And then our hero’s glasses broke. At this point the meltdown was complete, and our hero crawled into bed for a two hour nap in an effort to let his soul catch up with him. I’m on day three of trying to get my Google Nexus S to work with 3G without costing me $17 / minute. Since I use Google Voice for my phone number (and I make almost all of my phone calls on my laptop using Google Voice or Skype) I only need data service. Based on all the feedback I got when I was in the US, this seemed easy. “Just get a pre-paid SIM card from any of the telecom providers when you get there, slap it in, and it’ll work fine” or some varient of that was the suggestion.

For much of the last decade, Amy and I have spent the month of July at our house in Homer, Alaska. Amy grew up in Alaska and I have a great love of the place. We’ve built one month away each year in a different location into our annual rhythm which we’ve come to treasure as a key part of our lives. We are trying something different this year. Instead of going to Homer, we’ve rented an apartment in Paris for the month of July. We are in the 8th Arrondissement near the Arc de Triomphe on the top floor of a wonderful building.

I heard a great phrase the other day: “he’s a 99% committer.” It was in the context of trying to get something to closure where I felt like someone had committed but it was ambiguous. The person ultimately committed and all was good, but there was some question about outcome for a few days. To be clear, I separate this from a process issue – where the person is on board personally but going through an internal process with a partnership, an investment committee, or a decision making group. Rather, I’m focusing on the person who is able to make a unilateral decision, gets 99% of the way there, and then leaves it a little open.

I received an email from an entrepreneur today asking me about something that made my stomach turn. It’s a first time entrepreneur who is raising a modest (< $750k) seed round). There are two founders and they’ve been talking to a VC they met several months ago. Recently, the VC told them he was leaving his firm and wanted to help them out. This was obviously appealing until he dropped the bomb that prompted their question to me.

Today on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals I’ve got a great offer for anyone with a touchscreen device. The deal is for Joystickers – sticky arcade buttons you put on your touchscreen to make games easier to play. Joystickers is one of the Excelerate Summer 2011 companies (Excelerate is a TechStars Network member) – I met with them a few weeks ago and loved what they are doing. You can buy three buttons for $9 (normally $20), or five buttons for $13 (normally $34). My friends at Joystickers have even agreed to throw in free shipping.

If you have an iPad, go look at Feld Thoughts in the browser on it right now. I’ll wait. If you don’t have an iPad, it looks like the following. My friends at Onswipe did that. In one minute. All it took was one line of Javascript. Onswipe was in the TechStars NY program and did an awesome job. Not surprisingly they’ve put together an awesome investor group including Spark Capital and Betaworks.

It’s Sunday morning. Take a deep breath. It’s summer time. Go for a walk. Or a run. Play with your family. Take a nap this afternoon. Read a book. Go to a movie. Chill. Last week, I had two close friends tell me some version of “I’m too busy.” One insightfully said “I have no time these days. I’m doing too much.” The other simply said “sorry I didn’t call back – I have no time.”

Recently I’ve been on the receiving end of a bunch of due diligence calls. Some of them are for companies I’m involved in, some are for entrepreneurs I’ve worked with in the past, and some are for other VCs I’ve worked with who are raising new funds. I view these differently than reference calls (I won’t do reference calls for anyone) – these are not about “employment”, they are about investment and a long term working relationship.

I’ve worn glasses since I was three years old. I was trying to look at something on my iPad yesterday without them on and I heard Amy burst out laughing with “you really can’t see a thing without your glasses.” True – my eyes are defective. I’ve contemplated getting LASIK’s a few times but chickened out each time – if 42 years of glasses have worked, I expect another 42 will be just fine.