Williamsburg Weekend

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WilliamsburgTrip_InTheCondo_081207
Celeste and I spent the weekend in Williamsburg, VA with our very good friends the Figuracions.  It was their 14th wedding anniversary and they asked us to spend it with them, which we were honored to do.  We had lots of fun and it really came at a good time since we really seemed to need the break from our routine.  On the left, the four of us in the condo we stayed in over the weekend. Bobby and I were roommates in college and the fact that he would remain my friend after that says all you need to know about the man.

We spent a lot of time this weekend talking about our kids, or should I say commiserating with each other about living with kids, and it occurred to me at some point that we are very lucky to have friends who have literally been there through everything: wedding, kids, moves, job changes, etc.  Hard to believe they've already been married 14 years or that it's been over 20 years since Bobby and I roomed together at George Mason U.

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We spent the majority of the weekend puttering around the Pottery Factory, browsing the aisles of the Christmas Mouse and picking through the selections at the General Store.  To the left is a pic from the Pottery Factory; only there would you find a 'Hardware, Wine & Cheese' store.

Much thanks to our friends the Campbells for letting the kids stay with them for the weekend and shuttling them back and forth to take care of the pets.  That's some serious duty that we really appreciate.  Then they topped it off by feeding us dinner last night when we came over to pick up the kids.  We had a couple of hours to sit around and catch up and honestly that's about as good as it gets. A great weekend all the way around.

Bartering

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Fec has assembled a compendium of interesting information on bartering:

Green Apple is making it work in Pittsburg:

Green Apple works through a credit card system. If someone with a Green
Apple credit card buys goods or services, those are offset against what
they can sell to someone else with the card.

Green Apple charges retail prices, so there is no price break when using the Green Apple credit card.

The company also has a string of brokers who spend their days on the
phone trying to hook up potential trades. Last week the Green Apple
brokers had $2 million worth of John Deere commercial equipment they
were looking to unload.

Ithaca Hours are available in New York:

Over 900 participants publicly accept Ithaca HOURS for goods and
services. Additionally some local employers and employees have agreed
to pay or receive partial wages in Ithaca Hours, further continuing our
goal of keeping money local.

From Riding Out the Credit Collapse by Douglas Rushkoff:

The more connected you are to the real world, and the more consciously
you reject the lure of the speculative ladder, the less of a willing
dupe you’ll be in the pyramid scheme that’s in the process of
collapsing all around us at this moment.

Think small. Buy local. Make friends. Print money. Grow food. Teach
children. Learn nutrition. And if you do have money to invest, put it
into whatever lets you and your friends do those things.

Victoria, BC deals with the shortage of Canadian dollars:

Members open an account by paying a registration fee.
When members sell goods or services they earn Green dollars, and their
accounts are credited. When members buy goods or services they spend
Green dollars, and their accounts are debited.

Staples Looking for Ten Thousand Winners

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Staples is running a promotion called Gift It for Free that is a sweepstakes that will have 10,000 winners who can fill up a shopping cart and get all the items for free. The promotion is running until Christmas Eve so visit the site and enter to win.

The promotion came to my attention because a rep from one of their agencies emailed me about it and about their social media efforts for the promotion, including a Facebook fan page, a Twitter profile, and several YouTube videos.  They've created a character called Coach Tom who believes there should only be one winner in anything (a play on the 10,000 winners) and they have fun with that theme with the videos.  I've pasted one below and if you click through to YouTube you'll see that there's several videos and they're pretty good. 

Update on the Dash

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Since I posted earlier about the new name for the Winston-Salem Class-A baseball team I've found out a little bit more.  First of all here's the team's website.  There you'll find the new logo, which I think is fine but over at the Journal they have lots of reader comments (126 as I write this) on their article about the announcement and one of the commenters thinks it looks like an elongated p—s.  I'll let you fill in the Dashes.  You gotta love the high level of discourse we're getting on the local sites, eh?

BTW, the team is having a name the mascot contest.  I could have sworn it was "Dash" but I guess it's going to be "—- Dash" kind of like it was "Wally the Warthog."  I am officially announcing here that my nomination is "Balder".  You'll get it eventually.

Update:  My oldest just got home from school (sophomore in HS) and without any prompting he said the logo looks like a "weener" and that kids at school draw a remarkably similar image on desks all the time.  It's not lost on me that I'm wallowing in the gutter here, but honestly these folks can't be the only ones who correlate the logo with an anatomical part.  I'm thinking the team may want to make some subtle adjustments to the logo so that they don't continue getting this kind of feedback.

