Photo evidence of my encounter with Vai

I put the remaining pictures of my day with Vai up. It's an annual ritual to go see him if he's touring once a year. These pics are all from Sept. 30th at Birchmere in Alexandria, VA.

Should I be worried?

From the September 17, 2007 issue of Fortune magazine.

Virginia
There are no Fastest-Growing Companies in this state.

Letter of Apology

Dear VA plate JPX-2457,

When you passed me a few days ago, heading straight in the right-turn only lane, I thought to myself, "there goes another inconsiderate driver". I remember wondering if you failed to understand what the big white right pointing arrow and the huge lettered "ONLY" markings in the road were for. I can see how one could miss the signs approaching the intersection about the right lane with all of that traffic sitting idle in the straight lane. It must have been distracting as at your speed you would have been trying to avoid hitting the stopped cars in the road.

For thinking these thoughts I want to apologize, I now realize I jumped to a hasty first impression. After witnessing you pass the 15 or so cars all patiently waiting their turn in the straight lane again this morning, and barreling down the right turn only lane, I realized you must have a special license that grants you these privileges. It was so foolish of me to lump you into the same category as other people who have no regard for safety on our roads.

Obviously your important and critical position at work makes it imperative that you arrive promptly, with no time lost waiting in traffic with the "common" folk. I'd like to know how you qualify for the type of license that allows you to disregard the "regular" rules of the road? I'm hoping I might qualify too. I could use the extra few minutes in the office to write my creative blog posts, get an extra cup of coffee, or talk to office mates about some fantasy football.

I'd also like to know what other privileges this special license affords you. I already witnessed the speeding and tailgating that you demonstrated further after rolling through the stop sign. Those are good perks for those cases were you get trapped behind those pesky law abiding citizens. I did notice you used your blinker just before your abrupt lane changes, is this a requirement, or were you going for some style points? I'd think signaling your intentions to others should be well below your stature with this special license.

I'd specifically like to know if this licenses allow you to turn right-on-red even when the intersection is posted against that ability. Or better yet, can you make the right-on-red turn from the center lane? On my way to work I could use that clause to cut out a whole light cycle I think.

I'm prepared to waive my personal safety and the safety of others if that is required on this special license application. I can't wait to hear back from you on how to proceed. In the meantime, I'll be watching for you to see what other perks you have, as I'm sure there must be some other options available to you.

Thank you, and again, sorry for thinking those harsh thoughts the other day.

Csangos

The end of summer is upon us

frog15
Originally uploaded by yzrm1

This dude totally has the right idea.

Well I'm way behind in my master plan to kick of the BoD. Not for a lack of participation, but just because it's hard to get myself enough inertia to stick with it. I'm still moving forward with the topic (I'm being elusive on purpose here, as there just may be people who read my posts that shouldn't know the topic just yet.)

Don't abandon all hope, ye readers, I'll get back to this brilliant idea shortly.

Last.fm and BoD update

If you take a peek over on the right side of my blog you'll see an update playlist from Last.fm. I was using an RSS feed to populate this until this morning when I switched it to this Last.fm supplied widget. If you haven't played with Last.fm yet, I'd advise you to do so. If you like music half as much as I do, you'll enjoy the ease of which you can hear tons of stuff you didn't know existed and discover some great things to listen to.

On a separate note, I've received 3 positive responses back to my BoD invitations. Now that I have my motley crew assembled I need to give them some direction. I'll be back when I've completed that.

Baseball conversation with a 7 year old

This evening as I put my oldest daughter to bed we talked a bit about baseball and softball. I asked her what a home run was. You might expect her reply to be a simple definition of a common baseball term. Instead I was reminded that her experiences and understanding of the world is something I get to help shape. I find I can take as much delight in explaining the details of a sporting event or watching her participate as I did when I was a kid participating in them myself.

Below is her definition of a home run:

It's when you hit the ball so hard that you can run around all of the bases. I think you get 1 point for each base you touch. If you make it to home plate you get to bat again. But I'm not sure, I don't know that much about baseball.

I have a feeling we'll be having more of these talks...

I need a Personal Board of Directors

I think there is some benefit in building a close-knit, small group of advisers to help make informed, logical, and non-emotional decisions. I've been thinking about this idea for a while now, and I'm going to send off an email to a few friends to see if they would be interested in conducting an experiment of this sort.

The questions to answer are:

• If I ran my life like you run a business, could the structured approach produce better results than I could make on my own?
• Expanding on the 2 heads are better than 1, could I gain valuable insight from trusted friends who have a different, unique perspective than I?
• What subjects would be off-limits? (I would prefer these guys remain my friends after this experiment)
• How much personal information do I want to share, anyway?

Here are my ideas on building this team so far:

1. The Boards (BoD) goal will be to review status reports and provide guidance on the subject at hand.
2. Reports to the BoD need to be detailed but brief. This should be a low volume of material to maximize the time they spend, and hopefully improve the likelihood of receiving data back.
3. You have to compensate the BoD for their efforts. (Ex. Guys weekend in Myrtle Beach or something)

I need to work up the format of the status report, and provide some synopsis of what I hope to get out of each topic. I've got a perfect test case in mind for the experiment, let's see if I can find 3 takers to kick of my BoD.

I'll report back with my progress.