DaVinici's Code

According to Dan Brown, Leonardo DaVinci hid a lot of secret information in his art works. Believe it not, so do you! And you don't need to traipse all over the world to discover it. If your camera saves it's images as JPG files, simply browse to Camera Summary, upload a picture taken by a camera, and this site will ferret out the details of the picture and camera hidden in the JPG format. According to the site, it "provides information like: camera make / model, detailed information about how the picture was taken and even the thumbnail that was embedded in the file." On a sample file I used from our summer vacation, the site provided over 50 pieces of information about the picture. Some of it is useful even for the novice photo-bug, but some of the details are pretty technical. Some of the details could be used for CSI-esque investigation as well...

Be complimentary

When designing websites, or anything else for that matter (scrapbook pages?), it's always more appealing when the colors used are the right ones. Once you have a primary focus for your page, the color scheme, a title or background graphic, etc, head on over to What's Its Color. Tell it where the image is (upload a local file or point it to an image on the web) and it will "evaluate an image and give you the image's primary and complementary dominant colors of an image, how many visually unique colors are in an image, and the top ten visually unique colors in an image."

Granted, this is mostly for web design, so the returned colors are only identified by Hex values, but a quick Google search will return English names for the colors as well.

Local News

Why read the local Observer & Eccentric news when you can see it all mapped out on a Google maps interface? :-)

Give mibazaar your ZIP code and it'll find local news and show you where you live on a map.

Blow it up!

Sometimes a full screen view is just better. Bret Taylor thinks so -- at least when he's trying to navigate Google Maps. So, in the spirit of giving back, and statistical probability, he thought someone else might feel the same way and so he made this full screen Google Maps site available for all of us! Thanks Bret!

Locally famous

Tim Allen is famous for inserting local references into his entertainment projects -- his Home Improvement show, The Santa Clause movies, etc each make reference to his home town of Detroit, or to places around there where he grew up. Moviemappr (ala Flickr, remind me to blog about the naming of web sites later) allows you to find movies filmed in your area. You give it a city/state and it'll list all kinds of movies that spent some time filming in and around the area. Live in Cedar Rapids, IA? Did you know that Incident at Oglala, Miles from Home and, perhaps the most famous of the three - Starman were filmed in the area. Oglala might not be the summer blockbuster of 1992, but the others brought someone some money and had famous people involved...

Check out your city. Might be worth renting a movie or two just to see some local hangouts. The database seems pretty complete with movies ranging from the VERY low budget and audience to the most popular titles on the market.

Map your face -- or anything else!

Google's mapping interface defined the new standard for on-line mapping (draggable panning, dbl-click zoom, annotations, satellite and street-level views, etc), and it continues to get even better! Some people REALLY love the interface. If you're one of those people, you might like MapLib.

The site allows you to create your own maps. Big deal, right? So what! Oh, yeah. Something a little different from all of those other Google Maps Mashups -- This one allows you to use your OWN PICTURES! Not just maps, but anything. You can map your face. You can map a store. You can map Lord of the Rings. All of these maps can take full advantage of the Google Maps API -- the same features you'd see and use on maps.google.com.

Pretty cool!

Take your picture and eat it too!

One last graphic site for tonight. For a very personalized cake topper at your next party, check out Icing Images. Upload one of your images and they'll turn it into an edible image to apply to your cake. Something different and a very personal touch. You supply your own cake. :-)

Size DOES matter!

One more site that helps you get more out of your digital pix, Block Posters, aims to take your pictures out of the album and slap them all over the wall -- in larger than life size! Images in excess of 9'x9' are possible! "Upload, slice, download." That's it. Take a look at the gallery for a LARGE collection of very creative results.

A similar site I've used in the past is available at http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator.

Try using some of the sites together. Maybe make a mosaic of an image at Mosaickr and then blow it up really big here. See the graphics label on the side bar for other sites to combine!

More things for, and from, photos

FotoTiller bills itself as "a website covering all things photographic, with a particular focus on the intersection of photography and design." Lots of inspirational ideas here to make more out of your pictures.

More Flickr toys

I've posted about the guys over at BigHugeLabs and their Flickr tool/toy sets before, but here's another tool I came across today: Mosaickr. Using pictures selected from Flickr based on tagging, you create your own PhotoMosaic (a big picture made up of many smaller pictures). The samples they exhibit include an image of jumping dolphins made up of pictures tagged with ocean. Quite impressive and cool... Somethign different to do with your pictures.

Got another cool Flickr tool/toy? Do share!

Help yourself, help others

As the bustling holiday season encroaches on our laziness that attempts to settle in as we cover ourselves with more and more covers to hide from teh cold, take a step back and remember what the season is all about -- giving. I hope that whatever your means, whatever your budget, you will take a few moments this year to provide some comfort to someone else in need. That comfort can come in the form of a monetary donation to a national charity, a local church, a toy or food collection organization, time with a shut-in or elderly person in need, or however else you can contribute. Make sure you know who you're donating to in order to make sure that the gift being given is getting to those in need and not those in want.

Another way to assist those in need, while helping yourself is via the Free Rice site. Basically, you work on increasing your vocabulary, while earning grains of rice for someone else. It's a fun little diversion when you need a little brain stimulation, and you get the glow of giving deep down in your heart at the same time!

This one is stuck in my head too...

My wife thinks I like this song because Colbie Caillat is cute (I don't disagree, kind of an old-school Jennifer Aniston look to her, but not as beautiful as my wife! Love ya honey!), but it's really the haunting melody that is suck in my head for some reason.

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal a while ago about how Colbie's label tried to falsely pass her off as this "out-of-the-blue" up-and-comer, but I don't care. I like her earthy song style.

Birds do the wave

Interesting how nature imitates nature...

Traveling Salesman Problem

Salesmen have existed for thousands of years. In the early years, they traveled from cave to cave selling sticks and stones and tried their hand at up selling their clientele on "fire." The plight of the traveling salesman has not changed that much in the past millennia though. They still travel door to door trying to sell us products and services (thought a lot of perennial d-t-d sales have moved to the Web). As they travel door-to-door, they must do so in a way that conserves their time (the more potential clients they can see, the more fruitful their labors), and increasingly, their gas.

Though the price of gas wasn't at issue hundreds of years ago, efficiency still was. From that quest came the Traveling Salesman Problem. According to Wikipedia, the problem can be summarized as: "Given a number of cities and the costs [mileage] of traveling from any city to any other city, what is the least-cost round-trip route that visits each city exactly once and then returns to the starting city?"

For a small collection of cities, it's relatively easy and can be done by hand. As the number of cities increase, the computational power increases to compensate for all of the new permutations. Hundreds of people much smarter than I have battled the problem for ages trying to come up with the optimal (read: least cost) path.

All that aside, there are two things I wanted to get out there in this article. First, a Google Maps implementation or the TSP available for your personal travels this holiday season. As the Nuclear Family has exploded and we have so many more holiday family gatherings to attend, this site could help you get it all done in one day -- efficiently!

For a little more (geeky) fun, try your hand at some simple TSP games for yourself.

Happy travels...

Traffic Alerts

As the snow starts to fall in many part of the country, many of us will end up with longer than normal commute times. That's bad. Especially with the price of gas still so high. Wouldn't it be nice to be alerted to traffic slowdowns before you leave work? With that knowledge you could 1) leave early to account for the extra time needed, 2) leave later once things are clear, or 3) mentally prepare yourself for the long ride home. Traffic.com to the rescue!

