We used to get a cake during Free Lunch Friday every time it was someone’s birthday.  Pretty soon, that became every week, and that was just too much cake.  Now, we just get a cake on the first Friday of each month for everyone in that month. 

Laura has a bit of a cake decorating hobby, and she made one for us today.

I, too, like to decorate cakes, so I plan to top her on this effort — but it will be very tough.  That could be one of my favorite cakes of all time!

One of the things I love about Viget is working with clients who are really making a positive impact on the world, especially when it comes to kids.  Healthy Child Healthy World is one of them. 

Healthy Child Healthy World is a national non-profit dedicated to protecting the health and well-being of children and families through cleaner, greener, and safer lifestyle changes.

Today, CEO Christopher Gavigan released his book Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home on Amazon.  I’m just helping to spread the word.

While I’m in a book promotion kind of mood, I can’t help but join the rest of the universe and plug Gary V’s new book Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines: Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World.  Gary’s not a client.  He’s also not yet our VP of Strategy, despite my best efforts to recruit him.

When Andrew and Micah were making fun of each other in Trident last weekend over Twitter, I felt like I was there with my old Startup Weekend pals.  Then, when Andrew revealed that they were talking about VC Wear, a new t-shirt site that sells $100 shirts — to “accredited investors only” — and is already for sale itself for $100k, I threw up in my mouth a bit.  Especially after reading their pitch deck (PDF).

There are some funny ideas, and even though it started as a joke cooked up over a plane ride, the story got press and blog coverage, but didn’t quite make TechCrunch (yet).  My favorite shirt so far:

So are they making money?  At $100 per shirt and enough buzz get it in front of a lot of people, I dare say they’ve covered whatever costs they had (if any?).  I like it because Andrew and Matt had an idea, put it together quickly, and didn’t waste any time getting it out there.  I’m sure they’d love to sell thousands of shirts, but it doesn’t matter — they’re having fun with it.

Speaking of Micah, he wants to be #1 in Google, but not for his name (he already has that … it’s a bit easier than Brian Williams).  For some reason Micah wants to be #1 for the search “douche bag.”  With that little link I’ve now done my part in making his dreams come true.  Good luck!

After catching up on my tweet reading, I caught up on my blog reading, and enjoyed Scott’s post about a camera + GPS + purchase history + face recognition auto scrapbook generator product idea.  First, I thought how much I like the trend of people blogging product requests like this.  Second, I thought “does anyone care about privacy anymore?”

The idea of Microsoft / LinkedIn knowing everything about every email I send had privacy on my brain, but the thought of everyone knowing exactly where I am, what I’m doing (or at least buying), who I’m with, and when it’s all happening is just spooky — largely because it’s not far off from reality today.  Sure, you could argue that I could control who has access and it’s all historical data anyway, but access can be abused and if it’s being tracked at all it’s only a matter of time before it’s broadcast real-time.

Twitter is bad enough.  Want to know what I’ve been up to?  I’m a light user, but just look at my tweets from the past week:

• goodbye tiny hybrid, hello giant minivan. i guess we’re all grown up now. about 5 hours ago  
• heading out to a brunch that will feature a high % of small children … trying to remember my ear plugs and extra strong coffee about 15 hours ago   
• mulling over a minivan purchase decision for tomorrow 09:38 PM August 25, 2007   
• just learned a lot about django from djackson … couldn’t resist 01:33 PM August 24, 2007   
• using email to coordinate calls from india to a crappy mobile phone is a bad idea 08:58 AM August 24, 2007   
• meeting in the city near the capitol … brings back memories from my days consulting at FEMA 08:57 AM August 24, 2007   
• coffee good. suits on friday not as much. 05:10 AM August 24, 2007   
• taking a breath between meetings 01:46 PM August 23, 2007   
• looking forward to reuniting with my family in t-minus 30 minutes 01:39 PM August 21, 2007   
• shocked by how smelly trains (both amtrak and metro) can be 01:36 PM August 21, 2007   
• choo choo! chuga-chuga chuga-chuga choo choooooo! 11:07 AM August 21, 2007   
• check that - train is 1 hr late departing. lucky me. thank you amtrak. 05:37 AM August 21, 2007   
• off to bed — train departs in about 5 hours 12:11 AM August 21, 2007   
• wrapping up a day of meeting new folks in durham — lots going on here, and lots more potential too 07:45 PM August 20, 2007

All of the sudden you know a lot about me.  You know I used to drive a hybrid, so I’m probably somewhat eco-friendly (or maybe I just like to drive on 66 by myself during HOV hours).  You know I now drive a minivan, so I probably have several kids.  You know I don’t own an iPhone, and that I have either friends or business in India.  You know that I had a meeting near the Capitol last Friday which required I wear a suit, and that I used to consult for FEMA.  You know that I traveled by train from Durham to DC on Amtrak, departing an hour late around 6:30 am last Monday.

But I wanted you to know all that stuff.  Should I?  I’m not sure yet.  I still might get bored with Twitter.

People have always worried about other people knowing too much about what they’re up to.  It’s a healthy concern to harbor.  It’s clear now, though, that tracking everyone’s every move isn’t technically all that difficult (or at least it won’t be much longer).  I’m not sure anyone predicted that we’d bring the moment-by-moment monitoring so overtly upon ourselves.

It’s all in good fun amongst the techies for now, but I would expect a backlash at some point.  The question is, will anyone announce when they decide to detach from the monitoring machine, or will you just have to figure it out?

James noticed this video.  I had heard that Man vs. Wild was a sham, but this is too funny:

If you’ve talked with techies lately, you’ve probably noticed that they start every sentence with “so” and they end every sentence with “right?”  Not a heavy “right?!” — more of a rhetorical “right” that strikes an odd balance between confident authority and transparent self-doubt, both mashed together with a yearning for support and acceptance.  It’s like leading and following with a single inflection.  It always makes me want to interrupt and say “are you asking me or telling me?”

This isn’t new, but I used to think it was isolated to a few people I know.  It seems to have now spread to everyone on earth.  Is this just because someone told them to stop saying “um” all the time?

So, don’t get me wrong, right, because I do it too.  Even worse, I still say “um” all the time to boot.

I’ve been blogging for a while in various places on various topics, and I’ve found it to be personally rewarding.  So, I decided to spend 10 minutes tonight setting up wordpress, with no real plan beyond that.  Maybe I’ll get bored tomorrow and never write here again.  Maybe I’ll really want to blog here, but I’ll decide that the million other things I try to do each day are more important.  Maybe I’ll find documenting my random thoughts of the day so fulfilling that I’ll write reams (or the digital equivalent) of commentary and develop a massive following. 

Only time will tell, and my gut tells me that the best way to start is to not really care.