Amy and I go to a different foreign city every year on her birthday. Last year it was Rome; this year it will be Tokyo. Even though I spent six years working with or affiliated with Softbank, I never managed to make it to Japan. So – this will be our first trip. Once we decided to go, I emailed Jenny Lawton and asked her to send me a typical stack of Tokyo tourist books.

I was involved in a deal this week that finally closed at 4:40am PST on a Thursday morning. The lawyers were chasing down signatures until 3am PST. Amazingly, several of the signatories in the deal did not have fax machines at their house. Now – the deal should have been done in such a way that everyone had signed the docs and they were in escrow well before close of business the previous day; it was totally unnecessary to be chasing down signature pages in the middle of the night. However, it never occurred to me (and – apparently – it also didn’t occur to the lawyers who were the ones responsible for getting the signatures) that the people involved wouldn’t have fax machines at home.

If you recognize that, you probably have at least a basic interest in mathematics. If so, Count Down : Six Kids Vie for Glory at the World’s Toughest Math Competition is for you. This is a fascinating book that combines the story of the American team for the 42nd International Mathematics Olympiad in 2001 with a set of well-written essays on human intelligence, creativity, talent, and competitiveness. Olson does a great job of combining the story of the Olympiad with basic math theory; math education in America; the emotional, intellectual, and social issues these kids face; and a few very clever math jokes.

I thought I’d give you a break from the DNC coverage in the blogosphere (and everywhere else). I wrote the following article on “financial fitness for entrepreneurs” last year for the Kauffman Foundation’s Entreworld web site so it’s reasonably fresh; I got a lot of positive feedback and it ended up in USA Today. It’s aimed at any entrepreneur – not just those running venture funded companies. While it’s aimed at an early stage entrepreneur, I think it’s useful whether you have one employee (you, the founder) or thousands of employees in your business. It was “professionally edited”, so it lost some of my special voice (you’ll notice the lack of cuss words.) Enjoy.

Erg. Chewy. But – useful, interesting, and educational (kind of like eating shredded wheat for breakfast – it’s tough going down but you know it’s good for you.) Ryan Martens at Rally Software recommended Agile Software Development with SCRUM as part of my continued education on Agile software development approaches and methodologies. If you’re interested in learning about SCRUM – which was first presented as a methodology to the OMG at OOPSLA95 – this is the book for you.

We have friends down from Anchorage this weekend that turned us on to the Degree Confluence Project. The goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures and stories are posted on the web site. To date, 152 countries have successful confluence visits. 3276 confluences have been successfully mapped to date. While mathematically there are 64,442 confluences, the project came up with 16,165 that discount the many confluences near the poles as well as a number in the oceans.

You know the phrase – it’s said with some disdain, frustration, disappointment, or dejection. Well – it happens. My partner Heidi Roizen’s assistant (Mary Bush’s) father-in-law Chuck Bush just won the $44m California Saturday jackpot ($17m lump sump payment after taxes.) I’ve never met Chuck, but Mary is awesome and my understanding is that Chuck is too. So – good people do win these things. The next time someone groans out this phrase, tell them to be optimistic – it could happen (of course, you have to “suit up, show up, and play the game” also, but that’s a different metaphor.)

I mentioned recently that we have a place in Homer, Alaska. A common refrain that we hear from our friends is “where is Homer?” Well, believe it or not, the New York Times wrote an article on Homer in today’s NY Times (Friday, 7/23) titled 36 Hours In Homer, Alaska. It’s a cute story that hits some of the highlights of this place that we find amazing, fun, therapeutic, and wacky.

Yesterday, IAC/InterActiveCorp announced that it acquired ServiceMagic. ServiceMagic connects homeowners with prescreened and customer-rated residential contractors, real estate professionals and lenders. They are the market leader in this category of local services with over 50,000 active service professionals using their services, having facilitated more than 2.4 million customer request for home services, and generating an estimated $8.4 billion in consumer spending. We invested in ServiceMagic in the fall of 1999. The co-founders – Michael Beaudoin and Rodney Rice – did an extraordinary job of creating a real company that survived the dotcom implosion, came out the other end with a strong business, did $20m of revenue in 2003, and was profitable and cash flow positive. IAC/InterActiveCorp has assembled a powerhouse e-commerce business through their acquisitions of companies such as Expedia, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Ticketmaster, Match.com, Citysearch, Evite, and LendingTree. ServiceMagic is another great addition to their Local & Media Services segment.