On Traffic.com you can set up customized routes that will be monitored for traffic snares. You build your route by identifying the metro area, then the major road, then the entry point and exit point for that road, then rinse and repeat adding more roads to the trip. Save your route and then set up your alerts -- daily, regardless of delays, only if delays exist beyond a threshold, only on certain days, certain times, etc! The alerts can be sent to your phone, or an email address. You can click through to see the specific portion of your trip that's going to be slow, but the email itself will identify a delay in minutes, travel time and average speed.

I have my alerts set to notify me at work an hour before I normally leave when the Jam Factor (their custom 1-10 rating) is a 5 or greater during the week. I'm not in a position to be able to leave early, but I can at least psych my self up for the trip.

If you have a local blog or personal site, you can add a sticker (read: widget/gadget) that will show the jam Factor for your route, or metro area real time for all to see.

I can't keep up... and I LIKE it!

When Google released it's GMail application with 1G of space, it was exponentially more than anyone at the time. Who would ever need 1G of space? For mail?! It was one of those claims some thought they'd never have to honor for everyone -- kinda like fitness center memberships. They continued to incrementally up the ante and storage with a little counter on the home page that showed the storage available to each GMail account.

As of right now, they're telling me... "You are currently using 352 MB (6%) of your 5328 MB." I had hit a max of about 10% several weeks ago, but then they kicked the allocation into HIGH gear and are rapidly outpacing my inflow of mail. But that's OK. How often do you get something you want, before you need it, for FREE!

Other services like Hotmail (5G), Yahoo (unlimited), etc are adding storage feverishly, but people will still remember that it was Google that offered it first. Some people took it as a personal challenge to fill up their GMail account when they first got it and some actually achieved that goal, but now that there is so much space available that's just not fun anymore.

Google has started offering a paid storage option for their Picasa accounts, but I've not seen anything about requiring payment for even larger GMail boxes.

Almost Smart has a chart that shows the growth of GMail storage allocation. Guess I won't be running out of space for my mail anytime soon.

Life's a puzzle...

The guys over at Big Huge Labs have been putting the final pieces together on a new image enhancer recently. They jsut released a jigsaw-ing tool into their popular Flickr Toys site. You upload an image (or point to one on the web or your Flickr account) and it makes it look like your picture is an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. It provides enough of the image that it's recognizable (roughly 85% in my estimation), and leaves a few pieces "on the board." Pretty cool!

SPAM!

I happened to use Mailinator for a form today (see previous Mailinator post) and when I went to the site to check for the message, I was reminded that there are other domains besides mailinator.com that function the exact same way that you can use as companies get wise to the mailinator.com domain...

Email sent to an alternate domain goes to Mailinator too!

mailinator2.com
sogetthis.com
mailin8r.com
mailinator.net
spamherelots.com
thisisnotmyrealemail.com

Just thought I'd share!

Fancy yourself a Realestate Agent?

OK, so the housing market sucks for most of us right now. I estimate that I've lost almost a quarter of the value of my house in the last few years. Not because of developing a sinkhole in the backyard, or of an infestation of termites, nor a fire that destroyed the whole top floor (none of those happened by the way) -- but because there are too many houses out there for people to buy and not enough people to buy them. Pure economics. I wish I hadn't dragged my feet when my wife first suggested moving about 3 years ago. If we'd moved then, we'd be better off. As it stands right now, we'll have to wait another 3-5 years for the market to pick back up in the area -- if we're lucky. We need a massive influx of people looking to buy the houses that everyone leaving the state is leaving behind. The foreclosure list in the newspaper this past weekend was literally thicker than the newspaper itself!

There is a good side to the market, if that's possible. NEW GAMES TO PLAY! The people at Red Oak Realty in California ( in connection with Realius) are offering a cool "Guess the price" game. You see an ad (full MLS-style, recent sales, plus Google Maps, etc.) for a house on the market and then offer up your guess for the sales price. Compare that against the actual list price and you start gaining points. You can see others' guesses as well after posting yours.

Red Oak's entry to the Realius site is for housing in California mostly (unless my bad geography is catching up), but it's fun to use regardless of where you live.

Play the Fantasy Real Estate game.

Google Search

A cool and entertaining lecture given by a Googler about search...

There's still time to give your money away!

"The Official Black Friday Ads Site"

Google beat me!

I'll still look for some of the shopping and coupon sites when I get a moment or two, but I just noticed that the Google Ads on the right are already reflecting the Black Friday advertising. I "tell" them each time I create a new post here. Their ads are not placed real time, but are updated pretty quickly obviously to keep the ads relevant to the content on the site. Feel free to use those links until (and after) I get my set of links up. Time's running out for the Black Friday links, but my links will help the whole holiday season -- and beyond... And don't forget the jump off point for you Amazon shoppers over there too!

Happy Shopping!

Now THAT is COOL!

I've posted here about the voyeur photos that people started collecting when Google StreetView hit the streets (sorry, pun intended). Immersive Media is one of the companies that is collecting these images for Google. On their site, they have a demo that allows you to rotate the field of view -- get this -- while the video is playing! Take a look at their demo, then head on over to Popular Mechanic's Ridealong for more information on the company, and their cool technology.

Black Friday is coming

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the US, is the busiest shopping day of the year. A lot of stores depend on the Christmas season to make or break their business for the year. Cyber-Monday is the following Monday when people return to work and take advantage of the their company's high speed Internet access to do their shopping online. With analysts predicting a flat or only modest gain in sales this year over last, a lot of stores, online and off, are offering some great deals to move merchandise. A lot of online stores are offering free shipping again.

I don't do a lot of shopping online, but if you're heading out to Amazon to grab your share of the deals, I've included a couple of jumping off points for you on the right side of this blog. A Deals widget will showcase some of Amazon's current deals, and a search widget will help you find anything else.

I'll try to locate a few coupon codes and sites that you can use to save even more and post them here as well for you. Got a site of coupon code t share? Pot a comment here and share the savings!

Happy Consumerism!

Coupon sites: <-- Got more to add? Add a comment!
FlamingoWorld
RetailMeNot

Those annoying relatives

As the holiday season kicks into full gear, the cameras will undoubtedly come out in full force. Sometimes I long for the old days when everyone used film cameras so they were more particular about the shots that they took, and they limited themselves to a few mostly posed pictures. Nowadays, digital shots cost nothing to take, so statistics rule -- take as many shots as you can and surely one or two will turn out good and then you delete the rest.

I found a new site the other day that showed a rather unique digital image editor. It's got a lot of other features as well, but the one that really stuck out was their ability to literally strip people (or objects) out of a picture -- almost imperceptibly! The demo that they show at their site removes one of two kids jumping in the grass. When it's done, it's very hard to see where the missing kid once was. They call it their smart resizer... It'll be interesting to see who gets stripped out of their family pictures this year. Hope it's not me!

Are you smarter than a 4th grader?

I'm not... Well that's not entirely true thankfully, but I feel like it sometimes. Trying to help my daughter with her homework the other night was bringing back some old memories. Not all of the memories came back though as I struggled to remember the definition of mode (versus median and mean). I know that we talked about it in school -- 30 some odd years ago! -- but I just couldn't remember. Things will only get worse as she gets older, I'm afraid.

On the other hand, she likes teaching others what she knows, and her brothers are close behind her in school, so if I can just make sure that she continues to do well in school, and keep her interested in sharing that knowledge, maybe the boys will have someone to help with their homework... I can hope. If not, there's always the Internet :-)

You have to believe it to see it

A co-worker of mine has this as his tag line on his IM client. He's had it there for a couple of months now. I remember then I first saw it I thought he had mistyped the more popular quote "You have to see it to believe it." After seeing it a couple of times, it clicked and I thought it was a cool quote.

