You are here: Home

Happy New Year from Us to You

December 28, 2011 By 5 Comments

The Patrick and CB Houston family, December, 2011

Dear family, friends and others,

For those of you keeping up with our clan’s currently favorite sitcom, the saluation comes courtesy of the “Express Christmas” episode of Modern Family.  As MF’s Claire Dunphy asked after receiving a letter from her mom started just so, who are “others?”  If you saw that show, you know.  If didn’t, don’t worry.  There are no “others.” And if there were, you aren’t one of them.

As you might have anticipated, Mr. Digital Media is casting the traditional holiday letter as a blog post. Don’t think less of me. This is the first such update I’ve issued in recent years, if only because, for the first time in years, I’m not caught up in prepping for early January’s giant Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal updates Tagged With: ,

Movie recco: ‘Of Gods and Men’

November 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Scene from 'Of Gods and Men'

Seven of the nine main characters in their chapel huddling as a helicopter gunship hovers outside -- one of the scenes that makes for suspense sans any 'real' action.

Never from this movie would I have expected suspense, but for most of its two hours “Of Gods and Men” made me feel like I was watching a Jason Bourne flick instead of one about a gentle group of French monks. Never mind it had no action hero.  Actually, there was no action – and only the faintest insinuations of graphic violence.

Instead the movie, in French with subtitles, makes high drama out of the inner agonies of nine mostly aging French Trappists in a setting that barely strays beyond the walls of their simple Algerian monastery.

And that’s why I’m recommending it to friends as a must-see film. It shows the meek have a shot of inheriting the Earth and Hollywood too. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Movies, Recommendations

I’m off from NetShelter and on to the next big thing

July 18, 2011 By 2 Comments

I'll be scanning horizons, like this one in Montana where I canoed the same stretch of the Upper Missouri River that Lewis and Clark did.

After three years and two months at NetShelter Technology Media, I’m off, and when I say off, I mean off — as in I’ve served my last official day. So I’m not just off-off, as in taking a “sabbatical” but I’ll soon enough be off to (yet another) new start.

I just don’t know where just yet.

There was a time when the suspense of not knowing what or when would have startled me awake at night, with a heart hammering to a grunge band beat. These days, however, I’m sleeping like the family dog, sort of. While she’ll wake and woof at an unfamiliar oin drop, I’ll snooze through calamity’s bang, clatter, and cymbal crash.

One of the comforts of leading a life full of varied career experiences is that you begin hear not just your brain but your heart — those little inklings that keep goading with the hard, if subtle, truths about yourself.

And my inner voices have been telling me for a while now, “Hey, it’s time to move on.”

Of course, my decision to leave NetShelter wasn’t an easy one. It’s bittersweet at best. Although I’ve always been the intrapreneuring type, NetShelter marked by first “real” start-up experience. And, hoo boy, what a run it’s been — up and down as many steep streets as San Francisco’s cityscape. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Essays

Wine recco: 2005 Petit Manou (Bordeaux)

March 7, 2009 By 1 Comment

left-bank-logoShe-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed and I quietly celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary recently with a sedate dinner at the Left Bank Brasserie, a chain of five Bay Area locations with a soft spot in our hearts because it manages to nestle into this sweet spot between casual and formal, cheap and expensive, comfort food and haute cuisine.

You can have dinner that seems a special but not a splurge. Plus, it’s close. And we can always drop in to find a table.

SWMBO hosted my 50th birthday party there, as some of you will recall.

She loves the ‘Frits de Mer,” a lightly done fried calamari with shrimp and onions. I like it, too, but for its pleasantly unexpected twist: The breaded, fried lemon slices the chef throws in.

Left Bank’s menu features several dependable and long-standing dishes, like the Coq au Vin, yet manages to keep it fresh by offering a rotating series of dishes and wines from different regions of France.

On this latest visit, the Ms had the Trout Amandine. I had ravioli with a mushroom, short-rib stuffing. We prefer a red wine with any dish, so, faced with a wine list of many American varietals with which we were familiar and lots of French appellations with which we weren’t, we sought a recommendation.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Restaurants, Wine Tagged With: ,

Movie recco: Clint Eastwood’s ‘Gran Torino’

February 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment

gran-torino1

I liked this movie, but only because I like Clint Eastwood so much.  I like Clint Eastwood so much because the he’s produced  such an extraordinary body of work. And the real greatness of his work isn’t in his good, bad, ugly, Dirty Harry, every which way you can movies.   It’s in movies such as “Mystic River” and  “Letters from Iwo Jima,” one of  the best war movies of all time.

The man has become a cultural icon — and deservedly so.

So I was predisposed to liking “Gran Torino.”   Even predisposed, however, I was just only okay with this flick. Like “Million Dollar Baby,”  another “eh” movie, “Gran Torino” was Clint predictably playing a quintessentially Clint character:  Grouchy tough  guy.  Like “Million Dollar Baby,” “Torino” also tended toward  sappy.  The ending was different for Clint. He kicks some ass, like always.  But the movie doesn’t conclude with a climatic kickin’.  Quite the opposite in fact.

It also concludes with what may be it’s most memorable moment — Clint singing in the movie’s title track, which Clint himself composed with his son, Kyle,  and Jamie Cullum.

Should you see it?  My suggestion: Take it or leave it.

Filed Under: Movies, Uncategorized Tagged With:
Next Page »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.