Yesterday morning, SpaceX successfully launched their Falcon 9 rocket and accompanying Dragon capsule into orbit, and safely brought Dragon back home. This was COTS Demonstration I, which means they are proving to NASA that they are capable of launching and maneuvering cargo (and eventually astronauts) into orbit and to the International Space Station.
This mission is paramount because the Space Shuttle program is being decommissioned and we’re going to have to rely on Russian Soyuz rockets to get astronauts and cargo to the ISS. America needs to act fast, and SpaceX is stepping up to the plate and has recently hit three home runs.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 Takes Off
SpaceX performed this feat with just a FRACTION of the budget and number of failures that other government entities and larger companies have had. They are showing that privatizing works when done right. Put a bunch of geniuses in a room with a solid vision, a fiscal goal to achieve, and an inspirational leader, and this is what you get.
I am very close to many people at SpaceX, as they were one of my primary customers in my old sales job. I am still friends with many of the employees, as they are a great group of guys. I am honest when I tell you that every time I stepped into that building, I was the dumbest person in the room. I can’t say enough good things about them, the missions they’ve accomplished, and how they do so much with so little.
SpaceX is founded by Elon Musk, who was the co-founder of PayPal and also runs Tesla Motors.
What the SpaceX Launch Means to Me… and America
Note: This is the way I see things. I follow space, but not so closely that this is how it all went down
Over the past decade, we have had two American government administrations that have done nothing but balloon the size of the government with basically zero productive results. There has been nothing but bureaucratic waste, failure, and endless “wars”.
Our Space Shuttle program has been ailing, as was evident by the 2003 Columbia disaster. Our shuttles are no longer certifiably safe, and they need to be put to noble rest. So Congress commissioned NASA to create the Constellation program, a new human space transport program. Sounds cool, we can keep up with Russia and China, right?
Wrong.
As many expected, NASA shit the bed with Constellation. They were so covered in shit that they were unable to even provide a reasonable estimation for how much the program would even cost!! Talk about flying blind! (Original 2004 NASA estimates were that it’d cost $230 Billion to get to the moon)
So much win.
So I have to credit President Obama for doing his homework and canceling the program. Instead, he decided that it was time to take a “bold new approach to human space flight that embraces commercial industry”, as Constellation was “over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation.”
So he created the COTS program, designating $6 Billion to fund commercial technology companies to get it done. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences won the bids, with behemoths Lockheed Martin and Boeing left licking their wounds.
What you see in the video above is somewhere south of $600 million worth of investment. That is less than the amount of “cost threats” NASA calculated as being risky endeavors for the Constellation program. While this bloated program was busy making mistakes (yet keepin’ them cushy jobs!), SpaceX got busy flying rockets – and making profit.
I know that it’s not so clear cut, and SpaceX still needed a LOT of NASA help to communicate out there, but let me continue.
Okay… But why should I care about any of this?
Dragon Capsule Comes Home
Good question. This country is on a downward spiral, so why are we worried about sending expensive rockets into space?
The first part of the answer is that if the shit hits the fan, we may need manned missions that we can operate. Even with SpaceX, the US still has a gap where we cannot fly manned missions ourselves after Atlantis is decommissioned. We will have no safe shuttle!!!! SpaceX doesn’t think it can officially bring an astronaut to space for 3 more years, which probably means 4.
Sure, we have companies like Lockheed, Boeing, and SpaceX that can bring your satellite into space. But if we need to do spacewalks to fix things, do we really want to rely on the Russians and Chinese? It’s not a good situation if relations go downhill, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility. I for one don’t completely trust anyone but Americans with my precious cargo and communications systems.
The second part of the answer is this: While NASA is less than 1% of our budget, it’s a microcosm for everything that is going wrong with this country.
You can spend billions upon billions of good peoples’ money by pushing paper around, or you can let a bunch of smart people attack the problem with the incentive of that forsaken word, PROFIT.
