In the past while I’m seeing more and more people I follow in the blogging world (sometimes called the blogosphere) putting together lists of things in their blogs. Jeff Barr, an Amazon guy who works and promotes Amazon Web Services, publishes a list of links to items that interested him. Lorelle VanFossen writes about the blogging software I’m using (WordPress) and every post seems to have a list of related articles. These are just a couple of examples.
Then a month or so ago, lists of things started circulating on Facebook. I would write a list and then “tag” a number of my “friends” to do the same. I enjoyed reading these lists from my friends and relatives on Facebook and learning more about them. My blog is linked to Facebook, so anything I write here also gets sucked into my Facebook page and available to those who only have contact with me through that medium.
So, I’ve decided to try out a new meme: Ten Things Tuesday. I’m going to comment about a list on Tuesdays of ten random things. There’s no particular subject or theme, just a list of thoughts. Feel free to comment (particularly if I don’t somehow make this a regular thing on Tuesdays). So, here’s today’s TripleT:
1. I’ve really found Pandora Internet Radio to be just to my liking for music. It works very nicely on my iPhone, and since the iPhone understands wifi, I’m seen all too often walking around the house with my headset on listening to my favorite music streamed to my iPhone from Pandora. We are just at the beginning of the capabilities and benefits of ubiquitous and continuous connectivity and I look forward with great anticipation to what will be available to me in the next five years.
2. The economy has really tanked our 401(k) savings. The amount of money that has “disappeared” from the account has become quite depressing. However, there is one interesting bright spot. We’ll be in the market by next week for a car to replace Nina’s Camry. I’ve been looking at various websites with helps on how to negotiate a good deal with a car salesman and all indicators are that they are more desperate to sell me something than I am to buy something. I don’t know what we’ll be buying as we don’t have the disposition from the insurance adjuster yet. I guess if I needed to be in the market for an automobile, now’s the right time.
3. In reading the advertisements in the want ads from our local paper I’ve noticed that almost all the cars for sale are American made. There are very few foreign used cars for sale and what there are seem to be from the Korean manufacturers. Nina’s Toyota Camry was the best car we’ve ever owned. There was nothing fancy or sexy about the car … it just ran and ran and ran and required nothing more than routine oil changes. It had about 180,000 miles on it at the time of the accident and was definitely good for another fifty thousand or more. From the newspaper ads, people don’t have that much confidence in their American made vehicles.
4. One of the difficulties about where we live are the limited shopping and eating options available to us. The Sportsman’s Warehouse here in town announced yesterday that they are closing. This store is only about a year old and has been doing well. However, the chain isn’t able to get enough of a line of credit to keep all of their stores stocked with inventory. Consequently, the’re closing a number of stores to be able to concentrate on stocking a fewer number of stores. This is not good news for our fair city. Not only will sixty people be out of a job, but they were a pretty unique store and alternative places to buy the same merchandise is very limited. They will definitely be missed.
5. A Harvard Business School professor who I follow on Twitter recently lost a bet of some sort for which he had to send out 100 tweets on Twitter. Andrew McAfee took the opportunity to send out several lists of things. One of those was a list of 20 great poems available online. I read all of them and they were all interesting, some were just plain outstanding. A couple of those were “What the Uneducated Old Woman Told Me†and â€Orpheus and Eurydice†and â€Gravy†(this last might be of interest to my cousin Ted Larsen who is celebrating his 36th wedding anniversary today … alone … as his wife died from cancer a couple of years ago). Some of the poems I had seen before but most were new to me. I gained a new appreciation for poetry from Dr. McAfee’s list. I’m continually amazed by what I learn on Twitter.
6. Along the same lines, another Twitter friend about whom I’ve written before, PJ Rangaswami, started a blog entry by quoting a person’s depiction of Hamlet as though it came through in real time as little status updates in the Facebook newsfeed (Rangaswami’s post is well worth the read). Before reading his post, I had been thinking about a person living in Pocatello who I follow on Twitter. That person (who for now shall remain un-named) is rather prolific and definitely lives in a different world and lifestyle than I live. I enjoy this look into that person’s life and have thought it would be interesting to assemble all of the tweets into one place as it would be a fascinating story … even though that person thinks they have no meaning, no beauty, and are completely uninteresting. There are actually very few uninteresting people in this world. My tweets are not nearly so interesting, I fear.
7. My daughter from Arizona and her three boys are on their way here after spending a couple of days with our daughter in North Salt Lake. The Arizona daughter definitely has not missed the snow or cold weather since she moved to Chandler and has been kind of delaying her drive here because of the weather. However, as the day has progressed, the weather has gotten worse here. Yesterday the Salt Lake Valley got a lot of snow … we got a light dusting. We were not supposed to have any snow today, but maybe because the Arizona daugher is driving up here the weather karma has answered. Hopefully they’ll all arrive safely and without incident. As the week progresses, another son arrives tomorrow evening, and the North Salt Lake daughter and family come up on Friday. This will be a great week.
8. A couple of weeks ago I saw a short Request for Proposal to build a website for the City of Georgetown, Idaho. I decided to respond and have won the contract. The work is well underway and will be finished in a couple of weeks. When it’s finished, Georgetown will be one of the most “21st electronic century” connected city in southeastern Idaho. What they wanted and how it’ll be delivered is a good subject for a future blog entry. I’m excited to be a part of their entry into the 21st electronic century. Two months ago they didn’t even have an email account or an Internet connection in City Hall.
9. In a few minutes I’ll be leaving for my weekly Rotary Club meeting. This is the newest of four Rotary Clubs in Pocatello and meets in the late afternoon at 5:15 p.m. until about 6:15 p.m. The meeting time is inconvenient, but the association with the other members, being involved in growing a new organization, and the weekly programs are enough to keep me going every week. Rotary International is a great organization and has done outstanding service in providing clean water as well as in irradicating polio.
10. In the future I’ve got to figure out how to make a brief list. This one certainly doesn’t meet that criteria!
