This year I was introduced to a local company that makes a great frozen burrito.  Phil’s Fresh Foods out of Boulder, Colorado currently offers up 10 varieties of frozen burritos that are sure to tickle your taste buds.  I have tried all of them except the Spicy Tofu Saute because even the word, tofu, makes me clench my butt cheeks.  The other ones are seriously very good.  Here is a photo of Phil in his garden with some sweet hair (it’s shorter now).

When I first tried a Phil’s burrito I immediately noticed the tortilla.  It really is soft and chewy with a deliciously subtle flavor, which is so refreshing next to the brittle, dry cardboard typically wrapped around other frozen burritos.  You know what I’m talking about.  The next thing I did was unfold the tortilla to get a peek at the goods, and I was very pleased to see actual ingredients like peppers, rice, potatoes, egg, and meat as opposed to the typical mixed-puree mess where your guess is as good as mine as to what’s included.

Phil’s burritos are 8 ounces and well proportioned for a nice lunch.  I felt satisfied but not stuffed like I do after a Chipotle feast.  I picked up a variety case at Whole Foods for $2.69 per burrito, which considering alternatives, felt like a decent value.  Click here for a local retailer that carries Phil’s burritos.

I like the “made from scratch” branding Phil is incorporating along side the natural and organic ingredients used in the burritos.  It conveys a certain home-made feeling that I associate with higher quality, and in this case, it is not a ruse.  The quality is there.  Well done, Phil.  You make a great burrito.

Disclosure:  At the time of this posting I am not an investor in Phil’s Fresh Foods.

Overall I thought the presenters did a nice job and had listened to their coaches about hitting the critical points of interest.  These companies represented many different industries from consumer products to software to clean tech to non-profit, and they ranged from pre-revenue to cash-flow positive.  I enjoyed the diversity.  Here are the companies I saw today:

Alaskan Hardgear - Come on, that is a cool name for cool products.  These are performance work wear products for the outdoor laborer, and this company makes me want to drop everything, outfit myself in Alaskan Hardgear work wear, and go work a crab boat on the Bering Sea.  Well, almost.  Maybe I’ll just buy the gear and wear it around town so people think I’m tough.  Or maybe I’ll just post about them.  Basically if you want more out of your outdoor work wear like strength, durability and warmth without looking like you pulled it from your grandpa’s closet, you should look into this gear.  Come on, tan 10 oz. duck cotton is so 1950s.  I should at least get this vest for when I bring in firewood from outside.  That’s pretty rugged, right?

The pricing is competitive, the styling is modern and manly, and the materials are superior than traditional fabrics.  You cannot buy this stuff online yet, which is discouraging, but check your local Army Surplus, Gander Mtn, or Big R retailer.

iVation - Breaking out its marquee new beverage product called 540, iVation is going after the All-Natural sports drink segment with a proprietary formulation that should speed athletes’ re-hydration times.  These drinks are not yet available for purchase, but the bottle design is unique, and the flavor names sound like hip-hop songs; Perk Up Pom, Bounce Back Berry, and Circle Back Citrus.  I should have recommended Hollaback Blueberry or Baby-Got-Back Banana, but somehow I think those would have fallen on deaf ears.  Nobody listens.

VarVee - Born out of personal passion, the founders of VarVee have developed software that assists high school coaches and media outlets with tracking and reporting player statistics.  I like catering to peoples’ obsessions, and people definitely get obsessed with high school sports.  If there is a statistic or metric measured for an athlete, it seems there is always someone who wants to know about it and track it.

The larger question here is whether this idea can move upstream to the youth leagues where nut-job parents want to start the conditioning and reporting early.  Little Johnny’s Stats - Ran Away from Ball: 15, Laid in the grass: 22, Picked nose: 50, Scored against own team: 3…etc.  You gotta love kids.

AppVenture - How would you like to cut your software development time by 90%?  Yeah, I thought so.  AppVenture is offering a 45-day trial of its software, Foundations, for any of you nay-sayers who don’t believe the claim.  You put in the custom logic, AppVenture’s Foundations creates the application code, and Vioala! new software app.  Let me know what you think if you give this one a test drive.

CTM Software Corp - If you have ever purchased a home, you are familiar with the numerous contracts and documents that go back and forth between buyers and sellers and their agents especially before the closing.  It can be a little unwieldy.  Okay, a lot unwieldy.