So my question back to you is, if a company of 1200 employees can accomplish at a fraction of a price what a huge government organization of 18,000+ people cannot do… where else can this country save money and put power back into the hands of the people?
It’s not rocket science, people. Well, except it is, and privatization STILL worked. Why not try it in places where it’s a bit easier than building space ships?
So congrats once again to SpaceX and all of my friends and past associates.
Yesterday was a great day for America and our founding principles.
Elon is 39, and today I turned 29. I have exactly ten years to be as fucking cool as that guy.
Love this article and love SpaceX – “Put a bunch of geniuses in a room with a solid vision, a fiscal goal to achieve, and an inspirational leader, and this is what you get… a wheel of cheese in space!!!”
On my last day in Hong Kong, I had the honor of being the worst-dressed person at a Chamber of Commerce business networking luncheon and speech. The speech was about Hong Kong, so I didn’t learn anything applicable to my business, but I did learn a valuable lesson on how I should network.
We sat at a table with other members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. The typical conversation went like this:
Me: Hi, I’m Mike, good to meet you. Him: Hi, I’m John. (exchange business cards) Him: Oh, founder of your company. So what do you do? Me: I run a network of fitness and nutrition websites that helps users find the best information and lowest prices on different nutritional products. How about you? Him: I’m a consultant. Me:(…awkward silence…) Me: Ummm, doing what? Him: I’m like a janitor. I clean up problems. Me:(…awkward silence…) Me: Oh, ok. Well I’m gonna go over there so that I don’t breathe any of your stale carbon dioxide.
Out of the 8 other people at our table, this was basically the jist of 7 of the conversations. By the end, I quickly recognized the futility and simply started talking about my personal travels and how much I liked Hong Kong, as
These people didn’t give a shit about Internet Marketing and had no use for me
I didn’t own a sweatshop somewhere in China where they could run a Kaizen event, so I had no use for them, and
They wouldn’t know a dumbbell or high-protein meal if it smacked them in the face, so they had no use for my web platform.
This reminded me of the time I went to the “South Bay Internet Entrepreneurs” meetup.com meeting. Some guy gave an INCREDIBLE on-site architectural SEO presentation, and out of the 30 people in attendance, 2 others besides myself actually had a clue. The other 27 were wastes of space who were merely looking for easy “Make Monies Online” schemes.
After complaining about the idiocy that meeting, my friend Larry explained it best: “Because REAL entprepreneurs are busy WORKING, not going to lame meetup.com meetings”.
Lessons learned? Just like you need to focus on a niche (and divide that niche by 1000) in your small business pursuits, you need to stay within your niche when socially networking. Going to general business luncheons like this is where you find generally boring people with no specific passion who are generally clueless.
“If you like ‘all’ music, you like NO music” – Chuck Klosterman
So I need to start networking better within the fitness/health/nutrition industry. I need to meet personal trainers, dieticians, health counselors, etc.
The reason I haven’t been confident enough to do this yet is because PricePlow is what I consider an absolute wasteland of a website*. It’s on my roadmap to fix it all up in a monstrous project, and even though it’s not there yet, now is the time to plant the seeds in my niche so that I have a better social network ready to go when it’s time to rock.
However, I will attend the Affiliate Summit West. These guys might not all be in the health niche, but they do similar things as I do and use similar tools. I don’t care for 99% of ad networks that will be at this convention… but the party will be awesome and I’m going to learn some new tactics.
Besides that, it’s time to stick with my niche and away from these “consultants”, who I still can’t figure out what in the hell they do anyway.
* It’s never easy for a parent to admit the truth in that that their child is stupid, ugly, and fat… but this is the case so let’s not beat around the bush.
Not to take from your very interesting blog, but I love the “If you like ‘all’ music, you like NO music” quote. I think I have often subconsciously thought this when discussing music with people, but couldn’t quite verbalize it. But as shown in this blog, it is so universal.
