Actually, it may be better if you put these videos in the “documentary” category because all totaled, they are more than an hour long. If you don’t have the time to watch them all, I would encourage you to watch the first one and the last two. In one sense it’s a shame to even put these pictures and videos online because they don’t seem to do justice to the images and emotions that we experienced on the mountain but hopefully they give you a little bit of a feel for what we experienced.

Over the next couple of weeks we will be posting some more thoughts and specifics on this trip.

ALL OF THE VIDEOS CAN BE VIEWED IN HIGH QUALITY BY CLICKING “HQ” (in the bottom right corner)

This last weekend our neighborhood hosted a garage sale and somehow our kids got the idea of doing a lemonade stand. I wasn’t too excited about it but as the saying goes, “when life give you lemons…make a lemonade stand.” At least that’s how the saying goes for entrepreneurs. So, off we went. We started by having them watch their cousin Kelsy’s video.

Here is a snippet from the day:

Here are some of the lessons that our kids learned about business and finances from this, (mostly) fun and simple, experience

• The importance of and how to chose a location
• The importance of customer service – saying “thank you” when people support your business because there are many other places they can get there beverages (in this case the other neighbor was selling capri suns)
• Of course,  there were basic math with money calculations
• Why companies offer 100% satisfaction guarantees with full return policies and how they work. It’s not really just a community service.
• The importance of advertising and standing out. We were given the idea from Kelsey’s video in which she says to have your younger brothers and sisters waved signs to approaching cars. I haven’t gotten a hold of all the sales docs yet, but it would appear that profits literally doubled and tripled in direct correlation to Seven’s volume level. At one point Dove decided that it should be Seven who shouted “FRESH SQUEEZED LEMONADE” instead of the role as otter pop advertiser because of the difference in profit margin (otter pops were only 25¢). The second day the kids dressed up in costumes to stand out.
• We learned about how to find a correct price point. $1 seemed too high. We also thought you could get more than 50¢ so we settled on 75¢.  As in many service based industries, we also learned that many people don’t really want the 25¢ back if they pay a dollar. ha.
• We learned about (more) proper food handling skills when dealing with customers. This came up when Dove gave a little girl a glass that was only 3/4 full of lemonade. After the little girl left I told Dove that we need to fill the glasses all the way. She explained that the glass was full but Seven and Memory had both drunken out of it.  Hmmm….I hope that girl’s mom does not read this.
• We learned that a successful business is one that makes more money than it spends. At the end of the day, the kids paid us back $3 for the cups and $3 for the lemonade supplies. Of course, we didn’t need the $6 from them, but I think the lesson they learned about how expenses work is far more valuable than the Polly Pockets they would have invested the $6 in.
• We learned that running a business is big responsibility. An hour into it all of the kids were ready to bail. We made them stick it out for another 2 hours since they had spent so much time in preparation.
• AND in the two days they made 52 BUCKS! BAM!

They want to put the money towards plane tickets to visit grandparents in Kentucky. All in all, a pretty valuable experience for a hot summer day in Seattle.

I just passed out fliers to our neighborhood for our third annual 4th of July Neighborhood BBQ. Three years ago I organized this for the first time. It felt really weird for a couple of reasons:

• We are the youngest couple on the block and for some reason older people are inherently intimidating
• We had just moved on to the block. I guess I thought that for some reason people would be asking “Who does this young upstart think he really is messing with our traditions…etc”
• Some of my neighbors appear cranky
• I didn’t really know any of our neighbors

After two years I have observed the following:

• People really look forward to and appreciate it
• It is the primary, and in some ways sole, time that all of our neighbors come to one place for one event for the entire year
• The first year I did it one of the men that had lived in the neighborhood for more than 30 years came to me with a tear in his eye and said this is the first time that he’d ever seen this many neighbors together.
• I know my neighbors better, they know each other better, and our neighborhood  is one step closer to resembling that of Mr. Rogers.

So, If you are around on the 4th, and feel like taking on a little project, plan an event. Just go for it. 4th of July is a great excuse but there are many others.  While no one can diminsh the importance of supporting global issues such as cancer, AIDS, and slavery, it may be that our first step in reaching out begins with those that are next door.

It’s been about a while since I’ve posted so I decided so I decided to provide you with a special update about this summers hottest number. Below are my reviews of the ninest movies of this summer. Since I haven’t seen any of them I am simply going to rate them based upon their use of this hip number.

We will start off with Peter Jackons Ultra 9 movie:

Don’t be confused by an Acadamey Award winning director. Without even having to look beyond the title you will notice that there is a 8:1 ratio of non-number 9 characters to number nine characters. Seriously, with a title like this how nine can a movie be? We would suggest waiting for this one to come out in DVD and maybe check it out as a rental where hopefully it will be 99¢ !

