That other blog

Where did yesterday go? All day I kept telling myself “just zip over and make a quick, coherent post… just a quick one.” I simply couldn’t find the time.

Instead, I spent my day talking with a friend in England, interacting with colleagues in India, and adjusting to a (frustratingly) constantly revised work schedule.

While I didn’t get to type up a blog entry, I did get to record Episode 2 of the Jay and Dad podcast. I’ll edit it today and then get it online for the weekend. Jay was so excited to see our podcast had been accepted and was on i-tunes, that he wanted to make another episode right away.  That’s a good thing, considering technical difficulties made it 9 months between Episodes 1 and 2.  Happily, production of Episode 2 went very smoothly and I should be able to get it online soon.

Another staple of my Thursdays is taking my kids to their afternoon activities: drama class for my son and gymnastics for my daughter. I’m very lucky and happy to be able to do it. Both programs are very well run (likely the subject of an upcoming blog post), and the kids really enjoy being a part of them.  Even though it’s not a very productive time for me, personally, it’s one of my favorite parts of Thursday – and I just work a little harder before and after so that I can enjoy it.

Today promises to be almost as busy, with Jay’s first hockey practice taking the place of drama or gymnastics – but I’ll find the time to be a part of everything that matters.

Oh, one other thing – Jay keeps reminding me to point out that this weekend Toys R Us is offering free downloads of a very strong Pokemon character for the DS Diamond and Pearl games. We’ve participated before… it’s a well run promotion and one that really means a lot to Pokemon gamers.  Enjoy!

Contributed by: Scott Copperman (Guest Author)

*cough*  *cough* *cough* *cough*

My daughter is home sick from school today – hence all the coughing – and I think I’m catching what she’s got.  It probably doesn’t help that I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning last night working on rss feeds.

Back in January, my son and I tried making a podcast.  There were… issues… ha…, but it had the potential to be a lot of fun.  Unfortunately, the project succumbed to some technical problems that I just couldn’t iron out.  I gave it a good couple of weeks and lots of asking around, but over time it just fell by the wayside.

However, last Saturday my daughter and I were fooling around with the mic and we made a test podcast.  I decided last night that I was going to revisit the issues from 10 months ago, and after some digging and validating and tweaking, I finally got it.  Two podcasts are submitted to i-tunes for review, and once they’re approved we’ll be good to go.

I’m going to hold off on putting up any links to them yet, because all we have so far are test broadcasts.  I think we’ll be making some new ones this weekend, with a more interesting format and then we’ll go public.  Woo hoo!

But I digresss…, yes, my daughter’s home sick. Poor little girl.  She wrote a poem/story for me this morning…

In Am Sick Today by Jackie Copperman

I am sick today, but I will get better.
So I have to stay and rest.
But tomorrow maybe I can go to school.
My Mommy is here.
My Daddy is here also
So he can listen to it too.
The End.

She’s a cutie.  It breaks your heart to hear a little 6 year old cough like that. But, she’s right… she will get better, and it’s kind of cool that she looks at her Mommy and Daddy as all the medicine she needs.

Contributed by: Scott Copperman (Guest Author)

I’ve been inspired…

Wil Wheaton, Richard Smith, and others have made me realize that I’m missing an opportunity here. I should be contributing to this blog more often. It’s been crazy busy here for the past month or so, but I think it’s a reasonable goal to produce an update more regularly. So, I’m going to try to do that.

But the inspiration doesn’t end there. For Wil Wheaton (and others), I am going to stop making the link open in a new window by default and leave it up to the reader…. Left-Click to open in the same window or Right-Click to open in a new tap/window. I dunno, I always thought it was better to have links open in a new window so that you’re not taken away from what you’re reading mid-paragraph, but now that I think about it… it’s probably best to assume the reader is savvy enough to be able to make that happen on their own.  I’m not so sure that’s true about everyone, but you know what? If they don’t know how to do it, it’s not a horrible thing to just hit the “Back” button.  So, that’s the way we’ll go from this point on.

Exciting, huh? But, you know what? It is kind of cool when someone or something makes you reexamine what you think or do. Even if you end up sticking with the original plan, it’s still a significant event. (Let’s keep in mind that there are varying degrees of “significant”… reexamining your wordpress blog settings = minor, reexamining your views on NCLB and the use standardized testing = not so minor)

So, make sure you get out and vote today and be sure to watch this space for a lot more activity in the near future).

-Scott-

Contributed by: Scott Copperman (Guest Author)