So there’s this guy. We’ll call him “me”. And he spent five years of his life with this girl. Then the girl went away. The end.

Originally, I had written a very long blog post about the relationship and the spectacularly fucked up way in which it ended. But rather than subject my readers to a lot of post-breakup bitterness and depression, I decided to keep things quiet and get myself back to a healthy state of mind. Plus I didn’t want to get sued.

But hey, I’m back, and I feel better than ever. Let’s do this shit.

I went out drinking with Brent Simmons. Everything after that is kind of a blur.

About a year ago, I happened to be flying in to San Jose on business. As the plane touched down, I did what I always do: take my iPhone out of airplane mode. At some point over eastern California, my friend Alex sent an email to myself and Brent Simmons; he had noticed we were both going to be in the area and suggested we meet up. To be honest, I felt terrible that night. I just wanted to go to my hotel and get some sleep.

I had met Brent once before at Ignite Denver, but only briefly. The opportunity to buy the developer of one of my favorite applications a drink was too good to ignore. So I sucked it up and went out.

It just so happened that Brent was in town for 360|iDev, an event organized by a guy named John Wilker, who I sort of knew in passing and — again, by sheer coincidence — had just become my neighbor. Nobody could have said it better than Wilker himself when he walked up to me outside of the eBay Town Hall that night. “Dave? What the hell are you doing here?”

When Brent and I went out, we were joined by Dan Burcaw and Joe Pezzillo — iPhone developers and friends of Brent’s from, of all places, Denver. Jay and I had just launched Coathangr, the social network for fashion, and I asked Dan how much it would cost us to build an iPhone app for it.

He told me that the conversation couldn’t even start for less than twenty grand, and that we’d be better off doing it ourselves. So we did. And we fell in love with iPhone development. And a year later, Dan’s company acquired us. I guess he was right.

Of course, I’m leaving out an entire year’s worth of blood, sweat, education, experience, and perhaps most importantly, failure. I’ll save those for later posts. So part of it was luck, part of it was the truly awesome iPhone developer community, and a lot of it is owed to my generous and patient mentors. But if I had to trace it back to a single decision that changed everything, it would be going to grab that drink.

The lesson here is that when Brent Simmons invites you out, you say yes.

Alex King once told us that he wished someone would make an iPhone app based on the PwdHash project at Stanford to make it easier to use secure passwords on the iPhone. Rather than just rush something out, we decided to put some thought into the interface, how users would really want to use the app, and how refined the process could become. Should KeyGrinder save passwords? Should there be a bookmarklet? Should there be a web version? Should access require a password?

The end result is something that I feel is an elegant approach to the problem. There is no need to store passwords because they’re so easy to generate, but bookmarking of URLs provides a fast way to re-grind. The bookmarklet should be as easy to install as the iPhone will allow (tip: not very). And passwords should be easy to recover even if you lose your iPhone or iPod touch². And because no critical information is stored, no thief can steal your passwords even if they get their hands on your device.

We’re happy with this app. We hope everyone uses it and creates better passwords.

1. iTunes link
2. KeyGrinder.com

• Traded my car for a bike
• Became a homeowner
• Founded a company
• Launched a social networking service for your pants
• Started writing code
• Shipped an iPhone app
• Quit smoking

Looking at the roadmap, 2010 is going to be even awesomer. Happy new year, everyone.

Ever the mountain man, Larry loved being outdoors. On occasions where the need to find work or a family event brought him into the city, he spent most of his time complaining about it. The noise, the crowded streets, the suffocating smog. We all needed to get back to nature. The city was full of things that would kill us. Whatever you say, Larry.

As a kid I would often end up staying with my grandparents while Larry was in town, and we would spend the days together while everyone was at work. He would talk about needing to get back to nature. To sleep under the stars. Hell, to see the stars. And he would complain about being misunderstood, and how I shouldn’t always listen to what people tell me. Sometimes people close to me will lie. Even family. For better or worse, he always talked to me like an adult.

Once, when I was maybe ten or eleven, Larry came and stayed with my mom and I. His paranoia of the city coupled with my mom’s anxiety disorder reached a boil one day, with my uncle deciding he couldn’t stay indoors any longer. I found myself in the back yard, helping Larry build a teepee. I’m not really clear on where he found the materials to build a teepee (or even if he wound up sleeping in it), but I very vividly recall thinking to myself, “this isn’t normal. Normal people don’t sleep in teepees in back yards.” That was what made Larry so much fun.

I remember showing him some kind of PDA or smartphone and telling him about the things it could do. It wasn’t just that he didn’t get how it worked, or that he dismissed it out of hand as being bad, but that he genuinely didn’t understand why someone would want that stuff. And I didn’t get why someone would want a sleeping bag that would keep you warm up to thirty degrees below zero. But agreeing with each other was never really the point.

I would later listen to another uncle, Jeff, describe Larry’s reluctance to be in the city. Jeff said it wasn’t about the city itself, but rather the complexities of being part of that system. The credit cards, the banks, the mortgages, the traffic, and the complicated social structures. What Larry was really interested in was simplicity. He was a man who had found peace out in the wild. In retrospect, I see that Larry’s rants weren’t about criticizing our lifestyle; he was trying to share that peace with the people he loved.

Just over a month ago, Larry was diagnosed with cancer. He lived alone on a five-acre plot of land in southern Colorado, nowhere near a modern medical facility. This, along with his pride and his determination to wait it out, meant that the diagnosis came too late. At first we were told months. Then, weeks.

He took the news well. He said that he didn’t want to die, but since he had no choice, he’d just like to be comfortable. For a guy who spent so much time concerned about all of the things that could kill him, I guess he found a strange serenity in knowing, finally, which of those things it would be. He was finally able to bring that peace back into the city with him.

For the man who taught me about firing guns and building teepees, his most important lesson to me was far more profound. Larry taught me how to be my own person. That I didn’t need anyone, especially family, to approve of who I was or how I lived my life. I may not have followed directly in my uncle’s footsteps, but the way I choose to live my life is heavily inspired by his.

Larry was insistent on who he did and did not want to see in his final days. I’m thankful to have been included on that list, and even more so for the opportunity to shake his hand and say goodbye personally.

My crazy, awesome uncle Larry lost his short battle with cancer on Labor Day.