Disney Cruise Reports Blog

You may remember that in a couple of previous posts (here and here), I was kicking around the idea of taking the family on a Disney cruise this year. For various reasons, I've decided against that option - for this year, at least. This year we're going to stay in a safari suite at the Sheraton Safari hotel when we visit Disney World in October.

Speaking of Disney Cruises though, Jenny has pointed me in the direction of her blog, Disney Cruise Reports. This is a nice looking blog (I dig the big Mickey picture), with good information on the latest happenings (and deals!) on the Disney Cruises - go check it out!

PS - Thanks for the nice comments, Jenny. You didn't leave me an email address, so I couldn't respond directly.

Keep the Gulf Coast in Your Prayers

As we speak, the US gulf coast is getting pounded by the devastating hurricane Katrina. A storm like this has the potential not only to destroy homes and property, but to flood entire cities and take many lives. Please keep the residents of New Orleans, Gulf Port, Biloxi and all the others in the path of this storm in your thoughts and prayers.

Current Updates:
Fox News
MSNBC
CNN

Happy day for Coffee Lovers

Coffee lovers of the world - rejoice! There's an article on wired that discusses a recent study showing that my beloved black gold contains more antioxidants than any other food or beverage. Just another reason to never stop enjoying the java.

Link: http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,68677,00.html

Lunch with Ann Northup

Kentucky 3rd district congresswoman Ann Northup was here today for a lunch time talk about the looming Social Security crisis. I am concerned about this issue for a number of reasons. Number one, I work at a company that is a major player in long term health care (nursing centers). Changes to Social Security and/or Medicare directly affect business. Also as a younger worker, I’m 31, any changes made to the Social Security program today will directly affect me in my retirement years.

As mentioned in a previous post, I attended President Bush’s town hall meeting on the same topic in March of this year. I know that the presentation was packaged for a mass audience and geared for sound bites, but even so after hearing him speak I was still very confused as to what he intended to do to fix the problem. He did a nice job of building consensus that there was a problem that needed to be fixed, but he was very short on solutions.

Not so with Ms. Northup. She did an outstanding job of taking a complex topic and making it understandable, clearly outlining both the problem and the proposed solution that she supports. In addition to the plan that she supports, she talked about the other plans on the table and why they are not as good. What impressed me most was the question and answer session at the conclusion of her talk. She was able to address a wide variety of concerns from the audience, and I came away with the distinct impression that she had spent a great deal of time getting to know this topic in intimate detail.

As for me, I’ve still got some more thinking and research to do before I make up my own mind as to whether private accounts are the way to go or not. However, I now have a much deeper understanding of the issues at hand and I’m very grateful to Congresswoman Northup for that. Thanks Ann!

New Poker Blog

I've just started a new poker blog over on MSN spaces that I'd like you to check out. You can find it at http://spaces.msn.com/members/cypoker. It's basically a journal of my online poker play with results and perhaps some keen insights (yeah, right) along the way. Go see it and let me know what you think!

Update: Corrected URL

It's Widget Time!

I'm sure that by now most everyone has heard that Yahoo! has purchased Konfabulator, and made it free (as in beer). Now it's time to go exploring and find out what the coolest widgets are. The default install includes a few pretty handy widgets like the CPU Portal and the Memory Guage. What are some of the others that I should check out?

The What To Do? widget has really caught my attention. I've been trying to convert to a more Getting Things Done style of managing my workflow. To that end, I've been using the GTD Wiki for managing my next actions list while I'm at the computer (which is always). The only problem with the Wiki is that I need to have the browser open to use it. In the past, this would not have been an issue because my browser was always open anyway. If the browser is always open, you can guess what I spent too much of my time at work doing, right? Anyway, I've got the What To Do? widget set as the topmost window and slightly transparent. I can see what I need to be doing at all times without having my browser (or Outlook) open. I'll let you know how it goes!

MindManager Beta

Woo Hoo! I got a message earlier that I was selected to participate in MindManager Pro 6 beta for Mindjet. As you may recall from a previous post, I am a big fan of the art of mind mapping in general and of the MindManager software in particular (though prior to the beta, I've been using FreeMind).

The confidentiality agreement of the beta prevents me from giving any details about the new product, but I don't think that the Mindjet folks would mind me saying that It Rocks! I'll post what I can about it in the future, but in the mean time I'm very excited to be playing with (er, testing) the new features ;)

Happy Birthday America!

Happy Independence Day! It's July 4, and that means Independance Day here in the states. I would like to take this opportunity to say thanks to our men and women in uniform all over the world who are defending our freedom and doing their part to keep America the "Land of the free and the home of the brave." Thank You!

Almost Famous

I've written a book review of Bill Jensen's new book What Is Your Life's Work for 800CEORead.com.

If you've not been to their site before, I encourage you to check it out. They've got a terrific collection of business books (and reviews). I especially like the Jack Covert Selects section (click the "We Recommend" link on the home page). This page has the president's recommendations and reviews of the latest books - very cool.

