Archives / August, 2008

Wednesday night at the DNC

While I’m a fan of politics (and my wife and I are active supporters of causes and candidates we believe in), I’ve never been particularly "political" and generally don’t find myself at political speeches, rallies, etc.  But last night when I had the chance to head over to the Democratic National Convention being held here in Denver, I figured that it was something worth seeing in person. I wasn’t disappointed – it really was an amazing scene. I managed a tour of the press area courtesy of VC Adventure reader Elliot S., who was there working for NBC (broadcasting live over their temporary DS3 set up specifically for the convention). It was pretty unbelievable to imagine what needed to happen…

Denver to the top of Mt. Evans (and back)

Long overdue, but here’s an account of my recent bike ride from Denver to the top of Mt. Evans (elevation 14,264 ft) and back. First some quick technical and summary data in case you’ve found this post looking to do a similar ride. I ride a lightspeed titanium bike with a standard front crankset (39/53) and a slightly climbing friendly rear cassette (13/27). The ride up took us 7 1/2 hour (ride time) and covered some 10,000 feet of climbing over 72 miles. While that’s a lot of climbing, the gradient actually didn’t kick up much past about 8% (and for most of the climb from Idaho Springs was more like 6%). My training had been pretty modest – I…

"The Board"

I’ve written before on effective board communication, how to run effective board meetings and other "governance" topics related to companies and their boards of directors. Today’s post is a little more ethereal. I’ve noticed a real difference in how various CEO’s I work with refer to their boards – particularly when talking internally to the rest of their management teams and employees.  On the one hand are the CEO’s that consistently refer to their board of directors as "The Board" (capital "T", capital "B") and often use them as some kind of foil (as in "The Board has said that we really need to do XYZ") – almost separating themselves from whatever decision or direction it is that they wish…

A different take on Twitter

As you know, I’m a big fan of Twitter.  I’ve even gone so far as to call it the new IM. My wife Greeley has watched on with some amusement as I’ve twittered my life away over the last year or so.  She finally sat down this weekend and read a few months of my tweets.  What follows is a note she sent to me – an "if I’d been twittering too" list of tweets (to be read with heavy sarcasm; I was laughing out loud, but maybe it’s just me…).   Woke up in a shitty mood, PMS? Contact lenses dry and itchy, off to buy SALINE! Sale at Safeway on seedless grapes. Nectarines look good, too. Made peanut…

Track your favorite Olympic sports with Filtrbox

Information tracking company Filtrbox has put out a handy little widget for tracking TeamUSA at the Olympics.  By choosing both sports (for example: "USA Cycling – Men’s Road") or an individual athletes ("USA Cycling – Men’s Road: Levi Leipheimer") you can keep up to date on your favorite Olympic stories.

hello? …. echo …. echo …. echo

Apologies for falling out of the blogging habit over the last month. A nice, mostly off-line vacation was followed by a few weeks of slowly catching back up.  Blogging (and keeping up on my blog reading as well) fell to the bottom of the list.   Or maybe I was just being lazy.   Either way, I was off the blogging circuit for a while and I apologies for any of you who may have been waiting with breath held for the next post (hopefully you didn’t delete me from your feed reader).   I’m back. With plenty to write about.   More soon.