Ben’s Blog

I was listening to AM Radio while stuck in traffic (had to turn off Satellite radio to get traffic report) and caught a story about the Redesigned Naturalization Test that people immigrating into our country must pass.  The latest changes go into effect October 1st, 2008.

The hosts were quizzing callers and sadly, from the sounds of it, most people who already live here couldn’t pass the test.  Here are a couple of the questions…how do you fare?  The answers to the following 4 are below, but DON’T CHEAT.

1. When was the Constitution written?
2. Who was President during World War I?
3. How many justices are on the Supreme Court?
4. How many amendments does the Constitution have?

You can find all the questions and answers here:
http://www.uscis.gov/files/nativedocuments/100q.pdf

Keeping in mind WOOD 1300 probably has a fairly conservative audience, they also replayed a self proclaimed “rant” by Rick Roberts titled “I want my country back.”  They pull it off the shelf on special occasions to spread the sentiment.  It was pretty good - the guy was definitely passionate - you can hear it or read the transcript here:

http://www.760kfmb.com/rick_blog/?p=72

Happy Independence Day!

Answers: 1787, Woodrow Wilson, 9

Dateline: Grand Rapids, MI.  Yesterday we had intense weather - hale wiped out miles of farmer’s fields, rain flooded streets and basements and winds snapped trees like toothpicks.  I left work during one of the lulls in the storm so that I could take Bailey to the vet, but was unable to make it to the vet’s office because the highway was shutdown due to a power line that fell, covering all lanes of traffic.  On the way home I called the office to offer a ride to others who had to walk a fair distance home or to their cars and then headed home to see what damage laid in my yard.  First, there was a tree blocking the entrance to my street but luckily there is another back way into our subdivision.  Luckily everything around my house was OK - jut very very wet.

Holly and I were both home now, both fearing the potential of flooding in our back yard and into our basement.  The creek/drainage ditch in that runs through our back yard goes from an inch of trickling water to a 3 foot deep river with raging current any time we get a fair amount of rain, and with almost 5 inches of rain in 5 hours we were well past a fair amount.  I had to pull my bridge away first because the water was getting close to washing it away, and then we watched, and waited all night.  5 years ago our basement flooded and the damage left behind was unimaginable - the worst is the fear that is left behind that rises every time it rains.  So long as the creek is moving we are OK, but the amount of rain was just too much and soon the water rose to within 15′ from our basement sliding glass door.

The creek that is normally 3-4′ wide was now over 30′ wide, wiping out landscaping and my garden.  The water peaked around 11:30 and then slowly went down - so crisis was averted, but we still spent hours cleaning the basement making sure nothing important was going to get damaged when the rain came.  For the first time in 5 years I was certain the basement was going to flood - the good thing is that I can be reasonably sure that we are safe in the future…if we were going to take on water it would have happened yesterday.

Here is a quick before and after:

Before:

After:

Wow, I am lagging behind when it comes to keeping the blog up to date…so today you get a two-fer.

First post - catching up on last weekend. In a last minute decision I decided to skip going to the cabin in lieu of driving the Upper Peninsula to help Mark bring home his classic Jaguar that has been parked in the barn for the winter. Since I drove it up there late last fall and now home I think I have put more miles on it than Mark has in the last year. This overnight trip also coincided with the 2008 car show in St. Ignace so I was able to check that out at the same time.

This was a quick 28 hour trip - we left Friday afternoon and made it to the campground after a 5 hour or so drive, headed into St. Ignace only to be washed out by rain before the big parade began so we headed back to the camper to drink beer around the campfire while dodging rain drops. We had an unusual mix of people around the campfire so the conversation was lively and entertaining. I drank enough beer to make sleeping on the floor of the camper possible, but woke up feeling like a quadriplegic (no offense to quadriplegics, of course.)

(which one of the above don’t belong? Seriously…I think some people enter their cars just for good parking.)

Once everyone was up and around we headed back to St. Ignace to walk through the car show - I’ve been to the show multiple years and I am always amazed by the dedication people put into this hobby. I would love to own a classic car, but I am not sure I want to have a hobby car that handled with kid gloves and can’t be driven freely or enjoyed like other transportation. Holly will be glad to hear that this is one purchase I am not looking to make. If someone has an extra car laying around however, I certainly wouldn’t turn it down. After a terrible weather forecast and crazy storms in the straits area the weather turned out great and the attendance at the show grew exponentially as the day went on.

Once we made a couple passes up and down main street it was time to head back to the camper, pack up and head to Pickford to pick up the jag. With a little coaxing the car started up and was back on the road in no time. We took advantage of running water while at the house, got cleaned up and then ate at Big D’s in Pickford before getting back on the road. (Side note: if you find yourself in Pickford, MI you should try the worker’s breakfast at Big D’s - you won’t be disappointed, all the food is excellent and fairly priced.)

I took my time heading home - a scenic route for sure but I made it back in 6 hours and early enough to watch the original SNL episode with George Carlin. I even stopped at the scenic park by the bridge since I never stopped there before. All in all, it was a good trip but must have taken a serious toll on me as I fell asleep during the Sunday morning news on CBS after the story on removal of the pistol ban in Washington DC and didn’t wake up until after noon. Don’t worry - I have the DVR set to record the news program so I didn’t miss a thing.

