calculating the odds

Is everyone allotted a finite number of strange coincidences? If so, I feel like I should be running out of them soon.

For instance, the other day I got a message on the answering machine from an old friend and colleague. I didn't have time to call her back because I was finishing up some work and then running off to a dublit event in the city. Then, on my way home that night, guess who I ran into at the BART station?

Weird.

home repair tip #4783

Need to find all the squeaky spots in your floors? Simple: Just walk around the house with a baby you're trying to put to sleep.

san francisco summers

As I was shivering at the pool today, I realized that I haven't had a true, warm, sunny summer in a decade -- literally, a full 10 years! In 1998, I spent the summer working in Scotland (more on that later). And by 1999, I had moved up to San Francisco, where all the tech startups in the world can't solve the problem we've got with miserably overcast and chilly summer weather.

Maybe it's time for a long vacation someplace where the people wear shorts in the summer and worry about tracking sand in the house. Where do you go with a two-month old?

goings on around the web

Some friends are doing some cool stuff this week:

Ben, who runs Virtually Blind and is an expert on legal issues in virtual worlds, has had an op-ed piece about the future of the Internet published in the Wall Street Journal.

Maggie, of Mighty Girl fame and a former colleague at Web Techniques, has launched Mighty Haus a new shopping blog focused on cool stuff for your house. As the tagline says, hooray for stuff!

Jeff, who runs the Digital Camera Resource Page, one of the top digital camera reviews sites, got to play professional sports photographer for a day at the Bank of the West Classic tennis tournament at Stanford. Love the photo of the flying braid.

why's daddy in jail?

Clearly, I've had a few things on my mind lately. So it's no wonder I completely forgot about jury duty. That's right, I completely blew off my civic responsibility and simply did not show at the courthouse on my appointed jury duty date. I, my friends, am a criminal.

And I'll tell you, when I finally realized what had happened -- on the day after I was supposed to be at the courthouse -- I got that feeling in my stomach that I sometimes get when I eat the leftover Chinese food from the cartons at the back of the 'fridge. And I imagined a frightening scene in which I would have to do the drive-of-shame down to the courthouse and turn myself in to the bailiff, who would proceed to handcuff me and haul me off to spend a night in jail, where there would be no Chinese food, just bread and water. An alternate scene had me on the lam in Mexico, occasionally sending the wife and kid some pesos and a letter signed with my pseudonym, Nacho; but I quickly dismissed that as a bit melodramatic (and plainly quite difficult to pull off given border security these days.)

Fortunately, when I called the courthouse, the world's nicest clerk answered and let me reschedule. I didn't even get a scolding.

swimming lessons

A lot of people say exercising helps them relax and takes their mind off things for a while, or else it helps them focus on a problem a little more clearly. When I jump in the pool, there's none of that. Instead, I've got two voices battling it out from the moment I break the surface (squealing like a frightened pig at the sudden temperature shock) to the moment I crawl out (flopping on the deck like a prehistoric fish taking its first evolutionary steps on land.)

The voice of Lazy Amit is saying, "Dude, you've had a busy week, everyone will understand if you just swim a handful of 50s and get out. Take your time." The voice of Type-A Amit cuts in, shouting, "Stop hanging there on the wall, you barnacle! You're doing 200s and you'd better keep moving. That 80-year-old in the Speedo over there is kicking your ass!"

And so it goes on like this for the first several hundred yards or so: the voice of Lazy Amit gently urging me to skip the flip-turn and hang on the wall to catch my breath; the words of Type-A Amit pushing me onward to the next lap. Then, as I'm seriously contemplating getting out and taking Lazy Amit with me in search of a slice of pizza, Type-A Amit pulls out this line: "You can only improve if you push yourself to do so."

Well, ok, sometimes he phrases it a little less gently. "You suck," he'll say, "and if you get out now you're always going to suck." Either way, it keeps me in the pool every time. And then, when I eventually do finish up and get out, completely exhausted, I keep hearing those words (the kinder version). I hear them even when I get home and when I get back to work. You can only improve if you push yourself.

I'm not saying Type-A Amit always wins. I've bought Lazy Amit plenty of beers and dude owes me one sweet party one of these days. But the other guy's got a pretty convincing argument. When I think of it, I can't come up with a single thing I've done well or do well that just came to me on its own; there was always that push.

speaking of poop

They asked about the peeing at the pediatrician's office. But they didn't ask whether he can also shoot poop a foot in distance.

We've since learned that the answer is yes.

Aren't you glad you know that now? Enjoy your breakfast!

i'll try to explain

I was not expecting to be so charmed by the minutiae of infancy. I mean, he's small and that's cute, and I get that. But watching his eyelashes grow little by little? Noticing that he stares just a second longer at the green frog dangling from his play gym? I'm fascinated. I could launch an entire blog just about the shapes his belly button has gone through in the past few weeks.

I think this is why it's so hard to explain what being a new parent is like to our friends who don't have kids. In conversation, it's the big, obvious things -- the negative things -- that get discussed: He kept us up all night; he wants to nurse all the time; we're so exhausted. Or else, it's the funny-but-poor-us stories that we tell -- like how he woke us up with his cries at 3 a.m. the other night, and how, when I went to pick him up, I realized that he had somehow worked his diaper down in his sleep, and then crapped. All over himself. And the blanket. And the bassinet sheet.

"That sucks," my friends respond.

But the thing is, it doesn't. Not at all. Because when I picked him up that night, he opened his eyes, looked at me, and smiled. Not a big smile, just a quick moment of recognition and then back to crying.

That may seem like a small thing in comparison to standing in the dark with shit on one hand and a crying infant in the other at three in the morning. And when the story gets told in the following days, it's the exasperation of the whole scene that gets the most attention. But secretly, I loved every minute it took to clean that kid up that night.

introducing kinverge

So what have I been doing with my time now that I'm a fancy-pants "Independent Technology Consultant"? In addition to working for some great startups and nonprofits -- and, oh right, that whole procreating thing (which I did in my off hours, I promise) -- I've teamed up with two sharp partners to build Kinverge, a free family intranet service.

In a nutshell, our goal with Kinverge is to make it super easy to set up a private Web site where your family can share and store family photo albums; set up birthday, anniversary, and other event reminders; post announcements and group messages; create gift lists; ...and you get the picture. We built it with the philosophy that photo sharing and blogging and other technologies don't have to be complicated and just for the tech-savvy. We think using a private family Web site can be easy enough to allow everyone in the family to participate.

We're still refining the site and adding new features, but if it sounds like something your family might be interested in or you're just curious, definitely head on over and get yourself set up. It takes all of a minute -- and did I mention it's free? Plus, it'd make me very happy.

(And if you perhaps felt compelled to tell others about it, or post about it on your own blog, I'll tell everyone you're the greatest.)