CTM has taken this current leg-work mess off the streets and onto the web and is offering a solution that saves both time and paper by allowing clients to provide a signature with their mouse.  So no more emailing, printing, and faxing documents all over the place.  The documents are hosted on a server and reflect the real-time changes and signatures as they happen.  Nice.  Although I just practiced my signature in my Paint app, and a monkey could have produced the same scribbles.  Hopefully, CTM’s signature software is superior than that.

Demand1 - 7 years old and still kicking, Demand 1 offer interactive video applications and ad-sales solutions for the digital television market.  I was not entirely clear on the company’s products and was too hungry to ask.  It’s rough being the pre-lunch presentation.

Zerista- I am an investor in a competitor to Zerista so I have a conflict of interest, but this company offers software tools to event organizers that improve the attendees’ and exhibitors’ experience.  I hope my company beats your company.  I’m kidding…sort of.

Flaik - I probably wasn’t aware of the problem ski resorts face with lost children in their ski schools, but Flaik is trying to ensure those wandering kiddos are never too far out of reach with their real-time GPS tracking system.  If you are out of the school years and just hungry for your personal carving statistics, strap on the Flaik armband, and track your speed, vertical distance, altitude, and number of runs conquered.  Check them out at Copper Mountain and Steamboat this year.  Gizmodo covered these guys back in June.

MunchAway - I thought this was going to be another opentable wannabe, but instead of making reservations, MunchAway allows customers to actually place an order for food online to be later picked up at the restaurant.  I’ve used the PapaJohns Pizza online ordering system for years, but I hadn’t really thought about it for take out food.  I’d love to pull up Ya Hala’s menu online, pick out my entrees, then go get my food.  Who wouldn’t?

Toghers - When I was younger my grandmother came to live with us, and my mother took care of her until the end.  I always admired her for that, but I know it was a tremendous strain on her and our family.  Volunteer, unpaid caregivers like my mom are everywhere, and most are probably just as uninformed and ill prepared for the experience as my mom.  Toghers is creating a web-based community and resource for people who are faced with the often-difficult situation of caring for a loved-one.  Information, support, products, coaching and more are available to help caregivers provide the highest level of care.  Aren’t all of us going to be affected by this at some point in our lives?

Thanks to everyone who made this event possible, and good luck to the companies who put it all out there today.

My experience has been one disappointment after another, but I can’t leave solely because of this magnificent phone; a phone I cannot seem to get enough of.  I like to hold it.  I like to wipe smudges off it.  I like to make the little icons shake before I move them.  I like to watch the screen smoothly scroll with the flick of my finger.  I even like rotating the phone from portrait to landscape just to see the screen adjust..it’s a thing of beauty, but I digress.

Before I signed up I read the reviews and listened to the complaints about everything I am now experiencing, but I was probably thinking what you may be thinking right now, “it can’t be that bad, can it?”  Oh, it is.  It’s worse.  What really hurts is that I walked right into this mess with my eyes wide open so I can only blame myself.

I have only been a customer for 2 months, and the headaches have been consistent throughout.  Porting my number from T-Mobile took too many phone calls and several days to actually transition.  I had over-charges on anything and everything on a billing statement that is pathetically unintelligible.  I had to call and call to reverse hundreds of dollars of incorrect charges, and I had to stay on top of it with vigilance.

AT&T bills in advance, which I find ludicrous given the variability of usage and charges.  Even the customer service girl admitted to that foolishness.  My last statement was 116 pages because they report every KB of data transferred to and from the phone.  Are you kidding me?  The data plan is unlimited!  Keep the usage to yourself and save some paper.  Give me a line item of total MB used for the period and be done with it.

Last but no where near least, the network is embarrassing.  The reception is spotty and inconsistent, and the call-drop problem is very real.  I can be on a call staring at a 5-bar 3G signal, and the call drops.  I know it is my drop because I’ll be speaking with someone who is on a land line.  I will sit and watch the signal switch from 5-bar 3G to no service without moving the phone.  What is going on here?  Upgrade your network.  You obviously cannot handle the traffic.

So live it up, AT&T, while you have this exclusive with Apple, but beware the day when customers have carrier freedom again…prepare for a mass exodus.

As of today Kiva has over 359,000 lenders who have lent $49 million dollars to borrowers in 42 different countries.  The average lender has 3.69 loans out at an average value of $137.09.  The current default rate is only 1.3% which is extremely impressive.

