My dad was born in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia (which at the time was under Germany rule) and lived in Germany through most of his college career before coming to the U.S. His ties back to our European roots are extremely strong. In fact, today he is flying to Europe for a four week trip visiting all our relatives there.

Growing up, my dad made it a point to keep close connections with our European family. One particular tradition I remember well was our celebration of Heiliger Adend (Christmas Eve).

Our older brother, Robin, would play board games with us in a room that was far away from Der Tannenbaum (The Christmas Tree), to keep us busy while we all awaited the arrival of Der Weihnachtsmann (Santa Claus…or if you want to laugh it literally means “The Christmas Man”). We’d know Santa arrived because the electricity in the whole house would flicker on and off. Then we’d all run towards the Christmas Tree to see a pile of presents. But unlike presents that are typically given on Christmas Day, these gifts were all from our family in Germany.

One by one, we’d open the gifts and my dad would sit us down and explain who each family member was and their relation to us. We’d then have a traditional German dinner of Goose, red cabbage, white asparagus, and potato salad.

To finish off the night, my dad would lead us in singing O Tannenbaum…

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,
Nein, auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!

Though an ocean separates our family, my dad’s efforts to keep us connected has stayed with us as we’ve grown up. Whether it’s seeing each other in person, or joking around on Facebook, our family bond exists because my dad made it a point to make it a point. Happy Father’s Day!

My dad turned 70 this year and in celebration my oldest brother, Robin, had his son record this cutness filled video. 

I don’t know if it’s a trend isolated to just the tech geeks, but more and more I’m hearing the the words “right” and “so” being used as filler words like the word “like.”

I first noticed it during interviews with the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.

Then, in a recent trip to Austin, my oldest brother, Robin, mentioned he started picking up the bad habit from his programmers.

Though I’ve mostly noticed it in conversations with tech people, I’m starting to see it spread more into the general population as well.

Language is constantly evolving and this must be another attempt at a new filler word.

Consider this your public service announcement. The more you know the more you grow .

About a year ago my brother’s wife, Suruchi, brought up the idea of doing a big surprise 40th birthday bash for him. At the time, the rest of the brothers were excited, but planning something a year out with my family is next to impossible.

Fast forward a year later and over the past weekend, we did the impossible. All four of my brothers, my dad, and myself rented a lake house for four days and three nights in central Wisconsin. Though we grew up taking road trip vacations two times per year, this was the first time all the brothers have taken a vacation together in at least 13 years.
It took a lot of pre-planning to make the vacation happen, but for me it was totally worth every second because no matter what, there is still nothing quite like family. As we all grow older and spread out across the country, quality “together-time” is a rare thing.

Most of our extended family is in Germany and we don’t get to see them very often, so I’m jealous of families who do a big family reunion every year. But coming out of our inaugural family reunion, I have a lofty goal to make it an annual event and an even loftier goal of owning lake property that we can keep depositing new memories into year after year.

Several months ago I had a Digital Identity training at Sonoma State University in California. As an added bonus, an investor for my oldest brother’s company, Goal Tribe, lived near by, so my brother set up a meeting for us.

Over lunch, the investor, David was able to give me some very direct advice about Red Rover and business in general. I then asked him why he thought Goal Tribe didn’t work out. After pondering for a while he said something about too many verticals and no clear customer development, but then he said something that keeps reverberating in my head…

“Ya know, your brother is the only investment I’ve taken on in which despite doing everything right and working hard, it still didn’t succeed.”

I have five brothers and personality wise, I’m closest to my older brother. If he couldn’t do it…

No one in my blood family has yet to break past the upper middle class level of success despite several tries. It worries me that maybe we are missing something in our DNA. There’s something we/I don’t know I don’t know. Then the thoughts flood in..

• maybe I don’t have what it takes.
• maybe I’m not meant for that level of success.
• maybe I’m just not smart enough

I’m not saying any of those are true nor do I believe any of those, but they do creep in and David’s comment keeps bouncing around in my head from time to time.

