I’m hardly a Machead, but I have tremendous respect for Steve Jobs and his contributions to humanity. He created two companies that revolutionized several industries. Pixar and feature animation. Apple — personal computing, mobile Internet, music distribution, more?

In 2005, Jobs gave the Stanford commencement speech. I remember listening to the speech  in the summer of 2005, and feeling challenged and anxious. I was approaching my 30th birthday; the self-imposed deadline for figuring out what I wanted to do when I grew up.  It was a year before we launched Wise Bread and two years before I quit my day job.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Rereading that speech today, six years older, another part speaks to me: “Stay Foolish.”

Thanks, Steve. Rest in peace. We’ll miss you.

It’s a bright and brisk 67° today in LA. The birds are out singing. It’s bright but not exactly sunny. Just cold enough to put a bounce in your step, but not so cold you want to curl up in front of the fireplace. The kind of weather that’s great for running around, or for sitting outside with a coffee talking about interesting things.

Going into winter always bums me out a bit. Things seem to change after daylight savings time ends the first week of November. It suddenly gets dark a lot earlier, everyone’s cocooned in their coats, and reflecting on the past year starts to weigh on me. My mood fits right in as the cold, dark rains fall in December.

But on this first day of the new year, it’s crisp outside with clear blue skies. And that’s how I feel about the new year. I’m looking forward to 2010. I think it will be a bright and brisk year for me and Killer Aces, and I hope it is for you too.

Happy new year everyone!

* I want to say “happy new decade!” because it sounds cooler, but really, the new decade doesn’t start until next year.

I’ve always wanted to learn how to fly.  Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of the sense of freedom I would have soaring through the air.  Now that I’m in my thirties, I thought it was about time to start pursuing that dream, and I took the first step by reaching out to the one pilot I knew.  And boy am I glad I did.

My friend Thanos gave me a great primer on learning how to fly. He graciously spent an hour on the phone giving me pointers on sites, organizations, and the general path to getting a pilot’s license.

Even though I had done some cursory Google searches on learning how to fly, the tips Thanos gave me in that hour long conversation were invaluable.  Getting a pilot’s license is pretty confusing.  There are different types, with their own restrictions and paths, and Google only provided a smattering of confusing advice.

Spending an hour on the phone with Thanos, he was able to give me a big picture idea of what it meant to learn how to fly.  We talked about why I wanted to do it, what to expect of the 100+ hours and $10,000+ process, and what it was like at the end (when I have a license).  We talked about how the general aviation world works and how he uses his private pilot’s license.

I love the one hour primer by experts. If you’re looking to learn something new and somewhat complex, do yourself a huge favor and find someone to give you a primer. Buy them a cup of coffee and just pick their brain.  It’ll make the journey so much more productive and enjoyable.

Or you’re an expert in something a friend wants to learn, give the gift of a primer.

Thanks Thanos!

I quit so I could give Killer Aces the full-time effort.

Some of the conversations I had with family, friends and co-workers.

Are you making enough from KA to cover your expenses?

That would be a resounding NO. But I believe in the vision and my partners. We’ll see how it goes.

Why now? You’ve been talking about it for a while, but I thought you were going to keep trying to work both?

That was the plan, to work at Rhythm full-time, while building up KA on the side. It was working great for a while, but as Wise Bread grew (in terms of bloggers and readers) and as KA faced new challenges and opportunities, I found that I wanted to work on the KA problem all day. I was preoccupied with whatever issue-of-the-day was on KA’s plate, and I felt horrible that I couldn’t give my partners and the bloggers more time and resources. The worse part was my slacking performance at work. All the problem solving cycles I had went to KA, so by the time I went to work on Rhythm issues, I was drained, cranky and highly ineffective.

So why today? What was the final trigger?

This is my resignation story. I was lying in bed Monday night / Tuesday morning… Wait. Let me back up.

Late Sunday night, we launched WB 2.0. On Monday, the bloggers let us know what they thought. And it wasn’t pretty. Monday was the biggest “crisis” day we’ve ever had. At the end of the day, though, I was more happy than worried. Some thoughts:

1. I spend all day dealing with the KA crisis and I loved it. Rhythm got zero work from me. That was totally uncool.
2. The KA team handled the crisis well. My partners are awesome! Hey, maybe we can make this work….
3. WB got better because of the crisis. We made a couple of changes based on chats with bloggers. Hey, maybe this could work….

That night (it was actually very early Tuesday morning), I lay in bed and could not quiet my mind. We had resolved most of the major issues, so I wasn’t worrying. I think I was excited! After a few hours of laying in bed, dead tired but unable to fall asleep, I got up, took a long walk to getting breakfast, and decided that today was the day. I drove out to Pasadena to talk to my dad about it. He was supportive. That sealed the deal. I drove back to Rhythm and turned in my resignation.