I didn't give it more thought until tonight. Last time Radio Disney held one of their D-Tours, my daughter, as is the norm of late, won a bunch of Disney stuff -- a DVD, CD, folder, long sleeved T-shirt -- and tickets to see Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. We took the kids to see it tonight in a preview showing before tomorrow's release. I thought it was pretty good. The kids liked it too. My youngest son said it was "really, really, really funny Dad."

The movie is about a magical toy store that is passed down from Mr. Magorium (Dustin Hoffman) to his Store Manager. Without giving too much away, the Store Manager (played by Natalie Portman of Star Wars fame and more) isn't sure that she's ready to handle the magical store all by herself. Somewhere in the middle of her soul searching, I saw that phrase flashed again..."You have to believe it to see it." When I saw it this time, in the context of the movie, it really hit home more quickly.

You have to believe it to see it. It reminds me of a lot of other success-building phrases like "Picture what you want and then grab it," and all of the "other visualize success" sayings. "If you think you're a winner you will be." "If you think that you can't, then you can't."

In this movie, the magic was right there all the time, but the Store Manager didn't believe that she had the magic too. She thought that the magic was all Mr. Magorium's. It wasn't until a block of wood (with a little help from a friend) showed her that she really did believe and suddenly she could see the magic herself -- from herself!

So often we forget that we're in charge of our destiny. We see someone else succeeding, in business, in life, in love, and just stare. I'll never be like that. I'm not capable of attaining that level of success. They're so lucky. But, by believing, by visualizing, by acting like we are in charge, we will be in charge. You have to believe it to see it.

What are you waiting to believe in?

Political Donations

Ever wonder which way your neighbors lean? Do they care enough about a particular candidate to financially contribute to their hopefully successful campaign? The folks over at Political Base have a handy Google Maps mashup that lets you visualize the political contributions to the 2008 US Presidential race. See the money from from each state all the way down to your local neighborhood. You might be surprised.

They also have a section that allows you to see contributions by "famous people." See who your favorite star is supporting. It might make you view them in a whole new light.

Holiday time hustle

I received this from a friend today. I've seen this several times before, but this time of year, with all the chaos of the holidays, the commercialism, the running between family and work get-togethers, school and church functions, etc it's a perfect time to re-read it. Take it to heart and have a cup with a friend...

The Mayonnaise Jar

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous 'yes.'

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

'Now,' said the professor as the laughter subsided, 'I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things--- your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions---and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.

The sand is everything else---the small stuff. 'If you put the sand into the jar first,' he continued, 'there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

'Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first---the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.'

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled and said, 'I'm glad you asked.' The coffee just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.'

My son the Songmeister

OK, so maybe we watch and listen to a little too much Disney Channel. After getting my 4-year-old son a cup of juice this morning I apparently put things back in the fridge in the wrong order. He was quick to correct me saying that the orange juice should go in back and the apple sauce in front. I apologized for this lack of discipline and he said, "That's OK Dad. Everyone makes mistakes." Then almost in the same rhythm, realized that he had started something and continued in song with "Everybody has those days. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has those days."

He's often thrown Hannah Montana, Mylie Cyrus, High School Musical (1 and 2), Backyardigans, Go, Diego, Go and other lyrics back at the rest of the family -- in context. It's great to know that he's paying attention (see: Life Lessons...), has s good memory, likes to sing and in general is having fun with it. He often gets the rest of us laughing so he gets a positive response from it. We usually lose it completely when he adds dance moves :-)

Cool headed, er, um, Luke

This past Wednesday morning at about 2:30am my youngest son woke up coughing and crying. We still have a monitor in his room so I heard him and went down expecting to cover him back up and return to my warm blanket. This is what I was expecting ...

When I got to his room, he was sitting on his bed gasping for breath. He couldn't get a good breath! I started to panic a little. As I assessed the situation looking for some cause that I could remove, I called my wife down as well. She suggested that we try the steam from the shower in the bathroom. That didn't seem to work so we tried a hot bath and some Tylenol. He was still gasping, his breathing labored by severe congestion. As we got him in the bath, my wife commented that based on what we were witnessing, he likely already had bronchitis and, if left untreated, it could turn into pneumonia. Still in a state of panic, I went up stair to get my pants on, ready to take him to the emergency room.

Realizing that maybe I was getting a little ahead of the game, I went back down to the bathroom. He had calmed down a little and, though still laboring quite a bit, there were signs of change -- of improvement. Other than his breathing, he seemed to be doing OK. No fever. Nothing else abnormal. About an hour later, he was doing well enough that I had calmed down and my initial shock and fear were almost gone. A few unproductive coughs confirmed that he was still severely congested, but he could at least breath well again.

We decided to prop his pillows and see if he could go back to sleep. My wife, the maternalistic martyr, decided to sleep on the floor next to his bed as a comfort to him and so that we could react more quickly should the need arise again before morning. I went back to bed to try to catch a few more winks before getting up to head to work. I tried, but it didn't work. It took another 45 mins or so before I could finally get back to sleep, convincing myself that over her own snor..., I mean guttural breathing, my wife would hear him quickly and react as needed. I woke up every 1/2 hour or so, straining to hear his breaths over the monitor for some assurance that he was still OK.

I must have finally given in to the need for sleep, because the next thing I remember, I awoke to the second alarm, having hit the snooze button without even knowing it. I went into my son's room to check on him and as I cracked the door, I saw his huge smile greeting me across the room. He was OK, at least for now.

Although my wife and I are back to sharing our bed at night, every night since then, I wake up on a schedule about every two hours to make sure that I can hear him on the monitor. I've gone to his room a few times just as an added precaution a few times (and checked on the other two while was up). If you're having trouble breathing, it's not like you can yell -- "Help! I can't breathe." Like my wife recalls from her childhood... When her brothers were pestering her and had her in a headlock or were tickling her too hard, she would say "Stop! I can't breathe." They would retort, "You can't talk if you can't breathe."

We still haven't gotten him in to the doctor, afraid of feeling foolish when they sent us home with a note to give decongestant 3-4 times a day and continue on. He's feeling much better now and all that gunk in his chest is finally making it out via his nose (sorry for the visual).

This whole experience has taught me a few things. First, that being a parent, loving your child, you really do feel helpless when there's not a quick fix that you can apply to make all the pain and the bad go away. I was really scared and started thinking about what would happen if we couldn't get things under control. "There's a fire station at the end of our street, 1/2 mile away, that's the closest 'medical' facility...the Emergency room is on what road? No that's too far..." I would tell myself. I'm still trying to let go of the whole situation.

Second, I was reminded of how my wife and I morph to take whatever role the other needs. She's usually the one who freaks out and overreacts (if only in my eyes, and only slightly) with things. That night it was I who took on that role while she shifted and took control of the situation. She calmed him down, deciding that was the first thing to do. Then she went for the remedies we had at hand - Tylenol to reduce the swelling (I hadn't even thought about that part of it), and the steam to loosen the phlegm. Though we were both awoken from sleep, she's the one that was able to keep it together. Thanks Hon!

That's what being a partner, part of a pair, is all about. Looking out for each other and being the better half as the need arises. Parenting is a LOT of work. There is no instruction manual. There are no do-evers. There is only doing the best you can. Learning from each other, from mistakes and moving on. I'm glad I've got my wife along on that journey.

Wanna know what people think?

How do you ask a question of all the world? Unless you're working for a large website like CNN or Google or a site with similar global audience and a lot of traffic, your best bet may be a site I discovered yesterday -- Ask500People. The premise of the site is that you can create an account, ask a quick question, that question is voted on by visitors, and if enough people are interested in the answer, your question will be the asked of 100 people (I know. I know -- a little false advertising by the domain name, but maybe that's 'cuz they're still in beta. Don't know). The results of votes (taken on their homepage and via widgets placed on websites of "different sizes and audiences, to reach a cross-section of the general population") are graphed and on the homepage, you can see the near-real time voting results on a Google Maps mashup.

