So Conan did his first San Francisco roadshow last night downtown at The Orpheum. And we loved it. And of course by “we”, I mean those bastards that actually got tickets for the show. Not me. I dutifully filled out the form at NBC weeks ago when he made the announcement. I got my friends to fill out the form. Near as I can tell, nobody I know scored a ticket.

I provided a small bit of help to a talented friend setting up her back-end….no wait, that would be website back end…for a new blog. She thanked me by giving me a “part” in her first posted cartoon on the site. I wish I could draw…

Check out Carole’s art and thoughts on LittleCarotte.com. I look forward to seeing more!

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

Tell me this isn’t awesome. You really need to spend more time on YouTube

Not me. I’m barely in corporate America to begin with. My past and current are packed with tech start-ups, entrepreneurial self-ventures, non-profit, and for-profit but for-service small companies. I haven’t worked for a company as big as 3000 employees since my first job out of school.

For those of you who think that the far-out ideas in politics come only from California, I submit Initiative 957 from the great state of Washington…

Proponents of same-sex marriages have heard for years from the conservative right, that gay marriages make no sense, because marriage exists solely for the purpose of procreation. So, in a put-up-or-shut-up move, the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance puts forth Initiative 957 that would make it law that those wishing to marry must prove they have the ability to procreate (I’m guessing biological proof of fertility, not an actual demonstration of knowledge of proper technique). Further, should any marriage actually fail to produce progeny after a period of 3 years, that marriage would be “unrecognized”. You can read a bit more here, here and here.

I never really got into the Second Life thing. I went there, I tried on a body, walked into a few trees. But the time it takes to learn how to have sex was evidently beyond my attention span so I didn’t go back (And that’s different than my First Life how?). ANYWAY, the virtual world has been getting a bunch of attention lately, including cover status on the current issue of Inc. Magazine. With folks like IBM saying they plan to drop $10 million into establishing a presence there and other companies setting up shop it seems to have reached the tipping point corporate-wise. And perhaps for its personal users too, as their number reportedly doubled in just the last few months.

I picked this off Snopes last night and wanted to share. Follow the link to read the whole story…

OK. If I were a real journalist I couldn’t write this. I’d have to make all the phone calls, all of which I expect would turn up no real information and a few “no comments”. But I’m just blahgging here, so what the hey.

Steve walks out onto the auditorium stage, set just as the Moscone Hall will be on Tuesday, though the crowd today is only 2 people instead of thousands. He walks over to the stool in midstage and cracks open the water bottle sitting there. He takes a drink while he imagines the cheers from the crowd on Tuesday.

“Welcome!” The crowd cheers in his mind are still so deafeningly loud that he is sure nobody heard him. He raises his hands to quiet the crowd, waits a moment, and then again says, “Welcome!”

You know you love them. Those wonderful little stories of people proving Darwin’s claims of the survival of the fittest by opting out of the human race through shear stupidity. It seems to me that this year’s list is a bit darker than previous ones, however. The original winner was disqualified. The First Runner Up actually seems to fit the bill nicely, however…

I resolve for 2007…

…to be more diligent in seeking out the joy in life.

…to write more, for the sake of writing, as a crutch for introspection, and to tell the stories that bounce around in my head.

…to be open to adventure, to seek exhilaration, and to just every so often throw caution to the wind.

…to be there to teach my children, to protect them, and to see the world through their eyes.

I’ve been struggling here for a bit trying to decide which of two posts to leave for ya’ll on Christmas Day. I had planned to go with the feel-good YouTube video of the Apollo 8 Astronauts reading the creation story from Genesis in the Bible during their trip to the moon. Can you imagine the screams about that today? The Festivus celebrators along would have shut down NASA’a switchboard.