On Christmas Eve, while I was drying my last dish after baking and cooking up a storm all day, James walked in with an animal carrier containing a five month old kitten.

"I always feel so bad when I leave the house, Frank just looks at me like, 'hey man, where ya goin'?  Let's play!'  So I got him - well, and you - a kitten.  I just went out to get him a treat for Christmas but then this kitten was there, and she kind of looks like Frank, and she just had the coolest personality, so, I brought her home."

Dramatic pause.

"Wow.  Wow!  I can't believe it!"  I was in disbelief, and thinking about how much more litter I would have to scoop, and yet inexorably drawn to the cuteness radiating out from this small creature.  She opened her mouth up wide, as if to yawn, but a squeaky, breathy "mew" came out instead.

Frank was curious at first, but once he realized what had just landed in his living room was he was not at all happy about it.  The kitten would charge up to him and he would hiss.  No paws were raised and it hasn't come to blows at all that we know of; just hiss after hiss after hiss of dramatic disapproval from our lugubrious feline. 

The next morning Frank's hissing seemed to have ceased.  We were gone all day for Christmas festivities, and I was worried the whole time about coming home to find a bloodied kitten hiding in some secret part of the house.  When we got home she was indeed nowhere to be found, but then appeared ten minutes later, like a ninja, purring unusually loudly and going from one activity to the next to the next to the next with the kind of ADD typical of energetic youngsters.  Although Frank seems to gradually become more at peace with the newcomer, they're not holding hands or anything yet.  She has cheerfully carried on her campaign to win him over; she is confident and dominant, and has already started to drive the activities of the house.  Nap time.  Play time.  Food time.  Pee time.  Cuddle with the humans time.  Frank follows along with each activity, but can't match the wide-open throttle of the kitten we have named "Roxy," after Elizabeth's Aunt Roxy Montana, and another Roxy I know who's beautiful, confident and daring.

Here is a photo of the soon-to-be happy couple (Frank on the top, Roxy on the bottom):

Sometimes I jog around my oddly shaped little block.  It's about three-quarters of a mile and I try to run it at least four times, and have once done five laps around it.

So Monday's time for four laps was 35 minutes.  I walked a little bit towards the end, a bit beaten up by the Rich Oliver school I got back from Sunday night.  Today, 32 minutes, no walking and what I feel was a slightly brisker pace.  I'll drive it again now, four laps, just to make sure it's really three miles for the whole route.  The one time I did five laps I believe I did it in 42 minutes.

I'm not supposed to run because of last year's back surgery, but it doesn't hurt when I do.  Plus I run so damn slow that I wouldn't think my body takes all that much abuse from it.

Somehow my cat believes that I need him close to me today. I've been staring at the computer all morning, clicking aimlessly from useless site to useless site, looking at a little email, thinking about doing some work, and then losing direction. My cat is not helping matters, as he's planted himself firmly on my lap, making it difficult to type, to move, to think about anything of consequence other than the soft fur and how good I feel when he stretches out a paw and places it on my arm.

At around 11:30 p.m. yesterday, my grandma passed. I had a good visit with her a week and a half ago or so. She was weak, but moving around and conversing relatively well. She complained about the spicy guacamole in our Carl's Jr. Guacamole Bacon Cheeseburgers, she set the record straight about what a wonderful man she feels my father is despite a rocky first ten years or so of their relationship, and as always, continued to encourage me to put myself first and not care about what anyone else thinks. For her and my mom, two women who devoted their lives to others, to encourage me in this way is curious and I don't completely understand it.

The saddest thing I keep thinking and crying about is something my mom wrote in an email around three a.m.: "Grandpa is hanging in there but he is shaken to his core. Half his life left him tonight." They were married for almost sixty-seven years.

I'm going to go for a bike ride and then come back resolved to do some real work. No more lap time for Frank. Actual work will be accomplished.

Does anyone know how to download one's entire LJ into a text file? I was reading the help section and they mentioned that you can export your journal one month at a time. Given that I've been keeping a journal for nearly 84 months, this would take an immense amount of time. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Why is it so embarrassing when a woman drops her purse or make-up bag and everything spills out onto the ground? I feel like it's up there with, say, being a guy whose little blue pill stash was just discovered. I don't feel shame over very much in this world, but this one takes the cake.

Route: Fountain Grove Parkway/Riebli Road
Distance: 10.2 miles
Time: 48 minutes
Average MPH: 13.0
Top Speed: 32 mph
Low Speed: 3.9 mph
Post Workout Meal: Lean Cuisine Macaroni 'n' Cheese

Lots of vertical feet in that workout, people. I could also do a 23 mile route with fewer hills, but this has more bang for the buck. At one point switching from my little ring to the middle ring, before completely cresting the hill I was climbing, my chain came off and rather than toppling to the ground as usual, I saved it. It cost me a minute to wrestle the thing back on and proceed.

