*note* I originally posted this over at The Runoff, but thought it was worth the re-post here. I’m interested in your thoughts.
Last night, while at work, I received a call from my Dad telling me that my Mom was in the emergency room being treated for pneumonia symptoms. What she had thought was a cold progressed into a high fever, incessant coughing and nausea.
They had not yet diagnosed her with pneumonia, but were treating her for it until it could be ruled out.
A few hours later, my Dad called back to say that she was being admitted to the hospital because she indeed has pneumonia. However, before I could really process what that entailed, he offered the following context.
Initially, they had x-rayed her lungs and found a dark spot. The possibilities offered were either pneumonia or some sort of tumor in her lung. That changes the picture a bit. She is recovering well today. They caught it early enough that she didn’t have to be in a breathing tent. While she is still very sick, given the choice between a tumor and pneumonia, I think I’ll take pneumonia.
After a little over a month of spending most of my time over on The Runoff, I think I’ve figured out what my blogging future looks like.
Tumblr is an impressive format. Its ease of use cannot be matched. That being said, as a platform, Tumblr sits somewhere between micro blogging and full blogging and it doesn’t meet all the needs I want for my blog. The biggest issue is comments. So far as I can tell, a reader must have a Tumblr account to leave comments on anything I post there. That’s a big drawback for me. That being said, the majority of what I’ve put up there isn’t really stuff that would spark a big conversation.
So, what is the future? The conclusion isn’t too different from what I projected when I first talk about tumblr in early March. 6 Mile Village will be the home for posts that are best served by the long-form blog format. Topics that I hope spark discussion or are informational. While Tumblr will continue to be the home for the random stuff that doesn’t need to be here, but needs more functionality than just 140 characters.
I have a few different posts in mind coming down the pipe. A series I want to start that I hope you’ll enjoy and some other topical stuff that we self-important bloggers like to ramble about.
Last week, long-time ABC news correspondent, Sam Donaldson, was a guest on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. During his interview he made a couple of comments that, to me, summarize just how important it is to hear all the points of view around any subject.
“If all you do is watch or listen to ABC, you’re deprived; you have to have a wide range of sources.”
“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own set of facts. That’s why you have to check around.”
“The people that are inhabiting those shows, some of them, not all, they have an ideology they want to preach to the choir.”
“You go to church because you like the preacher and because he says exactly what you want to hear and what you believe. That’s fine on Sunday…”
“But the point is, in looking at the issues today … if you don’t have a wide range of opinion, how are you going to know? If you only listen to the ‘preacher’ Rush Limbaugh or Olberman, you’re not going to know.”
“Let all flowers bloom.”
If you follow my twitter stream, you’ve seen me refer to the people who work in the group next to me as the rabid republicans. (Though I recently changed their names to the non-contributing zeros.)
My issue with them isn’t that they are republican. Everyone is free to their own set of ideals, political views and beliefs. The major problem I have with this group of individuals is that they only preach to the choir. They ARE the choir. They worship at the church of Fox News and accept everything said there as fact.
How is only ever listening to people who agree with you of any real value? How can you ever grow as an individual if you don’t take in everything around you? Isn’t the garden of ideas more beautiful when we let all flowers bloom?
Have you seen tumblr yet? Are you on tumblr? Do you like tumblr? It seems that tumblr has landed in the circles I travel in and naturally, I had to check it out. I’ve created my own space on tumblr, The Runoff.
So here we go tumbling.
From the get go, I was (and still am) very impressed with tumblr. It is by far the easiest platform I’ve used to date with the ammount of functionality it offers. The dashboard is very intuitive; after only 5 or 10 minutes I was posting text, images, videos and even audio.
One great feature of tumblr is the ability to set up personal domains on the tumblr platform. Easiest website I’ve EVER set up. It’s 3 easy steps: 1. Register your domain name. 2. Point your a-record to their name server. 3. Set up your site with the tumblr dashboard.
