the $17 and send me back all of my money. I was suppose to get a check in about two weeks.

About a month passed. I never received a check. So today I called them back to see what happened. The first person I talked to said (after being put on hold a number of times) that they should have sent me a check but it appears that they messed up. She said she would put a note in my file so that the check would be cut and sent. But she said no-one would read the file so she needed to transfer me to Fresno so that they would open the file and proceed with cutting the check. You can imagine wonder about where she was and why I needed to talk to someone in Fresno - but we will ignore that for now.

I then talked to another person at the IRS - this time in Fresno (how would I actually know, and why do I care ...). Anyway she said that they would need to cut a check. She would pass my file along and I should hear something in a couple of weeks. I asked her what I would be getting back. Her answer was, "I don't know." She said she thought that it would be the whole amount plus interest ... I asked her how I would hear back from them. Her answer was, "I don't know." Starting to sound like a Bill Cosby routine. She said she though I would receive a letter. I asked her what the letter would say. She said ... Anyway, seems that case has been handed to AUR Audit Recon. I did find that using google. It is Audit Reconsideration. Kind of the place where things go that got screwed up:)

What was the point of that. Well, not really much. Just kind of amazing. Seems they would be pretty good at this kind of thing. And given everything else that I have been doing with FreshBrain - really a waste of my time. And now I have blogged about it so it cost me even more.

Lynbrook vs Del Mar

The Lynbrook Vikings played their first game of the season yesterday afternoon against Del Mar. We all have high hopes for the team, but the game didn't go as planned. After we scored on an awesome first possession - of 93 yards - the rest of the first half scoring was done by Del Mar and we went into halftime trailing 25-7. We did better in the second half, having two touchdowns called back on penalties and scoring again, but in the end it was not enough. Final score was 31-13.

On the bright side, Anthony got to play a LOT and played really well. He expected to be in on all special teams including his job as long snapper, and he knew he would be in on some offensive plays subbing at fullback. But early in the first half Ryan Tom (an inside linebacker and fullback) got hurt so Anthony played all but a few plays the rest of the way. He carried the ball three times, had a number of tackles and almost blocked an extra point.

So kind of a bittersweet first game. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Cool New Technology

Had to write a quick blog entry based on a couple of things. One is the Apple announcement yesterday about their new iPod lineup. If you haven't seen it, very cool. I think they are on fire and have come out with the best update to a product line that I have seen.

They redesigned the iPod Nano, the iPod Classic and they introduced the iPod Touch. The first two are nice steps forward for existing products. The third is basically an iPhone without the phone capabilities. But they DID include WiFi - which means you can get on the internet wherever there is open WiFi. They of course have a browser, have build in support for YouTube and nice integration with iTunes so that you can download music or video. You have to play the video and check it out. Impressive!!!

The other is the ebook. Amazon will be coming out with a new one. Sony has a fairly new version as well. Maybe this time it will actually catch on. Check out the short story on this from the San Jose Mercury News.

Back From Summer ...

How does that song go. Schools out for summer. Schools is out for ever.

Well, school is back from summer. The boys are back at it (although this is a three day weekend:)). Nick is in 8th grade. Top of the heap, king of the school - and playing soccer at the same time. And Anthony is a Junior with am impossible school schedule, football and soccer as well.

Today was the Anthony's football scrimmage as well as a soccer tournament game. He has one or two soccer games tomorrow as well. Nick has the weekend off having his normal soccer practice last night. Julie and I are just doing normal weekend stuff before we attend a pool party on Monday.

Thought that you might be interested in a few pictures of Anthony from today's scrimmage. He did well. He is playing 1.5 string running back and 2nd string inside linebacker. He also does long snaps on punts and PAT/field goals. And he is on the kickoff and kickoff return teams.

Making a tackle.

Dropping back into coverage.

Carrying the ball.

Hope you enjoy. And keep checking my FreshBrain blog as well Jujuart (Julie's blog). We are both trying to them up weekly.

Good, Bad and Ugly of Podcasting

Seems we are in an interesting transition with podcasts - at least the few that I regularly listen to. A quick scan of my ipod and here is what I have downloaded.

• Adam Curry's Daily SourceCode
• Business Week - Cover Stories
• Buzz Out Loud from CNET
• Kiplinger's Personal Finance
• MacBreak Weekly
• Money-Guy.com
• MP3 Insider from CNET
• PCMag Radio
• PRI's The World: Technology
• The Real Deal from CNET
• This Week in TECH

My all time favorite has been Buzz Out Loud. I really enjoy Tom and Molly. Sorry to see Veronica go, but the show is still pretty good.

