Author Archives: Brian Alvey

Yep, that is the question. We’re on a family vacation in Colorado where Jack is going to learn to ski. He’ll be four in a few weeks and we felt we were running out of time to get him started on his Olympic training. The trip involves both skiing and tubing, so Niki got JackContinue reading “Tubing or not tubing?”

I had an odd dream with Jason in it last night. An appearance like that doesn’t happen as often as you’d think it does. I was in a supermarket and he kept sending me a shopping list to my BlackBerry, complete with photos of sushi he wanted me to buy. At one point in the dream heContinue reading “Get out of my dreams, get into my church”

When Weblogs became part of AOL Jason and I had been equal partners, but someone had the bright idea to have me report to him. So my reporting structure at AOL looked like this: Brian Alvey > Jason Calacanis > Tina Sharkey > Jim Bankoff > Ted Leonsis > Jon Miller. Earlier this week, thatContinue reading “Just add drama”

I get that people are supposed to die, but slow it down already! Earlier this week Martin Nodell, the creator of Green Lantern, passed away at 91. A few weeks ago we lost Dave Cockrum (co-creator of X-Men characters like Colossus, Storm and Nightcrawler) to diabetes. My sister once bought me a t-shirt that had one of hisContinue reading “Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found you”

I found out from his obituary (below) that Michael was one of the founders of a charity called Take the Lead which is “dedicated to provide direct services, support and care for all qualified participants in the sport of dogs who suffer from the devastating realities of life-threatening or terminal illnesses.” In keeping with this week’s “It’s a SmallContinue reading “Take the Lead”

I have all these posts I want to write about hanging out with my old college friend Chris and his family at Disney and my family and my Blogsmith dev team (who is staying at a nicer hotel here than we are), but I’m still in shock. I was listening to the big band stationContinue reading “Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think”

Niki and our favorite kennel owner Michael were extremely close. When she called the kennel this afternoon to check on our dogs, his assistant Alex said he had some really bad news. We never would have guessed that the news was that Michael died of a heart attack three days ago and that his funeralContinue reading “Michael Larizza”

“Drove downtown in the rain — nine-thirty on a Tuesday night, just to check out the late-night record shop. Call it impulsive. Call it compulsive. Call it insane. But when I’m surrounded I just can’t stop.” I love the Barenaked Ladies’ song Brian Wilson. It’s a song about suffering from a mental block of giant proportionsContinue reading “Fun, fun, fun”

I’ve got the television on, playing Flight 26. I’m switching between blogging, IMs with Niki about Celly’s vacuum cleaner, catching up on email, managing Google calendar and doing some accounting work. I can do any one of those things plus listen to Flight 26 at the same time since everything but listening to the radio station isContinue reading “Old school multi-tasking: walking and chewing gum”

Joe Girardi won baseball’s National League manager of the year award six weeks after he was fired. Since he’s an ex-Yankee (catcher, broadcaster and then bench coach) Niki and I were rooting for him as a manager. When he was let go, he reportedly called one of his mentors who comforted him by basically sayingContinue reading “One man’s failure is another man’s manager of the year”