Hey Dan

In what is a totally Rob Gordon* Christmas moment the Darkside girl made me cry tonight. She gave me two CD’s one of which is out of print. These CD’s include two of my favorite tracks from a mix CD she made for me when we first met. These were her only copies. This was an amazing emotional gesture to me.

I am not sure I can really explain to anyone outside my head what a wonderful Christmas present that is. It is not just a CD it is a 100 nights of staying up late being an emotional wreck over things that have long since become stories. The music you listened to when you couldn’t talk about it. That is how personal music is and why to share that is such an amazing gift. I told you I could not explain it.

* Lead character in the Nick Hornby novel ‘High Fidelity’ which was made into a movie with John Cusack. If you have not read the book or seen the movie and you truly want to understand me, do yourself a favor and pick it up.

Posted by Dan at 11:18 PM | Permalink

For all of you who don’t know, we are getting close once again to Zoo Tour. Zoo Tour is my yearly trek to the Fort Worth Zoo every New Years day.

The tradition started the after one of the worst days of my life. It was the night after my second annual (and final) beer and logos New Years sleep over. There were about 8 people hanging out at my house talking about what we wanted to do with our New Years day. My Car had lost a timing belt the day before, so one option was for Bert, who is both a mechanical genius and one of my dearest friends to this day, to help me replace the belt. The other option was for all of us to go to the zoo. We did not choose the Zoo.

The result of that day ended with all of us having a tragic and sometimes amusing story to tell, Bert missing part of a finger and me feeling worse then I ever have about the events of a day. To spare you the truly gory details, I will tell you this. I found out two things worth having in my brain that day. One my friends are not only smart, funny and talented, they react to an emergency like a well trained team. The other is that the Zoo is a wonderful place to be on New Years day.

So, this year like every year since we are going to the Fort Worth Zoo. I will tell stories and give my rash political opinions about animals. These stories include the ever popular ‘Baby Duck’ story.

This year we have a treat Thom Barrow who work with me at the Zoo will be joining us. I know Thom has some great stories (some Thom is not allowed to tell). Everyone is welcome and there are no specific invitations. Here are the details:

Fort Worth Zoo
January 1
Front gate
Between 11-noon. (We start showing up at 11, we go in at noon)

It is the same every year.

Posted by Dan at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was reminded of A Charlie Brown Christmas this week. It seems funny to me that with people saying there is a ‘war on Christmas,’ no one remembers what the message was. For me the message was as clear when I was 6 as it is now.

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” ~ Linus and sometime before that Gospel of Luke 2:8-14.

Glory to God, peace earth, good will toward men… Marry Christmas you and yours.

Posted by Dan at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Time magazine named its "Person of the Year" on Saturday and it is ‘you.’ Notice the little quote marks. These are meant to indicate that by ‘you’ Time didn’t me you but rather all the user-generated Internet content community. I know it’s obvious, but I have to point these things out. Some of my readers my not be savvy with the lingo.

I know most of us think that Time is the Wired of the 1970’s but I would like to thank them for the tip of the hat. Few people in the business really understand why user-generated content is important and Time does seem to be on the front edge here. But not everyone is happy about the elevation of blogs, YouTube and MySpace.com to this lofty height. George Will is disgusted by it. Who is George Will? Mr. Will is a Washington Post Opinion Writer who made this comment on This Week:

Will: It’s about narcissism, which is why a mirror is absolutely perfect. So much of what is done on the web is people getting on there and writing their diaries as though everyone ought to care about every one's inner turmoils. I mean it’s extraordinary..

While I admit that this little patch of the Internet is my place for airing my inner turmoils, you have to understand this is about community. While few people really care about my fear of ice skating, many of them just care about me and my thoughts. Mr. Will I am not in the running for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary which you have won, but I am talking to my audience in my voice. That is important. Yes, there is some narcissism involved, but so does wearing a bow tie on Sunday talk shows.

We Blogger, LiveJournaler and MySpace weirdoes are interested in what people think and say. Someday when the print media has to change or die, remember you as an Op-ed writer called a group of people who diligently read other peoples opinions a butch of narcissist. Good luck to you Mr. Will, you will need it.

Posted by Dan at 01:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We went ice skating yesterday. The mighty B invited us as part of her ‘it’s the holidays, bit me’ spirit. It was secretly terrifying for me. Not the actual skating, once I got out on the ice I was fine. The thing that was terrifying was thinking about skating. Deep inside I am still that geeky kid picked last for dodge-ball (dodge-ball here is a euphemism for all play ground games in my mind). As such, I have a deep dread of anything that involves physical coordination. I went because I love my friends and it sounded like something K would enjoy. I have gone ice skating once before. It was during a Wyse company outing and I grip the rail and like a kid with floaty’s in the shallow-end of the pool.

