Life Lessons

A major life lesson was reinforced for my daughter (and us) this past weekend.

Radio Disney was conducting one of their D-Tour shows at a local Ikea store in the area. The local Disney station brings their road show equipment and sets up stage in front of the store and invites kids (and adults) to take part in games to win prizes provided by either Disney or Ikea in this case. My daughter and youngest son both participated in a little lip-synch activity for a chance to win a $100 Ikea gift card. My daughter also was picked to participate in three other events (a hula hoop contest and a Disney version of hot potato and one more that I can't remember). My daughter is always excited at events like this, but we've raised her right and she recognizes that she isn't always going to win and that she should be happy for those that do win. During the events, she took time to cheer on the other contestants and congratulate each of the winners. Not bad for a 9 year old.

Anyway, on the last contest, someone else won and the show was over… Except for the grand prize of the day – a prize basket, including a 5 pack of tickets to see Aly & AJ and Corbin Bleu (very popular Disney artists) in concert locally, and an entry into the national drawing to fly to Chicago and see them as well. We didn't win that prize, but the girl that did win the prize had already won a four pack of tickets for the same concert earlier in one of the contests. She (with a little help from her mom, probably), decided that 9 tickets were too many and that she needed to share. Because of the enthusiasm and support that my daughter had shown during the event, she gave 4 of the tickets to us! My daughter was speechless. She could still scream, but she was speechless. ☺ Should be a great show!

My youngest, for his 5 seconds of lip-synching (and couple of minutes of dancing with his sister), won the Ikea gift card too! "He" opted for a new "big-boy" dresser to go with his room which is being redecorated this fall.

We all had a great time, the kids got some exercise (and sun – it was hot!), and we walked away with some enforcement of a very important life lesson…

Unlikely pair?

There are somethings that go together. Ketchup and mustard. Baseball and bat. Cat and dog (ok, that one's questionable). Other things are not obvious pairs. Take for instance an elderly woman in a brand new hot red Ford Mustang convertible.

The other day, that's exactly what I saw. I literally did a double take. Then I started trying to come up with a rational reason for this pairing.

Maybe she won it in a raffle (you know old people enter those things all the time).

Maybe her grandson was stuck at school and needed a ride home and because she didn't have a car of her own, she had to borrow his car to go pick him up (but if he had a car, how'd he get to school in the first place?)

Maybe she was a Ford exec who didn't take the buyout. (or did and bought a Mustang)

Maybe she was a do-gooder chasing a bank robber and she had to commandeer the first available car (she was driving fast enough...maybe plausible).

Maybe she just needed to relive childhood memories. Maybe her first car was a Mustang. (2007-1964 = 43 year life of brand + 18 years when she got her first car would make her... 61... She looked older.)

Maybe she is just an avid tanner and was really only 35.

I'm not trying to deny anyone their enjoyment of a cool, fast car. It just looked a little out of place.

What other rationalizations can you think of? What other unlikely pairs have you seen recently?

Parenting is...

A little privacy please...

So you're posting an ad on Craigslist, or meeting someone at a bar, or filling out surveys and you need to give your phone number, but you don't really want to. What do you do?

Well, you could head on over to Numbr and get a FREE, auto-expiring, forwarded phone number in your own area code (or another if you want people to think you're living somewhere else). You can set the expiration to an hour from how, a day from now, a week or a month from now. You can also select other options like getting an email that lists your incoming call history.

This service is free during their beta.

What's your legacy?

A very self-important college freshman attending a recent football game, took it upon himself to explain to a senior citizen sitting next to him why it was impossible for the older generation to understand his generation.

"You grew up in a different world, actually an almost primitive one," the student said, loud enough for many of those nearby to hear.

"The young people of today grew up with television, jet planes, space travel, man walking on the moon, our spaceships have visited Mars. We have nuclear energy, electric and hydrogen cars, computers with DSL, BPS, light-speed processing...and," pausing to take another drink of beer.

"You're right, son. We didn't have those things when we were young, so we invented them. Now, you arrogant little brat, what are you doing for the next generation?"

The applause was resounding. I love senior citizens.

>>

I ran across this anecdote the other day and started to wonder... What do you want people to remember you for when you're gone?

The benefits of Spam

No, I'm not talking about the ham wannabe, I'm talking about the e-mail spam, and chain letters, etc that circulate around the world several times a day in periodic cycles. The most recent one that made it to my inbox was titled "Two moons on 27th August 2007." I'm a pretty big skeptic, but because it came from someone I trust (or appeared to), I decided to read on (I have a really good multi-layered anti-virus/malware solution so if it makes it through Google's spam filters from someone I know, I feel pretty safe).

This particular email purports that Mars will look as large and as bright as the moon in a few weeks. I'm a huge science fan, so I saw holes in this right away, but validated my thoughts on a respected debunking site. Then I got to thinking... As I was reading the article, I realized that I was learning something new. And gaining interest in something that I really hadn't thought about for a while -- in this case Mars and the other planets. My interest was piqued a while ago with all the Pluto ruckus (he was robbed!), but after that, nary another thought... Until now.

My wife likes to keep the kids interested in school-eque subjects as well as pass the summer a little faster by picking a topic/theme for the week. Each week they try to work in something special for that theme. This week I think is transportation. Another week was animals. It's been friendship one week already too. Maybe we'll need to make sure that the planets (and dwarf planets) are covered one time as well.

As to the debunking task - when you receive an email like this, especially one that tells you to "forward it to everyone in your address book" or the like, copy a small, but relevant portion (the subject line, or a distinct portion of the email) and head on over to Snopes and paste into the search engine and prepare yourself for a schooling.

Those Sexy English Pepsi Girls...

This UK Pepsi site allows you to enter a few details (and a pic) that are incorporated into a sexy tattoo video. Pretty out there advertising...

More iGoogle tabs

I just noticed that we're no longer confined to the 6 (?) tabs we were limited to on iGoogle. I've been able to add more than 20 tabs! Thanks for listening Google! (I'm sure it wasn't just me, but I did submit this as a request to Google shortly after they added the tabbed functionality). Then again... Google knows all about me... :-)

As long as you're listening, how about putting the most obvious (or utilized) word at the top of the replace list in Blogger's spell checker... Seems like it's always number 2 or 3 on the list.

What's Justin up to now?

This guy's living his life on-line - in the raw for everyone to see. He's broadcasting his life real time on the Net. Remember The Truman Show? In that movie, Jim Carey played someone whose life was broadcast 24x7 to the world. Everyone was in on it but him. This time the tables are turned - Justin is in on it! And he wants you in on it too! It's all Justin, all the time!

Got Kids?

If you've got kids, then you've got to get Radio Disney. Listen on-line or on the AM dial on your radio. Stations in many states.

Big Spy

Digg is a site that allows members to post links to interesting articles for others to vote on. If someone likes an article, they "Digg" it and vote it more popular. The articles that get the most Diggs end up on the front page of the site. The site is mostly geared toward technology articles (and those that are of interest to techno-geeks).

