We had two baby goats born a day apart.  The first was sickly and we took her to the doc twice, got lots of antibiotics and watched her carefully (I even learned how to give her shots).  The second one was born to an experienced mom and looked well feed.  He did seem to pant in the heat but was spry, nursed frequently  and looked good.  We watched him but left him with mom, mostly because she already had lots and lots and lots of babies.  This afternoon he was unsteady on his feet and had trouble latching on.  I took him inside the house to cool him off, and he wanted to nurse.  So I took him outside but he had trouble latching on.  I tired to milk mom and her milk was not flowing so well, still he found that udder.   My plan was to check in two hours and if he was still doing poorly,  I would prep some goat formula and supplement him.  When I checked, he was already gone.

I feel awful. In hindsight I should have supplemented him at first sign of distress.  Now I am not a novice baby goat owner, last year I hand raised a kid who was rejected by his mom, but I do not have 4-h or in depth farming experience.  My knowledge was acquired in books, online forums and trial/error.  Today it turned out not to be enough.

I think that is a serious flaw with the homesteading movement.  Book make it sound so wholesome and romantic.  In fact is hard work, that requires you to be part farmer, part doctor, part animal surrogate mom.  Mistakes have real consequences and animals suffer and die.  As a sign of respect to this little calf, I am going to be a lot more respectful with our little ranch from here on out.  I am going to work with area farmers, ranchers and others who can become my mentors in the this ranching adventure.

If you are thinking of sustainable living or homesteading and I hope you see this blog post.  I hope it makes you think about the responsibility you have towards the animals you acquire, and get adequate training support group beforehand.

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I am excited to what this week will bring.

As an industry we took our lumps, learned our lessons, retrenched and came roaring back with companies/products like google, facebook, ipod and wordpress (disclosure: that’s where diaper money comes from.)  The people who lost so much the first time around, are back, well some of us.  We understand that its the way to the valley, and we follow the words of Rudyard Kipling:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

Which bring me to Goldman Sachs, the latest company to be helped by the fed…and Warren Buffett…and Japan’s third largest bank.  At $125 per share, you have be Warren Buffett to comfortably afford the investment.

I am rusty on my economics, finance, and credit market studies, so I will not comment on the merits of a bailout vs.world monetary collapse. It just seems to me that wall street is full of cry babies.  They played musical chairs with high-risk debt, and can’t believe the music stopped and they are “out.”  Furthermore, they are – as my mommy friends would put it -  sore losers.  Life was good while the huge profits and bonuses were coming in, but now that things are going south, well its just “unfair.”

Now I must say that I have nothing but compassion, for people going through this.  I am also not ranting at individual employees but the industry overall.  I would not wish this on anyone.

Here is my epiphany for the day, and advise to the people in the financial industry trenches: Necessity is the mother of all invention, and that is were the true risk-takers and innovators congregate.  Spend this time retrenching and looking for the next opportunity, rather then asking for a handout.  The  next big thing will come and fortunes will be made again.

1- Shai Agassi event has turned into a viral marketing campaign with invites sent out via facebook, evite and this blog.

2 – A link to David Harris’s blog now sits on the main page.  Hopefully this will help drive traffic to his site.  This is a pet peeve of mine: people sending blog posts and website copy in emails.  Just please send the link referring people to the right place on the www.  The page owner, blog owners, advertisers, and people with bursting email boxes will love you.

3 – Jono (my main AJC contact) and I are using a prologue themed blog instead of IM.  Otherwise I would have to drive 60 miles one way and pay outrageous garage parking fees, or increase my cell phone plan to the outrageous minutes per month option.

Now we have a long way to go before the site is complete and our work is done, but I just wanted to give everyone at the AJC office a shoutout for getting on the latest and greatest technological bandwagon.

Naturally our discussion wandered on to web2.0 technologies (my favorite thing) and security (Jim’s favorite thing.)  After a summer of kids, bbqs and poolside tanning sessions, it was a pleasure to talk shop with such a tech-savvy individual.  (And no I am not gushing – I am stating fact.)

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed by Jim are his own and do not represent his employer.

Here is our takeaway:

(For all the fact-checkers out there, please rest assured if I misrepresent anything Jim will be the first person to comment.)

1- Twitter, facebook, wordpress (well it is paying the family bills) and Perez Hilton will tell me what I want to know anytime and anywhere. The monopoly on information and distribution channels by traditional media companies, highly-paid analysts, entertainment industries, and data warehouses has been broken by anyone with a connected device.  These mavericks are not interested in copyright or DMCA, but rather the propagation of their views: the more hits they get on their blog, the higher the their digg rating and the more rss feeds the better.

2- Make no mistake, regardless of your actions or inactions, your information IS ALREADY ON THE INTERNET.  If you have a credit card it does not matter if you don’t make online purchases, because the bank who issued your card already keeps all of your purchases on some electronic database, connected via network and probably downloaded by its employees to an unsecured laptop.  To make matters even more scary for the conspiracy theorists, cloud computing (the new “Gossip Girl” of the internet) will drive even more of your information into datacenters run by companies like Google and Amazon.  This is not a bad thing and from a technological point of view, its even necessary to implement some really cool stuff for mobility, next-gen applications, etc.  But unless we find a way to make all the members of our family comfortable sharing information online, these amazing “level the playing field” technologies will continue to stay in the hands of a few highly-influential members of society.

Which bring us to…

3- Security: The winner will be the company that makes the average person comfortable making these technologies a main part of their daily routines.  Security specialists will need to go beyond firewalls, because the hackers are already there.  Security will need to understand not only where the information comes from, but security levels of the actual content: employees have personal blogs, corporate directory information can now be uploaded into linkedin, and corporate calendars are merged into family calendars on google.

Wow – That was alot of insight to be found between bites of tasty Mexican food.  Next time perhaps we will try Italian and I can not imagine what kind of geek talk that menu will inspire.

So here is my first unCisco thought of the day…

Best way to increase traffic to your blog… send out a resignation announcement.  My traffic went up exponentially that day and has increased overall since then (yes, I am blog stat junkie.)  So now the pressure is on to continue the trend.

Its like a grown-up version of telephone… I am interested in seeing where it will land.

So dear reader please feel free to read, submit and interview.  Thank you in advance for your assistance.

I mean what is this world coming to?  No wonder no one is reading the traditional papers, but following the Colbert report.

I could say so much more – but I feel the tingling sensation of blog-rant-o-itis coming on.

As for aliens living among us- that explains so much.