Questions cover a broad spectrum of about the world we live in. An interesting idea I think...

What's acceptable?

Happy Halloween! Tonight is a night of ghosts and goblins and candy and walking and seeing neighbors you otherwise tend to ignore. This is a time for kids, young and old to dress up as a favorite character, popular icon, or, for the older kids to walk around in street clothes (no costume at all) and prey on the kindness of strangers for the next day's sugar rush.

That's all in good fun mostly. It's fun to watch the kids who get spooked at the more elaborately decorated houses. It's fun to hear the kids laughing (and the parents and younger siblings yelling "wait for us!") It's fun to see the kids faces light up as they run away from the houses proclaiming and displaying their winnings.

It's not so fun to think of how much we're fueling the dentistry industry, but that's another story :-)

In my neighborhood there are only a few houses that really get all decked out for the holiday. A couple have smoke machines, spooky music, a few ghouls stuck around the yard, etc. We added a makeshift cemetery display and a few jack-o-lanterns this year as well as a few window clings in the bay window. There is a house a couple of streets over though that the kids call the "spooky house." These folks literally have thousands of dollars invested in Halloween decorations. Over 50 life-sized mannequins/props, fog, music -- the whole works! They put up their display several weeks before the "big day" and even have a guestbook for people to sign. It draws quite a crowd each night. It's all done in good, but scary, taste.

From the news on TV and the radio, and the papers, and the Web, not everyone has the same idea of what's in good taste though. Mock lynchings. Columbine-style costumes. A Ronco Rotisserie grill with a bloody baby doll spinning round! COME ON PEOPLE!

I'm sure that if you talked to your grandparent -- or any grandparent -- they'd have a TON of stories to tell you about how things are so much different than when they were growing up. I'm starting to feel like an old fogey now, though. How long has it taken, how many generations, to breed out the common sense gene, the respect gene, the gene that tells your brain when too much is too much from our society?

I understand that each of us individually goes from being completely reliant on our parents, to showing that we can survive without them. From knowing nothing, to knowing it all. All this by the time we reach teenager-hood. (I am soooo looking forward to that. NOT!). Most of us though, I think, I hope, turn the corner and come back to reality. Back to common sense. Back to a respectful individual. Not so for all of us though. Apparently there are those out there that lost their map and forgot to turn the corner. And then they had kids.

There are so many people out there that just don't get it. I'm not saying that I have parenting down pat -- I don't think that's possible -- but I think it's important to instill a certain set of values and judgements into our children. Society, peers and age in general will erode a lot of what we teach them over time, so maybe I'm over teaching now so that they still end up with something left when they hit puberty. Maybe I'm too old fashioned and need to just let it go. But I can't. I can't imagine a nation where there are no morals. No consideration for others. No respect for others. Wait -- I don't have to imagine. I see it thrown in my face everyday in the news. (Let's not talk about whether the news is portraying reality or someone's vision of reality right now.) Is that what our country would be like if our social morays "(the ethics that prevail by means of the unwritten code of social contract at any point in a given civilization)" continue to erode? I shutter to think of that time.

How do we decide what's acceptable? Who decided the 7 dirty words you're not allowed to broadcast? Who decides what local decency standards are? Who decides what words end up in the dictionary (They'll argue that they they are included due to popular use and that they don't condone or endorse their use, but rather make them available for people to understand the language better -- but simply by inclusion, it's lent a certain legitimacy. Remember all the controversy over the word "ain't?")

I'm torn here, because I very much believe in people's right to believe what they want to believe. I'm not trying to take that away from them. Nor their free speech to express those beliefs. I just wish that they would have some respect for others that maybe have a little more traditional sense of values.

People develop. Families develop. Nations develop. Let's hope that each is developing in a positive direction.

Scent-sational

I don't want to offend anyone. I take a shower everyday. I practice good hygiene. But this morning I realized that I may be offending people in a different way...

I counted the number of scents that I apply to my body every day.

1) bath gel -- I usually just use scented soap for my whole body, but I happened to find a scent while on vacation this summer and my wife got me some bath gel and hand soap last week. Bath and Body Works.

2) face soap -- Well, not really face soap, but scented body soap I use on my face. Usually Irish Spring or the equivalent.

3) shampoo -- Nothing really fragrant here, but they all have some in there. Costco brand currently. My hair doesn't seem to care.

4) deodorant -- Gotta use it. Nothing overpowering, but it's there. Arrid XX Dry.

5) cologne -- A staple, but not too much. Mary Kay Domain from when my wife used to sell it.

6) shaving cream -- not every day, but several times a week. I tried an electric razor several years ago, but felt that the manual blade (Gillette Fusion currently)worked better.

7) laundry detergent -- Tide. Nothing added.

8) fabric softener -- Tide Simple Pleasures Vanilla and Lavender for sheets and towels and Downy Clean Breeze for clothes.

9) body oils -- We all have them. It's more an issue of how they change the smell of the other scents as opposed to their scents themselves.

10) animals -- We happen to have cats.

11) hand soap at work -- Industrial blend. Not too smelly, but it's there.

12) environment -- Scents in the air around.

13) foods -- the smell on my clothes and my mouth (or the Listerine strips or gum I use to eradicate that smell.)

Other than the occasional whiff of the bath gel, I don't smell any of this stuff after I put it on.

I've had a few people comment that they like my cologne and (this is funny to me) someone comment that they liked my fabric softener. No one has commented that I smell too strongly, good or bad, so maybe it's nothing, but I was surprised when I actually counted this morning.

Puppet Master!

This guy is great with the strings!

Everything AND the [kitchen] Synch

Google released a little gem the other day for all of you with money to invest and those who just like to pretend you have money to invest. If you use iGoogle, they've now got a Google Finance Tab you can add to your collection. Big deal, right. They released something similar several months ago that had a bunch of Google Gadgets aggregated onto one tab that they shared... Well, this one is DIFFERENT! Not only does this gadget set have a bunch of cool financial gadgets (a gadget for your Portfolio, Top Movers, Sector Summary, and stock quote), but they talk! OK , not out loud, but to each other! Each of several specific gadgets will actually change when you change one of the others. Confused? Don't be.

If you look up a stock quote for IBM in the Stock Quote gadget, not only do you get the stock price on that gadget, but you also get Related Companies in another gadget, Company Sector/Industry reports, Company Overview and Mini Charts -- FOR IBM!

This is the only time I've seen something like this in gadget form. With this release, Google is making the function available to other developers to use inter-gadget communication as well. Can't wait to see what the community comes up with to showcase this cool feature!

See the full Google Finance blog post for more details.

Make a funny face

I swear I've seen these guys before. I think I passed some of them on the street the other day!

Time Flies...

I found this set of interesting pics the other day. I almost used them on my desktop. Still might. Four Seasons In Each Picture. Very well done.

Check out the LinkInn site for other really cool photo sets as well.

Hijacked again!

I'm not sure what's doing it, but I've experienced a number of occasions when going to my blog, that I'm redirected to http:// earn-your-degree dot com. I assure you it's not me doing it. Usually if I go to http://aworlddiscovered.blogspot.com/ again, it's fine. It's always this site that it goes to, but I have no idea why.

Sorry about any inconvenience...

Surprise...

I have a gadget / widget / mini-app on my iGoogle homepage that shows the geographic location of visitors to my blog. It's provided as an RSS feed from Blogflux. I check it periodically. Today I was surprised to see visitors from "Mountain View, California, United States." Ummmm. I know that sounds familiar for some reason. Let me think. Hmmm... Oh yeah! GOOGLE!

