URLs From the Edge

So once again I'm trying to get a technology start-up off the ground, and in these economic times too - Wheee. Actually, it's a lot of fun and always educational... but oh so much work. Thank goodness for my hard-working co-founders. Rule 10: Always start companies with your close-friends - not only do they have your back, but it's your unthinking reflex to cover theirs too.
(I'll post the other 'rules' some other time :-) )

It's always felt a little bit disappointing to me that the core work of setting up and managing a company has soooo little to do with the actual cool tech solutions being built. :-( As a technology geek, it's always a bit hard to let go of the tech completely and focus on goal of developing the business. I try to tell myself that my background insures that "at least the business side won't ever be divorced from technical realities", but it's all too easy to be swayed to the Dark Side - to upsell a reach-goal feature that serves more as a grenade for the technology team to leap upon. :-)

Since some friends/family asked for an update on 'everything else': In other News, I've been secretly feeding my technology urges by writing some code, late at night when the house is quiet. (In fact, I'm waiting for a build to finish while I write this!). Actually with all the hardware in my office and server room, it's not very quiet. It's nothing big; I'm just writing a few Ubuntu USB device drivers to deal with some unsupported hardware on a friend's MAME machine.

I found out the other day that Christopher (my 15 year old son) is plotting to construct a Beowulf-cluster from a mountain of scrapped, partially recycled PCs that my son-in-law-to-be has stacked in a warehouse. I guess that will look good on his MIT application.

I also cleaned up the workshop last week. There were too many project that needed documenting and storage just laying around. Those of you who know about my projects will immediately grok the danger this poses. Also, we were expecting more serious rainstorms and the roof can leak in certain places... so I cleaned up. It took two days. First time I've really organized the shop since Burning Man. Mostly it got me thinking about the phase-2 layout that Linda and I worked up (using a 1 meter piece of graph paper and to-scale cut outs. :-)), and it might be time to start migrating some of the large workstations, the drill press & welding benches, etc. into the new positions. Hmmm.

Nikolai (cockatoo) is starting to fly to my arm on request. It has been remarked by experts in the field that Cockatoos are generally too smart/independent minded, nor driven by food-rewards, ergo you can't easily train them using treats. Hah. Not this bird. Sheesh. Nikk is like a Corgy with wings; he thinks with his stomach. He would run into a hole after a snarling badger if he thought the badger was hiding the Scooby Snacks(tm). For those unfamiliar with Nikki, check out my Flickr pages.

Ok, the build is done - time to debug, then maybe a pass through the Proforma before bed.