I just one-click upgraded the ‘ol blog here at oblogn.com to WordPress 2.8. Looking good. Most of all, it’s screaming fast. Good news.
Update: the new widgets controls in WP 2.8 seem to be unusable. I’m unable to expand both the left and right sidebars in the “Simple Balance 2.1” theme I’m using. My guess is this is something specific to the theme. Bummer. I love this theme. I guess I’ll wait to see if there the point release of WP 2.8 corrects the problem or if there is a new theme release.
Roy, my coworker, runs Tabulas.com a respectably popular lifestreaming/blogging/social network in the consumer space. It’s huge in the Philippines for some reason. 🙂 For Roy it is a side project and labor of love. He also blogs regularly at the site and has quite a following. I just read this comment that was left by a regular reader of Roy’s blog:
It’s just strange because I don’t even know you in real life but for some reason I keep reading your blog, and it’s not even that interesting, I guess I’m waiting to see if it ever does get interesting… it’s like a really boring soap opera and I’m waiting to see if it ever gets good, so far five years and not really… #
Roy now has this prominently displayed in his blog’s side bar. That is really really funny.
I’m pretty sure this photo foretells the future.
Earlier this week I wrote at Ostatic about The Future of Collaborative Networks. It’s an important post that I’ll be building on in the coming months.
Rather than focusing on socialization, one to one interactions and individual enrichment, businesses must be concerned with creating an information fabric within their organizations. This information fabric is a federation of content from the multiplicity of data and application silos utilized on a daily basis; such as, ERP, CRM, file servers, email, databases, web-services infrastructures, etc. When you make this information fabric easy to edit between groups of individuals in a dynamic, secure, governed and real-time manner, it creates a Collaborative Network.
Rion Morgenstern, my co-worker, ran the Rock & Roll Marathon yesterday. He’s so hard core he decided running the marathon wasn’t enough of a challenge for him and instead he would tumble the entire 26.2 miles.
Jokes aside, this is Rion taking a tumble at the halfway point of the marathon. Apparently he was really excited to see his co-worker Sarah.
NOTE: No Rions were injured in the making of this blog post. Rion did finish this marathon making it his first. 🙂 WAY TO GO RION!!!!
Knowing my affinity for burritos, Rion has been recommending Lucha Libre. I finally had a chance to sample the fare. The California Burrito was great, the salsas excellent and the decor unforgettable.
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The in-laws are visiting from Duluth, MN. My father-in-law is attending a conference and they’re staying at Paradise Point. We spent the day at the beach and pool. Unfortunately, it was unusually cold and overcast in San Diego today. We still had a wonderful time. I was able to grind through a few hundred emails that had piled up form last week’s travelling and spend time with the kids too. Ashby is so much fun.
This kid is hilarious! She’s only three and she is smart well beyond her years. Her wicked intelligence and amazing sense of humor aside she is scared of homeless people. Not a bad thing really; although, I think Tara has over done it a bit. In Tara’s defense, there are a lot of homeless people in San Diego. Anyway, we’re at the pool and Ashby wants to use the restroom, but she’s concerned and asks: ‘is it clean’. She is somewhat discerning when it comes to bathroom cleanliness and was assessing whether she should use the bathroom nearby or wait to use the one in the room. Smart, right? 🙂 So, I told Ashby these bathrooms were clean because they make homeless people clean them at this resort. LOL. She thought that was hilarious. Of course, she totally knew I was full of it.
In other news. My body has healed remarkably fast from my recent bicycle mishap. Case in point, the day of the accident:
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Look at me here about a week later:
Everyone, including myself, is amazed at how quickly I’ve healed. I believe the rapidity of my convalescence is due in large part to taking Vitamin E. I started taking it when I was running and since I damaged my knee I’ve just kept on taking it, most days. Today, I’ve had almost two weeks of healing and most of the road rash is gone. Gone from my face at least. Alas, I do have two hard nodules under my skin. One is on my chin and the other on my right cheek. They’re noticeable if you know what you’re looking for. If I were clean shaven the one on my chin would definitely be noticeable. Hopefully these too will heal.
Happy Mothers’ Day Tara. We all ❤ you very much.