Next up we have Nicole Kidman who, lets face it, has nothing nine about her, starring in this movie:

This title is slightly deceptive. Although titled “NINE” you may have noticed that there are not actually any “9″s in the title. Very typical of a “romantic musical”, in this age. Well “NINE”, our staff has rated you an “EIGHT”!

Taking it up a notch is the movie:Not to be outdone they have included this summers HOTTEST number not once, not twice, but THREE times, which itself is the sqaure root of 9! Three squared thumbs up for this stop motion 9-based blockbuster.

And finally, leave it up to Director Tim Burton to use his slightly deranged artistic nineness to come out with what is sure to be the ninest movie of them all…

The title alone reveals how nine this movie is. With 100% of the characters, in the title,  being the number “9″ there is no room for “.”, “$”, or even letters!

But wait! Not only that…check out the release date.

Tim Burton is not messing around.

Looks like we’re going to have a busy summer. Sometimes getting to the square root of 81 isn’t easy. But hopefully, this guide will help guide you though the hottest summer that root has ever seen!

UPDATE:

To Whom It May Concern,

I regret to inform you that google groups suck. They have universally been a headache and over-all declined my quality of life and the people who have been in groups with me. BenCrawfordLIFE.com would like to formally apologize for any influence that we have had in promoting or encouraging googlegroup involvement. Unfortunatley, we have not found any viable alternatives for productive online multiway conversations….BUT WAIT! This just in…Google Wave (a new service that melds e-mail, instant messaging, online forums, and wikis into a grand messaging service).

Looks like it’s going to be a while until it is released, so until then, the majority of the productivity that cannot be accomplished by “liking” friends status updates will simply have to be halted. This could really be it though.

Once again, I apologize for any misdirection you have received from this site. Here at BenCrawfordLIFE.com hope to remain on the cutting edge of technology and culture and are not afraid to admit when we are wrong if it means keeping the trust of our avid readers

Ben.

ps See you in 6 months when I write a post about how terrible google wave is.

learn more here:

Originally posted on 9/13/09

Fact: Most conversations happen in a virtual arena (cell phones, email)

Fact: These conversations are extremely difficult and limited when you have 3 or more people.

Fact: I will buy lunch for anyone that comes up with an alternate idea that is more productive and efficient than the one I will present here.

There are two major annoyances when it comes to communicating with a group of 3 or more.

1. It is difficult to get more than 3 people in one place (even conference calls are a pain)
2. It is hard to decide something when only  2 of 3 people are present

button on email. There are numerous problems with this:

Lucky for you I have a solution (or a free lunch) for you. The answer is…

I guess the name of the post gave it away…

Success is just 3 easy steps away…

1. You must have a gmail or google account to set up the group. This is free and you should  have one anyways.  ANY email address will work to join a group.

2. Create a google group. For this post I created a google group called EveryoneShouldUseGoogleGroups.

It took me one minute and 5 seconds from start to finish. You can also invite whoever you want to the group and set  it to be public or private.

At this point I think it may be helpful to  discuss who you would invite and what on earth you may use a google group for?!

I think the easiest way to think of a google group is to think of it as a conversation. So where in your life do you have conversations with more than one person. For two people, email and phone is still the easiest. But for any more than that it gets more complicated. Here are some examples:

• Business tasks and discussion. Want to discuss an idea and see implementation? Progress can be observed and assessed by all members in the flow of thread. What if you replaced the 60 minutes of babbling at a meeting (that all 7 people have to drive in traffic to get to) to 4 threads of  bullet points on a google group?
• Group of friends. Do you find yourself discussing topics that are relevant to the same 5 people all the time? In a group people can hop into a particular thread, start their own, or tune out for things that aren’t relevant to them.
• Plan an event. Wanting to organize a dinner or game night?  Who’s going to bring what? Are we talking Monopoly or Risk? create a group. Remember, you are creating a venue for a conversation. It doesn’t need to last forever. If it takes 65 seconds and is free you can make a new one for each event. It takes approximately 2 seconds to delete.

.

.

.

.

.

.

BAM!!!

NO

.

FREE

.

LUNCH

.

FOR

.

.

YOU!

Many of you have heard this story, but about 2 weeks ago I went into my old 5th grade teachers (who I found on facebook) classroom and talked to her kids about casinos, gambling, and card counting. I actually put quite a bit of work into preparing for the little presentation and decided to record a little voice over of the keynote multimedia presentation that I used. I only included about 75% of it. The original presentation was an hour long and there were a lot of questions. It’s amazing how smart the kids were and the whole thing was pretty interactive. So for those that want to learn about the math behind the machine, look no further…. Here is the boiled down version and will only kill about 20 minutes.

One of the other reasons why I made this video was just to get some practice with screen capturing software. It’s tricky stuff. If I don’t make eye contact, don’t take it personally. I kept on forgetting that I was supposed to be staring at the little 1/32″ dark circle that represents the gateway into each of your web surfing souls on the top of my laptop. I’ll get better at it. I promise.

