Stan Taylor

A couple of weeks ago, Rafe Colburn pondered whether we’re in ‘Boom 2.0’. I now have conclusive evidence that we are indeed in a boom, in the form of a short article from the Austin Business Journal:

NaturallyCurly.com Inc. has raised $600,000 from angel investors.
The company will use the funding for marketing and technical development. NaturallyCurly.com is a Web site devoted to curly hair. Board members include entrepreneur Tim Wall, Dr. Philip Sanger and NEA Venture Partner James Treybig, who founded Tandem Computers.
“Companies like NaturallyCurly have been able to see opportunities that have gone unnoticed by high-tech nerds like me,” Treybig says. “The movement to communities like NaturallyCurly is the foundation for the future of advertising.”
NaturallyCurly.com was founded nine years ago. The Web site provides articles, product information, salon recommendations and tips for curly-haired people. The site has registered members from around the world and nearly 10,000 visitors daily, according to the company. Last year, founders Michelle Breyer and Gretchen Heber also launched CurlyKids.com for children with curls.
NaturallyCurly.com has been nominated this year for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in Austin.

I just wish I could figure out a way to cash in on the insanity. I’d create a site for bald guys, but we just don’t use very many hair products. No retail or ad profit there.

I frequently describe myself as a liberal or progressive Christian. Twice in the past couple of weeks, I have been asked exactly what that means. While I have some general statements, it bothered me that I didn’t have a concise, easy-to understand answer. In response to this frustration, I started reading Brian D. McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy (which Rick Diamond, who I recently met, recommends on his blog.
I haven’t yet gotten too far into the book, and I don’t yet have an answer to my question, but I found the first chapter of the book to be an informative brief theological primer. In this chapter, Mr. McLaren describes “the seven Jesuses I have known;” he writes a short summary of the unique characteristics of seven ‘branches’ of Christianity. At the end of the seven characterizations, Mr. McLaren writes:

I am a Christian because I believe the real Jesus is all that these sketches reveal and more. Saying that, a question comes to mind…
Why not celebrate them all? . . . I’m recommending that we acknowledge that Christians of each tradition bring their distinctive and wonderful gifts to the table, so we can all enjoy the feast of generous orthodoxy–and spread that same feast for the whole world.

I definitely identify with this viewpoint, so I think I’m looking in the right place to help me voice my views. Stay tuned…
By the way, ‘the Liberal Protestant Jesus’ is one of flavors that Mr. McLaren describes. Since I identify much more with Mr. McLaren’s viewpoint than this one particular flavor, I see why I’ve had trouble describing my own theology. I have a feeling I’ll end up abandoning the word ‘liberal’ as soon as I find a more accurate and less charged description.

This fridge magnet, and several other equally awesome ones, apparently adorn Rick Diamond’s refrigerator (photos taken by Gordon Atkinson). Seeing the magnets and visiting his church‘s web site, I dropped by his office and had a nice chat with him. I’m really intrigued by the approach to their faith that Rick and his fellow ‘journeyers’ take, and I plan to visit their worship service soon.

Yesterday I went to lunch with a guy our company just hired. He’s in his early to mid 20s. We were talking about traveling to Europe, and he mentioned someone he knows who lives in Germany, in Bonn. By the tentative way in which he pronounced ‘Bonn’, it was clear that he was unfamiliar with it. I immediately started to remind him, “You know, Bonn, the capital of former West Germany.” Then it hit me that Germany has been reunited for the part of his life in which he’s been aware of foreign affairs. For him, Bonn is just some small German city.

President Bush has nominated Sam Fox, who donated $50,000 to the Swift Boat Veterans in 2004, for an ambassador post, and of course, he has to be approved by the senate. John Kerry questions him about his donation. A summary:
Fox starts off by stating that 527 organizations are wrong:

[L]et me just say this: I’m against 527s, I’ve always been against 527s. I think, again, they’re mean and destructive, I think they’ve hurt a lot of good, decent people.

He knows what’s coming, because he immediately, and without specific prompting, tries to butter up Kerry:

And, Senator Kerry, I very much respect your dedicated service to this country. I know that you were not drafted — you volunteered. You went to Vietnam. You were wounded. Highly decorated. Senator, you’re a hero. And there isn’t anybody or anything that’s going to take that away from you.

