Three weeks ago: I put a dish in the drying rack.  It slipped out and hit a wine glass sitting next to the rack.  The glass shattered.  I told my roommate that I would get another glass to replace the one of his that I broke.

Two days ago: I finally got around to buying the replacement glass.  I couldn’t remember exactly what type of glass I broke, so I got two different types.

Yesterday: I gave the replacement glasses to my roommate.  They got placed on the counter.

Today: My roommate was putting away groceries.  He turned around suddenly and knocked the two new glasses onto the floor.  They both shattered.  The tags were still on the bases of the broken glasses.

Yes, the glasses that were purchased to replace the broken glasses were themselves broken.  Oh, the irony.

It’s difficult to grasp, but already two years have gone by since I first visited California.  More shocking is that this fall marks eight years since I began my undergraduate education.  Now I am approaching the end of my second college tour, so it seems like a good time to look into the crystal ball.

What would I like to do in the next year?  Some things come to mind:

• Get a job.  Yes, I want to be employed after I leave school.  Fancy that!  This might sound shallow, but one of the most important criteria will be location.  I’d like to stay in the Bay area, but I’d also be willing to move to the area around Boston.  I miss winter(!), which brings us to…
• Resume playing hockey.  In hindsight, I shouldn’t have stopped.  The area around Palo Alto isn’t exactly a hotbed of hockey activity, so moving someplace with a deeper hockey tradition might help with realizing this goal.
• Keep photographing.  I’d like to get involved with some organization, perhaps a small newspaper, that will allow me to continue doing sports photography.  I don’t see this as a full-time career, but I enjoy it enough to moonlight.
• Have another adventure, preferably outdoors in a land far away.  Some of my “adventures” in the past eight years include: snowboarding at Steamboat, visiting Paris,  backpacking around Europe (including running with the bulls), snowboarding at Whistler, visiting England, backpacking on Isle Royale, backpacking in the Grand Canyon, and leaving a good job to go to Stanford and live in California.  What will the next adventure be?  I’m thinking of something along the lines of an extended backpacking trip this coming summer in either Alaska or New Zealand.

I’ve had mixed success with these lists in the past, but I enjoy writing them to show me how my ambitions change over time.

Middle of massive party at Stanford. The atmosphere is euphoric. Champagne flowing.

As the clock ticked towards 8:00, the crowd stared counting down the seconds. The hour rang, the polls closed, and history was made: Barack Obama will be our next president.

At the moment, I am sitting in a Starbucks in downtown Palo Alto.  Normally, I’d be getting my internet fix via AT&T/Starbucks.  Instead, I’m using the free WiFi provided by AnchorFree.  Their revenue model seems to involve placing banner ads across the tops of all pages accessed via their service.  Just one problem: people like me, who always use VPNs or tunnels when on unsecured WiFi connections.  With my web browsing burried in an SSH connection, I see no ads.

Let’s see.  Ad-supported “free” internet connections.  Nobody has tried that before, right? Ha.

Back in the late 1990s there was a service called Freewwweb.  At the time, they offered free dialup access in exchange for… well, I don’t remember exactly, but I know that it didn’t involve extra downloads, banners, proxies, or the like.  Quite the ambiguous business model.  Of course, it was the bubble, so revenue didn’t matter.  Things were good until the bubble popped, and Freewwweb went away.

I wonder how long AnchorFree will last.

I talked with noted author, blogger, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki this evening.  Allow me to explain.

I was at the Ice Oasis in Redwood City this afternoon taking photos of a Stanford Ice Hockey Club game.  I had all of the big lenses and camera bodies with me, so I was pretty conspicuous.  As the game entered its final minutes, a guy walked over to where I was shooting.

“Are you here for this game?” he asked.

“The Stanford game?  Yeah.”

“Ah.  So you’re not here with USA Today?”

“Nope, sorry.”

“OK.  Thanks.”

Then he walked away.  Yup, that was the extent of the “conversation.”

I instantly recognized him as Guy Kawasaki, but I didn’t see a reason to point that out.  I think that pitching a startup idea wouldn’t have gone over well right then.

 Guy (green jersey) gets checked into the boards

Guy appears to play ice hockey in one of the leagues at the Ice Oasis, and it seems that one of his games just happened to be scheduled after the Stanford game.  I stuck around to watch some of Guy’s game to satisfy my curiosity.

Sure enough, another photographer showed up and started taking photos of Guy and his team.  I suppose we can expect a story in USA Today sometime soon.