Dear Friends,

Happy Birthday Steve Jobs! Yesterday was Steve’s birthday and with it came the latest iteration of the new MacBook Pros. Ben will go over all the details of these new powerhouse laptops but I wanted to give a shout out to Steve on his birthday. Apple also held their shareholder’s meeting this week where the ridiculous resolution on Apple’s succession plan went easily to defeat. Apple is such a forward thinking company, does anyone really think that they do not have this kind of planning in place? And who, as a shareholder, would want Apple to tip its hand to their competitors – that is a secret plan and should remain in the vault because I for one, am confident that Steve’s got a few more gems left!

Wet heavy snow is in the forecast today and that should make driving tough, however, with the days getting longer and the sap buckets on the trees, spring cannot be too far away.

We are bidding a fond farewell to long time Small Dog employee and consultant, Mark Engelhardt, who is leaving the company to pursue his entrepreneurial urges. Mark is a serial entrepreneur and I have known him for a long time. Kibbles & Bytes was actually Mark’s idea as were many of the successful aspects of our web site, operations and company. We are going to miss Mark, but he’ll be right down the road in Montpelier so I’m sure we’ll be consulting him from time to time. I am very pleased to report that Rebecca Kraemer will be our new Director of IT and Consulting. Rebecca brings considerable experience and expertise to this new role and I know that while she has some big shoes to fill that she is going to do an awesome job!