I’ve always hated The Habs – never more so than in the moments following Game 7 of the second round of the 1986 Stanley Cup Playoffs. I’m glad the B’s swept them this year. And I hope this chick loses her beer.

This includes:

• People who do not respect the left hand lane. It’s for passing, not cruising along at 2mph faster (or heaven forbid slower) than the car in the next lane to the right.
• People who live in the Bay Area and do not have FasTrak. You slow people down, you encourage road rage and you create a ridiculous amount of pollution. I hate you. And so do intelligent, polite, ecologically minded people everywhere. But you can change. You can change. Make it a resolution.

That is all.

This sign makes me vomit. I hate it. Unfortunately, it’s just down the street from my office so I have to walk past it all too often. At first glance, you may wonder what’s wrong with free buffets, happy hour and cheap drinks. Wasn’t America built on excessive consumption and cheap booze? And the answer might be “maybe.”

Why does this sign turn my stomach? It’s a draw for the a “gentlemen’s club” in San Francisco – we’ll leave the discussion on the (de)merits of these establishments for another day. The top headline “Free Buffet Every Friday 11:00am – 2:00pm.” Let’s discuss. A buffet inside a strip club is so overly Bachanalian that Bachus himself would be ashamed. But more importantly, am I the only one who sees a sanitation issue here? Here’s what I want to know:

1. Are patrons allowed multiple trips to the buffet? If so, are they allowed to return after they receive a lap dance?
2. Is this a self-serve buffet or is it attended by a waitstaff (think Omelet Guy at a Marriot buffet) who handles the food for the patrons?
3. If the answer to Question #2 is “self-serve,” how long are the tongs? How is the use of tongs enforced? Who the hell still eats there?
4. Do the dancers smell like buffalo wings by 2:00pm? Not a major concern of mine but kinda gross to think about.
5. Does the CDC know about this?
6. How much Purell is consumed around the buffet and why isn’t the volume greater?

The list could go on and on. And I think it should. So let’s put the comments section of this blog to use and let me know what you think.

Given that the this post will be dated even prior to publication, I’m typing fast. Thanks for the extra patience with my typos.

We need a government bailout of the financial crisis. We all need to quit whining, tell the whiners to shut up and get do whatever we can to get something done. Consider calling your congressman. Seriously. The situation is that bad. I’ll spare writing the details here, but suffice it to say it’s pretty easy to see a pending economic implosion if the credit markets freeze. The CMOs, CDOs and derivatives are the sexy part of the story. Frozen overnight lending is what should really be scaring the shit out of everyone.

To those who say that we should just let capitalism run its course and the feds should stay out of this, I have a couple of responses. First, that’s an option. But it’s an option that’s likely to come with a horrific recession (nee: depression). We can let capitalism play out, but it will be brutal for everybody. Second, in the US, we don’t have a pure form of capitalism. We have a form which is influenced by fiscal and monetary policies, as well as regulation. If you are now saying that we should just let things run their course, you are effectively saying that we should alter the manner in which the American economy has operated since Alexander Hamilton did the whole Treasury Department thing.

To those who say any bailout should come with caps on executive compensation. Stop. If the feds invest $700 billion in this bailout, I want to be 100% sure that we can attract the best and the brightest to get the job done right. Everyone in Washington DC has a cap on their compensation and look at what we get there. If you want to attract the best, you can’t cap the comp.

To those who say the performances of all in Washington are awful, especially that of the President, the presidential candates and the folks who froze the process last night, I agree. The stink from Washington is putrid. Some deserve more blame than others, but it’s awful. That said, I don;t want to hear one more person use this as an opportunity to tell me about Ron Paul. There is a lot to admire about the guy. I myself has some libertarian leanings. I disagree with his stance on reproductive rights, but he’s someone who’s opinion I am almost always interested in hearing. Almost. He is so wrong on economic policy (policy is different than prediction). If were up to him there would be no Treasury and the dollar would be back on the gold standard. Stop. He is not even close to being the guy for the job on this one.

