February 3, 2012 – Ft. Collins, CO. Nancy Kindel, born May 22, 1928, died peacefully with her children at her side. Nancy and her late husband, Charles E. “Ted” Kindel were Vail, Colorado and Forest Highlands, Arizona pioneers. Incredibly resilient and positive, Nancy had an ongoing love affair with the outdoors and a powerful athleticism. A perfect day for Nancy was one spent outside with her friends and family. She was a particularly competitive golfer …Continue reading
My mom passed away yesterday. She was 83 and it was her time. We’ve been expecting this to happen for a while and we are grateful she went calmly and peacefully. We’re writing an obituary and I’ll post it here when it’s ready. I have 4 wonderful sisters. All of them, except Susie, were able to make to Ft. Collins to be at my mom’s side when she died. However, the snow storm that hit …Continue reading
Long time (23 years?) Windows user here. I’m not leaving Windows anytime soon, for a variety of reasons. But I do have a Macbook Air. Parallels lets me run the best apps, whether they are Mac apps or Windows apps, on one desktop. For example I’m writing this blog post using Windows Live Writer, the absolutely best blog authoring tool out there. It’s a Windows app but runs flawlessly on the Mac via Parallels. It …Continue reading
When I was in college I did an internship with a big company (IBM; working on submarine sonar systems) and learned amazing things (including that I didn’t want to work for IBM <g>). I also did a short internship for a professor writing Fast Fourier Transforms in FORTRAN. In addition to running my own little software company that I had started in high school, these internships were hugely valuable to me later in my career. …Continue reading
Yay. “We” beat SOPA. It snuck up on us but we activated and used our superpowers to defeat it (yes, I contacted my reps & I blacked out cek.log on the 18th). But ask yourself this: How in the frak are these idiots in office at all? The only way to prevent another SOPA is to ensure that we all remember who pushed this thing through, were idiotic about it, and finally caved only under …Continue reading
My wife was loaned Narrow is the Way – Why I Defected from Russia by Sergei Sazonov via her book club. She said I’d enjoy it. I read it. I loved it. I went online to find it to recommend it to others. And found nothing other than a Library of Congress citation. The book is an autobiographical account of Sergei Sazonov’s experience being forced to join the Russian army in World War II through …Continue reading
I’ve moved this blog from blogging platform to blogging platform over the years. Each time my primary motivation for moving was to learn a new technology. Last year I moved from Community Server, hosted on my own Windows Server box in my home to WordPress running on a Linux VM hosted on Amazon AWS. I made this change to force myself to learn PHP and to get more experience using Linux. I love learning by …Continue reading
The fragmentation of Android is very real and very problematic for end users, developers, mobile operators, device manufacturers, and Google. However fragmentation does not mean Android is going to “die” or “fail” as some seem to think. On the contrary I think we can count on Android playing a significant role in our world for a long, long time. I also am confident that Google has already lost control of Android and has zero chance …Continue reading
[UPDATED: Feb 11, 2012 – Version 1.4.0 Released] MCE Controller enables the remote control of a Windows PC over the network. It runs in the background on a Windows PC listening on the network for commands. It then translates those commands into actions such as keystrokes, text input, and the starting of programs. I wrote MCE Controller in 2003 for my own home control system. In 2004 I released it publicly so others could use …Continue reading
If you are self-employed or travel for business (not commuting) the IRS will allow you to deduct 55.5 cents a mile. The only trick is you need to track the business miles you drive and be able to produce a detailed log for your return. I have a whacky product idea that will make it brain-dead-simple for people to generate a mileage log at tax time. If I see enough interest it may push me …Continue reading
On January 1, 2011 I started a project of posting a photo to Flickr, Facebook and Twitter every day. Today I concluded this project with the photo below: I did this #photo365 project mostly as an experiment: to see if I could actually find enough interesting photos in my collection to last an entire year. In the end, I think it worked out great. In some cases I posted freshly taken photos, such as this …Continue reading
Posted Dec 26, 2011 – Updated April 17, 2012 People ask me all the time why, if I think Windows Phone is such an excellent product, sales appear so lackluster. My belief is Microsoft’s “end-user first” approach with WP7 has a impedance mismatch with the carriers & device manufacturers while Google’s approach reduces friction with carriers & device manufacturers at the expense of end users. The question is: will end-user dissatisfaction with Android’s inconsistencies and …Continue reading
My personal tagline is “If it makes noises or moves electrons I dig it.” To that end I’m going to start a yearly tradition of writing up a set of Christmas gift recommendations. Here’s the inaugural edition. Amazon Kindle I purchased my first Kindle the day Amazon announced them in 2007. Since then the various models I have owned have been my favorite gadget. That’s right, of all the geek-toys I own (and I own …Continue reading
At the Xconomy Mobile Madness event on Tuesday I won a Samsung Galaxy S II in a raffle. Irony much? The last time I used an Android device “for real” was in early 2009. At the time I was just getting going on building the Windows Phone 7 app platform and I wanted to make sure I really understood Android. I’m a firm believer that ignorance is idocracy and if I was going to build …Continue reading
I am working on a whacky startup idea (unrelated to any of the startups I’m advising or my yet to be announced ‘real’ startup). It’s highly speculative at this point and while I’m willing to put time into it, I’m not willing to spend much money. Someone suggested I try to get a CS student to help as an internship. So yesterday the following was posted on the University of Washington CS department intern-job board. …Continue reading
Do you love the idea of startups? Do you want the Seattle Startup scene to thrive? Do you want to invest in early stage startups but don’t know how to get started? I’m committed to helping make Seattle a world leader for creating new technology businesses. I’ve jumped in by doing my own angel investing, mentoring and advising, and of course working on my own startup. But as I’ve done this, I can see that …Continue reading
I’ll be doing some serious recruiting soon. I will only hire the best, and attracting the best requires them noticing jobs are available. This got me thinking about “best-practices” for driving recruiting. Watching others lead, and as a manager myself, I’ve seen that no one way is “the right way.” As a manager, it depends on who you are as a person. I’ve seen successful teams get built around the “serious boss man” and I’ve …Continue reading
I love startups. I love developers. I love Seattle. Given that my own startup will be based in the Seattle area (news on that coming soon!) it is important to me that the Seattle startup scene thrives. I’ve thrown myself out to the community and have been blown away by all the great people and fantastic ideas. I’ve lost count now of how many early stage folks I’ve met with in the last 6 months. …Continue reading
Before you read further, go read this post by David Gewirtz: Why I’ve finally had it with my Linux server and I’m moving back to Windows I guess I’m an idiot too. About 6 months ago I made the decision to leave Microsoft after 21 years. I knew I was going to build a startup, and I knew that the developers I’d want to hire were, to say it kindly, not familiar with Windows. It …Continue reading
In talking to and mentoring dozens of startups I’ve noticed that many of them are in similar spaces; working on the same general problem, yet not quite competitors. Almost complimentary. This raised a question for me: In the history of the modern startup universe, how common is it for really early stage (say 2-5 people with only friends & family funding) ventures combine with others? I ask because it seems to be a good idea …Continue reading
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