I like this post a lot Mike, especially the comparisons of focusing on niche’s and focusing networking efforts on people that relate to what you do/how you do it. It really drives home the point that in order to get something done you really have to focus on it and not it and everything else in the world.
Throughout my time in “Communist” China, one of the recurring jokes has been how there is often so much more economic and business freedom in China than there is in the U.S.
It sounds counter-intuitive, and small businesses in China definitely have to deal with a lot of hassles and paperwork, but they’re also given a great amount of leeway in terms of how they get to run their operations.
Some great examples of this are in Mike Michelini’s recent blog article titled Maybe I’ve Been in China Too Long. Mike is a businessman who has been bouncing between the US, China, and Phillippines. While I don’t agree with the Healthcare bullet point at all, it’s hard to argue with the other points.
One of the many interesting things I saw in China was a Help Wanted sign at a clothing store that dictated the prospective employee had to be under 5’4″ and 90lbs. Imagine doing that in the States! Every obesity support group in the country would have you in court by the week’s end. God forbid you want someone attractive and healthy modeling your petite line of clothing.
In the US, on the other hand, we have exceedingly aggressive laws and tax codes that have been written by lawyers and CPAs – two regulated industries where you need “certification” in order to enter the industry. This creates a barrier to entry, thus artificially inducing the wage floor. At the same time, since these are the people writing the laws, they write them in such a way that you need to hire one of them to figure it all out – and if you don’t, you’re going to get screwed by someone who does. Land of the free, right?
It’s a vicious circle, and if you’re not one of them, it affects you negatively. Not a day goes by where I don’t respect lawyers less. What am I doing about it? You’ll find out soon enough, but it’s phenomenal to see people such as Rand Paul, who I heavily support, getting elected this week. Rand will fight this kind of nonsense and try to reduce these laws and simplify the tax codes.
In the meantime, we have sticks-in-the-ass like this clown who shut down a 7 year old’s Lemonaide stand in Oregon due to lack of paperwork and licensing. Yes, I know the story had a happy ending, but it should have never have happened in the first place – and WOULDN’T have happened in “highly regulated” China. Land of the free, right?
As for me right now, I’m happy to admit that I’m struggling with the growth of my network. I have several successful projects, but I do nearly everything for every single one of them. The profit margin is great, but it’s time to start hiring other people.
The first thing I want to do is hire a writer. While I love writing, the research and composition takes too much time I’d rather be doing other things (designing, coding, marketing, and surfing, mainly).
Clearly, I want a quality writer who speaks English as his or her first language. But guess what – In the Land of the Free known as the United States of America, you can’t ask or require that English be your first language. That’s illegal become some bureaucrats decided that I need to give everyone a “fair chance”. The best I can do is massage the system and ask backassward questions such as “Do you have any language abilities that would be helpful in doing this job?”. A lot of good that will do.
So I either have to waste my time testing and weeding a bunch of people out (and most likely ultimately arrive at a native English speaker), or I can just say screw it and outsource the service to contractors, who likely aren’t Americans (right now I’m actually working with a British team). I don’t have to pay them benefits that I can’t currently afford, I don’t have to worry about ridiculous Obamacare rules and Welfare policies that may or may not get enacted, and I can stop sourcing to them whenever I want for any reason I choose.
So tell me, who are these laws really helping? Because let me tell you something: Life isn’t fair, and if you don’t meet my requirements, you don’t deserve a “fair chance”. In the real Land of the Free, you don’t have the government make fair chances for you – you make them yourself.
The first message is one giant middle finger to every brainwashed, spiral-eyed zombie Ohio State fan who sent me hate mail regarding the aforementioned post. I was right and you were wrong. James Laurinaitis is not only overrated, but he sucked in every big game he played for us, including this week’s Fiesta Bowl disappointment. I may have seen him make about two impact plays since I wrote that, and one of them was during a Michigan State rout.
