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12/12/2008
Check back after the holidays 10/29/2008Current music: Smashing pumpkins, Butthole Surfers, Stained, No Doubt, Beastie Boys, AC/DC. (been one of those weeks)
Continuing my theme of posting links, here's a repost from a year ago of some cool links. Oh by the way, I got a few really cool links in the comments section of my previous post.
I use the same biggies as everyone else (cnn, boston, myspace, digg, slashdot, download.com, zdent, craigslist), but these are a bit more interesting.
http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm
Without a doubt it's the top of my list, has been for years. It's an ASL dictionary site with videos. I tried to teach Elena sign from an early age but she jumped to reading and talking pretty quickly. Just check out the ASL word for "reverberation".
http://www.foundmagazine.com/
I heard the owner of this site on NPR a few years ago. He defined the word "voyeur" as "curiosity about another person's experience with the human condition". This site is devoted to notes, letters, photos of unknown origin picked up in "random" places. (... and you know how I feel about "random" and "coincidences")
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/index.html
This is the list of amenities celebrities require for appearances and performances. Good for a laugh. You MUST read Iggy Pop's. I'm not kidding - just click that link and look at the first page. I DARE you to not keep reading. Read it for a real laugh. Read it, I tell you READ IT! (Warning: it's long)
http://www.careofthesoul.net/
I can't say enough about what this book did for my life. No other book has even come close to helping me translate my Christian world view into daily living to the degree that this one has.
http://stardate.org/nightsky/weekly.php
Our place in the universe becomes smaller each day. This is very fun and very humbling.
http://www.lifehack.org/
kinda famous; good for tips to keeping sane and solvent
http://www.oddball-mall.com/knuckleball/
Read this and learn what makes Tim Wakefield the coolest guy ever. (Keith Richards doesn't count. Keith Richards is dead. He's been dead for over 10 years, but everyone's afraid to tell him)
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/
Razor sharp insight into the digital age for people who don't think that Microsoft is the evil empire or that open source is just for pale-skin, bugged-eyed, nocturnal, celibate-by-default computer geeks.
http://www.photo.net
A great example what the internet should be - people exchanging ideas and sharing what they know and love. I'm the world's worst photographer, but I love the art that can be found here.
Here's a reminder to all my fellow bloggers: be careful what you post. The other day I posted a blurb about Geni.com and the next day someone from their company commented on a question that I'd asked in my own blog. I mentioned Jerry Trupiano and his son commented on it. I raved about Charlie Peacock's earlier records and Charlie Peacock posted a comment. The use of Google alerts makes blogging much less anonymous. So don't say anything on a blog you wouldn't say to the person directly.
And a big shot out to geni.com for their proactive support work. As a support professional myself I really admire that.
10/27/2008Today's music: (I haven't done THIS in a while). Soundtrack to "Blade Runner"
Went apple picking recently. I picked an apple off a tree and ate it and the taste of it was so good, it was as though I'd never eaten an apple before. No apple will ever taste as good as that apple did that day (or the 4 or 5 that followed it).
Anyway the new feature is that in looking for a place to go I found a really awesome website that you might like, and I'd like to start posting cool and obscure websites. This website is where to find "Pick your own" farms. It also lists corn mazes, pumpkin patches, apple festivals, and so on. The view/layout is quite "clunky" but the relevant information is perfect and easy to otherwise easy navigate.
Please please PLEASE send me any interesting obscure websites you come across, so that I can post them here. God knows that this inter-puter thing has gotten out of hand and finding good info gets harder all the time. If you're reading this, there are other people like you reading this who would probably benefit from it.
Well, actually here's another site, though not so obscure. Geni.com was just sent to me by my cousin John ("1st cousin, once removed", which I finally understand, thanks to this site). It's a collaborative genealogy website, with a VERY easy interface. The "feel" is a lot like LinkedIn, but instead of focusing on professional relationships, it's about extended family relationships. Although I've kept the other website going, my genealogy activity has been pretty low. So this is going to be useful.
One limitation: most genealogy software to this point has used a "gedcom" format. It's a format like .html or .sql that would allow genealogy software to share information. I have yet to find a way to upload MY gedcom files to Geni.com, and I have about 300 people in my gedcom file. Once I get this, my genealogy activity will be much easier.
"The path to enlightenment begins with letting go".
The little kid did something interesting recently. Her mom and I have been pushing hard for her to give up the pacifier, and she fought back really hard. This has gone on for a whole year. And she's pretty old to be doing this. Each meltdown was usually capped off with "I want binky!!!". This was not the hill that the mom and I wanted to die on, so we usually acquiesced. Then Elena went to a dentist, who took one look and knew that the pacifier was still being used because she was developing an overbite. So Elena was put on notice that the binky's days were numbered and there was no negotiating room. Finally mommy sat her down and said "This is it. Why don't we give your binkys to the new baby at day-care?" Elena responded, "Why don't we throw them in the trash?" So that's what happened. She voluntarily threw them away and has not asked for it since. I have to admit, I'm impressed that she "kicked" that easily, after how she hard she worked to keep it. So I have a photo on my desktop of Elena with a cup of pacifiers in her hand ready to go in the trash. Her expression isn't quite happy, but she's obviously doing it willingly.
