I’m continually thankful to have such a great job at Grand Valley State University; one of the many benefits to working here is having the holiday break between Christmas and New Years off.  It is always a very relaxing time of year after the rush of Christmas is over and trips to visit family are complete.  I had hoped to spend a bit of time snowmobiling over break, but  a total melting of the snow in western Michigan did nothing for those plans.  With plenty of time I was able to read a couple of books; one shared with me by a friend and the other a book that had been on my “to-read” list.

I started with Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean, a book a friend of mine gave me after he finished it.  I really enjoy the Florida keys so this book appealed to me, and once I started it was hard to put down.  First, I had no idea that Henry Flagler had such a close affiliation with J.D. Rockefeller.  Most people know the Rockefeller name, but few people know Flagler despite also having similar wealth and public prominence.  I wonder if Rockefeller would even have had such wealth had it not been for Flagler’s shrewd dealings.  It also was interesting to learn that Flagler’s wealth and ambitions had an enormous impact on much of the state of Florida.  I learned that Key West was already a bustling island long before Flagler, but his quest to build a railroad from the mainland of Florida through the Keys along with plush hotels changed the area forever.  And doing this was so amazingly difficult…I don’t think anyone today would even consider such an undertaking.

Reading this, I couldn’t help but think that there was such opportunity in the late 1800′s into the early 1900′s for a person to start their own business and have the potential to grow it into a small empire.  I would love to be an entrepreneur and start something from the ground up, but it seems so very difficult now.  At times it seems like every good idea has been thought of, and every great product already developed.  And in my profession, it is ridiculously difficult to even find an original domain name for some new web-business.

If you like history or if you’ve ever driven down the keys and wanted to learn more about the railroad bridges that still stand near US 1 you would find this book a great read.  I will have to get back to the Keys to do a bit more first hand observation soon!

Next, I read One Man’s Widerness, An Alaskan Odyssey, a book that has been on my “to-read” list ever since watching a PBS documentary about Richard Proenneke.  The book and the documentary have a lot of overlap since they both are based on photos, footage taken by Proenneke, and entries in his journal but the book goes into a bit more detail.  This was another “against all odds” type story which details Proenneke’s departure from a “normal” life and his decision to move to Alaska’s extreme wilderness where he built his own log cabin and lived by himself for over a year.  He died in 2003 but spent much of his life at that cabin.  As he got older he opted to fly out before the extreme winters took hold of the area.

Proenneke struck me as half survivalist and half environmentalist, with real creativity, ingenuity, and passion for nature.  Aside from designing and building his own cabin with little more than what was available to him from nature and a collection of hand-tools, he had to make plans months in advance to survive all that nature would throw at him.  From bear attacks, to -40 degree days in the winter, to a water source covered by 48 inches of ice the journal entries cover the ups and downs of his endeavor.

Like Flagler, he set out to do what some people would call crazy and/or impossible, but it made total sense to him and his journal entries and photos are enough to convince anyone else to attempt the same thing.  Towards the end of the book the author touches on Proenneke’s thoughts on a man’s sense of accomplishment; Proenneke thought it did a person good to see a project through from start to finish by one’s self, completed by their own hands.

I’d love to do something like this in my lifetime, but I think I’ll settle for an alternative that involves weekends in some remote wilderness followed by a grounding return to society during the week.  I haven’t built my own cabin yet, but I’ve started with building houses for birds…which does give me a nice sense of accomplishment when done.

So…the take-away from these books is that I need to find some business idea that revolves me building my own house way out in the middle of no where.  Now I just need to sell Holly on this idea!

Here are a couple things I learned while in Cincinnati, OH earlier this week attending the HighEdWeb Association’s 2010 National Conference:

There are many, many objects more comfortable to sit on than the chairs in the Cincinnati Hilton Netherland Plaza conference rooms. A few that come to mind include a wood plank, a rock, or an upside-down 5-gallon bucket.

A high energy presenter like Robin Smail (@Robin2Go) is the best way to start a conference. She didn’t even let the fact that she was presenting a topic (Google Wave) that would be obsolete in two months phase her. After listening to the group’s thoughts on the extent to which Google should be trusted I learned that I am not the only paranoid higher ed techie out there. And seriously…an official title of “Disruptive Technologist” is just cool.

Video production and live event streaming seems to be an elusive topic for many campuses. The mix of technical skills, Audio/Video software & hardware skills, and access to equipment make it challenging for any one department to oversee.

Higher Ed Web Professionals are really social people…except in the elevator. Seriously, twitter backchannel was abuzz, but step in the elevator and no one talked to one another in person. Social events in the evenings are a different story…I can honestly say that I learned as much in the bars, restaurants, excursions than I did during the sessions.

Mobile apps are here to stay despite web browsers on devices making a native app’s less necessary. People must really like having an icon to click!

Mark Greenfield (@markgr) has great taste in pre-session music and a unique outlook for the future of web and education. I came away with an amazon shopping cart full of must-read books after listening to him for a couple hours.

Despite hating keynote sessions himself, Steve Krug (@skrug) gives an an exciting and entertaining keynote on usability! Watching a live mini-usability test makes me want to do these more regularly, and for more pages than our institutional homepage.

Dylan Wilbanks (@dylanw) gives an eloquent presentation on lessons learned after 10 years in our field. I think all new higher ed web professionals should see this presentation as part of their new-hire orientation! If nothing else, it gave me hope that the challenges I’ve seen in the same time aren’t unique and can have a happy ending.

Campus facebook pages come with ups and downs (especially during big snow storms!). If you build it, and if students come to it, then you have to be prepared to manage a really powerful communication tool.

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This was my first experience with the Higher Ed Web Conference and I’m impressed, and hooked! Can’t wait for next year’s event in Austin, Texas.