So, Kerry asks him why the hell he donated $50,000 to one of the meanest 527 organizations of the time. He expounds at length on two weasel reasons.
Excuse #1: He gives to so many organizations, he can’t keep track of them all:

I do not know who asked me. If you were to take my 1,000 contributions and go right down the list, I bet you I couldn’t give you five percent of them… Of who asked me.

Senator, if I had reason to believe and if I were convinced that the money was going to be used to, in any untruthful or false way, knowingly, I would not give.

Excuse #2: This is my favorite. Since the other side was funding smear campaigns via 527s, his side could not afford not to:

All of the 527s were smearing lies…I think if one side is giving then the other side almost has to and I think that the real responsibility should rest with the Congress to either ban 527s or to certainly curtail and regulate them. That’s the problem.

Kerry goes on to justifiably rip Fox a new one. Remember, someone with these kinds of morals is being appointed as representative of our country.

A couple of new blog posts (1, 2) by Anil Dash have sparked a lot of discussion (see here and here, for instance) about the value of diversity–specifically in this case, gender diversity–in high tech.
This is a timely topic for me. At work, I’ve recently joined a newly-formed development team. As we were sitting in team meetings this week, I realized that there is only one woman on this team (and she is the product owner, which, in our development methodology, makes her kind of an adjunct team member).
Our other two teams at work have at least two women members (all QA and technical writers; we don’t have any female programmers), and I’ve been very pleased with the team dynamics of both those teams.
For several reasons, I’m currently slightly uncomfortable with the dynamics of the new team, and it struck me this week that one of those reasons is that it felt kind of ‘good-ol-boy’ish. After reading Anil’s posts and some discussion of them, I emailed the team lead to discuss the issue of gender diversity on the new team. We’ll see what happens.

I’ve been really busy lately, especially with work. Stay tuned.

Preface: Katie and I love to mangle the names of stores. When we lived in New Jersey, our good friend David came to visit us. After we referred to the local Shop-Rite several times by its correct name, David exclaimed: “What has New Jersey done to you? Why don’t you call it Shop-Rong?” Well, we had referred to it that way from the day we moved there; it’s just that by the time David came to visit, it has lost its novelty.
So, on to the story… We spent last Christmas in Red River, NM. We drove up there in two days, spending the night in Lubbock. We arrived in Lubbock kind of late, and we were tired. After we got the van unloaded, we set out in search of a place to eat. Within a few blocks of our hotel, we didn’t find much that interested us, so we finally just went through the drive-through at Wienerschnitzel. The food was really awful, so Samuel dubbed it Wiener-shit-zel.
We had a proud parenting moment.

I just ran across the blog Death By Children, written by a stay-at-home dad. On his blog, that dad writes about his farting, scratching his nuts, his teenage daughter’s boobs–all hilariously, and supposedly with the sanction of his kids.
On my blog, in contrast, you get a highly edited version of my life: you find out that I’m a geek, a liberal Christian, a liberal politically. But I write nothing that could (I hope) offend anyone I know. About the most personal insight into our family life that you get is how we arrange our mantel hooks at Christmas.
I’d love to be as funny as the Death By Children dad, and I’d love to be able to write about it on my blog, but my personality type is all about control and moderation. Don’t get me wrong, I love being an introverted geek, but sometimes I’d just love to be able to throw all caution to the wind and write with passion and abandon. Oh well.

Now that we have a Democratic majority in Congress again, I’m glad to see that the issue of health care is back in the news. President Bush has decided to propose addressing the unequal health care in this country via the tax code: his proposal would provide a tax deduction for people who buy individual health insurance, and tax ‘high end’ corporate health coverage. It’s that second part that is controversial.
I’ve long held that it would not be possible to bring everyone in the U.S. up to the high standard of health care that some enjoy thanks to generous corporate benefits. But nobody wants to reduce their current level of health care.
Though I’m not sure what I think about the means he’s chosen, I do think Bush’s intention with his tax on high end benefits is to help the recipients of those benefits realize how good they have it, and, in some small way, to get them to reduce their level of health care.
Or, it could just be an excuse for big companies to lower the amount they spend on employee health insurance.