Who: Josh Adelman, 29. Last November I was one of four people who incorporated a company that sells used college textbooks online. Students list their old books, other students buy them for less than the campus bookstore charges, and we take a small cut. We're twenty-two people and one foosball table on the second floor of a warehouse South of Market. I'm the cofounder who wrote the first line of code and still gets paged when it breaks.

This is my weblog: a page of things I found, with a line or two about each, plus whatever's left of my life after that. (Yes, I know about the book. I read it on a plane in February and kept going anyway.)

At the office, obviously. Only one here. The Dreamcast is off. It's so quiet I can hear the fridge in the kitchen cycle.

Last night I went up on the roof with a beer and watched the harvest moon come up orange over the East Bay. Just me and the air conditioning units. Walking home at one I passed three launch parties on the same block, and two of them were playing "Smooth" at the same time, a half-beat apart. Somebody in each of those rooms was getting rich, or felt like it.

The bankers come Tuesday. Real ones, flying in from New York to "start the conversation" about spring. Ravi, my cofounder and our CEO, bought a suit. I'm told I'm buying one tomorrow.

Here's what I keep coming back to since Yom Kippur. When we started this, I said it was about making books cheaper for kids who work two jobs to pay tuition. I was never one of those kids; I grew up in Palo Alto. I roomed with one. I believe it at 10 a.m. At 1 a.m. it feels like I'm trading years for a number, and the years don't come back. Neither did Sara.

I haven't decided anything. I'm writing it down so I can't pretend later that I didn't notice.

Desk nights this month: 9. Bed nights since Yom Kippur: 4. Progress.

Links, because I don't have anything else in me today.

» NASA lost contact with the Mars Climate Orbiter this morning, right as it reached Mars. Nobody knows why yet. Years of work by very smart people, and then silence where a signal should be. I read the story three times. I'm taking it a little personally.

» Gordon's Y2K Watch: 100 Days to Go. As of today, it's exactly 100. His title finally matches the calendar. I check his page the way other people check the weather.

» Not a link. Kevin, our lead engineer, finally got through to his parents in Taichung this morning. Three days of busy signals since the earthquake, which hit Monday morning our time, while I was sitting in services with my pager off. They're fine. Their building is cracked and they're staying with a cousin. He came in, told us, and then went and sat in the stairwell for half an hour. Nobody bothered him. We are capable of that much.

» Also on my reading list, from right here on GeoCities.us: Margin Call and Kernel Panic. I'm jealous of both titles.

Yom Kippur. Writing at 11 p.m., back in the city, full of bagels and my aunt's kugel.

I haven't fasted since college. This year I did, sundown to sundown, no food, no water. And I did something I haven't done in my adult life: I turned off the pager. Took the battery out and left it on my parents' kitchen counter next to the honey jar from last week. The site stayed up. (I checked at 7:30 tonight. I'm not a monk.)

There's a confession you say standing, the Al Chet, the whole congregation together, tapping your chest for each line. For the sin we have committed before You by... and then a long list. I used to hear it as a list of things other people did. This year I stood there light-headed next to my father and every line was an invoice. Hardness of heart. Foolish talk. Throwing off the yoke. I said it all out loud with four hundred people and nobody looked at me funny, because they were all saying it too. That's the trick of it, I think. Nobody atones alone.

Around three in the afternoon the hunger stops being hunger and turns into a kind of clear, cold quiet. I sat on the bench outside the sanctuary and actually thought. Not about the company. About what I'd say if somebody asked me what it's all for. The twelve million, the options, the spring, the desk. I got as far as "so that later I can..." and couldn't finish the sentence. Every ending I tried was something I already had in June.

At the end they blow the shofar, one long blast, and it's over, and everybody goes and eats. My mother put her hand on the back of my neck like I was nine.

Mail: twelve of you wrote after the Sara entry. Thank you. A reader in Ohio said the gaps on the bookshelf fill in slower than you'd think, but they do fill. I'm holding you to that, Ohio.

Desk nights this month: 7. Tonight: my own bed. Seriously.