One of the other things that's neat about the site is it's recent addition of visualization tools. The tools (Stack, Swarm, Big Spy and Arc) are fun to watch. As each transaction occurs on the Digg site, a graphical representation is displayed on the visualization screen. With Big Spy, each article title gets inserted into the top of a falling tower as someone Diggs it, moving the other titles down in the stack. Much like Tag Clouds (see the one on the right side of my site) that change the font size of the tags depending on their frequency of use, Big Spy changes the font size based on the relative number of Diggs each article has received. More popular articles are in a much larger font that newer, or less popular titles.

It's a good way to stay on top of some techno-news, or just watch the visualization.

Looking for something?

Don't forget that you can use the labels on the right side of this site to see groups of related posts. Click on Sites to see blog entries that mention specific sites. Click on game to see the entries that talk about games.

You can also use the tag cloud for the same purpose.

You can also peruse the blog archive by date.

Don't forget to subscribe to the RSS feeds so you don't miss anything! :-)

Interesting word association game

Here's a little word association game called Human Brain Cloud. Basically, it throws a word at you and you tell it the first thing that comes to mind. Over time, it will build a network of interconnected words and phrases that you can view. Not sure that it has a real use other than scientific analysis (or a fun way to pass the time), but be forewarned - it can be addictive. As can Google's Image Labeler.

Way cool geeky graphics demo

Microsoft's Photosynth Technology

Sites Sites Sites

Www.servicetycoon.com - A service industry-type modern day Lemonade stand

http://www.blinkx.com/ - Search video, interesting interface

http://www.dafont.com/ - free fonts

http://www.lifehacker.com/ - all kinds of ways to hack your life to make it better

http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/index.php?sort=ratings&w=1280&h=1024 - Gorgeous wallpapers for your boring desktop

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/index.php - Cool Tools

http://www.incidentlog.com/lookup.pl - Crime

http://www.housingmaps.com/ - One of the original Google Maps Mashups - powered by Craigslist, this site helps you find housing, displayed on a Google Map

ZIPs

I admit that I'm a little bit of a trivia buff. (have you played the AWorldDiscovered Trivia quiz today?) One thing that always catches my eye is when I see websites, etc that lowercase ZIP code (or don't allow international Postal Codes for that matter). Most people have no idea that ZIP is really an acronym (so I guess it should be Z.I.P. code technically) for Zoning Improvement Plan. It was an attempt to optimize the mail delivery in the US. It essentially broke the US into sectors that could be coded into a 5 digit code. That code can be easily decoded as well. This zipdecode site shows a cool way to present the ever decreasing size of the ZIP codes. Type in the first digit of the ZIP code and it'll show you the area of the US that code covers. Add the second digit and you see the sub-section of the first are, etc all the way down to the specific city that the code covers. There are other sites that will show you what area a ZIP code covers, but this is the most visually appealing.

The Internet is back up

Sorry for any inconveniences.

Where'd the unicorns go?

One of the horses that my daughter fell in love with while we were at the Kentucky Horse Park recently was a miniature white horse (no, not a pony). I made the comment after seeing the horse that it looked like they had sawed off his unicorn horn. He had an abrasion on his forehead right where the horn would've been. The mystique of the miniature horse and its loving nature and white color (I dunno, for some reason I always picture unicorns as white) just fed into this fantasy. My daughter (and even both sons) were quick to point out that "Unicorns aren't real, Daddy." But just because you've never seen one, doesn't mean they don't exist...

While relating this story at my dad's the other day, my uncle pulled from the back recesses of his mind a long-ago song about what happened to all of the unicorns. Written by famous children's author of Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein, and made popular by the Irish Rovers in the 1960's, The Unicorn Song tells of the fate of the unicorns - they were too busy playing to get on the Ark!

The Internet is down...

Here's the latest update.

Not feeling like myself today

Ever have one of those days that you really just don't feel right? You don't really want to talk to anyone. Or maybe you just wish you were someone else for a day...

Now, through the power of soundbites, you can! Someone (many someones probably) have created a HUGE collection of celebrity sound clips that you can use for whatever purpose you decide. With well over 100 collections, you can be a different person each day! Pick a character - maybe Sylvester Stalone one morning followed by a little Al Pacino in the afternoon, topped off by some Futurama before dinner, finally winding down with a little classic Looney Tunes and Saturday Night Live before bed.

Of course if you want someone else to do all the work, you could listen to the prank calls section which uses these soundboards to make prank calls.

Enjoy!

Presumed guilty until proven innocent

I'm sure that I'm not alone in this tale. On the way to work this morning I was driving along minding my own business when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a police car sitting ready to exit a parking lot. First things first - I slowed down. Never mind that I was already going the speed limit. Next I checked to see whether he pulled out behind me or was still looking for someone. Naturally he pulled out right behind me. I checked my speed again. This was a two lane road I was on, so when he entered the road in the other lane, I figured I was safe.

Then he pulled over into my lane.

He continued to follow me for 2-3 miles. Each turn I made, he made. Finally I pulled into the center turn lane to enter my work parking lot. I checked my rear view again. As he slid on by me, I felt a wave or relief flow over me. I pulled into the parking lot and went on my way.

I had not done anything wrong (and don't have any warrants that I know about), but still I slowed down and thought I might be pulled over. How frustrating it is that we have such fear of police, or being caught at something that we pull back from whatever we're doing for no reason. How many times have you closed your browser when your boss walked up behind you?

Not So Easy

Ok, so things are not easy as they seemed... Still no redirect. I used Google/GoDaddy for my domain purchase/Registry and set the redirect via GoDaddy to the existing site, but things still get pointed to the Google (partner) Start page. Gonna need to research things a little more I guess. I've waited long enough for things to propagate, but still nothing... I've searched the help forums and tried the suggestions, but there is something still not right. I might have to break down and contact support...

Brave New World

A long time ago, I put up a small web page for my mother-in-law to promote her rental log cabin in North Carolina. It was really just something to point people to who wanted to see the house, give some contact information and a few other things. Pretty basic HTML, hosted on her ISP site with a .../~name address. Pretty cumbersome if you had to type in the full URL, but most people were going to be coming to the site via links from Chamber of Commerce sites, local community sites, etc and she didn't want to really invest in things until she saw how things moved along.

Well, it's been 6 or 7 years without more than a few changes to the site -- more comments to her guestbook, a couple of price increases and links to other local attractions is about it.

Tonight I took the plunge. I registered a domain for her. A true www.com domain. I've still got to play a bunch to get that part all set up, but then the next step is to redo her page as well. I'm going to try to do this all in the background and surprise her (she has already said that she doesn't have the time to read this blog, so I'm safe there). I'm not changing the old site and in fact right now I'm forwarding the new domain to her old site so even that's transparent (as soon as it propagates). Not sure how things will come together, but at the very least it will give me something else to stuff my brain with and maybe an easier domain for her to hand out. Once the other domain "got out there" she didn't want to have to reprint business cards, change web referral sites, etc. This way it'll be gradual. She can take advantage of the benefits when she wants and not worry -- at least that's the intent.

