Just joking.  But given that it was 70 degrees in Boston this weekend and it took me two hoursto dig my car out to get into the office today, the thought cross my mind (several times.)  The weather here is completely fubared.

We had a hurricane in our canyon in Eldorado Springs last night.  Seriously.  The winds topped 115 mph at 2am (that would be a category 3 hurricane for those of you following along at home.)  Amy and I were pretty certain that we were going to end up in Kansas last night when we went to bed.  We have a sculpture just outside our bedroom window called “The Vistors” – they are giant rocks on the top of 8 foot plus poles.  I dreamed that one of them was blown through our bedroom window (floor to ceiling) last night.  Thankfully, it was just a dream.

I woke up at 5am to no Internet (thanks Qwest.).  At 7:30am, I got in my car to drive to the office (it’s a 15 minute drive on a bad day.)  The main part of our road was completely windblown – it was mostly gravel – which was weird.  I was pondering where all the snow had blown to as I went down the road and made the sharp left turn that heads down to our main road.  The car abruptly stopped as I high centered myself in a two foot snow drift.  Stuck.  Completely.  Going nowhere.

I got out and marched back to the house.  Fortunately, my neighbors were coming down with snow shovels to dig out the road.  I grabbed my snow showed and the three of us proceeds to spend the next 90 minutes shoveling 4000 cubic feet of snow.  We managed to get my car down (after high centering it one more time.)  I arrived at the office soaking wet (from snow and sweat) around 10am.

At least I got a good workout today.  Packed snow (and you could make a nice igloo out of this stuff) is 481 kg / cubic meter.  According to Google, this is 30.027849 pound / cubic foot.  Given that we shoveled 4000 cubic feet, that would be (according to Microsoft Calculator) 120,111 pounds.  It’s a little hard to believe that I just moved approximatly 40,000+ pounds of snow, but my back is telling me that I did.  For perspective, a box of potatoes is about 50 pounds (if I remember correctly from my job in high school at Potatoes Etc.)  That would be around 800 boxes of potates.  Even if I’m off by a factor of two (ok – some of the showels weren’t completely full of snow bricks), that’s still a lot of potatoes.

It’s 50 degrees and the roads are wet (no snow – lots of snowmelt).  I keep telling my California friends who moved here this summer that “this is atypical.”  Whatever.

One of my favorite new investments (ok – all my new investments are “my favorites”) – Me.dium – has a pair of video interviews up on the Scoble Show.  If you are interested, start with the demo – then go watch the interview with Robert Reich and Kimbal Musk.  Look for the Me.dium widget on my sidebar soon (oops – did I say that?)

Our beloved dog Denali died on 12/22/06 at 11:20pm.  I’ve written the story up on Denali’s page at Dogster.

We got Denali when he was about six weeks old – he came to live with us about a month after we moved to Boulder.  He was an incredible dog – beautiful, smart, happy, and loved by everyone.

We’ll miss you Denali.  Enjoy your stay in the big treat yard in the sky.

Scott Howard Photography has a truly amazing picture of Sydney Australia at night.  It’s 169 separate photos stitched together with Autopano Pro with an aggregate resolution of 720 Megapixels (40k x 18x).  As a special bonus, he’s also got a 1500 Megapixel photo of Machu Picchu.  Wow – this makes my 6 MP camera look really lame.

A friend of mine and active angel investor asked me the following question recently:  “I thinking of getting involved in a ‘base hit’ type company, but one that feels like I could really help.  It probably won’t be a huge win, but then again I feel confident it will at least work and be viable. I’m just struggling with committing my time, which is of course my most valuable asset.  I guess I fear the opportunity cost of not being able to focus on things that could potentially be bigger.  How do you reconcile this sort of stuff as an investor?  I sent him a long answer which – after I sent it – realized it was a blog post.  Following is what I wrote him.

It’s difficult.  There’s a natural tendency to over commit and then have to back off.  I’ve been through the cycle several times and have ultimately come up with a methodology that works for me.  I break down my involvement into three categories: Lead, Active, and Passive.

– Lead: I’m the most engaged investor.  I’m often chairman or one of the large shareholders.   NewsGator would be an example of a venture deal in this category; Lijit and ClickCaster would be examples of angel deals in this category.  It’s important to realize that Lead is not an absolute – a company can have more than one investor categorized as Lead.  For example, I’m not the largest % shareholder in FeedBurner (I’m second), but I’d categorize my involvement there (at least in my own methodology) as Lead.

– Active: I’m on the board, but someone else is a more active investor.  As mentioned above, in venture deals, the % ownership doesn’t always determine Lead vs. Active. As a VC, I’m rarely simply “Active” (I’m almost always Lead – I don’t do “Active” very well).  As an angel, I’m often Active.  Me.dium would be an example – Spark and Appian are Leads, but I’m on the board and consider myself in the Active category. 

– Passive: These are situations where I have money in a deal and am following others.  Thetus, Wild Divine, Dogster, and Loomia are examples of these.  I never have a board seat in these situations.

My level of involvement is highest in Lead, still high (but not as high) in Active, and much lower in Passive.  In Lead, I’m always proactive about my behavior.  In Active, I’m proactive, but usually in the context of “the board” rather than an individual contributor (e.g. Chairman).  In Passive, I’m reactive – I’ll help as much as I’m asked and I offer feedback, thoughts, and connections regularly, but I’m not looking for additional responsibility.

I’ve found that I can handle about 10 companies in the Lead / Active category at one time and an infinite number of Passive ones.  It took me a long time figure out this split – at one point around 2000 I probably had 20+ Lead/Active companies (including being co-chairman of two public companies) before everything melted down.  Everyone is different – I know some VCs that can’t handle more than 4 Lead / Active companies; I know others that much prefer to have ONLY Lead (or Lead / Active) companies (and no Passive ones.)  And – I know plenty of VCs that think they are in the Lead/Active category, but really are only Passive + board meeting attendees.

You have to come up with your own approach.  At the stage that you are at and given your temperament (at least what I know of it), I’d recommend you go through one over commit cycle.  You should be comfortable stretching your boundaries to see what you can / are willing to handle knowing that you ultimately control your level of individual commitments and can back off as you see fit.

NewsGator Enterprise On-Demand just went Beta 2 and has 100 customer slots available.  Charlie Wood eloquently describes why he thinks it is important.  If you are a fan of acronyms and great software, you’ll understand why I think this product should be code named NGOD instead of NGEOD.  If you are interested in road testing NewsGator’s Enterprise RSS-reader in an On-Demand environment (which also works with all of NewsGator’s client side apps – FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, Go!, Inbox), go sign up for the beta.

Sometimes (actually often) “truth is stranger than fiction.”  Nik Cubrilovic – the founder / CEO of Omindrive – has an incredible post up describing “A November I Will Always Remember.”  As he says in the teaser – “here is a story about cross-feed fuel valves, space heaters and wisdom teeth.”  It’s also about work life balance, unintended consequences, and the value of having a great attitude no matter what is going on around you.

Lest I neglect another one of our portfolio companies, Klocwork also received an Infoworld 2007 Technology of the Year Award for the App Dev category (for Best Source Code Analyzer.)  Congrats guys.

Well – that’s a nice way to start the year.  I just saw that Infoworld chose NewsGator Enterprise Server 1.4 as their 2007 Technology of Year for the Data Manager – Best Enterprise RSS Manager.