Ok – so the flight to Sedona was awesome, the trip was awesome, the flight home was perhaps the best I have ever had, and the US got absolutely stomped in the Ryder Cup.  Now I need to get a few items off my chest:

• Raising a child is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, without question, and by far the most rewarding.  The idea that people write their children off because it is too much work doesn’t just secure them a special place in hell – it makes them disgusting, horrible human beings that should not be associated with.
• Easily the most important part of running my own business is the potential it has to allow me to employ a bunch of really smart people and treat them well.  I simply cannot BELIEVE how many people don’t get the importance of this in life.
• Java is robust and mature.  LAMP is not.  That is the END of that conversation.  Use what you want, and shut up about it.
• Offshore development is not stealing jobs from Americans.  It is taking commodotized jobs and moving them to where they belong – like making TV’s, etc.  If your job is being sent to India, or Russia, or China, it’s because you have not been paying attention.  Upgrade your skills, work harder, and – again – shut up about it.
• MS SQL is not a “toy” – it is a serious tool that works well in virtually any case.  If you haven’t created a multi-million row database in MS SQL, and are saying it is a toy, you don’t know what you are talking about.  See posts above about shutting up.
• Getting your shit together health-wise turns out to feel good and make you live longer.  It really isn’t something you should be congratulated for.  Like not going to jail, not beating your kids, and not stealing from people, it’s just something you SHOULD do.  Being unhealthy and fat, on the other hand, is something that society should be making people feel bad about.  The whole “big and beautiful” movement is just plain wrong.
• I really want to learn to become a highly skilled chef, and learn how to play the piano.  Yes – at 40.
• I hope my girlfriend understands how much I appreciate everything she does for me and my daughter.  Not from reading this – but from how I treat her.
• If Sydney ends up as happy an adult as I am right now, I will die a happy man.

That’s it.  Need to sleep now.

This turns out to be a big week for flying.  On Thursday, I flew out to Chino to chech out the immaculate RV-7 of Dan Checkoway.  Wow.  We spent some time talking about spcifics of his plan, avionics, performance, fuel economy, etc.  Then he took me up.  When out over the nearby lake and did some low level aerobatics.  Just unreal.  That plane is SO much fun to fly.  Really glad that Tom and are are building one.

Tonight I’m hoping to fly to Sedona with Abhilash – but the weather may not cooperate.  Cpunting the rturn trip, that will be roughly 13 hours of flying in one week for me.  No like I’m an airline pilot or a flight instructor – but that is a still a bunch of time in the air.

Been a while since I had a real flying adventure.  Given that I’m flying to Sedona, Az this weekend, figured I might as well PACK some real flying in.

Mom’s friend Patti needed to pick up a car from LA – said she’d be dricing down with Jim to pick it up in Palmdale, then they would drive separate cars back home to Monterey.  Since I made the trip to Montery recently, and Palmdale is right on the way home, I offerred to pick them up and drop them off.  About 400 miles.  We made all the arrangements to pick them up, and then I heard the bad news:  it wasn’t PalmDALE – it was Palm DESERT where the car was.  VERY different.  Like 200 miles different.  It was arranged.  Had to do it.

Van Nuys to Monterey to Palm Springs to Van Nuys is over 600 miles – and took 5.3 hours on the tach of N233ME.  Great flight, really – but tiring.  I was wheels up at 7:15am, and landed back home at 3pm – stopping only for lunch in Palm Springs.  A good deed, and a cool adventure.

OK – accountability is good, so I’m going to make my fitness data public.  If you look at my Fitness Log, you can see what I eat, what exercise I do, and trends for my weight.  It’s very cool, and allows me to track my progress – which has been slow lately.  I’m certainly at a “plateau”, and it is discouraging to say the least to keep stepping on the scale and seeing the same thing.  This should help.

I do feel MUCH better though. 

As I write this, Tiger is leading the Deutsche Bank Championship by one – after just the first day.  If he wins on Monday, it will be his 5th win IN A ROW.  For those of you who golf, you understand just how amazing this is.  For those who don’t let me explain.

Individual sports like golf or tennis or cycling - generally have trouble attracting a wide VIEWING audience, because it is hard to root for one individual.  Until a real standout player shows up (an Agassi, a Sampras, an Armstrong, or a Woods), you are left watching different people win all the time.  This is especially true on the PGA tour, where you see different people win all the time.  Given how deep the field is, a PGA player who wins once in a single year will consider that a great year for them.  Twice would very often be considered a CAREER year.

Now consider that if Tiger Woods ONLY won twice in a year – even if those wins were major championships (the Masters, US Open, British Open, or PGA Championship) – he would consider it a poor year.  If neither of those wins were majors, he would consider it an abysmal year.

In 2000, he won a LOT.  He won 3 of 4 majors (and won the 2001 Masters to hold all 4 titles at once – something that had never been done), 9 wins total, 4 seconds, and a total of SEVENTEEN top 10 finishes.  It is not even possible to describe how good a year that is.  Between the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2000, he won 7 times in a row.  NEVER did I think that would be duplicated.  And here he is on the verge of winning his 5th, with several more official money tounaments to play this year.  And the Ryder Cup.

I love it.  Being able to witness history is always fun – but this is really something special.  Prediction:  as impossible as it originally sounded when he said it was his goal, I think he will indeed hold the records for most wins in each of the four majors, and – of course – most wins lifetime.

UPDATE:  He won the Deutschebank, and everyone is now talking about how he can beat Nelson’s record.  Stay tuned.

After having lunch with Abhilash today, it occurs to me just how import friends are.  I’m not talking about “networking” – where you pretend to be friends with someone because you think they’ll be valuable to you at some point (and stop all contact when they realize you won’t be - a’la Matt Cutts and all of his blog “friends”) – but real friends who are:

•  Interested in what is going on with you
•  Look out for your best interests
•  Ask nothing in return – and get much more

These are the people that you can turn to for advice and help when you are running a business, and their experience and respect are absolutely invaluable.  And – sadly for many people – you can only get them by being the same to them.

OK.  Onward.