Digging a bit deeper, I saw that it was in fact visitors from Google.com. Pretty cool for a neophyte like me.

Then I began to feel a little deja view. I think I mentioned a visitor from Copywrite.com had stopped by shorty after I posted CD cover shots of Hannah Montana in my Life Lessons post. I started to feel a little guilty of something. Of what I'm not sure. I guess I have a little bit of insecurity and paranoia.

I'm sure that they were just checking out all the positive press I'm giving them. When I talk about all the great information that they've made available to the world. All the good that they're doing. All the cool stuff available at the Google Store that I'd be happy to show off to all my techno-geeky friends and the rest of the world.

Ah, whatever. I'm glad for the visitors. Makes me feel more worthy of something... I guess...

Know anyone else that might have an interest in something that you're reading here? Let 'em know. There's an email icon at the bottom of each post.

5*2+2/6

The other day my family and I went to our local Build A Bear Workshop so that my youngest could take advantage of a birthday coupon he had received. While there there was a contest to win Hannah Montana / Mylie Cyrus tickets. My oldest filled out her entry form while my youngest went perusing the accessories.

When I went to check on her, I took a look at what she was filling out. The normal stuff -- name, address, phone, birth date, etc. But I saw something on there that caught my eye. For those Canadian residents who want to try to win tickets, they had to answer a math problem. My daughter said, it was easy dad. I don't remember the exact problem, but, excusing the order of operations which they hadn't discussed in class yet, I'm sure she got it right.

That was the first time that I had seen anything about that though. Are they just trying to prove how smart the Canadians are? Or how uneducated? Or maybe it was just a psychological game played on us Americans to make us think that we were the ones too simple-minded to be able to answer the question. It didn't say, 5th graders and above must answer this math problem. It said Canadian residents.

So...

Google to the rescue. What the heck was all this about?

A quick search showed that I was not the only one to ponder this peculiar tactic. According to a Wired Magazine article (an excellent magazine by the way), it's actually required by Canadian Law. Who knew?! Those Canadians sure are a funny group of folk, eh? :-)

Mystery solved.

Amazon Search box

One more thing... I added an Amazon search box on the bottom right side of the page. If you're gonna get something from Amazon anyway, why not go through here and throw me a few pennies in commission on the way out? :-)

Thanks!

Did you find what you're looking for?

When I was growing up, one of my pastors had a player piano. When the family would go over to his house for some occasion, I'd often get to play the rolls for a while. The Entertainer and the William Tell Overture were among my favorites, but another was the Theme from Mahogany. I never saw the movie, and really have no interest, but for some reason at that point in my life, I liked that song. I found a Jennifer Lopez version of it the other day that brought back memories.

The first few verses go:

Do you know where you're going to?
Do you like the things that life is showing you?
Where are you going to?
Do you know?

Do you get what you're hoping for?
When you look behind you there's no open door
What are you hoping for?
Do you know?

I thought of this song as I was perusing my blog stats the other day. Several of the analytics that I have embedded on my site allow me to capture referrers (where you came from) including search terms. This isn't a big brother thing at all, but I am interested.

The last time I looked, I had a lot of people that apparently were looking for something else when they say I wrote about playing voyeur with Google's StreetView. Sorry guys. I had the occasional hit on topics from our summer vacation (Panda bears, Unicorns, Blue Ghost lights, Carousels and whistles among others).

Then there was the article about Hannah Montana. That drew a little crown when published, but died fairly quickly (as opposed to the fervor over the $2000+ price people are paying to see her in concert this summer.)

Lately, it seems that the Moutain Dew commercial post seems to be getting a lot of interest.

Just thought I'd share.

Sports Technology

I've already admitted to being a sports-avoider, but when caught at my dad's the other day, I decided to watch a few minutes of a football game. Don't ask me who was playing, or if it was college or pro. That kinda thing must not be genetic.

Anyway, I am an avid fan of technology -- enough so that I actually read an article about how they put those yellow lines on the screen for the first down markers. It had been a while (I think this is the one I saw, and it's dated 2001) since I read the article, but it was interesting enough that I remembered it... This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to high-tech in sports whether you're talking about all of the data mining of the player and team stats, marketing campaigns, stadiums, etc. I suppose I might be interested in all of that one day... or not. Sorry Dad. We'll have to bond on something else...

Let them sing it for you!

I've tried my hand at poetry and songwriting before, but it's just not a talent that I posses. It usually comes out way too cheesy. So, I let Hallmark put into words the feelings I have. Hey, they get paid to do it, so I'm just helping the economy...

But, until now, I didn't have much hope of getting someone to write a song for me. Now, using this Let them sing it for you site, I can type in words from Hallmark, and let them do the singing. Voila! A new song!

Another use for a hammer

I've been on both sides of the phone with regard to call center operations and customer service centers. I've answered sales calls and made sales calls and I've answered technical support calls. All of this behind the scenes experience does not make me much more lenient on the poor agents that happen to get my call when I need help.

Customer service has been going down hill fast. More and more companies are looking for cheap ways to get the customer off the phone, to stop emailing them, or in general just to leave them alone. "Just go buy our product and leave us alone" is the attitude being put off my a lot of companies -- big and small -- nowadays. It doesn't matter which survey you read, or who you talk to, it just plain ol' sucks!

Yes, there are shining stars out there that truly realize the value of the customer and don't just look at how many hard dollars they are spending on support. Some companies actually view customer service, technical support, etc as a marketing opportunity -- and I'm not even talking about up-selling! I'm talking about using a good customer service experience to build brand loyalty. To build brand trust. To build a force of non-paid sales people who talk about, blog about, and otherwise talk up your product or service to a lot more interested people than those that channel surf or turn the page when they see your ad.

But beware. Those same aggressive free sales people can turn on you if you screw up. Take the woman in this article from the Washington Post. She was probably pretty excited about the service she was receiving from Comcast -- enough to add additional features in the form of phone service. Or, yes, it might have just been about saving money, too, but that doesn't fit my story, as well... :-)

Seems Comcast make another misstep. Perhaps they overextended themselves. Perhaps they weren't paying close enough attention to the staff. Perhaps they really just don't get it. Unfortunately, I don't think that the national attention this article is receiving will make them change much of anything (except maybe to make a more secure area for their executives).

What will it take for companies to wake up and realize that they can't treat customers this way? I'll tell you what it'll take -- US! WE have the power in the form of our hard-earned dollars, in the form of blogs like this, in the form of speech, in the form of e-mail, to tell companies to stop treating us this way! I'm not talking about some spammy "don't buy gas on October 17th" kind of rebellion. I'm talking about a grassroots, personal effort, "power of one" kind of thing. If a company treats you well -- tell them. If they do something wrong -- tell them. You gotta give them a chance to make it right. Sometimes it's more about what they do to correct the issue than that the issue happened that shows you what the company is made of.

All you Dominos, Old Kent Banks, Chryslers, KMarts, McDonalds, etc out there -- are you listening? It's about what you do to rectify the situation that shows people what you're all about! Not rectifying the situation, one that's in your control and duty, shows people even more sometimes... And word spreads fast...

All you CXOs out there... Stand up and look around. Who's providing the face of your company to all of your customers? Call your company's customer service number once a month and see if that's the image you want portrayed. Go into your store occasionally. How are you treated? Would you want to come back and shop some more? Look at your customers. Are they being serviced, or ignored? Buy some of your products. Use them as a customer would. Do they perform as promised? You'd be surprised if you actually took a step down occasionally and lived like the rest of us.

I saw an article recently about a Chrysler exec who, upon sitting in the Sebring for the first time, suddenly realized why its sales were slacking -- the cheap plastic feel! And that from a car that was sold as affordable luxury. Are you overselling your products too? Spare the customer having to use a hammer, and do something...