The Fiesta Bowl was over the second Texas figured that they could simply pass it over the middle a few yards over #33′s head time and time again. He was absolutely lost in coverage, and got schooled by Colt McCoy his thousand-yard passing entourage. I won’t bother posting pictures or videos, someone else can go prove me right. I’m sure whoever does it will find a few good pics where JL is jumping on piles after the whistle and is somehow upside-down too, for good measure. That is, when he’s not standing around like an idiot with his thumb up his ass during passing plays.
My second message is good riddance to the 2008 Ohio State football senior class. You have continually let us down, you never played with ANY heart, and you have diminished the respect of this University (note to spiral-eyed zombie Ohioans – I’ve lived in Texas and CA. We have zero respect and I’m getting sick of defending my degree.)
I should have known there’d be four years of disappointment from these clowns when I saw punter AJ Trapasso starting fights at a local campus bar before he even enrolled into the school. Or when perpetual-disappointment Alex Boone got a DUI and hasn’t made a block since. I’ve never seen an offensive line so out of shape as they were in the second-half of the Fiesta Bowl. I’ll lump Malcolm Jenkins in on the blame too – you all go down together – Jenkins perhaps you should have stepped up as a leader after #33 failed us the first 3 big games?
My third message is that I refuse to enter the Shoe until some major changes are made. I’m not supporting this bullshit. Fire Bollman and every other lopsided Tressel cronie, get an offensive coordinator who knows how to call plays, and find someone who knows what to do with Terrelle Pryor, who is possibly the best player in college football for the next three years unless you continue to waste him. Until then, I’ll fly to Columbus, wear my OSU shirt, hang with friends, and laugh at the morons who pay $800 to watch a truly elite team like USC obliterate us.
I’d rather go 8-4 and show some heart than beat up on the pathetic Big Ten and leave nothing on the table against real teams. Good fucking riddance.
GO BUCKS 2009.
PS – To the thousands of people who found my blog by searching for James Laurinaitis’s girlfriend – GET A LIFE.
[...] Update 2009-Jan-08: I have posted a follow-up to this infamous article here: Good Riddance to James Laurinaitis and the 2008 Ohio State Senior Class [...]
The parts of this team were greater than the sum, which only shifts most of the blame from the players to the coaches/schemes/play-calling. The defense is setup to bend-not-break and to pounce on the opposing offense’s mistakes. This works against most lowly Big Ten squads, but not elite teams (as we’ve seen the last three years). Beanie’s potential is through the stratosphere, but he’s like a ferrari bulldozer made of styrofoam.
It’s odd that I know so much about a sport I’ve never played at a competitive level, haha.
so, this might be the wrong time to ask, but if you end up getting tickets that are to a decent game via the alumni lottery what are you going to do with said tickets? just wondering….
By the profanity laden filth that spews forth on your blog, you have no idea what class is. I happen to know some of the aforementioned Seniors off the field, not Boone and Trapasso. I like how you lumped them all together (all 28 if you know so much about Ohio State Football). Class is what goes into a football player as well, something you obviously know nothing about. And yes, the NFL does care about that as well…Many teams don’t even bother with so-called talent…see Randy Moss. T.O., etc….. As far as I am concerned, players such as “JL” and Malcolm Jenkins deserve whatever awards they earn, including a fat payday on draft day, something you will never see.
Oh, regarding your “get a life” comment on your PS: Who spends this much time getting screen caps trying to prove a point? Are you that insecure about yourself and your football knowledge that you spent countless hours with all your babble (see my prior comment on your filthy choice of words). If this is your life, I feel very sorry for you…
Two years ago, I wrote the first-ever post on mikeroberto.com: Fellow Buckeyes – So You Wanna Visit Austin?. This posting was passed around many discussion forums and groups of people, and has yielded 6,370 hits over the course of time. The average person stays for 6 minutes, and 20% of visitors go on to read something else on my blog.
