net neutrality
My friend Lauralee sent me a link to a video about net neutrality.
I thought it was fascinating. I also think it's true. What do you think?
CLICK HERE TO VIEWIt's about ten minutes long so you might want to go get a beverage first.
change is good
The metamorphosis is almost complete.
Old Me: last week, roasting in the heat in a hip little coffee shop in Glen Lake down the street from my house, meeting and talking about web 2.0 contradictions.
The new me sitting in an air conditioned Caribou in Maple Grove at 7:00AM in the morning to beat rush hour traffic turning a 20 minute drive to my new job into a 70 minute monster. My new office doesn't really open until 8:00 AM and most of the people I interact with don't roll in until around 9:00 - 10:00 AM because they're artsy creative types who end up staying in their offices until 7:00pm then out for some late night engagement.
I got a job, and sold Scrapped at the same time. More later.
So I know most everybody that posts responses. I'm dying of curiousity, if you put a date in the calendar as the dividing line between "old me" and "new me" what would you change? What would you give up and hope to replace it with? It's been liberating, even in the little things.
Minda's getting a new job, Paul's always got new hair ( and now a baby that forces you into a old me / new me ) Scrap Bunny has summer and rest of the year occupations, Drew... well Drew's pretty consistent. ( Consistently unpredictable. )Scrapbookers are constantly measuring changes in their kids / spouses in real tangible ways.
If you're logging in from Manila, Canada, the UK... feel free to be anonymous and spill your guts, let it all hang out. old me / new me. Daydream.I'd love to hear about it.
wes
Mr. Clean
Temps here were in the 90's for several days in a row and well... it's a new season in my life. I'm looking for a job, a new job in that I want to find a 9-5 instead of having my own business. Connie and I are selling our house and want to move closer into the city where we lived for many years.We're even trying to figure out if we should get a single family home, townhouse or condo ( no garage... yikes! ) New job, new neighborhood, new house, new lifestyle.
For some reason my inside brain activity wants to manifest itself on the outside and bring emotional and mental concepts into the tangible world. Combine all these together and I decided to shave my head. I liberated myself from my hair to cool off, to mark the end of something and the spark of something new... and so I didn't have to keep combing out gnarled bits and tangles from biking around all day in the sun and wind...
I can send you instruction on how to give yourself a dashing new doo like this one if you're interested.
wes
dicotomy
So here I am in my corporate battle gear pitching a video series and DVD companion product to a book about China. It's a far cry from the free wheeling scrapbooking project where you're still owing somebody something to get production done but you shoulder the success and failure yourself and don't answer to a board of trustees.
After a few months of shooting in China, editing, working on manuscripts, building an online delivery system with databases, blogs and podcasts it looks like things are winding down and we're not going to get a big chunk of millions of dollars all at once. That means current negotiations with McGraw Hill to publish the book, then build a TV and DVD series on that, which in turn is enough bait for investors in the online empire . I need to make money and pay bills ( are you with me? ) so I'm interviewing for regular 9-5 jobs in video production, editing, web building and interactive media.
One interesting possibility is a local distribution company wants to buy Scrapped,
Brethren ( my other soul searching project I did a year or so before Scrapped ) and possibly hire me on to develop a "docu-tainment" department for them. It might not pay much better than flipping burgers but how cool would that be? I smell a Scrapped 2 if that happens. :0)
Until then I'm just keeping the biking / fishing / rowdy music part of my life suppressed and dressing up for the last remaining funding pitches and job interviews.
PS> What is up with a sunfish biting a lure 23 times bigger than it's mouth? The poor little guy has guts...
Fly's, Flights and Fat
I had one day home to catch up on email, voicemail, send out some DVD orders and adjust to the 12 hour time difference in sleep schedule. Well, that and jet lag from spending about 43 hours of actual in the air time ( not counting layovers ) in one week of flying.
I celebrated my day of recovery by hopping on a plane and flying to Denver to visit my wife's family last weekend. It was also her brother Ken's birthday so some of us chipped in and got him a fly fishing rod and reel. Ken is my fishing buddy and a good friend so it seemed like a logical progression to spring it on him during this trip so we could head up to the mountains with another brother and brother in law to go for some trout.
After several hours of back yard practice casting we took off and I was able to catch a juicy rainbow trout that was big enough to cook up but I forgot to bring a leader on the plane and anything to contain a gutless fish in a car for several hours. It was sent on it's merry way with great ceremony as the first catch of the day. Out of the massive investments of skill and gear made in the fly world I was able to catch a trout right away with an open reel and scented marshmellows. Go Figure. I also ran up to the car for the camera, felt the burn of oxygen deprivation ( we were at least a mile higher than the mile high city itself ) and realized I left it back at the house so I'll have to paste in some silly substitute pic I found on the internet.