Alphabetology, Numerology

My wife and I have 3 kids -- a family of 5. If you take the first letters of each of our names, they can be arranged sequentially, contiguously in the alphabet (i.e., ABCDE, VWXYZ, etc). This was mostly a coincidence in that we didn't plan it -- except when it came to our youngest's name. Once we discovered that we had four in a row, we had to go for five! When the family caught on we had a little fun in telling them that we were going to use the much less common letter as our son's first name -- and all the rather strange and, um, unpopular names that brought with it.

It wasn't until just a few years ago that we realized that the length of each of our names is also sequential -- 4 letters in one name, 5 in another, 6, 7, and 8 letters in the rest of the family's names. There must be something to that... Just a little bit strange.

Politically Correct Posting

As more and more of our lives are being made available on line for all to see, we must be careful what we volunteer. We are in charge of some of the disclosures. That which we can control, we should control. People lose jobs, spouses, friends, careers, money, and lives over the stuff that they voluntarily post online, whether in blogs like this, via emails (that get forwarded to the "wrong" people), via chats, via MySpace pages, YouTube, Flickr, etc.

I've been "warned" by concerned co-workers that my current employer, like so many others, are using, or contemplating using on-line references for new, and even current employee weeding. You can't hardly pick up a newspaper, "public" magazine, let alone a tech journal without reading an article about employer snooping -- "Did you know that they are?" "What are their rights, what are yours." Those are the headlines that grab your attention.

I've been very careful not to provide enough information for the casual reader of this blog to identify me, my employer, my family, etc. At one level, that's a shame. Blogging is about sharing. It's about letting others share your thoughts, feelings, perspectives, ideas, knowledge. It's about building a community. It's about free press -- exposing the man behind the curtain -- in some cases.

But this is the reality in 2007. We hide behind the Internet's anonymity while trying to expose ourselves (figuratively only in my case I promise!).

In recognition of that juxtaposition, I have censored my true thoughts on the subject.

█ ████ ███████ ██ ███ ██████████ ███████ █ █ ████ █████████ ██ █ █ ███ █ █ █ ████ ██. ████ ███████ ██ █████ █ █ ███ ███ ███████ ████ █ ███ █ ████████ ██ █ ███ ███ ████ █████. ███████ █ █████ ██████ ██ ██ █████. ████ █████████ ██ ████ ███ ███ █████ ███ █ █ █████ ██████████ ███ █████ ████ ██ █ █. ███████ █ █████ █ █ ███████ █████ █████ ██ ███████ █████ ██████ ███ █ ███ █████ ████████ ███.

There! I said it. I'm glad I got that off my back...

Paper Crafts

Every once in a while I get the itch to do something crafty. This past week, I turned to the PaperToys website for some relief. It is my youngest son's birthday next week and we had a Cars party for him. We had the obligatory characters, but I thought I'd play with a few more generic models as well.

At PaperToys, they have all sorts of models you can build out of paper. All provided free of course. Everything from a model of the Empire State Building to a model of the Sphynx to a Stealth Aircraft. They also had some pretty cool cars that I thought I'd try my hands at.

Some of their models are pretty easy (they have a Santa I thought was pretty cool and easy a few years ago), but for some reason, the ones I chose to occupy my time with this time seemed a little harder than I remember. Maybe it's just my aging fingers. A lot of cutting and a little glue later, I had 5 cars that my kids played with for the afternoon before they got crushed -- I suggest printing the templates on card stock so that they last a little longer :-)

Take a look! They've got quite a collection. They do custom work as well if your company's interested in something really unique!

Another Conspiracy?

At one time it was all the rage to link events to September 11th -- either something foretold it's occurrence, or it was a conspiracy to create, mask, or benefit from the event. As time passes, the conspiracy theorists are still active, but most of the really wild speculation (relatively speaking) has died down.

I can't confirm which side of the groupings this falls on, but I have to say it's at least a first. The company I work for is accused of laundering money related to 9/11. True, the company has had a few legal issues in the past. True, a lot of the statements made in the article are valid. True, I can't confirm all of his statements.

It's interesting reading (I learned a few things that I later verified on our company site), but I think it's a little like statistics -- you can bend the truth in any way you need to in order to support the position you're trying to put forth. If you can get someone to the the edge, sometimes they'll jump all by themselves. The point of conspiracy theorists is to raise just enough doubt to make you question your own theory of reality -- whether it's 9/11, JFK, the War in the Middle East, the moon walk or anything else.

It's not wrong to propose an alternate view from the norm -- that's how we all grow and learn. It's not wrong to theorize -- just make sure you support your theories with verifiable facts. It's not wrong to be a contrarian -- just be willing to face the criticism.

It's our job to evaluate the facts and to look before we leap.

Did you forget?

I recently read an article in Wired Magazine where the author talked about off-sourcing his memory to Google, et al. He wrote about a study showing younger people were less likely to be able to recall information like a friend's phone number, a relative's birthday etc. When asked, they had to pull out their PDA, look it up online, or otherwise consult an external resource to retrieve the requested information. I've noticed this myself for quite some time. I've said for a long time, it's not what you know, but what you know how to find.

I'm a trivia buff, so I'm constantly cramming my brain cells with useless information, but when it came to remembering my youngest son's birth date, I had to rely on my wife to finally provide me with a mnemonic aid (my favorite TV show at the time was "24"). I can recall my street address from 20 years ago, but I literally have to calculate my age anytime someone asks for it.

In general, I focus on what I need to do right at that moment, and leave the rest to Outlook alerts, lists, and my wife to provide reminders. My like is just too complicated to try to remember it all myself. I'm sure yours is too -- it's a factor of society today.

Every couple of weeks a co-worker will ask if I remember processing a specific request, or responding to an email from so-and-so. Usually I have to go back and look it up. They, on the other hand, can recall some little thing talked about months ago with great clarity. I'm not sure if this has something to do with their mental constructs and faculties that allow them to be part of their specialized profession versus my different specialized profession, or if it's related at all. It frustrates me sometimes that I can't remember something that they're referring to, but I think I'm starting to accept it. If only I could find an always-on, personal storage device that I could keep with me at all times that would track everything I did and provide instant on-demand recall of everything... Guess we'll have to wait a few more years for that advancement...

Truth in Advertising

According to a Diet Mountain Dew ad, Taumata whakatangi hangakoauau o tamatea turi pukakapiki maunga horo nuku pokai whenua kitanatahu is a place in New Zealand.

The Maori name translates into English as "The hilltop where Tamatea with big knees, conqueror of mountains, eater of land, traveller over land and sea, played his flute to his beloved."

Wikipedia claims that the mount is "the longest officially recognized place name in an English-speaking country."

Thumbalizr

I came across a site the other day that I think will come in handy. It's called Thumbalizr and it makes real time thumbs (small pictures) of websites. It gives you six different sizes to download, or you can request a custom size. you can capture just the first screen worth, or the entire page worth of display.

They've got a bookmarklet (a favorite tool set of mine) that allows you to automatically generate the thumbs from any site you're on. I think I'll give it a try to give you a little snapshot of the sites that I mention here.

There are other sites that offer similar services (thumbshots comes to mind), but this one is quick, free and simple.

Quick Quiz

Check the time, and give yourself 5 minutes... How many words can you make from the letters in the word Discovered? Go!

tick tock tick tock

Try this yourself first, but when the time's up read on.

I was gonna do all the letters in A World Discovered, but that just generated too many possibilities.

For one set of answers you can check the subwords tool at DeGraeve. They came up with 193 English words! I need to play Scrabble more often. I'd have to look a bunch of theirs up in a dictionary to know that they mean.