They offer a variety of customizable themes as well as a custom HTML options for your site’s appearance. .. All I can say is WOW!
In addition to the web interface, the have developed an iPhone app that is equally user friendly. This pasts weekend, while in California, I put it to full use and you can see the results over on The Runoff.
So you might ask, what does that mean for 6 Mile Village?
Fear not my throngs of loyal followers. * cough * I’ll still be posting here, but my vision is something like this. Tumblr will be my day-to-day presence. I can’t deny the ease of use and the platform just makes sense for that.
Back here at the Village, I’ll still be sharing long form posts, reviews and general topics of my leisure, but I plan to use this space for the post that I will put more time and thought into. (No comments from the peanut gallery)
I look forward to interacting with all (3) of you in both locations. As always, your thoughts and suggestions are welcome.
If you’re on tumblr, please let me know and I’ll check out your site.
Ignite Phoenix 3 wrapped a little bit ago and what self-important blogger wouldn’t want to offer their opinion and review of the event?
First off, I have to thank @brianshaler for webcasting the event for those of us who could not make it.
Ignite has some huge momentum behind it and is exponentially growing in popularity. Tonight was standing room only at the Tempe Performing Arts Center and the online chatter was through the roof. Check this out if you want evidence.
This is the first Ignite event that I’ve been able to see from start to finish and overall it was a great one. Those in attendance both IRL and online were very satisfied.
Best presentations of the night for me were:
“20 Answers to 20 Unanswerable Questions” by Austin Baker
“Nothing Defines Humans Better Than Their Willingness To Do Irrational Things in the Pursuit of Phenomenally Unlikely Payoffs. This is the Principle Behind Lotteries, Dating, and Religion” by Derek Neighbors
“We ARE Trying to Solve World Hunger: How Open Source Biofuels Will Change Phoenix and the World” by Brad Biddle
“Floating Bones 102: Rules for Loosely-Coupled Structures (Like You)” by Phil Earnhardt
“Big Distance” by Evo Terra
“Lodgers, Robots and Generals – Falling In Love with Silent Movies” by James Cook
As you can see from the different titles, the real beauty in the Ignite formula is the freedom of topic.
Overall, I’m very impressed with this event; tonight’s presentations were entertaining, educational and even inspiring.
We spent last weekend in Santa Fe, NM visiting family, hiking and other general tourist activities. It turns out that the longest tram in the world is just outside of Albuquerque… who knew?! So, here’s a little video that inadequately shows off this beautiful area.
I really need to get a better video camera. Are the flip cams a good choice? They have to be better than what I have now.
Next video will be of the hike we took in some beautiful country outside out of Santa Fe and tons of pictures on the way as well.
If you follow Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) on Twitter, then you already know about Binary Game, the iPhone app that he help bring to market.
I don’t have much to add to the manyreviewsthathavebeengiven and you can read more about the different game types and the social side of the game there.
I bought this game for different reasons. Yes, it’s fun. Yes, it’s challenging and the social aspect they built in is really smart marketing, but I wanted this game because binary math is a huge part of my daily job as a network engineer… and I’m not very good at it.
This game has been great practice for me and helped in my re-certification process. I definitely recommend this game to anyone who works in networking, and while you’re at it see if you can make it to the top of the leader boards.
After all, there are only 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don’t.
Tonight I’ve been working in gns3 practicing some basic EIGRP and OSPF configurations. gns3 is the best simulator EVER!!!! If you’re a network engineer and you’re not using this, you’re missing out big time.
Here’s what I did tonight:
4 routers in full mesh running EIGRP on their links.
1 of the 4 routers has 4 loopback intefaces running OSPF for the networks on those interfaces
BEHOLD IT IN ALL ITS MAJESTY!!!!!
Alright, so it isn’t that amazing if you work with stuff like this, but I enjoy it. There’s a certain satisfaction to creating something and watching it work, even if it’s just a simulation.
