(Disc 2) 01 – Your Bruise (Live)

Source: http://adsoftheworld.com/media/ambient/agnesian_healthcare_center_for_sleep_disorders_cans

Advertising Agency: STIR, Milwaukee, USA
Creative Director / Art Director: Bill Kresse
Copywriter: Scott Shalles
Photographer/Retoucher: Brian Steenstry
Published: November 2009

My sister sent some new pictures of my nephew Evan this afternoon.

Jaylen Arnold, 9, has Tourette’s Syndrome. When he started to get bullied at school, he didn’t fight or run away. As Kelly Cobiella reports, Jaylen launched a Web site and its worked wonders.

A (very) quick look back at the Google story over the last 11 years. From Stanford to Mountain View and around the world, featuring many different products, starting with BackRub (Search) up to Google Wave, StreetView and Chrome.

I found a great open source password management tool called KeePass which I wanted to share with you.  If you are like me you have tons of different passwords you have to remember.  KeePass organizes your passwords and encrypts them which makes storing your passwords very safe and secure.  The other nice thing is it works with Linux, Windows, and Macs.  The above screenshot is the application freshly installed from my home PC running Ubuntu but at work let me tell you it is a good long list!  It is also highly configurable and even allows for plugins.

Net neutrality is nothing new if you are a geek. We want the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) of the Internet to be nothing more than a “dumb pipe”. What that means is we don’t want the ISPs to be able to control what we are able to access, how fast we can access what we paid for, and they should offer the service at a reasonable price. John Wilbanks in the above video says that net neutrality means it is our “rights as an Internet user and we should have a right as an Internet user to have access to a neutral architecture that lets us innovate with no more restrictions than fulfilling the technical protocols.”

I am against the Internet Freedom Act and that might surprise you if you are not familiar with what the act actually stands for. I mean I give credit for naming the act something that people would oppose just by the name of it. Who would want to vote against Internet Freedom right? Well John McCain, the  man who almost won the presidency has introduced legislation that would prohibit the FCC from regulating the Internet.  Yes, the man who doesn’t even know how to use the Internet (see the video clip below) has introduced legislation about your Internet experience. Not to mention he has received more campaign dollars than any other politician from telecommunications companies (hmm coincidence he is introducing this legislation to help empower telcos…?)

What he is essentially proposing is broadband providers could limit the traffic to certain sites and protocols if it so desired. For instance many of you probably use Skype to talk to your friends and loved ones online. Well media companies and ISPs don’t like Skype because it allows you to have something for free which they would love to charge you for. What some ISPs have done and are still doing today is throttling your connection and even dropping packets so your Skype call or bittorrent connection is terminated sporadically. See here for more information on how Cox (in Canada) and Comcast in the US have throttled network connections.

Oh and yes Obama is for net neutrality. If you love the Internet and you want innovation of technology, we must stop this legislation.

If you have a WordPress site you should definitely check this feature out if you are on WordPress.com or the plugin if you are hosting the site yourself.

Obviously this guy is onto something as this makes common sense.  I’m sure he gets some dirty looks for leaving so much space but he has put some serious thought into traffic jams.

Oh forget the clapper, this thing is awesome!  If only I was an angel investor I would so sink some money into this.

When I was a teenager I worked at Safeway in Bowie, MD.  Part of my nightly duties was to stock the Safeway SELECT machine with cans of soda.  I had a baskart of sodas piled up over the top of cart.  I made a sharp turn and the entire cart full of sodas went spilling everywhere onto the sales floor.  Some guys have all the luck…some guys have all the pain…some guys get all the breaks…some guys do nothing but complain.  Sing it Rod…

rodStewartSomeGuysHaveAllThe Luck

For centuries, the anvil was used to make tools. As Steve Hartman reports, one man’s obsession with carving anvils eventually turned into a more exciting fixation.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost

YouGetWhatYouGive

I was listening to The New Radicals song “You Get What You Give” which made me think about the now infamous Shel Silverstein book The Giving Tree.  As the holidays draw closer, are you giving or taking from others?  Winston Churchill said “You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.”

Hulk Hogan has been in the news the last few years because of his bitter divorce to his wife Linda Hogan. It has been more than a year for me so I know what it is like to go from a house full of life to coming home to complete emptiness. At some point I’d love to write some generalized tips I have found to get me through my divorce in hope of helping others. Like Hogan, divorce was what got me back to church and what has made me an even stronger and hopefully better person. Sometimes life has a funny way of working itself out. One thing I definitely know is divorce changed me forever. For a very stubborn yet very optimistic person like me, it took getting knocked down harder than anything I’ve ever been knocked down in life to learn (and now be able to share) that marriages may break but that doesn’t mean they have to break you.

A moving story about a 6-year-old girl who died of cancer and the notes left behind for her family.

I don’t know why but I love sharing information with others.  The next time you think about not sharing think about the following quote.  “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – Unknown

Went to Lake Merritt this afternoon for a 3.4 mile walk which was fun because the weather was beautiful today.  After the walk we went to Fenton’s Ice Cream in Oakland because we couldn’t possible have a calorie deficit.  We then walked down Piedmont Street and found Gaylord’s Coffee which was a funky coffee shop.

PETMAN is an anthropomorphic robot for testing chemical protection clothing used by the US Army. Unlike previous suit testers, which had to be supported mechanically and had a limited repertoire of motion, PETMAN will balance itself and move freely; walking, crawling and doing a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics during exposure to chemical warfare agents. PETMAN will also simulate human physiology within the protective suit by controlling temperature, humidity and sweating when necessary, all to provide realistic test conditions.  Natural, agile movement is essential for PETMAN to simulate how a soldier stresses protective clothing under realistic conditions. The robot will have the shape and size of a standard human, making it the first anthropomorphic robot that moves dynamically like a real person.

When we were young we were fearless.  You talk to children and ask what they want to be when they grow up and the answers will widely vary.  Some may want to be President, some a garbage person, some an astronaut, some a doctor, but rarely will they say they want to do anything average or mundane with their life.

When I was really young and obviously had no clue about reality I wanted to be Superman.  I had my trusty pillow case my mom would pin to the back of my shirt and I’m sure I really believed I was Superman running down the street (faster than a speeding bullet I might add).   Everything is possible through the eyes of a child.  At what point did you stop believing anything is possible?