We'll see where this goes...

Branding

No, not on cows and horses. I'm talking about the brands that companies spend billions upon billions of dollars a year to develop, market, keep, and monetize. It's an important thing...you'd think.

I the last several days, I've been witness to some severe brand erosion. By erosion, I mean the most important thing of all to those companies -- brand loyalty. Loyalty means business and companies are in business to make money (though some actually have other motives, good, or bad, as well).

On our vacation, I had the occasion to stay with my family at a hotel who's current marketing tag like is "Look again" according to their website. We've stayed at this chain of hotels on many occasions in the past with pleasant experiences. When we travel, we like to just stop when we're ready and find a hotel at that exit. We're not particularly loyal to one brand all the time, but there are certain brands that come to mind and are on our short list to check for room availability when we stop. This was one of those.

Through their share of the billions and billions of dollars spent, and through past experiences, we have a certain set of expectations for our stay at this hotel chain. Suffice it to say, we were more than a little let down this time.

I just finished sending off a three page letter to the General Manager and the corporate offices detailing my displeasure. Yes, I gave them a chance to address the issues while on-site, and yes, they comp'd my stay, and no, I don't expect anything more from them. Except one thing -- that they take my complaints and suggestions to heart and do something about them. If I have a bad customer service experience and I don't tell someone about it, that's my fault. If no one tells them, they don't know and so they can't do anything about it. If, on the other hand, I tall them and they don't do anything about it, then it's their fault for losing me, and others as a customer.

Just last night, at an "arch" restaurant around the corner, we had some pretty bad service -- long lines, slow service, expired food, employees smoking at the customer entrance, dirty floor, etc. I took the time to mention my concerns to the manager, who, while she listened intently, gave no indication that she was really interested in what I had to say or that she would do anything about it. Unfortunately, their customer service hot line has the same attitude, and I just haven't' gotten around to looking up their District Manager, or someone else to take my complaints to.

There are a handful of companies that will never see another dime of my money if I can help it, and I spread my stories to others who will listen.

On the other hand, we were very pleasantly surprised by another choice of hotels that we stopped at. Drury Inns and Suites in Columbus, OH was incredible. Clean, new, friendly (not just professional), great value for the price (we paid more for a heck of a lot less during our trip), safe, nice pool... Everything we needed to erase our memory of the other hotel. Drury doesn't spend a lot on advertising (at least not that I've seen), but I'll be doing some word-of-mouth advertising for them free of charge. That's what people do when they experience good customer service. I've told no less than 5 people since we've been back -- plus all 3 of you that read my blog :-)

In a time with high unemployment, you'd think that people would want to work hard to keep their jobs. In a time with so much competition for everything, companies should want to do what they can to keep current customers and gain new ones. I just haven't seen that happening enough recently. It's a shame. Did I mention what a great experience we had at the Drury Inn and Suites in Columbus, Ohio?

How much would it take?

Who to believe

I'm not much into using professional movie reviewers to pick my movies. I'm must more tempted by the trailers (that usually give away half the film) and by the actors or what my friends and family say. A lot of people though swear by the critics. That's why they're still writing columns, blogs, books, etc. I decided to check out this movie reviewer site that pairs your interests with a number of known movie critics to help find a critic with similar tastes as yours. The more you rank, the better the match accuracy. In my case, I think I'll stick to my friends (I'd only seen a few of the movies it asked me to rate), but maybe you'll have better luck.

Not bad...

I could drive for miles and miles without paying any attention to red Saturn SL1 models on the road. Then as soon as I bought one, they were all over the place. Same thing with my next car. I consider myself much more of a follower than a leader with most things, so I know that it's not me setting the trend (the world would be a much scarier place if I was the trendsetter). I'm not sure the name of this phenomenon, but it happens to me all the time. If I'm looking to buy something that I can't seem to find anywhere, and yet, somehow finally do...the next week, it shows up in every store I enter...

Having written that, I don't remember how it ties in to my real story, but... :-)

Every parent thinks that their children are special. They're smarter than everyone else's child. They much cuter than everyone else's children. They're much more polite than everyone else's child. Oh, yeah. That was the point I was going to make. That phenomenon doesn't always happen...

During our two week vacation, we went to a lot of places where there were throngs of children -- parks, hotels, restaurants, malls... We were able to see (and interact with ) children from many states, walks of life, religions, ages, and race. These observations, melded with those I've made over the years since having our children, have just served to reinforce my belief that my wife and I have done a pretty darn good job raising our kids. Sure they have their moments (that may last a few more moments than we'd like), and sure they act like the other kids once in a while, but on the whole, I think that they're pretty good. I know that all (or most anyway)parents say that, but someone's gotta be average, and I say that our kids are above. I've had a lot of other people that my kids interact with say the same things -- how well behaved they are, how polite they are, etc, etc.

I try to remember this during their "moments," but sometimes it slips. The moments pass and are quickly replaced by uproarious laughter, giggles, etc (do you know how hard it is to discipline a child that makes you laugh milk out your nose?!). For as often as the kids seem to really dislike each other (or us) at times, they are also quick to point out how bored they are when one of them is not around. I guess that's what siblings are all about.

A final note of public thanks to my wonderful wife, who has taken on the bulk of the burden and deserves the bulk of the credit for shaping our kids into the wonderful kids that they really are. And when they read this - a special thanks to them for being those wonderful kids.

Don't forget to remember the good moments with your kids...

Great Things

Every truly great accomplishment is at first impossible. - unknown

Round and Round

The other tour stop we made on the way home Friday was at Carousel Magic in Mansfield, OH. One of only two factories in the world that will build or reconstruct a carousel from the ground up (the other is in Mansfield as well, but doesn't do tours), this tour talked about the history of carousels (originally used as training for jousters), the style changes (from small horses only, to larger more ornate equines, to the free-for-all styles of today), the construction (hollow casket style saves a lot of weight), and the intricate quality assurance steps that they take (look for shadows). My daughter even got to try her hand at chiseling a little. Like the lessons learned at the Whistle stop, I think that we all have a new appreciation for the beauty of the manufacturing process...

Note to self: remember to always take twice as much cash as you think that you'll need. We had to change our route home to avoid the tollways because we didn't even have enough cash on us for that...

Whistle while they work

Friday was tour day. I'd been prepping the kids with episodes of How's it Made on Discovery Science Channel while we were in Atlanta. Using the FactoryToursUSA site I mentioned awhile ago, we found a couple of places to stop on the way home that conducted tours of manufacturing companies. First on the list was the American Whistle Corporation in Columbus, OH. They are the only manufacturer of metal whistles in the US.

The owner gave a very informative presentation in the factory about how they make whistles. He made a comment at one point about how a lot of people, especially the young people these tours were for, think that there is a giant machine that you pump raw materials into one end and it spits out the finished product from the other end. He dispelled that belief pretty well as he showed us the different stations and tasks that need to happen to turn a sheet of metal into a finished whistle. He talked about everything from the importance of recycling the scraps from the die press machines, to the importance of having a whistle handy while outdoors, to the fact that they sell 30,000 whistles a year to the NY Police department. This factory (incredibly smaller than I'd imagined) was/will be featured on John Ratzenberger's Made in America.

