-=kenneth's rants and other things=-

Volunteering

I had to pass this along

12-Year-Old Boy Scouts Volunteer To Give Women Breast Exams

How to CYA on Facebook

I meant to post this a while back, sorry.

A while back, a coworker was lamenting about how all the execs were loving Facebook and adding all the employees as friends. Well, not all of us, but managers and higher. We thought that was kind of poopy because if you denied a VP-level person as a friend . . well, maybe they'd take it the wrong way.

But on the opposite end- what about if you felt pressured enough to add them, but then realized you don't want that person to see your status updates and pics (or wall posts, etc).

I had told my coworker that I had already set up lists to deal with all of this and wrote a quick tutorial on how to alter the settings.

But it came up again as more friends had gotten on FB and were mentioning the same problem, so maybe you'll find this useful.

In a nutshell I did two things.

I'm a bit disappointed

My dad mentioned something to me when I was in SA and completely forgot about it until now.

He said that SA Express News readers voted the Olive Garden as the best Italian restaurant in San Antonio. Are you f$*%ing kidding me?

I thought he was joking, or hoped rather. But nope, here's the reader's survey

There are so many things wrong with the selections. Uggh. I'm a bit disappointed.

Reunion Fun

Well, I'm back from the AHHS Reunion trip. I had a really good time (better than I thought I would). Most of the events were a blur, but here are some random thoughts and recollections (and advice?):

1) I had a camera with me and I thought I took hundreds of pics all weekend. That wasn't the case- I barely used it. I think I wound up putting about 20 pics in an album on Facebook.

2) I thought I did a damn good job mingling at the bar on Friday night and at the event on Saturday night. Well, now that I've seen some of my friends's pics- I seemed to have missed a lot of people. That's kind of a drag, I wanted to give at the least a hello to a lot of them.

3) The girls looked better than ever (but of course you knew I'd say that)

4) The smartest thing I probably did was to schedule outside events- I met Ross for breakfast on Friday so we could catch up. I also got to hang out with the Lauras and catch up as well.

If/when you're going to a reunion, do that same thing if you have time-- schedule lunches/breakfasts/coffee whatever with your classmates. Or, bring them along to your parents' regular burger night post-reunion if they're still in town like Kevin, Laura and Tenny were. Like I noted before, I thought I had mingled well, but didn't so I was lucky to have scheduled things where I did have time to talk.

5) I also got to spend some quality time with some non-reunion folk- most notably my parents, my replacement™, Megan, Sarah, Chuck & Sam, and got to do a quick catch-up with Golly who I didn't know lived in SF for a bit before moving back to SA (she has a kick-ass store where those of you in SA should go shop).

6) I forget I'm in a bubble out here and was surprised that a lot of people weren't online- ie at least facebook. But from the past week's worth of activity, they almost all are now. Not everyone I know sits in front of a computer all day like me and I forget that.

7) No, I don't have any crazy "guess who I made out with in the women's restroom" stories, so stop asking me that.

8) No, the hostess of a popular tv entertainment "news" show wasn't there- so sorry, didn't get any star gossip.

9) Re: #6 above, I also rarely have business cards on me. I remembered them on Saturday, but only had one on Friday night.

I did have the foresight to order some cards from moo cards but they didn't arrive until today (or after I had left). Take cards with you if you go to an event-- I used to think it was cheesy until more than one person asked me for one. btw- here's what my cards look like. I had linked moo to my flickr account and picked random photos tagged with "food, travel or wine" and did some rearranging. They came out quite well.

10) I thought I had more to add, but I forgot some points. I'll add them to the comments later if I think of anything.

Going To TX

I'm going to San Antonio tomorrow. I'll be there for a few days to attend my (wait for it. . . . . wait for it . . . ) High School reunion. Holy crap!

I'll have some 20 year old mullet pics for you soon!

No TPC trip this time though:

How To Taste a Lot of Wine with Your Friends

Are you in a rut with your wine selection? Want to branch out and try new stuff, but you're not sure what to try? Well, here's an easy way to taste a lot of wines with your friends that's also fun.

Have a station set up near the door where your guests can put their bottles in a bag and write down some key information on some index cards. In our case, we hand our bagged wines and cards to the "cardmaster" who will assign random numbers to our wines.

Here's a vid from Saturday night where I'm bagging my wines while Patrick, the co-host, plays with the camera:

Once everyone's wine is bagged- organize the bottles on a table, give everyone a glass, and have a place to dump out extra wine. Hand out some index cards and pens and serve some food! Then let everyone taste the wines and keep notes (they can take the notes home with them).

Make the one sober person tabulate the scores and then do a "reveal".

Here's Patrick who somehow got stuck being the tabulator . . .

Oh, by the way- I brought two wines. One of them got last place. Yeah, I rock. . .

Enjoy. . .

Reegs going over his notes, Pak picks a fave:
?

Kenny expounding on Grenache

I'm in a Bubble

You know, I realized something when I was driving around San Antonio and Austin this past weekend.

I realized I had never seen a McCain yard sign in SF. Okay, "window sign" since people here don't have front yards . . . . I have seen a few bumperstickers though

But when I was hanging out with Megan she told me she had seen a *Palin* sign in someone's yard. Correction- she had seen a few Palin signs in people's yards. I thought she was pulling my leg, so I made her show me and we drove to the location. Here's a video of it.

Note- in the vid we say it looks like a printout but we realized it was a vinyl sign when we got close. It's pink too- very Barbie. . . .

I doubt I'll see one in SF. . .

More Flip Vids

Here are some more videos from the goofy Flip Video Ultra

Angie, Mike and I pt 1- doing intense road-trip snack research

Part 2

Social Social!!

I have been playing with some alpha and beta software the past few months. Well, actually, I do that all the time, that's not news. But I like to tinker with Media Server software when I can. And now that I have a newer computer that can actually display stuff, it's been more fun.

In the past you've heard me talk about how badly I've wanted to build a "myth box". It's basically a home-theater+dvr server. (Patrick has written much more about it, check out his site).

There is other software out that's a bit easier to use if you're less inclined to tinker though and have a spare machine around. And if you have a Mac there's Plex and Boxee (and Sapphire, a plug-in for Front Row).

But I was thinking about the Mac software a lot recently. And this morning on the bus there was a guy on his cell phone talking about Web Two Point Ohhhh (I should point out that he wasn't that loud, but the rest of the bus was quiet). But listening to that guy talk about Social Sites (and someone in the office talking about Facebook) reminded me that just because a site has a "social" aspect it doesn't make it any better than other software. In some cases it can be worse. Bear with me, I'll circle back to this . . .

And to calm me down ...

How about this after that last rant?