Minivan militia

A group of Jen's friends from our Stanford days came to visit today, most pulling up in various shades of minivan. Each of these women is impressive. Each has given up a lot in terms of personal ambition to be a mom (and, at the time while we were at Stanford, to support their spouses while we were in school).

Today, they drive minivans in a pack. I doubt any one of them would have chosen to drive a minivan. There just comes a point when you succumb because it becomes too tedious to have to help yet another child climb into whatever cool car you might prefer to drive. It's just not worth it. Not on the thousandth time.

Anyway, I loved seeing these ladies at our house, each with a few children in tow. Again, this is a hugely impressive group of women, capable of holding their own with men and women in any job, any school, any profession.

That's why they're moms.

And, for that matter, that's why I'm a dad. I'm not a particularly good one, whatever my mom and sister may comment to the contrary on this blog. (Just wait until my own kids are old enough to comment here. Then you'll know the truth!) But I'm a dad all the same, and the wonderful thing about kids is that they really don't care very much about the fact that parents have no training and no real competence to be doing what we're doing. They just expect you to take care of them, and so you do. However imperfectly.

But this group of women? They're experts. Exceptional, exceptional women. In spite of their motherhood. Or, rather, because of their motherhood. There's nothing better on this planet than a mom. Not even open source. :-)

A little loyalty

I cringed when I read this report from the UK's Guardian about the way soccer contracts are changing. I learned in law school that there are many ways to break a contract, but it's frustrating to see people break their words with regularity and impunity.

In this case, it's only soccer, but if a player truly feels indebted to a coach for discovering him or her, why not repay that favor with a little loyalty?

It has really been bothering me, as I've been dealing with this as a devout Arsenal fan for three seasons, first with Thierry Henry (who eventually left) and now with Flamini (gone to AC Milan), Hleb (can't leave soon enough for me), and Adebayor (I'll be happy to see him leave as soon as we have a good replacement lined up). With the exception of Adebayor, each was/is locked into a long-term contract, and wants to leave (or get paid more than they contracted for) the minute they start to live up to their side of the contract (i.e., playing well).

I've started thinking through my own loyalty, because I really don't want to be like these guys. I've always wanted to start my own company, but the more I think about it, the more I think it would be wrong for me to leave my current company to do so, no matter the opportunity that might present itself. I could make a lot more money elsewhere (if that "elsewhere" proved to be successful), but that's not the point. The point is that I committed to do something. I need to do it.

It's the same thing with my blogging. I left InfoWorld for what I perceived to be a better platform (CNET). In retrospect, however, I wonder if I should have stayed. The primary reason for wanting to jump wasn't a better publication, but rather that I wanted to have my own blogging space. So maybe it was right. I don't know. I just think I need to be more careful in the future to ensure that I think about my actions in a broader context, rather than what's in it for me, right now.

One good Saturday

Yesterday was awesome. Days like yesterday are what make life worth living.

As with most good days, this one started with exercise. In this case, mountain biking. I woke up early to put up a blog entry, then by 7:00 I was on the trail, spending the next two hours mountain biking.

The only hitch came as I tried to climb Rocky Ridge (part of the Dry Creek trail, and particularly difficult to navigate because it's strewn with rocks/small boulders): Legs pumping, my front tire hit a rock and went straight up like a horse rearing up, dumping me painfully onto my tailbone and my derailer into a rock. I had a hard time shifting the rest of the ride, which made climbing Hell Hill (dumb name for a difficult ascent) even harder than normal, but it was still a great way to start the day.

The rest of the day was spent visiting family (my nephew for his birthday party, my grandma to ensure she was doing OK, and my brand-new niece, Adelle (Brett's daughter), my own family for a belated Fathers Day dinner). The "glue" that held each of these together was driving down I-15 with Radiohead, Duran Duran (yes, I'm going through a renaissance period with my favorite 80s bands), The Buggles, and more blasting was fantastic. There are few things in life that I enjoy so much as good music, except for perhaps this view out the window of my car driving down Provo Canyon after visiting my sister/nephew at my parents' house:



There are few places as beautiful as Utah. Grasmere, England? Yes. The Vosges Mountains of France? Yes. The Columbia River Gorge in Oregon? Yes. But I don't get to see those every day as I do Utah....

OK, given the kind of person I am, I will admit that some of these visits only demonstrate my "check-box Christianity" where I do things because I'm supposed to do them, and not necessarily because I really wanted to. Even so, I find that doing the right things for the wrong reasons tends to motivate me to do them for the right reasons the next time. If I only did things because I wanted to I doubt I'd ever do much more than mountain bike, read books, and write my blog. Not a very useful human existence....