We were at the Denver airport by 11:00 AM on Tuesday and very ready to get home. Weather rolled in and our flight was delayed an hour, then another hour, then two more.... then around 8:00pm - canceled. We tried to get another flight but United was already booked well until Wednesday for other stranded passengers so we canceled our tickets and tried to get a flight back from another carrier. Hmm, apparently tons of requests at the last minute for flights insanely drives up the price of remaining tickets so we looked for other options. The airport was PACKED with stranded people with blood in their eyes so I immediately tried to book a rental car. We ended up with a minivan and after waiting in more lines, securing something and trying to retrieve our bags that had been checked all day ( another 2 hours from the time we requested our check in and when it actually showed up in a carousel ) we were on a 14 hour joy ride back to Minneapolis. WOW. What a couple weeks of being in transit mode. It's nice to be home now. :0)
I also realized that I've put on about 6 pounds in the last two weeks. Maybe something about having rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner or eating regular meals but sitting still in a seat for days on end... or maybe I'm a pig that eats more than he can expend, somehow I bumped up from 248 to 254. Not a huge panic other than obviously having to make my way down to the 230 range sometime this summer except for a deadline on a weightloss program I started before Scrapped that will refund 1/2 my money at my final weigh in if I meet my goal... which was due last week. DOH! Before I started Scrapped I came in at about 275 pounds and needed to desperately drop some excess cheek, neck, butt and belly before I was captured in time. The idea wasn't so much vanity ( although I'm obviously over wieght and not excited about it ) but I just didn't want extra belly parts hanging out and distracting what's happening on camera. I made it down to 250 while we were shooting and leveled off. Chubby enough to be aproachable but not thick enough to get in the way of all that hugging that seemed to happen everywhere I happened to be scrapbooking with women. So now I'm trying to shed some poundage in a short amount of time to take the money and run. Looking good is one thing but cold hard cash... that's a motivator!
Now before you start thinking about how big 250 pounds really is just remember that my fit weight out of High School when I was trim, benching around 250 and fitting into size 32 jeans was still around 210. Don't you 5 foot 5 inch ladies be comparing two of you to one of me and gasping in horror at my gravitational pull based on sheer mass. besides, it's fashionable to publicly declare your weight. I saw the other night that it got Tyra Banks on Larry King! I'm just hoping for a continued audience to my blog...
Here's what happened when Connie snuck a picture of me sitting by her mother for dinner and I spontaniously decided to plant a big juicy smooch or her. This is unheard of in her family as we were coerced into even giving goodbye hugs so I milked it for shock value.
view from above
Here's some pictures of Jakarta, an airplane and the view looking out.
The view out my hotel room window. A Mosque, a tennis court and a garbage heap. It pretty much sums up what I'm seeing in the city, fun, exotic, history - culture and brutally gritty. It's the 9th largest city in the world with a metropolitan population of over 23 million people - 44,283 people per square mile. Amazing, beautiful people who smiled bigger than I ever imagined possible.
I had finally met my South East Asian match and it looked perfectly harmless. Out of all the funky stuff I've eaten for some reason I had a hard time getting the tube mussles down. I think it was a combination of beer, the rank smell of amonia cleaning products and fishy aroma's coming from all directions. I made it through the exotic skin on fish, chili crab ( and it's eggs served in the hollowed out shell. Very spicy! Very good! ) tore the head off the prawn to suck out the guts ( why just eat the tail and leave all the goodness in the rest? ) then finally made it to the mussels.
You eat them by prying them out of the shell and slurping down the whole thing. I've got a problem with mussels in general. I've had salt water aquariums for years and remember the taste / smell of sucking on a cleaning tube to get the vaccum going to suck fishy poop products off the bottom. Mussels are natures waste treatment plant and they taste pretty much the same. This sensation was compounded by having to crunch up the hard bits, guts and shell flap that makes up the whole of the beast. I was able to show respect and keep it down despite several attempts by my stomach to send it back up from whence it came. The taste of stomach acid and bile that usually clinches the deal and makes you open and puke was a welcome alternative to the actual mussel in my case and I was able to sutrvive the beer, chili, ammonia, fish smell, open to the street feast of the senses. I'm still to North American to fully enjoy the bounty of South East Asian seas...
Hurrah! Chili Crab! ( with it's eggs. )
My partner Dave in one of our flights.
After getting rheemed by Northwest Airlines so many times ( it just seems to be their customer servic policy initiated by the management itself ) I was very happy to experience free beer, wine and peanuts on Malasian airlines!
Nothing preps you for another leg of long flights like chili fries, a brat smothered in peppers and onions washed down with a nice tall beer. I guess I couldn't think of any more explosive and potentially hazardous in combination for a confined and regulated environment shared among hundreds of people. ( note: We actually only had a couple beers on the whole trip, there just happened to be cameras aruond when we did. )
San Francisco from my window - almost home.
