The Jana group has officially given up their proxy fight to install a new board at CNET. They’ll thank CBS for the money and go home. See Silicon Alley Insider for the details.

I took a break from my vacation in Alabama to drive up and visit our Louisville office. As always, I had an enjoyable visit. The people who work there are great. The bar-b-q at Mark’s Feed Store was awesome as always. Last, but not least, I got to drink a can of Big Red.

Big Red is hard to describe. It’s a bit like liquid cotton candy, and I’ve only ever seen it in Louisville. I wouldn’t recommend it for regular drinking, but the occasional one is delicious! If you are interested in learning more about Big Red, here’s a link to their web site.

I had fajitas for dinner last night. They were from Compadres in Palo Alto, which is the Mexican restaurant I go to most often. Here’s a shot:

I had a green chicken mole burrito from the burrito place in South Park (Mexico au Parc) today. It was so good that I forgot to take a picture of it, but here’s a picture of the plate:

Here’s a link to The Burrito Eater review of Mexico Au Parc from 2007.

Hope everyone (all 7 of you) enjoys the new blog theme. It was designed by Marc, the most talented web designer I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Here’s his explanation of the design. Any differences between his design and my actual blog are all my fault, obviously.

If you can’t drive, don’t buy a Ferrari!

So, tonight I had an al pastor burrito from Como Esta. Como Esta is a burrito place by the Walgreens in mid-town Palo Alto. It’s never struck me as the cleanest burrito place, but the burritos are really good. I usually get the carnitas burrito, but I got there close to closing time and they were all out.

The only annoying thing about Como Esta is that you tend to run into spoiled, whiny residents of Palo Alto while you are there. For example, tonight there was a woman who requested that the overhead fans be turned off (because it was cold), that the non-existent A/C be turned off (she was still cold), that she get a salt shaker to put extra salt on her chips, and about a hundred other annoying demands. In general, though, the burritos are worth running the risk.

This is one of my favorites sayings, because it reminds me that however careful you are at hiring, you are going to make mistakes. Hiring is definitely the hardest thing you have to do as a manager. People try to deal with the difficulty by using grueling interview processes, and requiring unanimity before hiring anyone. In my opinion, too elaborate an interview process is counterproductive, because it tends to just reinforce prejudices. That leaves you with too homogeneous a team in approach and outlook. Take chances on people with different backgrounds, and the diversity of your team will make it stronger. But, you will still screw it up.

If you are ever inclined to ignore government corruption, just think about these poor parents in China. Their children were killed in shoddily constructed schools during the recent earthquake, and they have no chance of getting any justice.

If you are interested in personalization, then another great blog is Geeking with Greg. This blog is by Greg Linden, who did a lot of the personalization work at Amazon. Later, he founded Findory, a personalized news service. The only complaint I could possibly make about this blog is that he doesn’t post enough.