Protect Open Space

I don’t consider myself a hardcore environmentalist, but I enjoy the outdoors and wildlife. I do what I can to be a responsible Coloradan including voting for anything the county and town I live in wants to do to preserve remaining open space. Open space is wonderful: it creates buffers between neighborhoods to relieve congestion, it breaks up the monotony of suburbia gone wild (which, I realize, is a rather hypocritical statement given I live in the ‘burbs) and brings recreation and a little wildlife to your doorstep. My home is about a block away from a very large open space and I frequently take advantage of the trails the meander around it’s edge for morning runs.

Anyway, on the way home from skiing @ Eldora today, we spied a Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) hanging out in one of the open spaces. What a gorgeous creature and one you rarely see in built up areas. I don’t know what inspired this bird to hunt in our neck of the woods, but it appeared he / she bagged a gopher. We managed to snap a few photos sitting along side the road and I stitched them together to make a single panorama of the one bird. Pretty cool looking image if I do say so myself.

Anyway, it’s opportunities like this that make me thankful for open space. Protect it. There’s only so much left.

Photos taken looking south at the intersection of 96th St & Dillon Rd, Louisville, CO

the tartanpodcast

Like a spotlight shining through the fog of Internet crap, the tartanpodcast is truly quality, thoughtful and thoroughly enjoyable musical content. I “discovered” this podcast in Jan’06 after getting an iPod nano for Christmas. It was prominently listed on iTunes and I checked it out. I’ve been addicted ever since.

The host is a Scotsman named Mark Hunter who lives in Glasgow. Unbeknownst to me prior to picking up my the tartanpodcast habit, Scotland (particularly Edinburgh and Glasgow) has become a musical hotbed with dozens of independent bands and solo performers pumping out some great music. Artists like Kasino, Gum and The Boy Lacks Patience are self-producing and self-distributing outstanding tunes with the tartanpodcast providing marketing drive.

The whole idea of “amateurs” cutting out the big music companies smells like the Open Source movement and is one of the powerful and wonderful things the Internet has done for world. And it’s a classic Internet entrepreneurship model. Visit the tartanpodcast. Download a show and enjoy. After you get a taste, support independent Scottish music by buying and downloading these artists’ full CDs! You won’t regret it.

The Virtual Corporation

My company is very new, very small. It’s employees are scattered across two US states and one European country. We don’t have an official office (our corporate mailing address is a P.O. box). This is, of course, good and bad. If you’re a regular telecommuter, you already know the pros & cons. For me, there are more cons to working at home since I don’t have a room I can carve out as a workspace. I have kids, a dog, stay-at-home mom, a stocked refrigerator, TVs, etc. Lots of distractions.

So I work wherever I can find a hot spot. Borders / Seattle’s Best and Starbucks mostly. Amante is also nice. Coffee shop offices also have pros and cons. Lots of people moving around, ambient music, loud conversations. I usually just jack-in to my laptop and listen to Radio Paradise to drown it all out and focus.

But I am not alone. The number of people I see conducting business in coffee shops is astounding. Is this the new corporate model? Virtual offices with everyone communicating strictly via e-mail, IM and Skype? Or is this backlash for years of horrible mass volume “office coffee”?