My friends on the Delphi Team here in Scotts Valley have undertaken what I think is a great cause to auction some Borland memorabilia where the proceeds going to Haitian relief through the Clinton Bush Haitian Fund.

For more details click here.

[Update Feb 2, 2010] I’ve added my autographed copy of Danny Thorpe’s Delphi Component Design to the auction, it should be up in the next day or so.

At this time last year Falafel’s CEO, Lino Tadros, lay in an ICU with a grim outlook and no one was even remotely thinking of Christmas party. Fast forward and what a year it’s been! In fact, here’s Lino’s own update on this past year. Despite the state of the rest of the economy Falafel has performed, and continues to perform, extremely well thanks to this hard working team which I’m proud to be a part of.

This year’s company Christmas party was hosted at the Seascape Resort and when I walked into the room Lino greeted me, we chatted and we talked about the gift wrapped boxes laid out on the dining tables around the room. He joked they were chocolates and I should hide them from my wife based on a previous box of Côte d'Or chocolates he’d brought back for us from Paris. When we were seated for dinner everyone opened the gift which is when I realized it was not chocolate but an Amazon Kindle, one for each member of the team!

About an hour ago my wife came downstairs and said I want to read something on the Kindle and a minute later the book was downloaded and she disappeared. Earlier today on a Facebook thread John Waters mentioned he was rereading one of Stephen Hawking’s books we’d discussed a few days ago on his Kindle.

My wife is already talking about getting a second one, a conversation I imagine is probably occurring in a few other colleagues homes about now. :-)

So, thanks Lino and thanks Falafel for such a great year and Merry Christmas to all!

While this is well off my normal blog topics it’s been a hit at our house so…

My wife and I have three children (6 and under) and like all kids I know they love fire trucks. A few weeks ago with the kids sitting in my lap while looking at pictures on the computer they asked to see a fire truck so I browsed to YouTube and rather haphazardly stumbled into this video/song which the kids really enjoy. If you watch this video on YouTube you’re kids will probably also notice, as mine did, related videos with Caillou on the page and you may end up spending more time than you might anticipate.

Personally, I don’t frequent YouTube and have really only watched the occasional video as they arrive in email or via Facebook but recently I’ve found other fun YouTube videos the kids have really enjoyed:

• bullet trains
• fire trucks
• bull dozers
• monster trucks
• large cranes
• robot unicycle
• planes

Be sure to catch the train surfer and if you fly frequently you might want to skip the last one as will likely lead to ones like this. Come to think of it I think I had one of these landings in Scranton during this trip.

Do you have any kid favorites on YouTube?