Posts from November 2004

The blog world just gets richer and richer. 

Seeking Alpha, a great stock blog, quotes from a weekly letter from mutual fund manager John Hussman in which he addresses our return to irrational exuberance.  It sure feels that way in the market.

Here’s a taste of the letter:

That’s not to say that stocks cannot move higher, but we continue to observe speculative merit without investment merit. Indeed, investment merit is so lacking, and speculative conditions so extremely overbought (the recent, uncorrected spike is beyond belief on a P&F chart), that a vertical decline off of this “high pole” shouldn’t be ruled out. Patently overbought conditions in patently overvalued markets are the stuff that ruined retirements are made of. Though many investment managers are frantic to “make their number” for the year, there’s a certain recklessness in taking substantial investment risk here.

I’ve been selling in this market, but I’m no public stock manager and I also sold Yahoo! over a year before it peaked in 2000.

But one thing’s for sure.  Buyer beware.

I guess I am not the only one who is digging Wilco’s cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear The Repear.

Since appearing on their setlist at their Halloween show at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago, Wilco has played this song eight times and it appears that they’ve been ending the show with it for the past couple weeks.

The Gotham Gal got me this great knit hat for the winter. 

The best part is it has mini speakers sewn into it and you plug it into the iPod or any portable music player.

What a great gift idea!

The great thing about doing thanksgiving in New York City is you can go to the Macy’s parade. 

We like to watch the parade from Columbus Circle where they have grandstands set up.

Yesterday was a particularly nice parade because it was warm, mid 60s, and people were enjoying themselves.

There are a few balloons that I really like.  My favorite is the monopoly guy.  But I also really like Charlie Brown and Kermit the Frog.

 

After the parade is over we usually go into the park and play football with the kids. 

 

The weather was perfect for that yesterday and we had a great game of touch football, parents vs. kids.  The kids killed us.

After some more time in the park, we hopped on the subway to come home for the big dinner.

While we were having fun, the Gotham Gal was cooking.   

She cooked the bird on the rotiserie grill and it came out great.

Here thanksgiving stuffing recipe is on her blog and it is amazing. 

We had a bunch of friends who came over with their families and each brought a part of the dinner with them.

Probably my favorite part of the whole day is when we sat down for dinner, we went around the table and each person (kids included, in fact it was Josh’s idea) took a second to say what they were thankful for this year.  It brought home the meaning of the day.

It was a great thanksgiving for me and my family and our friends.  I hope all of you had equally great ones too!

Thanksgiving is a great holiday.  I’ve heard many people say that it is their favorite holiday.  For most people it means food and family and those are two things we can all be thankful for.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year.  First and foremost, I’ve got a wonderful family.  Joanne, Jessica, Emily, and Josh are all amazing people.

My parents, brothers, and their families are all healthy and happy and they mean a lot to me too.  And Joanne’s family is also very special.  I am thankful to have such a great extended family.

This year we’ve got a bunch of friends celebrating Thanksgiving with us.  We are lucky to have such great friends and I am thankful for all of our them too.

I am also very thankful for the ability to do the work I do.  Venture Capital is the best business I could ever imagine being in.  I’ve been fortunate to be in this business for 18 years now.  And I am thankful that the environment for venture capital has improved markedly this year.

I’ve also had the pleasure of having great partners in this business.  I am thankful for my new partner Brad, and my former partners Jerry and Bob.  I don’t think you can be succesful in the venture capital business without great partners.

Finally, I am thankful for the ability to write this blog.  It is a source of great joy for me.  Sometimes I hear nice things from people who like to read this blog.  If it is a source of enjoyment for you too, then that makes me even more thankful.

So Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I don’t cook.

But The Gotham Gal sure does.  If you are into food, you should read her blog.  Check out her thanksgiving stuffing recipe.  I’ll be checking it out tomorrow!

My brother Ted, aka Jackson, cooks too.   He doesn’t blog enough about food, but maybe he will start.  Maybe this post will be the inspiration.

I came across a new blog today by a friend Pete Burakowski.  Pete’s a musician and generally up and coming talented guy from Buffalo, NY.

He has two posts that list music to cook to.  It’s an album and a recipe, although he needs to beef up the recipe part.

My favorite is John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and sunday brunch.  Been there, done that.  And I intend to do it a whole lot more.

I never understood why people cared so much about Dan Rather. 

I don’t watch him, I never have.  I don’t watch network news, I haven’t in over 10 years.

All this ding dong the witch is dead stuff is much ado about nothing. 

And Tom Watson hits the nail on the head with his post.

Thanks Tom, you said what I was thinking, and did it a lot better than I could.

More thoughts on the Architecture of Participation on this rainy day before thanksgiving.

Tracy, a reader, sent me some quotes from Jeff Tweedy of Wilco that are so dead on that I want to blog them.  Here they are:

"A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that’s it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it’s just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work. Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music is a collaborator."

Well said Jeff.

My partner Brad turned me on to Tim O’Reilly’s conversations on The Architecture of Participation.

I have come to believe that the open source movement is not really about code, and its quickly moving way beyond software.  I told a journalist friend of mine yesterday that blogging is really open source media.  But open source is way more than that too.

I really like Tim’s words – The Architecture of Participation.

Let’s look at my effort on monday to get Wilco’s cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear The Reaper into my iPod and posted on my blog.

This effort required to integration of about eight web services, most of which were supplied by individuals, not businesses.

Web Service #1 – Wilcoworld webcasts the Fillmore Show live over the internet

Web Service #2 – Somebody records the internet stream using Total Recorder

Web Service #3 – HappyKev uploades the Bittorrent of the show into etree

Web Service #4 – Wilcobase posts the setlist from the Fillmore show

Web Service #5 – Bloglines shows me the setlist via RSS

Web Service #6 – I find the torrent on etree and download it using Azureus

Web Service #7 – I convert the files to MP3 using dbPowerAmp

Web Service #8 – I blog it using Typepad

Now I was complaining about how all this needs to get integrated and some people have commented that iPodder has done that.  I am going to dig into iPodder this weekend, but in any case the fact that all of this needs to get integrated is missing a bigger point.

This is the Architecture of Participation in action.  Don’t Fear the Reaper would not have shown up in my blog and my iPod had it not been for the actions of a bunch of people I don’t know and will probably never meet, participating in a medium where that participation adds incredible value.  And where that participation can be easily integrated into a larger and more valuable service.

And that’s a very big deal.