This outing turned out differently. I had learned enough in my last outing to keep from killing myself or others. It was fun, not in that way that I would like to do it again, but as a holiday tradition to do with friends I could live though it.

Posted by Dan at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Well finals are over. I did better then I thought I was going to do. This semester I took four classes. I took Math, Java II, Business speech and Communications and Digital Photo I. Out of these four classes I got three A’s and a C. The C came in math, but did not affect my GPA.

The math class was the intermediate algebra not for academic credit. Due to not having done math in twenty years I had to start with a refresher course if you will. However, to call this a refresher would be vastly over estimating my knowledge of math. I started at LA public school and transferred to rural depressed economy Oregon school during junior high. Add to that, I was never really a great student. I have always been bright, just not ever motivated. All of this showed taking the assessment test for math at quad C. Any assessment test that is done with you after 9 questions is not going well.

Oddly, I am proud of my C in math. It was a hard fought and emotional C. There were many times this semester I really thought my dream of getting a degree was over, because I could not do math. It was the class hit hardest by the chaos that has been my life the last couple of months. Math is the one thing stopping me from doing anything I want. If I can concur it I can do anything. This C is a small victory.

With grades in for this semester I still have a 4.0. Next semester I am taking only two classes, Advanced Java and college algebra. Even with a 4.0, I am proud of my C.

Posted by Dan at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Over thanksgiving my wedding ring went a couple of rounds with the garbage disposal. It wasn’t a title match, just a 3 round exhibition. However it did leave some burrs and few dings. I took it in Wednesday to the jewelers to get it repaired. Today I got back a ring that is all shiny. I had forgotten my ring ever looked this good. All is right with the world again.

Posted by Dan at 09:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Most of us were down in Galveston this weekend for Dickens on the Stand. We have a singing group that sings carols and dresses up in funny cloths. I know, big surprise there. I mention it here because it stuck me how talented and dedicated the people I hang around with are. Sunday morning it was cold and windy and we had a performance at 10am on set of marble stairs. All of us were cold.

We made jokes and grumbled, however when it came time to sing we were on stage and giving it our all. The weather and the hour being what they were few and I mean few people where around to hear us. It was cold and we had no audience, but we preformed like this was the best day in the world. It is one of those moments of Zen when you see the meaning beyond the reward. This is what it means to be a performer.

Posted by Dan at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I taking a business communications class and part of our grade is this expo project. For the project we formed ‘companies’ or groups of six students to develop a product. For the project you create the company info (name, mission statement and values), media material (print ad, TV commercial and media kit) and the product. All of this, in about five weeks and mostly outside of class time. The project was a killer amount of work.

The team I was on was very good. As those of you who have done team project know they can be nightmares. My team was motivated and energetic from the start. They were also ambiguous; hence we bit off a great deal more then anyone could chew for a product. Our product was innovative, clever and way more complicated then anyone without a real interest in commodities trading or finance would be willing to listen to.

The first step in the project was to pitch our idea to the class and take questions and feedback. This was a nightmare. We kind of crashed and burned. Our idea was hard to explain and had lots of moving parts. We feel victim to going off on tangents when answering questions. This was the path of madness I tell you.

We had two weeks before the expo and we were loosing faith in our own idea. To complicate things we need a product example, TV commercial and all the trappings of a trade show booth. Did I mention that I have been stressed lately?

Last night was the expo. The project worked like this. The professor had wrangled 100 or so people to play possible investor visiting our expo. Each of them had two checks, one for $300 and one for $700 that they could invest in any of the three companies at the expo. Our job was to give them our pitch and convince them that they wanted to invest with us. The company with the most money invested would get an automatic 100% on one of the three part of the project.

I was amazed at the level of professionalism from the whole class. Having been to a couple of trade show, I would say that the only thing that was lacking was a couple of thousand dollars in booth displays. The product demos, pitches and attitudes were the same. In the end the result was close out of almost $100K invested the gap was less then 6K between the highest and lowest.

We won by a very narrow margin. This is much better then any of us expected to do. It is a testament to the hard work and creative thinking that went into the last couple of weeks. We did not change the product. Instead we took the feedback we got and changed how we explained the product. It was a difficult thing, I think by the end we did well.

I don’t care really that we won. What I care about is that we turned it around.

Posted by Dan at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)