My family flew out of the Cedar Rapids airport a couple weeks ago. Since 9/11 I’ve been through LAX, Sea-Tac, O’Hare, Sky Harbor, Denver International, Lambert and San Francisco International. Up until a few weeks ago my perception was that O’Hare and Sea-Tac had the tightest security.

Then I went through Cedar Rapids, a small airport just north of the University of Iowa. The security was surprisingly tight. As I went through the screening process, the only thing keeping me from thinking that the country wasn’t on condition Red, was the lack of police dogs or machine guns.

I make no secret that I think the whole airport security system has become a complete joke - I mean a policy that doesn’t allow you to take on a bottle of water that you purchase at the airport but does let you bring on a laptop is either retarded, or a complete farce (or both). However the Cedar Rapids TSA take their job very seriously. Check out this sign “The Faces of Global Terrorism” posted in the airport lobby:

Yes, that’s Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri in the upper right! Because, if Bin or Al come through the Cedar Rapids, you’ll want the general public to be able to pick them out from the Iowa crowd.

Feeling secure yet?

There’s a reason my chat status has been set to “busy” and I have not updated this blog in two weeks. On the heals of ScribeStorm’s first interactive DVD release earlier this month, we’ve been asked to do nearly a dozen more! Then last week our funding went through.

After the funding was finalized I had a restful night of sleep, only to wake up the next morning and realize that the past eight months was the easy part. Now, in half that time, we have to hire half a dozen people, support and build out a quickly growing interactive DVD business, build a fully interactive demo for three next generation platforms (HD-DVD, Blu-Ray and IPTV), and sell our secret sauce to the next round of VC so we can go the distance.

The white boards are filling up again.

I admit I’m pretty extreme in my views on smoking in public places, but come on - smoking at a playground? Moments later she was stomping out her butt at the bottom of the slide. No surprise though, littering and smoking are a marriage of bad habits.

Before moving to Fairfield, I lived on a cul-de-sac with twelve other homes on Bainbridge Island. I lived on that street for just over three years and can only tell you the names of five of my neighbors. It was rare that I would find myself in a conversation with a neighbor, and when I was the topic was almost always about a conflict someone on the street was having with someone else. It seemed like everyone had at least one neighbor they were not on speaking terms with due to a disagreement.

Let’s see, there was:

• The raccoon killer (shotgun in the middle of the night).
• The barking dogs that started as early as 530am.
• The basketball court light that was installed next to a neighbor’s master bedroom window and stayed on till midnight sometimes.
• The tree cutter who had his entire green buffer of Douglas Firs cut down with no permit and no permission from neighbors.
• The family of 15 living on a septic system for 4 - a frequent problem for anyone living downhill.
• The dog walker who refused to pick up doggy doo.

I realize it would be a generalization to say that this type of tension was typical of life on Bainbridge Island, but I certainly believe that it is typical of suburban living (which Bainbridge Island is). And I have my own theories as to why that is the case.

Anyway, here we are in Fairfield. And I don’t know if it is a Midwest thing, an Iowa thing, or a small town thing; but all my neighbors seem friendly and considerate. When I first moved into our home here I looked around and thought in despair that I didn’t seem to have anything in common with the people on my street.

And now, 5 months later, my wife and I can hardly walk down the street without entering into conversation with not just our neighbors on our street, but people all over town that we’ve met. I’ve actually had to learn that it is ok to just say hi at times and keep moving otherwise you’ll never get to your destination.

It’s a welcome change from my experience in the suburbs.

Today Ben and Jerry’s is giving away ice cream, taxes are due, and I turn 38.

After two weeks of shared stress between our Burbank and Fairfield offices, ScribeStorm shipped it’s first release today! I cannot reveal the details until it hits the streets - other than it is a disc for a highly successful ‘alt’ rock band. This release implements the first taste of our interactive media management system.

Monday we continue work on releases for two more major recording artists due out before the end of this month. It’s getting pretty exciting around here. Now if I could just fill our three open positions.

The arrival of our office XBOX 360 was well timed - nothing like fragging your co-workers to celebrate a release.

I’m a long time Netflix fan - more than once I have stated that Netflix is the best thing on the Internet. I’ve been waiting for weeks now to get included in “Watch Now”: Netflix’s implementation of video on demand.

So tonight I noticed for the first time that the “Watch Now” tab shows up when I sign in . . .

Yaaaa! I immediately rescheduled all my activities for the night and planned for several hours of Netflix fueled videotainment. I said goodnight to my wife and clicked THE TAB.

WTF! It doesn’t support Firefox? I am speechless. There’s a reason I don’t use IE6 - it blows. There’s a reason I don’t use IE7 - it blows, and then it crashes. I like choices. I’ll wait until “Watch Now” supports Firefox.

Bad Netflix.

I spent most of the 80s on a skateboard plugged into a walkman playing one of several 120 minute Maxell cassette tapes packed with punk bands like 7 Seconds, Minor Threat, Youth Brigade and of course U2’s anthemic Boy. I never owned a Psychedelic Furs album, but I had their “President Gas” song on one of my lighter mix tapes. It’s not that I wasn’t a fan of the Furs, but their music was reaching saturation on the radio and MTV (back when they had two dozen videos that playing continuously) and they didn’t make a good soundtrack for the half pipe.

I recently stumbled across Richard Butler’s (lead singer of the Furs) self titled release which came out last year while listening to Rhapsody’s “Down Tempo” channel (check it out). Hearing Butler’s distinct calm and soothing baritone was immediately serendipitous. I usually recall the 80s as a time of unparalleled teen angst: a time of constantly running (skating) away from a suburban world filled with enemies to my way of thinking. A time of earphones blasting out the lyrics I wanted to say, while keeping out the world I didn’t want to hear.

And then to hear a warmer voice from that time, an iconic voice I had entirely forgotten . . . it was great. I sat in my living room with my wife and we listened to the entire album. And right from the start, with “Good Days Bad Days”, you feel wrapped in this blanket of warm memories from the 80s: good memories of being young with just the right amount of melancholy to stress the distance in time and age, without depressing you.

Time to visit mom.

After getting screwed on ebay (some guy in Russia owes me $5), I finally found someone to throw me a Joost invite. Joost, an application that delivers TV over the Internet, is funded by the creators of Skype and Kazaa. I have little doubt this app will blossom into something big.

I’ve been playing around with it for about 30 minutes. The interface is nice and the themed categorization of content is refreshing compared to normal TV. But like normal TV (and the reason I don’t watch TV) there is still a ton of crap: it took me less than a minute to find myself scrolling by several items of content featuring Paris Hilton.

The quality is better than YouTube (not difficult to do) but still well below the DVD mark. I tried watching some Green Day videos and got several time outs. But hey - it’s early, it’s beta, and I can see the huge potential here. There are a handful of community style widgets you can enable which allow you to do things like chat with other viewers and rate shows while watching them.

Oooh, Comedy Central. Later.

The day the jack hammers and earth movers showed up in the alley outside my office I was annoyed. After a day of deafening noise, I left for home and passed the crew on the way to my car. When I asked them what they were digging up, they responded that they were laying fiber optic to service the square - the downtown area.

My annoyance went away. “Dig faster!” I screamed, grabbing a shovel. I jumped into the nearest ditch and started tossing out dirt . . .

In spirit anyway.

I cannot wait for my gigy! (that’s 1,000 Mbps for you non nerds)