Happy Halloween
Today has been a busy day. I started by spending hours getting my costume together.
I helped out at Grace’s class Halloween Party. She volunteered me for the hair and make-up station. Mainly I painted all the kids’ hair.
We had an office Halloween Party with pumpkin carving, a scavenger hunt, refreshments and a showing of the movie Halloween 2.
And finally, I went Trick or Treating with Grace and one of her friends. Grace is an Undead character from World of Warcraft and her friend is Pocahontas. Peter went out with his friends dressed as an elf.
And here’s a link to all my Halloween pictures posted on flickr.
Help Taylor Get to Paris
My friend Taylor Barr thinks he can change the world. I actually think he has a pretty good head start in accomplishing that goal. His next step is to attend an upcoming Web Conference in Paris, France. Watch the video below that he and David Parsons made and if it moves you in any way, click over to TaylorBarr.com and read what he wants to do. Please share this video and his story, if you like it. You may even want to consider supporting his trip. Whatever you can do, just know that you have helped Taylor get a little closer to his goal to change the world.
Paris on Le Mime from David Parsons on Vimeo.
This One is for Mom
Tonight I was having a conversation with my mom, and she said that she still doesn’t understand why I Twitter. Why do I want to tell people what I am doing? she asked. Because my friends care what I am doing. And yes, these are real friends that I have made through Twitter and other Social Media connections. This is the same person who has called me (on 2 separate occasions) when I had not tweeted in a couple days, or posted to my blog, to make sure everything was okay.
After the conversation, I posted the following tweet:
My mom continues to ask me why I twitter. “Why does anyone care what you are doing?” I have repeatedly explained.
I immediately got the following responses:
@Ilinap: I get that from everyone I know who doesn’t twitter…which is everyone.
@whythulc: For those that have never used Twitter, it sounds trivial. But those of us who use it, can’t live without it. 
@Adam10: I care about what you are doing.
And I even got a direct message from @gwensutton, the mother of @waynesutton: Do Mom like wayne did me, show her plurk, then twitter and Rejaw, I’m now officially Hooked. No further explaination needed.
These are two people I know in person and two people I know online. I can explain to someone how and why to use Twitter, and I have done this many times. And no, Twitter is not for everyone, but it works for me.
Generation We
Somehow I missed the release of this great video about my children’s generation. I don’t know if it is scarier as a parent or as a member of our society. Hat tip to Trina, whose niece is in the video at 1:31 and 1:53.
Generation WE: The Movement Begins… from Generation We on Vimeo.
Blogging in an Echo Chamber
As the month winds down, and I look at the counter on the right, I see that I probably will not make my goal of averaging 1 post per day. I have 2 excuses, and neither of them are very good. One of them is that I have been very busy and haven’t had a chance to post. Last week I took the kids to the fair. I took nearly 300 pictures while we were there, and it was all I could do to go through them and get them up on Flickr. If you follow me on Twitter (or Facebook), you might have seen them already, since I usually post a link to Flickr photo sets.
But the other reason I have fallen behind is that I have started business blogging. Our new company website includes a blog, and I am one of the primary bloggers. This is great to be able to bring a skill to work that I developed on my own. This requires me to spend more time at work fully engage in marketing blogs and the b2b and advertising worlds online. This definitely changes the amount of time I spend doing similar things at home. Before blogging for work, I spent time reading Ad Age and Adweek online, whether through email newsletters, RSS or on the web. Now I do it at work. I used to check Twitter sporadically during the work day. I was a night and weekend Twitterer. Now I watch custom Twitter searches all day long. I am constantly looking for content for my business marketing blog. All this means that what I used to do in my free time, now can get done during work hours. I only need my free time to keep up with friends’ blogs and other personal interests. Think of all the free time I should have. It hasn’t really worked out that way. I’m still getting use to this change in process.
I still need to follow Twitter at night to catch up on politics and funny videos. I still need to dedicate a big chunk of time and a whole section of my brain to content generated by Wayne Sutton. I even generate some of that content.
And finally, what makes all of this a bit odd, is that the new business site where I have been blogging the whole month of October isn’t even live yet. I’ve written posts that nobody has read. It is the ultimate blogging in an echo chamber. The good news is that the site should launch the end of this week, and I can start promoting my new content. Some of it might even get re-posted here. More posts coming soon. Maybe even some back-dated ones to fill in the past couple of weeks.
Enceladus, Moon of Saturn
This photo of the Southern Hemisphere of Enceladus is a mosaic of 21 photos taken by the Cassini spacecraft. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Here’s a link to more photos of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons from Boston.com.
Saturn’s tiny, icy moon Enceladus has recently been visited by NASA’s Cassini orbiter on several very close approaches – once coming within a mere 25 kilometers (15 miles) of the surface. Scientists are learning a great deal about this curious little moon. Only about 500 kilometers wide (310 miles), it is very active, emitting internal heat, churning its surface, and – through cryovolcanism – ejecting masses of microscopic ice particles into Saturnian orbit. Cassini has been orbiting Saturn for over 4 years now, and has provided some amazing views of tiny Enceladus, some collected here. Another close flyby is scheduled for Halloween, October 31st.
