It looks as if I have fallen out of practice of updating my blog over the past few months.

So very quickly here’s what has been happening in my life:

• It was a hard decision to make, but I parted ways with Backblaze in January. Brian and crew are still going strong and I wish them nothing but the best of luck. Especially considering I still have a vested interest in the company.
• I took a position at StrongMail Systems back in March as an Architect in the Advanced Technology Group. Up to this point it’s been fun. My knowledge of the Sales and Marketing side of business seems to be growing by leaps and bounds each day. Maybe a little too much…
• And to keep myself challenged mentally I have been playing around with a few side projects. I’ll write more about them when the time comes.

In general I have been keeping myself fairly busy, which is probably why I haven’t written a post in quite a while. It sure isn’t for the lack of interesting things going on in my life. I plan on keeping this updated a little more often than twice a year. At the very least to keep my parents informed of what is going on out here on the West Coast.

Now playing: Dzihan & Kamien – Sliding – Gran Riserva

We have Jeremy to thank for our stop in Lake Como. The latest Bond film has a scene where 007 is housed up in a super swank hotel overlooking the lake. I’m not sure if it was the beauty of the location that caught Jeremy’s eye or Daniel Craig on the beach. Either way Lake Como turned out to be a serious highlight of my travels.

After spending multiple days eating pasta and sitting on a train, we all agreed that exercise in dire need. So what better way to burn calories than to take a strenuous day hike though the mountains. Our hotel manager told us about a spectacular trek which started in Brunate and ended all the way up in Bellagio. He claimed it should only take us 4 to 5 hours to complete, but it was well worth it.

He was partially correct. The views were spectacular, but it sure wasn’t a 5 hour hike. Our hike ended about half way though and at that point we had been on the trail for over 6 hours. Not knowing what the public transportation would be in these small towns, we decided to cut the trek off early and head down to the closest town to catch a bus back to Como. Trying to calculate the distance on the map I’m pretty sure it would have taken well over 9 hours to complete the whole thing. Which of course would be a stellar day hike if you got an early start, or a nice chill 2 day trek with a night of camping.

I didn’t actually make it outside of the Town of Como, but I’m guessing the rest of the lake towns are just as beautiful. If you are looking for a super chill vacation spot in Italy, then Lake Como should be on the top of your list.

Another option, spend more time in Lake Tahoe of course.

More Lake Como Photos…

Wow how time flies. 3 weeks ago today I was in panic mode scrambling to find homes for anything I owned that didn’t fit into my storage space. I was successful with a good portion of it, but in the end there was car load of crap which I ended up driving down to the dump in Hunters Point. Hey Sunset Scavengers, lovely location for the dump, sheesh…

At this point I became homeless in an effort to begin a 2 to 3 month European backpacking holiday. Yes I know, I’m about about 13 years too late. But I figure what are the chances I will be this free of responsibilities to warrant me to take a trip like this again? I know once I join… no scratch that, start my next startup I won’t have the time to take 3 hour bike rides, let alone have 3 months off. Thus now is the time.

The first stop on the trip was Western NY. Yes, yes this is not Europe, but I am in fact staying in Greece! I have been keeping myself rather busy hanging with the family doing all sorts of activities such as, attending weddings, chilling in cafe’s, watching a ball game, sailing, bowling, golfing, seeing quality music, etc. All great fun and of course all accompanied by our loyal friend Genny.

This Saturday will be my last outing before I head out to NYC. I’ll be enjoying one of Rochester’s largest neighborhood festivals, Park Ave Festival. Which is a little nostalgic for me since Park Ave was my home for a good portion of time when I was attending university at RIT.

Anyway, I land in New York on Sunday morning. If you are going to be in the city for the next couple of weeks, it would be great to meet up. I plan to be doing a bit of the tourist thing, but I’m sure there will be plenty of geeking out in the cafes as well.

Now playing: Echo & The Bunnymen – The Killing Moon – Songs To Learn & Sing

Yes that’s right today is officially my first day of unemployment. I concluded my consulting gig with Mailfrontier / Sonicwall on Friday and feel I have left them in good hands with the product.

What’s next? Well I am going to get some serious traveling under my belt and begin working on my own projects. A ton of ideas have been running though my head over the past year, I have made an attempt to get a few of them accomplished on the side, but that just does not seem to work for me. Thus, the plan is to focus on them full time. I feel this is my chance to make this work, it’s now or never baby.

I know it’s only my first day, but so far it feels good. What did I do on my first day of freedom you ask?

Check it:

• Slept in to 9AM
• Cleaned out my email inbox
• Paid my bills
• Ripped though all my stuff and organized them GTD style
• Hammered out a 2 hour ride with Baus
• Knocked two things off my project todo list

Oh yeah and it’s only 6PM. What, what?!

Not too shabby if you ask me. My biggest accomplishment in this list may be sleeping in. If you know me at all, you are aware that 9AM is unheard of. I’m not sure what caused this to happen, but let’s hope the uninterrupted rest continues…

Now playing: Peter Bjorn and John – Chills – Writer’s Block

Don’t you always hate it when you get down to your last pair of drawers? Currently, I’m well beyond that point. So today is officially laundry day! I dread this day with a passion, first I have to pick up all my clothes off the floor, slam them into the laundry bags, drag them down a whole flight of stairs to my car, and drive them over to the Wash N’ Fold. Today, the best they can do is get my clothes cleaned, folded, and back to me by 5pm. And for what, $.69 per pound?! What a disgrace!