Funny Will Ferrell & Jimmy Fallon clip for a Friday afternoon…

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here so I thought it was about time to do a general update…

Things have been crazy the past couple months as Holly and I ran in 10 different directions trying to decide where we were going to live in the coming months/years.  We considered building our new “dream house” but suffered from a case of sticker shock, then thought about buying a house but suffered from thoughts of “that’s all we get for that price?,” while all along fixing up our house with the intention of selling.  That was until we heard what the Realtor thought it would sell for.  So, I think the plan at this point, as of today, is to live in our house for a little bit longer while making a plan to build soonish.  We’ll also likely take advantage of the crazy-low mortgage rates to refinance into a 15 year mortgage in order to pay down the principal faster; believe it or not the low rates make this less than $100 more than our current payment.  Now…if you ask again tomorrow and you might get a different answer.

Somewhere during the process of looking for money under various rocks I decided to sell my old Polaris snowmobile.  It gave me years of hassle-free use but it was getting to the age where I just felt a big problem wasn’t too far off…so I decided it would be better in another person’s garage.  When I got nearly as much as I paid for it years ago I immediately started looking for more stuff to throw on craigslist.  If it isn’t nailed down it might be for sale soon!

Onto the dog…it seems like a couple months can’t go by without a trip to the Vet for Bailey.  This time was a bit more concerning though as Holly found blood in his “stool.”  The diagnosis this time is Colitis – swelling (inflammation) of the large intestine (colon).  This was better than other things we thought it might be and should be controllable with food more suitable for a dog his age.  It seems that his old food just isn’t bland enough for his aging digestive system, but with his lack of teeth soft food probably isn’t that far off!

As a general public service announcement: don’t ever try to make a “sparkler bomb!” Sure it looks fun in the youtube videos but playing with something that sounds and acts like a stick of dynamite really isn’t a good idea.  Some minor property damage and a close call with some flying “material” left my brother and I in a state of shock, and me with a solid resolve to never put one of these together again….seriously; never.

Finally…I bought a used Howard Miller mantle clock (pictured above) today from someone at GVSU today.  You might not think that is very cool or exciting but I was pretty thrilled to find such a treasure at such a reasonable cost.  My dad must have passed his odd desire to collect clocks and pocket watches onto me, but there is just something about winding an old clock and hearing real chimes and gongs every 15 minutes.  After hearing this even Holly agreed that she’d like to get a full-sized grandfather clock whenever we do end up in a new house!

Of all the “news magazine” type shows that I love to watch, Dateline NBC isn’t one that I make an effort to catch often.  Since we’ve disconnected from cable, however, my options on Sunday nights are limited so I happened to tune in this past weekend.  Ann Curry did a story (America Now: Friends & Neighbors) on the increasing poverty in the US as a result of the recession; she focused on southeast Ohio and selected a couple families to follow for the story.  I was really moved by this, and have thought about it often since watching.

If you didn’t catch it you should try to make some time to watch it here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38382773/ns/dateline_nbc-america_now

Let me first say that I am a big fan of Ann Curry…I watch the Today show almost every morning while getting ready for work and I think she brings a lot to that show.  I liked her so much I was rooting for her to replace Katie Couric, and most mornings while watching Meredith Vieira, I wish that she had.  That being said, I thought Ann was too nice, or simply chose not to ask hard questions while covering this story.

The story started with a local food bank that is supporting a growing number of people who rely on assistance to feed their families while operating on a shoestring budget.  It was really sad seeing the many people who probably couldn’t feed their families without this food bank.  The depiction of poverty in this rural area was surprising and Holly and I decided that we’d like to send a donation to the Friends & Neighbors Food Pantry.

While feeling very bad for the people covered in this story, I kept getting frustrated that more questions weren’t asked about what the individuals were doing to help get themselves out of poverty. Had these individuals considered moving to another area? Have they looked for ways to make themselves more employable? Have they contacted state agencies to take full advantage of programs setup to assist them? Do they think they’re making it possible for their children to rise out of poverty? I know these are easy questions to ask from my vantage point and there are countless hurdles for poor families to overcome to change their situations, but I felt the story glossed over everything that might involve the families helping themselves.

I tried to focus on the bigger picture, but it was hard watching a woman get upset about not being able to feed her children while smoking a cigarette…this after explaining that she pinches pennies to buy the cheapest groceries because even the pennies saved counted.  Even if you smoke the cheap brands, I’m sure that the money spent would equate to a couple more cans of food for the kids.

A similar moment came when Ann was interviewing a young mother of 3 who had lived in her van with the kids during the times that she couldn’t stay with her grandparents after fighting with them.  Ann questioned whether this woman had ever learned about birth control…she said that she had, but retorted: “accidents happen.”  There were no other follow up questions despite so many opportunities to go into more detail; instead they moved onto talking about the woman participating in a singing contest to win 50 dollars.  After dropping out of school when she had the second child before she would have graduated I had to ask myself at what point she thought a 3rd child was a good idea.

Judging by the comments left on the dateline page I saw that many others experienced the same frustrations.

Somewhere in the middle of all this the governor of Ohio was interviewed and stated that at some point “it became stylish to be selfish. It’s almost acceptable to be prejudiced against poor people.” I then wondered if my frustrations were just my prejudice and selfishness coming out.  I’m still thinking about that, but I think a little more in depth coverage was still warranted…

As an aside…throughout the story I was reminded of Jeannette Wall’s book, “The Glass Castle.”  I imagined that the people being interviewed were somewhat like Wall’s parents, and wondered if the kids had some of the same feelings/experiences that she had as a kid.  If you haven’t read that book I’d recommend that too!