for a guy with no job...

I sure am busy.

I'm way behind on my journaling here, so here's a shotgun blast of Dav-itude. Quick summary:

• I spent a month travelling on the East Coast from Montreal to Atlanta discussing business opportunities, visiting friends and attending my 20 year high school reunion.
• An unusually large number of friends are looking to start new software based companies and I've been considering joining their ventures.
• I've also even looked at joining a few existing startups.
• And of course I've got a half dozen of my own ideas for new software ventures that I'm still working on.
• Burning Man is less than a week away, and I feel two weeks away from being prepared.
• I finished my sailing lessons and have already started bareboat chartering as a certified skipper! Aye, Aye!
• My luck finally ran out for FOO Camp this year, luckily BAR Camp stepped in to fill the void in my heart.

  Details follow (click the MORE link):

In Weblog style, I'll work backwards through the list.

BAR Camp

I only went one day since time is precious until after Burning Man. It was definitely smaller scale than FOO Camp but it was really amazing for something thrown together in about six days. Hats off to the organizers! The session rooms were so small and packed it was difficult to get into many of them, but that left plenty of time for hallway conversations which were every bit as interesting as the FOO Camp variety. I did catch a great talk from the Dogster representative and the amazing Flock demo. Flock is a nifty new Firefox-based browser and would have helped me greatly creating this post actually. I'm looking forward to the release. Dogster is a site that really listens and responds to its users, and is also home to probably the saddest discussion forum I know of on the Internet, the "When It's Time To Say Goodbye" forum. I gave a half-session on my recent Stem Cell Server (or Blank White Server (I need a better name)) idea that I've been on about lately and got some good feedback. My modified FOO Camp '03 tshirt was popular, but not as popular as Ted's with the velcro scrabble tile style. More photos here.

Libertatia

Sneaking this one in here. The day before BAR Camp I was up in the Mendocino National Forest in Lake County, California for my brother Marcus da Anarchist's annual Libertatia event. A totally free weekend camping event with about 40 punk bands on the schedule. Unfortunately I only got to stay one night but it was a fun time nonetheless. More photos here.

Sailing

I took the written tests for Basic Keelboat Sailing and Basic Coastal Cruising (scoring 96% and 93% respectively, not bad for my first tests in about a decade) and completed the Basic Coastal Crusing on the water course which included an afternoon sail across "the slot" to Angel Island. The 27' sloop was heeled over so far in the 20+ knot winds that the starboard deck was practically underwater the hour+ ride over. Quite an adventure, especially when I had to crawl up and adjust the starboard fairlead to depower the jib. By the way, I love talking like that now :). Sailing in the San Francisco Bay is just amazing. During the same trip we found conditions so light we had to power up the outboard to make progress. Last week I set out with my friends Sean Savage, Mike Scanlon and Briony (fellow student from BCC) on my first bareboat charter. My second one is tomorrow.

Burning Man

We leave for the playa in less than a week. Yikes. Stress. Calm Blue Ocean, Calm Blue Ocean. I've bought new tarps to cover my dome, hopefully making it less of an oven than the translucent parachute has in the past. I bought a 1991 Jeep Wrangler (coincidentally from Honneyman the guy who made all the signs at Burning Man for years) since my old car wasn't going to make it up the mountain another year. I'm 90% through making a dalmation fur bunny outfit. This is my first time sewing using a pattern and I broke 7 needles on the machine before I figured out the right type to use for fur. With a couple of other folks from my camp we made three collapsable benches from single sheets of plywood based on the genius playatech plans.

Bidness

I've been talking with friends about software ventures ranging from online gambling to social wifi to taste mapping to anti-aging mental health. Another friend and I have been looking into an business importing wine from South America. I've been working on my own ideas ranging from Blank White Server to social peer to peer trusted darknets to a backpacker service and more. I've entertained the notion of taking tech lead jobs at a locative services company and a startup that is actually implementing my Blank White Server idea. I've declined to sign two NDAs (man I hate those things). I'm starting to lean towards doing technical consulting for very early stage startups as that seems to be my power-niche. All this is going to have to be acted on soon after I get back from the desert. By November 30 I'll have been on vacation for a year, which sounds too lazy really so I want to be actively working on something full time by then.

Travel

It was great catching up with old friends and getting some feedback on some of my business ideas. Boris in Montreal, Danzig, Thomas, and Alan in New York City. Also Michael Reyes in NY who I met in a hostel in Rio de Janeiro and lived with me for two weeks in Garopaba, Brazil. Then it was Jim Holt and Michael Rei in the nation's capital. Ele and Will, Paul and Jenn in Raleigh-Durham, NC. Todd and Kevin in Wilmington. Bobby Joe, Toby and Bobby in Jacksonville. Derek, Raj, Jeff-B, Troy, Jimmy and Jesse in Atlanta. Whew. I also got to visit my sister Katherine in Cleveland, something I should do more often. I saw and did many wonderful things with these wonderful people but I just realized I've been working on this post for nearly two hours and I'm just too busy to continue at the moment (I think the bulk of that time was hunting for links that no one is ever going to click on, ha). But ok, one more link, here's some Flickr sets from the trip, check out the Montreal and Atlanta street art if you're into that sort of thing.

Comments

[Paul]

Bernie loves Dogster. Here's his page:

http://www.dogster.com/pet_page.php?i=29819&PHPSESSID=63d6019baf29d62f1a247c22a4f364e9

Turns out he has a bunch of dopplegangers.

[Ele]

Nice recap! Although I think I followed it pretty well in real time via flickr. BTW- would you mind adding /blog to the link for "Ele & Will"? Thanks!!