Speaking of the blog, I'm now getting over half a million people reading it each month, which is amazing given that a) However much I may like open source, it's really not all that interesting a topic for 99.99999999999999 percent of the world's population and b) just two years ago I was lucky to get 50,000 people reading it.

I suppose this is a very poignant reminder that location matters even more in blogging than it does in real estate. Going from Blogger (this very blog, in fact) to InfoWorld (traffic tripled over my AC/OS blog numbers) to CNET (traffic exploded) has been the big differentiator, not my writing.

Anyway, for those of you still expecting to read open source stuff here, you'd better move on to my CNET blog which is 100 percent open source (or related) content. This has become my personal space. If you don't care about me as a person (and I can't blame you if you don't - heck, my kids even struggle to do so! :-), then best to unsubscribe and just read CNET. Besides, I don't get paid for this one and do for CNET, so I'll like your traffic there better. :-)

What morning looks like in Utah

Bryce Roberts and I headed up to the foothills this morning for a quick 45-minute ride. There's very little better in life than climbing up above Salt Lake City to look down from a mountain bike. This is what it looked like this morning:




Come out to Utah, and I'll take you up on the mountain. You won't regret it.

(Well, you might regret seeing me, but you won't regret seeing the mountain.)

Stanford would have passed even quicker...

I will admit that I was a bit distracted while doing my law studies at Stanford. I was married with two kids and worked full time for Lineo, an embedded Linux vendor, for two of my three years. I was knee-deep in open source between Lineo and my research under Larry Lessig and others among my professors.

But if Stanford would have just done away with grades, well, I might never have been seen again on campus. (I was a bit of a ghost as it was, except in the classes that I really liked, like Antitrust, Open Sources, Copyright, etc.)

Well, now Stanford Law School has done it: No more grades. The School has gone to a pass/fail system, copying Yale's policy.

I wonder if it will make any difference? It's virtually impossible not to pass, anyway (just like at Yale), and at least on the employment track that I took, no one ever asked me about my grades (which were, by some miraculous feat, actually pretty good despite myself).

The one thing this policy change might do is to encourage more people to take risks with their careers, rather than plod down the Big Law Firm path like automatons. (Sorry, Clark. :-) Theoretically, if students spend a little less time fixated on grades during law school, they might discover that they have other interests and pursue them, either academically, personally, or professionally.

For me, I was fortunate to know almost from the first day of law school that I had no interest in being a lawyer. That set me free to scramble for other work, which I did from the end of my first semester. I knew that I needed more work experience if I wanted to leave law school as something other than a corporate attorney. And so I got it.

Would the same course be appealing to others...? I suspect so. It's not that it's a bad thing to go to work as a lawyer, but that people should be more thoughtful in heading into the profession. This might help.

How Alfresco spends its money

Here at Alfresco we go cheap on some things like cars...



...but not on the things that really matter:



That's why we're so happy. :-)

I could have been skiing today

Bryce called me early this morning to see if I wanted to go skiing. The answer, of course, was "Yes," but I couldn't. Jen was off to have a girls-day-out and I was set to have a kids-day-in. But what an amazing thing, to be skiing in June. Utah rocks.

Here's a picture of Bryce today, skiing the last day of the year at Snowbird.

And burns. I figured I'd surprise Jen by clearing out our weed garden (which used to be filled with wildflowers). An hour into it, however, I started trying to figure out more efficient ways to clear the weeds. At 100 degrees Fahrenheit, fire seemed like a good idea.

So, with my kids gathered around, I started torching the crumbling weeds (which I had poisoned two weeks ago so that today they were crispy). I had the hose cranked up, ready to douse the flames before they chewed into our cedar fence.

As it turned out, the billowing black smoke freaked me out more than the flames - I was worried the neighbors were going to call the fire department. So, with the job only one-third of the way done, I put out the fire and went back to digging. Ugh.

At least a neighbor was nice enough to pick up some berries for me at Costco. So this evening I made a vanilla sweet cream crust for a raspberry-blackberry pie that I'm going to make tomorrow. I can't wait.

Delta owes me a memory

I should be home right now, watching my son's championship game. But I've been stuck in Atlanta, my flight delayed by over three hours. Delta has stolen a once in a lifetime opportunity from me. I am not happy.

My wild and crazy night of drunken revelry

It all started so well. France was playing Italy, and I asked the hotel for a recommendation on a place to watch it with my Alfresco friends. "The King's Arms Pub," the concierge told me.

This was my first foray into a pub, one that Martin Musierowicz, Phil Robinson, and Jeff Cramer eagerly anticipated. This was their chance to show me all that I've been missing all these years by going home early instead of visiting pubs with them. As for me, I didn't care so much about the pub - I just wanted to enjoy the game.