Other things which annoy me:

• People who were responsible borrowers got fucked. We got to sit around and watch real estate prices get bid up by people who couldn’t afford it. Now it’s in the national interest to make sure there aren’t too many foreclosures. I hope these people get hurt somehow – we need a moral hazard. We can’t allow this behavior to continue.
• Hard working professionals get hit. Blame the investment banks all you want, but investment banks are complex organizations. For example, M&A bankers would have little influence (or knowledge) of their firms trading practices. And now when those trading practices cause the bank to go under or the stock to crater, they get hit. They lose their jobs, their savings, their bonuses (often paid in stock). This has a huge financial and emotional toll. Just because they were investment bankers, doesn;t mean they were to blame.
• There are some traders and money managers who made huge amounts of money making trades which ultimately turned out bad. These people will never have to give the money back. Never

These last points are nothing but schaudenfraude. Worrying about them is childish, lizard brain type stuff (and exactly what the politicos are worrying about). In truth, these emotions have no bearing on improving the current reality.

Time for us all to put on our big boy pants and act like adults (maybe Washington DC will follow our lead). We need a bailout. It should happen ASAP. It will not be perfect. But we need it. Get it done.

Why do people move so slowly when they cross the street? Personally, I tend to break into a light jog when I cross. I’m not such a huge fan of standing in an open area with 2-ton steal boxes whizzing by.

Often people will appear to labor when they are crossing the street. Lift foot, plant foot, take breath, lift other foot. In San Francisco, where fleece outerwear remains popular, this gives the impression that the street crossers are living out their Walter Mitty mountain climbing fantasies. But they are neither traversing the Khumbu Icefall nor scaling the Hillary Step. Just crossing Van Ness. Six lanes of traffic. At sea level. It’s not the top of the world on the other side, just the 41 Muni line to take you from Cow Hollow to your job and a latte downtown.

Other people cross while glaring intently through windshields at drivers (me) who are looking to make a right hand turn. Yes, I know that you have the right of way but does that really mean you can’t pick up the pace? You’re not making some grand political statement about the sanctity of walking. This isn’t a bipedal version of a sit-in. Get over yourself. Really, you’re just slowing people down and wasting the gas of every car that sits idling.

We’ll leave people who text or email in crosswalks for another day. But the NY Times says it’s dangerous. (Yes, the NY Times is now reporting on common sense. Forget the election, the war, the financial crisis, pending energy crisis… We need the Gray Lady to alert us to the dangers of texting while walking in traffic.)

Anyway, unless you are disabled or wearing fabulous heels, pull your head out of your rectum and/or Blackberry, stop sauntering and move. It’s polite, it’s safe and it’s good for the environment.

This is a happy birthday. Today, there is nothing about which to be angry. To all of my friends who have made my 34th birthday so memorable, thank you. I hope you know how much your kind words and well wishes mean to me. I’m verklempt (apparently, male menopause begins at 34).

Some things I’m looking forward to in the new year:

• Seeing my age round the Fenway basepath when Papi goes yard
• Working with the great team at First Round Capital
• Watching my eldest niece enter kindergarten
• Helping my friends overcome any obstacles in their path
• And then celebrating their tenacity and success
• Bug fixing my 3.3 release
• Good company, more belly laughs, and even more smiles

Thank you all for making today so special. Much love.

-Kent

Two early thoughts on NBC’s coverage of the Olympics.*

1. Imagine if the World Series or the Super Bowl was shown live on the East Coast bit tape delayed on the West Coast. That would be madness, right? Well, that’s whats going on with NBC’s coverage of the Summer Olympics. Boo.
2. I love that every 4 years the Olympics celebrates non-mainstream sports such as fencing, weightlifting or rowing. The dedication of competitors in these sports is tremendous. They train and sacrifice for long hours without expectations of fame or fortune. Every four years we catch a glimpse of their sport and are “wowed” by their commitment to and love for their craft. The emotions around their victories and defeats are every bit as powerful as those of the gymnasts, swimmers and track & field competitors. So, NBC, please… show us more competition. I saw the same Chris Collingsworth / Dara Torres human interest piece twice yesterday (and I didn’t even watch all that much). Move the human interest stuff to Bravo and show more of the actual Olympics on the big stage!
   

