More reason I want an iPod Touch (and quite frankly, the best reason, ever):

Looking for a way to celebrate the Obama victory, while still proclaiming that you’re a child of the 80’s?  Play Super Obama World.  I kid you not.  Also, the bit that I played made fun of Palin the entire time, it was glorious.

The Red Baron is back!  Only one…dog…can save us!

I’ll be posting an election recap in a couple days, I figured everyone could use a break.  And besides, two of the videos below are about politics anyway.

Ok, so apparantly this series of PSA’s brought out all kinds of celebrities from the woodwork.  And aside from a few exceptions (Cohen, Silverman, Cruise), it’s a cool montage of people, and funny.  The first one is about registering (obviously we’re past the point where you can register, but not many celebs are in both) and the second about your polling place.

Ok, a couple things I forgot last time and some new stuff to share (I’m taking a break from noveling to add this in, but I’m off to a good start!)

First off, the link to the PG voter guide didn’t work: but here it is:
http://www.post-gazette.com/politics/election2008/
If the link doesn’t work, just copy and paste it.  I think the PG is also putting the voter guide on their front page as well, so if nothing else, try that.

A boy gets shocked when trying to switch out political signs.  I bet switching and removing of signs happens a lot, so in a sick and twisted way, I’m kind of glad this engineer came up with this (and it was a low enough current to not harm the boy).

The Wii makes an appearance in the politics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UFzkO5OhKY

And in case you missed it, here is Obama’s half hour infomercial (channeling Ross Perot, just much more eloquent and with much higher production values).  I really enjoyed it, and was glad to find it online:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtREqAmLsoA

And since I love zombies and punditkitchen.com:

Alright, I decided to write up a post about the election since NaNoWriMo starts Saturday and chances are, I’ll be deep into noveling very, very soon. I’m going to add the word count widget to the left hand side, so keep coming back to check my progress and to send kind words of encouragement!

I found this page very useful. The Post Gazette has this feature where you can compare candidates (based on your street address so it gets down to your local representative) and when you’ve made all your choices, you can print out a ballot to take with you so you know who to vote for once you get into the booth. It’s a cool feature and really important since I knew just about nothing about most of the races besides president. Head on over and put in your address to get your ballot!

While I was walking up the hill to work on Monday, I heard that Obama was going to be speaking at the Mellon Arena. And I figured that since I work across the street, I would go over and listen to him. During the day, the police used our building as a staging ground, and at one point we had members of the SWAT team riding in our elevator with guns. Just another day at Flag Plaza I suppose.

I headed over, and eventually found the end of the line (a feat unto itself) and headed inside through the metal detectors. As I was going to my seat, Obama came out and began talking, first by thanking Mayor Luke (mostly cheers, a few boos) and then Onorato (the entire arena booed). As I got to my seat, he began to speak, and he was amazing! He was always great listening to him online or on TV, but hearing him live was just awe-inspiring.

The speech wasn’t anything too new, but had some new details and was interesting. At one point the crowd began booing at a mention of McCain, and Obama reacted beautifully (and in a way that everyone should heed): “Don’t boo. Just vote!”

So anyway, enjoy the videos below (I reposted the Jibjab because it’s too much fun not to watch over and over again) and please go out and learn about the candidates (including people not running for president, like local representatives) and go vote on Tuesday, no matter who you’re voting for!

Sorry for the long stretches between posts.  Things are crazy as always, but I guess that never changes.  I’m gearing up for another year of NaNoWriMo, but I’m going to try as always to keep posting during the month of November.  This year, NaNo is providing some really cool widgets, so I’ll post them on the sidebar over on the left so you can track my progress.  I’m notoriously bad for not updating my word count, so if that goes stagnant for a while, I haven’t stopped writing, I just haven’t updated my word count.

At work, I just had one of those ‘duh!’ moments.  I just now (after a year) changed my computer to the silver theme from the blue (smurf-esque) theme of windows XP.  It’s almost like some kind of jolt to my eyeballs.  I forgot how much more I liked the silver theme!

Otherwise, I have some plans for a couple new things for the site.  The first being of course the upgrade to the new Joomla.  If everything works well, visitors to the site won’t be able to tell, but I have to play around with the site skins to make that work.  Or maybe it’s time for a new look (nothing too drastic mind you).  I also will be looking for a new host in the future.  Basically I need more room (especially for photo galleries), so the site address won’t change (again, nothing that you’ll notice if I do everything correctly).

And the other big thing I want to do is a revamp of the book review section.  I believe I’m going to change it to a wiki format.  Not only will that allow me to quickly add pages, I’m hoping to better organize it, including pages for authors, and it will help me keep better inventory of my small library (and actually allow access to more than the latest 10 reviews).  I don’t think I’ll have it set up for anyone to add books (since it’s also an inventory), but adding comments is something I want to incorporate for sure, so we’ll see what I can come up with.

Ok, I think that’s it for now, catch everybody later!

Around the world, bloggers are discussing a singular issue: Poverty. To me, poverty is one of those problems that seems so daunting, so big, that there isn’t anything I can do. I mean, if the UN can’t figure it out, then what chance do I stand?

But, just like last year’s topic (the environment), I think with a little help from bloggers, some web 2.0 and maybe even a couple other surprises, we may not be able to solve it, but make a difference: enough of a difference to continue empowering ourselves to change the world.

