Archive for September, 2007

How Hillary got my vote

September 29, 2007

I went to bed a Obama supporter and woke up committed to Hillary.  What happened?  Well I had a dream in which I and a couple of friends were sitting together with Hillary.  One of  my friends asked her how she found enough time to read books.  She picked up a book and started talking about it and in the process leaned over me to show my friend something in the book.  I could feel the softness of her body as it touched mine.  In that moment, Hillary became my mother.  How would you not vote for your mother?  So unless I get a nocturnal visit from Barack, Hillary has my vote.

 It is funny how dreams an effect us.  I normally do not remember my dreams and I wonder how experiences like this really effect my thoughts, feelings and actions.

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Posted in About life in the last third | 1 Comment »

The Crash of ‘87

September 28, 2007

Kevin Maney who use to be at USA Today and is now at Portfolio wrote a column on some of the changes that we have experienced in the last twenty years (since the stock market crash of 1987).  Those of you (there may be one or two) that read my blog regularly know that I love to think about the past and the changes that have taken place. I also love to think about the future and the changes the may take place.   That is why I have to do yoga, meditation, the Alexander Technique, psycho therapy and most of all, play piano, just hoping to stay in the moment even for a moment.   Anyway, I enjoyed Kevin’s remarks.  The stock market crash of 87 is one of those days where you remember where you where and what you where doing (like the two Kennedy assassinations and the day I lost my virginity).  We were living in Portland. Our children were actually children. I worked for Intel trying to make business sense out of a technology experiment masking as a business ( a venture with Siemens to build a multi processor, fault tolerant computer with a new micro processor, new operating systems and any thin else new we could think of).  This all ended up as a JV company called BiiN which “fail to launch” as they say.  A year later, we would move to Palo Alto, where I would start up Intel’s venture arm (what eventually became Intel Capital).  Intel was still primarily selling memory chips (I am laughing now thinking about the fact that Intel use to be referred to as a “memory” company in the context of this post) but realized that its future would be as a microprocessor company.   The crash of 87 was very scary.  For the first time every in my life I actually owned stock and had been building a “nest egg” so that I could send my kids to college.  I watch this dream lose its grip on reality and in a panic. I actually sold my stock holding, thereby locking my loss and learning a very valuable lesson:  you want to sell when the market is high not when it is going down.  This lesson paid off when in March 2000, I sold most of my stock holdings which were primarily in the technology sectorJ.   

Posted in Avram's Past | Leave a Comment »

Fourty four years ago, I went to jail for the first time

September 24, 2007

Forty four years ago I went to jail for the first time.  I was arrested at the Palace  Hotel in San Francisco as part of a Civil Rights demonstration.  It is funny to think that the last time I was at the Palace Hotel it was for a Web 2.0 conference.   I doubt that many at that conference were even born before that day.  We were practicing non violent demonstrations then.  We lay in the street before the Palace Hotel. You can read about that at and even see a video at. They picked us up and threw us into a police van.  Then they booked us.  When the police asked me if I had an scars, I said yes (I have a major scar running up my back that looks like I lost in a sword fight).  I told them I had a lung operation.  They asked if anything had been removed and I said both lungs which they wrote down.  It was a demanding time.  I had to choose between anti war activates and civil rights.  I tried to spend my time equally.  The anti war stuff was more demanding and the music was not as good.  And believe me it was not as it is now, where most people know  that our government is lying to us. But watching the Jenna Six stuff reminded me of this time forty four years ago and it made me sad.

Posted in Avram's Past, World Situation | 3 Comments »

You know you are old when

September 8, 2007

You know you are getting  old when an attractive woman sits down next you in first class and says “it is going to be a long flight since I forgot to bring a book” and you look at her, smile and hand her a book to read.  That just happened to me.  But it made me think of all the interesting conversations I use to have on planes (and some interesting flirtations I should also say).  I guess in the good old days when human beings actually made conversation by talking rather than typing, a plane ride was a good time to learn something new from someone you did not even know.  I met a number of interesting people and actually have a few friends  that I met on flights (the girl friends are long gone J).  My first encounter with meeting people on a plane, was a flight I took from NYC to Luxemburg via Iceland in 1964 when I was 19.  The flight got terribly delayed. During the flight a meet a number of people my age and we got  dumped in Luxemburg at 4:30 am.  I ended up taking a train to Paris with a French girl around 7:00 am.   She fell asleep with her head on my lap as we rode through the French country side as the sun began to rise.  It was sweet beyond words.

One of the benefits of professional success was flying first class.  And there I would often meet successful business people and make important connections.  I think I found a deal or two this way.   But now, we are all protected by our iPods, Blackberry’s, notebook computers and soon, eBooks.  We carry on our semi anonymous conversations on facebook.  We make our business connections on LinkedIn.  We learn about the world from the Wikipedia and we carry an extra book just in case someone forgot theirs and wants a conversation.

Posted in About life in the last third, The Post PC Period | 11 Comments »