Well, it turns out that it's very hard to enjoy a soccer game with a whacky, drunk-out-of-his-mind French-Spanish guy hanging on you. At least, it was for me.

I look happy in this photo, don't I? Well, what you're actually seeing is Matt Asay under severe strain. On the right is my good friend and colleague, Martin . On the left? Well, let's just say that this pub crawler glommed onto me and it took $20 and a stealthy escape to rid myself of him.

Before he left he managed to spray spittle into my face (and mouth, which nearly made me puke - he was hanging on me and talking right into my face), buy a round of beers for himself and the Alfrescans (and then ask me to pay when it turned out he didn't actually have any money), and challenge a few peacable Welshmen to a fight. (I made the mistake of speaking to him in French, which may have occasioned his unyielding affection for me.)


Unfortunately, all I was drinking was San Pelligrino. It might have helped to be drunk or on hard narcotics to help me escape the grossness of the situation, but given my "friend's" display, I don't think I'm going to bother taking up alcohol any time soon.

At least now I see what I've been missing all these years. :-)

Having said that, Martin, Phil, and Jeff seemed to be a bit more responsible in their drinking. Well, they didn't spit in my mouth, anyway. Thanks, guys!

The beautiful game

Though I'm cheering for France in Euro 2008, I am first and foremost a fan of the game. France played well in yesterday's game against The Netherlands, but the Dutch were sublime. Watching Van Niestrlroy's play to spin through two defenders and thread the ball to Robben was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. It was like reading Emerson, only slightly more profound. Having it capped off with Van Persie putting the ball into the goal was icing on the cake.

It was a beautiful, beautiful thing to see. Robbed and Schneijder then followed it up with two more exceptional goals, while Henry demonstrated his former class in front of goal. It made my day. I was literally nearly in tears.

Last night I capped off a great day with a campout in Weber Canyon with Isaac. He was so happy to be up there, as was I. It was sweet to fall asleep to the sound of a river rushing by in the distance. I'm not sure that life could possibly get better than it was yesterday.

Except, perhaps, seconds ago when Isaac hit a single.

Unfortunately, I've got a flight to London this afternoon with a big contract to edit on the way there, and no soccer to see when I arrive. And life had been so good.... (-:

My Dad moment

It's 3:53 AM. I'm awake, not by choice, but because of my little niece, Willa, who is staying over and who apparently doesn't yet know how to sleep through the night. Jen warned me of this before we went to sleep, but I figured I'd be able to sleep through it.

Nope.

So, here I am, sitting on my couch in the wee hours of the morning, wondering what to do to fall back asleep. I've been up for two hours with the same question, and don't appear to be getting any closer to an answer.

It makes me think of my dad. My dad coached me in sports and I have a wide array of memories of spending time with him, but an enduring memory that I have of him is the early morning/late night dad, sitting in an easy chair with a book or at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal. Or five. (Shredded Wheat, too, so he clearly wasn't eating out of enjoyment. Maybe it was the equivalent of a Mormon hairshirt?)

While my dad currently serves our church in Argentina, he was a cardiologist before that (and, presumably, will be again when he returns in 2010, just in time for the World Cup). Always on call, I don't think my dad has had a normal night's sleep in his life. He had to forage for sleep when and how he could (sometimes with the help of Ambien :-), and often sleep wouldn't come at all.

Hence, the book/cereal when everyone else was sleeping, sitting there in his blue robe.

I'd like to say that I'm awake because I had to get up to save someone's life and just couldn't fall asleep afterwards. But being awakened at 2:00 AM only made me want to take lives, not save them.

Dad read or ate cardboard-disguised-as-cereal. I'm blogging. I think I'm going to read some Dickens and then try for sleep in a half hour. After all, there's no Ambien in the house since Dad went to Argentina. :-)

The joy of Costco

And on the eighth day, God created Costco.

I had to stop by Costco yesterday to get berries (Blackberries and blueberries to make my "Black and Blue Pie") and ended up leaving with steaks, cereal, and $300 worth of other stuff. Costco is deceptive: Apparently you're saving money while you're there, but it gets me to spend on so many things that I'm sure I stopped saving long, long ago....

But my favorite part of costco is the fruit (with the meat coming in a close second). Costco has the best fruit, hands down, and it stocks fruit in huge quantities. I love good fruit, especially peaches and berries, and I have enough to last us...

...two days. After a Costco trip we end up gorging ourselves on fruit for the few days afterward. It's one of the healthiest times in the Asay home. It's also one of the piggiest.

Let the berry fest begin!