I loved Austin and wanted to share my joy (and contempt) for the city. I received a lot of good and bad press due to my comments. I learned that when writing, you are putting yourself out there — you need to be thick-skinned and stick to your guns.
Since then, I moved to Hermosa Beach in the South Bay area of Los Angeles to start a new life chapter. I can honestly say that with the possible exception of the 2002 football season or the entire 2004 school year at Ohio State, I’ve never been a happier person. I love life, I love where I live, and I love what I do on a daily basis.
The thing is, I no longer have anything to prove to you. I don’t care if you have a good or bad time in LA. I don’t care if you go to Hollywood when you really should be checking out the South Bay and parts of Orange County.
So many people in the Midwest have never visited LA (or CA for that matter), but still had to share their opinions that I shouldn’t come here. They think it’s a horrible place because “they’ve heard”. They heard there were too many mean people. Rude drivers. High crime, gays, drug abusers, etc.
Rather than listen to the uninformed, sheltered Midwestern masses, I came and experienced. It took me three weekends, but I found the spot in this big city where I could get along. Sure there are bad elements – it is a big city after all – but that’s why you shop around.
So I am not going to write a guide on what to do here. There are plenty of places to find that out, such as yelp.com or the OSU and USC message boards.
Instead, I’m going to tell you a bit about the South Bay, the area where I live in LA.
That first year in LA is rough — if you don’t approach it right, it will eat you alive. If you don’t get active in some sort of productive scene, you will perish. If you are a slug and don’t latch onto the energy, you will get kicked to the curb and turn into a nobody.
For me, the scene that brought me into this fold of energy and activity was beach volleyball. It is definitely the best way to meet normal people out here. It has given LA such a small-town feel for me. You can’t just go out to bars here and expect to meet quality people.
I don’t know why, but when I moved here, I didn’t expect there to be so much partying. Instead, I learned that down here, nobody grows up. There are 35 year olds partying harder than I did as a 25 year old. Nobody gets married. Everyone is dating 4 other people. There is always something going on. Everyone is beautiful and in good shape. It is an adult playground. IT IS COMPETITIVE.
This competition is scary, but don’t let it scare you off. You must step up your game here, in all aspects of the word. You must adapt to the energy. For me, it brought my fight and drive back. It has brought my social skills to new levels.
Californians are a different breed. I still don’t understand them, but let me tell you, they love to talk. At first, I thought they were trying to get something out of me, but then I learned to relax — all they want is a nice Midwestern ear to fill. When everyone talks and is hopped up on 8 cups of coffee, they will fall in love with a listener.
Despite the ridiculous amounts of stimulant-enriched energetic people here, they’re still super laid back. I love it, it’s the best of both worlds.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, PEOPLE ARE NICE.
In my Austin post, I talked about how dumb some Texans were. While true, let me tell you, I had no clue what I was in for in LA. What’s ridiculous is the diversity here – you might be walking down the street with one guy next to you who has got to be the biggest idiot on the planet, and on your other side is literally a brilliant rocket scientist. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. There is no range like this anywhere else.
Everyone in LA is a goddamned real estate expert.
The way I see it, there are only two reasons to move to LA: 1. To be by the ocean 2. To get into “the industry”
I personally see no point to living in the Inland Empire, especially if renting. I also see no reason how people live by the beach/ocean but never use them.
The traffic is awful. I stay off the highways and schedule my life around it. I don’t see how people sit in traffic every day like lemmings. Is this really what we want to be doing with our lives?
Rude drivers? I don’t know, I haven’t really seen it. I’ve never had a time when people would not let me into a lane. I’m rarely cut off by a madman on the loose. Sure, if you sit at the intersection playing on your stupid phone, you will get honked at quicker than in Texas. But there’s a lot of cars out here and we need you moving your ass on green. I have no problem honking when people deserve it, but it doesn’t happen as much as I would have thought.
