Last minute prep for Finovate 2009

It's a little past 11pm and we're still in the office doing last minute prep for the Finovate 2009 show tomorrow morning. Everything is pretty much done, just doing last minute bug checks and word-smithing. Though exhausting, it's exciting times like this that make me so glad I don't have a regular 9 to 5. Don't get me wrong - start-up life is brutal and there's a lot of risk involved. However, it's just so much fun and I wouldn't trade the lows here for another Monday morning 2 hour status meeting to discuss why we need more discussion on a proposed action item from blah blah blah.
 
Now the only real issue tonight is whether I should go get chicken and waffles at Merritt Bakery...

A double standard for young basketball players

I'm reading this Yahoo article about a kid named Jeremy Tyler who is going to forgo his senior year of high school to play overseas in Europe. His goal is to get 2 years of experience and then return to the US for the 2011 NBA Draft. He'll be home-schooled and earn his GED (overseas, I assume).
 
My reaction, good for him. I think there's a terrible double standard for young highly talented basketball players. On one hand, they've been poked and prodded and coddled since they were in junior high school (some earlier) and then asked to follow the same path as every other 17-18 year old kid. Go to college, earn a degree, etc. Why should they? Their vocation is not going to be in the fields of engineering or sociology or biology, etc. They have chosen a profession for themselves - PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE. Why shouldn't they do whatever they can to enhance their skill sets in that area? Jeremy Tyler was basically a man playing against children. Do you think another year of crushing high school kids was going to improve his draft stock? Regarding college, do you think playing against college level kids is better for honing your basketball skills than playing against professional men in Europe? The only noise I hear are from pro-NCAA folks who somehow feel like the value of education can't be compromised. My argument would be, if they didn't play basketball for your school, would you let them in? If they care about education so much, what would it matter if Jeremy Tyler played professional basketball for 15 years and then enrolled in college at the age of 33 (which he stated he plans to do). That's the difference between a professional athlete and a person with a normal career. Athletes don't need a college education to do their jobs, but normal people need a college education before anyone will hire them.
 
And don't get me started about how much the NCAA makes off essentially free labor...

I'm fried ... plus Peek Pronto arrives

As we're getting ready for the Finovate 2009 show next Tuesday, we're all in mad rush mode to get final features into the system. Was up until almost 4am last night and got into the office a little after 10am. Suffice it to say, I'm dragging right now. We're making good progress and I'm excited to see how we'll be received when we present at the show.
 
I'm taking a little break from work to play around with the Peek Pronto I won in the Posterous contest a couple of weeks back. First impressions are that it's a very well put together device. Very sleek and compact. Super light and the keyboard is very well made. Also, the screen resolution looks much better than I anticipated. This is going to be my wife's device since I already have my iPhone. I just hope she puts it to good use. Thanks again to the guys over at Posterous for choosing me and to Jeremy Downs at Peek for sending this out!

The last thing you want to see when installing a new HD in your TiVo

Just got my new hard drive for the TiVo and popped it in immediately. You can imagine what I was feeling when I first saw this. 30 minutes later though, the machine rebooted and everything was right as rain.

 It's so amazing how fast technology moves. In October of last year, I bought a replacement 320GB hard drive for my Series 3 TiVo that cost about $120. After that one crapped out 6 months later, I bought a 1TB replacement drive for $90. At this rate, I'll be getting a 3TB hard drive for $60 in another 6 months.