I learned something on my flight back to Burbank this week: electronic devices like iPods and the Nintendo DS, are deemed more dangerous to air travel than smoking. I flew out on one of the new Embraer 170 jets and the lighted signs above the seats have been “updated”.

No longer is there a “no smoking” message (since we can assume that no one is crazy enough to light a cigarette in the aircraft), but instead a “no electronics” message (since there are still many whackos out there that insist on passing on the excitement of sitting in a cramped seat and instead decide to endanger everyone by playing video games or listening to music).

After returning from Burbank late Friday night, I had to spend Saturday shipping equipment, doing laundry and packing for my trip back out Sunday for the next two weeks. The exhaustion is being kept at bay by the excitement of the project we’re working on (more details later).

On the jet ride out I found myself trying to figure out just what the hell this graphic on the safety instruction card means:

I’m sitting in the Ontario airport, having logged into a WiFi hotspot moments ago. When I opened up my wireless connection control panel, I saw a list of 19 networks to join, most listing their rock bottom prices in the SSID (the name of the network). Competition is tough at the Ontario airport!

Ok now I’m in the Denver airport on a 5 hour layover - this place is becoming my satellite office. For those of you thinking about getting into the WiFi hotspot market, I suggest you try this airport. It has 50 times the traffic of Ontario and quarter of the number of hotspots. All of which are a pain in the ass to connect to.

Gotta go - someone is trying to bogart my power.

At a recent party I was boasting about Will’s amazing corn popping skills (we eat popcorn at least 4 times a week). What is his oil of choice? Canola oil.

Rut-Row!

You should of seen the look of shock on my guest’s faces. Didn’t we know that canola oil is a horrible genetically engineered rapeseed? Ah, no.

Later that night Will was bummed because he was sure he could never attain his bowl of perfectly popped kernels without canola oil. I was bummed because at the last grocery store run we stocked up - so we have two or three bottles of organic canola oil in our cupboard. So we turn to the Internet to confirm or waylay our fears. At first glance it is shocking to see all the toxic effects of canola oil. How can they be selling that stuff?? But if you take a closer look it looks as if its all a hoax.

But it goes way beyond the email hoax. There is a substantial anti-canola camp out there. How can there be nothing wrong with it when there is so much bias against it? One claim that was not renounced everywhere (i.e., perhaps real) was that a Canola oil based diet causes vitamin E deficiency. But then others stated this claim did not have traceable research and statistics.

The most compelling argument (and most straight forward) was that canola oil heated at high temps distorts the fatty acid turning it into an unnatural form of trans fatty acid that has been shown to be harmful to health. But this is true of all oils high in omega 3 fatty acids. I guess I should quit using it for popcorn for this reason alone.

Gesh. It is maddening that it is this hard to navigate ones’ food choices.

I’m in Burbank this week an the weather is beautiful.  I cannot recall the last time I was in the LA area and did not choke on smog.

My favorite little liberal town is in love with Ron Paul (sigh). There’s a Ron Paul yard sign on every block, a Ron Paul bumper sticker to see at every stop and this large banner near the square. I don’t get it.

Sure Ron Paul is against the War in Iraq (who isn’t), but why would a liberal defect to the Republican party over a war every Democrat is against as well?  More importantly, why would a liberal defect to a man who has an agenda to overturn Roe vs Wade?

Trying to get to Burbank this afternoon but ended up stuck in the Cedar Rapids and now in Denver. A bunch of thunderstorms are to blame. They delayed our plane coming in from Chicago, and then we had to fly around a huge thuderstorm on the way to Denver (which was quite beautiful in size and electrical activity).

While picking my nose (and the Internet) at the Cedar Rapids airport, my traveling companion (and ScribeStorm’s HD-DVD developer) pointed out some odd things.

First the free and secret code (a bit of a triple oxymoron):

It took awhile to figure out why the Chicken Citrus Salad costs 55 cents more than the other salads:

Checking out one of my friend’s Flickr feeds today I was reminded of what I miss most about Seattle right now. It’s not the mountains, nor the cool ocean breeze, and not even the blackberries or blueberries growing in my old garden. But rather a large bowl of chicken noodle soup - Vietnamese style.