I think it went over pretty well. And the kids each got a whistle of their own at the end of the tour. Shhh...I might have to accidentally lose them later. :-p

Cincinnati Zoo

Today's agenda included a visit to yet another zoo. We hit the Cincinnati zoo. The draw for this zoo was my wife's desire to see the new two-month-old Sumatran rhino. This little guy marked his entry into the world by breaking a record. Harapan's mom Emi became the first Sumatran rhino in history to produce three calves in captivity, breaking her very own record. One of the claims to fame of the Sumatran rhino is a very hairy body. It was quite a site to actually see the little guy running around all over the enclosure -- full of energy!

The rest of the zoo was very well laid out, again not a lot of extra walking. Thank goodness! This was another 90+ day with high humidity! A baby gorilla, a wonderful "wings of wonder" presentation, a pretty cool manatee, and a three-toed sloth that was less than a foot away from us made this yet another enjoyable zoo visit.

We listened to the trainers at the elephant exhibit for quite a while. It amazed my wife how non-chalant they were with the three female elephants that were in the pen with them. These ladies were well behaved and quite fun to see interact with the handlers. The male will be in his own little hide-away. Apparently he has a little too much testosterone to be around the other elephants (or humans)...

Oh, yeah. My daughter and 3 year old got to handle live snakes as well! My middle boy bowed out of that experience for some reason. He's all into bugs, and frogs, bodily functions/noises and other things boys, but not live snakes. Go figure!

Flash! Boom!

After we finished up at the Kentucky Horse Park today, we barely made it back into our hotel before the storms hit. Wave after wave of very intense storms passed over during the next several hours. It was mostly cloudy, though, so most of the flashes just illuminated the clouds in the sky as opposed to showing themselves as streaks raining down from the heavens.

After we got the kids down, I took a few moments to sit on the front porch and watch the storms move over. Watching storms, particularly those with heavy lightening content has been a relaxation activity for me for quite a while. As long as we didn't have to be driving in it, I really enjoyed them this trip. While the big show was happening high in the sky, this being the 4th and all, a smaller variety was taking shape a little closer to the ground. Between godly flashes of bright white, red, orange, purple, blue, yellow and others punctuated the sky. At times, the brightness of the colors competed with Mother Nature; the rapport of the fireworks echoed the boom of the thunder.

After a while, I retreated to my room to catch some shut-eye. As I searched for something on TV to help, another wave of flashes pulsed outside the window. Another hour of fireworks -- some man-made, others not -- kept me awake and amused before I finally drifted off to sleep.

I saw some new fireworks that I had not seen before and I loved the finale, but those kind of fireworks come along only once a year. Mother nature keeps me company several times a month. That's what friends are for.

Kentucky Horse Park

We decided that on this trip, we would do a special attraction for each kid. The Ripley Aquarium was for the older boy, the zoo for the younger boy, and this one was for the girl. We expected to see a well planned, well maintained attraction that she would enjoy. We were wrong -- she was FLOORED! The whole park was incredible. She enjoyed everything -- from the miniature horses (both mare and foal, and no they were not ponies), to the champion race horses here to retire (Da Hoss, Cigar ($185 shy of a $10M career!),Western Dreamer, John Henry) to the statues, paintings, competitions, and the Parade of Breeds. It was a really well done presentation and a very enjoyable, though HOT, visit.

Atlanta Zoo

After our week in NC, we headed to Atlanta to visit a friend of my wife. She has kids the same age as ours and the two of them have been Internet friends since they became pregnant with their first.

One hot spot in the Atlanta area is the Zoo Atlanta. Our family loves zoos. My wife's husband commented, "Well, that will take you a half-hour," when he heard about our outing. We spent six hours there!

The zoo is laid out well, with minimal, non-productive walking (where you don't get to see new animals along the way). Although most zoos in the US have pretty much the same collection of animals, each has their own claim to fame (read: "marketing plug"). Zoo Atlanta's happens to be a newborn panda cub. One of only four born in captivity in Zoos in the US if I recall correctly. The crowds are so great for this attraction, the zoo rations out tour slots like Disney World except for the last couple of hours of the day. They also have a Panda Cam that you can use to watch the wee one (though apparently only zoo hours -- poor marketing in my opinion).

Though the temperature was a rather hot 93 degrees and the humidity high as well, all in all, it was a very cool visit (especially after a trip to Hank's Ice Cream Parlor across the street).

Privacy

One thing that has taken a little getting used to is the assumption of privacy when you live out in the woods. At the cabin, the nearest neighbor is about a mile away and there were no blinds on the windows. No need, right? Surrounded by trees and no external lights save the moon. When there is no light of the moon, there is no light period. For city dwellers, this assumption is still a little disconcerting. My mother-in-law did cave and add blinds for us city folk in the rental unit, but her living quarters are still open to the world. I guess that's why she moved there in the first place, though. Wouldn't make sense to move 11 hours away from home to be in the mountains that you love and then block them out for 1/3 of her life.

Nature Calls

My youngest got to experience (and contribute to) nature in a whole new way this trip. He's been potty trained for quite a while, but at his age, when you gotta go, you gotta go. I'd say his bladder must not be very big, but I know differently. We try to remember to have him use the facilities before we leave anywhere so that he's not stuck somewhere when he has to go, but after a construction slowdown the other day, we found ourselves no where near anyplace for him to go. Being a boy... :-)

His first experience was at the side of the road somewhere on I-75 southbound (have you seen the layers of rocks (shale?) they have carved out there?). Then natured called again way down at the bottom of my mother-in-law's mountain -- way too far to quickly hike back up.

He still get the biggest kick out of these events. Now we just need to make sure that this is not an acceptable alternative as he grows up (in public anyway)...

Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies

Another stop on our trip this year was Gatlinburg, TN, home of among MANY other things, Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies. It boasts the longest underwater aquarium tunnel in the United States. In addition to the tunnel, they have a HUGE variety of water life, exhibits, etc. I had always equated Ripley's with the strange and unusual, and I guess this is not your ordinary aquarium, but if differs in its scale and ability to showcase so many different creatures, not a Believe It or Not atmosphere.

The Flats

Remember my comments about all of the S-curves in the mountains? It's apparently kind of a joke to the locals as well. So much so that they named the 1.5 mile section of straight road between a couple of mountains by the cabin "The Flats." Those of us that live outside of the mountains need something just a little bit longer to qualify... :-)

Ghost Light

One of my youngest son's favorite movie is Disney's Cars. He's watched it so many times, he now knows it all and so we actually use it to help him fall asleep (he doesn't have to concentrate on what's next - he already knows, so his brain allows him to shut down). On the extras on the DVD is a movie short about a Ghost Light. Tow-Mater is afraid of and chased by the "Ghost Light" in a prank played on him by the rest of the residents of Radiator Springs.

