Take me out to the opera….

Kudos to the Giants and San Francisco Opera for putting on opera at the ballpark last week.  There’s something to be said for enjoying garlic fries and a beer while watching Samson and Delilah. 


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It was also neat to see the full moon rising above the outfield.  My camera phone photo doesn’t do it justice.

Good career advice from Sen. Craig

Here’s a little tip for your career thanks to Sen. Craig of the infamous restroom sex scandal.  Don’t speak before you think.  Of course, Sen. Craig is a great example of what NOT to do in this case.

MSNBC has a story about Sen. Craig possibly changing his resignation.  First he pleaded guilty but claimed he was innocent.  Then he resigns effective later this month.  Now he’s reconsidering the resignation.

I wonder what’s next…

Blog hiatus over . . . or is it?

I think I’ve made this claim several times over so we’ll see if it sticks this time around.  I’m not going to have the bandwidth to post daily but I’ll try to get back on the rails with posting at least once per week.

Blogging takes time and since I mostly do this to record my thoughts and make no money on it, it’s not a high priority for me.

Happy Memorial Day

To all those who serve our country and their families, thanks.

Only in Milwaukee: Harley Hearse

Boing Boing points to a Milwaukee Journal article about a Harley hearse.  Only in Milwaukee.

Happy 70th!

The Golden Gate Bridge turned 70 today.  I remember a brochure my dad found from my grandparents’ house.  They drove out to California on their honeymoon at the time that the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate bridge were being built.  I’m sure that it was built in less time than it took to fight court injunctions and hearings for the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge.

Dave Brubeck at Masonic Auditorium

(Warning: retroblog post)


Tonight I saw Dave Brubeck at Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco.  Dave is one of the jazz greats and I have always wanted to see him perform live.  As a drummer, his Time Out album is one of those things you must own.  For those who don’t know the album, it features non-traditional time signatures and its hit, Take Five, was in the background on The Sopranos the week before.  If you don’t know Take Five, well, you’re missing out.  At any rate, there were two standouts in the evening.  The first was the drum solo by Randy Jones.  I’m not sure how old he is but the guy is much older than I am and he really smoked.  Drum solos are oftentimes sources of cheap applause but this guy’s solo was unbelievable and deserved the loud applause it got.  He fell into this theme and would keep coming back to it, building and layering each time.


Of course, the second highlight was Dave Brubeck.  There are few living jazz artists left with the cultural impact he has had.  According to Wikipedia he is now 86 but the amount of life he had onstage defied his age.  During the performance he was calling out to the other band members while comping, laughing and having a great time in general.  His chops seemed as good as they ever have been.  He had a few words for the audience and you could witness his age in his speech and in his cadence as we walked across the stage.


One other minor funny thing was a moment when the band leader for the big band, featured in the second half of the program, announced a song that incorporated some elements of Count Basie and someone in the audience yelled out “Hell yeah!”  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a shout out for Count Basie.  He’s one bad ass MF.  Jazz is alive!


The whole show was excellent and aside from the musical talent of the performers and historical significance, it was a great testament to the dichotomy of age (an odometer) versus experience (condition of the car).

For the visually-oriented

In my MBA program, I had an organizational behavior professor who loved to draw diagrams.  It seems like he would diagram just about any point he was trying to make.  This article in the Village Voice takes it to a whole new level (but doesn’t take it to the Bay).

On the blog again….

Well, it’s April Fools Day but this isn’t a joke post.  I’ve never been very good about posting to my blog but I’ve decided to make another run at it.  It probably won’t be daily but I’ll get something up here at least once a month.  Now that I’ve got a halfway decent camera in my 3G phone, I might even do a little mobile blogging.  I may also do some cross-posting of stuff around IPTV to a msdn or spaces blog since our global subscriber acquisition rate for services running Microsoft’s IPTV software is ramping rather quickly now.


I’ve got to figure out what I want to do with photos.  I may either use my Windows Live Spaces site for that or I may share some of them out publicly via Orb.

Trends I am watching


  • Prefab green building
  • The rise in the “undeclared / independent” policial party
  • The mobile phone as THE device (phone, email/text, video camera, music/video player, still camera, wallet, display/projector, gps, computer)
  • IP everything
  • Boxed wine
  • More content in smaller chunks
  • China