The highways. It’s not Route 405, or 405. It’s THE 405. Almost like it’s THE Ohio State University, except you say “thuh” and not “thee”. The best explanation I’ve heard for having “The” in front of all of the highways is that each highway has its own very unique personality and thus becomes a proper noun. I personally love it.
I’m not into most LA clothing style. I hate the black print shirts, I hate straight brimmed hats, I hate plaid shorts, I hate high black socks, I hate sagging, and I hate that stupid ass piece of facial hair under your lower lip.
Most of the styles mentioned above are what all the “bros” wear. Unless you are one of my best friends out here, I am NOT your “bro”. I am a dude, or a man.
The heavy metal shows out here are weak as balls.
I have caught myself saying “gnarly”. I plan on keeping this one, just like I occasionally bust out a “y’all” still.
Californians like to say “no worries”. I rarely catch myself saying it, I’m just a “no problem” kind of guy.
I don’t know a damned thing about Hollywood. Don’t ask me about it, and don’t expect me to take you there when you visit, because I don’t go there unless I have a concert to attend. It’s out of my “bubble”, or my small LA geographical area of interest. It’s a pain to get there and it’s not my scene. I’m sure a Buckeye in Hollywood could write an equally interesting rant with a completely different theme… but I prefer to stay by the beach and play with dolphins.
I am falling in love with the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes she lets me ride on her shoulder, other times she beats the piss out of me. It will be tough to leave her — and I’m not sure if I ever will — I don’t make plans like that anymore. No plans.
Californians seem to drink more soda than pop. Unlike other Buckeyes, I don’t fight for “pop”. I just order a Diet Coke — why bother with vagaries?
Girls who’ve lived out here all their life hate the “transplants”, especially other girls. Those are the girls who give LA a bad name. They come out here and try to become something they’re not. They begin to FLAKE.
… and “flaking” is a big problem out here. You can make plans with some people, and have no clue who will really show up. I tend to quickly remove flakes from my life, so it doesn’t bother me too much anymore. Two or three flakes and you’re a goner. I have too many other girls chasing me to care.
Yes, the girls do chase out here. Maybe my game is just that much better, but I don’t think that’s all. If you are a girl and you don’t chase, your mating prospects will be harder. But don’t chase too hard, because that’s a turn-off too. The tables have certainly turned.
Everyone loves the environment. I now recycle like a fiend and love it. I swim in that ocean, put your garbage somewhere else.
If you’re tight on time, don’t get a Californian hybrid owner talking about their hybrid. You might still be there through sunrise.
Despite the enormous Aerospace industry out here, don’t bother talking politics if you’re a neocon. You won’t like what you find. Liberals and third-parties can get along just fine.
Gas is expensive. But not as expensive as Europe, so quit bitching. GM is really regretting killing the EV1 though. Don’t mention that to the guys in Torrance who developed the drive train for it though.
Tattoos run rampant. Especially the full-arm sleeve ones. Kind of scary, but kind of cool too. Don’t expect to see me with one anytime soon though.
If I can’t wear flip flops and a T-shirt (preferably my new Iron Maiden one), I’m not coming.
Sand is EVERYWHERE. I can’t get it out of my bed. I flew home to Cleveland and it ended up in my bed there too – I think I transported it with my ears and belly button. After enough volleyball, you eventually just give up and get used to rolling around in sand.
Sushi is on every corner. Everyone has their own favorite hole-in-the-wall Sushi spot that they love and everyone else hates. Those are fun.
Unlike Texas, good pizza CAN be found out here. It’s still difficult though.
Nobody seems to care about Arnold anymore.
Lastly, Ohio State – 21 USC – 20
Ohio State goes undefeated, and loses the BCS National Championship to Georgia.
Good blog Mike! Glad to hear you are doing well out there. When I visited my friend, Carisa, in LA, I observed similar things that you talked about. Particularly, everyone thought it was very bizarre to be married. :-) Still, you can’t beat the weather or all there is to do.