* In a week or so, I’m sure that I’ll be complaining about too much gymnastics.

This note might seem a bit dated. Many folks have already weighed in on the design and performance of the new iPhone. Now that I’ve been using one for three weeks, I’m ready to share a few more thoughts. I’ll stay clear of mentioning its tendency to crash, run out of battery life, drop calls, fail to deliver SMS messages on time, anything about MobileMe, the manufactured scarcity of the devices or anything about the keyboard (actually, the keyboard is great – I type faster with it than I did with my Blackberry 8800).

The amazing thing is that despite all of these deficiencies, I still love the device. I’ve heard some people say that the Blackberry is like a wife and the iPhone is like a mistress. Well, whichever the iPhone is, I’m in an abusive relationship with it (I’m the one getting abused btw).

So here is a simple thought on the design. It’s mostly brilliant, but this brilliance makes the bad parts mas que feo. And, I lied. I’m talking battery life. My single biggest complaint about the device is it’s shocking craptastic battery life. The device can do anythng you want it to do… for half a day. In order to extend the battery life, I’m turning off many of the new fangled features. 3G – off! GPS – off! It’s basically like I have the original iPhone with a *flush headphone jack* (this was the “mas que feo” of the original iPhone – if you don’t know what I’m talking about go to 1:26:41 of the WWDC08 video and listen to the cheers as Dear Leader intros this revolution in smart design).

Absent a larger or swappable battery, if I could make one simple tweak to turn the iPhone 3G into the iPhone KG, it would be this. Manual intervention on network mangement (and vicariously battery management). We can each be our own Mechanical Turk. How about an external button to allow me to control my network preferences? I’m thinking a slider with three stops.

Position 1: Edge Network only.

Position 2: 3G Network only.

Position 3: Edge + WiFi.

If you’re on a WiFi network, you don’t need 3G unless the WiFi sucks, in which case you don’t need WiFi. All of these settings are in the device, they are just buried in the settings menu. I don’t know about you, but if Steve announced this change with the next iPhone, I’d cheer “Woohoo!.”

Hey Dell-

Are you kidding me? Did you really just trademark the term “cloud computing” for your own use? And, wait, you’re planning to enforce it? Instead, why don’t you say “hello” to my little friend:

Do the right thing. Set the right example. Or else, we’re all going to boycott that new music player of yours. Well, actually, we’ll do that anyway.

Sincerely-

Angry Kent

Hat tips to the WSJ and Valleywag.

Let me start by declaring that I love Yahoo. Many of my favorite online services are Yahoo services – Yahoo Mail, Flickr, My Yahoo, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Fantasy Sports, Yahoo News and even Yahoo Weather. This was the case before I begin my nearly four year tenure there and remains the case today even though I am an alumnus. I really do love Yahoo.

When I finally got my iPhone 3G (soon to be the star of an Angry Kent rant), the first thing I wanted to do was to connect my fast new, bleeding edge device to all of my favorite Yahoo services. Pretty much, no dice. Yahoo Mail syncs nicely with the iPhone email client. Beyond that, nada. If you go to this page, it looks like you can connect your Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Weather to your iPhone. Not really. The iPhone has a finance app and a weather app which is powered by a Yahoo feed, but it’s not in anyway connected with my Yahoo ID. In fact, what I do on the phone is completely independent of what I do on the Yahoo sites. What about Flickr, Sports and the other properties that have all of my preferences stored online? Nope. No apps available. If I want to use them, I have to load the iPhone’s browser and access them that way.

So where does this leave me? Where I can, I’m finding substitutes. I’m now getting my scores via the SportsTap app and my news via the NY Times app. Because my iPhone is always with me, I’ve found that I’m checking it more and more and Yahoo less and less. I have no idea whether the blame lies with Yahoo or Apple on this one (in any case, I really hope this isn’t a “strategic” decision). But the net result is that I’m less engaged with Yahoo properties and less satisfied with my iPhone.

So, please Yahoo and Apple, as a user, a shareholder and a long devoted fan of both companies, I’m begging you, can we crank out some iPhone apps?