My Mother-in-law mentioned a southern phenomenon that she apparently missed when she was up visiting us this summer -- Blue Ghost Fireflies. As she described the always-on, blue glowing flies that descend the mountains in a wavy procession, hover at the bottom in a lush carpet, then just as mysteriously ascend back up the mountain only once a year, I thought of the "mystery" of the Ghost light in Cars. I wrote it off as mountain folklore, but I guess I was wrong. Seems strange things really do happen in the mountains...

BOOM...1...2...3...4...5...FLASH!

One thing that we saw a lot of on the trip was lightning. It's rained at some point almost every day so far. I learned as a kid that you can count the time between a boom of thunder and the associated flash of lightning to determine how far away the bolt struck. I couldn't remember the timing, though. Back to the Web for an answer. Apparently it's a count of five. I could have done the math (186,000 feet per second, or was that miles? Now was that the speed of light or of sound?), but I already admitted that I'm not smarter than a fifth grader. (Have you been playing my trivia contest?)

Southern Living

Southern living is a lot different from the northern life I'm used to. I've grown up in the Midwest all my life. Not to disparage that life, it's just a lot different.

Place names for some reason struck me as funny. Places like "Greesy Creek," "Seldom Seen Lake Road," "Betsy Mountain," "Grits Restaurant," "Butts on the Creek BBQ," "City of Joe," "City of Trust," "City of Luck," and "Piggly Wiggly Grocery Store" are a few that come to mind. Those are just not names I can imaging seeing on a sign in my state. And I'm not sure I want to know what "Rat Cheese" is. :-}

Carolina Colors

I'm sure that there is a color scheme for the colleges in North Carolina (I'm not much of a sports fan), but the colors that stick in my mind are red and green.

The dirt down there not brown, or fertile black like I'm used to -- it's RED. Actually it's red-orange. And it seems to stick to clothes more than the brown dirt I'm used to. I associate the red dirt with clay up by me, so I'm still amazed that vegetation grows in the stuff, but it does. And that brings me to my other color memory -- Green. Lots of green. There is so much green in the trees, the kudzu, even the grass. It's hard to tell that most of the counties we pass through have received not even half of their normal rainfall year-to-date. Some are even in serious risk of wildfires. Couldn't tell by the plant life we saw on our trip.

NC or Bust

Every year or two we take a trip to North Carolina. My mother-in-law owns a rental log cabin there about 3500 feet up in the mountains, a mile and a half off the Appalachian Trail. It's a long trip, but worth it.

Living in the mountains poses certain restrictions on road building -- mainly, there's only so much that you can economically alter Mother Nature. This means that the road bend to her whim, not the other way around. It's a kind of game driving with so many S-curves for the last hour or so as we approach her property. Last hour of driving, but that only equates to about 15 miles because it's soooo curvy. I thought about counting the S curve signs from the time we enter North Carolina to her cabin, but not in time to do it this trip. Maybe next trip.

The other thing that comes with driving in the mountains is height -- something I'm afraid of - especially when you're only a few feet from a couple-of-hundred-foot drop off. I guess to be fair, half the time I was on the inside of the curves hugging the mountains, but the other half I was hugging the door handle.

Did I mention it's a long trip? It's about 10-11 hours if you drive straight through. With three kids, we break it into two days for all of our sake. We also try to keep the kids occupied as best we can. The week before we left, we hit the bookstore and happened upon some Tamagotchi toys. They are those little key chain pets that with constant attention metamorphose from tiny "babies" to adult LCD characters that mate and produce offspring. The "owners" need to feed, play with and clean up after, and train (via praise and timeout sessions) the pets in similar fashion to the baby dolls that the high school Parenting classes use. These little buggers come with a voice too -- a little multi-variable chirpy tone. I decided to name the sound the "Tamagotchi Crickets." I admit to helping parent the little creatures occasionally (one of the games you play with them is kinda addictive). My wife actually had one several years ago (before kids) and managed to keep him alive for a couple of weeks.

More vacation blog posts soon...

Small steps, big rewards

I once read a story about a salesman. Vacuum cleaners I think. He was a new salesman learning the ropes of door-to-door sales. He'd practiced his spiel over and over again in front of the mirror. He had all the product specs down cold, and was very personable. He knew that this was the way to make his fortune.

He spent the first several weeks under the tutelage of a more senior salesman. He listened intently as his senior extolled the virtues of the products -- more power, quieter than the competitors, etc. As he listened, he would pick up bits and tips that he could use when he was on his own. He grew more confident with every visit the pair made.

Finally it was time for him to strike out on his own. He approached the first house on the first day. He knocked on the door and greeted the homeowner pleasantly. After a very brief dialog, the homeowner stated that they were not in the market for a new vacuum and he went on his way. The next several houses ended the same way -- "Thank you, but no thanks." He made several more stops that day, and he did finally make a few sales.

This pattern repeated itself several times over the next few days. On occasion he'd get the chance to deliver his pitch, but more often than not, he'd be rebuffed at the door. Maybe this wasn't the job for him, he began to think. In short time, his anticipation of rejection began to show as he approached the doors of his potential clients and his highly polished pitch, soon became just another solicitor interrupting the chores of a busy housewife.

One day, between rejections, he decided to take a break at a local coffee house to try to collect his thoughts and try to figure out what he had gotten himself into. Chance placed his mentor at the same shop that day and the two began to chat about business. The Senior was in jolly spirits and cracking jokes with the waitresses as they walked by. The Junior was complaining about all the rejections and how hard he really had to work to earn his commission for a sale. It would often times take him ten houses just to make one sale. 'That's nine houses where I just waste my time," he complained. He continued for several more minutes while the Senior just sat back and absorbed with a slight hint of a grin.

The Junior finally took notice of the grin and asked the Elder, "How do you do it? I didn't see you making sales at every stop. Doesn't it bother you that you spend all that time for nothing?!"

"You're looking at it all wrong, son," he said. "You're only looking at the final sale as when you get paid. You're only making your $100 commission at one house. That's why you see the other houses as a waste of your time. Me? I see that each of those other nine houses are earning me commission as well -- $10 at a time; I just don't collect until the last house. Even if those nine reject the sale, I'm still making money from them. It's a different way of thinking."

The two finished their coffee, mostly in silence, and went on their way.

As the Junior returned to his territory, he was still thinking about what he had heard. He wasn't sure that he had bought into that philosophy yet. He approached the first house somewhat gloomy. As he began his speech, the homeowner waved him off. Instead of turning in defeat though, he reached out his hand and shook the woman's hand and thanked her. In his mind, he had just made a sale -- one that earned him his $10 commission.

How often do you look only for the big reward? How often do you ignore the deferred benefit, only looking for the immediate and tangible reward? Would your attitude be improved if you took the small gains as a reward in and of themselves? Give it a try. You might be pleasantly surprised.

