Or – do you know one?  Gold Systems is looking for one.  Terry Gold writes eloquently about what he’s looking for.  He’s also looking for experienced support engineers and a director of product management. 

If you are interested, you can learn more about what Gold Systems is up to from this Microsoft Case Study on Gold Systems IVR Solution for ServiceMagic based on Microsoft Speech Server.

I’m not a huge fan of Christmas lights (see my Christmas vs. Chanukah post).  However, last night at our holiday party Ross turned me on to the most amazing Christmas light show that I’ve ever seen (and – having grown up in Dallas, I was subject – against my will – to some doozies).  This is less “Christmas light” than it is “technology / music / light tour de force with a mild Christmas theme.)   Awesome.  (Note: for some reason it’s only working correctly in IE this morning so if you are a Firefox user and getting a screen full of gunk, try IE).

Reading today’s episode of hackoff.com gave me the chills.  Tom has deeply woven the events of 9/11 in his story as Chapter 10 happens on 9/11 (and several of the main characters are in the World Trade Center South Tower at the time.) 

While I wasn’t in either tower on 9/11, I was in Manhattan having taken a red eye from San Francisco the night before.  I got to my hotel (The Benjamin) at about 7am and went to sleep to get a little more rest before my 10am meeting.  I woke up at 9:15 (to the clock radio – I remember it vividly – it was a fancy Bose clock radio like the one I had at the time in my bedroom at home) to an announcer saying that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane and was on fire.  At first I thought it was a joke (I was completely zoned out from the red eye and generally tired from the events of the previous five years) so I got up and went to the bathroom as though nothing spectacular was occurring.  A few minutes later, when I walked back into the bedroom, the discussion on the radio has turned to panic, so I did something I never do – I turned on the TV in the hotel room.  I sat there for the next 30 minutes in a trance as I watched the towers fall.

My story is a much longer one, but as I read through George Harcourt’s email to his wife Janet, all I could think about was the phone call I got from Amy on her way to the airport (DIA) to fly to New York to spend the week with me.  She was in tears because no one knew what was going on and I hadn’t been answering my phone (I’d shut it off while I was sleeping).  I assured her that I was fine and safe in the hotel, that I had no clue what was going on, but she should go back home, not come to New York, and I’d call her as soon as I knew what was up.  That was the last phone call I was able to make the entire day, but I fired up my computer, connected to the hotel Internet, and remarkably was able to email and IM all day long.

The chills came from the story, knowing that Tom experienced something powerful that day, and unexpectedly remembering pieces of it.  There was no need to suspend disbelief on this one – Tom is really showing his skills as a writer.

I’m sure I have to pay someone to put this up on my blog legally. 

Thanks njschock – nice use of the for:bfeld del.icio.us tag.

Eric Olson has another VentureWeek podcast up – this time with me, Dave Hornik of August Capital, and Mike Arrington of TechCrunch.  We discuss the important things of 2005, at least to our little insular universe.

For those of you that requested visual confirmation of me posing as Jack Bauer, following are the photos for the t-shirts that Galanos made for my 40th birthday.

I love the Beatles.  I love Brian Ibbott’s Coverville podcast.  I love running.  I set out to do 60 minutes in Atherton early this morning and started listening to Coverville 149: The 2nd Annual Beatles Thanksgiving Double Shot on my iPod Shuffle.  90 minutes later I had one of my best runs of the year.  I was late to my first meeting (sorry Greg) but it was worth it.  If you are a Beatles fan, don’t miss this one.

Since FeedBurner and Technorati started off their announcements this week with cooking metaphors, I thought I’d continue the trend.  Three of my four RSS-related investments made announcements this week about products and/or customers.

FeedBurner announced a  new service called FeedFlare.   Jennifer Aniston didn’t wear enough Flair in Office Space, but she would have been fine if she had used FeedFlare.  At the bottom of my feed, you’ll now see options to email this post to a friend, email me, see the Technorati links to the post, tag the post with del.icio.us, and see any del.icio.us tags that have already associated with the post. This was trivial to set up – a couple of clicks within my FeedBurner setup page and I automagically had Flare. FeedFlare is based on an open-API so expect lots of new Flare to quickly appear.  Fred Wilson nails it with his description. 

FeedBurner also announced that Reuters has chosen it to manage its RSS feeds.  Major publisher, major market validation.

Technorati announced the Technorati Kitchen.  Niall Kennedy explains why this is “The Kitchen” instead of “Beta” (Beta feels so “day old bread”, doesn’t it?).  First up – Explore.  Think of it as a newspaper front page for any subject – find out what bloggers are saying right now on any topic, organized by how many links their posts are getting.

NewsGator announced that the NewsGator Hosted Solution has been chosen by Newsweek and MacWorld.  Brent Simmons – the creator of NetNewsWire – talks about why he’s excited about the MacWorld deal.

All in all, a tasty day.

This just in from Matt Blumberg, a CEO of one of my portfolio companies that is enjoying pondering what to do about 409A.

She’s real fine?
Or tile cleaning fluid?
No – IRS mess.