I am now officially one week into my new job and by all accounts it was a great first week. I’m impressed with the level of talent and the magnitude of their operation at the new company. I’m also fascinated by learning all about the model (this is the first consumer-facing company I’ve worked for) and I think it’s great when friends from around the country call or IM me because they just heard or saw an ad. Besides all the new challenges of the new gig I think the one that will take the most getting used to is the commute. The new company is downtown and while I could drive and park I’ve opted to take the train. This allows me to feel self-righteous about my new, small carbon footprint AND allows me to play “who smells like urine?” on the Green Line. It’s win-win for everyone expect the guy that actually smells like urine. The whole train experience is worthy of it’s own post so I won’t go into too much detail here other than to say how nice it is to be able to get so close to people so early in the morning. Besides the humanity the biggest issue with taking the train also means my life is on much more of a schedule and this is what really takes getting used to. In order to get to work a reasonable time I need to catch the 7:20 am train which means I need to be out of the house by 7:10 am. 7:10 am seems like a fine time except the dog still expects his one hour walk in the morning so this means we need to be out walking by 5:30am in order for this new schedule to work. Have you ever seen 5:30am? More importantly have you ever walked through the woods at 5:30 am? It’s really dark the only things that are awake in the woods at that hour are generally things I prefer not to hang out with. In fact there are no normal people walking at 5:30 am in the morning and it’s hard to not feel like a complete crazy person out walking in the pitch black with a lamp strapped to my head. But sanity is no match for me and so with an eager pup and head lamp into the woods we go and I’m proud to say that not once were we attacked by bears and not once did I miss my train.

For those that don’t know I am leaving Yahoo! and moving to a Boston-based start-up that focuses on consumer backups. Yesterday was my final day in the office and last night was my going away party (thank you Yahoo!). Yesterday was an extremely bittersweet day. On one hand I am excited for the scenery change and the prospect of new challenges and on the other it was hard to say goodbye to many people I consider very good friends. Over the past two-and-a-half years I have formed some extremely good friends: We have been to battle together, had the joy of toiling away our nights and weekends together and developing cool new products together. So saying goodbye, even “goodbye for now,” was harder than I expected and the goodbye party was extremely humbling for me. The fact that such effort was put into it (with gifts and all) left me slightly embarrassed and I consoled myself by thinking that everyone was there simply for the free food and booze. It is strange to think that as a group we averaged roughly 50 working hours per week conservatively, and there are 47 weeks in a year counting vacation time, so in two-and-a-half years I spent 5875 hours with all these people. Wow! Almost 6000 hours my our lives spent together and then just like that the paths change and I am off to spend many thousands more hours with a new group. Like I said, exciting and sad at the same time. One thing that was less sad and more astonishing was the amount of crap that I managed to pile up in my office over that time. Seriously, if you saw the stuff I was packing and throwing away you’d think I hobo with a passion for hi-tech had been camping out in my office. I have to work on that at the next gig.

So to all you from Maven/Yahoo! that might be reading this let me just say thank you!! I was serious when I said it was my honor to work beside you and I will never forget everything we accomplished and how we accomplished it.

I’ve been on a quest to finish an Einstein Biography by the time my vacation ends. I am half-way through and the contrasts between Einstein’s life and mine are striking. By age 16 Einstein had formulated his first “thought experiment” concerning relativity. He imagined that he was riding along a light beam. At age 32 he had produced the famous formula E=MC^2 and at age 36 Einstein delivered his General Theory on Relativity. To put this in context: At age 16 had formulated a way to get vodka out of my parent’s liquor cabinet and most of my “thought experiments” should probably be kept private. It was another 3 years before I learned how to keep hard alcohol down or mix it with anything. At age 32 I had just graduated from University after producing what is now known as the “Kai=16 years to get through College” formula (the actual formula looks something like: kai=rollins(university of the yucatan)+umass+ccsn+unlv+middlesex+bu).” At age 36 I had nearly completed graduate school and was about to deliver my famous “General Theory of Massive Student Loans” which states that kids should finish school while their parents still pay for such things.

So it is clear that Albert Einstein and I shared many commonalties but I think the one thing that draws the closest comparison is Einstein’s lovable habit of forgetting his house keys, locking himself out of his house and office, forgetting his wallet and/or money when he went out and, my personal favorite, signing correspondence as the person he was actually addressing. For anyone that knows me knows that I have made an art form out of forgetting things and locking myself out of things and … I forget but there was something else.

Sincerely,
Dear Blog Reader

The mini-vacation continues in Eastman, Quebec. The Eastern Townships of Quebec are a curious place because they were originally settled by Anglo-Saxons from the U.S. and then later became French speaking. The surrounding towns boast such elegant French names as Magog (as in “Oh Magog”), Granby, and my favorite Asbestos! Yup, Asbestos is a real place where they mine… wait for it… Asbestos. Shocking I know. We are probably going to miss the tour of the world’s largest open Asbestos mine shaft but if anyone wants any souvenirs from the town please let me know. This morning we did trek over to the Saint Beniot Du Lac Abbey to see a local monastery. We sat through a noon service in French and I can honestly say that a Catholic service in French -to me - is about the same as a Catholic service in English. I still don’t know whn to sit, stand up or knee. Now we are off to lunch which, although included in our stay, will undoubtably consist of variations of seaweed, more legumes than I know what to do with, a soup puree that would make most babies drool and a protein dish with all the flavor expertly removed. They tell us that we will be healthier. Health is a dish best served with butter!

