Last August, I stumbled into the idea of running the North Pole Marathon.  Early in December, I realized it was a dumb ass idea – at least for me – as I’d never be ready for it given the inconsistent training I did in the fall.  So – I decided not to run it (at least not in 2007.)  As Kenny Rogers once said, sometimes you’ve got to “know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.”  I’m not running this time – I’m going to fold ‘em instead. 

The original idea was that the University of Alaska at Fairbanks was going to sponsor me.  However, they ran into some budget issues and ended up not being able to do this.  In the mean time, I’d fronted the money for the entry (about $10,000.)  So – as karma would have it – I decided that I would sponsor someone to run it in conjunction with YourRunning (one of my investments via The Enthusiast Group.)

So – if you have the desire, courage, or basic insanity to take a shot at running the the North Pole Marathon, go to the YourRunning site and apply to be the guy (or gal) we sponsor.  You’ve got to fill out an application – we are only going to sponsor one person.  YourRunning is tossing in round trip airfare, which increases the approximate value of this sponsorship to $12,000. 

If this is not for you, but you know someone (other than me) that this might be for, please feel free to pass this along.  We’ll definitely be highlighting some of the “more interesting” applicants.

Jason Mendelson and I have started a new blog aimed at entrepreneurs called AsktheVC.  We’ve started this blog to discuss relevant issues in the venture capital and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

As you may know, we’ve spent a lot of time over the past three years writing about venture capital and entrepreneurship on Feld Thoughts. We’ve had great feedback regarding our regular posts on matters that effect people in our industry, as well as our blog series on topics such as term sheets, letters of intent, and 409A. We’ve also had a lot of fun and learned a lot from the questions that people have asked us.

We’ve decided to put more focused effort into regularly addressing these questions. I will still blog about venture capital and entrepreneurship on Feld Thoughts, and we’ll occasionally cross-post between blogs, but we’ll begin to use AsktheVC to address the steady stream of questions we are now getting on a daily basis from entrepreneurs around the world.

You can expect the same thoughtful and honest opinions that we’ve always had. We will also tackle bigger issues in a larger format than a single post. Our goal is that this blog becomes a broadly used informational source on venture capital and entrepreneurship. To achieve this, we welcome (and encourage) questions from you.  We hope you’ll subscribe and participate in AsktheVC.

I’ve been enjoying my experience with Vista on my Lenovo X60 over the holidays.  It’s stable, fast, and mostly behaves as expected.  I’ve only had two required reboots in 10 days, which I view as a major victory.

But – Vista has more than it’s share of stupid little oversights.  For example, the Calculator app.  Microsoft has included a Calculator in every version of Windows that I can remember.  I extremely good at doing simple math in my head so I don’t keep a calculator on my desk, but I occasionally need a mildly advanced calculator to figure things out.  While I could run Excel, that seems stupid (ok – it is stupid) for the type of math problems I need a calculator for.

I figured the Vista Calculator would be a nifty little upgrade.  Wrong.  It’s still the extremely lame Calculator that shipped with the last few versions of Windows – going back I think to Windows 3.1.  Yeah – it has a scientific calculator – but I still find myself going to Google to do simple math transformations (what’s up with that?)

I poked around a little and found that there is actually a Microsoft Calculator Plus (yes – that’s its actual name) available for a free download.  After fighting through the Windows Genuine Advantage thing (first time on this machine – in Firefox – erg) I downloaded Microsoft Calculator Plus.  Copyright 2004!  Exactly the same, except for the additional Conversion menu which is extensive and nice.  It created a new directory for it, didn’t replace my old Calculator, and created a new menu item. Yuck.

Why oh why would Microsoft ship Calculator with Vista instead of Calculator Plus?  And – why not put one person on it to spruce it up a little.  One of my mottos for 2007 is “guys – it’s the little things.”

Welcome to 2007.  You did make that copyright notice thing a variable or an include, didn’t you?