I worked at Atlas Solutions, a subsidiary of aQuantive, from October 2005 to July 2007.

Google bought our largest competitor, Dou­bleClick, for $3 Billion in April 2007. In the following five weeks, all the other major web ad­ver­tis­ing companies were bought up, cul­mi­nat­ing in Microsoft paying the stupendous sum of $6.3 billion for aQuantive. The Microsoft-aQuantive deal closes in mid-August.

To put it mildly, I was not excited at the thought of becoming a Microsoft employee yet again. Cu­mu­la­tive­ly, between 1992 and 2005, I spent 10 years at Microsoft as an employee or contractor, including a year and a half on Cairo, seven years on IIS, and a year on FlexGo.

Nev­er­the­less, I had absolutely …continue.

I got myself a R.E.Load bag for my birthday. My previous bag, a so-called Large Cafe bag from Tom Bihn, wasn't large enough to ac­com­mo­date a 17" MacBook Pro.

The R.E.Load bag turned out to be less than ideal. It is, if anything, too big, and it lacks dividers and smaller pockets. My laptop and other stuff was swimming around inside it. It's a messenger bag aimed at real bike messengers, not laptop-toting nerds.

Last weekend, I went down to Tom Bihn's showroom again and picked up a Super Ego bag, like the one pictured here. This bag is designed to tote laptops, and it's working out a lot better.

I …continue.

The Ides of March rolls around again, and it's my birthday. I am now the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Emma gave me the messenger bag shown here. I picked it up from R.E.Load Baggage. The 17" MacBook Pro is too large for my previous shoulder bag.

The video clip below shows the Bugatti Veyron, the world's fastest and most expensive street-legal car attempting to hit its top speed of 253-mph. I guess I'm not getting one of these for my birthday.

10/29. In mid-October, I shaved off the goatee that I had sported since March, leaving me clean-shaven for the first time in a decade. I quickly got over that urge and let the beard start growing back.

This is me at the two-week stage: a self-portrait taken while ex­per­i­ment­ing with the new camera. It looks a little odd to me. I'm using this as the startup photo on the camera.

10/30. I go back and forth between Atlas's offices at Pioneer Square and the In­ter­na­tion­al District, and Smith Tower is a major landmark.

10/31. Once again, we got dozens and dozens of young callers at Halloween. I have a …continue.

I noted at the beginning of July that my sister Michelle was to be married to David Bowles in Dublin in early November.

The wedding took place on Friday, November 10th. Emma and I arrived the afternoon before, half stumbling with tiredness. My brother, Mark, and his wife, Lizzy, had arrived from New York only hours earlier.

The ceremony took place at 1pm at St. Brigid's, a small, old Anglican church, on the outskirts of Stillorgan village, long since absorbed into the Dublin met­ro­pol­i­tan area. It was very Ascendancy, with 19th century plaques about Fellow of the Royal College this and Brevet Colonel (Boer War) that.

The bride looked lovely, and I …continue.

As I mentioned last month, I par­tic­i­pat­ed in this year's AIDS Walk on Saturday.

I raised over $1300 online, handily exceeding my goal of $1,000. I also raised another $300 in cash and checks at the fundrais­ing barbecue that we threw on September 1st.

I've lost count, but I believe that in the last 15 years, I've raised about $10,000 for charity. Most of it has been for the Northwest AIDS Walk. The last few years that I was at Microsoft, I raised $2,000-$3,000 each year, thanks to the power of Microsoft matching, which doubled the amount of money that I raised. I've also raised money two years running for Ugandan orphans sponsored by …continue.

In mid-July, most of the Atlas Solutions developer teams moved from our old offices at Fifth and Jackson in the In­ter­na­tion­al District four blocks west to swanky offices in Pioneer Square. The new offices are at the State building on the corner of Occidental and Main, the pedes­tri­an­ized block with the antique stores and art galleries. Occidental Park across the street has been re­fur­bished. There are three coffee shops within two blocks, and Elliott Bay Books is one block west of us. It's all very pleasant, with the exception of the large number of homeless people.

The only thing that I miss from the old offices is that we're further from the large number of …continue.

This year is the 20th an­niver­sary of the Northwest AIDS Walk. A whole generation has passed. Twenty years ago, AIDS was considered a gay man's disease and a death sentence. The U.S. government was just beginning to ac­knowl­edge the existence of AIDS, half a decade after it had first been recognized by health au­thor­i­ties, and thousands had died.

AIDS is still a serious problem, but the de­vel­op­ment of an­ti­retro­vi­ral drugs a decade ago means that people with HIV are living longer, healthier lives than before. More than 1 million Americans are now living with HIV/AIDS: 9,000 of them in King County. 40,000 people are infected every year in the U.S., and most new …continue.

My brother David sent me this photo earlier today, of me, him, and Michelle. I'm guessing that Michelle is less than a year old, so it was taken sometime in 1971, which would make David four and me six. (Our youngest brother, Mark, wasn't born until 1973.)

Emma thinks we're adorable and has already made this picture her desktop background on her work computer.

Mark has another photo of the four of us, taken in 1978 on his website, alien­res­i­dent.net:

Raven is now Doctor Raven. She suc­cess­ful­ly defended her doctoral dis­ser­ta­tion in biomedical in­for­ma­tions this morning. Six long years in the making.

Dr. Raven and Mr. Raven came over this evening for Games Night, a twice-monthly get-together we have for our friends to play board games. Emma and I had been given a bottle of Dom Perignon '92 for our wedding that we had never quite found a suitable occasion for until now, so we chilled that in an­tic­i­pa­tion of tonight's cel­e­bra­tion. I generally don't care for champagne, but that went down nicely.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, Raven!