Today was really emotional; we attended the funeral of a friend killed by cancer.  It was a moving service, lots of good ideas about what matters and how to live your life.  People are at their best in the presence of death, friends act like friends, and the petty politics of daily life are set aside.  It is true, if you want to set your priorities, imagine your funeral, and what people will say about you.

...perhaps they will say of me, "he was a good blogger"...

Just want to thank my friend Peter for the generous loan of his bike, a spiffy Trek Madone (that's Mr. Armstrong pictured on his, at right); in the wake of my weird disaster I've ridden it the past couple of days and it has convinced me that aside from the cost, buying a new bike might not be so bad.  It does ride differently - stiffer and harsher - and I haven't gotten used to the shift-lag in the 10-speed Dura-ace cassette (my 9-speed is faster), but beggars can't be choosers and anyway a Madone is about the coolest bike going.  So I'll be riding the Stagecoach Century this Saturday on a "foreign" bike, that will be interesting... 

It was nice and warm here in Southern California today, in the 70s, but not so elsewhere as Blowing snow and frigid temperatures pound nation.  "Arctic air extended its grip Wednesday with below-zero temperatures stretching from Montana to northern New England and frost nipping the Gulf Coast.  A few ski areas in Vermont and northern Minnesota closed for the day because of the cold - 38 below zero at International Falls, with the wind chill during the night estimated at 50 below."  And there I was, riding in the late afternoon in just a cycling jersey, quite comfortable... 

Which brings us to the photo of the day, a fleet of Laser sailboats nestled in the snow, courtesy of the Horse's Mouth.  Brrr...

Scott Loftesness notes the U.K. Financial Services Club's celebration of PayPal's 10th birthday.  Wow, ten years.  It has been eight years since I left, seems more like eight hundred... 

Robert Scoble: Steve Jobs' bad news heralds the real-time web age.  "Our mechanisms for tracking stories and important tweets are really lame. Right now, hours after the news has broken, there are TONS of tweets coming through the system. Hundreds every few minutes. But, in that stream of “noise” is there any 'news?'"  See, that proves it, even a dedicated Twitter-er like Robert admits the signal to noise is too low.  RSS was way better for following Jobs' announcement, and for assessing the reactions of the blogosphere (and for just about everything else). 

Ottmar Liebert quotes Harold Pinter: "There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false."  To which I emailed, "A proposition cannot be true and false. It sounds like an interesting observation but it is actually vacuous."  To which Ottmar replied: "I think you are forgetting the fourth dimension.  A proposition is only true or false according to current information and perception.  As that information changes true might become the new false and vice versa.  So, a proposition can be true today and false tomorrow."  To which I say, good point!