Today’s Tech-Support Nightmare is priceless.  How many times have you had this particular customer support exchange?  LOI <g> WTF can’t speak sentence complete grammar bad.  We used to have the Pepsi Generation.  Now we are going to have the texting / SMS / Facebook generation.  W00t.

I know there are plenty of readers out there that are Warren Buffett fans based on the requests for the "Annual Letters of Buffett Partnership, Limited, 1957 – 1970."

The new Berkshire Hathaway 2007 Annual Report is out and available on line.  It’s dynamite.  Paragraph #4 follows:

You may recall a 2003 Silicon Valley bumper sticker that implored, “Please, God, Just One More Bubble.” Unfortunately, this wish was promptly granted, as just about all Americans came to believe that house prices would forever rise. That conviction made a borrower’s income and cash equity seem unimportant to lenders, who shoveled out money, confident that HPA – house price appreciation – would cure all problems. Today, our country is experiencing widespread pain because of that erroneous belief. As house prices fall, a huge amount of financial folly is being exposed. You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out – and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight.

As usual, there is a lot more where that came from.

I can’t decide what the most disturbing part of this is.  Robin Williams singing man-crush is reasonably close to the top.  Hollywood sure knows how to get its game on – writers strike or not.  I’m not even sure I’ve ever seen Jimmy Kimmel before.  I definitely don’t need to see him without a shirt on.

This is a two part NSFW edition of "things that amuse me, but I’m not sure why."  Only spend time on this if you are willing to give up 10 minutes of your life to some of your favorite movie stars.

Part 1: Watch this first or you won’t have the back story.

Part 2: I’m having trouble deciding between Jimmy Kimmel and Ben Affleck.  Actually, I’m not.  Neither – is neither good for you?

Seth – thanks so much for sharing this with me and enabling it me to share it with the readers of my blog.  Of course, I know I’m several days behind pop culture so please don’t remind me by telling me that this is yesterday’s humor.  And – if you haven’t seen this yet – you are even further behind pop culture than I am.

While I’ve known Bill Flagg for a number of years, I had a chance to work closely with him and his partner Attila Safari on the sale of their company – RegOnline – to Active last year.  RegOnline is one of those "sleeper companies" in Boulder – self funded, rapid growth, highly profitable, and a very impressive exit.

Bill, Attila, and all the folks that have worked at RegOnline over the years have created a great company.  Bill is channeling some of his experience and insights into his new blog.  I highly recommend you check it out and subscribe.  Bill – no pressure!

I stumbled upon the MIT Sloan Blog last week.  I am a Sloan grad (’88) and am a speaker at my 20th business school reunion this summer.  The folks behind the blog have done a nice job of tidying up TypePad and stringing together a series of Student Bloggers.  I asked to be added to the blog roll and voila – there I am.  They also added Lijit for search (which will be fascinating across the network of bloggers in the sidebar) and Intense Debate for comments (enhancing the social network that gets built through the comments to the collection of blogs.)

Even more fun is that the new Dean of the MIT Sloan School – David Schmittlein – also has a blog!

My partner Ryan McIntyre discovered some old trippy TV ads that Excite did in 1996 based on Jimmy Hendrix’s Are You Experienced.  When I saw him in the office yesterday, he was fondling a rectangular black thing that was about an inch high and roughly the shape of a book.  It had two plastic turny things on it and a cover-like thing that sort of – but didn’t really – protect a long thin shiny black strip. He also had a big box that he claimed you stuck the thing into, mechanical stuff happened, and video came out the back of it.  Weird.

Fortunately he put the videos up on Youtube for all to see.  Wander over to Ryan’s post Are Your Experienced? to see the videos and have your own personal Excite flash back experience.

Andrew Hyde (the creator of StartupWeekend) and Matt Emmi (the founder of OneButtonLife and the dude that keeps all my home electronics working smoothly) have launched their latest company – Venture Capital Wear.  It’s been making the rounds today and is brilliant.  Included is an ode to my treadputer.

Don’t miss out on the ppt pitch.

On my way into the office this morning, I heard Stay by Lisa Loeb on the radio. When I was growing up in Dallas, my parents were friends with Lisa’s parents and I was friends (for a little while) with Lisa’s brother Ben.  Lisa was my brother Daniel’s age but they / we didn’t go to the same school so we rarely saw each other.

When I got to the office I typed Lisa Loeb into Wikipedia and quickly caught up on her musical career (both good and bad), her old boyfriends, and her TV experience.  I also found out that she collects Hello Kitty stuff which I probably could have inferred from her choice in glasses, but was pleased to see confirmed by the brilliance of Wikipedia.

I decided to look up another childhood friend that is now a rock star – Aaron Comess (the drummer for the Spin Doctors.)  Again, the Comesses were friends of my parents, Aaron was my brother’s age, and for a while I was friends with Andy – we didn’t go to school together, but I think we went to Sunday school (the Dallas reformed Jewish version of religious school) together.  Unlike Lisa, Aaron doesn’t rate his own Wikipedia page. 

Pretty cool – my bro hung out with two rock stars when he was a teenager.  And Wikipedia helped bring back some memories while catching me up on the last 20 years.

I’m working on a new project called Gnip.  It’s appropriately inspired by the following game from my childhood.

I look forward to gnipping while my friends gnop.