I spent some time this evening putting together my annual list of highlights from the year. What strikes me about 2009 is how … well, dull it’s been by comparison to other years. Sure, some good things have happened, but compared to the scale of things that happened in recent years past 2009 has been a yawner. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, obviously, but it will put my skills to the test when it comes to creating punchy, attention-grabbing writing in documenting it.

Merry Christmas to everyone. Hope you have a joyous and peaceful holiday.

It was a weekend of fun. Friday afternoon the kids went to their respective lessons: Travis to piano, Hallie to riding. I took Travis from piano over to meet Kelly and Hallie at her lesson, where Hallie and her trainer were just putting away the horse. I said goodbye and went to Durham to spend a little time at a holiday party.

Saturday morning we enjoyed sleeping in a bit. After breakfast, I said goodbye again to the family to spend four hours in a “producer’s workshop” from Raleigh Television Network, Raleigh’s community access channel. I’m getting trained on video production as it’s something I’ve been interested in for a while. While I was in class, Kelly took the kids over to the neighbor’s house to decorate Christmas cookies.

I met up with the family after my class and we took the kids to the birthday party of one of the kids’ friends. It was at a gym in Wake Forest and we all had a blast chasing each other around. Afterward, we went to a holiday party at a friend’s house and enjoyed meeting more of our neighbors.

It was a fun time for everyone.

Had a great weekend, as usual filled with lots of stuff.

Friday evening was spent getting the kids to their respective lessons (Travis for piano, Hallie for horse riding). Saturday morning had the whole family at Lions Park to help guide development of the new playgrounds at Lions Park and Lockwood.

After lunch on Saturday, I spent the afternoon getting some media training as part of the Operation Free group I’ve been working with. It was very informative and will help me deliver my message, no matter what the audience. I skipped out on having dinner with the group, though, as I already had dinner plans.

Dinner was, of course, a celebration of Kelly’s birthday, and we joined many friends at 18 Seaboard for the occasion. The food was great (as always) and the company even better. It was great seeing all our friends making connections with other friends. That’s one of the best things about getting to know so many people.

Sunday we didn’t have anything scheduled, so we used the time to get things organized around the house. Kelly helped the kids pick out toys they no longer played with for donation to a local charity. I tackled my messy desk and shelves and also sorted through our videotape collection. In-between we found time for playing a “bowling” game with Travis, Mad-libs with the whole family, and after-dinner Christmas carols, complete with flute, guitar, and bells. We’re getting better, even!

It was a good wintry weekend.

We had to take the van in for some last-minute repairs before taking it to Florida so our friends were kind enough to loan us their BMW 328 for the day. I drove it to work today.

The car is 15 years old and is filled with “quirks” but it didn’t matter. It is a stick shift (which I missed as I haven’t driven one in years), it actually hugged the curves, and it had a little power! I didn’t have to slowly creep up that daunting hill on NC 540 over N.C. 54 today – heck, I didn’t even have to downshift!

I’ve been driving the Honda CR-V (and Odyssey) for so long I forgot what it’s like to have a car that’s actually fun to drive. It’s sad that I had to give it back tonight. If only that pot of gold were to appear . . .

Word came out today that Google acquired the VoIP company Gizmo5. Gizmo5 offers VoIP calling similar to Skype only Gizmo5 uses open standards.

Gizmo5’s service was tightly integrated with GrandCentral, the web-based phone organizer, so that Gizmo5 was the only way to turn an incoming call to a GrandCentral number into an incoming VoIP call to Asterisk or another SIP device. Once Google bought GrandCentral and rebranded it Google Voice it was really no surprise that Google might soon snatch up Gizmo5.

This is the second big payout for Gizmo5 CEO Michael Robertson. Robertson made a fortune early on when he parlayed his MP3.COM domain name into a business he later sold to Vivendi Universal for $372 million. Congrats, Michael!

Update 13 Nov 2009: Oh, and one other important point. Continue reading →