Congrats to my cousin Jon Feld, his business partner Todd Price, and all the folks at Navigator Systems – they announced on Friday that Navigator Systems has been acquired by Hitachi Consulting. Jon and Todd started Navigator Systems 15 years ago. At the time, I was running Feld Technologies – my first company. I remember a seminal discussion in my grandparent’s garage in Florida when Jon told me that he was going to leave Frito-Lay and start Navigator. At the time, Jon was a Lotus 1–2–3 stud so I hired Navigator (for one of its first contracts) to do some Lotus 1–2–3 modeling for one of our law firm clients. I hope Jon still has the invoice he sent me – that’s definitely something that should end up in a frame on a wall somewhere.

I guess it is only fair that while Jason and I rip on the IRS, accountants, and lawyers regarding 409A, we make take a few shots at the VC community. VC’s are perhaps the most uninformed population with respect to the 409A guidelines. In general, it’s been very disappointing to here other VCs speak about the regulations and make grotesque over-generalizations regarding their applicability. At this point, I can’t remember how many “this isn’t right” emails that I’ve had to send. At least I have a blog that I can send them to (of course – not for “official advice”), as opposed to having to type the same email 100 times.

This just in from the Wall Street Journal News Alert service. The White House unveiled its budget proposal for fiscal 2007, which starts in October, calling for $2.77 trillion in spending. Though the U.S. government will remain deeply in the red next year, the federal budget deficit should dip to $354 billion, a decline from the current year’s projected record $423 billion shortfall. Only negative $354 billion this year? Respectfully Mr. President – you’re a Republican. Can’t you figure out how to run up a bigger deficit than that? Gotta go – five more minutes left to pack.

Lon Sunshine (a frat brother) sent a group of us a way to waste our entire day. I’ve decided to share it with you. I gave it two minutes and managed to go 12.547 seconds. I’ve got to go pack now – I leave for the airport in 10 minutes

Are you a media company that is tired of losing online traffic to the RSS capabilities incorporated into My.Yahoo? NewsGator announced the general availability of the NewsGator Hosted Solution (NGHS) and will be showing it off at Demo. If you are a publisher, media company, or content provider and want to incorporate an RSS Aggregator into your site to increase the user experience for your online users, NewsGator has a great solution for you. Look for launches from Newsweek.com, SFGate.com, and Macworld.com in the next month. Oh – and look for the elusive “FeldReader” – whenever I manage to find a few spare hours to put it together.

I love exponential curves – they are beautiful things. Whether they are linked to positive or negative things, they signal opportunity. Dave Sifry – CEO of Technorati – has started on his February 2006 State of the Blogosphere report. He starts off with a very pretty exponential curve and begins his periodic dissection of the growth of the blogosphere.

My friends Paul and Renee Berberian (and their daughter Marlo) are taking a trip around the world for the next year. If you’ve ever fantasized about something like this, I expect you can do this vicariously through Renee’s blog. She has a delightful entry up about packing for a trip like this. Whenever Amy and I travel, even if it’s for a week, I get to watch Amy have a similar experience. Of course, being a guy, I can pack in five minutes for any trip.

Western Union announced on Friday, 1/27/06, that the age of the telegram had officially ended. The Western Union website has the following comment on it. Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative. Presumably they don’t expect you to contact them via telegram (they provide a nice email form, physical mail, and a bunch of 800 numbers.) I imagine that someday in the future a similar message will go out on some other communication medium about “the death of email.” I wonder how that’s going to work.

George Gombas passed away yesterday. While you probably don’t know George, he was an entrepreneur with a big mind and an incredibly big heart. I first met George when he and his co-founder Steve Buck were pitching me – in 2001 – on the idea of a company they had created called Npulse. George, Steve, and a band of a few others had some really big ideas around monitoring, measuring, and managing application activity on the web. I was interested and immediately liked George and Steve, but suggested they spend some time refining the idea with Ben Wen who was working for me at the time.