This is a deceptive business practice. Not that I’m surprised, but (a) they were trying to quietly get more money out of me each month, and (b) made no plans for me to easily return this, imposing a cost upon me that I cannot recover. I’m sure if I don’t return it they would bill me for it.

They tried to scare me into installing it too. “Your current modem will stop working at some point, and might start slowing down”. Umm… ok it’s worked fine all along, but maybe there are tech reasons for this. “We cannot tell you when it will stop working, and we cannot warn you ahead of time”. Really? Wow you suck Comcast. If I could I would switch to Fios; my experiences with Verizon were always pretty good in the past.

Related chiclet keyboard evil – I have struggled with RSS since college, keeping it under control with good ergonomics, stretching etc. But I love Apple design, so bought two chiclet aluminum keyboards when they came out. A few weeks later my fingers were killing me – because effectively I was smashing my fingers into aluminum. Duh… but still it says something that the good design isn’t effective, just pretty. Dangerous for me in fact given my typing style.

Of course I’m the idiot since I keep buying their stuff.

Both of us gave up something precious for these cars. We gave up the cars we bought for ourselves from our first post-undergrad jobs, cars we loved and cherished for 7 years. Franny gave up her Jeep Wrangler, and I gave up my Mazda Protege. So thank you to these cars which kept us safe and happy for so many years. Both had > 150k miles when we traded them in and were still going strong. The Jeep brought us to Alaska and back, not to mention uncounted snowboarding trips. The Mazda took care of me and various members of my family as needed through the years. Pics below from our first dream cars:

4 feet of snow, no problem

Brand new and I loved it

I’ve had a few dream cars – and ever since driving Pat Shine’s brand new 2002 Audi A4 turbo an A4 has been one of them. Now that I’m a family man, that means A4 Avant (ie wagon). And I just picked one up (used, 40k miles) – beautiful looking black 2007 A4 Avant – 6 speed manual, turbo, quattro (ie all wheel drive). I love the red interior lights (reminds me of my fishing days – red lights maintain night vision) and the power / snappiness of the ride. Here’s the Car and Driver page on this car.

Just like this, but black

So if you’re getting married you need a SeeMonkey photobooth.  And if DIY (do it yourself) isn’t your thing, and you’re in the New England area, they offer a full photobooth service which is affordable.

And yes, I’m shilling hard for a good buddy and fellow member of Team Rocket Monkeys, but you can ask any guest at his wedding and they’ll validate that this is an awesome addition for any wedding or party .

So it is annoying that I can’t read The Economist on my phone. No mobile version of their site, no iPhone app, it’s painful. I trust they will get there, but it’s annoying they haven’t yet.

In the past (college) I would have implemented this myself. Not anymore. This is an interesting observation. In college, I had mobile phone email by auto-forwarding emails from my personal server to SMS, and vice versa. Well before Gmail for mobile. Now, I trust that progress will solve many of these little annoyances, and there is enough competition for my attention / interest that if something isn’t perfectly meshing with my desires, I find something else that is. (Or, for The Economist, which deserves my attention, I put up with its annoyances).

We bought the house without a realtor or lawyer – saving $$$ – go us. We can read our own contracts, and who is better aligned with our own interests than, um, us?  (If you’re interested, there are great HBS cases on why realtors are completely unaligned with either the seller or buyer’s interests).

We were then the proud owners of a house on a cliff, overlooking the ocean, with a beach at the foot of the cliff for surfing and playing. This was literally the way Franny and I would dream about our perfect house – “wouldn’t it be nice to have a house on a cliff, with surfing waves, by the ocean?”

The house was being sold as a knockdown. We knew better – but it was a scary proposition. The house was built in 1920, fairly solid, but hadn’t been occupied in 8 years, wasn’t completely winterized, and had been destroyed by a bad 1970′s makeover.

Long story short – we are in heaven, we bought at the low point in the market, at a truly hardball price (paid for land only) and then “flipped” our own house with the help of tons of family and friends – thanks everyone!  We now live in a beautiful, inspiring, livable, warm Cape Cod summer cottage, we play daily at the beach with our children, and we wake up to sunrises over the Atlantic. Incredible.

Before and after pictures of the flip are here. We’ve since added a gravel parking area and pathway, many flowers, and more (pics).  It just keeps getting better.

Annoying, I don’t have time in my life to play at sysadmin anymore, I’ve already learned this stuff.  Why can’t wordpress, from the admin screen, just perform an update in the background?  Totally stupid that I have to download a file, unzip it, upload it, and then it borks everything.  Serious wtf moment.

I’ll fix it sometime soon, perhaps when I get around to delivering on those promised posts from earlier .

• My 3rd Google launch – 2008 US Voter Info
• My new Google job – Book Search
• Our move back to Massachusetts – post is up
• Our new baby Gabriel Moyse Murray – post is up
• Lots of pictures – available at Picasa, many more to add though

As you can see, we have been busy. Hence the lack of updates here.  It’s been fun though!