A New Career

According to a co-worker this Money magazine article about new new careers sounds a lot like my job. My job may not be as full of perks as one at some profiled, but I kinda like it. I think I'll keep it for a while :-}

LinkedIn change

While perusing my Linked in account this evening, I noticed two things. First, someone wanted to add me to their network! (Thanks and you're welcome Dave. Good luck!) Second, There is now a new beta service that shows you "who" has looked at your profile in the last month and how many times your account shows up in search results in the past week. They have set the viewer/searcher display setting to "generic" by default so I can't tell who's actually looking at my profile, but it currently says someone at my company, someone at a supplier, someone in the "Entertainment Industry", someone else at another supplier, and a "Sr Account Manager" in my industry.

I know that several of the other "social networks" have added this feature a while ago (and taken some heat for it, if I recall), but to me, this is pretty cool. Everything is pretty generic so I can't trace back to a particular person, but it's nice to see that people are looking. A little bit of an ego boost.

I'm up to over 320,000 people within the friends of friends of friends circle!

I know you

Well, not you personally (though I might), but I know about you. As a visitor to my site (and almost every other site on the Web these days), certain details about your visit are being tracked so that I can improve the site for you, my readers.

I actually have multiple stats/counters on my site and get a slightly different view from each. That's the nature of statistics. What the collectively tell me about "you" is that...

• You most likely have Comcast business as your ISP provider.
• You may very well have found my site via the Blogger Nav Bar (A GREAT way to discover new blogs I might add!)
• You may have been using Google's Personalized HomePage (now re-branded iGoogle) to monitor this blog for changes.
• You've got something in common with people all over the world -- you've read my blog! (I've got stats to support visits from United States, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, Israel, Germany, Australia, Ireland, France, and the Republic of Korea but I know that I had visits from other countries before I got the stats counters installed).
• More than 1/2 of you go right to the home page at aworlddiscovered.blogger.com as opposed to linking in to an article directly.
• The vast majority of you (over 85%) are using Windows XP, with Max OS X pulling in about 13% of visitors.
• IE 6.x is the browser of choice for you, though IE 7 and Firefox also appear regularly
• More than 4 out of 5 of you have been here before. Welcome back. That means that 1 of you is a newcomer. Welcome!
• Most of you have DSL, though others are slipping through from work on T1s and T3s -- I won't tell
• Most of you only spend a couple of minutes on the site each visit, but that's OK, because you stop by almost every day.

I'll be looking at these a bit more in depth shortly, looking for interesting nuggets of value. Tonight was just a surface scratch. :-p

More Email..addresses

Well, this is actually a way to manage your email better -- if you're using Gmail, that is.

Google is a powerful beast. So powerful, that there are all sorts of features that they simply never publicize because you'd complain of information overload. This feature was describes quite a while ago by a number of Google watching sites, but I think it's worth mentioning again.

I've mentioned using anyone@mailinator.com email addresses before as a way to prevent spammers from getting your real email address and to allow you access to a doc link or some other one-time bit of information that you need to receive via email. You can make up those addresses on the fly and then use them and forget about them. But what if you just want to be able to manage the mail you want to receive a little better? True, Gmail has some pretty powerful filtering options, but did you know about these gems...?

If your email address is BobbyRoberts@gmail.com....... It's also Bobby.Roberts@gmail.com. And B.o.b.b.y.R.o.b.e.r.t.s@gmail.com and BobbyRoberts+TraceMe@gmail.com and may more combinations you probably never thought of. All of these will send mail to the same email account (but don't use these for testing. Bobby might get mad.)

Basically Gmail strips the period out of any email addresses when it determines where to deliver the mail. I had a friend at work complain that he kept getting mail for someone other than himself in his Gmail account. It was mail intended for another person with the same name. This was a very brief glitch in the way that Gmail was handing out email addresses initially that brought to light their parsing of periods. The intended recipient was xxx.yyy@gmail.com, but my friend's address was xxxyyy@gmail.com. That pesky period was stripped out for delivery and xxxyyy@gmail.com received xxx.yyy@gmail.com's mail.

So what do you do with this knowledge? Gmail doesn't differentiate email addresses that differ by only a period, but most other sites that require your email address do. So you can use this as a way to separate out mail from one source from another. Give xxx.yyy to your friends, and xxxyyy to the websites. Then set up filters in Gmail to categorize them or apply labels, or any other action.

The "plus-addressing works similarly. You can append a plus sign and another combination of valid characters after your real GMail address before the @ sign and the mail will still be delivered to you. Use xxxyyy+shopping@gmail.com for on-line purchases or xxxyyy+Amazon@gmail.com and xxxyyy@BestBuy@gmail.com to keep track of mail received about your accounts. Another neat trick using the plus-addressing is that if you give out unique "plus-addresses" to sites you think might sell your information, you can watch the email address spread. Say you use xxxyyy+website1@gmail.com and you start receiving mail from website2 at your website1 address... Bingo! Your email address has been sold (or traded, bartered, freely passed on, whatever). But since you never gave your real email address, you can simply change the filter you setup and delete that mail right away and never deal with it (or the company who sold your email address) again!

There are no winners

You don't need to know Russian to understand this one...

Matchstick video

My Father's Day gift

The ability to celebrate Father's Day is a great gift - to celebrate being a son, and to celebrate being a dad. Each year, in addition to that gift, my kids and wife create a t-shirt with the kids' hand prints on it. I can look back several years and see how their hand prints have grown in size and think about how each of the kids have grown both in body and mind over that span.

I'm at the point where when people joke about all that lies ahead for me and my children (dating, cars, peer-pressure, etc) it's not so funny anymore... It's starting to feel too real. While searching for books yesterday at a bookstore, my daughter sated that she couldn't find any books to buy to take on our vacation. Well, that wasn't entirely true. She could find books she wanted to read, but she said "they weren't the kind of books you like me to read." When questioned further, she replied "You know...Romance ones." Ah, the joys of an 9 year old. Jokes, eh. Maybe after I get through the next 10-40 years!

Happy Father's day all...

Thanks Dad!

Are you insane?

So often, when someone thinks outside of the societal norm, they are labeled "difficult," "troubled," or even in extreme cases, "insane." In the business world, these people are labeled as "risky." When someone thinks outside of the box, it's often though of the same way... Until they convince people to see their side of things. And then they're thought of as "revolutionary," "ahead of their time," and "visionary."

I once saw an ad, or clip of some kind about a young boy whose class was coloring pictures. His teacher walked up to each student and nodded in approval as she saw each student with the obligatory green-leaves tree, blue sky, green grass and yellow sun drawing. Then she came to another student who had chosen colors of his own liking to paint his picture. Pink sky, purple leaves, blue sun, and other non-traditional colors made up his palette. I don't remember his rationale as he explained it to his disapproving teacher, but I remember it being pretty profound for a 5ish-year-old. This video reminded me of the same...

Another voyeur site!

There is a new feature in Google Maps now (similar to something I saw via A9 a while ago), that allows you to see actual street level views of locations instead of just satellite views. They've only rolled out a few cities so far, but just like when Google Earth came out, there's been a slew of people looking for the interesting locations. Google Blogoscoped has a couple initial captures that are interesting, but Street Viewr is one site that people are submitting locations to. I just keep telling myself that these are fun to look at and push to the back of my mind any thoughts of the book 1984 (you can even see faces close up). It really is cool technology. Be sure to use the zoom and navigation once you get to a location. I've even seen a site where someone used Flickr to create a little drive by movie. Maybe Google will incorporate that soon too...

