a proposal

Excerpt from Denver, who might be excerpting E.Fromm:

A few characteristics of THE NEW MAN.
- Willingness to give up all forms of having, in order to fully be.
- Security, sense of identity, and confidence based on faith in what one is, on one's need for relatedness, interest, love, solidarity with the world around one, instead of on one's desire to have, to possess, to control the world, and thus become the slave of one's possessions.
- Being fully present where one is
- Knowing that to reach this goal, discipline and respect for reality are necessary.
- Sensing one's oneness with all life, hence giving up the aim of conquering nature, subduing it, exploiting it, raping it, destroying it, but trying, rather, to understand and cooperate with nature.

I'd like to see aking layout what it means to be The Basic Man.

One on One meetings

Times available:

Thursday 11/30 8:30 - 10pm
Friday 12/1 4 - 8pm
4-5pm Christine
5-6pm Edale
6-7pm MP

Sunday 12/3 5pm - whenever
6-7pm Ryan

646 Time Appropriate: dturk

Leave your time in the comments section. Be sure to leave your name. I'll update this as it goes.

*note: this is for my LC, so external folk can kindly disregard, unless you'd like to come to Madison for some delicious conversation.

interconnected

The recent times of Life have been a bit more tumultuous than Mix likes, but as waves of calm have begun to smooth out, they've become more jagged for others. Some futures may be connected.

And so, in the holiday spirit and out of it as well, let us not forget that we're all in This together.

living large, effective

This year, Congress did not address the looming spending tidal wave of Social Security and Medicare but did decide that State Street in Madison, Wisconsin, could use some upgrades. Congress did not pass comprehensive immigration legislation, but it did decide that the public swimming pool in Banning, California, could use another $500,000 in renovations. (Heritage.org)

The Proverbial Man

Stumbled on this as I was perusing this evening. This is why I do in fact worship something.

J tourists

For the record, if you google "corraborate" it asks if you meant "collaborate." When you click yes, you get about 190 million hits. There's gotta be some worthwhile stuff out there. I'm perusing the world for ideas on building a virtual community that promotes relationship building and working together.

210 minutes at work and thus far I've answered the phone once and let someone in their office.

Update (1 min later): just put a cell phone in a cabinet.

wounded hunter

As with all things in life, sometimes you have to accept defeat, lick your wounds, and perform damage control.

About the only time I grab a shisha late at night is when I have a test in the near future. This is one of those nights.

I look at finals as an opportunity to sneak up on victory, not fall back on defeat.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
Philo of Alexandria

on managing

That is, your 6-person project team or 7-person training department or 18-person housekeeping unit is a new puzzle every day. It's far beyond "treat everybody differently according to their skills," etc. It's that in a 220-day work year, we the leader-manager face 220 different teams! Every day is a new crossword puzzle! (Tom Peters)

bandwagoning

I might as well join the crowd and plug gapingvoid, as it is pretty rad. Short tidbits of daily wisdom and/or hirarity.

Idea expounded

I started to talk to Adam about this idea at the Gala, but it was circa 4am at that point and nary a soul knows how much rum was flowing by that point. I seem to remember stopping the conversation at one point to retrieve another of a table, but I swear it was the mysterious 3rd one burbo had bought.
In any case, let me explore this community idea on the fly.

In order to build community, or relations, between visitors located across a fairly vast continent, our website should be just that: a place or community. A community to build community, if you will. There's 2 aspects to this:
1) Reinforce existing relationships
2) Facilitate the creation of new ones

The underlying question, then, is how do people meet each other on a website?

Profiles are a baby step in the right direction. Something along the lines of Facebook in terms of information provided might work. Let viewers get a glimpse of another's life. Messages, photo albums, and the like probably aren't necessary as there's plenty of other services to do that.

Automatically getting logged into chat could really be money. Go to website, log in, automatically have an "online" list. Let users tag people whose names they want to see when they're online, and then sort the rest by LC. Click on an LC, see who's online. Have not only a screen name, but also their position listed. Allow people to join groups. Let's say I join some functional group with members from across the country working on some project. Instead of sending out an email letting everyone know when the conference call is, just post it to that group's board and have an automatic email sent to it's members. US-Voice could be replaced by a group/board such as this. It might be good for archiving purposes as well. Each group could also have a wiki or drawing board for random conversation.

The second money shot would be having a Talk function, a la Google Talk. There may be some hardware issues (people having a mic), but using this for conference calls could save precious cell phone minutes and also add some interesting online elements. Allowing people not on computers to call in to some number to access the call would be rad as well.

