Keturah and I paid a visit to her doctor yesterday and received some wonderful news. Our second baby, due in early August, is — or will be (depending on where you stand on the whole “what is life?” debate) — a boy. This will be our second child and our second boy. The baby is healthy and Keturah’s pregnancy is going very smoothly, especially now that she’s gotten through the winter and all the nasty viruses that were going around.

I’ll be honest and say that I had my fingers crossed for a baby girl, but any baby is a miraculous gift and what’s most important is that we have a healthy baby. When the doctor said “It’s a boy” and even zeroed in on the ultrasound to show the little guy’s “manhood”, any disappointment was quickly erased by joyous thoughts of a second son.

Any lingering regrets were definitely disposed of when a friend of mine sent me a text message that said “Now you just have to decide which one is the point guard and which one is the shooting guard.” I have to admit, the possibilities for seeing Toothman backcourt tandem in the future does sound immensely cool.

Keturah and Mason in Siena last fall. Mason’s going to be a big brother soon! But is he point guard material?

Our due date is August 10, 2008. There’s indeed a chance that our two sons will be will be exactly two years apart as Mason was born on August 2, 2006. A name has not been finalized yet, but we have some leading candidates. They are…

• Jude
• Griffin
• Tucker
• Harrison

Anyone have a favorite in that list?

I have to admit that I never would have thought of this:

http://designintellection.com/downloads/wp-contact-manager/

I’ve been extremely tardy in writing a recap post about my trip to Austin, Texas for the SXSW interactive Festival.  Suffice to say, it was an amazing experience and an event that I will be returning to in years to come.  One thing that was pretty clear about this gathering of technology, interactive, and social media thinkers is that the best content was no where near the panels.  It was everywhere else.  That was easily found in the conference halls, the parties, the back of taxicabs, and even on the plane from SFO to Austin. 

Here’s a bunch of random highlights, notes, and tidbits from my four days in Austin

It’s always good to catch up with old friends and  acquaintances

Folks like Peter Cole (who I hadn’t seen in over 6 years), Marshall Kirkpatrick, Britt Raybould, and Scott Beale to name just a few.  I’ve been fortunate to attend a few industry events in the past year and I’m really enjoying the anticipation of attending the next gathering and connecting with familiar faces. 

Coffee with Sam Lawrence of Jive Software

There’s so many wonderful byproducts to being active on Twitter.  In my job at Stanford University, I’ve been investigating updated intranet solutions to enable improved collaboration across the enterprise and with cross functional project teams.  A few tweets while I was in Austin scored me a Sunday morning coffee meetup with Sam Lawrence of Jive software.  Sam spent an hour of his only day at SXSW showing my Jive’s flagship product, Clearspace.  Very impressive software and I can’t tell you how grateful I am that Sam was willing to take the time to walk me through it. 

Chris Brogan is the nicest guy I’ve met in this industry

Sam and I actually were having lunch a few days after SXSW and we both agreed – while working in technology, we’re hard pressed to think of a nicer guy we’ve met than Chris Brogan.  Chris and I had breakfast on the morning I left Austin and I’m looking forward to further conversations with him.

Finally got to go to a Fray event

Derek Powazek’s Fray is one of the reasons I’m in the "web industry" and I’ve always wanted to go to a Fray day.  Lucky for me, a Fray cafe was organized to coincide with SXSW and attending it was a nice change of pace from the rest of the parties held in Austin. 

The cool kids were in the Blog Haus

Seriously, I could have stayed in the Blog Haus my entire time I was at SXSW.  There were so many excellent conversations happening in there.  I can’t tell you how many times I was ready to head to the next panel, but missed it because of positive discussion taking place in the Blog Haus

"Do whatever is right in front of you"

This is the best advice I got all weekend.  Going with the flow and being open to choosing a different path is the way to maximize your time at SXSW.  With so many choice, you almost have to change your decision making process.  Optimizing your time at SXSW is like a Phish jam…best performed with less planning and more improvising.

Twitter made the SXSW experience go to 11

Expect another post on this subject in the future.  But I was so impressed about the role Twitter played at SXSW, that I returned to Stanford and wrote a proposal for integrating Twitter with the next reunion homecoming weekend. 

In preparation for heading to Austin for SXSW I asked a buddy of mine who used to live in Austin for his recommendations on what to do, where to eat, etc. Here’s what he had to say…

Good restaurants
-gueros: it’s classic tex mex and in a cool part of town on south congress. Great for lunch.
-shady grove: it’s on riverside next to a trailor park and has great outdoor eating sometimes with a band. It’s classic austin.
-saltlick: best bbq in the austin area it is about 15 minutes south of town in driftwood. It is a dry county so bring a 12 pack with you. They have a cool patio where you can habg out and drink while you wait for a table

Fancier Restaurants
-z tejas over by 6th and lamar-sort of nuevo mexican
-mars which is in a funky old bungalow and serves american
Breakfast:
-kirby lane has great pancakes and is another austin classic

Bars
-a lot of the sxsw stuff will be around 6th st. That’s the college drag and kind of nasty. I’d stay more on 4th west of congress
-club deville is a great bar just by campus with a great outdoors
-gingerman is on 4th and lavaca I think. It has 30 or 40 beers on tap and an outdoor patio. They also have some kind of happy hour around 5 where beers start at a dollar and then go up every half hour. Good deal

Clubs
-i’m sure you’ll go to most based on the acts but continental club (across from gueros) and antones are the classics

Sites
-barton springs pool: it’s a natural spring that they turned into a public pool
-hamilton pool: also a good place to go swimming if it’s warm enough. It’s an old river bed that collapsed leaving a pool with half shell over it.
-lake travis: this is a little far but there are cool views of the lake from the oasis restaurant.

There was a point in time when Nomar Garciaparra was my favorite baseball player alive. And I thought he was the best shortstop around. Argued with various people that he was a better than Jeter, better than A-Rod (remember when he used to play shortstop?). I thought he would lead the Red Sox to the promised land…to that World Series championship myself and the rest of the agonizing Red Sox fan base was so desperate to win. I thought he would spend his entire career as a Red Sox player, get 3,000 hits, have his number retired at Fenway, and make the Hall of Fame.

I forgave him for not being able to hit .360 when he came back from his thumb injury. Put up with all the throwing errors in 2003 and 2004, believing that he would come through when it mattered most. Then he was traded to the Cubs in 2004 (on my wedding day, no less). And while that trade partially led to a that Red Sox World Series championship I was wishing for, there was definitely that bittersweet moment that Nomar wasn’t on the team.

Now I read this and wonder how Nomar could have fallen so far:

In one of the least fan-friendly displays I’ve ever witnessed as a baseball writer, Garciaparra spent the absolute minimum amount of time signing. He never looked up. He never said a word. When fans offered a hearty “Good luck!” or said “You’ve always been my favorite!” he either grunted or pretended the sentiment was never expressed. If someone made the “mistake” of requesting that he sign a ball on the sweet spot, Garciaparra actually went out of his way not to. Though the rope between Garciaparra and the fans was no more than half-an-inch thick, it felt like the Great Wall of China. All attempts at small talk began with a Dodger loyalist’s enthusiasm and ended with the Dodger third baseman’s body language, which screamed “I’m Nomar, you’re not — please don’t touch me.”

Read the whole thing at ESPN Page 2 – Pearlman: No love from Nomar