Know your neighbors

I happen to live between two retired couples. At least in the physical world. In the cyberworld, I live next to (actually in the same house it seems) admashup.blogspot.com, and akworks.blogspot.com , and batchgeocode.blogspot.com, and hundreds of other sites that share the same IP address according to the My IP Neighbors site. I'm gonna need a bigger breakfast table.

Have a site? See who else is living in the same cyber-residence...

And I had trouble with stick figures...

glumbert.com - Genius 3-year-old finger painter

Look around you...

How much do you know about the city you live in? Is is pretty balanced male to female? What's the average income? The racial mix? What's the housing market like? Is it safe? How warm is it? All this and MUCH more is available at the City Data site. Check it out for your city and learn something new, or browse the thousands of other cities listed...

One man's junk

There's a lot to be said for spring cleaning. Most of them are swear words. But every now and then I come up with a nice one. Like "money." My family and I have been having a garage sale this week. In nearly 90 degree sun and only a light breeze, hundreds of people have stopped by in search of that one little thing that they didn't want to pay full price for at a store. Some people come for the hunt, others for the adventure, but they all come for e deal. I'm happy to oblige in return for a little green stuff... They get the adventure, we get to meet quite a variety of people, and we free up more space so that we can fill up more space -- all the while, earning a sunburn and enough money to put toward "edutainment" adventures during our upcoming vacation.

I used to think that garage sales, or yard sales, or rummage sales, or moving sales, or anything similar was a purely Midwestern kind of event. Everyone else had "estate sales." I've changed my mind on that a little, though without much proof to the contrary. I've heard about down-on-their-luck actors having sales, and even not so down-on-their-luck actors or singers, or other personalities selling a thing or two in a fit of common-dome, though the latter generally "donate the proceeds to charity." Whatever the class, or cause, or size, there will always be jun...er um, precious antique hand-me-down heirlooms that will be better suited at someone else's house.

NSFW...?

Well, actually it is suitable for work, or home, or wherever. This site allows you to upload a picture and blow it up to full wall size. It prints on regular size paper, but with a little tape you can have your own custom mural.

Looking for inspiration, check out the gallery and the video walk through. Really cool!

Think you're paying too much for gas?

An article in Wired magazine might just make you feel a little better...

Mashed up Maps

Interested in...anything? This site probably has a mashup for you. Mashups are combinations of data from two (or more) sources, mashed together to give you something new. This site happens to be dedicated to Google Maps Mashups. There are links to all kinds of sites -- from fast food finders, to pub crawls, to UFO sightings and just about everything else. The blog itself is interesting to read, but make sure that you scan through the Mashups and Tools index on the right. It's really interesting just to see what people think should be mapped out...

Who are you?

Have you ever wondered who you are? I mean, really wondered? Certainly there should be a place you can turn to get unbiased feedback on who you are, what you stand for. Have you ever tried to Google yourself? You'd be surprised what you might find...

Me? The first listing I found was for my profile on LinkedIn. I wasn't really expecting that one.

Just like checking your credit history every year, you might want to see what the ol' www knows about you. You never know when it'll come back on you.

Now where?

A couple of days ago, I posted about my brother's travels -- where he'd been so far. I got to thinking, though. Where do I want to go? What do I want to see before I die...

The list is pretty short actually. I'm not really into anything extravagant. I would love to go on an Alaskan cruise. I would like to go to Hawaii. I would like to see the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower. I would like to walk across the equator. That's about it.

What about you? What's on your list of places to visit? Leave a comment. It might give me some more ideas.

If you're gonna fly there, a cool site that I found tells you whether to buy your tickets now because the fares are heading up, or chill out for a few days because they're trending cheaper. A little research could save you enough to check two locations off your list!

Something of small importance

With the new hit show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader I started reminiscing about how good I used to be at trivia. Trivial pursuit - had them all. Jeopardy - I actually kept score. Well, my wife and her online friends have been playing a private little kinda trivia contest for a while now and so I decided to make one for this blog site too...

Go to this trivia site, sign up, sign in, and see if you can keep up. The more you play, the smarter you become and the more "Fun Trivia Bucks" you earn. There's a new set of 10 questions every day. I've got it set to get harder each day throughout the week, but we all get different questions each day. Who's gonna have bragging rights today?

Nature's resiliancy

Ok, so I'm a little late. My New Year's resolution just started. Well a couple of weeks ago anyway. I resolved to walk around our neighborhood each night, regardless of the weather, or the time, for both physical and mental exercise. A big loop around the neighborhood would get me about 1.5 miles and 30 mins or so of exercise. I made it three nights...then nothing. I guess it doesn't matter when you start your resolutions... :-(

Our spring flowers had already began to bloom and everything was really starting to look full and colorful. Then, Michigan weather struck. The running joke (well one of them anyway) is that if you don't like the weather in Michigan, just wait a few minutes. (The other one is about the two seasons in Michigan -- winter and construction). We had a particularly late frost and all the tulips, daffodils, and other early bloomers were hit bad. They all began to droop their once proud heads to the ground like a little child that was just told that the ice cream man ran out of rocket pops. I was sure that we had seen the last of the beauty from those plants.

Some of the television news shows started warning people to just leave well enough alone. Don't touch the weeping plants. Let them be. They'll come back. I didn't really believe them, but hey - it gave me a reason to defer a little yard work!

Mother Nature has been at this gardening thing a little while longer than I have, so I guess she knows what she's doing. She's had time to work out the "ways" and the "hows."

The sun shone brightly the next few days and started to warm the little greens from the outside in. I have to admit that I was a little impressed and surprised at how resilient the plants actually were. Something so seemingly fragile. My hat's off to you Mother Nature. Bravo.

It's for your own protection

It's a sad world we live in sometimes. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. While I disagree with the extent to which some policies and rules are enforced (re: zero tolerance gone too far?), there is one that I will never disagree with -- keeping the kids (and others) safe. To that end, many schools have been engaging in lock downs when there is a threat of harm to the students, faculty or visitors. Often times the parents of the kids learn about these lock downs on the news or when they return to try to pick their child up from school.

LockDownAlert is addressing this communication gap by sending alerts to your cell or email when a designated school notifies them that there is a lock down in progress. You specify the school(s) and give them your contact information and in return, you get a little more peace of mind.

I can't vouch for the site, its speed, or accuracy, but if the bulletins on the front page are to be believed, this is a much needed service -- 10 across the country yesterday.

Idea hamster

I have a coworker who is an idea hamster. Everyday he's got another idea to make things better. In fact, he's go so many ideas that he doesn't know what to do with them all. So he doesn't...mostly. He's paralyzed by information, and choices, and chances. And by perfectionistic tendencies. His fear to date with most of his ideas is that he doesn't have the time to make them good enough to stamp his name on it. None of us want to release a poor quality product.

