My mom must be cleaning out her attic.  She just sent me a pile of "old stuff" including a bunch of photos, my bar mitzvah speech, and some more stamps from my never ending stamp collection.

Me at age 8.75.  Note the excellent glasses (probably the same size as the ones I wear today) and my lack of tie. 

Age 12. I was an SVAA basketball star.  Man – that basketball is bigger than my head.  I was wearing contact lens (which I’ve since abandoned) by this point in time in my effort to look more sexy.  Pretty hard for a 12 year old.

I love a good data visualization.  Take a look at the site Watching the Growth of Walmart Across America.  Truly awesome (the visualization of the data, not the spread of Walmart).  Thanks Ian for the link.

I have completely fallen in love with my Kindle.  I’ve now read over 50 books on it and have another 50 or so queued up.  I’ve been reading exclusively on my Kindle when I travel (I no longer carry books with me), although I do read from the infinite pile of books in my house when I’m home.  As a mega-reader, Amazon has completely nailed it.

However, I have one problem with the Kindle.  DRM. 

I view the Kindle as a pure substitute for a book.  The way a book works is that I can read it and – when I’m done – I can give it to Amy to read.  She can then give it to a friend of her’s to read.  Or put it on her bookshelf.

I can’t do this with the Kindle.  I can read the book.  I can put it on my bookshelf.  But I can’t give it to Amy.

Now, I don’t have a problem with the fact that I can’t copy a book and have it simultaneously on two Kindles.  However, Amazon has already solved for this – it lets me store my books on either my Kindle or in my Amazon account.  So, I’m one small step away from "sharing" my book with Amy where she could then download it and read it on her Kindle.  At this moment in time, she’d have it on her Kindle but I wouldn’t have it on my Kindle.

That’s how books work.  That’s how the Kindle could work.  I’d even be satisfied with having a limit on the number of people that I could share a book with (at least two; less than five) and would be ok with a permanent association between a few Kindles.  Remember – share means that we can’t read it at the same time.

It makes no sense to me that I can physically give Amy my Kindle to read a book on, but can’t transfer the book to her to read on her Kindle.  Oh – so very close.

The very first folder in my browser toolbar is called "Daily" and it’s the folder I right click and choose "Open All in Tabs" first thing in the morning when I do my email / web / blog drill.  For a long time my.yahoo.com was in there; I took it out about a year ago because I was getting all the information I wanted from other places.

Last week, Alan Warms from Yahoo sent me an email about the new Yahoo Political Dashboard.  Fred already beat me with a blog about it titled Polls vs Markets but I totally agree with him – Alan and his team have done a dynamite job creating a political dashboard that I’ll now look at every day.   It’s now the 11th item in my Daily folder.

On Saturday I ran the Mesa Falls Marathon.  I’ve now completed a marathon in 12 of the 50 states – almost 25% of the way there.  My co-conspirator for this one was Matt Blumberg, who ran the last half of it with me and wrote about it in Half as Long, One Third as Hard.

This was a small marathon – my guess is around 150 people ran it.  My goal was to finish in the top 200 which I accomplished comfortably.  My serious goal was to break 4:45.  My official time was 5:02, although according to my Garmin 305 my running time was 4:52.  I can confirm that I lost about 5 minutes to a bathroom break at mile 10 and another 5 minutes at the half way mark and on a few pee breaks.  So – I was close.  However, I finished much stronger than I had two months ago at Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth so I’m pleased with the progress of my training under my new coach Gary Ditsch.

Mesa Falls was a beautiful marathon.  The first 10 miles are on a dirt road in the middle of no where.  Tranquil, quiet, and wonderful.  I had trouble getting into a rhythm – my shoes were too tight, I had to pee, and then around mile four I got an upset stomach.  There was a porta-potty at mile 6 but I felt better so cruised by it.  Predictably, at 6.5 miles, I had to go.  For a brief moment I considered turning around, but powered on to mile 10 where I took a delightful 5 minute break.

We immediately turned onto a road and I totally kicked ass – covering the next 3 miles in 27 minutes.  It was a decent downhill but I felt much lighter.  I stopped for 15 seconds right at mile 13 to look at the incredible view at Mesa Falls and then stopped again at 13.1 to meet up with Matt, make the "Uncle Spike sign", have Amy take a few photos of us, and change my shirt.

