Date Scheduled with the Wife!

I just signed a letter of intent with a company to help distribute my product, and I'm going to receive some cash up front! I'll hold off on any details until we do the official press release, but this is cause for celebration, so I scheduled a date with Pearlin to celebrate!

In mid August, we're going to eat at the Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton. We're fans of Ron Siegel (former Iron Chef winner), and we've previously eaten a 10 course meal when he was the chef at Masa's. Now that he's at the Ritz, we're going there instead. Imagine world class French Cuisine with some Japanese accents... Mmmmmmm....... After we eat, we're going to see an evening performance of A Chorus Line.

A Chorus Line is special to me for unusal reasons. Back at MIT, I took a class called Musical Theater Workshop, taught by Tommy DeFrantz. Pearlin also took this class, but we didn't take the class together. Tommy was once the dance captain for A Chorus Line, which is really saying something considering the fact that A Chorus Line is a show about dancers at an audition, which means everybody in the cast is a skilled dancer. There is a famous dance within A Chorus Line where everybody wears a hat and they sing a song called "One". Tommy taught all of us how to do that dance and we performed it in front of a small audience at the end of the semester. Coincidentally, A Chorus Line was playing in Boston the year I took the class, so we all went together to watch it. The hat dance they did on stage was identical to the one taught to us, so it was extra cool when we watched that part of the show. In addition to that, A Chorus Line really impressed me. Not only could everybody dance well, they had incredible singing talent. I had already seen Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, and Les Miserables at the time, so I was genuinely surprised when my enjoyment of A Chorus Line was on par with my experiences with those other hit shows. Pearlin has yet to see A Chorus Line, so I know she's in for a big treat.

The Curran Theatre is only half a mile away from the Ritz, so it's really convenient, and validated valet parking at the Ritz will only cost us $15!

Big Developments

MathScore Developments
I'm really excited right now. I have a good friend who is geared up to do commission-only sales for MathScore.com, and he has a number of contacts in various states. He does sales as a profession, so I believe he's going to do an awesome job. In addition to that, we've been pursuing partnerships with larger companies, and I think something's going to happen... Naturally, if something big happens, we'll do a press release and I let you know on my blog!

We also got selected to be part of a pilot program on the California High Speed Network. Think of this network as a private high bandwidth intranet that connects all of the public schools in California. By placing a MathScore server on their intranet, all my California customers will experience faster service. More importantly, the High Speed Network people will pretty much market to the entire California public school system the availability of participating companies. My company was selected as only 1 of 3 companies to initially participate, which is a great honor. I hope this will generate tons of publicity among California schools, so this may lead to a number of sales in the next year :-)

Bridge!
On a fun note, it looks like I'll be playing bridge Monday night with my brother and a couple of high caliber bridge players. A couple of weeks ago, I visited my best friend Tab in Orange County, and he along with my parents played nearly 6 hours of bridge in one evening! We played a little past midnight :-)

Two Forehands?
With Tab, I also played tennis. I'm experimenting with the idea of playing tennis with two forehands and no backhand. I've always played left-handed, but it turns out I can also hit the ball somewhat competently with a right-handed forehand. Ask me to play tennis some time and I'm sure you'll see me mucking with a right-handed forehand. Sometimes I can generate decent power on that side. The idea, of course, is to develop a right-handed forehand that is as strong and versatile as my left-handed forehand, effectively eliminating any groundstroke weaknesses in my game.