Right now, he's got the time (if he makes it) and certainly the talent to take any of his ideas to an incredible place. Yeah, he could make millions off one of them someday, or thousands of several, or nothing off any of them. You never know til you try.

They say that life is a journey, not a destination, and that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Well, in much the same way as my starting this blog, not knowing if I'd have enough, or too much, to talk about, or if anyone would actually read this (outside of my immediate friends and family), we all have to "leave the harbor, because a ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are for" -- or something like that. What I'm trying to say is that whether you're an idea hamster, or someone with a single fantasy that you keep putting off because you don't think you're ready for it -- GO FOR IT! DO SOMETHING! START! You can, and will, make it better, but if you don't have anything to make better because you didn't start, where are you?

Good luck man!

Losing a little weight

I noticed the other day that my main entry page to this blog seemed a little bloated. It was taking a little longer than I would like to load, so I've tuned the settings to show only the last 7 days worth of posts on the home page. According to the Blogger FAQ, this is the last 7 days of active posts, not the last 7 calendar days worth of posts.

What does this mean to you? Two things. First, check back often so that you see all the new stuff right on the home page (or set your RSS reader, or subscribe to the Feedburner email). Second, if you do happen to miss a new post, you can always scroll down a little bit and check the archives which are grouped by week on the right hand side.

I'm hoping that this will make the site a little lighter, and make the ads more relevant to the current postings as well... :-)

Don't forget to chime in and leave a comment if the spirit moves you. I'm also going to try to create a place where you can add suggestions for things to discuss or new stuff that you discover in your world. Look for that coming soon...

CSI

Found this site today that let's you play CSI forensic sketch artist... Draw the guy that you saw in the bar, the woman who keyed your car, an old schoolmate, or try looking at yourself in a mirror...

Ah, those were the days...

...when we thought $2.00 for a gallon of gas was high. Seems like only yester-year. :-(

I'm not really that old yet, but I find myself falling in the same storytelling that we used to joke with my dad about. His was about walking 5 miles to school each day...uphill...both ways...in 3 feet of snow...with no shoes. Another was working at his first job - Dairy Queen I think, for $0.25 an hour. Mine now involves recalling fondly my Junior year in high school when gas prices dropped to $0.68 a gallon - a mere 20% of the national average cost of a gallon of regular today!

Find out more about the average gas prices in your area via AAA, or find the cheapest stations via Gas Price Watch or my favorite Gas Buddy.

A little, ok BIG, pet peeve of mine is the way that stations will jump 20+ cents in a day, and then drop back down the next day. I know it's all about supply and demand (and greed), but I would like to think that a station that exhibited fair pricing practices would get more business in the end. Only increase retail prices when their wholesale prices rose. I'm not blaming the stations directly, I know that even they don't completely control price at the pump, but...

The only way that we're gonna get lower gas prices now is to reduce the demand -- that part is in our control. "They" will control the supply to balance out the gains we make, but at least we can say that we're doing something about it. I'm not a fan of the "gas boycott" email that gets passed around all the time because it's not a boycott -- it's a deferment. The station owners know that the next day after the boycott, they'll simply have higher sales. The only way that we can change things is to be smart about the way we're using the supply. The sites above have a number of ideas to help. To shameless paraphrase a tag line from the TV show Heros -- "save the gallon...save the world..."

Thanks Mom!

Nothing more need be said... :-)

i

Last week Google re-branded it's Google Personalized Home Page as iGoogle. It reminded me of a couple of similar re-branding efforts in the past at my company. First it was e-this, and e-that. I think that the e was supposed to stand for electronic. Every ting was renamed to begin with e. Then there was the i-this and i-that era, including the iPod and iPhone, famously Apple. Now iGoogle joins the parade.

I've mentioned before, that I'm generally in favor of all things Google, but I really think that this is i-silly. Especially since no one is advertising what it really means. Does it mean individual? Does it mean internet? Does it mean iwantmoreattention? In no article that I've read do they actually say why they're re-branding with i, just that they say it stands for personalized/ation. So why not use pGoogle? Why waste so much time on this?

What do you think it stands for? Have you seen an article that supports that?

A little cloudy

With so much information out there, a lot of sites are starting to investigate a better way to see, at a glance, what's the most relevant information in a collection. Tag Crowd is a free, alpha site that allows you to create tag clouds from text. Basically, the more frequent the word (or topic) is used, the more prominence it's given in the cloud. It's intended to make it easier to get the gist of a collection of text quickly, without reading the whole text. For example, I took my last post titled Peas...and carrots and pasted that into the TagCrowd site. This is what it spit back.

3-year addition adjusted adventurous air answered anticipation anyone apart around asked away bad balloons become carrots cents character children compound computer concerned consonants construction continue corny cost couple curious deal deeper done door draw early easier education elements enjoy enjoys enunciation etc exercise extra extremely family focus fresh fun game gave gets giving hard hold immediate instance instead instill interesting job joke kids knowledge knows learn light lives lot memorization miles mix motion multiplication needs neighborhood nowadays nugget ones others parents peas people planets plants please pocketful polite pretty proper protective question questions raising rather really reward says science sense sesame sets simple slow smart something started street tables teaching thank theme things think toss trash tv unprompted vegetable walked wanting wants warranted whole wife words working world wrote youngest

Peas...and carrots

I think that my wife and I have done a pretty good job raising our kids. They are as well adjusted as anyone can be in this world. They are all extremely smart and curious and adventurous. We may be too protective a parents as far as some are concerned, but I think that's warranted nowadays.

One thing that we started teaching our kids really early, and one of the things that I think sets them apart from a lot of other kids, is how to be polite. We often have people tell us how polite our children are, as they hold the door for others, say thank you - unprompted, when warranted, etc.

My youngest is still working on proper enunciation of some of his words, and I like to joke with him about it as I help him learn. He has a hard time with compound consonants, so when he wants something, he says peas instead of please. After he says that I say, "and carrots." It's become a little game between he and I and he knows that he needs to slow down, focus and say please before he gets what he's asking for. It's a little corny, to continue with the whole vegetable theme, but he enjoys it and he's learning at the same time.

Learning has to be fun for kids to really enjoy it. There's a place for wrote memorization in the mix too (addition tables, multiplication tables, etc), but to really instill a sense of wanting to learn in our kids, we try to keep it fun. When they as a simple question, rather than just giving the answer, I provide that extra little nugget of knowledge, and them draw them in deeper. They really like that and they learn a lot more than if we just answered the question asked.

The other day all of the kids and I went on a "penny walk." We walked around the neighborhood for a couple of miles, but to keep it fun and interesting, I asked them science questions as we walked. For each one that they got right I gave them a penny (immediate reward. Good thing I had a whole pocketful in anticipation!). These were questions about things like planets, plants, light, motion, elements, construction, balloons, etc. I had to toss a few easier ones for the 3-year old that weren't as hard ("Name a character on Sesame Street who lives in a trash can," for instance), but he got into it as well. It cost me 35-40 cents, but we got exercise, family time, education, fresh air, fun and some time away from the computer and TV our of it. Not a bad deal.