The Denver Business Journal has a nice article about my friend Niel Robertson, co-founder / CTO of Newmerix. Neil joined the ranks of CTO bloggers a few weeks ago. For the record, I like his earring.

The Denver Post had a nice profile article on a couple of local Boulder / Denver CEO’s that run, including me (ok – I’m a “managing director” – but who really cares about titles). Ed Roberto – the CEO of Newmerix and occasional running partner was featured also.

I’ve received a variety of entertaining (and thoughtful) presents for my 40th birthday. Earlier this week, Dave Jilk gave me another one – my own Wikipedia entry. I suppose every kid wants an entry about him in the dictionary – my ego is highly entertained. Thanks Dave.

Now – that’s a mission statement. I’m on the board of the Colorado Conservation Trust and we had a board meeting last week. CCT is one of the best organized non-profits I’ve ever had the privilege to be involved with and is unambiguous about its goal. The mission statement says it all – “Conserve 2,000,000 Acres in the Next Decade – Let’s Get Going.” I’ve lived in Colorado for 10 years. Part of the magic of this place is the mountains, the open space, and the wide stretches of undeveloped land. Boulder benefits greatly from the city and county’s forward thinking conservation attitude from many years ago, resulting in a magnificent city in an environmentally protected setting. None of this was by accident and I’ve tried to do my part in the last decade to help locally.

I monitor around 400 blogs and try to stay on top of them daily (I use FeedDemon and NewsGator Online and have developed an awesome personal algorithm for getting through all the items quickly.) I also use a handful of services such as Tech Memeorandum to follow what people are talking about. I’m a fast reader and excellent skimmer so that helps. I had a very busy day yesterday that started early so I didn’t read anything from Thursday evening through Saturday morning. I just finished going through everything and was stunned by the amount of discussion about the Yahoo / del.icio.us deal. I’m very excited and happy for everyone involved, but as I read through post after post after post saying “Yahoo bought del.ciou.us” I started to feel something was wrong. I checked on Technorati – “delicious” is the number one search this hour (and Yahoo is four; Delicious Yahoo is six). I checked NewsGator’s Latest Buzz – the first is Joshua’s post and the second is Jeremy Zawodny / Yahoo’s post.

Anyone that’s walked (or run) across the Harvard (aka Mass Ave) bridge has noticed little numbers painted on it that end at 364.4 (and one ear). If you are an MIT grad, you know that in 1958 Oliver Smoot and his frat brothers from Lambda Chi Alpha measured the bridge in “Smoots” (Smoot was 5’7” and was the shortest dude in his pledge class), painting the bridge in intervals of Smoots one fall evening. This tradition of repainting the bridge has lasted since 1958 and I always get a chuckle in the fall when I end up in Boston and go for a run that crosses a bridge when I hit “69” or “halfway to hell”.

I get a little grumpy around Christmas. I’ve always felt like I get short changed with Chanukah. Alan sent me this hysterical overview that provides a little perspective. 1. Christmas is one day, same day every year, December 25. Jews also love December 25th. It’s another paid day off work. We go to the movies and out for Chinese food. Chanukah is 8 days. It starts the evening of the 24th of Kislev, whenever that falls. No one is ever sure. Jews never know until a non-Jewish friend asks when Chanukah starts, forcing us to consult a calendar so we don’t look like idiots. We all have the same calendar, provided free with a donation from the World Jewish Congress, the kosher butcher or the local Sinai Memorial Chapel (especially in Florida) or other Jewish funeral home.

George Bush recently had some deep and insightful thoughts on global warming. “We just need to get nature to cooperate with us. We don’t need to listen to nature. Nature needs to listen to us.”

Tom Evslin’s brilliant blook hackoff.com is grinding through the April 1, 2000 – June 30, 2000 time frame. If you were an executive at a company during Q200 you’ve got to read Chapter 9 as part of a sick, twisted reminder of what was going on. Today’s (and yesterday’s) episodes are the first of the “exec meetings from hell” where the public company realizes it is going to miss it’s numbers in Q200.