Technically Speaking

This has nothing (very little) to do with technology, well wait a minute, I guess I need to start this off and first plug a post that I wrote and published a bit ago on the Lookery blog. For those of you that don’t know, yes - I work for Lookery, so that’s your full disclosure. If you don’t know what we do, than you really need to visit us and sign up!

Now on to the casual observations. I like to eat and I like to hit the buffets. My 40-50lb overweight body probably doesn’t need it, but I do like the all you can eat for one price. You can call it basic cheap to eat economics. Now there are times I prefer a more formal dining experience, but when you are dining with your kid, a buffet is the perfect option.

Tonight, I’m in line in the salad bar, and this old lady decides to back up. Now why does she think she has the right to back up in a line moving in one direction? That really irks me to this day, how older or old people think they have the right to do whatever they think is right, no matter how wrong it is. I tend to observe the older than me generation, and vow to not be like them. Hey, we are all getting older every second; you too will be old(er) than a few seconds ago when you started to read this post!

The funny thing is that a lot of times you actually end up being your father (or mother), no matter how much you try not too. Optionally you want to learn and try to avoid the mistakes they made, and learn the good habits, but chances are you end up picking most of if not all of their bad habits. That is life in a nutshell, a vicious circle.

Another observation I made this week is that I really am not a very good drummer. Stringed instruments always came easier for me, and even have dabbled in the keyboard world which makes more sense. Something about only counting to four but moving your body parts in different directions is only starting to click. So yes, the drum set in the last video with my son playing them, is in fact mine. I have improved, just nowhere the monster drummer he is. I do however like to be challenged as most people should.

If you aren’t up for a challenge every now and again, you just got really old. Something that doesn’t come easy is the exact thing you should try next. For me - drums - always had an interest, but never took the time to give it a try. Am I ready to jam with Joe phenom guitarist yet? Hell NO! Am I ready to even jam with my hack guitarist/bassist self yet? Not even in the same league yet as far as drums are concerned. I do feel safer trying this than something where my out of shape and overweight body would convulse into a heart attack or something.

While looking at the older (old) generation, one thing that most people tend to forget is observing the younger generation. I like to look at both, as you can learn just as much from the old lady backing up at the salad bar, as you can from the kicka$$ drummer my son is becoming.

A real case in point that actually made it a feel good experience was when I went to the Mayhem Festival a couple of weeks ago. There were more older (old) people actually taking more active interest in their kids than when I was younger. That actually made me feel good, for one - I wasn’t the oldest person there - and another thing, it showed me how much our generation learned from the mistakes of the generation(s) before. In my day, when I went to a concert it was with my buds and there wasn’t a parent in sight. Most parents did the drop off thing back in the day. After the show, there were very few (like two that I saw) parents picking up their kids from the show.

I really hate e-mail newsletters. I think they are a big waste of time. Pardon the interruption, but I have to change that and say - I hate most e-mail newsletters. One that I recently subscribed too is the new one that Jason Calacanis is putting out. That newsletter simply rocks. I’m a person that doesn’t have the time to read everything I see online, nor do I have the time to jostle through personal e-mail since I deal with a ton in my daily work, but his latest was a beaut. It was something I can state honestly, I read every single word of it. Great job there Jason in writing something worthwhile. You can now read it here.

Here is some old work related news that Allen, who is my favorite and hardest working professional blogger I know, reported on this week. I say old work related as it was some interesting news about my old company that I did consult for up until March of this year, Lending Club. No idea what it all means, as Lending Club is in a silent period so no one from the company can talk to anyone outside of the company in a formal interview or comment/quote. I really can’t wait to see how they ramp up and take off after the whole SEC silence they must observe. I am proud to say that I did leave the blog in good shape and turned over the keys to a great crew there; still rocking posts out daily. If you don’t have them in your reader, you should!

Now I’m starting to roam over to the more tech world again. So let’s just venture over to VentureBeat’s latest news about the non-compete being null and void. Well illegal is the exact term. This could be very interesting to see how the latest government decision impacts the start up world as a whole.

California’s highest court has ruled unanimously that a common feature of employment contracts called a noncompete clause is illegal under state law and has been since 1872.

Quite interesting to say the least. Think of people that are high paid engineers at say a video startup with new emerging technology, that bankrolls their own version of what they are building. Not only that, but also pitching the same idea to a VC firm. Now on one hand, the VC knows that this is one of the dirty guys who came from company “xyz video” but also was the key developer on that project. Which one would you invest in if you were the VC? Could make for some interesting discussions and maybe some even more interesting startups will actually take root. Or than again, it could be a thorn in the side for the valley business world as a whole.

One more thing, if you are a fan of twitter, and have not seen this yet today - you must take a view of it. Pretty funny stuff if you are into Hitler, twitter, and a good joke parody video. Did I just say that? If you are into Hitler, - Let’s rephrase that and say if you are into TV/Movie adaptations about the person’s life with a twitter twist. Something like that; hey - it was a fun way to kick off this morning.

Technically Speaking, at the risk of offending someone else by last observation - I’ve observed enough for now.

Sphere It

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Technically Speaking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.