There are many things I love about my wife Amy, but I especially like her brain. Over the holidays, she came up with the idea for having a year of living alphabetically. As a writer, she spends a lot of time with words and – besides have one of the most amazing vocabularies I’ve ever encountered (I don’t every have to use the lookup feature on the kindle – I just should “Amy, what does “ossiferous” mean?) – she’s really good at not misusing dashes or having run-on sentences.

I’m always amused by articles that are headlined “Jobs outlook uncertain for 2009”. No shit sherlock. I was pleased, however, to learn that Boulder, Colorado is one of thirteen cities (“metropolitan areas”) out of 381 in the US that are actually growing. The cities that are growing are Boulder, CO.; Lafayette and Louisiana, LA; Bethesda, MD; Jacksonville, NC; Binghamton, NY; Oklahoma City; OK.; State College, PA.; and Brownsville, El Paso, Laredo, McAllen, and San Antonio, TX.

I do this every year just because it’s a pet peeve of mine. It’s now officially 2009 – time to update all those copyright notices if you haven’t turned the ending year into a variable. What’s the point of these stupid copyright notices on the bottom of every web page anyway? Kudos to Matt Blumberg at Return Path for (a) reminding me about this and (b) having his copyright notices automated. Google – not so automated. Microsoft – not so automated (although Live appears to be). Yahoo – automated! Ask – not so automated. Ebay – not so automated. IBM – not so copyrighted! I could go on but it’s time to go have lunch with my partners.

As everyone gets fully back to work after the Christmas / New Year holiday season, there was something that you just did with friends and family that will have a huge positive impact on your work (and life) if you apply it going forward. While it might sound trite, make sure you spend social time with the people you work with. Or – in English – “play.” It’s 2009 and we can (and should) be optimistic about the future, but we are still in the midst of an economic down cycle. I have no idea when the cycle turns positive, but the notion of enjoying social time together with the people you work with applies in both good times and bad.

One of our portfolio companies – Zynga – is looking for great game producers. Mark Pincus, Zynga’s CEO writes about it on his blog. “We are open to anyone from game industry, consumer internet or i-banking analysts and associates or mgt consultants. You should be numbers oriented, love games and have a competitive spirit. Our company is a meritocracy where those delivering great results advance fast.” If you are in the bay area and fit this profile, drop an email to flo@zynga.com.

It’s 2009, people are getting ready to get back in gear, and there’s a lot of good stuff floating around the blogosphere this morning. Here’s some of it. Economic Recovery Plan: Philip Greenspun has some prescriptive ideas about what the US needs to do to dig itself out of the ditch. I agree with some of it and disagree with some of it, but it’s all stimulating. Another Resume Tip: Whenever there is a downturn, the number of resumes that flow through my inbox increases dramatically. Many of the companies we’ve invested in, including most of the Foundry Group investments, are growing so I’m happy to get these. If you are a software developer, Joel Spolsky has a superb suggestion about how to shape your resume so I’ll pay attention.

2008 was a fantastic year for entrepreneurship in Boulder. While the VC firm I’m part of (Foundry Group) invests nationally, the partners have made a deliberate decision to live and work in Boulder. As a result, we believe it is our responsibility to participate actively in Boulder’s entrepreneurial community. I’ve been living here since 1995 and have seen and helped Boulder evolve into a serious entrepreneurial hub, as written about by my friend Ben Casnocha in his article Start-Up Town in The American Magazine.

I rang in the new year with some mental floss. I found David Stone’s The Echelon Vendetta on one of our bookshelves in Keystone as I was looking around for a palate cleanser after my run of serious books last week. Last night I got about 80% of the way through it. At around 11:20, long after Amy had gone to bed, I actually got scared reading it. I hadn’t figured out the end game yet, so my brain was whirring around a lot. The book was taking place mostly in the Rocky Mountain West (Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado) and I suddenly had an image of the bad guy stalking me from the giant open space behind the two story picture window I was lying in front of. 

As 2008 winds down, Amy and I are having a traditional New Year’s Eve filled with debauchery. She’s eating a bowl of tomato soup with cheddar cheese and crackers in it; I filled up on appetizers at our friends’ house down the block where we hung out until the late hour of 8pm so we could make it home in time for bed by 10:05pm (yes – we consider that midnight here in Colorado.)