Category Archives: Personal

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On February 22, 2014 I will be skiing on “Team Breck” at Hope on the Slopes in Breckenridge. Hope on the Slopes, Ski & Ride for a Cure is a fundraising event for skiers and boarders, held at ski areas around the country. Proceeds benefit the American Cancer Society (ACS), and support their mission to eliminate cancer as a major health problem through prevention, saving lives, and diminishing suffering from cancer through research, education, advocacy and service.

Cancer has affected my family and, more recently, a friend. If you’d like to donate towards my team please feel free to use this link.

Second Annual Denver Brewery Tour Weekend

For the second year in a row, I hosted some friends from the east coast on a tour of Colorado breweries.

The long weekend begun on Thursday, November 7, 2013 and contained over two dozen check-ins at various breweries, eateries, and coffee shops around the Denver metro area (and Fort Collins).

Thursday consisted of…

  • starting a late lunch at Euclid Hall, one of my favorite downtown restaurants with an excellent beer selection
  • then stopping by Prost Brewing before happy hour (where a lawyer meetup was convening?)
  • then Wynkoop Brewing Co. for some pre-dinner drinks
  • then swung by Lucky Pie in LoDo for some pizza and, yet again, good local beer

Friday included…

  • a (not early enough) start at Snooze, one of the busiest but tastiest spots for breakfast and brunch in downtown Denver
  • Crema, for a quick hipster-filled caffeine pick-me-up
  • a tour of the Stranahan’s distillery, some of the best whiskey made in Colorado
  • then swinging by Breckenridge Brewery’s 471 Kalamath location for some unique beers
  • then a stop by TRVE for some hard-core metal brews
  • followed by a stop-over at Renegade Brewing to have one of my local favorites: REDACTED
  • a delicious dinner at My Brother’s Bar, the oldest continually operating bar in Denver

Saturday comprised of…

Sunday wound down with:

  • a delicious, early breakfast at Sassafras, quality southern cooking
  • Crema again, for good measure
  • a trip to Epic Brewing, the prettiest warehouse and tasting room in River North
  • Crooked Stave at The Source, the best sour beers in the best cluster of butchers, bakers, and restaurants in River North
  • Mile High Spirits, a great menu of local-made spirits
  • Our Mutual Friend, with one of my favorite ‘session’ beers around

All in all, looking back at this list it was a busy weekend with a lot of quality stops along the way. If you’re in Denver, I highly recommend checking out any and all of these venues.

Time flies. It’s already been two years since Rachel and I tied the knot at the Denver Botanic Gardens. In the past year, we’ve had a lot of fun adventures together: visiting New Orleans for the first time, camping a few times (and forgetting most of the supplies once), hiked Hanging Lake, watched the new Arrested Development episodes (loose seal!), painted fat penguins with friends, planted a vegetable garden, skied at Steamboat for the first time, nordic skied for the first (and last?) time, cheered on the CU Buffs in person for the first time in years, started golf lessons, played in a bowling league (really?), helped friends move, had an appendix removed, enjoyed opening night of The Book of Mormon, visited the Dominican Republic and Lake Powell with respective families, installed flagstone (and removed sod by hand, sorry). It’s been a great year!

Here’s to many more, Rachel…

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I was one of the earliest to register for B-Cycle (Denver’s bike sharing system) and now I’m excited to sign up for car2go in Denver.

Different from some existing car sharing services (which I’ve also tried), car2go has worked out a local ‘zone’ where if you park on the street (even in metered areas), you can leave the car there instead of being tied to specific parking lots of spots in the city. So, I can literally park in front of my house after taking a trip and use the app to find the nearest car (which may be in my neighborhood or on the same street where I work). It’s a great service and made me think of this quote:

A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation — Enrique Penalosa, Mayor of Bogota

For a limited time, the $35 registration fee is waived if you use offer code “ROCKIES”. Check out car2go in Denver.

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I’m often asked what I’m wearing on my wrist (it’s a Nike FuelBand) and then folks chime in with “ah yes, my friend has a different one” which then leads to a discussion of the pros and cons of the various fitness trackers out there.

I’ve been happy with the FuelBand1 just because its an easy measure. And with any tracking (weight, calories, time spent watching TV) until you measure, you don’t know how to adjust your behavior.

So, to folks who want to learn more, I recommend: reading the article at The Wirecutter comparing the various fitness trackers, start tracking, and then adjust your behavior accordingly.


  1. It has broken once but was promptly replaced. For what it’s worth, my daily goal is 3,000 “fuel” and I’m on a 34 day streak. I walk to and from work every day which is about 3 miles round-trip. 
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From Joe over at Dappered on “luxury”:

It doesn’t matter if your outfit cost $7,500 or $75. It doesn’t matter if you’re hopping a private jet to Marseille or riding your bike to the park down the street. That Pinot Grigio can cost $500, or it can cost $6.50. What’s key is that you’re taking the time to actually enjoy life…

It’s a quick and smart read. I’m starting my list…

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Chris Brogan, on Ev William’s Medium:

I’ve written five posts, all of them in a different collection … I’ve written about what mantras and chanting have done to improve my business. I’ve written about Microsoft Windows 8 and how it’s a disruptor. I’ve written about my mostly plant-based eating choices. All over the map. If I wrote this way on this blog, it’d be hard to know whether to subscribe or not. (Yes, I write somewhat varied material here, but there’s still a general theme.) That, to me, is the magic button of Medium.

I disagree. Lots of services already aggregate long-form discussions around a common taxonomy (Tumblr being of note).

Plus, this is something Chris Yeh first talked about back in 2007: The Grand Unified Theorem of Blogging — I piggy-backed on it with my own post titled Blogging Audiences and Feedback

In short: the more you talk about, the less focused you are, the less readership your site will enjoy. In other words, if you don’t write for a niche you won’t be “successful.”

As Yeh followed up in the comments: “Success means different things to different people. Like you, I’m content to write about the things that interest me, and to let the chips fall as they may.”

While Medium certainly reminds me of the blog networks and webrings of the early years, I’m confident they’re also aware of the reasons we no longer see webrings and blog networks. “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Related: What competition is WordPress up against?

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Some of my writing has been featured over on the Breckenridge Connection blog again for GoBreck (the chamber of commerce). This time I looked at the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day holiday and highlighted some events and venues for celebrating the day of food and feast (the best kind of day, in my opinion). Click through to read the post on GoBreck.com.

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I liked this collection of thoughts and lessons from Julie Zhuo, a design director at Facebook, including:

Sweep up the crumbs. Wipe the tables. Turn off the lights. Plug the holes that need plugging—even if it’s menial, even if nobody will know you did it. Do it in service of the product, the company, and this wondrous, magical thing you are all building together.

It reminded me of this story from Adii Pienaar, founder at WooThemes:

As CEO, I don’t necessarily think that washing dishes is part of my “job description” and it doesn’t carry any obvious priority in terms of things I need to get done today … sometimes the best thing I can do in my business is the smallest, simplest thing; especially if that means I can remove obstacles for my team.

(these were published at medium and svbtle, respectively)

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I found a poll over at Hacker News via John Siracusa:

I am surprised at how many people, like me, who select text to highlight what they are reading. Some reasons include tracking your reading position, increasing text contrast, or as an “intra-page” bookmark.

It seems natural for me to highlight as I go and I almost didn’t realize I do this. I wonder if others have noticed it. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone (friends or coworkers) do it…