I will post more photos as we go, but this is pretty fun so far :) We created a square foot garden that is 8 feet wide, 4 feet long and 1 foot deep (separated into 32 squares). We will be planting something different in all of the different square feet (hence the name).

For those of you who are interested in some of the details, here you go:

1. We made our own soil using peat moss, vermiculite and 3 kinds of compost (commonly referred to as Mels Mix)
2. We created our own gardening plan and will have a mix of around 25 fruits and veggies and 5-10 flowering plants and herbs rotated through out the growing seasons
3. We will also be using my dads Topsy Turvy Upside Down tomato growers to grow tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, hot peppers and green peppers (you should buy these!)
4. You can see all the photos as we go in our Square Foot Gardening Photo Set

Subscribe to my blog now to stay up to date on the garden, and with our family :)

Where to find out more about Change:Healthcare

• change:healthcare on CNN, teaches you how to save money on health expenses
• Visit the healthcare information site at www.changehealthcare.com

BTW, if you want to see some of my behind the scenes photos of the event, click on over to my flickr set to see them.

GoDaddy, OJ Borg, Candice Michelle from Wonkles on Vimeo.

Back to the point. The circus came to town here in Nashville and Amy found dirt cheap tickets. This thing had everything! Acrobats, high wire acts, tigers, fire, elephants dancing, clowns and so much more. It really was a blast and I am glad to have taken photos. They will remind me that I have been to the circus and that I should go again, because it was fun.

With that said, enjoy my photos from that night.

While cleaning up some old backup CDs I stumbled across some classic photos. This one is from back in high school, my good friend Tim and I hanging out in the hallway of the school. I must say that this is a CLASSIC outfit on myself. Just for the record, I always wore that t-shirt and pajama pants on the day of a cross country race.

I know I shouldn’t post photos like this (it only enhances my nerd persona) but I could not resist, it just made me smile. Plus, I promised Tims sister I would post stories of us with photos from time to time. Hard to believe this was almost half a life time ago for me.

As many of you know, I am new to healthcare. I’ve never really cared much about the costs or prescriptions or doctors visits because I worked for companies that paid for most of the expenses if I were to ever need them. But in light of everything going on in the world today with small business owners being less and less able to afford health benefits for their employees, it is more important now then ever for us as educated citizens to be conscious of what prescriptions cost us.

Thankfully the new company I have come to work at, change:healthcare, has started taking the steps to educate us, the consumers, on how to work with our doctors to save money. One of the easiest ways (and the way that concerns most of us) is on prescriptions. The truth is, most name brand prescriptions are EXPENSIVE, yet many of them have generic alternatives. Here is a link to the change:healthcare field guide about how to ask your doctor about generics and about how you could save up to 70% on your prescription costs by switching to generics.

If you do nothing else, talk to your doctor about generic drugs to start saving money. The field guide tells you how to talk to your doctor and what questions to ask. Also, if you are interested, you can go the prescriptions section of change:healthcare and look up the drugs you are on to see how much others are paying for them, and where you could them cheaper too.

Links to Resources to Save Money on Generic Drugs:

• Free field guide describing generic drugs and cost savings
• Visit change:healthcare and see how much you can save on generics

Well, the news is official now. I left Mevio about 5 weeks ago to move back home to Nashville, TN and to start a new career…this time, in healthcare.

Through my early days of podcasting I was extremely fortunate to meet tons of great people. But in 2005 I was contacted by a gentleman by the name of Christopher Parks. At that time he was just a lowly podcaster to me (jab), host of a show called the BizCast (don’t look for it, you won’t find it. He pulled all the links down). Turns out he had a lot more to offer to the world than just a small town business podcast.

Christopher started the company I now work for as Product Manger, change:healthcare, out of frustration with the healthcare industry, and all the medical bills resulting from both of his parents unanticipated deaths within 1 year of each other. While this seems like a sad story (with no disrespect to Christopher or his family), it truly is a blessing to Americans everywhere who struggle with healthcare, related costs and confusion every single day of their lives. Because of this tragic event, Christopher was driven to make sure no one had to suffer through the confusion of paperwork, rejections and health jargon while dealing with sick and dying loved ones like he did.

You will no doubt hear more and more about this rising star, change:healthcare, in the coming months & years. We are growing explosively, releasing robust bill management tools and helping people save TONS OF MONEY on their healthcare costs every single day. But I will save the details for a later post.

For now, let me just say I am proud to be working with this company. They epitomize everything a company should strive to be: energetic, proud of their offering, revolutionary in their product and services, leaders in their field, and making a difference that is monumental to the growth and education of our nation as a whole.

If you are interested, you can read more about change:healthcare and the products and services offered here.

Links of Interest for this Post

• The official Press Release of My Joining change:healthcare
  
• The Change:Healthcare Website
• The Nashville Post Coverage of My Joinging the company

Thanks Joe for the Link!

