• Joining Augsburg Fortress Board of Trustees

    Just under two years ago, I participated in a panel at the Publicity Club of Chicago with Eric Zorn from the Trib and Elizabeth Berglund from Hill & Knowlton. It was a pretty straightforward presentation for me, but at the end of the discussion, one guy worked his way up from the back of the…

  • Polished presentations at SES

    I attended SES San Jose this week, and gave two presentations – one on podcast/audio search optimization, the other on blog and feed SEO. Both are versions of presentations I’d given at past SES shows (NYC, Chicago) and they went pretty well. By the turnout here and in NYC in April, it’s clear that the…

  • Home for sale in Naperville, Illinois

    Our house in Naperville has been on the market for a little over two months, and now that we’re finally starting to settle into our home in California, I wanted to take a few minutes to tell you about the home we left. I’d love to sell the house – two mortgage payments are never…

  • Safer toys

    Several months ago, I wrote about the horror I experienced reading about Magnetix toys in the Chicago Tribune. These toys – dozens of which were in our house at the time – had killed a young boy and injured many others. What was worse, the manufacturer and the government were both made aware of the…

  • Sonos + Rhapsody: Nirvana

    Over a year ago, Fred Wilson raved about Sonos, and I’ve been jealous pretty much ever since then. But his music dialtone post earlier this year sealed it for me: I needed one of these things. For those that don’t know what it is, the Sonos is a multi-room music system. They are tiny-ish boxes…

  • Thanks for the ride, pup

    Eleven years ago, Robin gave me a trip to California as my law school graduation gift. There really wasn’t much choice about where we’d go once we got to San Francisco: I’d visited Yosemite as a kid, and couldn’t wait to see the park again. It touched me like few places had (or have since),…

  • Blessed

    A song that was in heavy rotation on KFOG when Robin and I were out here to do our househunt was “Blessed” by Brett Dennen. I’ve since listened to all of his songs on Rhapsody, and “So Much More” has become one of my favorites. In particular, a line from the song keeps resonating for…

  • Living in San Ramon

    The moving truck arrived yesterday morning and unloaded our stuff into the new house. It’ll take a while for us to get settled, but we could not be more thrilled to be in San Ramon. I have a gorgeous view of Mt. Diablo from the front of the house, and the Livermore hills to the…

  • I’m not dead yet…

    …but wow, I’d forgotten how painful moving is. Not painful in the “so sorry to see you go” way. No, the goodbyes have been sweet, and appreciated, and since we’re moving to the Bay Area, we’re already scheduling visitors – it’s not like we’re never seeing our friends again. No, it’s painful in the “what…

  • Traveling with pets – fly Continental

    Among the thousand and one things we need to nail down before actually moving to California (estimated time of departure: 2 weeks away) is getting our dog out to California. When we moved to Chicago over six years ago, it was touch-and-go: American Airlines will not fly pets if either city in the trip will…