Hat tip to Wired’s Geek Dad blog
Basketball Tourney Preview
Yesterday Peter wasn’t feeling well, so he stayed home from school. I worked from home in the morning, and he slept. We went into my office after lunch for some meetings and Peter came up with a very interesting way to keep himself amused.
Peter is huge sports fan, and his favorite sport is college basketball. I was sitting at my desk and he was sitting at the second desk in my office on the computer. This was after I made him hook up the monitor. (Here’s a monitor cable and a power cable. Hook it up. How, he asked me. Figure it out, was my response. He did.). I looked over and saw lots of post-it notes covering the desk. And there were colleges written on them. I had no idea what he was doing. It turns out he was on ESPN.com and picking the 64 teams, and how they would be seeded, that would be playing in the NCAA College Basketball tournament. I can only assume he was seeding the teams by pre-season rankings, last year’s records, and other bits of sports statistic arcana that I cannot even begin to understand.
And since this is Peter, he had to take it one step further. He had to play out all the games and determine the winner of the tournament. His predicted winner is always Carolina. While that is not who I would pick, it is not a bad pick this year. And since he is just a kid, rather than pick each game based on stats, he picked them by mascot. He used Google Image Search (his favorite internet tool) to find pictures of school mascots to make his determinations. Who’s tougher, a tiger or a bulldog? He even got into the subtle distinctions of who was tougher between a purple and yellow tiger and an orange and white tiger. This method did not bode well for any school whose mascot is a kid in a big-headed humanoid suit. A wild animal will defeat those mascots every time.
This selection methods caused the unlikely 15th-seeded Drexel to make it to the Elite 8 because their mascot is a dragon. A dragon can beat almost everything. Well, except they met Carolina in that game in the round of eight and the ram must have some secret weapon to beat dragons. We’ll have to see how his predictions work out once March Madness is upon us.
Opie is Not Running for President
Lots of people have seen this already, but if you haven’t, watch it before you vote.
Something to Think About
In 4 Days of Early Voting in North Carolina: 270,000 people voted
In 4 Days of the NC State Fair: 270,000 people attended the Fair
Decent turnout for the fair, but record-breaking turnout for early voting. This election has really energized people.
Inspiring Women
This past weekend I volunteered to help with the Ramblin Rose woman’s triathlon. I have friend who is a biker, and he told me they were looking for volunteers. As I am always looking for things to do, I signed up to help. It turned out that he was going out of town that weekend, so I was on my own.
A few days before the race I received an email stating that I needed to be there at EXACTLY 6 am. And, yes, it did have exactly in all caps. Whoa, that’s a bit early on a Sunday morning, but I could manage. I arrived at the appointed time and went to volunteer check-in. The coffee wasn’t there yet. ARRGH! The coffee finally came, but no cups. Double ARRGH! Okay, I was finally checked-in, got some coffee and was ready.
My first assignment was to work in the transition area. This is where the women put their bikes and set up all their stuff. The way the race works is they first line up at the pool for the swim. After the swim, they get their bike and biking gear and hit the road for the ride. They finish the ride, drop off their bike in the transition area, change shoes and head out for a run. The logistics of a wet bathing suit underneath a variety of exercise clothes is the most difficult part of the race.
I have never participated in a triathlon, but I have been in running races. I was always thankful for the volunteers, but was curious why they did it. Why don’t they run I thought. Now I know. Sometimes people just like to help out. And you get a pretty big emotional boost cheering people on who are participating. I signed up to volunteer without knowing anyone in the race. It turned out I saw 4 friends of mine competing.
Anyway, I reported to the transition area in the cold, dark early morning. I didn’t have much to contribute in the way of triathlon or setup knowledge, but I greeted participants and made them feel welcome. I tried to answer questions, or find someone who knew the answers. Sometimes I would refer to the way others were doing things. Eventually, I found something I was qualified to do. I took a picture of a mom with her daughter. The girl was 10 and she was pretty funny. I had to take the picture about 4 times so I could get one with their eyes open. It seems that lots of digital snapshot cameras have strange delays that make it hard for people to know when the picture is actually captured.
At 7:30 I left the transition area and headed to my spot on the bike course. I was standing on the corner of Old Chapel Hill Road and Pope Road (near the Durham Chapel Hill border). My job, along with another volunteer, was to direct the riders to turn right and to provide encouragement. I could look forward to the next 2-3 hours of “Turn right. Great job! Keep it up!” We were supported by a Durham County Deputy Sheriff who directed the traffic at the intersection.
As this was a short triathlon (250 yard pool swim, 9 mi bike, and 2 mi run), there was a wide variety of participants. It certainly showed with our interaction on the bike course. We got several questions from the women up front how far they had to go, was this the halfway point (we didn’t really know). Many of these women did not need encouragement, but they were very appreciative of our volunteering. Overall, we got lots of thank yous from riders.
But it was the women further back in the race that needed cheering on. For many of them it seemed to be their first triathlon, and they didn’t really know what to expect. It was our job to push them on. Give them the mental boost they needed to keep going.
After the last biker passed, I drove back to the finish line of the running race to watch some of the later finishers come in. This was truly inspiring. These women set out to accomplish something when they signed up several months ago. They wanted to complete a triathlon. With all the training behind them, here they were at the end of the race. And you could see the pride in their faces as they crossed the finish line. They had done it. They could add completed a triathlon to their list. Now onto the next goal.