Stories

I am often afraid of sharing my stories from business here on my blog. Some of the more interesting stories will contain mistakes I’ve made and I worry that that could cause companies not to want to hire us or possibly even lawsuits from people who might feel like I have defamed them. However, I think it would be extraordinarily helpful to other CEO’s and Founder’s for these stories to be shared so that we can all learn from them and not just have each of us make the same mistakes over and over.

Proposal

The apartment was quiet and spotlessly clean. Lots of delicious food was on the counter, along with a bottle of good champagne. I stood by the front door, shifting from foot to foot and sweating, dressed in a nice dark green button down shirt and a good pair of dark jeans. After an interminable wait, there was finally the rattling of the key in the lock.… read more “Proposal”

Surrogate Parenthood: 1,000 Children

I proposed an idea to Laurel today: We could have 1,000 children that are 100% ours through surrogacy. Basically, the scientific technique is that they harvest her eggs and my sperm and then implant fertilized eggs in a surrogate mother.

Rinse and repeat 1,000 times and you have 1,000 children that are all genetically yours.

I don’t think I could even remember that many names.… read more “Surrogate Parenthood: 1,000 Children”

Why I Spent $100k To Fight A $10k Small Claims Lawsuit

What follows is my personal perspective on an interesting dispute. Obviously, it is only my opinion of the situation and there are two sides to every story. I invite the other side to respond if they wish in the comments. I also made the decision to keep the other side anonymous after I first wrote the post with real names, mostly because I hope to not inflame them further and I would prefer to never hear from them again. read more “Why I Spent $100k To Fight A $10k Small Claims Lawsuit”

Food Poisoning

Laurel and I both got food poisoning on our last day in Big Bear after having eaten at Masala Indian Restaurant. Very unfortunate. I stayed up all night alternatively vomiting or having diarrhea. I also had a fever as my body tried to fight off the invader.

Having had food poisoning makes me much more appreciative of my usual good health though.… read more “Food Poisoning”

Tribe

I would really like to build a community of people who get along well and live a bit more like our tribal ancestors.

Our modern society glorifies individualism and encourages isolation from others. Laurel and I’s closest family member is a 45 minute drive away and most are hours away. Our closest friend is 15 minutes away and most are much further.… read more “Tribe”

Ground Fall

I have been climbing for six years now and yesterday had my first incident where I was on belay and my climber had a groundfall after clipping one bolt. Fortunately, we were indoors at Cliffs of Id and had thick padding so he was uninjured other than a rope burn. It was embarrassing and I felt really bad though… that should never happen when I am belaying.… read more “Ground Fall”

More Effort = Easier & Happier Life

As a child I thought that the happiest lives were the laziest ones… people who were rich and could just relax all day.

As an adult, I have realized the opposite is true. The times I have done nothing have been some of the most depressing times in my life.

The harder I work (as long as I balance that work evenly between exercise, learning, finance, and social / emotional well being), the happier I am.… read more “More Effort = Easier & Happier Life”

Video Uploads

Uploading videos to Youtube is a nightmare through their API. All of the videos have to first be uploaded to your server to a temporary directory, then you can upload them to Youtube itself. The problem is that large videos can cause out of memory errors or timeout errors or cause your server itself to bog down.… read more “Video Uploads”