Since writing this post and making these videos Mrs Draper called me and told me that the kids had turned in assignments that highlight what they learned. Here are some snippets. From what I can gather, they were instructed to create a conversation between two people.

Hannah understands the nature of gambling more than most adults I know.

I love the “LOL! ” at the end.

I hate to butt into this fine conversation boys and girls but technically Ben never said that you get “cheated” if you “roulette” and he never used “roulette” as a verb.

Yeah? Well you try speaking to a group of 5th graders about gambling from the perspective of a professional card counter while trying to stay out of trouble from parents AND make it exciting!

I wasn’t going to post it, but this is the picture that I put on the tail in the conversation for the kids on the powerpoint. Almost all of them reference it on their assignment. Most of them went nuts when they saw it and for most of them, I think it’s the only thing that they remember. They are vaious disguises I have used in casinos in recent years. And no Lauren, the beard is NOT fake.

Two days ago I had a pretty awesome idea for a recipe and wanted to share it with you. I know this isn’t a cooking blog, but hey, it’s a part of my life.  I remember going to this friends house about 5 years ago and hearing how he cooked this flank steak by burying it with coals under the sand overnight. Anyways, it was awesome so I decided to try my own variation. After searching all of the internet for recipes and not finding anything I realized I would have to improvise.

1. I bought a $30 piece of beef brisket. This may not seem like a lot to you but I almost never buy meat and $30 is a lot for me. It was almost 7 lbs and came with a fancy steak rub that can be seen on the right hand side.

2. I marinated it for about 6 hours in fresh squeezed lime juice (4 limes) and 10 cloves of garlic. Flip every hour.

3. I wrapped it tightly with all of the juices and marinade in about 8 layers of tin foil.

4. I prepared a fire and burned it down to white coals. I used a fire pit but in hindsight you may want to use a hole in the dirt/sand or something that restricts the airflow a little more. I would wait until the flame completely dies out, but as you can see from the picture, I cheated a little.

5. I put 2 large pieces of wood over the piece of meat so that it would cook over night.  At this point it was about 8:30 pm and the meal was about 21 hours away. This would give the meat plenty of time to cook and should be really tender.

6. After a while I noticed that the coals were pretty hot so I buried the whole mess in fresh grass clippings. Pack them in around the edges, restricting the airflow.

7. At this point, this picture shows my general expectation for the likely hood of this experiment actually turning out.  I figured there were one of two options. The first is that the piece of meat would turn out awesome. The second, which I gave about a 25% chance, is that it would be charred and dried on the outside.  Nothing prepared me for what I would find in the morning when I woke up.

8. I slept in a little bit but decided to check the fire at 9:30 am to see if the fire needed any more wood or grass. When I opened up the fire this is what I found.

9. That’s it. 2 scraps of tin foil. The fire had completely incinerated my entire $30 investment.  It was an entirely unanticipated outcome that can only be wielded when cooking with stumps, grass clippins and 2000 degree Fahrenheit.

10. It turned out ok though, because the 20 people that were coming to my house for dinner were not arriving for another 8 hours so I had plenty of time to thaw out frozen chow mein noodles.To my credit, a couple of people commented on how good the recipe probably would have been, had it turned out.

As for me, I’m still not going back to Betty Crocker.

I recently stumbled across this video on my friend Mike’s blog. I pushed play and then said “oh crap” when I realized it was like 9 hours long. But I was just surfing the web and doing some email while it was playing on in the background. Before I knew it I was pretty engrossed and by the end I would say that it was probably the most interesting speech/dialogue/presentation that I have seen or heard in years.

I would label the content as Why people can not deny exclusive claims to truth and why Christians are to blame. I think the most interesting is the part of why Christians are to blame.

I don’t want to take the time to post my thoughts here but I do want to share it with you here. The talk itself is about 40 minutes long and then it goes to Q & A. I have not listened to the Q & A.  I would suggest playing it in the background and then going about your business.

If you absolutely do not have the time, here are my highlights. (With youtube now you can drag the playbar to wherever you want even before it loads!!)

4:15 - Beginning

8:10 – 9:38 “Now that we all agree that religion is a big problem”

30:55 – 33:24 “What you need, is people with an exclusive truth claim that humbles them”

37:46  -  40:40 The Moral Performance Narrative vs. The Grace Narrative

40:40 -  43:00 You know what the problem with the world is?…..Fundamentalists!

43:40 – END

This is a business idea that I’ve been partnering with Jeremy Pryor, Jon Collins, and Stephen Mowry on. I’m pretty excited about it even though none of us know which way it’s heading. The business is built around creating and organizing a collection of “epipheos”. To learn what an epipheo is…just watch the video.

I made a keynote presentation for a group of 5th graders that I spoke to about casinos, gambling and card counting last Friday. This is the vid after I added some music and sound fx.