According to the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) May is National Bike Month. Moreover, Bike to work week (#B2WW) is May 11-15 with National Bike to Work Day (#B2WD) being Friday May 15. Never heard of any of this? Neither had I. Nor had I heard LAB, but you can follow them on Twitter at @BikeLeague. I first learned of B2WD when I was driving to REI yesterday and spotted a highway traffic sign that announced the event. I was going to REI to return a shirt. I left with a brand new bike for Ashby.
A little context first. Ashby has been asking for her first big girl bike for a couple weeks now. She brought it up yesterday morning and the day before. I was putting off making the purchase because Tara and I have so many damn medical bills from Roe being born, plus property taxes and I need to fix my bike from my recent accident because I rely on it for transportation to work ; so, I’ve been trying not to spend any money. At REI Ashby immediately spied a purple and pink bicycle and ran to it. She was smitten. She had been asking for a purple and pink bike. “Daddy, it’s a purple and pink big girl bike!!” Wow, what now? Like I said, I did not want to spend any money. I tried to talk my way out of it, but she was so damn excited! I relented. Thankfully all bikes at REI are 15% until May 10 and I have an outstanding 20% off any one item for being an REI co-op member that I hadn’t used, which would expire May 10 anyway. $107 later I was leaving with Ashby’s big girl bike and new bike helmet. Not bad! I thought it was going to cost much more.
As for B2WW, what a great idea! On May 15 San Diego RideLink is actively involved in making the event a success. They are asking participants to register now. Already a record number of participants with 5,200 riders have registered. RideLink is providing many resources including: a getting started guide, bicycle route maps, pit stops with free water and snacks (see map ), and you can ride FREE on MTS and NCTD services, which can accommodate bicycles.
Enjoy Bike to Work Week and hopefully I’ll see some of you on the road on, at least, May 15. I’ll be the guy with road rash. 😉
photo by jenzwick via flickrI can’t seem to find a task list that works for me. I’m probably not alone, but I have a running task list of thirty to fifty items. These are work and pe rsonal things I’ve got to get done. I also write down at least a few ideas a week that inspire me orare things I want to write about, blog about, business thoughts, things to do for the family, etc…. I’ve tried Remember The Milk, Moleskines, paper, iPhone apps, MindTouch pages and more. The problem with digital solutions is I don’t have them with me wherever I go. Even when I do it’s tedious to capture tasks digitally. On the other hand I always lose paper based solutions. Most recently I had a paper “pocketmod” that was working really well for me. I kept it in my wallet. Surely I couldn’t lose this! I did. 😦
I wonder what people think of of my task lists and Moleskines. I suspect some of those I’ve lost have been found. I’ve written down some things that surely would appear crazy to someone reading them without context. Or perhaps even with context. I recall one such item I captured was a series of ideas Steve and I tossed back and forth to pass the time when we were talking to a lot of venture capitalists. We would come up with fictional scenarios that we found hysterical. I wrote them down because I had a dream of writing them into a story or even living out the scenarios in real life at a time that it wouldn’t be damning to my career. I’ll share a sample scenario to give you the flavor. Whenever you meet with a VC you’re always lead into the conference room in advance of the partners you’re meeting. The conference room always has a white board in it. Most often these are hidden in a cabinet. One of our fictional scenarios consisted of a giant phallus drawing on the white board. There were several variations of this. In one it would be revealed during the presentation. There are a couple ways you could play this out. You could act shocked, feign anger and disgust. Or, you could just ignore it and work around it on the white board. Perhaps you could treat it as an unveiling and have it as a primary signpost of the presentation. A modified version of this had the drawing on the white board, cabinet open with your back to it. In this one you could act as though you never saw it. Another variation, and this is really my favorite because I’ve unintentionally done this before, included a phallus emerging from a diagram as part of the presentation. I think I had seen the movie Superbad around the time we had dreamt this series up. These ideas were decidedly off color, but they weren’t all related to phalli. It just so happens the few I remember are. Alas, the others are likely lost forever as I lost the Moleskine and so too did I lose the more than a dozen or so silly scenarios like this.
I always write my name and email in my Moleskines and notebooks, but I’ve never had anyone return one to me. Maybe it has something to do with the content. Well, if you have a no fail way of managing tasks please feel free to share.
Aaron Fulkerson 