The parents of a close friend just had a direct lightning strike on their house.  It immediately burned to the ground and everything was lost.

The simple advice from my friend if this ever happens to you is "get out fast and not go back for anything that is not a human being."  She also suggested that you check your home insurance to make sure you are covered for this.

I used to be good at tennis.  Really good.  When I was 11.  I treasured my Jack Kramer Autograph (until I got a Futabaya), never really wanted a T-2000 even though I loved Connors, and thought Ille Nastase was fabulous.  I grew up in the golden age of Connors, Borg, and McEnroe (and Guillermo Vilas, and Vitas Gerulaitis, and Eddie Dibbs, and the ever present Ion Tiriac.)  I could beat most 12 year old boys and almost all the 13 year old girls except for Heather Harrison who regularly kicked my ass.  I thought Prince oversized racquets were for old ladies.

I watched Federer bury Roddick last night 7–6, 7–6, 6–2.  My mouth was hanging open for much of the second half of the match.  Roddick hung in there for a while (there we no breaks in the first two sets although Federer manhandled Roddick in both tiebreakers.)  However, once Federer broke Roddick in the third set it was quickly over.

Federer makes the phrase “poetry in motion” come to life.  Charlie Rose has a long (about an hour) interview with Courier, Federer, McEnroe, Collins, Laver, and Nadal discussing the man who will likely become known as the best player ever in the game of tennis.  If you are a tennis fan, fire it up in your browser and listen while you catch up on your email this morning.

I’ve got a large stamp collection that I’m considering selling.  The obvious – but relatively labor intensive – way to do this is on eBay.  I poked around looking for some other options, but didn’t come up with anything particularly credible.  Any stamp collectors out there willing to give me a clue?

I had a superb run this morning through the English Garden in Munich.  This is only the second time I’ve ever been in Munich – the first time was with my friend Bruce over 20 years ago.  While it was cloudy, it was a lovely morning, the park was fresh, green, and hidden from the city, and there were some wackadoodle surfers practicing in the small river under a bridge with a water pipe.  I discovered the incredible value of the map function of my new Garmin Forerunner 305 – without it I would have been lost in the park and would have never been able to find my way back, especially since none of the signs made any sense to me except the ones that said “GaragePark” which weren’t of much use and I forgot to leave myself a trail of bread crumbs.

BoingBoing has noticed that something weird is going on with the clock on 24.  Rick Stratton asked me – with regard to my post that the first 25,000 users are irrelevant, whether I was referring to “free, ad-based ‘consumer’ web services” or did I also lump paying enterprise web services users into the mix.  Nice catch Rick – I only meant the free consumer ones (e.g. my portfolio company Rally Software has less than 25,000 individual users, but ever one of them is very relevant, especially since we get paid for each one each month.)  Finally, Tali Aben saved me 58 minutes by blogging a great summary of a breakfast “fireside chat” with Bruce Chizen, the CEO of Adobe.

Time to go have breakfast.  If I remember correctly, I’ll be presented with a buffet full of meat and sausage choices, surrounded by cheeses.

Paul Kendrosky’s pickup on Joey Ramone’s affection for Maria Bartiromo made my head spin around in circles this morning.  The full interview is in the Financial Times / Arts & Weekend section.