leeottphotography.com is LIVE!!

It took many many months more than I expected, but the website for Lee Ott Photography is now LIVE. Check it out at http://www.leeottphotography.com!

And make sure to let me know which ones are your favorites...

My first patent!

I have to admit that I'm super-excited about this - I got my first patent awarded by the US Patent Office!

I'm usually really excited just to submit patent proposals. At Yahoo! they give out these cool glass cubes for every 5 patents you file, and I will admit that they're my favorite desk adornment other than a picture of Sophia. Since I recently signed a few more submissions, I went to find out if I was eligible for another cube, and low and behold, a patent had just been issued! And apparently for awarded patents you get a cool black onyx cube for the desk. Awesome.

Hooray! I'm now officially an "inventor", which was what I wanted to be way back in Kindergarten...

A great analysis of MSFT / YHOO

This post by Marc Andreessen is a great analysis of the current proposed MSFT takeover of Yahoo!.  Very enlightening for anyone interested in exactly what is happening over the next few months.

Some discussion of an idea of mine

I was entertained today by an article a co-worker forwarded me today that describes a patent I filed for at Yahoo! a couple of years ago. It was fun to see one of my ideas get both described and then debated on the message boards. Cool.

A super-duper foodie adventure

This past Saturday Sophia and I got to go on a food tasting tour of San Francisco planned and hosted by a couple of friends (Hideyo and Alinna). I've done this once before with a different set of people up in Berkeley, CA, and it was a great taste experience.

This was no different.

We left the South Bay at 8:30 am and drove with the friends up to the Ferry Building in SF. It was cold and somewhat rainy, but we were bundled up well. We started by walking around the weekly Farmer's Market that goes on there, and I bought a pound of kumquats right away, which I proceeded to eat as we wandered around. We tasted a ton of yummy food, including various jams, hummus, etc. Soph had a fresh-water oyster at 9:30 in the morning and was in heaven. A bit much for me at that hour, but more power to her. We also bought some freshly made butter, a couple of fresh breads, and some AMAZING triple creme cheese called Sir Francis Drake by the Cowgirl Creamery. OMG!!! Dang. Wow. That cheese ROCKED THE HOUSE.

After buying all our goodies we stopped in at Pete's and got a few free coffee's (thanks, Hideyo), then sat down outside Pete's and snacked on our first fruits. We ate about half the cheese we bought, spreading it on the fresh bread, and washing it down with coffee. Unbelievable. It took both Soph and I right back to Paris a few years ago. Man was it awesome. I'm getting hungry just writing this and I just ate dinner a few minutes ago.

After the Ferry Building we were off to Tartin for some amazing pastries. My eclair was good, but Soph almost had a seizure her meringue was so good. We then went to Memphis Minnies, a true Southern BBQ spot, where the pork was definitely better than the beef, both were good, but nothing was, at least in my opinion, really spectacular. But it was way fun to eat. Then we were back to Tartin so Soph could pick up more meringues (and for Alinna to get some additional treats as well), before we headed home.

We got home at 4:30, so basically 8 hours of non-stop eating/touring. mmmm. All in all a delicious tour. I can't wait for the next one.

I should be sad to admit, but I'm not, that for dinner Sophia and I finished off the rest of the amazing triple creme Sir Francis Drake cheese, as well as the rest of the baguette we'd started in the morning. This time we toasted the baguette and had the combination with some red wine. wow. time to work out tomorrow, but it was sooooo worth it. yummy.

Rituals of Relaxation

I had a really great weekend, full of relaxation. More on the specifics in another post. One of the things that I was reminded of at lunch with some friends, though, is how important it is to me to have rituals of relaxation. Not just time to goof off or relax, but some form of relaxation that I do regularly, usually with friends.

In college this ritual included Frisbee Golf and Bojangles. My close friends and I would frequently get up Saturday morning, eat some cereal and watch cartoons until we were awake enough to function (approx 10am). We would head out to a nearby frisbee golf course, trash talk each other while wailing our discs into the nearest tree (not what we were intending to do, I assure you), and just enjoy the outdoors on a pretty southern spring or fall day. After about 2 hours we would finish up and head to Bojangles.

Now for those with the misfortune not to have eaten at Bojangles, let me describe this briefly. Bojangles is a fried chicken joint in the same vein as KFC or Popeye's. The difference is that Bojangles is better. First of all the fried chicken is noticeably spicier (and therefore better). Second, the fries, while nothing that interesting by themselves, come covered with a cajun salt seasoning that is to die for. If you ask nicely you can shake on as much as you want, and you should shake on plenty. Of course, you need a very buttery biscuit to tame your mouth afterwards, which is kindly provided with all meals, and by then you're parched. Sweet tea to the rescue. Bojangles has the gold standard of sweet tea, with as many refills as you can stomach. If you haven't had sweet tea before, it's just good old fashioned hot tea, poored over ice, and sugar added until the sugar stops desolving; in other words, super-saturated sugar-tea. mmmmm.

So you can see why after a meal at Bojangles, esp after the physical activity and emotional stress (remember, trash talking) of frisbee golf, well, we would often take naps on Sat. afternoons. Once rested we would in some months of the year end up at a Duke Basketball game.

So *that* is a ritual of relaxation. It wasn't just a one-time event. Or 2 times. It was *all* the time. ahhhh. It's refreshing just to remember it.

Even now I have some rituals of relaxation, although none are quite so extensive, nor quite so likely to shorten my life by a decade or two. Recently Sophia and I have been going to breakfast on most Saturday mornings. We either go to a diner near-by, or a coffee shop, but we order breakfast, coffee, and sit and talk. It's a super way to start the weekend, first because it's delicious, and second because Soph and I get a chance to catch up on the week, process a bit, then jointly figure out what we're going to do with our weekend. It's awesome. In the last few weeks we've added joint scripture memorization to the ritual as well. That's been cool since I don't actually have that much scripture memorized, and it gives us something to do together.

What about a "stupidity" pill?

There was a great quote from the movie "The Sixth Sense" that shortly after it came out was completely transformed/modified into an even better quote:

"I see stupid people. They're everywhere. They don't know they are stupid."

I was talking at lunch with some coworkers about large drug companies and the fact that they are heavily incented to find drugs to treat chronic diseases, since you have to regularly take the medicine, resulting in good ROI for the drug company. Chronic pain, obesity, etc.

So why not a drug to treat stupidity? It's a common illness. If you could just improve IQ by 10 points with a daily drug, wouldn't that be great? Of course, smart people would end up taking it, too, so I guess it would be more accurate to call it IQ booster or IQ vitamin, rather than a stupidity pill.

But what would it feel like to be 10 IQ points smarter? Would everything suddenly get easier? Would everything be instantly boring? Could you even tell?

I think there's a lot of money waiting to be made here, but by somebody much smarter than me.

Yahoo! getting bought by MSFT?

Wow.

I've been speculating about this with some friends recently, that if we dropped below $20 that we'd be ripe for acquisition and that the most likely target would be MSFT for exactly the reasons listed in this article. In addition to providing a competitive alternative on the advertising front, a combined MSFT+YHOO would *own* the global markets for email and messenger, plus have an unbelievable mobile presence.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out.