Man, I am one tired puppy.  Got up at four, drove down and spent the day in Vista, then did a 35 mile loop including Del Dios highway along Lake Hodges.  Finished with a nice steak and a decent Pinot.  What could be better than that?  However I must say this was not a good day; much to do, too much finicky crummy not-fun stuff to do...  (So, what makes something fun?  A great mystery... but definitely there are things which are not fun.  Like taxes.)

This is very cool: 14-Year-Old Creates Chemistry Trading Card Game.  From the Elementeo website: "In this action-packed game, two or more players wage a chemical war with just one goal in mind – destroy their opponent's electrons to zero! Armed with their arsenal of elements, compounds, and nuclear reactions, these young chemists strive to create, combat, and conquer the world!  As the commanding general of your army, your job is to move, attack, and strategize with your elements and compounds. The primary goal is to destroy the most number of your opponent's electrons by the end of the game."  Pre-ordered! 

Inhabitat notes the First LEED Parking Garage at the Santa Monica Civic Center.  Not only is it green, it is beautiful!  Wow, what a triumph of design... 

I've held off commenting on Fred Wilson's We need a new path to liquidity.  When I first read it something bothered me, but I couldn't put my finger on it...  but now I have.  From Fred's point of view "an exit" is the only thing that matters; he's a VC, so he invests and then an exit gives him a return.  An IPO or an acquisition gives him liquidity.  But I'm not a VC, I'm an entrepeneur, and although I want liquidity too (someday) I am more interested in other things...  like succeeding at building a good company, and generating cash.  It feels like if you build a company to grow for twenty years, the five-year things take care of themselves.  Maybe the new path to liquidity is that management buys out investors with profits! 

Renowned physicist John Wheeler, who coined the term "black hole", has died at 96, the last of the great pioneers of quantum mechanics.  His students at Princeton went on to become a who's-who of physics, including Richard Feynman and Hugh Everett.  He will be missed but never forgotten. 

ESPN on Greg Maddox: How in the world did this guy win 347 games?  "When Brad Penny and Maddux were teammates on the Dodgers, during the last two months of 2006, they had a conversation one day that led Penny to reach a stunning conclusion: This guy knows my stuff better than I do. It was eerie, really, how easily Maddux dissected Penny's repertoire and suggested ways to maximize it. Penny, figuring he'd take advantage of the situation, asked Maddux to call a game for him against the Cubs. And so, on the night of Sept. 13, Penny glanced into the dugout before every delivery and found Maddux, who signaled the next pitch by looking toward different parts of the ballpark. Penny threw seven scoreless innings with no walks and beat the Cubs 6-0."  I love it.  Too bad he's now a Padre... 

Russell Beattie: The End of Mowser.  "Now the question you might be asking is why not stick with it a little longer?...  Beyond the fact that I'm irretrievably in debt, the general answer is that I don't actually believe in the 'Mobile Web' anymore, and therefore am less inclined to spend time and effort in a market I think is limited at best, and dying at worst."  Interesting because Russell was always the biggest proponent of "the mobile web", which I never saw.  I guess he no longer does either...  There is only one web, and this is it.  Anyway good luck to Russell in his next endeavor, whatever it may be! 

Wired reports Users Fight to Save Windows XP.  "Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews.  No matter how hard Microsoft works to persuade people to embrace Vista, some just can't be wowed. They complain about Vista's hefty hardware requirements, its less-than-peppy performance, occasional incompatibility with other programs and devices and frequent, irritating security pop-up windows."  Go Users!  I love "less than peppy" performance, BTW.  How about dog slow?