Colorado Startup Life: Week 2

Well, we haven’t gone out of business yet! HA! That might be a recurring joke, we will see. Life was overall good this week. 

It started off Sunday I went to a new church, were there were four people between 20 and 40 years old, which unfortunately is typical. Then I drove down to Colorado Springs and planned to bicycle up Pikes Peak. When I was airing up my tires I forgot I locked the clamp on the bicycle pump, and used my teeth to pull out the aluminum oxide coated fitting, and chipped a tooth. Pretty bummed about that. I don’t have any pain and I haven’t been to the dentist yet, but my new dental coverage starts October 1st, so it’s time to go I figure. Although, it might be minor enough that they just “polish” it and doing put a filling in, like when I chipped a tooth in March in Mexico biting a salad fork. As an engineer, polish is code for lightly grind. I’m most mad that I forgot the clamp and could have easily pulled the adapter out, instead of struggle with it for five minutes and stupidly chip a tooth. 

The bicycle ride turned out to be miserable as well. Right from the start my heart started pumping and my breathing became rapid. I shifted into my lowest gear, and considering I ride a compact crank, that’s like 6 mph speed, which is depressing, but I was on the edge of going anaerobic. About half way up, in miles, not in vertical feet, I turned around and flew back down the mountain to try another day. I’m not going to destroy myself when my performance is so far below what I used to be capable of. Again, my new insurance starts October 1st, and I went with the top tier so I’m probably going to max that out figuring out what is wrong with my lungs, or whatever it is in my body.

The work week went really well. Of course, I’m in the honeymoon phase. It’s going to be all good for the next six months or so. Part of what attracted me to this company was I felt a sense of urgency, but not stress. Usually when there is a sense of urgency in an organizaiton, there is a sense of stress. A good description of our little company is that on Wednesday probably half the company, maybe two thirds stayed until 5:45 PM because we were doing a test, and people were excited about it. Unfortunately it was not successful. On Thursday with some adjusted parameters it was a success! So on Friday, when there were no active tests, the operations team left just after 3 PM to have beers at the local brewery. Urgency equals staying until almost 6 PM, but no stress equals leaving at 3 PM on Friday.

Thursday I had a date in Denver. We had a glass of wine at a wine bar. That all sounds pretty average to most people probably, but having lived the last 2.5 years in a town of 9000 people, I’m thinking, ‘Wine bar! City! Date!’ It’s pretty amazing. How did the date go? It was good, and I’ll leave it at that.

Friday I broke down and bought a TV. I gave away my 25 inch tube TV when I left Independence. So the last two weeks I have been basically on my phone for everything. Well I like watching DVDs and a movie or two on the weekends. So I went to the store and bought a $320 49 inch flatscreen! It’s huge! It was hard. I’m not fond of spending money on things. As I’m there, I’m thinking, ‘maybe I should wait one more pay check or one more credit card cycle before buying a TV?’ But with my lung issue I was planning to take it easy this weekend, and a TV certainly helps me lay on the couch. 

Saturday I didn’t leave the house until around 3 PM when a friend called and convinced me to take a walk and get out of the house.Saturday night I went to see Free Solo in Denver and I just wrote about that the other day.