Calendars are the last thing on my list, and I'm not sure how they fit in, but they could be good. Let each LC have a calendar, as well as groups perhaps. Make them viewable by all. Then on the main page have a completely aggregated calendar that shows everything going down in China Town for each day. Let people subscribe for email notification or RSS (or have it automatically subscribed) to calendar updates. Embed an RSS reader into their account. When they log in, show them on the first page what changes have happened to their "calendars of interest."

This is it for now. I have 25 minutes left of my shift at work and just saw my first human. I asked her a question and she didn't answer.

a round-up

After this weekend, I will have been out of the state for 3 of 4 weekends. Two in NY and one in Hell, or Michigan for the lay man. It has been hectic, but quite a ride and very rewarding.

In any case, The Gala and Halloween didn't fail to exceed expectations. Betsy pulled together an amazing event, and the OC was definitely a group of smooth operators. I applaud thy efforts to my greatest ability. It had been a while since that many of the crowd had been in the same place and acted as a great reminder to the madness and greatness which we somehow maintain. I will give a great shout-out to Cat and Craig whose presences are enjoyed more than they know. The under cover bar will go down in history, along with the facial expressions. And that sauce I made.

Having a weekend like Halloween after the Gala didn't seem humanly possible, but we did it. Great company, a lot of kegs, and sexcellent conversation (aka Saki's Excellent Conversation). It was smaller than previous years, but the added intimacy added a here-to-fore unseen element and was not lost on myself.

I'll leave the weekends at that. May the attendees remember the good times and may we have many more. My friends, may we all convene again.

The Gala

IMG_2499 Hosted on Zooomr

IMG_2494 Hosted on Zooomr

IMG_2501 Hosted on Zooomr

IMG_2496 Hosted on Zooomr

IMG_2500 Hosted on Zooomr

IMG_2492 Hosted on Zooomr

By the way, Betsy rocks. Keeping it classy whilst keeping it real. Rad.

2nd Gala, or Halloween

DSCN0897 Hosted on Zooomr

n502936387_1978_9349 Hosted on Zooomr

n502936387_1974_7884 Hosted on Zooomr

n502936387_1962_3274 Hosted on Zooomr

A Holy Performance Hosted on Zooomr

MP Hosted on Zooomr

The House + Hosted on Zooomr

It is sad the Holy Quadrinity was never captured as a whole for photographic evidence. The Rosta Friar, Madison Messiah, 70's Pope, and Raiden will fade into infamy.

From Sports Center to genius

Keith Olberman and Dan Patrick were my favorite ESPN anchors. When Olberman left I was deeply disappointed and pretty much thought he was out of my life forever. Well he made a big comeback when I found him on youtube about 10 minutes ago, in this interesting monologue that I think not only applies to Rumsfeld, but also to this administration in general. It's about 6.5 minutes.

prose

Anyone out of high school forced to watch more than an hour of “Laguna Beach” might possibly feel the urge to beat themselves about the head with a large stick. (NYTIMES)

Never thought I'd see a line like that in the New York Times. Hilarious.

WTF?

It's no Drake Fall, but 54F in November? Add a little sun and I'd call it paradise.

The campus is buzzing as the vote on the gay marriage amendment proceeds. A Fair Wisconsin has been all over the place, as well as legions of PIRG slaves. I'll be tossing in my "no" in about 100 minutes.

that time O year

We need more participation, so get out there and vote. I don't care which way you lean, an increase in turn-out is going to be best for everyone. It sure would be sweet if you took the time to learn a little about what you're voting for, though.
I will say: if you have one of those gay marriage bans up for referendum in your state, I'd suggest voting no.

the Big Tobacco Deal

This is an interesting 15 page report on how the big tobacco deal, which many claim as a success, really worked out. It is worth a read if you are interested in that sort of thing and don't have any beer.

Skype plug in to Google Desktop

It worked like shit for me. Took up a boatload of RAM.

on Edgy

If the most uptight person in the room is not at some point offended during my presentation, I usually don't consider its design complete.

Consider this a request for comments.


Nine mile skid on a ten mile ride
Hot as a pistol but cool inside

on free trade

If a foreigner insists on selling things to us at a discount, it is not the government's place to prevent Americans from accepting such generosity. (Cafe Hayek)

I read this blog often. It offers great commentary on a variety of economic issues, and should be easy to understand for those not versed in economic lore.

Living the dream

Part of the reason it pays to live with a few classy girls:

This homemade cheesecake I'm eating right now.