Kind of boring. If you like amusement-park rides, you'll love the Tesla Roadster. If, like me, you sit there calculating the infinetesimal odds that the operator's insurers will allow a rollercoaster to actually pose any real danger to you, you'll hate it. I spent the ride up to Coit Tower and back thinking about how much coal was burned to generate the electricity now being thrummed away by the Roadster's motors.

Back at the bar, Musk was affable enough, considering I've hinted he's taking out his midlife crisis on his employees and may be scheming to take over Tesla Motors completely by running it into bankruptcy. He laughed at the last idea, and then thanked me for the suggestion, saying he hadn't thought of that particular financial maneuver.

Musk still blames cofounder Martin Eberhard for Tesla's current straits. When Tesla raised its fourth round of funding in 2007, Musk says, Eberhard, then CEO, told investors that the Roadster's cost was $65,000, giving it a $25,000 gross margin. "It's right there on the slide, with Martin's name on it!" Musk told me. The company, he adds, was already in the middle of a search for a CEO to replace Eberhard.

A private-equity firm which had invested in Tesla sent some consultants to help Tesla sort out supply-chain issues, and they found that the Roadster's parts actually cost the company $140,000. "We might as well have sent customers $50,000 and saved the bother of making the car," said Musk. Former Flextronics CEO Michael Marks, a Tesla investor, confirmed their findings — and that's when Musk decided to fire Eberhard and replace him temporarily with Marks. Just as now, the company's cash position was running low, and Tesla tapped existing investors for new funding, despite having just raised a round. He revealed none of this at the time, he says, because it would have jeopardized the company's ongoing CEO search. (Not that that worked out particularly well; Musk installed Ze'ev Drori, then replaced him last month.)

That's Musk's version, anyway. I'm skeptical, if only from experience with Musk; when he was running PayPal, I remember him making statements that company insiders told me didn't match the facts. But as he was leaving to drive back to the Valley, Musk mentioned that his divorce from his sci-fi novelist wife Justine was a mutual matter; he got the paperwork in first, but she was getting ready to file papers, too. That, at least, checks out. I'm still not sure if I should trust Musk's account of what led Tesla to these perilous straits. But I do believe now that he's brave enough to drive a Roadster up to San Francisco and deliver it in person.

Ressi had the cheek to make a little video where he personally delivers the documents EDF requested. He assures the audience that they contain no information that will identify "John Doe," the unnamed defendant in the suit. The smiling Ressi makes a thumbs-up gesture at the end, clearly mocking the litigants. It also suggests that such charming and friendly customer service can be yours if you pay to promote your fund on the site.

EDF's main factual quibble: The poster claimed to have worked with EDF on "several deals." EDF partner Mike DeVries says the company has never done multiple deals with the same entrepreneur.

Which just goes to show how tone-deaf EDF's legal adventure is. Most venture capitalists love to talk about how they keep entrepreneurs coming back for more. That EDF has never worked with the same entrepreneur twice is a far more damning admission — from the mouth of one of EDF's partners! — than anything written on TheFunded.com. Campbell and DeVries might be able to prove their point, at the cost of further damage to their firm's reputation.

Far better for EDF to have focused on the commenter's claim that EDF's deal terms are harsh. The PE Data Center, a research service, finds that EDF's terms, on balance, favor neither the investor nor the entrepreneur.

Dealing with Jeff Loomans, his dishonesty and malicious behavior for a year and a half has been a headache. In some ways, I am glad to part ways because I have never dealt with someone who seemed to relish petty power-plays and lying on a systematic basis as much as he obviously did.

TheFunded.com is surprised to learn that venture firms are spending money entrusted to them by their own investors to silence the opinions and constructive criticism of legitimate founders and CEOs.

The saving grace of Intelius's new directory? It's mostly useless. My boss tried to use it to ID the guy responsible for TheFunded.com, before Adeo Ressi outed himself in the pages of Wired. (Photo by freezelight)

I didn't see Mike Moritz on the list. Or partners from Accel, Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Matrix, Greylock, Venrock. What I saw [was] a list of someday superstars. If TheFunded is going to be a resource we can rely on, Adeo needs to have two tiers of voters: people with real knowledge and others. Categorize the commenters so readers can judge the source, and not display poll results until the sample size is large enough.

TheFunded.com, a community site for startups to anonymously review and rank venture capital firms, has given entrepreneurs a peek into the secretive VC industry and a chance to dish about some of the unseemly behavior they've witnessed there. "We have seen distinctive pieces of our business plan end up in marketing materials of a competitor," reads one testimony. Another: "He had his feet up on the table the whole time he was telling us how bad our business is."

The site has 3,150 members. Neither Ted nor TheFunded is beloved by the venture capital community, which is more accustomed to CEOs kissing its butt than kicking its ass. "VCs are taken aback," says one former VC. "The peasants have revolted against them."

He's not making any money off of it. I asked where he wants it to be in five years. "Owned by a large media company," he replied, only half jokingly. (Hey, he sold Total New York to AOL a couple bubbles ago.) Ressi namechecked Dow Jones as his preferred owner. Meanwhile, he has this little problem where he can't get VC backing. When pressed, he admitted the site is a "charity case," and there's "not enough money to make a living off of it." Still, while a quick QuantCast lookup shows TheFunded far behind Fake Steve Jobs in readership, Ressi thinks he's the man of the moment. His reaction to Wired's 3,500-word feature story in the latest issue? They should have put him on the cover. He's totally serious about that.