I was starting to really like Adam Curry's Daily SourceCode show, but it has gone over the top with its advertising. These shows are addicting - typically based on the host and their guests as much as the content. But as these are businesses, sometimes finances win out. Adam has lost his way to the big corporate buck. The final nail seemed to be set with a back to school deal that they cut with Kmart (didn't even know that Kmart was in the UK, and I tuned it out so much that I even forgot who they were advertising ...). In any case, he used his daughter to help sell online shopping at Kmart. They must have spend 15 minutes or more talking about the cool things that you can get there. When they finally cut away from this segment they went to an advertisement. I switched over to another podcast.

To make a long story short. The same thing is happening to another podcast - The Money Guy. He has also given in to more and more advertising, mostly of himself. Both of these are coming off my ipod. Time to find other podcasts that find a better balance between interesting content and a reasonable amount of advertising.

There are still a few. I think that This Week in TECH is doing ok. They have one major advertiser and they do include it, but then they are done and the rest of the show is pure.

So for what it is worth - one man's view on this. Sorry - no links. If you are interested in any of these, check out iTunes. Not an advertisement, but that is where I download mine from.

Donner Party:)

We just returned from a couple of a really nice vacations.

The first was up at Serene Lakes near Donner (Lake Tahoe). We stayed for close to a week in a cabin there. What a great place. The word Serene really describes it well. A beautiful lake with a fun beach, paddle boat and canoe rentals, a lodge and restaurant, and cabins surrounding it.

We took a great ride on the Flume trail. This ride is gorgeous. There is quite a climb (maybe 4 miles) from Spooner lake up to and around Marlette lake. Then on the Flume trail. This is a narrow and fairly flat trail that runs along a part of an old flume (to transport logs). It is way way up on the mountain above Lake Tahoe. The views are absolutely amazing. We then rode down and took a car that we had dropped off earlier back to Spooner lake.

We also took a number of other road bike rides around the area. The most interesting was from the cabin down to and around Donner lake and back. There is a pretty significant hill that we first went down and then back up that went from Donner Ski Ranch to the lake. Amazing views and the weather was great!

While there we also went to the beach at Serene Lake and Sand Harbor at Lake Tahoe, went to a concert in Truckee, did some shopping, took a hike and a couple of walks, and even relaxed and did nothing:)

Anthony Sand Soccer

Anthony's team (the Strikers) played a sand soccer tournament this weekend. What a great event and what an amazing weekend in Santa Cruz. It was clear, warm but not too warm, and a very happening place to be!! We had to be there on Saturday by 10:30 to sign in. The first game was at 1:50 and the second at 5:10. They managed to win both games and Anthony played really really well.


I fit in a bike ride between checkin and the first game. I did about 35 miles down the coast past Capitola and Rio Del Mar before turning around and riding back.

Then this morning we had to get to the beach by 8! It was again a beautiful day. No fog and warm enough at 8 to go without a sweatshirt.

The game didn't go as well this time. It was the semi-finals and we played a really strong team. But the Strikers worked hard throughout!

Yosemite

Or as Nick would say ... Yo Smity!


We just got back from a quick two day trip to Yosemite. We left at 6am on Wednesday and got home tonight (Thursday) at about 8:30pm. The drive from Yosemite Valley is roughly 4 hours. Long but tolerable.

We stayed just outside the park at a place called Americas Best Value Inn!! It was ok, reasonably priced and given that we made the reservations pretty late - AVAILABLE! Given how large the park is - the drive from the hotel was about an hour. Fifteen minutes to the park entrance and then another forty-five to the valley.


We decided to walk around the valley on the first day and take a bunch of pictures. In total, we must have walked for about four hours. We saw all of the spectacular sites that you would expect such as Yosemite Falls, El Capitan (where we could see climbers!) and Half Dome.

We then checked out the visitors center, Ansel Adams gallery, the theater (where both Julie and I fell asleep), the stores and Yosemite Lodge. We then ate at the Mountain Room (at Yosemite Lodge) where we had an awesome view of the mountains through their wall of windows.

After that we made our way to the Curry Village. We got some coffee and ice cream and checked out this area. Took the shuttle back to our car and drove to the hotel.

The next morning we ate at a small place close to the hotel and were back in the valley in time for the bus that Nick and I took to the Glacier Point. This was about an hour and a half ride to over 8000 feet where we departed for a 8.5 mile hike. At the same time Julie went to an art class where she would do some water color painting and sketching.


