Oracle announced their “best and final” offer for PeopleSoft today. I’ve heard the phrase “best and final” a remarkable number of times recently in several deals I’ve been involved in. Each time, it’s not the best and final as more negotiation occurs and the credibility of both parties is stretched as a deal doesn’t come together. In my experience, good deals for both parties don’t have “best and final” conditions – the negotiation is a dance that works its way to a deal, often winding and twisting about, but converging if both parties want it to. 

It started snowing last night, so we get to say the first Boulder snow of the year happened in October. As I hauled my ass out of bed at 3am for my almost weekly trip to the bay area, I woke up to about six inches on the ground in the mountains where we live. It was beautiful until I had to trudge out into it to clean off and warm up my car.

My wife Amy loves to watch horse racing on TV (not bet, just watch the horses.) I’m lying on the couch resting from a very intense week (and catching up stuff.) It just dawned on me that horse racing is “NASCAR for rich people” (just look at the stands.) That got Amy laughing (although I like NASCAR better.)

We just put an RSS feed up on our Mobius Venture Capital site for press releases. So – if you subscribe – you can get the press releases about our companies when we post them. I got bitch slapped by some folks early on in my blogging career for simply posting press releases to my blog. This caused me to think hard about how to use my blog to promote my companies. I try to do it carefully, with context, and make it something more significant than a simple press release (e.g. tell a story around it, explain why I think it matters, personalize the experience, etc.). I’m always open to feedback on this as I try to balance information dissemination with shallow promotion.

My first company – Feld Technologies – was a transformational experience for me. I started the company in 1985 out of my fraternity at MIT. My first major client was a 100 person dental practice in California (run by the step-father of one of my fraternity brothers) – I wrote their office management and insurance billing software that is still in use today (written in DataFlex 2.x- still available today although now version 3.2.) I recall sending out invoices at the steep billing rate of $25 / hour. You’ve got to start somewhere.By 1992, we had a company that was doing around $2m a year in revenue and had about 20 employees. We were self-funded (we originally funded the company with $10 so we could split up the ownership of the company – we had 10 shares of stock at $1 each.) We never raised any other money – the business grew based on our cash flow.

I’m going to be out of town on election day so I just filled out my absentee ballot (thankfully I got my ballot, unlike my 13,000 friends in Colorado that didn’t.) The anarchist is me voted for Colorado Amendment 36 (proportional voting). Last time I checked, we lived in a “one vote for each person country”, although I can’t ever remember whether we live in a democracy or a republic (and – after reading this link – I still can’t tell.) Lots of folks rail against the electoral college – I took my mandatory semester of government in high school and couldn’t figure it out. Colorado’s proportional voting amendment is retroactive, so if it passes, the 9 Colorado electoral votes will be allocated proportionally (making Colorado most likely a 5-4 state.) My election prediction at this point is that Kerry will win by 3 votes, Colorado Amendment 36 will pass, Colorado will go 5-4 to Bush, the Bush faction will sue for unconstitionality of the retroactivity of Amendment 36, and the Colorado Supreme Court will have some fun in November and December (and we won’t find out who our new president is until 2005 sometime.)

I’ve added a new NewsGator feature to my blog – Ratings. If you are looking at my blog online or via NewsGator Online, you’ll see a new thing in the footer of each post that says “Rate” and has five stars next to it. To rate each post, simply click on the number of stars. If you have a NewsGator Online account (or create one), you’ll be able to see both your rating (red) and the aggregate rating (orange).

I discovered Danny Gregory this summer in Alaska when I read Everyday Matters. I bought all of his books and tossed them in the to read pile. Today I read Change Your Underwear Twice a Week: Lessons from the Golden Age of Classroom Filmstrip. Remember filmstrips? I do. They sucked. I remember taking off my glasses in elementry and junior high school to make it “harder” to see them since they were so incredibly dull and banal.

I finished Florence of Arabia by Christopher Buckley an hour ago. I am still laughing about it. It’s by far the funniest thing I’ve experienced in October – even better than the Jon Stewart Crossfire episode. If you desire a “middle eastern comedy” written by a satircal god, you’ll enjoy this one.