Great blog Mike! I don’t think i could have summed it up better my self. I have been out here (Hermosa beach) only since march and i agree with a lot if not everything you say. I mean we are friends and we live in the bubble and we both are FOMO’s (That is bertos phrase for you newbies reading this). I also agree with your “bubble” comment what is point to leave and i hope my Midwestern friends realize I don’t know how to get to Hollywood so that means we are not going!! Go Bucks!!!
Good blog! Well said about LA. I like my little bubble of North Hollywood up my way, and lookin’ forward to checking out the beaches your way someday. Malibu is gorgeous IMO… I hope Hermosa can top it. :-)
Haha! I knew this information way before you! I lived there from 1983-1988 and it was everything you talk about now. I lived in Huntington Beach and I loved it. Traffic was crappy then, girls were superficial then and tattoos were definitely “in” then. Not much has changed. Enjoy your time there, I did and when you are ready for that “family feeling again” come back to Ohio. It feels good when you do, and Ohioan’s always want there peeps back! One last thing…my SoCal phrase was “totally”. Enjoyed your post.
Mikey – You know I am your biggest fan and I absolutely love your life. You truly live the dream. As Emily (above) stated, I do miss my youngest peep – but I am really cool with being a transplanted Mom – and retiring right next to you. If that doesn’t work – we’ll visit often. Go Bucks – Have a great time.
Having played beach volleyball in Berto’s neighborhood, I must give the fair warning that on three-person teams THE PERSON IN THE FRONT-MIDDLE MUST MUST MUST MUST HAVE THE SECOND HIT!!!!!!!!! I’m not even joking. If you are not the front-middle person and the first hit comes directly at you, you’d better dive out of the way like a bomb’s about to go off, because for all intents and purposes, it is. The bomb of your social standing in the South Bay, where everyone is super-chill, except when it comes to who hits the ball second during beach volleyball.
And it’s true, there aren’t really as many rude drivers as you’d think. Well, except for the fact that everyone on the road wishes everyone else were dead so that their lane could open up a bit. That’s kind of rude, I guess.
Excellent post. Dont forget the fact that a lot of people become allergic to their shirts……doesnt matter where you are. It could be the beach (given), a bar, a house, or just a random deck party. Cotton allergies run rampant out here.
omigosh, michael! i am soooooooo jealous………..that you are sooooooo happy there! good for you. you sound absolutely fantastic. hopefully i’ll get to see you soon here in BORING cleveland, ohio! haha! no, really, i like my life, but yours sounds much cooler! and you should be a writer……..you are so eloquent!
Hey there, Mike, it is so great to read your blog and what is more, to find that you have “found yourself” and alot of good in a place that the “heresay” group talks about but never visits.
Carlyn and Rick just left Wednesday to “test the waters”. Hopefully you three will be in touch but wow, it might not be the best place for a “bride to be”. Anyhow, whatever befalls the two of them, let it happen!……Just as long as everyone is healthy and happy, I am happy too. Just like your mom says….”happy kid…happy mom”…..
Why don’t you add Michael and Dominick, Giorgi and Tania to your list….later with lots of love…marilyn
I think when people in LA do grow up and have kids they move to Steiner Ranch in Austin, TX. I would be willing to bet that half of the people in my neighborhood are LA/Orange County transplants.
Larry Salbira said,
12.11.10 at 9:06 am
Well said Mike. 10 years. Let’s do it.
Alison Lowndes said,
12.12.10 at 12:15 pm
Love this article and love SpaceX – “Put a bunch of geniuses in a room with a solid vision, a fiscal goal to achieve, and an inspirational leader, and this is what you get… a wheel of cheese in space!!!”
Chad Vordemesche said,
02.07.11 at 6:23 pm
Great article Mike. I didn’t know you were a great writer too!