August, 2006


30
Aug 06

television

Well, 4 season finales this week, for Entourage, Deadwood, Rescue Me and 30 Days. all 4 were superb, and finish off great great seasons for all 4 shows. Rescue Me was probably the best of the lot — perfect pacing — what a terrific show. Deadwood’s finale was challenging (in a good way), pretty much like the whole season. Terrific, groundbreaking television. And Gerald McRaney completely floored me in his role as George Hearst.

And I’d be remiss in not mentioning that as we shut off Rescue Me last night we accidentally turned the TV to Fox’s Celebrity Duets, possibly the worst bit of television in the entire history of television. We “lucked” into seeing a duet between Xena (Warrior Princess) and Smokey Robinson, followed up by a ghastly country song sung by Randy Travis and Cheech Marin (pictured above) about digging up some sort of bones. I could feel the life force leeching out of me just being in the room with it on. Funniest bit (in sort of a sad way) that we saw in 10 minutes or so was one of the judges, Marie Osmond, telling someone that he sounded “a little too white” on his song. Wow. You can’t make that stuff up.


23
Aug 06

sigh.

a friend of mine sent this to me a few days ago. so disappointing. things like this are no doubt happening across the country, with virtually no notice. bad times.

A bunch of Iranian scientists and their

families came to Santa Clara for a conference / reunion event.

They’d been granted visas. But when they land at the airport,

the visas have been revoked–they’re isolated, interrogated, and

(the lucky ones) put back on flights out of the country. The

unlucky ones don’t have outgoing flights that day, so they’re

taken to Santa Clara jail, “admitted” there, with all of the

rituals that goes along with that, families separated, housed

in group holding cells until the next day when they’re taken

back to SFO via prisoner transport vehicles. See the stories

at:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=sharif+santa+clara&btnG=Search+News


23
Aug 06

mozilla

Some of you know this already, but I’ve been at Mozilla a bit more than 14 months now, and it’s one of the most unusual, interesting, fascinating places that I’ve ever worked. (And this is saying quite a lot, as other places I’ve worked include Apple (crazy in a living-in-the-future sort of way), the Superconducting Super Collider (crazy in a giant-hole-in-the-ground kind of way), and Trilogy (crazy Vegas-style).) It’s been a really fun year, and I feel like I’ve both learned a lot and contributed a lot.

Last week, I shifted jobs — from VP Business Development to COO (and I’m joining the board as well). What this means is that I’ll take broader responsibility at Mozilla in terms of helping us grow (we’ve grown from about 20 people a year ago to about 70 now) and execute more efficiently and communicate better, both inside MoCo and outside.

I’m really excited about Mozilla & what we’re all doing here. The team is really terrific & incredibly committed; current & upcoming products are great; and it looks like we’ve got lots and lots of different opportunities to contribute to the Internet on a global scale.


23
Aug 06

what phone?

okay, i’m ready to get a phone with e-mail capability again. which one?

treo700p? i like the palm UI, but the phone seems sorta big, and this seems like a dead end platform.

treo 700w? ugh. bad UI, clunky phone.

blackberry 8700g? maybe. no camera. sort of clunky. weird OS.

motorola Q? neato packaging. crappy windows OS.

danger sidekick3? do the cool kids like paris hilton still use these? or has the world moved on?


23
Aug 06

Winkie, by Clifford Chase

To be honest, not as good as you’d expect a novel about a teddy bear who becomes sentient and is then put on trial for Unabomber-style terrorist activities. I expected it to be a lot more interesting. Not really worth the time. So promising!