Photo by Damien

Saturday I was out with my daughter shopping for a birthday present for a young boy’s birthday party later that day. Browsing the aisle devoted to boys toys I felt a little put off that even the toys that weren’t weapons (guns and swords) included weapons (robots, action figures, combat vehicles).

The only toys that weren’t in the combat category were cars. And thankfully my daughter is a fan of them (thanks to Pixar) so she ended up choosing “Ramone” and “LeakLess” from Cars. I say thankfully because I have this dislike for toys that are weapons. Which is actually pretty hypocritical of me considering that a couple months ago I dug out my old Darth Vader action figure carrying case complete with about fifty Star Wars characters . . . and their guns.

It took me about ten to twenty minutes after cracking open the Darth Vader case in front of my daughter and going through the characters that I realized that the real appeal of playing with Star Wars actions figures was their guns. Every figure came with either a sword, blaster or machine gun; and without those items there wasn’t much Star Wars going on (or fun).

I mean playing with Star Wars action figures is only about 25% dialogue (”use the forrrrce Luuuke”) and the rest making blaster and explosive sounds (my lips were well practiced at puckering long before girlfriends enter my life - if you have no idea what I am talking about, try making the sound of Han Solo’s blaster going off right now while looking in the mirror).

The day after the birthday party I came across two photos of me at age 8 and 10, each taken on my birthday with me holding a real rifle (a birthday present, complete with ammunition of course). I cannot recall a relative of mine who did not have at least one gun in the house and I often played at relatives homes where there were dozens of pistols and rifles around, some locked up but most not.

This got me to thinking. As a kid and a now a grown up kid, I personally like love games, comics, models and action figures that revolve around weapons. Whether it’s comics of Wolverine slaying bad guys with his claws or the board game Axis and Allies; where you essentially get to kill thousands of enemy soldiers with each roll of the dice - I find great joy (and relaxation) in these things.

Yet I absolutely hate real firearms. Or maybe I’m just scared of them.

I’m not sure what my point here is, other than I’m feeling split as a parent. Ideally the world would be a better place if the boys toys aisle at say Walmart or Toys-r-us was void of weapons or soldiers. But on the other hand I can’t even count the number of toys/games I still own that revolve around war or conflict.  Why am I annoyed (as a parent) at the very thing I still enjoy (as a grown up kid)?

I realized late last night while organizing a database structure, building wireframes and recalling cash flow worksheets all in my head at the same time - that running a startup is the most challenging thing I have ever done. I used to think raising a child was at the top; except a) Dawn does most of the work, and b) no matter how badly you screw up parenting, you still have a child.

However with a startup you are aware on a daily basis (no matter how well things are going) how easily it can all disappear. The climate is very unforgiving of mistakes and there is a considerable amount of luck involved in the rewards. We’ve been running for over a year now, with revenue coming in the past 2 months. We’ve delivered Music Video Interactive DVDs (”MVI”) for Linkin Park, Rush, Flaming Lips and James Blunt (as of this week); with several more due in September.

That, I have learned was the easy part. Now the challenge is scaling beyond a 3-5 MVIs per month production team and giving our investor (and ourselves) a positive ROI. That means growing revenue with our existing services while building new software products. We’ve gone from being able to do one MVI in ten weeks to doing three a month. But even that just keeps us floating.

New software products require a war chest for all that R&D, and paying customers want your full attention to quality and turn around time - they could really care less about your other plans that don’t involve them (rightfully so). So the challenge for this CTO is to manage engineering resources on a daily basis to ensure that both mouths are being fed - product maintenance (service) and product development (R&D). It’s not easy. It requires both a strategic focus and a split personality to shift between rushing a product out the door and then leaning back in front of a white board and chewing on architectural decisions and problems.

I love the engineers we’ve hired every time I have to have them QA a product for the nth time one minute, and then get back to coding (a different product altogether) the next. And never have I heard a complaint or groan from them.

Before I entered start up mode I thought a lot about the potential rewards (in dollars) from the personal investment. Now I rarely think about money, but rather am becoming addicted to the problem solving. Success wouldn’t be interesting if achieving it wasn’t so damn challenging I suppose.