Stop your presentation before it kills again!

Kathy at Creating Passionate Users has done it again. Today she has a terrific post about the horrors of slideware presentations. If you're a PowerPoint user, or have ever had to sit through a PP presentation, or even if you know somebody who has, check out this post! In addition to Kathy's insightful (as usual) commentary, she's included a link to this Wired article about the effect that PP has on our learning and cognition abilities.

Vacation as an Inspiration for Change

WSJ.com has a fascinating story this morning about how sometimes vacations can inspire career changes. I'm going on vacation next week - maybe some time on the beach will help me find the spark that I've been missing. I know that I'm ready for a change, a big one, but I've not yet determined what it is that I want to do. My current job used to supply both sex and cash, but no longer. Stay tuned.

Link: WSJ.com - A Good Vacation Can Serve As an Inspiration for Change

China Forces Websites To Register

Slashdot has a post this morning about the Chinese government forcing owners of blogs and websites to register with the government. This story is chilling in a lot of ways, but one of the most frightening aspects appears near the bottom of the Inquirer story. A blogger who attempted to register with the government was told not to bother because "independent blogs would not be granted permission to continue."

Link: Slashdot | China Forces Websites To Register

Sim Brain - Coming soon?

New Scientist is reporting on an ambitious project by IBM and a Swiss university to create a computer simulation of the human brain. The project will use IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer and will attempt to simulate the electrical structure of the neocortex.

Link: New Scientist Breaking News - Mission to build a simulated brain begins

What I'm Hearing: A Short History of Nearly Everything

My audible.com listener pick for this month is Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. The scope of this book is absolutely breathtaking! It represents the fruits of Bryson's quest for knowledge about, well, everything.

The book begins by tackling such trivial subjects as the formation of the universe and the age and composition of the Earth and the solar system. It then takes on nuclear and particle physics, natural disasters and just about anything else you ever wanted to know about, well, anything.

What Bryson has accomplished here would be an absolute dream to me. Imagine traveling to the far corners of the globe for three years to learn at the feet of the world's most brilliant scientists about both the history and origins of their fields as well as the bleeding edge of their current research. All I can say is - WOW!

Update: Include picture of book jacket

Star Wars Mini-Review

I went to see Episode III: Revenge of the Sith last night, and was pretty impressed. The Empire Strikes Back is still my favorite episode, but this one moves into a close second. The special effects of the battle scenes were a step beyond any of the other Star Wars films, which is to say that they were spectacular.

I think that the best part of this movie is the way that it answers all the questions (I won't spoil any of them here) and ties up all of the loose ends. The dialogue is a little hokey in places, and the film seemed to drag a little bit near the middle, but overall this was an excellent effort from Lucasfilms. Definitely worth seeing!

Coding for Fun

Scoble's got a link to the Coding for Fun site today. This is a site from Microsoft that's dedicated to hobby programming (games and web sites mostly). I'm just getting my first look at this site, but it looks pretty good. It's always fun to dabble in game development and other new stuff that most of us coders don't normally do.

I'm pretty lucky in that what I do for my day job is also one of the things that I like to do for fun (in other words, my sex and cash coincide). Obviously, the Coding for Fun site deals only with the MS tools. I really enjoy using VS .Net, but I use it all day long. When I code on the side, I like to pick up tools that are new to me (like Java and more recently Ruby). Still, this looks like a site that I'll be spending some time on.

Link: Do you code for fun? Check out this community

Dream the Big Dream

I watched a fascinating show called Black Sky on the Discovery Channel this morning about Burt Rutan and the Scaled Composites team that worked on the Spaceship One project for the Ansari X Prize. I was mesmorized by this show and by the amount of passion that the team displayed. These are people that know how to dream big and literally shoot for the stars. The show was very inspiring; I want to find something that I can be that passionate about!

Back to work

Alright, Derby week is over here in Louisville and it's back to business as usual. Raise your hand if you picked Giacomo in the big event. No? Me neither. Seriously though, if you've never been to Louisville for Derby week then you are missing out. It's not just a horse race - the whole city comes alive for all sorts of celebrations.

There are the usual host of civic events like the Pegasus Parade, but there are many events that you won't see too many other places: a steamboat race, a bed race, and a basketball game (and I've already mentioned the mini-marathon and Thunder). Of course, we do have some horse races too!

43 Things

The 43 Things web site is a great place for tracking your goals. It works like this: you write down your goals, make notes on your progress, and check them off when you've completed them. C'mon, you know that writing down your goals and checking up on them regularly increases your chances of completing them. An additional benefit of this site is that you get to see goals from many other people (and they can see yours), thus adding an element of social commitment to your goals. Incidently, some of the goals posted there are pretty inspiring, and it's very easy to make the goals your own and add them to your personal list.

Here are my things.

Ugh - Mini Marathon results

Well, as promised, I participated in the Derby Festival Mini-Marathon Saturday morning. My official time was officially bad - 2:55:22. I guess I still have some work to do on goal number 7 at 43 things!