Morning all:

The last thing I heard before falling asleep last night was Marcia saying something about wanting to go to the “all Northside” yard sale in the morning. Now Northside has been a fringe community in our area that has been recently re-discovered. This is especially so since it does have some wonderfully interesting old housing stock. I know exactly what she’ll say; “a number from the gay community have moved there and they might have some wonderful stuff up for sale”. Would it be PC for me to retort by saying: “yes, but they tend to way overprice their stuff”? Another hour we’ll fight that battle, for now I’ll focus on a coffee refill. Thankyouverymuch.

It always drives me nuts when I allow myself to fall into this trap. Whenever I happen focus on something it seems that for a while that everywhere I go or look I’ll notice it. Early this week I spotted one of those Dodge Neon cars and made an observation that its headlights were all clouded over making them look like they had cataracts. By yesterday I must have seen nearly ten of these things, all with cataract headlights. I have some family members that are seriously into cars and I’ll ask them: so what gives with these Neon cars and their cataract lights?

Mentioning cars reminds me that some of you might be concerned with the current fuel prices and the cost of a fill-up. Just to make you feel better let me swing this little tidbit by you. Last weekend Marcia and I drove our little Citroen Deux Chevaux to a festival that was twenty-eight miles from home. After we returned I mentioned that the next time we take it out for a ride I’d probably want to fill the tank since it was below the one-quarter mark on the gauge. Just to let you know, the last time I filled it was October 2004—the tank holds six gallons.

Our families have gotten serious into toddler-speak. Kirstin shared Derek’s newest word, one that substitutes library with “bibaby”. Couple that with classics such as “elebator”, and Marin’s “mogidykle” (motorcycle) and you’ll find our conversations have stepped dramatically away from the language given to us by luminaries such as Shakespeare.

This week at work I hosted a Round Table event that was broadcast over a call-in telephone link and also over the web. Participants were from as far away as Egypt. I have handled several of these events, all on a much smaller scale and these were quite one-dimensional. This one was totally interactive with instant participant polls where in 20-seconds bar graphs were displaying the results of various polling questions that were presented. The system manager was getting constant real-time feedback from the project leader, who was in another city. Participants were able to privately key in questions and responses could be broadcast or sent back to a single individual. It really was a privilege to have a hand in this and see this technology at work and also dream a bit about other possible applications.

Since I am on the topic of business, I came across a business site that has an amazing amount of information about world events, as well as companies and people. It is from a French society, The Henokiens, whose members are individuals who run companies that are all family owned—and which have been around and been continuously in business for at least 200 years! Take a look at a tab marked “The Time Machine”. In case you are wondering how I came across this site, I was Google-ing around trying to check up on my competition. Hey, we gotta do what we gotta to do.

Make it a great week,
Cheers,
Dirk