Chief Beer Officer???

OK, I've heard of CTOs, CFOs, CIOs, CMOs, and C3PO...but this one's new to me:

Four Points by Sheraton has recently appointed Scott Kerkmans as their CBO. Yep, Chief Beer Officer. He's 27, from Colorado, started his own magazine called Draft, and is a certified beer judge.

Fire dancers, Le Meridien, Papeete, Tahiti

Tahitian dancers at Le Meridien, Papeete, Tahiti

The Kegulator

So you're planning a party...maybe Super Bowl, maybe 4th of July, or maybe it's the May 2-4 weekend (Canadians will understand), and now it's time to go fill the fridge. You're stuck with that terrifying question of how much beer to get--too little and your friends will call you a cheap bastard and never show up again, too much and you're stuck with a whole bunch of beer your friends like but you'd never drink yourself.

Now, there's a magical solution: The Kegulator!



Just tell it how many people are coming, and use the sliders to size up your friends' character...and there's your answer!

Canadians please note: you'll need to use your miles-to-kilometres converter (X 8/5) to get the correct numbers for your latitude & attitude).

A few photos from my Tahiti trip

Click the photo, then click the Slideshow button.

I'm on Tahitian TV!

Yeah, that's what everyone calls the glass coffeetables in the overwater bungalows, where you look down and see the fish. Or a honeymoon registry guy clowning around.

In other news, David & Rodney & I did have lunch next to the president of Tahiti, at Hotel Bora Bora. And we got a better table in the restaurant...guess it's all in who you know :-)

Well, that's one way to save weight

After several jugs of Chianti, the MV Agusta engineers may have come up with a winner...or not!

There's no business like Snow Business

Portland is really beautiful in the snow. The down side is that Portlanders FREAK OUT when we get 1/2" of it! Everybody stays home, the MAX commuter trains get delayed by 30 minutes (how can THAT happen? are they stopping the trains to PUT ON CHAINS????), and the city grinds to a halt.

Canadians would be laughing at us...if they weren't so polite.

Pictured: the view today looking over the Park Blocks, 1 block south of TheBigDay.

Wanna buy a hat? Only $75 million and it's yours

Hat Island, that is...also known as Vatu Vara Island, in Fiji.

Boy, if only I hadn't spent so much this year on Christmas lights... :-)

Thanks to Aruna, our resident Fiji native and honeymoon expert, for spotting this.

More details in this story from Forbes.com. There's a slide show there too, but be warned: the Forbes.com site is HORRIBLY slow--and put your safety goggles on, cause they're going to hammer you with an avalanche of ads.

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

My friend Cliff turned me on to compact fluorescent (CF) light bulbs--they save a substantial amount of energy (see Seth Godin's blog posting entitled How many bloggers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?). I'm using them in a few places in my house--places where the lights tend to stay on a lot, like the driveway light that stays on all night...some hallways...etc.

I tried using them in the lights outside our front door (which are controlled automatically by an X10 home automation system), but somehow that's like Crossing the Streams, and the bulbs just fry in a day or two. So I gave up on using them for the X10-controlled lights.

Click the photo for a slideshow.

This is Guoliang Tunnel, in the Taihang mountains in China. Pics are zooming around the internet claiming it's the Road of Death in Bolivia...but it's not. Here's the story:

"We chose the tunnel. Sitting by the elderly driver I was lucky to hear the story about the tunnel. Before 1972, the path chiseled into the rock used to be the only access linking the village with the outside world. Then the villagers decided to dig a tunnel through the rocky cliff.

Led by Shen Mingxin, head of the village, they sold goats and herbs to buy hammers and steel tools. Thirteen strong villagers began the project. It took them five years to finish the 1,200-metre-long tunnel which is about 5 meters high and 4 meters wide. Some of the villagers even gave their lives to it. On May 1, 1977, the tunnel was opened to traffic.

When I was mulling over what the tunnel looked like, the van started a very steep ascent. I looked up and could not move my eyes away - it was so beautiful! All of us were excited. We found ourselves in extremely gorgeous surroundings - against the blue sky, with a path frighteningly narrow, and the cliffs piercing the sky.

All of my fellow "donkeys" stopped talking; some were busy taking photos, some were just dumbfounded. The golden sun shone upon the ground and through the air vents in the rocky wall of the tunnel. We were sometimes in the dark and sometimes in the light. I was deeply moved and even wanted to cry, for the sacred Guoliang Tunnel and for what the villagers have done - to triumph over nature.

In about an hour, the small van slowly took us to the unsophisticated village surrounded by the towering mountains. The village, more than 1,200 meters above the sea level, seemed as if it had retreated from the world. Everything there was made of stone: the village gate, roads, bridges, houses, tables, stools, bowls and chop sticks. It is said the village originated from Guo Liang, a peasant army leader who used to fight there in the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24).

There are currently about 83 households in the village with 329 people."

(from Tom's Jokes Collection)

Happy Hallowe'en!

Pumpkins carved by my two-week-old son, Benjamin. OK, so he didn't really carve them, but the faces he's made over the past two weeks inspired the creations you see here :-)

Nicky Hayden wins MotoGP World Championship!

This past Sunday, Nicky Hayden became the first U.S. rider since 2000 to win the world MotoGP championships. It was probably the most exciting season ever, with the championship up for grabs between several riders on the very last race. The closest contender, Valentino Rossi, crashed a few laps into this race and never climbed back close enough to challenge.

The year was full of surprises and heartbreak--Rossi's bike blew up twice (once at Laguna Seca, right in front of us on the front straight, and once earlier in the year...on the last lap, while leading the race)...Nicky's teammate, Dani Pedrosa, crashed a couple of races ago, taking Nicky out of the race as well.

Congrats to the Kentucky Kid!

(The photo above is one I took at Laguna Seca after Nicky's win there this past July.)

The DVD Rewinder....gotta have it!

Found this from Seth Godin's blog:


...a DVD rewinder!

Parallel parking...not exactly as taught in Driver's Ed

Found this at Sports Car Market magazine:

A bug in Google Earth

If you've been reading my blog, you're probably well aware that I'm a big fan of Google Earth...but even Google Earth has bugs sometimes. Like this one!

Apparently there is NOT a 50-yard long killer insect devouring the forests and fields of Germany, but rather some adventurous insect managed to crawl its way onto the glass plate used in the scanning process. Somebody at Google Earth has gone so far as to actually identify the bug...it's a thrips, very small bug at about 1mm long. Not a lot of people would have known that :-)

Lost wedding ring video

Very funny commercial for an Australian brand of underwear!

Portland Voices for Darfur

My friend and executive coach, Vicky Trabosh, has done a ton of work in support of humanitarian causes in Africa--particularly in Rwanda through the organization Itafari. On Sunday Sept. 10th, Vicky was the emcee for a benefit called Portland Voices for Darfur.

Dance Lessons in the Cook Islands

My friend (and trusty customer service guru here at TheBigDay) Linda recently returned from the Cook Islands with her husband Karl. Apparently it was an educational trip for Karl, as evidenced by this video :-)

2006 Rotary Club of Portland Road Rally

Here are my video highlights from this year's downtown Portland Rotary club Road Rally (click the image).