Last month, I decided to spend April with Microsoft, May with Yahoo, and June with Google. As April comes to an end, I turn from Microsoft to Yahoo. I already changed my search default within Firefox and am now sending traffic to Yahoo instead of Microsoft. In hindsight, April was frustrating. I started out by trying to switch all my software infrastructure to Microsoft, including IE7b2. In addition to bonking hard, this attempt messed up enough other things on my desktop computer at home that I quickly backed off the “all Microsoft” and went to “online Microsoft only.” The nice folks in the IE group tried to help, but the pre-release of the next version that I downloaded was too unstable (and – after one iteration – I decided I simply didn’t have the time to keep fighting with it) so I bailed and just kept using Firefox.

Last week, I wrote post on A Different View of China from a close friend of mine who is spending the year traveling around the world with his family (wife and 11 year old daughter). I think he’s got a delightful rhythm to his thoughts and sent me another rant which I feel compelled to share with you. Remember – my friend has been on the road with his family since the beginning of the year so his thoughts are certain to be tinged with facing “the travel wall.” If you want yet another view, Rick Segal is also blogging about his trip.

We made some ergonomic upgrades to the Treadputer this week. The main changes, compared to the last iteration, are: Mounted speakers Angled keyboard and mouse holder (the angle is very important) Much better stabilization for keyboard / mouse We are still working on the headphone / microphone configuration. Getting this right has proven to be a lot harder than we expected due to ambient noise, weight (it sucks to have real headphones on for two hours while you are running / walking), and modality (speakers and microphones don’t mix that well.) It’s also time to put a better desktop background on those pretty monitors.

After a grueling week on the road (I started in Boulder and got to see the ocean off of both coasts and then ended up in Boulder), I just returned to my office at the end of the day to see a copy of 24: The Game running on the PlayStation 2 in my conference room. In the words of Jack Bauer, “Damnit.”

If you’ve been a long time reader of my blog, you know my fascination with bathrooms. Yesterday, I got an email with this link twice – I figured it was time to blog some new bathroom art.

Following is a question I got the other day. We have some people who are currently interested in doing a Series A round with us. They aren’t VC’s – they’re a company in our market who offer a pile of services complimentary to ours (they aren’t competitors, or substitutes.) In our conversations with them, they’re asking for a Right of First Refusal – I know this is standard stuff, however, they’re asking for a ROFR for acquisition offers, as well. Their reasoning (which is valid), is that they don’t want one of their competitors coming and buying us outright – they’d want to do it themselves. My question is, in an acquisition scenario, will this type of ROFR cause problems that make us a less appealing acquisition? What type of issues might we run into in the future? Any advice?

NPR had a great segment over the weekend on the secret to happiness about this year’s most popular class at Harvard is Psych 1504, also known as “how to get happy.” Apparently the most popular class – until recently – was an economics class also known as “how to get rich.”

While watching the Sopranos tonight, I saw the magic manilla envelope stuffed with cash get passed to Tony and thought “what would a good deal be without some fees?” Remember – it is important to make sure that the lawyers and bankers can afford their fancy sports cars. A letter of intent will usually be explicit about who pays for which costs and what limits exist for the seller to run up transaction costs in the merger. The transaction cost associated with an agent or banker, the legal bill, and any other seller-side costs are typically included in the transaction fee section. While it’s conceivable that the buyer will punt on worrying about who covers transaction fees, in today’s M&A world most savvy buyers are very focused on making sure the seller ends up eating these, especially if they are meaningful amounts.

If you were interested in my post earlier this week about the closing of the Colorado Institute of Technology, you’ll find Al Lewis’s weekend column – which is a sharp commentary on the Colorado Institute of Technology – a useful compliment, both in terms of some of the details of the events around CIT as well as the spin from Mark Holtzman, current Republican gubernatorial candidate and the effective co-founder of CIT with Colorado Governor Bill Owens when he was Colorado Secretary of Technology.