My 82-year-old father is a Korean war vet who’s reached a state is life where he needs to claim the benefits he won for the 18-months he spent in harm’s way. And perhaps more urgently than ever. Which is why I’m thanking Kevin and Jeanie Bock for the pro bono work they’re doing, and recommending them to those of you who may need their services.
Dad Fell, So I’m Singing Amen to Two Veteran Angels
April 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Happy New Year from Us to You
December 28, 2011 By 5 Comments
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.
Movie recco: ‘Of Gods and Men’
November 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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...]
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...]
Wine recco: 2005 Petit Manou (Bordeaux)
March 7, 2009 By 1 Comment
She-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.
