Babies 'R Us
Mark Hoover, President, Acuitive, Inc.

This Musing is completely non-technical and only of interest if you are a personal friend of Acuitive.  I’ll be back to Musing about networking market and technology trends next month.

I’m in as good shape physically as I’ve been in for a long time.  My secret?   Baby-ups and marathon baby carries.  At first I struggled a bit at the 7 ½ pound level, but now I’m up to the 15 pound level and doing just fine!   I can do more reps than ever before.  I think I’m ready for the next and more advanced events – squirmy baby lifts, and one armed cooking and typing.   My wife Jill can already do these things.

Of course I’m not in as good shape as Paula Walsh, our marketing person. She has had two babies within the past 18 months.  That has given her a head start and an edge in terms of weight and balanced dual-baby lifting that I just cannot compete with.  I call her superwoman. But not to her face.  She might want a raise.

I thought I could catch up with Paula, fitness-wise, by playing racquetball with Dave Logan.  But watching Dave run back and forth across the court, while quite amusing and entertaining, isn’t really doing much for my health.  I think there is a rule that you have to break a sweat or elevate your heart rate in order to improve your fitness. So after racquetball with Dave, I just go home and do some more baby-ups. 

Speaking of Dave, he and his wife also have a fairly new baby, of the four legged and floppy ear variety.  Zack was adopted in California, but Dave and his wife moved back to North Carolina several months ago.  This was a clever move, since Dave’s main client, for whom he is working 60-70 hours per week, is in California.  It has given Jill and I a chance to have a permanent guest.  That may sound like a complaint but by no means is that true.  Dave cuts the lawn, administers our LAN, and keeps our refrigerator stocked with Guinness and Sierra Nevada.  We’re going to miss him when he no longer stays here.  But, we will have probably sold the house and moved to Woodside before that happens anyway.  I hope the new owners of our house get along as well with Dave as we do. 

Tim Helms continues to spend a lot of time raising his sons to love baseball.  In the spring and summer, it is hard to arrange meetings with Tim after hours or on weekends. One son or another has baseball practice, a game, or is in some playoff.  So – we’ll talk to you this fall, Tim.

I recently joined John Jaeger and his family at a San Jose Giants baseball game.  John’s daughter was more interested in the souvenirs than the ballgame. Which John and I thought was odd, because we were so focused on the varieties of beer available.  Something also caught my eye that a vendor was carrying around.  It looked like fried cactus on a stick.  I didn’t have the guts to try it.

We saw Tench Cox and Lawrence Ebringer from Sutter Hill at the game.  Tench was trying to explain to Lawrence why all the players didn’t wear white, why the game would actually be over in 2 hours, and the concept of a foul ball.  It didn’t appear to me he was making much progress.

Dave Logan and his brother-in-law, who was out from North Carolina on business, also joined us at the game.  The company Dave’s brother-in-law works for was about to get acquired. I spent some time to him explain the choices he had with his stock options. Mostly explaining the tax and AMT issues related to options which have not been exercised but which have increased in value.  I think I succeeded in thoroughly depressing him.  This is the same brother-in-law, by the way, that borrowed Logan’s truck the last time he came to California and smashed it up.    That sounded to me like something that could cause some familial disharmony, but it has actually been a great thing.  Dave can now use that as a guilt-trip tactic to get his sister and brother-in-law to baby-sit Zack whenever Dave and Dina want to travel. And if Zack chews up a few shoes, or furniture, or whatever – who cares?

On the eastern front, Dave Danielson has been regaling me with stories about he and his wife put in a swimming pool.  It’s in now.  And Dave’s daughter has officially reverse-evolved into a fish.  But the process of getting the pool was more interesting than actually having the pool is.   Dave has a different style than I do.  He’s more hands-on.  I would have hired people to do all the heavy work.  If equipment was needed, Dave did just that.  But if he could do it himself, he would pitch right in and perform a lot of the manual labor.  It must have been more strenuous than playing racquetball with Logan is.  Now I get long voicemail messages about his bad back.   Gee – I think I could have predicted that.  

That’s about it.  The purpose of this Musing is to keep you up-to-date on the personal lives of some of us and to remind you and ourselves that there is life outside of work.  That life can be summarized by the 3Bs – baseball, beer, and babies.  And a good life it is.

(volume 3, number 6)

 

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