The hike that Nick and I took allow us to see great views of the mountains as well as four falls: Illiluoette; Bridal Veil; Nevada; and Vernal. Because of where we started, it was mostly down hill, with the exception of at least one up hill climb of a bit more than a mile. We enjoyed our lunch with our feet dangling in the river feeding Nevada calls. As Nick said - best place in the WORLD to have lunch:)


We got back to the bottom at around 3:30, met up with Julie who had been sketching, painting and doing a bit of shopping since we left. We grabbed some food, headed to the car and were on our way by 4:30.

Notice no Anthony in the pictures. He stayed home to attend practice (check out my last blog entry).

Anthony Football - Passing League

Just a quick entry with some pictures from Anthony's passing league.


The coach with some skill position folks and a shot of Anthony dropping back into coverage playing linebacker.

Big Thanks!!

Thanks to a bunch of folks who worked for me in my last job (ok, that was only a few days ago:)) - I now have the coolest gps watch in the world!! It is a Garmin 305. Here is a picture of it. I have had it for a few days now and have used it twice. Once for a mountain bike ride and once for a run.
The picture shows a pretty killer mountain bike ride. The graph shows distance along the bottom, the grey line is altitude and the red line is heart rate. There are other things that you can show instead, such as speed. And you can have time along the bottom of the graph. You can also set up things like laps where you compare yourself to your goal. Or you can race yourself when you do the same route.


I plan to use this for every road, mountain or run. This will be a great way to track my workouts and see how I am progressing. Thanks!!

Farting Around :)

I am half on vacation, half working on FreshBrain. It is kind of hard telling which is which. For example, right now I am playing with a new and interesting site called Gizmoz.com. I created this highly intelligent widget. I also created a bunch of other recordings. I think that if you search for freshbrain, you will find them. Not sure that they are actually worth the effort.

Get your own at Gizmoz.com

We are also going to Stanford tomorrow to check out the Senior Project Software Faire, where we hope to see what college students are doing for their senior project and maybe get some insight into where we should be taking FreshBrain. We may also do some recruiting:)

And later this week we will be meeting with a graphic design company who sounds willing to do some pro bono work for FreshBrain.

All of this wrapped around starting up with a personal trainer, getting some runs and bike rides in and spending more time with Julie and the boys:)

FreshBrain and Time Off

As I mentioned in my last blog entry - my current job is winding down. Actually, it really has wound down this week. The announcement of the merge of my organization into my peer VPs organization should be going out tomorrow. My team all knows what is happening, who they will be working for and when the announcement will take place.

As a result, I have cleared my calendar and I am beginning my new career - as head of FreshBrain. But since it has been almost 19 years since I joined Sun, I want to take some time off and do a bunch of stuff that I have not had time to lately. Here is a snipit from that list:)

• Get in shape. This amounts to at least more exercise and a personal trainer. What is my goal you might ask ... well, don't really have one. Just want to be able to ride up highway 9 without standing, do a triathlon and maybe the Alcatraz swim. This list could definitely change.

• See the sights. Not sure what the list will look like ultimately, but Yosemite (scheduled) and the Palace of Fine Arts are a couple of examples.

• Read a few books. I have been working on David Baldacci's "The Hour Game" for quite a while now. Need to finish it and get on with a few others.

• Play golf. I haven't done much of this in a while ...

• Spend time with Nick and Anthony. I will be playing golf with Nick. Anthony and I will definitely play some catch. More stuff to be planned.

• Do stuff with Julie. Sightseeing is one example. Workouts. Walks.

• Home projects. I have a short list. Might just keep it that way.

• Vacations. We are going to Tahoe with my mom and Curt as well as my brother Todd, Chris, Cooper and Anea. And we will be going houseboating with the Jacobsens.

• Take pictures with my new camera. Lots of opportunities already mentioned.
  

Sounds like a great summer!

Winding Down ... Ramping Up

This is my 19th year at Sun. I was all ready to leave to start a nonprofit when the most amazing thing happened. Sun (Jonathan our CEO) asked me to stay on as an employee and follow my dream. Why would Sun do this you ask ... well, because it is a good cause and a good thing for Sun. I will expose a large audience of students to Sun and Sun technology. The payoff for Sun will be down the road when these kids grow up and run their own businesses.

But this entry is not about the nonprofit. Take a look at the new blog that I created on FreshBrain.

This is all about timing and changing of my career. I am down to the last week or so of my old job. I will be traveling down to Monrovia next week to meet with my folks for the last 1:1. It will be my last staff meeting. And by the end of the week, we will announce the new organization.

I plan to take about 6 weeks of vacation over June and July. The list of things that I want do do during this time is already growing:) I plan to play some golf with Nick. Get in shape for a triathlon. Do a few house projects. And then get into FreshBrain full bore:)