10/17/2008I have this thing about Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy, because I think sometimes he comes out as genuinely "mean". On the other hand, he's the best at writing human interest stories on a athletes back story. He has a thing about Curt Schilling because Curt is pretty full of himself.
This mornings Globe made me literally laugh out loud at Dan S comment:
"The Sox turned to the inimitable Blowhard himself - Mr. Big Game Bloody Sock - Curt Schilling. It was somewhat amazing that the Big Lug was available since the presidential election is less than three weeks away, but Schill strode out to his old mound of glory and bounced a pitch 6 feet in front of catcher David Ross. That's what the Red Sox got for their $8 million this year - one pitch, in the dirt." 10/16/2008Mom has never pretended to be very involved or interested in politics, but this time around she pegged John McCain better than anything I've heard to date. I'm paraphrasing here, but she said that after being a POW for 5 years, he obviously learned the importance and value of "keeping the faith" and "holding out hope". That's great when you're in a POW camp, but not so great when you're dealing with a war in Afghanistan and Iraq. And regarding those wars my mom said, "Sometimes you have to cut your losses." Brilliant. Even as she approaches being a septuagenarian, she still surprises me.
I just watched the film "Uncounted" which documents election fraud in the age of Electronic voting. My "inner leftist radical" didn't need any more incentive, but it's hard to not follow the logic. The short story is this: when the electronic voting machines are made by a company whose core business is ATMs (Seibel), it's ludicrous that these votes cannot be audited with a paper trail. *Every ATM transaction has a digitally signed audit trail. So the solution is simple – have votes electronically entered, with the voter getting a paper-printed copy that goes in a locked box (old-school ballot style), to be used in the event of a recount. This solution is simple, elegant and completely ignored. The film goes on to document how much of the last few elections have been … um…. "tampered with". The film is built on statistical sources and not anecdotal evidence. In each of these discrepancies (exit polls, undervoting, etc), the difference favored George W Bush. Don't get me going.
One of the final points the film makes is to support making election day a national holiday. I've said this a few times in the past and gotten weird looks, but now I'm hearing the same thing from another source. So now I can say it out loud: Make election day a national holiday, dammit! Democracy is too important to leave it to people who don't have anything better to do than vote in a rigged election.
Ooops…was that my out-loud voice talking again? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY 10/14/2008Anyone remember the coffee table book "Life's Little Instruction book"? It was the advice a dad started writing down for his son when the kid was leaving for college. It eventually became a book with one page dedicated to a single sentence of advice. You could probably read it all in a doctor's waiting room.
There were a few pieces of advice that have stuck and one of them was "Always ask couples how they met". Like most of the men in my family, I'm pretty good at meeting people and when I meet people at parties (especially holiday parties), I almost always ask it. It's especially rewarding when you sense the tension in the air because the couple rushed to arrive, or they weren't getting along that day. Telling that story almost always makes them smile. And it's a conversation starter, too. Even if I met Kelvy via internet dating, everyone always has another "success story" about it.
I've taken that a step further and I always ask people how they came up with the name of their kids. It's one of the biggest choices a parent will make for their kids, and people take so much pride their kids. It also tells you a LOT about who they are.
So … Elena.
Elaina Del Rossi was my first guitar teacher back in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. She and her husband David later hired me to work at the same music store and take over basic guitar lessons. Their store was a big part of my high school years (along with the Bible Conference). In 7th grade, during my first month guitar lessons, I had to learn to play "skip to my lou" on the first 2 strings. So my mom sat my butt down and really drilled me on it, helping me learn good practice habits at an early stage while annoying the hell out of me. When I went back to play "Skip to My Lou" for Elaina, she said "I think that's best I've ever had a student play 'Skip to my lou'." And with those words, I was a Guitar Player for life.
When Elena's mom and I found out we were going to be parents we started with the list of names. (True fact: we never came up with a single boys name; we knew it was going to be a girl). I kept coming up with names that had important meaning attached to it, such as an important biblical character or if a family member I really admired had the same name. E's mom was concerned mostly with if it sounded nice. Whatever. That was her criteria. Anyway I told her the "Skip to My Lou" story when she was about 6 weeks pregnant and the name caught her attention, so it went to the top of the list.
"Elena" is the Italian or Spanish version of the Greek name "Helen" which means "Shining Light". Suznne's best friend is named Ellen, which also comes from the same source, and Ellen is a really great person in her life. Elaina del Rossi told me that *she was named for the very old song "Maria Elena", which you can find on ITunes (or by emailing me). So there's a strong musical connection to the name.
I'd tell you about the name "Kevin", but most of you reading this are probably already half asleep. If you're still awake, take a minute and reflect on what your name means to YOU,
10/3/2008thanks to everyone who answered the roll call. It helps knowing who I'm writing to. (or would be if I blogged regularly)
10/1/2008My last post was a little vague, so I decided to make it a bit clearer. Someone in my family is very sick, so that is taking a lot of my attention and energy. It's a sad situation and difficult. It's not about me though. They're the one who is sick, so I won't say any more than that.
I do have a request though. I'm not sure who is visiting the blog these days. There are a handful of people who comment either here or to me off-line. But if you read this, can you let me know?
9/29/2008hi everyone, i'm just poking the blog and telling the world I'm still around. I'll be back to posting regularly at some point. |
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