In March I left my camera in the seat back pocket of a Southwest airlines flight after helping an older woman with her bags. As soon as I got into the car to head to my appointment I realized my mistake and called Southwest. Alas, all they did was file a lost report and I assumed I would never see my camera again.

Then my co-worker, Mike, suggested I try out www.stolencamerafinder.com. It’s elegantly simple. I drug and dropped a photo I took with my camera. The service pulled the metadata about my camera from the photo including the serial number. I filed a report of the details of where I lost it. Done. Then the service monitors photo sites for my camera.

About two months after losing my camera Southwest found it and returned it to me. I was shocked! I thought it was gone forever. Then after shooting for a couple weeks with my camera, and uploading photos to my Flickr account I got this email: 

Hi Aaron,

You created a missing camera report on our website on 1st May for an Olympus E-PL1.

We have found photos matching your lost camera that were taken since that date which are appearing on your Flickr stream.

Did you manage to get your camera back from Southwest Airlines? If so, would you like us to remove the missing camera report?

Kind regards,

Karen Cooper

www.stolencamerafinder.com

Outstanding! Thanks Karen and StolenCameraFinder. You’re awesome.

Henry forwarded me this email I sent announcing Ashby’s birth. He was cleaning out his email and came across it. Wow, this took me back.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: aaronf
Date: Mon, Jan 9, 2006 at 3:05 PM
Subject: Announcing the arrival of Ashby Julia Fulkerson

Greetings all,

Ashby Julia Fulkerson was born Friday, Jan 6th at 10:56 PM. That’s right, on her due date! She is very punctual. She was born 8lbs 3.75 oz, and was 20 inches long. Her head is _huge_. She also seems to be nocturnal…In addition to the attached photos you may view a small gallery here:
http://ninje.com/ashby/.  Best wishes…

~ Aaron Fulkerson

One evening a Cherokee elder told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between the two ‘wolves’ that live inside us all.

…

One is Unhappiness or Evil – It is anger, jealousy, fear, regret, greed, arrogance, sorrow, self-pity, resentment, inferiority, false pride, superiority, weakness and ego.

The other is Happiness or Good – It is joy, love, hope, serenity, benevolence, peace, empathy, kindness, generosity, truth, humility, faith, strength and compassion."

The grandson thought about it for a while and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed." – Cherokee Elder

/via Kirk Tuck

When cycling to work today I listened to a podcast with Charles Sennott about the Egyptian revolution. I had a revelation. 

The atrocities perpetuated by the government of the United States of America on behalf of our (mostly) corporate interests in the first half of 20th century in South and Central America are mild when compared to those committed in the Middle East in last half.

I recently met Jason Levin at a dinner with David Allen of “Getting Things Done” fame. Jason is the founder and CEO of Dos Gringos, Inc. Jason is gregarious and affable and his company Dos Gringos is a fantastic success story. They also happen to be the largest supplier of sunflowers in the country. The sunflower happens to be Tara’s favorite flower. I shared this with Jason and he suggested that we should tour his facility in Vista, CA. Tara’s birthday was this last Friday and with Jason’s help I organized a birthday surprise for Tara. A tour of Dos Gringos!

 

It was so cool! The people were all incredibly friendly. The facility was amazing. They can cut 125,000 sunflowers a day. Also, at full production speed they can make 6,000 bouquets an hour!

Posted throughout the facility is the Dos Gringos mission and vision statements. I really liked this.

While we were touring the facility Susie, the Dos Gringos Special Projects Lead, was filling our car with gorgeous arrangements. It was amazing!

Thank you Jason, Joan, Susie and all of Dos Gringos for the wonderful and memorable birthday surprise. You’re all awesome.

Obeia is no longer with us. It was very sad even though she had to be the most irritating animal ever to walk the planet. While I was with Obeia in her last moments Ashby took it upon herself to create her interpretation of heaven.

That’s pretty ballsy. They’re syncing your address book and sharing it with others. This means advertisers and companies that you allow via Facebook connect have access to a lot of information that I haven’t necessarily approved because some friend of mine has synced my contact information via this feature. I’m generally really liberal with things like this, but this is pretty appalling to me.

I’m not sure when they started this. I was syncing Facebook with my iPhone because I liked seeing everyone’s updated photos. Was I syncing friends and family private information before?

Via The Atlantic: What a Leaked ‘Today Show’ Clip Taught Us About Mankind’s Progress

Last week, a fascinating video was leaked from The Today Show archives circa 1994. It featured off-air footage of Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel struggling to comprehend what the “Internet” was and how it worked.

“What is Internet anyway?” Gumbel pondered. “You don’t need a phone line to operate Internet?” asked a puzzled Couric. The video was taken down quickly but not before others duplicated it and distributed it widely.

http://videos.mediaite.com/embed/player/?layout=&playlist_cid=&media_type=video&content=23843F11YMX85FLN&read_more=1&widget_type_cid=svp

Kelly Abbott pointed out a review of me at Honestly.com.

In case you’re new to Honestly.com:

"Honestly.com is an online resource for building, managing, and researching professional reputation, using community-contributed, professional reviews."

Kelly had to show me the review because I don’t have access to this service. Early on—when it was still called unvarnished.com—I provided reviews of people I know in industry along with tongue-in-cheek quips like: "he smells like unicorn farts…at least, what I imagine they would smell like, which is to say delicious".  All my reviews were overwhelmingly positive. Alas, the founder and CEO of Honestly.com, Peter Kazanjy, banned me as a result.

This was our email correspondence:

On Aug 27, 2010, at 11:33 PM, Peter Kazanjy <pete@getunvarnished.com> wrote:

Hey Aaron,

Saw your experiments on the site ; )  Testing the countermeasures, eh?

So, I banned your account, and marked all your reviews as abusive (they’re gone off the site), but am happy to unban if you’re cool with adhering to Community Guidelines.  I assume that you were doing this from a standpoint of critical inquiry rather than actual abuse. 

Let me know how you’d prefer to proceed!

Best wishes,

Pete

—
Peter Kazanjy

My responses:

From: Aaron Fulkerson Date: Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 6:48 AM
Subject: Re: Hi from Unvarnished
To: Peter Kazanjy

 

Abuse? How do you figure? Those were my actual opinions.

 

Then I realized he deleted my posts and banned me. Incredulously:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Aaron Fulkerson
Date: Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 6:52 AM
Subject: Re: Hi from Unvarnished
To: Peter Kazanjy

I’m shocked you deleted my reviews and banned me. What was abusive about my reviews? How do you justify this?

Again, all my reviews were 100% positive. Me being banned for expressing myself honestly I think this is an interesting service. Yelp for people? I think it’s a great idea. Also, integrating with Facebook is a smart move. I will however advise that you refrain from injecting your reviews with personality lest you be banned by Pete Kazanjy. Autocrat that he is. LOL

By the way, my overall rating is 4/5 with only one negative rating (shown above), which I presume is from the Founder and CEO of Honestly.com, Pete Kazanjy. Pete, I think you’ve got a fine service there, but you should be less autocratic.