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A friend of mine died the other day, far, far too soon. Ryan Neff was a good man. Kind, gentle, steadfast, smart, and funny. Everyone who met him would agree–he was that kind of guy.

We met in college playing ultimate Frisbee. We both moved to Chicago in the early nineties and were close friends there. We supported each other in the big, unknown city. Then, in 1994, we both moved out to Seattle with our respective partners.

For two years, we spent tons of time together, two couples who struck out to the west coast and were taking it all in. We had many good times together.

In 1996 I ended my relationship with my then partner. That caused Ryan and I to go our separate ways, as can happen with friends in breakups. But he has been in my thoughts ever since, especially when he started battling cancer a number of years ago.

When his cancer came, went, and then returned with a vengeance, Ryan’s response was one I will never forget. He said, “It can’t always happen to someone else.”

May I have a mere fraction of the courage, grace, and humility that Ryan showed us all. Godspeed to you Toast, we all miss you.

Matthew just notified me that my last month and a half of articles didn’t make it to my feed. Whoops. I seem to have fixed the problem. Feel free to check out what I wrote in July and August!

Seen on my Sunday long run.

Van Jones, the founder of Green for All, and current ONE/Northwest client, will be on The Colbert Report tomorrow night! We’re setting up our DVR’s and frantically trying to launch their new site on something more robust than shared hosting as we speak…

Tune in to find out about Van and the great stuff he’s doing with Green for All!

Because Microsoft is going to launch a planetarium product soon, I heard about an open source package called Stellarium. It’s a cross platform piece of software that shows you the sky and a lets you navigate through it. It’s pretty cool, especially if you have a Mac and kids who expect you to know the names of stars in the sky.

During the lunar eclipse last week, we were outside looking at the stars. I was trying to navigate using a star chart in a book and saw a red star that I couldn’t quite place. After 2 minutes on Stellarium, I realized that we had been looking at Mars, a fact that would have sent Malcolm through the roof had I know it at the time. I can’t wait for the next clear night!

I was recently prompted to buy an iphone thanks to a bunch of folks in the Salesforce community who chipped in money for the purchase. The phone is great, and it’s the first ipod I’ve ever owned.

I’ve been running a lot in my triathlon training and I’ve been listening to podcasts on my hour plus runs. This American Life, of course, but my favorite is one called Radiolab out of WNYC in New York. It’s an hour long show that takes broad topics and looks into the current state of our scientific understanding of them, and does it in a highly produced format.

It’s a killer show and I’ve found myself looking forward to my runs just because I’ll get to listen to another Radiolab. I’ve been talking about the thought-provoking topics so much at work that I’m sure they’re all as sick of me talking about it as they were sick of me talking about Critical Mass 6 months ago. Oh well, at least I don’t talk about triathlon at work…

Try out Radiolab–you’ll dig it.

Malcolm and I made this today.

After 2 years of daily bike commuting in Seattle, I was finally hit by a car today. I’m a bit sore, but fine. I was riding over to NPower Seattle to get a lesson in migrating data out of eTapestry from the incomparable V Waters when it happened. I was riding in the bike lane going south on 2nd avenue when a man swerved right into me as he pulled over to pick up his wife at the curb. I saw him coming but didn’t have time to do anything but break.

He hit my right side and sent me skidding. I then fell over backwards and landed in the open parking space he was headed for. My elbows hit (ow) and my helmetted head hit the pavement, but not very hard judging from the light damage to my lid.

Like most bike accidents, I was obeying traffic laws and the car driver was completely at fault. That doesn’t get me anything, unfortunately. Somehow in the accident my chain broke, but the rest of my ride appears in good shape.

I was definitely shaken, though. My first reaction was anger, then I was stunned for at least 4 hours. Pretty unsettling, even though I didn’t really get hurt. I headed back to the office and just started working again. It was a bit surreal.

So to all the drivers out there, Watch out for bikes! And to all the bikers out there, The drivers aren’t watching out for you!