As we all head into the long weekend, I thought I’d give you something to ponder other than what your friends will twitter about this weekend.

While in Italy last week, David Cohen and I got into yet another discussion about whether it was better to be a nerd or a geek.  I generally use the word nerd to describe myself whereas David was all about geek. 

During our fundraising for Foundry Group last year, we had a due diligence session with two of our investors where we got into the same debate.  The conclusion from our discussion (no alcohol was involved) was that "nerds are geeks who make money."

David Brooks takes a different position in today’s NY Times in his Op-Ed titled The Alpha Geeks.  Brooks does an awesome job of detailing the history of nerd and geek from the original 1950 Dr. Suess "If I Ran the Zoo" (the first known published mention of the word nerd) through Happy Days, through the nerd ascendancy of the 1980’s (led by Bill Gates and Paul Allen), finished with the recent shift of geek to a position of prominence in the past decade.  He tosses in a little political commentary along with a few serious literary analogies.

So – which is it?  Nerd or Geek?  What’s the difference? 

As David Brooks says, "the last shall be first and the geek shall inherit the earth."

While Soul Patch’s new album Sooner or Later is not yet on the Billboard Top 10, I believe it is #1 on the VC Rock Album Chart so far this year.  My partner Ryan McIntyre explains the history of the band.  Learn more by joining the Soul Patch Facebook group and look for scandalous photos of Ryan and Jason Mendelson in the upcoming issues of Variety and People Magazine.

Even VC’s need groupies.  Please help.

While everyone is spending their day talking about Microsoft and Yahoo, I thought I’d share an email with you from 1993.  Once again, my old friend Warren Katz has dug into his email archive and pulled out a doozy.  This time I’m introducing him to this great new magazine called Wired.

Subject: Wired.com
Date: 25 Apr 93 16:57:27 EDT
From: Bradley Feld <75170.1206@CompuServe.COM>
To: Warren Katz

Warren,

If you haven’t seen it already, check out the new magazine WIRED. It’s excellent. Flood them with press releases for Mak — they’ll definitely pick you up (in issue #1 there’s an article about SimNet and in issue #2 there’s an article about how Jaron Lanier is fearless).

If you haven’t heard of them, email them at info@wired.com.

Hope you’re doing well. I’m back in town for a few weeks — let’s get together.

… Bradley

Yeah – well – I thought it was funny.  Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

What a fun picture of me and Kevin Parent (now at Oblong) that someone found and gave me yesterday.  I was a sophomore at MIT and probably 19 (although maybe 18).  Oh to be 170 pounds again.

Can you name the statue?  Bonus points if you can name the location on the MIT campus.

In February, I took my dad away for our annual father – son weekend.  This last weekend, he and my brother Daniel did their annual weekend together in Chicago.  My dad has written a beautiful post titled Chicago, Chicago, It’s a Wonderful Town. 

A friend of mine lost his father earlier this week.  I feel so lucky that I’ve always had a great relationship with my dad and that I figured out early enough that one of the special things in life was to spend a little time with just him every year.

As a special bonus, you should read his post if you are looking for fun things to do and eat when in Chicago. 

Love ya dad!

You aren’t a real trail runner until you’ve taken a spill that draws blood.  I had a doozy today at mile 4.

I was on a stretch of trail that I’ve run hundreds of times.  I was humming Across the Universe (Amy and I watched the movie last night – five stars) and thinking about whether Google AppEngine is the reinvention of the 4GL.  I was jolted back to the present moment when I realized I had caught my toe and was now flying through the air.

I’ve gotten pretty good at falling on trails (an important skill if you are me) and usually manage not to hurt myself.  My method is to fall on my side leading with my shoulder.  It’s inevitable that I am going to land on some sharp rocks – I want as much surface area to absorb the fall but stay off my front and my knees (too many dangerous things to hurt there).  Shoulder hits, hands hit, then knee hits, then everything else hits.  I then roll on my back and look up at the sky for a minute while my heart rate comes down from 195 back to something manageable.

I picked myself and finished my run.  I decided to cut it from 14 to 10 since I knew my knee would get stiff at some point.  The picture above is after six more miles (yes – the cut is deep enough that it is still bleeding.)  Other than being a little sore, my knee is fine.  I’ve got an equally nasty cut on the palm of my right hand which is going to slow down my tennis game for a couple of days – fortunately I didn’t have any tennis plans this week.

Wesley Snipes apparently got a three year sentence for tax evasion this week.  At least he’s pretty good at Karate and Kung Fu – I expect that will come in handy if he ends up serving the sentence.  Apparently the message being delivered is "pay your taxes".

How’s that for a run?  Yes – that’s a 1.75m hill starting at mile 3.  And it’s steep (>10% grade).

Elevation gain: 2,081.  Elevation loss: 2,867.  Number of people seen during run: 5.  Number of animals seen during run: > 5. Mental happiness: priceless.

Is this a surprise to anyone?  I suggest Harvard take on Stanford next since they’ll actually have a chance at victory.