Quarter end!  Gak, already!!  I had the most delightful day today, it began with the fact that I didn't go down to Vista, slept in and had a nice commute downstairs to work.  Then I was able to do some actual programming, which is always a treat, while watching a steady stream of new order bulletins flowing through my inbox (yay sales team).  Later I did a great Rock Store / Encinal Canyon ride with the CVC Red Group; they are fast and just keeping up with them in the flats is a challenge.  And finally we adopted Bo, our new little guinea pig.  I could go for Groundhog Day on this one.

So let's make a filter pass, shall we?

Absolutely the saddest story: Father and Son Grand Tour Dream ends with tragedy.  A father and son riding in the same Grand Tour I rode last Saturday, hit by a drunk driver on PCH.  The father was killed, the 14-year old son hospitalized with multiple broken bones and no father.  That could have been me.  It could have been anyone.  Just horrible... 

No idea what to make of this: Swedish software firm acquires the Pirate Bay.  This feels like Napster going legit all over again.  Business model, anyone?  Cory Doctorow is confused too.  Anyway it will be interesting to watch, in all senses... 

Remember I commented on Alaska Airlines' "north of expected" motto?  I flew Alaska and their service was indeed unexpectedly good, and significantly improved from my previous experience.  Turns out JDPower just found Alaska was airline flyers' favorite airline.  Wow.  Shows the power of a motto... 

An interview with Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital: 

Q: Opentable is one of the first 'silicon valley' initial public offerings (IPO) since the economic downturn.  Why do you think the company was able to get public and was received so well?

A: I actually believe that the buy-side has ample demand for IPOs. The key problem is a supply problem – most companies either don’t want to be public or aren’t willing to make the tough choices it takes to get public (healthy margins, sarbox implementation, etc).

Huh, interesting...  Bill is one of the most astute VCs out there (and before that he was one of the most astute analysts).

Check this out - an unbelievably awesome papercraft castle.  As you look at these pictures remind yourself that everything is made of paper.  Wow.  Some people clearly have too much time on their hands, and I'm glad they do!  [ via Boing Boing ] 

Well this is good news: LiveScience reports Getting old is better than expected.  "Good memory, good health, good sex. It's enough to make the grandkids cringe!"  Of course my expectations for getting old are pretty low... 

Firefox 3.5 was released today, and apparently set all kinds of download records.  At this point they've served over three million downloads and at one point were averaging about 100 per second.  I don't know what's more impressive, that the servers stayed up or that their monitoring application :) 

So what, right?  Well, it you're already a Firefox user, 3.5 is going to be faster, and perhaps enable compatibility with a few new websites.  And if you're not, this is your perfect chance to switch to a browser which is faster and more secure and supports extensions - like Adblock...

Finally our ZooBorns of the day: baby Otters! 

(Almost as cute as Bo.  Almost.)