I was walking to a meeting today on the other side of the river when I noticed a duck up ahead of me, walking over said bridge. As I got closer I noticed the duck was followed by a chain of ducklings. Maybe this is just my sense of humor, but I appreciated the irony of the little duck family taking a shortcut over the bridge vs. wading over the river. Odd as I am, it made me think of how times where I have taken the easy way out of things rather than the better/more expected route. Politically, I would equate this to Obama’s decision to not accept public funding - I think he is taking the easy route of fund raising rather than fixing the inherent problems with the public funding model that has been in place since Watergate.

I only had my phone with me so the quality may not be the best - you can click on the image to see the larger version on Flickr.

Maybe this would be a good picture for a “apply your own caption” contest.

Compared to the past several weeks of travel and family obligations the next couple weeks seem rather mundane.  After an eventful flight home last Friday I immediately made my way to my mom’s house on the other side of Michigan to help with chores around the house in preparation for my youngest sister’s graduation party.  Saturday was the party - which meant lots of family, many new faces, countless conversations, and sometimes feigned interest in any subset of these things.  At least my mom put me in charge of picking up beer so there was some good Oberon to make the day better.

Just when I thought I was done for the day, I got a call that someone wanted to buy a canoe that I had been trying to sell for sometime on Craigslist.  I had given up hope that this would sell since the posting was over a month old by now, but a very nice family made a long drive Saturday night to pick up the canoe before Father’s day.  Stan and his family were like some adaptation of a Rockwell painting - two kids, a dog and all very pleasant.  It just felt good to send the canoe to a family that will get good use out of it.  This was the type of family that my dad would have given the canoe to just knowing that it would bring them enjoyment - my mom, while happy for one less eye sore in the yard, probably wanted the money more.

Tuesday brought the family to Grand Rapids for my sister’s orientation at Aquinas College, I entertained my Grandpa and sister by showing them the sights around Grand Rapids and eventually heading to Muskegon to visit a campground my grandparents used to manage.  It was nice seeing some old faces and now I would love to eventually spend my own summer season at that park on Lake Michigan - too bad there is a waiting list of almost 60 people to get in.  This is an Elk’s campground, so my friends and I may explore becoming members.  Now my co-workers will really think I am getting old - I like grandfather clocks, 60 minutes, and the Elks.

Now everyone is caught up again - I hope to spend some time this weekend fishing at the cabin, or maybe just relaxing in between various projects.  I’ve told myself that there will be no more birdhouses built for awhile so maybe I will start my 12′x12′ shed.  I’ll post pictures of whatever we do next week.

On my last night in Boston I decided to visit the Institute of Comtemporary Art.  I really wish I could have taken photos inside the building as the Artwork was amazing.  I am not a huge contemporary art fan, and I really went initially just to see the building, but I was blown away.  If you ever have a chance, I would add this to you to-do list.

The building is just as much a piece of art as the works inside.  The outer wall facing the water is 100% glass - you have the most amazing view and there were plenty of things to look at on a nice sunny evening.  Looking down you could even see jelly-fish in the water.  On the “back deck” they have pseudo-bleachers setup for people to site and watch the view.

Not being familiar with Logan Airport in Boston, or the commute to the airport in a cab, I wanted to be sure I gave myself extra time in the morning before my 6am flight home.  I set my alarm for 3:45am, but my body decided to wake up at 3:15am.  Oh well, guess I have more time to relax at the airport and write on my blog.

Logan wasn’t busy at all, but a couple of my fellow travelers were having some problems this morning - I have no idea who these people were but I added names for effect.

1. Harold & Janice, with little Mike and Jesse in tow.  Janice, with both kids and a stroller that could double for a shopping cart, were in front of me in the security line.  We get to the first checkpoint where you show your ID and tickets - I thought people knew about this drill by now.  Not Janice.  She looked at the guy like he was insane, then started screaming at her husband who wasn’t even in earshot.  Apparently they were running late, he was parking the car after dropping them off.  Harold showed up within 60 seconds, welcomed with a tirade about how self centered he was and lacking of any consideration for others in the line; to top it off young Jesse chimed in with a “Yeah dad, you always have to go first…”  Hope they have a happy vacation.  The security guy was pretty gruff and chuckled as they walked away that he would leave “that one” behind.
2. Not to be outdone, there was a couple, Bobby and Karen, fighting in the food court area - the Bobby was calming sobbing/yelling Karen as she complained that the bar wasn’t serving beer at 4am.  Apparently they worked things out and then settled for McDonalds instead.

I’ll remember these people in November when I list what I am thankful for on Thanksgiving.

Today was a long day indeed.  After waking up late I rushed downstairs to grad a quick bite to eat and some coffee before heading into today’s first breakout session: “Work Green, Work Virtually” with Jessica Lipnack and Jeff Stamps.  I was a little disappointed that there was such a low turn out for this session but it allowed those of us in the room to have a good conversation on many topics ranging from politics, oil, green initiatives and finally virtual teams.  After hearing some of the barriers people encounter when trying to setup a flexible work environment I was thankful that our office is fairly laid back.  I am also more driven to find creative ways to meet virtually with clients and peers on other campuses at GVSU.

