19 posts tagged “rave”
This is such a moving video by an autistic woman "talking" about her native language. Share it with others - even if it were not authentic, it is an incredibly important message.
Link: Geni - Everyone's Related.
Oh my God, Jason Calacanis is brilliant as usual (yes, I'm a big fan of his - always have been, you know, since the "early days.") He is gaga over this site Geni and with good reason.
I've always wanted to build a family tree online but have found the Web-based software to be clunky and confusing. Geni uses Flash to make it so easy a monkey (or I) can handle building a tree with ease.
My dad's mother's side of the family has a tree they've worked out in great detail but the rest of my family tree is not documented anywhere, especially my husband's side and mother's side. I'm hoping this site will help us flesh out our famly history.
My husband, a non-techy type, immediately caught on (although had a little trouble with my PowerBook keyboard). He said that this is an invention that people are really going to use (unwittingly echoing Jason's assessment). My husband also keeps telling me he wants me to invent something like this that can rake in $100 million.
Yeah, I'll keep thinking on that one.
The brilliance of something like Geni is that it is so damn obvious that this kind of intuitive site was needed for the millions of genealogy fanatics out there who were slogging through bad software. But this also brings in all those who aren't really the die-hard family tree builders, too. It is infectious. It is contagious.
The one thing they are missing - a little badge that I can put on my blog that says I've built my family tree at Geni. They've got $100 million - maybe they'll hire me to do a little marketing strategy for them. Yeah, that's it.
Who, me, obsessed with celebrity pregnancies and birth? Not me!
The irony is that when I was miscarrying, I was obsessed over how often pregnant celebrities appeared on magazines and it angered me so much. Now I'm obsessed with reading every detail about celebrity pregnancies and derive some vicarious joy out of the whole thing.
So join me in my obsession, will ya?
Cruise, Holmes Welcome Baby Suri
'TomKat,' Shields In Baby Irony
...but pretty cool!
I love the Web! Here is a site where you can make a snowflake.
And here is my first attempt!
Another useless blog thing but hey, I've been boring lately with little to say about life or the world so here it is...
| Your Birthdate: December 19 |
 You've had some difficult experiences in your life, but you are wise from them. Having had to grow up quickly, you tend to discount the advice of others. You tend to be a loner, having learned that the only person you can depend on is yourself. Your strength: Well developed stability and confidence Your weakness: Suspicion of others Your power color: Eggplant Your power symbol: Spade Your power month: October |
Too cute - created this South Park cartoon version of me at:
http://www.planearium2.de/flash/spstudio.html
As usual, I find out about some current event 3 months after it happens. I must be on a 3 month time warp up here in Alaska.
A good friend forwarded me a link to Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford this past June. I enjoyed reading it so thought I'd link to it and excerpt some of it here.
Connecting the Dots
(talking about how a class he took by chance ended up influencing him when designing the first Mac.)
...You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
About Love and Loss
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
About Death
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart...
...No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
And his ultimate wish for the 2005 graduating class from Stanford University?
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
I just heard of a site that promises to be better than Self-Googling. You know, the thing that everyone is doing in private, the thing that you are doing but maybe not admitting to it: searching for your own name in Google.
Try This: Zoom Info ("People Information Summarized") Note how you can click on the "This is me" link and update your profile.
I'm supposed to be writing my book on blogging so am not going to fiddle with this site but it looks interesting and satisfying for self-Googlers everywhere. Now we can say we self-Zoom.
Let me know what you think since I won't have time to really play around with it until I turn in my book.
Link: Seth's Blog: Clueless.
Seth Godin draws our attention to the clueless companies giving us bad customer service and trying to dress it up as business as usual. Remember the last 6 months of bad customer service I experienced at Wells Fargo? Clueless was definitely the operative word there.
The Wells Fargo Fiasco, by the way, has finally been resolved by a single attentive, sharp and customer-service driven woman at their Anchorage headquarters. She singlehandedly salvaged our business banking relationship with Wells Fargo by listening, empathizing and then not only offering solutions that made sense but taking immediate action to rectify everything that was wrong. Within 2 weeks, our business banking was functioning properly. That woman deserves a promotion AND a raise. She already has our sincerest thanks.
Link: Pandagon: Santorum wants to knock you up for your own good.
As I continue to read blogs day and night for my upcoming book about blogging, I come across some things that I won't be able to include in my book but must link to or at least bookmark.
I'm enjoying the rants at pandagon.net by Amanda Marcotte like the one about Santorum and birth control:
How does (birth control) harm women? Well, apparently freedom is dangerous for women, since we are, after all, just very tall children who need constant punishment and discipline. Birth control allows women to escape the "consequences" (children are "consequences"--doesn't that make you feel all warm and Hallmark-y) of having sex. [Read more...]
But I won't be able to include this particular blog in my book because my audience is supposedly Christian, white women from the Midwest. Maybe I'm being too cautious here, but better to err on the side of caution than have to redo content.