How many did you get? Leave a comment.

Pets Welcome!

I had lunch with a friend of mine over the weekend. It had been a while since we had talked so it was nice to catch up on happenings, and rumors, and just spend some time chatting. He's changed quite a bit since last I saw him. He's lost over 100 pounds (intentionally) and has adopted a rigorous exercise plan (just finished a half marathon). This guy is light years ahead of anything I'm working on personally right now. I envy his dedication and persistence. He's even trying to get into the Police Reserve Corps.

His current job has brought him to Michigan several times in the past couple of years, some times for week-long (or longer) stays. He got married several years ago, but states emphatically that their "kids" all have 4 legs and always will. He commented that he wished it was easier to find lodging that accepted pets so that he might be able to bring his "whole" family on a trip with him next time maybe. He couldn't dream of leaving his pooch in a pound.

It can be difficult to find hotels that accept non-human family members. But, once again, I have a site to ease the pain... Pets Welcome is a searchable database of pet-friendly lodging locations. Search by state, city, lodging category (hotel, bed and breakfast, etc), even route! My mother-in-law's site gets a lot of referrals from this site, so I know it's being used. It may not have every city in there, but if you find a location not listed in there, encourage them to get listed -- for FREE!

41 Pounds

I've said before that actually like getting junk mail. There are only a few of days a year that we don't get some form of mail at our house, and most of those are holidays. If you don't have the same need to receive external validation for your existence, there is a new service that might come in handy for you.

According to their site, the average adult receives 41 pounds of junk mail a year. That's each adult. So in a household it could easily reach over 100 pounds in a single year. No wonder my back hurts. I cart all my junk mail and newspapers to my kid's school so they get a few bucks a year from their recycling partner, Paper Retriever.

For $41.00 for five years, you can join 41Pounds. They claim to be able to reduce your junk mail by 80-95% in just a few years. For less than 70 cents a month, you could be saving time, reducing your waste and the waste that goes into generating that waste, and doing your part to take back your mailbox. I heard one of the three brothers who started this being interviewed on the radio the other day. I was very impressed by their knowledge, commitment and ideas. If you want to reduce your unwanted junk mail, give 'em a try.

Be prepared to learn something

On the way to work in the morning, I listen to a local morning show that mixes music and "witty banter" like most morning shows. On the way home I usually listen to a local talk radio station. On the weekend, while driving with the kids, I usually put on Radio Disney for them (though I'm starting to like it too). That was my habit and I liked it.

Then on the way home the other day, I tuned to my talk radio station to find that it had switched formats to a Sports Fan radio station. They'd been broadcasting games on the weekend, and had a sports show occasionally, but I don't remember hearing anything about this ahead of time. I was surprised. And I don't like sports radio...

I occasionally would flip to NPR (National Public Radio) for a little bit when Talk Radio wasn't catching my interest, but after 15 mins or less I'd flip back to Talk. Couldn't do it this time, so when I was done listening to the NPR segment that caught my attention, I had nothing to flip back to. I started to scan... and continued to scan... and scan... and scan. I couldn't find ANYTHING that caught my attention. I fried the whole FM dial. Then I even checked the AM band. Still nothing. I even listed to Radio Disney without the kids in the car to see if that could hold my attention. Nope... So I reverted back to NPR.

I guess I had always considered NPR an old people's radio station. With nothing left to turn to (it'll be a while before I end up with HD Radio and Ford hasn't come trough on my offer to test drive their Sync product yet), I ended up staying with NPR...All week...

I still would rather listen to my Talk Radio guys (I found them the next day on their same station, but as the morning show now instead of the afternoon drive time slot they had been in, but that interferes with my normal morning radio station, so I'm still mixed up). I confess, though, that I have learned a thing or two from NPR over the week. I guess it couldn't hurt too much to expand my brain a little more.

Bring your credit card...

Automotive maintenance is just something that I know I have to trust someone on. I know that there are good shops and bad shops. I look for shops that are used by friends, etc to better my odds. I cram my brain with other stuff and just realize that I might be taken by a bad repair shop. I'm just glad this guy doesn't work around here... Oh, wait! He does!

The best advice I ever received...

I consider myself a fairly bright individual. One of my best traits, though, I think is that I don't think that I know everything yet. I'm always trying to learn something new. Often times that knowledge comes from reading. I scan literally dozens of magazines a month, daily and periodic newspapers, and several books, plus all of the reading I do online. Sometimes my learning comes from television. I admit it - I still like to watch This Old House reruns as well as the dozens of more current variety. I like to watch How's That Made, and similar shows as well. Sometimes my knowledge comes from something that I learn how to do myself -- working out a data query or presentation issue for instance.

Some of the most important things I've learned have come from a little closer to home, though. Or in this case, a little closer to work.

My degree is in Business management. My initial reading frenzy was largely skewed toward business process improvement -- reading about fast moving companies that were "doing it right." I read about customer service leaders. I read about manufacturing leaders. I read about retail leaders. I read about marketing leaders. I read about small mom-and-pop stores that were competing and winning against the corporate giants. I read about the companies that stretched themselves too thin and then re-found their focus. And I read Dilbert. I learned about as much from Dilbert as I did from all the other reading. What I read in that comic, though, scared me. It was like Scott Adams was working in a cube right next to mine. Listening in on all my rants. Taking notes at the meetings I attended. Reading all my emails. Every comic I read seemed to ring true to my work life. He was writing just for me! I've not even found a horoscope author that could be so accurate - so dead on!

As Adams wrote, and I lived, Dilbert's, I mean my, work life, things just continued to get worse. Except for one thing. I was smart! Certainly smarter than the others who were making all the decisions that didn't make any sense to me. I was going to change things. I was going to make it better. Unfortunately, things didn't always work out that way... I like to think I made a difference, if only in caring to make things better, but the dark side was too strong. Instead of seeing all of my great revelations, they only saw someone who was a complainer. A whiner who should just sit back, shut up, and let them do their jobs. If they wanted something from me, they would seek me out.

And so it went. True, it came in cycles. Sometimes, I would hit on something that I could do, usually in the background, behind the curtain, that would gain some traction. Many months would go by between my introduction of something of value while it sat fallow in the back of some one's mind, before rising up in a flash of brilliance (with minor modification sometimes), as their idea to champion.

OK, so I guess I am still a little bitter. This isn't going where I had intended it to go... What I was going to say was that "Real leaders are not people who can point out what is wrong. Real leaders are people who can make things better." That's what Marshall Goldsmith, Ph.D. says in
his article "The best advice I ever received".

My tendency was to point out where things were broken in the organization. Sometimes I had a fix, but not always. My intention was that I would point out something wrong, and then let the "experts" fix it. I expected it to be a revelation to them. They couldn't see the forest for the trees (or is it the other way around?). They've been doing it the same way for so long, that they just couldn't see that it didn't make sense anymore. Surely a fresh set of eyes was needed here.

In Goldsmith's article, he was an employee like this as well. Finally his boss said "Marshall, you are becoming a pain in the butt. You are not helping the people who are supposed to be your clients. You are not helping me, and you are not helping yourself. I am going to give you two options: Option A: Continue to be angry, negative and judgmental. If you chose this option, you will be fired, you probably will never graduate, and you may have wasted the last four years of your life. Option B: Start having some fun. Keep trying to make a constructive difference,
but do it in a way that is positive for you and the people around you. My advice is this: You are young. Life is short. Start having fun. What option are you going to choose, son?"

Goldsmith replied: "Dr. Case, I think it is time for me to start having some fun!"