I have actually had only one loan default out of 30 in my portfolio, and it was just a portion of the loan amount so it was not a total loss.  In fact, it was not even the borrower who defaulted.  The local lending partner was stealing the money so my borrower probably never saw the cash to begin with…hey, it is bound to happen, but Kiva does a decent job of trying to screen out the shady organizations.  You can see my loan portfolio here.

Kiva has made a few additions to their site which I wanted to mention.  The first is the way that Kiva repays the loans.  The borrowers typically make monthly payments on their loans, but early on Kiva would not make those funds available to lenders until the full loan amount was repaid.  That has changed.  Now I am receiving the small payments from all of my borrowers, and when I have sufficient funds available I can re-lend more frequently.  In other words, the loan turnover has improved.

The second feature I like is the new “map view” of the lender portfolio which basically plots where in the world a particular lender has loans.  I always like a visual representation, don’t you?  It is more fun than it is functional.  Here is my current loan map (click to enlarge):

As you can see, I am a little light in Asia right now. I guess I need to send some love to that area of the world so I can’t be accused of favoritism.  Why are you still reading this lame post?  Go lend some of that long green that is burning a hole in your pocket!

Back in 2006 a homeowner named Amanda Reece hired a contractor named Bob Kitts to remodel the bathroom of her 83 year-old home near Lake Erie.  While tearing out the walls of the bathroom Kitts encountered 2 green metal boxes hanging from a wire behind the medicine cabinets.  He opened the boxes and discovered $182,000 in envelopes labeled “P. Dunne News Agency”.  He notified the homeowner, Reece, and they celebrated together…yada yada yada.  Read the article.

The fun discussion comes into play when a lawsuit was filed because Kitts (the contractor) wanted 40% of the loot, and Reece (homeowner) thought his fair share was only 10%, which I feel is more than a little stingy.  But it did not end there.  Word got out to Dunne’s relatives (heirs to the original Dunne who put the money in the wall) about the money, and they tried to get their cut too.  So now back to the question, who gets the cash?  Isn’t this fun?  I think this is a cut and dry case, but the more people I hear share their views along with the judge’s ruling have made this conversation rather spicy.

I will share my thoughts and then tell you what the judge ruled.  Man, I wish I held the gavel in this one.

The money should be the current homeowner’s.  Period.  She has title to the property.  She paid for it.  Anything left behind, lost, hidden, forgotten, buried…etc on her property is now hers.  Metal boxes hanging behind the wall are as much a fixture of the home as the electrical wires and plumbing pipe hanging back there as well.  Now, I think she should have split the money with Kitts who not only discovered it but was honest enough to tell her about it.  However, he should have no rightful claim to it.

The funny thing is that a similar thing happened to me when I was remodeling my bathroom.  My contractor was tearing out the drywall, and he found a small gold watch and a necklace pendant that were probably from the 50’s or 60’s era that had probably fallen behind the medicine chest back in the day.  They may have had some value, but I told the guy to keep them anyway.  He was honest and came to me with the find, and I was not interested in taking them on antique roadshow for an appraisal.  Case closed.  If some chump would have come knocking on my door claiming ownership to the jewelry, he would get what all solicitors at my home get; a pressed ham on my front window.

The Dunne descendants should get out of the picture and quit living in the past.  They did not know about the money, the original Dunne failed to tell anyone about it, and the home was subsequently sold.  Get on with your lives.  Haven’t you ever heard of the “law of finds” or “finders keepers” or “possession is 9/10 of the law?”  Sheesh.  Your great great grandpa clearly did not care if you saw this money or he would have mentioned it to someone.  Obviously my opinion has no real legal merits, but I feel it is the right layman’s opinion.  The judge seemed to see things differently.

The Cuyahoga County Magistrate, Charles Brown, recently made his ruling, and I was a little surprised to say the least:

Brown reasoned in his decision that because $157,000 of the money was found in envelopes bearing Dunne’s name that the money belongs to his heirs.

About $25,000 was found in cardboard boxes with no identification in another bathroom wall. Brown determined that that money belonged to the property owner, Reece, but since she dropped her claim Kitts should get the money because he found it, according to the magistrate’s decision.

Reece didn’t keep the money from the two finds separate, so Brown decided to split the remaining $25,230 between Kitts and the Dunne estate on a prorated basis.