Friday I took Caltrain down to Palo Alto for the first time since spring. My mother made the round challah with raisins, and brisket, and the tzimmes nobody eats that she makes because her mother did. Apples and honey, for a sweet year. My father asked about our customer acquisition cost before the soup. I love him.

I told them about Sara over the apples. My mother put her fork down and didn't say anything for a long time, and then said, "Well. I liked her." My father said, "Josh, when's the last time you slept in a bed?" I didn't know. That was the answer.

This afternoon Dad and I did tashlich at the creek, throwing bread crumbs into the water to cast off the year's sins, like when I was a kid. (Pushed to today because yesterday was Shabbos. My father is a stickler for the calendar and nothing else.) It's September in California. The creek was nearly dry. The crumbs just sat on the rocks. Dad laughed and said, "Well, that's a sign," and I laughed too, and then thought about it the whole train ride home.

Pager went off eleven times over the holiday. I answered nine.

L'shanah tovah, everybody. A good and sweet year.

9/9/99. For those not in the business: some old software used 9999 to mean "end of file" or "never expires," so today was supposed to be a dress rehearsal for Y2K. Nothing happened. Lights on, servers up. The only crash was me, at 4 a.m., under my desk.

Also the Dreamcast came out today, and three engineers took a long lunch and came back with one "for morale." It's hooked to the projector in the big conference room. Sonic Adventure through the wall during a board call is its own kind of Zen.

Going to my parents' tomorrow night for Rosh Hashanah. My mother has asked three times whether Sara is coming. I've said no three times. I haven't said the rest.

The wire hit at 2:14 p.m. We are funded. Twelve million dollars, second round. Somebody opened champagne in the kitchen at 2:20. At 2:40 Ravi said the letters I, P, O out loud at the all-hands, in a sentence that also had the word "spring" in it, and I watched twenty-two people do math in their heads. I did it too. It is a strange thing to watch a room full of your friends become rich in their minds while nothing has actually happened except a number moving between two banks.

» Link: Ty announced today that every Beanie Baby will be retired at the end of the year. Somewhere a venture capitalist is taking notes on artificial scarcity. I'm not joking. I forwarded it to our board.

Called my mother to tell her. She said, "Mazel tov, sweetheart," and then, "Are you eating?" I lied.

Desk nights this month: 13.

Sara moved out yesterday.

I'd like to say I didn't see it coming, but there's a sleeping bag under my desk, so.

Her sister drove down from Sacramento with a borrowed pickup. I helped carry boxes, which I think made it worse for everyone. We were very polite. We divided the CDs like diplomats. She took Lauryn Hill. I kept the Buena Vista Social Club, because she said I'd need it more, and she didn't mean it nicely, and she wasn't wrong.

She left the ring on the kitchen counter next to the fruit bowl, on a note that just says "Josh" and then nothing. I've been looking at that note for an hour. Nothing is a lot to say.

The bookshelf has gaps like missing teeth. I came to the office at eleven tonight because it's the only place that still sounds the same.

No links today.

Term sheet came in at 6:40 tonight by fax, eleven pages curling off the machine. Series B, led by a firm on Sand Hill Road whose conference room has a better view than my apartment. We close by the end of the month or we don't. Our lawyers bill more per hour than our engineers make in a day, and they're worth it, which is the most depressing sentence I've written this year.

I missed dinner. Sara, my fiancee, made a reservation at the Thai place on Clement three weeks ago, reminded me Sunday, reminded me this morning, and paged me at 7:15. I paged back "20 min." I got there at 9:30. She'd paid and gone. The waiter recognized me. That's how often I've done this.

There's a sleeping bag under my desk now, and a toothbrush in the top drawer next to my stock option paperwork. Four-year vesting, one-year cliff. Nobody tells you the cliff is also a metaphor.

» Link: Doug's diary of Selling on the Internet: My First Year. A man selling real things to real people on the Web. I'm told this is called a business model. We're getting one next quarter.

Desk nights this month: 6.

Previous entries: January through July 1999 are in the archives. Before the money, mostly.

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