Update #2: The Journal's managing editor noticed the comment too, and talks about an internal debate they had about the choice of leaving the comment up.  He points out that they probably would have taken it down if the writer had used any number of synonyms for p—s, but since he used the correct anatomical term they let the comment be.  I think they made the right choice.  FYI, I'm using dashes in my spelling to be both coy about the team's name and because I really don't feel like turning up high in searches that feature that particular anatomical name.

Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!

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Winston-Salem's Class-A Carolina League baseball team is moving to a new stadium next season (hopefully) and in the process they are being re-branded.  Today the team's owner announced that the team formerly known as the Warthogs will now be known as the Dash.  The dash refers to the dash between Winston and Salem in the city's name, which often causes confusion in computer systems and with anyone who's not from the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina.

If you visit the article in the Winston-Salem Journal that I linked above you'll see in the comments that many people find the name less than desirable.  Personally I don't think it's as bad as the Miami Heat, which I consider one of the all-time bad team names.  What's a "heat"?  How weird is it to a call a player a "heat"?  I'm assuming that Dash players will be called "Dashers" but maybe I'm wrong. 

Reindeer
I'm also wondering what the mascot will look like.  They were supposed to unveil it today, but there wasn't a picture accompanying the story in the Journal so I'm not sure if they did.  Perhaps they'll go with a reindeer like, you know, Dasher.  Or maybe they'll go with some variation of the punctuation mark, which leaves the question, "Will it be an em dash or an en dash?"  Or even better maybe they'll go with some variation on The Flash (I'd vote for this one). 

Whatever.  I'm with the commenters on the Journal page: the name is lame, especially when you consider that it was chosen over the Rhinos, Aviators, Wallbangers and Racers.  People probably would have squawked at the Rhinos name because the team's owner, Billy Prim, made his fortune as the founder of Blue Rhino and they would have seen it as too self-promotional, but I would have been fine with it because as the owner it's his prerogative and because I happen to think that you could do some really cool stuff with a Rhino mascot.  The Aviators would have local meaning since Winston-Salem has a rich aviation history, and the Wallbangers and Racers would have been a nice tie to the areas rich car racing tradition.  As I said, though, it's Prim's team and he can name it what he wants. It's just my opinion that he picked the weakest of the five candidates.

Bad Thing Happens to One of the Real Good Guys

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Martin Eakes is one of the real good guys in this world.  He's been an advocate for the poor, starting Self Help in 1980 with $77 raised in a bake sale and eventually providing financing to 50,000 home buyers who were considered higher risks by traditional lenders.  He was also instrumental in the creation of the N.C. Coalition for Responsible Lending which pushed North Carolina to be the first state to pass an anti-predatory mortgage lending law in 1999.

Last week Eakes was jumped by four guys in a parking garage near his office in Durham.  The beating left him with a severed left bicep, a torn hamstring and 15 stitches in his forehead.  His nephew Patrick Eakes tells all about it here and it sounds like Martin is on the mend.  Here's hoping for a quick recovery for one of the real good guys.

Puppy Farts

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I'm sitting here working away with the two dogs asleep nearby on the floor.  One dog is our six year old, 80 pound black lab named Arthur, the other is our approximately seven month old, 31 pound mutt named Mia.  As they sleep I hear a "phhht" sound every few minutes and then smell what can best be described as re-heated road kill.  You'd think the sound and odor assault was coming from that fat old codger Arthur, but you'd be wrong; it's emanating from the mini-mutt.  What makes it particularly annoying is that she occasionally wakes herself up, leans over and sniffs her butt as if to say "Hmm, that's a good vintage" and then promptly goes back to sleep and leaves me to suffer through her output.

Rest assured as soon as I'm done typing I'm waking the dogs up and sending them outside before I suffocate.  It's worse than the kids' dirty diapers ever were.

Gag.

Can Higher Ed Avoid the Fate of the Dinosaurs?

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A compelling presentation deck on the future of higher education is making the internet rounds, and after looking at it I just have to share it (see below).  What makes it even more interesting is that the revolutionary thoughts on higher ed and how the industry needs to change to survive come from a professor at one of the most conservative universities in the land, Brigham Young University.  If you have any interest in higher education then you should take a few minutes to view it.

Openness and the Disaggregated Future of Higher Education

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: future policy)

Update on the West Forsyth HS Fire

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We just received a robo-call (about 9:55 a.m.) from the principal of West Forsyth HS saying that there was an electrical issue in the 1000 building that caused a lot of smoke, but no fire.  The building has been evacuated and the teachers are holding class with the students in the old gym.  They expect to have the kids back in the 1000 building by 11:45 at the earliest, but it could be later.