Dean Karnazes, the writer and subject of Ultramarathon Man, is a wild man. As the leader of Team Dean (which has a nice support crew consisting of his family, but only one athlete), Karnazes describes in great detail several of his ultramarathon feats (feets?) including his first Western States 100, a failed Badwater Ultramarathon, the first marathon at the South Pole (and one of two people to run around the world naked – try to figure that out), and his first (and the first) solo effort of The Relay (199 mile relay race from Calistoga to Santa Cruz). 

Last year at about this time I hosted a fundraiser for the Boulder Philharmonic and was the guest conductor. Prior to this I knew nothing about conducting and – while I like music – have no real musical aptitude beyond singing in the shower – so it was both a fun time and a good learning experience for me. In addition to conducting, I was also the guest auctioneer for the live auction (which was much easier). Amy and I chose the Boulder Phil as our major philanthropic initiative last year and our efforts (among others) at the fundraiser resulted in over $130,000 of additional contribution, helping the Boulder Phil land in the black for the first time in a while.

There was plenty of buzz last week about the new company – Numenta – that Jeff Hawkins (inventor of Graffiti and the PalmPilot, Visor, and Treo products) and Donna Dubinsky (CEO of Palm and Handspring) have started. It was coincidental that I was reading Hawkins book – On Intelligence – which describes his theory of intelligence, the working of the brain, and how he thinks it will lead to the creation of truly intelligence machines.

A long time friend, Shawn Broderick (first employee at my first company Feld Technologies and founder/CEO of Genetic Anomalies – acquired by THQ), has started up a new company called MaxVox that’s working on some cool consumer VoIP related stuff. Shawn’s been studying the VoIP market to try to determine which demographics are actually driving the adoption of VoIP. MaxVox announced today that they have discovered that a much younger demographic than expected is actually driving VoIP adoption. They issued a press release discussing the “Wired Toddler” category and announcing the availability of their report Residential VoIP Adoption – The Pampers Segment – which costs $495 and will be available via their website on April 1.

I’m playing around with some of the characteristics of my Feedburner feed so I apologize in advance (and ask for your indulgence) if you get multiple copies of posts. Things should settle down in a couple of days.

If you are avid followers of the TV series 24 (as Jason and I are), you’ll recognize that the next item in our term sheet series – Redemption at Option of Investors – has similar characteristics to the regular exchange Jack has with CTU: CTU Director (any of them – Driscoll, Tony, Ryan, George, Michelle): “Jack – stand down – don’t go in there without backup.” Jack: (Gruffly, in a hoarse voice) “I gotta go in – there’s no time to wait – if I don’t go, the world will end and my (current babe, hostage, daughter, partner) will die.” CTU Director: (Mildly panicked) “Jack – wait – it’s too dangerous – I command you – wait.” Jack: (Insolently) “I gotta go.” (Jack hangs up the phone).

If you thought it was challenging determining the quality of art these days (e.g. does it – or does it not – belong in MoMA), you apparently aren’t the only one. The British graffiti artist Banksy pulled off a nice prank recently, installing his own art in four New York top museums in one day. It “only” took MoMA three days to discover it.

I woke up this morning thinking about Plaxo and my computer. I’m been thinking lately about the number of manual things that I do that my computer should take care of for me (when I say “my computer”, I mean “my personal computing infrastructure”, which goes well beyond an individual computer at this point and includes four desktop computers, a laptop, server Al servers, a Danger Sidekick, a Windows Media Player, a ton of software, all the data stored at various web-based services, lots of web-based applications automatically doing things for me, several people (including “my IT guy Ross”) – all spread across at least four locations plus all the different places I travel to). 

As our term sheet series unfolds (almost as exciting as 24, eh? – if you’ve been reading the last few days I bet you figured out that I recently had a 7 hour plane ride with a laptop battery that was in pretty good shape) we now shift gears from nuclear meltdown situations (also known as “things that matter a lot”) to economic terms that can matter, but aren’t as important (e.g. “why doesn’t Kim have a job at CTU anymore?”)