After a lot of discussion about where to spend a few days of vacation we finally settled on the fine Canadian Province of Quebec. Specifically Eastman Quebec. Fortunately the U.S. dollar has rebounded against recently and is once again strong against the Canadian dollar, meaning that the universe has righted itself and life can carry on as usual. When the the U.S. dollar was trading at 1:1 with the Canadian dollar I knew that things were seriously out of control. So we decided that Quebec would be a great place to spend $.72 and get a $1.00 worth of value for a few days while we finish off a couple of books and generally disengage. We had talked to Mally’s breeder and she graciously agreed to take him for us while we were on vacation… this is a win-win. We win because we know that he is being well taken care of and the price is right (free) and he wins because he gets to hang out with his mother, aunt, sister and a couple of other relative dogs. I expect to get him back fully tuckered out and ready to sleep for a couple of days straight. So off we go to Woodstock, Vermont to drop Mally off with his breeder. She and her husband live outside of Woodstock in a beautiful area surrounded by rolling hills, old stone walls and dirt roads. In all a gorgeous area, except when the frost o nthe dirt road starts to melt and the back roads turn into a slushy death-trap. You see where this is going? It wasn’t long before our car got thoroughly swamped in the muck and refused to budge. I tried every trick I knew but in the end all I ended up with was a light covering in fresh Vermont mud. We were roughly half a mile from the breeders house so after 30 minutes of trying to dig ourselves out I finally made the distress call to get pulled out. For those that don’t know getting a car stuck and having to ask for help is a serious violation of the man code requires serious deliberation. I had no choice. Luckily our dog’s breeder lives on a farm and her husband used to own a garage so he was fully outfitted to help the pathetic likes of me. After towing us out of the muck he help me as we had to remove all of the car tires to clean and remove the thousands of small rocks that had lodged themselves in the wheels and made driving sound like we were tearing the car in two pieces. To say we were thankfully is an understatement. Unfortunately it added two hours to our journey but, alas, we made it safe-and-sound and am now broadcasting live from Orford, Quebec. As a side note do not come to Orford looking for late-night eats: Literally everything shuts down at 8pm.

Pine Knob Trail at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging

A 5.5 mile hike around the Fells with Riitta, Ruby and Mally. It took 2.5 hours and everyone was thoroughly wiped out at the end.

Fells: Reservoir Trail

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I was just in the process of writing a post that could be construed by some to be a touch on the negative side. In particular I was moaning on about how much I disliked 2008 and all the things that had gone south throughout the year. But while I sit here and watch Elf (for the …25th time this year) I realized that being so negative was not a great way to kick off a New Year. So instead here are the reasons I think 2009 will be an excellent year (in no particular order):

*My brother will get married in 2009
*I will lose some much needed weight in 2009
*I will take up duck hunting in 2009
*My wife’s design firm will see explosive growth in 2009 I am very happy for her
*Our puppy will become a great dog in 2009
*In 2009 we will add a much needed addition to the house that will add a new 3/4 bathroom on the first floor
*We will get a new car in 2009 (the lease expires and I’m trying to turn this into a positive)
*My job can only get better in 2009
*The economy will provide much excitement in 2009 (and maybe even get better)

There are more but now I have to go watch Dick Clark. Happy New Year everyone!!!

Christmas with brother/sister-in-law,Christmas eve, Christmas day,Christmas with other brother/sister-in-law, Christmas in Doylestown,PA. That’s five excellent family get togethers, a heaping of excellent presents and above all, at least five gigantic Christmas dinners. I have been throughly stuffed from the days before Christmas and continue to be even as I type (albeit I am happy to be writing this post on my shiny new iPhone). So as I sweat out hundreds of pounds of baked goodness I am thankful to have spent the holidays with so much family. And with family in mind I am very pleased to report that my oldest little brother, Nick, got engaged over the holiday. Not only am I very proud of him and like his fiancé very much but am honored to be his best man. This poses two distant problems for me personally: first it means I have until September to slim it down to Tux weight which means working off the above mentioned baked goods and second it means I need to start putting together a world-class bachelor party. I’m pretty sure I have some big shoes to fill in this department is substantial and I’m starting feel the pressure already. In the meantime there is one last piece of pie with my name on it.

We are happy to welcome this new little guy into our family. His official name is “Sunpiper’s Prince of Scotland” but his call name is simply Malcolm. Malcolm is, in fact, the Prince of Scotland in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and we were trying to stick with our Shakespeare naming theme. Right now he is a bundle of fluff and quite the handful. He is generally very well behaved, extremely smart (knows some basic commands and has pretty much house-broken himself) and a little shy. Both his parents are champion dogs and we had the chance to watch his mother compete in an agility competition in Western Mass a couple of weeks ago.