I will be doing a more in depth blog post soon, but wanted to get the photos out ASAP. Amy and I are moving back to Nashville, TN and these are the photos of us and our friends at the going away party. Enjoy :)

9 years ago today, Tim & I celebrated his 21st birthday (and 3 days later we celebrated mine). And as was par for the course, we had to wear our party hats. There were very few times that Tim and I went out together that we would NOT be wearing hats. Some of the best memories I have from growing up were with Tim, and I am so glad I have these photos to remind me of him always. Wish you were here, Tim.

See below for a few more images of Tim and I – all wearing our party hats :) As you know, You can see all the photos of Tim over at www.timmcgovern.us.

I use Twitter.com daily. If you use twitter, you should add me. You can find me on twitter with username theferf. If you do not know what twitter is, there are many resources you can find about it including information on how to register for and master twitter, listings of the top twitter tools for your computer & phone, and more… so I won’t go into that here. Visit any of those links are do a google search for twitter and start your journey.

And dont forget to follow @theferf!

On a lighter note, I was asked by a good friend to share some stories of the years Tim and I had together (high school friends, college roomates)… so lets move on to that now :)

“The year was 1997 and it was the first year Tim and I were in the college dorms at Purdue University. Tim was, obviously, an ROTC boy and therefor spent many long weekends out in training and many more early mornings at PT, working out.

On one weekend, I had a few friends over for a party where we decided to have some mixed drinks. Screw drivers were the drink of choice (for those not in the know, the ingredients are vodka and orange juice) and in an effort to cover our tracks and prevent getting caught drinking under age, we simply poured the vodka into the orange juice containers so we would not have a bunch of liquor bottles laying around.

Tim was in the field all weekend and went straight to PT Monday morning, so he was unaware of my party. Upon arriving home from PT he went straight to the fridge, exhausted, and slammed a quart of the orange juice and jumped into bed for a few hours. When he woke up, he was WASTED from dehydration and consuming a massive amount of alcohol. He called me freaking out, thinking he had been poisoned some how when in reality, he was just drunk, dehydrated and exhausted from three days of hard training and no sleep.

I remember seeing him huddled up in a blanket in our dorm room when I came back from class looking like absolute hell. From that point on he always sniffed first, drank second, anything that came from the fridge :) “

• R.I.P Tim McGovern
• See Photos of Tim at TimMcGovern.US

Amy and I were going to Vegas, Nik had never been to Vegas… it seemed like it would be too good to be true. But fear not my loyal readers, it was not. We had a rip-roaring good time (we did not get too crazy) but enjoyed the heat, slots, drinks… oh yeah, and the Podcast Expo too.

I don’t need to go into too much detail, but a $60 hotel stay at Circus Circus on the strip allowed us the oppurtunity to gamble, eat at nice places and drink giant-ass 100 ounce drinks from cups that required a strap go around your neck in fear or being too tired from holding the cup to be able to finish drinking it.

It was great to see a few old friends at the New Media Expo/Podcast Expo, but I am not going to lie… it is not the same. I’m not sure if it was the location or just that the people did not seem to be that into it, but this Expo was dead. It was hard to even find parties or gatherings of people while at the expo. So we did what any normal not-too-old person would do… we went to Tao, somehow gained access to the VIP roof party after supper, and danced the night away (thanks Nik).

Nothing too crazy happened (we were in the midst of marathon training still) but it was fun to be there with Nik and Amy. We will have to do it again sometime with a larger crowd that loves to go dance and socialize all night long.

• Check out the full photo set with the 100 ounce beers on flickr

Sometimes, this is what Amy and I have for dinner. I was too lazy to cook anything so I quickly cut up a bunch of crap and threw it on a plate. It looked so awesome, I had to snap a photo of it.

It’s little things like this that remind me of the more simple lessons in life. For example, “Not everything has to be a production” and “accidents can be better than planning” or even “sometimes lazy is awesome”.

Maybe that should be my new life motto. You heard it here first, folks.

“Sometimes lazy is awesome.”

What started as a joke years ago at PodShow has now become a tradition at Mevio. If you are unlucky enough to find an error or 404 page on the Mevio.com website you will find the back of my head not looking back at you. We have had a number of different versions of these over the years within the company for some reason. It’s sad that I look forward to the site crashing and burning to get a good laugh at the images that show up that we have forgotten about.

Thanks to a few of the people (jawbone, sue, bryn) who made me a living error.

Here are a few of the previous ones I could find:

It turns out that my camera has a feature that helps you take panoramic photos. COOL! Additionally, Photoshop has a tool to stitch together photos in a variety of ways to make photos like the above. Cooler! This photo isn’t that exciting, just a sample. Shot with a canon point and shoot, by hand. It is actually 4 photographs stitched together into one.

Now, what could I do that would be interesting with this? Worlds longest panoramic photo? Hmmmm… I wonder if there is a Guinness Book of Worlds Record for that yet?