Active entrepreneurs (those in the middle of running a business) aren’t very quick to admit their doubts since we have to be “selling our dream” all the time, but here it is for me. 

I accompanied Annie to her ingrual NYC softball game today. Partly to support her, and partly to meet the team. I also got to play, and we won by a lot. 

In Chicago we built up an entire friend base through playing sports, and figured the same should work in NY, so we joined a bunch of teams. 

Long term friends don't happen overnight though. Friendship quality is proportional to the number of shared positive emotional experiences. Knowing this, all the people we've met so far are great and we are super excited to hang with them, but are realistic about instantly becoming bestfriends. It just takes time. My oldest brother (Robin) once told me he thinks it takes about three years to establish roots in a new place. 

Today I was working with the student leaders at Alvernia University for their first ever leadership retreat. The setup for the training wasn't that great; low turnout, huge room, early morning, and on campus. 

As I said before, I've had good and not-so-good trainings and suspected this one was going to be a bit rough. But quickly I was proven wrong. For whatever reason, the training rocked. The small group was a blast to work with. I was on fire with connecting all the content together, and they were on fire with getting it.

In highschool, I used to run every night to keep in shape during soccer's offseason. Robin, my oldest brother, once told me that you know you've had a great run when you feel more energized afterwards. I can relate the same thing to doing a training. 

I know Alvernia was a great training because afterwards I felt more energized even though I was burning through crazy amounts of calories during the 4 hours. 

I'm flying somewhere 35K feet above Nebraska on my way back to NYC after an extended weekend visiting my brother (Robin), sister-in-law (Suruchi), and nephew (Milan). Milan is almost 1 1/2 years old and due to geographic distances (NYC vs San Francisco) and work schedules, this is the first time I've been able to really spend some good quality time with him.

Many would consider me a fairly analytical person, but It was amazing how quickly I emotionally connected to Milan while we rolled around on the floor playing with his trucks, building blocks, and more trucks. I, just like his parents, found myself joyously smiling at the little things he would do like pucker his lips to kiss me good bye, or make the noise of a fire truck from his crib the first second he woke up, or wave his hands to let me know we shouldn't climb on the kitchen chairs.

This was also the first time I've been able to spend quality time with Robin and Suruchi since the birth of Milan. Every night after they put Milan to bed, Suruchi would prepare a wonderful meal and we'd sit around the kitchen table and talk for a few hours over some beer, wine, and dark chocolate. The nightly conversations were a combination of comparing habits between the Krieglstein brothers and lessons in fatherhood (which is not too far off).

In some ways, I feel like this trip was a bit of a self-journey for me on my way to fatherhood. Much like when I visited them for a week during college by myself. Something about "going west" adds a layer of magic.

As great as the trip was, my bruised (broken?) rib was a perpetual pain in my side the whole time and didn't let me play with Milan as much as I'd liked. It's still shooting a pain as I sit here writing.

I'm thankful to have such an amazing oldest brother and sister-in-law who created the cutest little boy who warmed my heart this weekend. I'm also thankful to come home to Annie who knows how to make me feel special every time I walk in the door.

And so ends 8/25/10

After a nice walk with Robin and Milan, we met up with Suruchi at the local farmers market to pick up several items including a bunch of Strawberries.

While sampling some food from a Pakistani stand, a little kid stood to the side of us, where we set our Strawberries down, and started stealing them from us one by one. After a few grabs, he walked away.

We all saw him stealing, but he was already too far away to do much without a big scene over a few Strawberries. I was ready to throw down .

A couple minutes later, the kid came back to the same spot ready to steal some more. Before I had a chance to take the law into my own hands, Suruchi smiled at him and said, "Do you want a Strawberry?"

The kid responded no thanks and walked away. He never came back or bothered us the rest of the time we were there.

Force is one kind of punishment, kindness is another.

Pakistani dinner with my brother. Note the strawberries.