A previous manager of mine gave me a copy of this article one day. She stated that she thought of me when she read it. I understand why. I was being a "pain in the butt" and though she was no longer directly in charge of my career, she cared enough to enlighten me to my current situation -- in a not so subtle way. I am glad that she cared enough to enlighten me -- again...

My career took a right turn, figuratively and directly, shortly after that. I was told to find another job (though within the company still). I ended up out moving out of the environment in which I had become a "pain in the butt" and got a fresh start somewhere else. My attitude changed completely. I was somewhere new. I didn't have the baggage on my back, nor were my peers and co-workers carrying any on their shoulders for me. I could offer my services to those that needed them, but because I was now the new guy, I wasn't perhaps so bold.

I've continued to learn a lot in my new job (just passed the two-year mark), and to share that knowledge with others who are very receptive to my knowledge and skills. I continue to read Dilbert occasionally, but it's just not as funny anymore when he's not sitting right next to me.

I still carry that article around with me, and have even shared copies of it with a few other co-workers who had drifted away from having fun.

In less than one week, I will have made it through 14 years with my current employer. Not bad for a tech job. Thanks to all of my co-workers who saw something in me worth keeping around. Oh yeah, one more thing. JN: I think I am having fun now! Thanks!

What was the best advice you've received? Leave a comment.

Then there was this...

Right after I wrote the last post, I happened across this one...

(warning NSFW)



Thankfully, these over-the-top officers are very few and far between. I live in a place where, so far, I've not heard of, or witnessed anything like this thankfully! In fact, I often stop and just say, "Thanks" when I see an officer. They often times will sit at the the end of our street watching for "red light runners." I know that often times their job is a thankless one, so I do my part to change that a little.

Wish I could have seen the final ending to this one, though...

Being right can cost you!

So many of us take the easy way through life. We try surgery over diet and exercise. We cheat instead of studying hard. We pay a little extra instead of researching for the best deal or finding a coupon. We drive a car 1/2 a block to a store instead of walking or taking a bike. We refuse to show a Circuit City "exit guard" our receipt because we're not required by law to do so.

No, wait. Most of us would show the receipt because that's the easier way out -- a small inconvenience. But not Michael Amor Righi. This guy decided to take a stand. He'd done nothing wrong and he was being subject to an unwarranted search. He wasn't mean about it. He just answered "No thank you," when asked if they could examine his receipt. Oh what a tangled mess that led to, though -- including arrest (you gotta read that part!). You can read the whole story on his blog starting here.

He'd done a little homework and chose his words wisely, but he did nothing illegal. I heard this story on the radio the other day and got worked up just listening to it. This is a guy who was smart enough, bold enough, confident enough to know when to say "No." He knew exactly what his boundaries were (thought he learned an awful lot after the fact as well). He knew what his rights were. He knew what he was getting himself into -- at least up to the part where he was actually arrested! He chose to take a stand against the erosion of our liberties. He fought the big corporation. He fought the law, and the law ... Well there is not really a winner in this situation. He took a stand for the apathetic rest of us, and came out about $10k short for doing nothing wrong... but at least they expunged his arrest record.

This little act may not change the world, or even things at the Brooklyn, Ohio Circuit City, but maybe the press it has generated will at least make people think again about what rights they have and cherish as American citizens -- and which ones they're willing to cede to take the easy way out.

(p.s. I don't suggest trying this at home without a law degree and a sizable legal fund lying in wait.)

Shadows and Light

When you hear someone say that someone has incredible hands, you usually think of a "well manicured female," a "surgeon," a "masseuse," etc. Not in even in the back of my mind would I have though of a "shadow puppet artist."

Raymond Crowe is self-described as "Australia's only unusualist." I don't care what you call it, this guys is amazing -- artistic, talented, funny, and famous. I am certainly not the first to post this video of his performance at the 2007 Helpmann Awards, but add me to the list of his admirers.

Speed test

So maybe the Global Index is fine on the Internet Traffic Report site, but your Internet connection is still crawling... How about a few speed test sites:

http://www.giganews.com/test_connect.html



http://myspeed.visualware.com/

Internet Traffic Report

Every day in my car, coming and going to work I hear traffic reports on the radio. It's what we need to stay away from traffic jams, or at least anticipate delays. Some times it is more voyeuristic, just knowing that there are other people stuck in the jams and not me.

There is a site that will give you traffic reports for the Internet -- after all, it's just the same as our interstates. Transportation vehicles (packets) travel down a path (Internet circuit) from one place (host) to another (destination), dealing with congestion (bandwidth), accidents (collisions, dropped packets), and deadlines (TTL), etc.

The Internet Traffic Report, compiles ping response times throughout the Internet and then scores the results from 0 to 100. A little aggregation and averaging later, and you're got an Index score for each continent. The higher the score, the faster the traffic. The lower the score, the more frustrated the users become. The site also gives you trends (speeding up, or slowing down), as well as which routers are behaving poorly (or well).

Men as Role Models

I'm a man. I'm a parent. I'm a dad. I've worked in a day care. I teach two-year olds at church. I play with my children and others. Before we had kids of our own, my wife and I took balloons to the local mall's play pit for other children to bounce around and play with.

I'd like to think of those things as helping to make me a role model for my own kids, and for other kids as well. To some, though, it makes me a potential predator.

I struggle with this one. I guess I fall into the same trap as many other people when I tend to feel safer if my children are talking to a female stranger than to a male stranger (always within eye sight in either case). Maybe it's because men look more ominous strictly by their physical characteristics. More rugged. More strong. More threatening. Versus the more laid back, primped, softer image portrayed by most women. I'm not a psychiatrist and I've not seen any studies, but it makes sense to me. Add to that the real statistics about who predators are, and the cards are stacked against those of us of the male persuasion.

Jeff Zaslow, from the Wall Street Journal, wrote a couple of articles related to this recently. The first one, Are Are We Teaching Our Kids To Be Fearful of Men? talks about what we're teaching our kids about males. The second one, Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope With Being Cast as Predators, talks about how us guys have to limit ourselves lest we be labeled as potential predators. This certainly does nothing to aid all of you women out there asking us to be more open and to express our feelings.

It's a fine line, I know -- on both sides of the sword. The only way for us guys to reverse the stigma is to show that we can be nurturing and loving with little ones and not be stalking our prey at the same time. That might not sit right with some. You know what though? I don't care. Those that I care about how they perceive me, will see the real me and not a predator.

On the other hand, I too need to deal with how I treat and teach my little ones to treat unknown men. The Stranger Danger posting I made just the other day was about a woman, not a man. But that was pure chance. Had it been a man that had given my child candy, would I have felt differently. If I'm to be honest with myself, reluctantly, I'd have to say, "Yes." I don't like that, but, "Yes. "

I teach my kids to look past someone's appearance, their speech impediments, their skin color, their clothing taste, etc. Look at their inside character, not their outside character I teach them. But looks can be deceiving both ways.

I guess I need to take a few lessons on character myself... for all of man-kind.

You can do better than that!

I don't remember where I saw this one link to, but if you're ready to make yourself a little (or a lot) better, this is the place to start. Priscilla Palmer has created a very thorough list of personal development sites. There are over sites for everyone and the list is growing! Don't go overboard though. Pick a few to review and then go back in a day or to for the next selection. Don't want to change so fast that no one knows who you are! :-)

Those guys at Fedex sure are busy

I came across this testament to Fedex's speed and reliability from Presurfer today. Very reliable those Fedex guys...

Embedded music from Deezer/BlogMusik

I've had various problems with the embedded music that I've been trying lately. The service appears to be up and down. It's been down enough that I'll look for an alternative. Sorry for those of you that thought there was something wrong on your side. If you've got a suggestion for an embedded player, let me know.