I do find it a bit ironic that we’re discussing poverty on a day that, for a large chunk of the population, a pay day. So maybe we can think about that today. Another thought crossed my mind, and something that helps cement the poverty crisis to home (and not to say other parts of the world, or even other parts of the country don’t face larger problems than Pittsburgh does) is the (presumably) homeless man I usually pass on my way up the hill to work every morning. He has his spot that he’s claimed, and most days he’s there.

The strange thing was, it took me a while to even see him. Probably for a month of walking up the hill I didn’t even realize he was there. Kind of like some distorted view of the inequality seen in the Book of D’ni, where those in power have trained themselves to not see those below them. And while it could just be me of fin my own little world (as I tend to do), maybe it is something that’s partially engrained in our minds.

I’m reminded of a friend from college who constantly took it upon himself to do service in the city, leading Service Charges and organizing all kinds of projects. I’m so used to working on service projects behind the scenes and usually away from the city that it seemed so foreign and strange to me, but now maybe I’m beginning to understand why he felt so called to help.

So it is in that spirit that I join with over 10,000 websites and bloggers, with an estimated audience of over 11 million. And while I can’t offer anything earth shattering (in fact, I didn’t know what I was going to even write about until I woke up this morning), I can offer some things that we all can do:

Goodsearch allows you to use a Yahoo! powered search engine while supporting a charity of your choice. Simple, easy to use, and something we can all utilize, I mean, we’re all searching on the internet anyway. Find a charity to help combat poverty in your area and you’re off and running!

In addition, Goodsearch has a shopping area as well, same concept, just online shopping instead of searching.

Sell stuff on eBay? Donate some of your profits to charity, and besides, people are more prone to bid and bid higher if they know they are supporting a good cause.

Create an event! Firstgiving allows you to get sponsored and donate money to any nonprofit. So do something crazy, make a mini-golf tournament with a group of friends, see how many hours you can drink a glass of unsweetened grapefruit juice, hang upside down while reading the bill of rights, anything that you can come up, spread the word and get some sponsors. Who knows, maybe you’ll start the next big charity event.

So I hope that these meager ideas helped you out, or maybe inspired you to see what you can do in your own life to help combat poverty. Best of luck, and I’ll catch everyone soon!

Quick update for everyone.  I hope you got a chance to see what’s been going on a Pittsburgh Metblogs.  There’s a widget on the left hand side of this page that shows my posts, and like what I did for Pgh 250, Lindsay, Pittsburgh’s Captain, did at Ligonier Days, so be sure to check it out!

NaNoWriMo starts November 1, and I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to write about.  But in exciting news, I found out that one of the books I just finished, Water for Elephants, was written as a NaNo novel!

Speaking of novels, I went to the Post-University Book Club, which rocked.  We discussed Animal Farm, and for next month we’re reading The Untouchable.  It was a great discussion, and the three of us had a lot of fun, so I’m hoping this is something that keeps going for a while.

And finally, I uploaded the Heritage closing staff banquet slide show to youtube, so here it is (not that I couldn’t embed it from Animoto, but it’s a lot easier to get to since it’s on youtube now):

If you didn’t get a chance to check it out, make sure you head over to Pittsburgh Metblogs where I had a full-day blog stream going of the Pittsburgh 250 celebration kick off on Saturday.  You’ll have to go back a page to find my first post (24 in all), but the day was amazing, and I think the blog stream was a cool feature to do, and I had a lot of fun doing it!

We kicked off the day with the Eagles at the Point, where I was the stage producer, coordinating via camp radio with the Scouts and all the other producers on stage.  The program went off without a hitch, and after cleaning up, we all headed to the Hilton for lunch.  Afterwards I wandered around Point State Park all afternoon talking with vendors, playing games, taking a few pictures and listening to a few concerts.  The singer of the Eat ‘n Park jingle, Sarah Marince performed (she also sung the national anthem during Eagles at the Point) and I got an autographed picture from Mr. McFeeley!

I saw the ceremony where a bronze trail marker was presented to the city to commemorate the Forbes Trail, and about 1,000 bikers came in on the Allegheny Passage (the other end in D.C.) and celebrated the completion of that bike trail (which in some places uses the same decking, Trex, that we use on the docks at camp).

As the day started to wind down and the crowds swelled even more, I headed to my “somewhat undisclosed location,” also known as the Science Center, where I attended a somewhat swanky reception for the staff of Pittsburgh 250.  Most of the Eagles at the Point crew were there, and we made our own group of course, and we were probably louder than other people had realized we would be, but that’s what happens when you get Scouts together, we have a good time.

So up on the roof we had a great view of the fireworks.  The only things we couldn’t see were the West End Bridge (blocked by the telescope) and PNC Park (blocked by the building), but we had a perfect view of the point and the big barge anchored there.  The fireworks were amazing, and like everyone said, we’ll be spoiled forever now, having seen such an impressive show.

I’m still waiting for the rest of Point State Park to open, and if I can manage it, I’d like to head down and go to Kayak Pittsburgh before they close for the season, but I don’t know if that will be possibly with my schedule.  I’ll be collecting and putting up pictures as I get them, so check back for those soon (I hope)!