Please. Who cares whose envelopes contained the money? Is there no statute of limitations on the length of time someone has to claim personal property? I would guess that 70 years should qualify.  I wouldn’t have given a penny to any Dunne folk or Kitts in a courtroom.  If I were Reece, though, I would have split the dough with Kitts 50/50 and avoided this whole fiasco in the first place. Fools and greed…Any thoughts?

I have often wondered this so I decided to finally research it a little.  The trucks are extremely distinct, and have this retro, almost kitsch look to them.  I searched around for the answer to this question, and I couldn’t 100% confirm it, but I feel pretty confident that the manufacturer is Grumman Olson.

This desire sent me on a long, boring hunt for a site that would allow me to do this seemingly simple, obvious task.  I am clearly not alone as you can tell by the large number of “solutions” out there.  Why craigslist doesn’t just add a “search multiple cities” tab is beyond me.  Come on, Craig, add a feature once a decade.  Here is what I found:

CraigsHelper - Easy to use and seems to be accurate with the search results, but the way the results are displayed will prevent me from really using this site.  Instead of just displaying results from the search Craigshelper shows every city’s results page even if the search resulted nothing.  So what you get are hundreds of pages to browse through because every city is listed with its own screenshot.  If craigshelper eliminated the “no results found” cities, this would be a much more valuable tool.  They understand the problem, but they are trying to stay within Craigslist’s terms of use.  Craig, you bug me.

CraigsPal - This is a software download with a free version and a pay version.  I did not try it because I want a web-based solution.  Sorry Craigspal.  No search for you!

Craigslistsearch - I could not get my search to run in the “all cities” tab because the search link seems to be covered up by some stupid banner ad in both Firefox as well as Safari.  Come on guys, that’s just sloppy.  If I shrink the city search to just the “met” cities, the link appears and I can run the search.  The results have the same problem as Craigshelper above…too many empty cities to ignore.

AllofCraigsList - This is a very easy search to use.  It is basically a custom Google search, and all of the results are returned in an embedded google window.  The search I ran returned a few pages of results, but for the most part they were accurate.  Some of the results were no longer on craigslist or had been flagged or something, but this is an acceptable-but-not-ideal solution.

Searchallcraigs - This is very similar to Allofcraigslist above with a custom Google search.  The exact same search terms returned only 11 results whereas the allofcraigslist returned over 40.  These results seemed to be more relevant, which I appreciated.  This is a decent solution and the one I will be most likely to use.

Craigslist Reader - Another software download but more professional looking than Craigspal above.  This actually seems like a legitimate desktop app that would do everything I want.  I just want it online and not on my computer.  You do need .NET from microsoft to run this program, but the instructions are all at the site.  I would definitely use this one if I wanted a desktop app (and if I had a PC).  I really like the notifications feature that can send me an email when a posting is made that matches my search.  Very slick.

Craigslittlebuddy - I couldn’t get a search to run on either Firefox or Safari.  It just froze up.  Oh, I just learned that this site has been banned and subsequently shut down.  Bummer.  It looked promising.

So after all that pain, the winner of the EXCLUSIVE bookmark for craigslist searching goes to……SearchAllCraigs.  Please let me know if you have other (viable) options that I have missed here.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Grand Junction police are investigating the discovery of a body inside a trash bin found burning in an alley.Fire crews responded to the blaze about 1 a.m. Thursday.

Firefighters extinguished the flames a short time later and discovered the badly-charred remains of an adult male. Authorities are calling the death suspicious.

Suspicious?  Nah.  Just a well orchestrated suicide.  Maybe he was depressed.  I know I often contemplate stuffing myself into a garbage can in an alley in the middle of the night and lighting it on fire…but then who doesn’t?  Hardly grounds to begin some exhausting, time-consuming investigation.

I like that they are open and honest with viewers and telling it straight about their situation, but my guess is it is all over but the crying for Mobuzz.  I have never watched their show and have no feeling for the content, but if they haven’t stumbled onto a viable revenue model that will sustain the company by now, we may be looking at a ghost.  Good-hearted viewers can only get you so far, and the capital markets are not the most favorable right now in case you haven’t noticed.  The “Save Mobuzz” meter on the website shows they are at 14% of their goal with 4 days to go.  It doesn’t look good, but I wish them the best.