Yes, I no longer do my own laundry. Now this isn’t because I’m lazy, which of course I am, instead it’s much cheaper. The cost for one load of wash at the local laundromat is $1.75 and $.25 only gets you 6 minutes in the dryer. Thus, it turns out to be about $3 per load and you have a good chance your clothes will still be damp. Not to mention having to hang out there, killing time so no one steals your shit.

Now you may ask, “aren’t you worried they are going to do weird stuff with your underwear?” Hell for $.69 a pound and a 6 hour turn around, take a pair for yourself for all I care!

NOTE: If we could have a washer and dryer in our flat or garage, there would be no way I would pay for someone to do my laundry…

It’s amazing how quickly 5 years can go by. Today was my last day working for Virage, Inc., and I have to say it was a pretty decent experience. A lot has happened over that period of time; went though our IPO, struck by the down turn of the market and had to lay off a bunch of good people, all in the end to be acquired by Autonomy, Inc. All in all, it was a great time, but now I am ready for something new.

What’s new?! You ask… Well MailFrontier to be exact, but they’ll have wait a week while I take some time to relax and clear my head.

Every year Nicole is asking me what I want to do for my birthday, the answer normally goes something like, “Ahh, I don’t care we can just go out for dinner or something…” This is exactly what we did on Tuesday. Which by the way was excellent! I highly recommend the Slanted Door.

Well, last night I was tricked into going to the Mission to meet up with our friend Tiffany for dinner and then down to the Phoenix for a drink. I was a little suspicious about the location, since it was 5 blocks away, but when Nicole decided to walk right past the bar toward the back of the restaurant I began to look around to noticed all my friends already hanging out back there.

I have to say I was pretty surprised that I knew nothing about this, and I’m not sure if I was really was suspicious on the way down there like I said earlier. What really threw me back was a minute or two after I started talking with everyone there I got a tap on my shoulder, when I turned around I found my brother and sister Mike and Keri standing there with big smiles on their faces! I’m not positive that it wasn’t the couple of drinks they had while waiting for us to show up, or if it was the pure look of surprise on my face. I’m guess a little of both. But this was very, very unexpected! Why you ask? Well they made a 3000 mile trip out here for this! Pretty cool…

Of course the night went on, a lot of alcohol was consumed. Enough in fact to get me up on stage at the Mint to belt out a rendition of The Joker, by Steve Miller. I must say as far as I can tell, I wasn’t too bad.

Well I have an open weekend, and first on the agenda is to get some breakfast and get something else in my belly other than last night drinks.

After watching all of the pain Christopher has been going though since his 30th, I was sort of worried for my own health. But, I have to tell you I don’t feel much different that I did last year at this time. Well yes, if I didn’t have to go to work today then that would make it much better, but all in all it’s been okay…

I’m really looking forward to tonight. Nicole is taking me out to the Slanted Door for dinner. The both of us have been trying to find time and a good reason to hit this place; I guess turning 30 is as good as any…

Too bad my game wasn’t there. The round was played at the Presideo Golf Course, which is conveniently located 5 or 6 blocks from my apartment.

Great course, just a little too hard for someone who’s only been out twice in the past 3 months. The best part for me was the golf carts, they are equipped with GPS systems! This takes away the guessing game of figuring out how far your lie is from the pin. And anyone who’s played a course which has haphazardly placed yardage markers, know how extremely frustrating this can be.

Anyway, if you have the cash to spare then I recommend playing a round. I’m sure after some more play I’ll be teeing up there again.

Excellent show! It opened up with Operasperry, a collection of musicians Matthew had worked with over the years. The music is a rather bizarre free form improvisation. It’s wild how alien the sounds can be made from conventional instruments. The best part was watching people’s faces who bought tickets to primarily see Tom Waits and didn’t realize what they were in for…

Second up was the Pauline Oliveros Quartet. Apparently Oliveros is well known for her advante-garde compositions, which the MC claimed that even Sonic Youth has recorded. They played a couple of nice arangements. Plus how often do you get to see someone playing a koto?

On third was the Red Hot Chachkas. Sperry had these guys play at his wedding, which at the time he was a member of. The first time I heard them play was at Matthew’s memorial service, it was nice to hear them in more upbeat setting.

Tom Waits came on solo around 10:30. He mixed up the set with new and old tunes, while moving between his using his acoustic and electric guitar and the upright piano. Once I heard Matthew was recording with Waits I was hoping that they would go on tour and He would be my ticket into the show. But, once the albums were released I found out that Waits doesn’t really go on tour anymore. So this show was truly a treat! Waits was a cool as I expected…

Last but not least was the Hedwig and the Angry Inch. They ran though a bunch of songs from the show and sounded wonderful. It was sort of strange seeing them out of costume.

It always amazed me how much depth Matthew had playing music. Tonight really brought that together and made very enjoyable show.