I'm plagued by just as many morbid thoughts on my bicycle as I am on my motorcycle when street riding; thinking about the front wheel coming off while barreling down a hill, or one of the deer on the side of the road leaping out in front of me. I also think about what it would be like to get hit by a car from behind and sent flying; would the car run me over? What if it ran over my face? It's ridiculous, these thoughts, and I have my mother to thank. I wouldn't change how I am about it though, honestly, I think it's helped make me a better motorcycle rider.

In today's San Jose Mercury News there was an article titled Venture capital: Silicon Valley start-ups weathering the financial storm and it featured, exclusively I'll have you, MyLawsuit.com. Here is a photo (yes, my CEO is smokin' hot) and the accompanying story in case you're not able to access the link.



From left, MyLawsuit VP Marketing Christie Cooley, CEO Michele Colucci and VP of Engineering Cisco Riordan ( LiPo Ching )

By Scott Duke Harris

Mercury News
Article Launched: 11/07/2008 12:00:00 AM PST

MyLawsuit.com is still more a concept than a company, with a Web page that promises "Coming soon.'' But inside her work space at a Palo Alto start-up incubator, Michele Colucci can tick off the ways her idea for bringing the legal marketplace into the Internet age has progressed since her summertime move from Los Angeles to Silicon Valley.

Even as America staggers into a recession, Colucci personifies how Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial culture is showing remarkable resilience, even defiance.

Venture industry data suggests that early-stage investing is slowing down, and many angel investors are said to be pulling back. But at recent valley conferences, prominent investors such as angel "godfather" Ron Conway said they are hearing many pitches and have money set aside for promising start-ups. The "deal flow," as Conway put it, remains strong.

Serial entrepreneur Dave McClure, considered a start-up guru, says the valley's entrepreneurs are "absolutely" as enthusiastic as ever: "Perhaps it's misplaced," he added with a laugh, "but it's just as strong."

Colucci is perfecting her pitch, winning over angel investors and recruiting a team for her dream. A former Google ads pro is plotting online marketing and a Stanford University math student is communicating with a software team in India. And she is in talks with prominent venture capitalists. Whether MyLawsuit flies or flops, Colucci figures Silicon Valley is the only place she could put it together so quickly.

"It's the only place in the world that recognizes 'serial entrepreneur' as a job title," she said.

Silver linings

The ugly economic outlook has valley venture capitalists and entrepreneurs looking for silver linings. On panels and in blogs, they point out that the likes of Apple and Microsoft were launched in tough times, while the dot-com bust gave rise to such billion-dollar babies as YouTube and Facebook. While the financial industry melted down and Washington went into crisis mode, start-up showcases at the Plug & Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale and the Microsoft campus in Mountain View brimmed with entrepreneurial optimists.

One recent morning, two partners from First Round Capital hosted "Office Hours" at a Palo Alto cafe — an open invitation to entrepreneurs. "We had about 60 companies show up," Rob Hayes said. "There's still a lot of people out there who want to start companies and want to learn how.''

Start-up founders, McClure and others say, have to recognize that there is less money available and contract terms won't be as favorable as before. Tough times mean that many venture firms are expected to hold money in reserve for later-stage rounds for maturing portfolio companies trying to weather the recession.

Many large venture firms were already focusing more on less risky, later stage investments, some VCs say. But that trend created an opening for a new wave of early-stage and "seed'' venture firms such as True Ventures, Alsop Louie Ventures and SoftTech VC. Meanwhile, several start-ups have been launched on shoestring budgets through "boot camp" programs like YCombinator and LaunchBox.

Helping to spur innovation is the fact that advancing technology and the Web's maturity have driven down the cost of launching Internet companies. Some entrepreneurs are surprised to find their funding requests are regarded as too small.

Syncplicity founder Leonard Chung, who is 28, learned that lesson in start-up economics on the way to securing $2.35 million in first-round funding from True Ventures. A partner at a larger venture firm, Chung said, was impressed with Syncplicity's data-management technology and business plan, but balked at Chung's initial "ask," or request, of $2.2 million.

"He said that's not big enough," Chung recalled. "He said, 'I need an answer on this: How can you tell me with some level of confidence that I'll be able to invest $10 to $15 million over time?' That's the thing I could never answer."

Syncplicity, Chung figures, simply shouldn't need that much money to succeed. In his pitch, Chung suggested Syncplicity match the success of Mozy, a data backup company that Josh Coates founded in 2005 with $1.5 million in venture backing and sold to EMC only two years later for $76 million.

In the end, Chung decided to take $150,000 more than his "ask" to address the economic downturn.

Running lean

Conway and star entrepreneurs like Marc Andreessen say start-ups should try to raise as much as possible. But Mozy founder Coates said he turned away VC interest once he had enough to execute the business, and that Chung was wise to do so as well. A lean budget encourages smart decisions, Coates said, and "raising a lot of money makes you stupid."

Like many start-up founders, MyLawsuit's Colucci is seeking the right formula. At age 43, raising three sons while working through a divorce, Colucci stands out among the prototypical techies who live on Top Ramen and sleep at their cubicles. She was an attorney who later applied her entrepreneurial instincts to Hollywood as a writer and producer.

