The Immortal Game inspired me to play some chess again. I was having trouble sleeping tonight so I hopped online to find an online chess game. Not surprisingly, I was completely overwhelmed by options. Any suggestions for good places to hang out and play online?

Amy and I love to sit around and make up names for bands.  Etiquette of Suicide was tonight’s band name.  It’s not our all time best, but I expect it to show up as a band name on MySpace any day now.

It eventually happens to all bloggers that become popular.  I’ve had several of these moments – you get feedback that causes you to take a step back and re-evaluate what you are doing an how you are doing.

My friend Alan Shimel had one of these the other day and has written a very thoughtful post on it.  If you know Alan, you can almost hear him saying this to you – that’s how lucid his self-reflection is.  His conclusion is 100% Alan.

“I actually do love blogging and expressing my opinion on these topics.  In many ways I was born to blog, I guess.  I have always been opinionated and eager to express my views.  Blogging is the perfect outlet.  To those of you who read my blog regularly, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  To those of you I might offend, my sincerest apologies, but I will not change what I write.  To those of you who think you are going to spin a story and believe by shouting it loud enough or saying it enough times, people will believe it, know that I am going to continue calling BS on it on here- for whatever it is worth.”

Keep it up my friend.

My friend Stuart Chapman – a partner at Esprit Capital Partners in the UK – sent me a note about his new portfolio company WAYN (Where Are You Now?) which is a self-proclaimed “Web 2.0 Travel Site.”  It’s become very popular in Europe and – according to Stuart – is profitable and fantastically run.

WAYN’s core audience of Europeans regularly travel outside their own borders.  They are trying to determine how this maps to the US market where travel outside the country borders is much less prevalent.  While there’s a logical “outside the state mapping” (especially among adjacent red and blue states), it seems like the metaphor might be different . 

If you are a frequent traveler – especially to Europe or other parts of the world – take a look and – if you are inclined – leave feedback for Stuart here.

I had my second opera experience last night at Opera Colorado’s Season Opening Gala performance of The Magic Flute.  I was blown away by my first opera experience in May and had high expectations for last night.  Even though I was completely exhausted from the week, I had a great time.

We arrived at about 5:30 with my folks, Dave Jilk and Maureen Amundson, Wendy Lea and Chris Byrne.  Wendy and Chris have become major opera fanatics in the past year (e.g. weekend in NY where they saw four operas in 30 hours), Dave and Maureen lost their opera virginity with us in May, and my dad will use any excuse to wear his tuxedo (“Brad – can I wear my tux to the basketball game?”)  Entertainingly, both Chris and I had brand new tuxes for the event which just happened to be exactly the same make and cut.

The pre-opera event – which included dinner and lasted until 8:15 – was magnificently done.  It was definitely a Denver crowd – and a beautiful one at that.  The food was excellent and the setting “magical.”

When we sat down to watch the opera, I quickly tried to read the synopsis (I hadn’t read the libretto in advance – bad me.)  It was incomprehensible to me – I couldn’t decide if it was me (I was too tired) or Mozart.  I decided to just settle in and roll with it. 

The production was superb.  The Ellie Caulkins Opera House is an excellent theater – extremely comfortable – and our seats were front and center (12 rows back – exactly in the middle.)  The Magic Flute is one of Mozart’s most well known operas and was completed near the end of his life, so it’s the culmination of a lot of his genius. I once again found myself entranced by the combination of things going on – the acting, singing, choreography, language (German), translation (subtitles on the seat backs), character development, and plot which – while relatively simple – requires some thought when it’s unfolding in another language as all the other things are going on simultaneously.

I was really tired from the week (note to self – opera late on Friday night is a challenge) so I found myself drifting near the end of the first act, especially during the slower segments.  A diet coke at intermission pepped me back up and I stayed engaged all the way through the second act (no snoring from me) which ended at 11:30.  Thankfully Amy drove home, so I slept in the car on the drive back from Denver.

Once again Opera Colorado did a great job.  I look forward to my next opera experience.

Ryan reminded me that we get to experience 11:11:11 twice today – which happens to be 11/11.  I’m looking forward to 2011.

After seeing Borat last weekend, Warren and I were debating which scenes were real and which scenes were faked.  Warren apparently stayed up late researching it, but if he’d waited a week he could have read the Slate story titled What’s real in “Borat”?  The reactions of the people involved to the Slate reporter are fascinating.

The FeedBurner Venture Capital Network continues to expand with the additions of new VC bloggers Santo Politi from Spark Capital and Susan Wu from Charles River Ventures.  I’m on the board of Me.dium with Santo and we’ve been having a good time working together – expect plenty of deep and insightful stuff from his blog.

Dean Karnazes just finished running 50 marathons in 50 days (one in each state.)  He finished up with the New York Marathon on Sunday and then didn’t know what to do with himself on Monday, so he ran the New York Marathon backwards.  On Tuesday, he still didn’t know what to do with himself so he went for a 26.2 mile run.  Yesterday he decided to run home – from New York to San Francisco.