I will be in London from this Friday to next Saturday (29 Sept - 7 Oct). I’ll be available on email and my get a temporary SIM card from Vodafone for local calls while I’m in town. If you’re in the area, drop me a line.

AMMENDED: email me for my UK phone number if you haven’t received it already.

Cheers,

Mike

I really thought that this quote, taken from New York Times’ RSS technology feed, about the status of the HP leak scandal. I think this rings true about business in general:

“that leaks tend to afflict ships that aren’t seaworthy to begin with” - New York Times (25 Sept. 2006)

Missoula’s Very Own Skate Park, right along the bank of the Clark Fork River and between Orange Street Bridge and Osprey Field (pro baseball), had its grand opening with a show by the “Michael Jordan” of the skateboarding world, Tony Hawk. Joining Hawk included his son, several X-games pro skaters and Bam Margero (known from Jackass and MTV’s Viva La Bam shows). It was a beautiful day and tens of thousands of people showed up for the all-day event.

Skaters of all sized showed up for the festivities.

Bam, Hawk, Riley Hawk (son) and others preparing to drop in one of the several pool sections of the park.

The master himself showing his stuff. We saw many cool stunts and even his infamous 540 and old school hand plants.

Some pro skaters “warming up” for the vert show on Hawk’s $million halfpipe. This is one of the stops in his Project 8 video plus a series on “hidden skate park tour”.

Beautiful view of Missoula’s Clark Fork River (left), Orange Street Bridge (west side of downtown Missoula) and Mount Sentinel (with The University of Montana nestled at its base). The event drew a health crowd and it was a beautiful day to be out.

This evening I was fortunate to meet Tom Siebel, founder and former CEO of Siebel Systems, as he was being recognized for his tremendous efforts in awareness and prevention of Methamphetamine drug use which is rampant throughout the state. We discussed a couple of my ventures briefly but the focus of the evening was on this nationwide issue of which I believe everyone has been affected or known someone affected in one way or another.

I’m pleased to know such a caring individual and truly dynamic speaker and in true Mike Sparr fashion, I managed to capture a photo of Tom and I.

Tom Siebel and I in Missoula Montana.

One of the coolest tid-bits of advice Tom shared was the value of human capital in an organization. Technology, Marketing, Finance and of course “Revenues are nice” but in business it boils down to “my team versus their team”. I found this extremely relevant as I’m currently in a position of focus, strategy and growth planning for Goomzee trying to figure out exactly how to accomplish that.

I’ve met with many high-profile CEOs, or former CEOs, in the past year and I must say that I always take something valuable away from each meeting. Stay tuned for another exciting announcement about one of those “Companies” listed at the right of this page. Also, please take a moment to learn more about the Montana Meth Project and lend a hand if you can.

Related Links:
- Montana Meth Project
- Siebel Systems - now part of Oracle

Today is Jeff Northcutt’s birthday so I thought I would let everyone else know. Have a great day and enjoy my home improvement articles.

The garage in back is already a 1-1/2 car detached garage with a carport. I decided to enclose the whole thing and will knock out the wall so we’ll have a small workshop and park both vehicles inside. As I aim to finish the sprinkler system tomorrow (Monday), I decided to frame in the east wall so we could mount the sprinker system control box inside.

It is always best to install the control box in a place where you can view the yard. This way you can test zones and be sure they turn on or off. Here are some photos of my progress. I still have to cut a remaining sheet and then add some screws in some areas to really secure all the sheets to the studs.

I took measurements and planned out my “shopping list” before visiting the local Home Depot. As they were open on Sunday and I got the urge for this project just around lunch time, we didn’t shop around and just bought everything there.

The sheets were only $12-13 each and the studs (8-footers) were only $1.99 each. The treated 2×4s were just under $5 each and boxes of nails were $3 and $5 respectively. We bought 24 studs, 5 treated 8-foot 2×4s and 6 sheets of 5/8″ sheeting for just over $150.

I pre-cut all the lumber before clearing an area to assemble the walls before putting them in place.

Rather than trying to build the walls in place, it’s best to assemble them on the ground and then put them in place. As you can see, I used pressure treated lumber for the section that touches the concrete and ground and standard lumber for the rest.

My professional photographer, Jamie, caught this “action-packed” photo while I was raising the first wall section. I should have placed some thin foam strips on the ground first under the treated lumber for moisture and bug barrier but instead I will simply use caulking and glue to seal the floor.

Fitting the wall into place before making it plumb with a level, then tacking it into place with nails. After I finish the job I will rent a hammer drill and use a special bolt called “Red Heads” to anchor the bottom plate to the concrete.

Installing the 2nd wall section

New wall with all studs in place. Now I prepare for installing the sheeting.

Installing the first sheet is very important. You must make sure it is square so all the other sheets you install and butt up against it will all fit.

View from the inside. Now I did not take into account the 4×4 posts that existed so you can see that the sheet does not end on a stud. I will correct this by screwing in 2×4s between the studs that I can nail the sheets against to ensure they have a good hold before siding the garage.

