Our 12th anniversary. We dined at the exact spot of our first date almost 15 years ago.

I was invited to the e-G8 by the French President Sarkozy a couple weeks ago. I wrote two article about the event that were published at ReadWriteWeb.

What Will e-G8 Create: Solutions or More Cynicism?

…The e-G8 Summit precedes this years G8 Summit in Deauville on May 26 and 27. The purpose of the e-G8 is to inform the G8 leaders by gathering the world’s top Internet and digital leaders in advance of the bigger event. Given the closed-door nature of the event and its relationship to the G8 Summit it’s somewhat unsurprising that rumors about the nature of the meeting have been flying.

The e-G8 has the potential to be an important event and it is attracting a who’s who in technology and government. The attendee list boasts heads of state as well as prominent media and technology figures like Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Eric Schmidt of Google, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook; are all expected to attend.

…

 

e-g8: "The Future of the Internet Wasn’t invited"

…The draft statement from the e-G8 Forum to the G8 Summit appears to have been authored in advance of the completion of the e-G8. Throughout the event, statements discussed on stage would be flashed as summary bullets. These statements often ran counter to the opinions and statements of many in attendance and were more a reflection of the views of large telcos and media conglomerates.

This left the small, but very vocal faction of Internet entrepreneurs, academicians and bloggers scratching their head. It was within this group that I found the most substantive conversations taking place. These discussions often had divergent opinions and views from those being represented on stage. It was this vocal minority that were actively pushing the message of an open Internet at every opportunity.

…

It was quite an event. I hope you’ll read, tweet, and like my two articles.

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?