Last night I went out with Brian Alvey for a few drinks and dinner. It's great not because he's my boss, but because he's someone that I consider to be a friend and an inspiration as well. He's the guy who young techie entreprenuers like myself look at in awe of his ability to balance both work and family.

Brian's the technical mastermind behind all of this stuff that I've been a part of recently. He is Jason's business partner and co-founder of Weblogs, Inc. Blogsmith is his vision and his baby. He's the Chief Architect of the new Netscape.

Basically, he's the professor to our X-men.

Without Brian around solving our scaling issues, or figuring out the ad framework, or the traffic metrics, or ranking formulas, or handling our personnel issues, or taking care of our hosting configuration, or organizing and leading our code jams, or even simply talking me (and I'm sure others) off the occasional cliff -- None of this would be real.

So, yeah -- Congrats on all of it Brian. We truly appreciate (and admire) everything that you do.

Oh, and thanks for dinner ;)