A lifestyle blog of Silicon Valley nerd and part-time Travel Journalist
About 20 years ago we signed a contract to do a major remodel for our house, adding a second story and taking the house from 1,450 square feet to 2,900 square feet. We made some good decisions, we made some bad decisions, and we had some good luck. After 20 years, I have a better …
Here is a simple and fun craft project that you can create where gathering the materials together is more than half the fun. We like wine. Every time we finish off a bottle of wine we put the bottle in the glass recycling but we save the cork. Slowly over time we end of with …
For more than twenty years we have had a piece of abstract art in our Living Room. My kids made this when they were 4 and 5 and when I notice it, it still makes me smile. We saw an article in a Sunset magazine when our kids were small about a kids art project …
I am just wrapping up our family’s 2017 reading challenge. We agreed on 12 different categories that were intended to encourage us to broaden our choice of reading materials. I should say that when I say I “read†a book, it usually means I listened to a book on Audible. Skip to the end for …
I think there may be something wrong with me. Working in Silicon Valley for these many years seems to have warped me. I just announced that I am leaving my current day job PayNearMe.com to work for myself. My intention was to work on some of my own projects like BloggerBridge.com and support myself as …
It has been a bad week for product design in the Christensen household. FirstTech Credit Union Our credit union has been marketing their new iPhone app that will allow us to deposit checks remotely by taking a picture of them. What a great idea. I had a check that I wanted to deposit so …
My new employer, PayNearMe, had an investment from True Ventures. One of the interesting programs True runs is a two day educational program once a year called True University. The 250 students at TrueU come from the 70+ startup companies that have had investment from True. There are 39 classes led by 52 instructors over the …
Working in Silicon Valley for a couple of decades, you can accumulate quite a few t-shirts. I had shirts that lasted longer than the company did. I had shirts from companies like Momenta, Apple, Talk City and LiveWorld, not to mention project shirts like Amateur Traveler, eWorld, Newton, and that production of Joseph and the Technicolor …
One thing that science fiction has taught us is that robots are cool… at least until they take over the world. But some robots are cooler than others. I had the opportunity recently to visit Intuitive Surgical with my alumni group from RPI. Intuitive Surgical is located here in Silicon Valley. They make surgical robots. …
My friend Margit is a teacher. Her Facebook wall had the following update recently: Note to student: “Thank you for submitting your paper. Unfortunately, I am unable to access your work. It appears there has been an error in the file upload. Please submit a new copy of your paper before [deadline]. I look forward …