It was huge to have Matt join me.  The course had a brutal uphill between mile 17 and 20 that Matt towed me up.  I marched through to mile 23 where I finally slammed into the wall.  I don’t really remember the 25 minutes that it took me to run mile 23 and 24, but Matt said I was pretty calm.  I got a seventh wind at mile 25 and covered the last mile in under 10 minutes.

Thanks to everyone who supported me on this one, especially my sponsors Return Path, Pixie Mate, NewWest, and Bill Flagg who made an extra generous contribution to Accelerated Cure.  And of course – my sherpa Amy and my friends the Blumbergs.

Next up – Mount Desert Island Marathon in Bar Harbor, ME on 10/19/08.

Marathon #12 is on Saturday.  I’ll be running the Mesa Falls Marathon in Ashton, Idaho.  157 people ran it last year so it’s a deliciously small one.  I’ve been training with a new coach – Gary Ditsch – for the past six weeks with a goal of ultimately getting below 4 hours.  My goal for Mesa Falls is sub-4:45 which given my training and how I feel should be achievable.

If you recall from my last marathon (a mere two months ago in Duluth) I’m now running to raise money for the Accelerated Cure Project.  My goal is to have raised $100,000 at the end of running 50 marathons ($2,000 / marathon); to date I’ve raised $2,375.

As a result of my two anchor sponsors – Return Path and Pixie Mate – I’ve already got $1,250 in the bag as Return Path is contributing $1,000 and Pixie Mate is contributing $250.  So – all I need from you dear readers is another $750 of contributions to make my goal for this marathon.  Any amount will do.

Thanks in advance for Matt Blumberg, the CEO of Return Path who will be running the second half of the race with me with the explicit goal of getting me across the finish line sub-4:45.  And finally, thanks to Amy for putting up with all of this marathon nonsense.

Matt McAdams has a clever blog up titled Up next: telesoftware!  He discusses the rise of our favorite new buzzword (hint: it’s "Cloud Computing") and spends some time harkening back to its origin (hint: it’s the "Application Service Provider.")

I was around at the birth of the ASP as the co-chairman of one of the early ASPs (Interliant) which started out life in 1996 as a "web hosting company" (how passe) and evolved in 1997 into an Application Service Provider.  I clearly remember the tech media latching onto the ASP label at the end of the 1990’s right alongside prefixing everything with a lowercase e and postfixing everything with ".com". 

The cynics were simple minded – they simply referred to the ASPs as the return of mainframe – or even better – timesharing.  Interliant enjoyed rapid growth and a brief period of what looked like success before being decimated during the collapse of the Internet bubble.

Platform-as-a-Service has emerged suddenly with a vengeance.  IBM System/370 anyone?  The S/370 had this nifty thing called "virtual memory", which evolved into VM, which lives on today as the great new "virtualization" trend.

Telesoftware?  Nah – that sounds too much like Telemedicine (what ever happened to that one?)  I think we are going to be talking about "planetary computing" once "cloud computing" runs its course since "Sun computing" has already come and mostly gone.

I’m one of those guys that can’t resist downloading a piece of software to try it out.  I buy every gadget, download everything that comes my way, and create an account on every web service I notice.  I’ve told Ross (my IT guy) never to come back from a trip to Best Buy without buying me something to play with.  Yes – I have poor impulse control.

I’m finding that a lot of the stuff I’m trying is sticking with me these days.  I still have a wide range of things that go into the discard pile (which – if it’s a physical device – means I give it to Ross as a gift after playing with it for a week or so.)  But – a surprising amount is useful.

As I think more about our Digital Life and Human Computer Interaction themes, I realized it might be fun (at least for me) to start writing about some of the experiences (good and bad) I’m having with "tech" as a typical early adopter.  I’m sure those of you out there that are gadget freaks early adopters will have fun suggesting new toys and helping me out with the ones I’m having problems with.

So – look for the trials and tribulations of my gadgets in my new Tech I Use category.

My friend Mitchell Ashley has started a really powerful new blog titled BreastCancerForHusbands.  I’m at the age where several of my friends have now fought with breast cancer – fortunately no one close to me has died from it. 

Mitchell’s wife Mary Ellen has breast cancer and he’s decided to blog about his experience with it.  Mitchell is a brave writer and speaks his mind clearly – he’s not afraid of talking about the ups and downs.  He also doesn’t pull any punches, as is evidenced by his post Don’t Be An Edwards Dumbass, Support Your Wife.

Highly recommended reading for anyone with a friend or family member struggling with any kind of cancer.  Mitchell – thanks for being brave enough to blog about this stuff.