Self-Aggrandizement: July 2008 Archives

Shyster
Filed July 31, 2008 6:14 PM.

While I don't have a law degree, after eleven years of running contract-intensive companies, I do sort of feel like I've gone through law school from the other side.

And while I'm bad, my CFO is worse; he previously worked for a few years as a strategic consultant at a law firm, and he's taken to referring to his position at Cyan as 'war time consigliere'.

This week, however, as we've been neck-deep in finalizing the PPM (for those without even an imagined law degree, 'private placement memorandum') that serves as the next step in our MovieSTAR hedge fund fundraising, it's become readily apparent that we're not, actually, attorneys at all.

Because while real ones can somehow spend all day, every day, reading their way through page after page after page of exceedingly dense legalese, we can only make it about twenty minutes at a stretch before our eyes glaze over to the point of effective blindness.

Which is all to say, it's a damn good thing I didn't go to law school in a spurt of mercenary money-chasing; I'm pretty sure I'd have ended up offing myself years before I even made partner.

First Day Back
Filed July 28, 2008 6:21 PM.

It's 6:20pm, I'm still in the office, and only about a third of the way through the to-do list I drew up for the day. This could be a long night.

More Wishes
Filed July 19, 2008 12:15 AM.

One afternoon, when my brother and I were about 5 and 8, respectively, our mother picked us up from school in the family Volvo. She then drove down the road about five hundred feet before announcing that she wasn't our mother, but rather an alien, who had come to kidnap us.

Obviously, a debate about this ensued, with my brother and me insisting that she was, in fact, our mother, and her insisting, no, in fact, she was an alien, but that the other aliens had just done a remarkably good job in making her look precisely like our mother. The debate raged for nearly the entire ride home, with my mother holding out just long enough for my brother and I to start developing serious doubts.

To this day, I'm not entirely sure what possessed her to do that, but if she were to do it again, I also wouldn't be terribly surprised. Because, while she's logical and organized, my mother also jumps on beds and pushes people into swimming pools without warning.

Or, at least, without much warning; by now, my brother and I have both learned to recognize that certain gleam in her eyes which serves as the signal for both of us to run for our lives.

Apparently, my mother inherited this troublemaking streak from her own mother, who once, while measuring her for a skirt she was shortening, poked my mom in the posterior with a pin, "just to see what would happen."

So, on her birthday (and, yes, astute readers, her, my, and my father's birthdays do all fall within the span of a week), to any readers who have been following along with self-aggrandizement and wondering what the hell is wrong with me, I say: go ask my mom. Much as she'd deny it, her genes clearly account for at least half of the whack-job traits I possess today.

As left on her answering machine while they were apparently headed down to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk for caramel apples:

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Your husband's the one who looks like a monkey,
But you smell like one so you probably shouldn't laugh at him too much.

xoxo

Also
Filed July 18, 2008 2:28 PM.

Did I mention I turned 29 on Wednesday?

It's been kind of a crazy week.

More Waiting
Filed July 17, 2008 5:27 PM.

In the perennial Cyan fundraise, once again stuck in a patch of waiting for high-net-worth investors to move their money.

As my VP of Development commented today, they may be liquid, but they seem to be very high viscosity.

Wishes
Filed July 14, 2008 6:30 PM.

I was six years old in 1986 when Haley's Comet passed over Palo Alto. It came overhead at about 4:00 in the morning, and I was there watching it, atop one of the Stanford hills near Highway 280, with my father.

My father had woken me, had driven us through the early morning March frost, and had climbed with me to the top of the tallest hill we could find, away from noise and light pollution, next to a single barren oak that I can still for some reason vividly remember.

We stood there, and we watched Haley's inch along overhead, and my father told me that Haley's wouldn't come around for another 75 years, that he wouldn't be alive to see it, but that he had brought me out that early morning so that I might, at age 81 or 82, be one of those few people lucky enough to see it twice in their lives.

I think of that morning sometimes, and it makes me think of all the selfless, wonderful, giving things my father did while my brother and I were growing up, and that he still does today.

So, each July 14th, on his birthday, I hope that at least some small measure of all that giving turns back his way, and that he gets exactly the day and the toys and the fun and the love and the adventure that he's hoping for.

So, to my father:

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
You look like a monkey,
No, seriously, you look like a monkey, especially given the ridiculous amount of body hair you have.

xoxo

Amazing News
Filed July 8, 2008 5:48 PM.

My brother informed me moments ago that there's apparently a Chick-Fil-A in New York City, mere blocks from my office.

My lunch life will never be the same again.

I Kilt It
Filed July 6, 2008 10:13 PM.

48 hours, 800 miles, one trip down to Frederick, MD to serve as a groomsman in my good high school friend's wedding.

Dixie
Filed July 2, 2008 11:22 PM.

According to the best man, for tomorrow's rehearsal dinner, the groom has requested the groomsmen wear "Khaki and Polo... we gotta look sharp you know."

Toto, we're not in Midtown any more.

Under Dress
Filed July 1, 2008 6:23 PM.

Thursday morning, Jess and I head down to rural Maryland for the wedding of one of my good high school friends.

He's apparently more Scottish than I'd previously realized, as the groomsmen - myself included - will be wearing kilts.

Today, a woman at the kilt rental shop (who knew?) warned that I needed to wear underwear under my kilt.

Oh, I assured her, I will.

No, really, she insisted. Sure it's traditional for a man to wear nothing underneath, but if you aren't use to it, she continued, the rough wool routinely causes penile hives.

Which is why I'll now be layering on at least two or three of my thickest pairs.

Shyster Filed July 31, 2008 6:14 PM.

First Day Back Filed July 28, 2008 6:21 PM.

More Wishes Filed July 19, 2008 12:15 AM.

Also Filed July 18, 2008 2:28 PM.

More Waiting Filed July 17, 2008 5:27 PM.

Wishes Filed July 14, 2008 6:30 PM.

Amazing News Filed July 8, 2008 5:48 PM.

I Kilt It Filed July 6, 2008 10:13 PM.

Dixie Filed July 2, 2008 11:22 PM.

Under Dress Filed July 1, 2008 6:23 PM.