I simply need to cut the remaining sheet and finish fastening the walls. As I have not purchased the garage doors, I am unsure on the rough opening specs so I cannot build the front and back walls yet. Depending on how busy I am this week with all my work projects and meetings, I will try to get those measurements and purchase the materials to finish the garage.

Inside view of new wall. Soon the entire garage will be enclosed and then I will install a beam in the center of the roof so I can knock out the existing wall, opening up the entire garage for 2 cars and a small workshop.

More to come…

When I landscaped the front and side-yards last year, I pre-plumbed the main line and drip tubing for an underground sprinkler system. I felt ambitious 2 weekends ago and borrowed by grandfather’s backhoe and pulled out the old fence. I hired a dump truck and loaded up all the dirt from the landscaping job to be hauled away. Thereafter, my buddy Jamy and I pulled the pipe and installed the sprinkler system - I have to finish the back yard and hook up plumbing and control box (Monday). Here are some pics:

Digging the holes for the sprinkler heads

Sprinkler head hold and poly line

Assembling the sprinkler heads

Plumbing the valves for the 4 front (and side) zones. The white PVC pipe is always pressurized with water and the black valves are what allow water the to various zones supplied by the green poly lines.

Setting the sprinkler heads in the ground, splicing into the poly line for that zone.

Burying the head. First you scrape back in the dirt and then re-use the sod that you cut away, making sure the the heads are packed in very tight and flush with the level of the ground.

I have actually ran the front and size zones manually while I wait to finish the system. The grass is greener already and starting to repair from the pipe pulling and digging. It should be repaired before winter and will come back very healthy and green next year.

My cousin, Shane Bemis, is running for Mayor of Gresham Oregon. I offered to design/build a website for his campaign which should be going live real soon. If you are a registered voter in the Portland/Gresham area, choose Shane!

Elect Shane Bemis for Mayor of Gresham Oregon

It has been brought to my attention that a couple of my company’s e-commerce clients have experienced attempts of people using stolen credit cards to place orders within their stores. Our system and the merchant gateway has blocked these attempts but they are all recorded. One ambitious client went so far as to track down the real owner of the credit card and inquire as to how someone might have gotten her number. It turned out she was on a local cruise in her hometown in Alabama.

This brings up the point that when travelling either locally or abroad, be CAREFUL when waiters, busboys, cleaning staff, etc. have access to your credit card. I always advise when visiting a foreign country that you visit a reputable bank ATM machine and withdraw local currency. Only carry the amount you need for that day’s activities in person and store the rest in a safe place. It is best to run your card at the register and ensure they have abided by merchant rules preventing printing of your complete credit card number on any receipts or batch receipts.

Hopefully this will draw awareness and the most common cause of fraudulent credit card charges and help prevent some unscrupulous attempts at charging your account. Happy travels and SAFE shopping!

For most Americans, 9/11 was something they remember while glued to their television screens or worse yet, witnessing the distruction of the World Trade Center towers or the Pentagon first hand. I was living in Helsinki Finland at the time and only a few days prior had just returned from a trip back to San Francisco.

I was staffed on a project in Helsinki, helping deploy a major portal and wireless community worldwide. It was near the end of our workday (GMT+2) when some Finnish colleagues notified us ex-pats about the first plane crash. We rolled in a television to our office and sat there glued to it as our co-worker translated the Finnish report for us English speaking folks. As we watched, we witnessed the second plane hit live. I for one, had little emotion as I tried to figure out exactly what I had just seen. It took days for it to really sink in.

We had 2 ex-pats that were actually stuck back in the US as they had just flown back upon my return to Helsinki (rotating our leave time). I recall my friend and his concerns because his wife was back in New York City. He and I both had just returned to Helsinki while other ex-pats were taking off. We all coordinated to attempt to find a news website that wasn’t saturated with traffic and I recall refreshing the page every minute or two for more headlines across the country. There was a new post it seemed every minute we refreshed the screen and whomever saw it first would call it out to the others. My friend reached his wife and everything was alright!

That night, and many nights thereafter, I remained glued to my television in my flat every day after work, sometimes until 3am. I recall one day while at lunch at a restaurant near our office given many at our table were Americans, the restaurant asked all patrons to exercise a moment of silence to honor America; it was an amazing gesture. The worldwide support and compassion that came out of such tragedy was overwhelming, it is just so unfortunate that it often takes such horrible events to unite people.

After days of numbness, feeling like we were simply watching a movie as the event unfolded, it was all too surreal. The feelings finally hit a couple days later after limited sleep and continued hard work on our project. At first it was sadness, then anger towards whomever would do such a thing. Being over 5000 miles from America and watching the whole thing develop from afar was a unique perspective as I hear others’ accounts of that day.

I’ve never really shared my account, and it’s been years, so I just thought I would post a little note to say thanks to all those from abroad who supported the US and demonstrated such kindness and compassion during a messed-up time.

Jamie has successfully ridden Aden now 5 times. I took some photos last week of one of the rides - see below.

“Check out my fiery saddle pad!”

A short walk. They considered it successful just keeping him moving.