I spent 55 minutes of my early Saturday morning watching this video, laughing and sometimes being moved to tears, but overall feeling it was one of the best hours I’ve spent in a long time. Instead of watching some inane TV program, do yourself a favor and spend that hour watching this remarkable teacher.

When I first heard of Professor Wesch I posted this link to his “The Machine is Us/ing Us” and later to this five minute summary of the Information Revolution, either or both of which you might enjoy reviewing (they’re short) before watching the video below.

Thanks to Robert Scoble for tweeting the link to this presentation that follows.

This is image 197 on xkcd.com

Thanks to Dylan Wolf for the pointer to the xkcd site.

This is a note I sent last night to an audience that’s introduced in the note itself.   I decided to make it my entry for this morning.

Friends,

I’d like to invite you, no let me make that “encourage you,” to view tonight’s entry at my personal blog, because I have made an important and unfortunately, a sad announcement there tonight.  I ask that you watch the video in the post as it will introduce you, better than I could do in any other way nor nearly as quickly, to my ex-wife Carole, who died last night of cancer.

Those of you getting this message are a diverse mixture, but by no means an exhaustive one nor even an adequate sampling, of ex-fellow employees and business contacts and, in the BCC, members of the inner group of my local Knoxville social circle.  I’d encourage any of you receiving a copy of this message to share it with anyone else that you feel would like to receive it.

I thank you for those tears you may shed in sympathy with our family tonight.  There is no greater gift nor any better way for you to comfort us than to allow yourself to feel our pain tonight.  Nothing more than that is required.

Thanks to Jimmy and Cathy, I’m “learning to dance in the rain” with a heart full of gratitude to you both, mostly for the gift of your friendship.  I read the little book you gave me when I was at the dentist’s office this past week.  Its message gives me strength and inspiration, and resolve.

Pete C. if, by some miracle of serendipity that Manpreet simply could not prevent, you actually receive your copy of this message (I had to guess at your address), please forward it to my fellow NA Ops managers.  I no longer have access to their address or I wouldn’t have asked it of you.  It seems that just as Carole slipped away from me before I knew it, so did my opportunity to say an adequate goodbye to that group before I myself became the “dearly departed.”

Susie, maybe you could make sure, for Pete, that the group gets a copy, since I’m pretty sure you’ll get yours. Thanks.

David S., I hope you have access to all those now in (or formerly in) Indianapolis that might want to receive a copy of this message.  And Jim A., you have access to our mutual contacts on other continents who might want to receive this message.  Please do me the favor of sharing it with them.

I love you all.  You each contributed in a unique way to a wonderful year last year, for which I wish to thank you one and all.

And so with this message,  I bid you a fond adieu,

What I failed to say in that note but wish I had, was “Oh and please buy a copy of my book about the experience when it comes out next year.”

Note to self:  Remember to add that to my closing whenever I am speaking in public throughout this next year.

Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash

Apparently some of my friends are having trouble viewing this video here on my site. Why I can’t imagine, since it plays perfectly well for me here in Firefox. If you’d like to try to view it in its native location go here: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/breaking_news_all_online_data

Yesterday my friend Jerry Pounds called me to ask if I knew of a florist close to the hospital where our mutual friend Tucker was hospitalized so that he could order some flowers for him. I said, “No, I don’t, but what I’d do is go to Google Local and look one up.”

He said, “Hold on. I’ll do it while we talk.”

Because I always find it easier to guide someone through something if I am looking at the same thing they are, I too went to Google. Once we both got there, I instructed him to “Click on More, and then on the next page click on Even More,” both of which were links on each succeeding page that lead to more of Google’s tools and services.

Then Jerry cracked me up when he said, “I’ve never clicked on More before, and I’ve clicked on Even More even less.”

Back in the late 1970s while I was still a member of the S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A., Inc. (now called the Barbershop Harmony Society), I was privileged to be a member of a quartet called the Fun Addicts. Bob Wilson (tenor), Forrest Umberger (lead), and Phil Petty (bass) were the other members. We sang together all over the country for only about three years, but we used to have great times together.

A long time ago, I registered the domain name www.thefunaddicts.com and attempted to create a web page to hawk the copies of our CDs that Phil had had put together from old tapes that he had of our performances and a few of our practices. Those web pages suffered from the problem many personal web sites do; they were largely static and required a lot of work to try to keep fresh. Eventually, they became rusty due to a lack of traffic and, like a scene from an old western movie, virtual tumbleweeds rolled down their streets (pages) because even the former residents abandoned them.

So as we fast forward to today and factor in my experience in maintaining a blog for almost 5 years now, on Friday I decided to convert that domain to a blog for our group where the four of us can recount some of our memories from our time together and post them there. So far it is just getting off the ground, but I wanted to mention it here, in the event you’d like to read it. I can promise that it won’t be dedicated to technology, as this blog primarily is, but will be lighter fare. And to illustrate that, I’d invite you to read about “the night I achieved immortality.”

The highlight of my boyhood Saturday afternoons at the movies (price of admission about $0.25) wasn’t the cowboy movie or the Tarzan flick that was at the top of the bill; it was the cartoon! Who’d have ever thought I’d be able to add a classic one, such as this, to my blog!?

Link courtesy of my eagle-eyed friend Paul Moor.

I like this series of commercials …

Apparently technology does have some limits.