Colucci said she's been impressed by how so many successful people in the valley, unlike Hollywood, try to help others succeed, opening doors and suggesting solutions. She's had coaching from Astia, a group specializing in women entrepreneurs. One associate pointed her to the Indian software team building an engine to match lawyers with prospective clients.

Stanford student Cisco Riordan, a 20-year-old junior, joined the MyLawsuit team after hearing Colucci's presentation at Plug & Play. And Colucci's pitch to Sand Hill Angels impressed Christy Cooley, who had worked at a couple of start-ups before joining Google in 2002.

Cooley, having prospered on options, decided to return to the start-up world as an angel investor, but the recession has made her more conservative. At MyLawsuit, her investment is "sweat equity."

"I love start-ups," she explained. "I love the feeling of trying to build something that wasn't there."

Vegas at the racetrack on November 2, 2008, was windy. In June, we had a rogue wind that blew through around 2 a.m., according to reports, picking up our new 250 dollar canopy and crumpling it up like a rejected page of earnest prose destroyed in frustration by its author. This time around, the wind was relentless, starting first thing in the morning and not easing up until the early afternoon. But this time around we were wiser; we'd anchored our canopy 2.0 to several buckets of water, heavy steel motorcycle chocks, and generators. The canopy may not have ever gone anywhere, but the wind was just pummeling it and us. The canvas sheets on our new canopy were flapping around noisily, my hair was whipping around and making me irritated, and James and I frequently glanced at each other, and then at our canopy, and then at the heavy objects we'd tied it to.

Eventually we took it down and stopped stressing. It wasn't hot, or terribly sunny, so shade was not an imperative.

During Sunday morning practice the wind was so forceful that it was blowing us all over the track. One turn at this track is a long, fast, right-hand sweeper, and during the Sunday morning windstorm the wind was pushing me wide so hard that I came off the track suspicious that James had adjusted my suspension.

There is a young man that we talk with at the races named Garrett. Garrett's a nice kid, maybe 18, and he has a mop of curly, crazy brown hair that's usually hidden underneath a trendy beanie or cap. He has cute pictures of himself on MySpace looking sort of emo, as emo as a motorcycle racer can look, I guess. Anyway, I'd never really talked much with his dad aside from some 'congratulations' here and there, but Mr. Willis came by and chatted with me and James quite a bit on that windy Sunday. At one point Mrs. Willis walked by, and Mr. Willis said, "Hey pig!" She looked, then laughed indignantly, saying "the sad thing is that I looked." I asked Mr. Willis what she calls him. "Toad," he said. Later that day I saw Mrs. Willis riding pillion with Mr. Willis on their scooter, and looking like a couple that's been in love so long they have almost a handful of grown children. It was strangely sweet and it stuck in my mind.

I got a bad start in Formula 2 Novice, my first race. A bad start means that I get scared by the pack of riders all vying for position in the first five or six turns, and I just roll over and expose my belly like a submissive dog, letting everyone and anyone pass me. Once things clear up, I spend the rest of the race picking people off and working my way back up. If I could be braver on the start, I would put myself in a position further ahead with faster riders, and my experience has shown that when I ride with riders that are just a bit faster than me, I easily and without any hint of issues step up to their pace.

During the race I had a good battle with Jo, a racer I'd been competing with all year. He looks kind of like Mr. Clean and is quite friendly and loquacious. I passed him, then I passed him back and stayed ahead of him at the checkered flag. I was frustrated with my pussy start and wanted to change this behavior. I talked with James about it and he inspired me. "Don't dawdle!" "Find the hole and just go in it, like I do." "Put yourself where you want to be, they will get out of your way." In the second race, Lightweight Twins Superbike Novice, I got a significantly better start, and even ended up passing a man named Zoran, a legendary SV racer who happened to be tootling around on a new concept bike he built and was testing out. He was tootling, but I was still thrilled and amazed to find myself passing him by. I also was ahead of Jo before the first turn, and ended up beating him by more than two seconds. I played the game of chicken with a few riders in those treacherous first few turns and I won. It was awesome.

Another highlight of the day was watching 14 year old Elena Myers win two big races. She beat lots of men, but more impressively, she beat teenage boys that are older than she is. God I wish I'd started riding when I was younger.

James won four races, which thrilled me, but there really wasn't anyone significant there for him to race against. But we were still tickled. He also got a nice write-up in RoadRacingWorld.

We've been vacationing in Vegas since then and having a great time. My life is blowing up in about four other ways right now, so much to write, so little time.

Look it up in a dictionary. Find this photo:

Facebook's constant ads for diets and engagement rings are starting to offend me. Every now and then there are ads for homes for sale or jobs, but it's mostly Hollywood style diets and freaking rings. It's untargeted and patronizing.

In other news of the Facebook world, I'm playing a fairly retarded car racing game on the thing. It's something to do. James plays it too.

I've also reconnected with several childhood friends I haven't seen or heard from in almost twenty years. Neat.