Category Archives: General Stuff

First, thank goodness for the iPod and its descendants! I love being able to listen to music when I work, when I exercise, or when I’m trapped 37,000 feet above the ground in a hurtling, noisy  aluminum tube for four hours.

Second, every time I hear the opening chords of Van Halen’s “Beautiful Girls” I break out in a big grin. The song just has such an infectious good-natured energy, neatly separated by the bridge, and David Lee Roth’s swagger is a perfect match for the “Hey, hey, where ya going?” at the song’s end.

Third, being able to impulse-buy iTunes songs with WiFi on my iPhone is really, really bad. If I’m not careful, I’ll blow my yearly entertainment budget on cheesy 80s songs.

Fourth, if you haven’t heard the Dirty Funker remixes of GnR’s “Welcome to the Jungle” or Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”, you’re missing out.

That’s all for now; my favorite song is on! (I kid, I kid; I have lots of favorites.)

David’s watching TV to help him recover from his appendectomy, and I was passing the TV I noticed that he was watching an “Ant and Aardvark” cartoon on Boomerang. Our whole family loves these, so I did a quick search when I got back upstairs and was delighted to find that Warner has issued a DVD of all 17 original Ant and Aardvark shorts: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MTFDDI?ie=UTF8&tag=robichaassocia&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000MTFDDI">The Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection, Volume 5 – Ant Aardvarkvolume 5 of the Pink Panther collection. Yowza! I know what somebody’s getting for Christmas!

Steve Teffenhardt has started a comprehensive new site, www.ottawaflood.com, centering on flood relief efforts for the people affected by this summer’s flooding in Hancock and Putnam Counties. Check it out.

This was great to see: John Cargill sent me a note about his Scout troop’s trip down to Ottawa for flood cleanup.

Thank you for your assistance in locating a relief agency that my Scouts and I could work with.
We traveled with 13 scouts and 7 adult volunteers. Scout Camp Berry hosted us at no cost for tent camping – and with thanks for our purpose in traveling to Ohio.
The agency you directed us to was very efficient and registered us quickly. They listened (some don’t) to our level of preparation and tried their best to assign us to matching tasks. We responded to one home where the owner had approximately 3 feet of ware in her basement and questioned whether there was mold behind the paneled walls. We carefully removed one sheet – found no mold, but some moisture, and recommended that the base molding be removed for better drying.
She agreed as she really didn’t want to strip off all of the walls unless there was a clear need. Her family had already spray bleached the external paneling so we
proceeded to Murphy oil soap the whole basement. Some furniture washing and yard work finished us up on that site.
We returned for additional assignment and responded to the need for re-insulating a shop garage and yard raking and cleanup of wet plaster scraps. While this particular home looked okay from the outside, we were aware that they had had to pull up all of the floors and part of the wet plaster walls – so despite our not being involved in demolition or internal reconstruction we were able to help with some work that they did not have time to get done.
All-in-all a good trip. Several scouts and parents said that they really enjoyed the recovery work and would be interested in future trips of the same kind.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation is dedicated to finding the cause of, and cures for, type-1 diabetes– the insulin-dependent kind. Using insulin doesn’t cure diabetes, it just postpones the inevitable slow degeneration of major organs that eventually leads to death. That’s no good.

Our martial arts school is sponsoring a team, the Black Belt Brigade. As part of that team, our family has signed up to raise $500. That’s a lot, on one hand, but on the other, it’s a very small fraction of the $90 million that JDRF hopes to raise this year.

If you’re reading this, please consider donating online. $2, $5, $10, or more will definitely help. You can donate, or just check our family’s status, here. (and if not, that’s OK too… but Dad’s ghost may come haunt you. No, wait, that was just a joke…. maybe!)

Last night, 13 ABC here in Toledo did a short piece on “Flood of Hope”, my effort to “surge” volunteers down to Ottawa to help with flood relief. I haven’t had time to set up a formal website, so here are the details– hopefully people searching for “flood of hope” will find this article.

The Ottawa / Blanchard River Valley area has been badly afflicted by the recent flooding. More than 500 homes are uninhabitable, and the Red Cross estimates it will take several months of cleanup work to get the area back in shape. If you haven’t been there, you might not appreciate the scope of the destruction— it’s worse than you might imagine,.

I am coordinating “Flood of Hope”, an effort to surge volunteers from the metro Toledo area down to Ottawa on September 6th. The goal is to get teams from Toledo-area employers to go down and help with restoration and cleanup work.

Here’s how you can help:

1. If you’re a business owner or manager, please consider giving your employees a paid day off or vacation day to participate. (A big shout out to Ritter and Associates, the first company to volunteer to do this!) The cost may even be deductible as a charitable contribution (but maybe not; only your accountant knows for sure.)
2. If you’re not a business owner, consider taking a vacation day to come help anyway, even if it’s not on September 6th. The cleanup efforts will continue for some time to come, and they need help every day, including weekends.
3. Spread the word. Tell your friends, neighbors, church members, and co-workers. We need all the help we can get.

The recovery efforts can use special skills if you have them—they need construction expertise, data entry and office skills, and good old-fashioned demolition and cleanup too. Whatever you can do will be appreciated.

If you want to join the Flood of Hope, please email me or call me at 419 873 8308 and I’ll get you signed up. It’s important that you call ASAP so I can keep the volunteer staffing coordinators apprised of how many people to expect. If you can’t reach me, call the volunteer center at 419 523 3288 and tell them you want to work on September 6th.

David Pogue asks a good question:

…could somebody tell me the point of LinkedIn? … What I don’t understand is: If somebody knows me well enough to e-mail me with an invitation to join, why doesn’t he just e-mail me directly with whatever his problem or offer is?

Easy. LinkedIn has very little value for someone like you, David, because you’re already super-connected. For virtually any problem you have, you can easily find a resolution because you’re David Pogue. You have access to a huge audience, hundreds (if not thousands) of contacts from all walks of life, and the accumulated knowledge of the entire NYT staff (or, at least, those you get along with well enough to ask for favors).

For those of us not similarly blessed, LinkedIn is valuable because it provides a tool for finding contacts or expertise in areas where we’re not necessarily connected. For example, say I want to know about a particular market segment in depth, or I want to ask an alumnus what he thought of a given MBA program, or I want to find someone who works for Company X. LinkedIn makes it easy. I’ve used it to find contacts at famously opaque companies like Apple, as well as contacts at companies I didn’t even know existed. I occasionally get linkage requests from people I don’t know, and I don’t feel obligated to accept them, but usually I do. Why? For the same reason I accept business cards when I meet people at face-to-face events: a) it’s polite and b) that person may turn out to be a very useful contact.

So, David, feel free to send me a link request now that you have your answer. Heck, you can even write a recommendation if you like.

Yes, it’s true: up to 60% of shopping carts have coliform bacteria. Yikes! I think I’ll be bagging my fresh fruits from now on, thankyouverymuch. And wearing a biohazard suit, too.

Want to get your week off to a great start? Try an 0830 appointment with your doctor, then top it off with a 1000 visit to the dentist. After that, the rest of the week is guaranteed to be a breeze!

The headline says it all. Semper Fi.

Finally. The FDA is getting more aggressive about regulating companies that harvest useful tissue from cadavers. I still recommend reading Body Brokers if you want to know more about the industry (provided you have a strong stomach!)

Wow, this is a fascinating video clip of a guy whose job it is to fix high-tension power lines. Not for the faint of heart! (It’s from Straight Up: Helicopters in Action, which I may now have to order!)

This video shows home prices, adjusted for inflation, since 1890– as a roller-coaster ride.