Next the entire group filed into the ballroom for the large sessions focused on Enterprise 2.0 initiatives in practice.  First up was Mark Woolen (VP CRM Product Strategy) from Oracle.  His 20 minute session morphed into a 45 minute sales pitch which threw off the entire morning’s schedule - judging by audience reaction most people tuned out at the 10 minute mark.  Thankfully, Pete Fields (Senior VP, eCommerce) from Wachovia Bank came up next and did everything right.  He focused his discussion on making a case for Enterprise 2.0 technology based on what he heard us asking in other sessions - wow, he tailored his presentation to the audience.  I could tell he passionately believed in the direction he was leading Wachovia and shared some insights that I hadn’t considered before.  A couple take aways would include:

1. He was able to finance Enterprise 2.0 initiatives by working with managers who gave him 5% of their annual travel budgets in return for collaborative tools.
2. A large portion of the work force will soon be leaving and taking a tremendous amount of knowledge with them.  It is in any organizations best interest to download this info into some tool for others to access before this happens.
3. Incoming generation Y employees have grown up with tremendous social networking and collaborative tools - they expect to have access to these in the workplace to do their work and are often stifled by the lack of the “social aspect” and often disengage or leave because of bureaucracy or environments that are too rigid.

Pete later appeared on a panel with other presenters and again gave some great tidbits of information.  I think next year he would be a great keynote speaker as he seems to really “get” this stuff and sums it up so well.

After lunch I attended a couple more breakout sessions - I was really looking forward to both of these, but the first session on mashups was a dud.  The panel that was assembled to discuss mashups seemed to be limited to sales/marketing experience and when asked for practical applications of mashups, or cool mashups they had seen, it was a struggle to find anything that didn’t involve a map.  The second breakout was titled “Making Wikis Ridiculously Successful,” and this was interesting.  The conversation ballooned to include blogging, micro-blogging and knowledge management.  Some take aways included:

1. Let go.  Trust employees to manage the content and don’t worry about their content. Find a balance between policy, risk tolerance, and culture.
2. Seed the wiki/blog/fill in the blank with content and evangelize the tool pre-launch.

Finally, a question was posed on how do organizations account for time spent blogging or contributing to a wiki.  Specifically, if employees bill for their hours or attribute all their time to a client or project, how do you account for time spent on these tools.  There wasn’t a real answer to this, but there was an underlying worry in the room that these initiatives may just be a time-suck for their employees.  I guess go to take away 1 above - just trust that employees are smart enough to find their own balance.

Was the day really this long?  Next came the social/beer/mingle with vendors time downstairs.  I saw most of what I wanted to see the day before but there were some new faces in the room and I spent a little more time in the Microsoft booth.  I dropped a card in the drawing for a Zune and I won!  Anyone need an 8gb Zune?

Finally, the last item on the schedule was a 6-8pm panel discussion between a couple vendors in the social networking space.  I’m not sure what the takeaways were, but the conversation was amusing and the panel worked so well together in answering the audiences questions.  I’m glad I stuck around for this - it was a lot of fun.

At this point it was 8:30pm and I had yet to step outside; once I did I found the heat had broke and it was beautiful outside.  I walked a little, picked up the T and found a little Italian restaurant where I ordered the special despite having no idea what the waitress said.  I picked up something about shrimp and what I thought was clams over linguine.  Turned out to be a plate full of whole mussels in the shell with a couple shrimp.  The special was great - I wish I knew what it was so I could order it again sometime.

And to think, there is still one more day to go!

I had a couple plans on how to entertain myself while in Boston alone:

• I had a few restaurants I wanted to revisit from my last trip
• I want to visit the new Contemporary Art Museum (because I saw it featured on This Old House)
• I wanted to find the building my parents lived in while my mother was in nursing school at Mass. General Hospital and my dad was in the US Navy.

I decided to set out on completing the third goal last night after the conference…but it was a little difficult seeings how my mom could only remember the street name and the fact that there was a market across the street. To make it worse, yesterday was the hottest day this week with a heat index of 103. Luckily Anderson Street is only a couple blocks long, and the market is still there.

After finding the building I spent some time walking around the neighborhood snapping pictures for my mom. It is a cool area, lots of young health care professionals walking to/from work in their scrubs and many little shops/businesses disbursed throughout the area. I’d live there if I lived in Boston.  I even bought a couple lotto tickets in the market thinking that lightning could strike twice and I would rewarded with copious amounts of treasure after finding the first item I was looking for - that didn’t work out so hot.

After checking that goal off the list I spent some time sitting by the Charles River talking to my friend Marty, enjoying the view, thinking about life and then heading back to the hotel. It was a good night.

Another highlight of the day was finding a whole new group to follow on Twitter.  There are about 30 people here who are regularly and extensively posting on Twitter.  It is so great - I can virtually attend every session whereas normally I would be limited to the one I could sit in.  I’ve also had a chance to meet a couple people that I’ve followed or who are following me which is a new experience (outside the office).