Archives: Wow
Maine to Florida - Four Million Steps - 2300 Miles
Sounds whacky doesn’t it? Well our friend Tommy Neeson is going to make the run. For Ronald McDonald House Charities.
Once in awhile a really wild idea gets into your head, ferments, grows and if
powerful enough has the power to transform your thoughts into actions.
Tommy Neeson, husband to Elaine, father to Shelby and parent of a child
lost to cancer (Randi) has a passion for running and a passion for helping
others in need.In 2007, Tommy raised thousands of dollars for the Ronald McDonald House
Charities of Norfolk, VA with a world record setting 50k treadmill run (see
video). And now, Tommy’s energy and enthusiasm for running will merge
with his leadership and passion for helping others into a very unique event
that will culminate with a single step. -=SOURCE=-
Some of you probably remember me blogging about Tommy when he set a new world record for the 50K Treadmill run last year.
Please consider a donation to this incredibly worthwhile cause!!! Donations can be mailed to:
Four Million Steps
c/o Donna O’Banion/Towne Bank
297 Constitution Drive
Virginia Beach, VA 23462
The webpage, Four Million Steps, has many features and information on the run including a tracking chart and map documenting Tommy’s location during the run.
PRESS INFORMATION:
On August 28th, 2008, 39 year-old Virginia Beach resident, Tommy Neeson, will depart from the Ronald McDonald House in Bangor, ME and run over 2300 miles to the Ronald McDonald House in Miami, FA. He will make stops at various Ronald McDonald Houses along the way (see The Route).
Four Million Steps, the number of steps taken on this journey, is aimed at raising not only money for the Ronald McDonald House Charities, but awareness as well. Ronald McDonald House provides a home away from home or families with children facing medical challenges and support programs that directly improve the health and well being of children, as well as providing grants to nonprofit organizations for programs that enable children to live happier, healthier lives.
The first Ronald McDonald House opened in Philadelphia in 1974 as the result of the perseverance and dedication of Fred Hill, then a Philadelphia Eagles football player. After his daughter Kim, was treated for leukemia at the local children’s hospital, Hill became determined to help other families faced with the same situation. Very few institutions at the time provided sufficient accommodations for such families. Dr. Audrey Evans, a pediatric oncologist at Children’s Hospital, suggested that a “home away from home” was needed. Hill enlisted the help of his teammates and the local McDonald’s restaurant franchises to raise funds to purchase and renovate the first House.
There are now over 269 Ronald McDonald Houses in 30 countries. All told, more than 3,000 bedrooms are available for families every night.
The journey will end 75 days later at an average of over 30 miles of running per day. To make the things just a little harder, the event will be done without the assistance of a support vehicle. Tommy will cart all of his supplies in a baby jogger. Want to read more about how an idea like this comes about, start from the beginning.
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WordPress 2.5 is out (and installed!)
From the WordPress Development Blog:
WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages. WordPress › Blog » WordPress 2.5
I installed 2.5 on three sites this morning in a matter of minutes. Yes MINUTES!!! It was a piece of cake!
The new admin interface is incredible, I was able to get rid of two different plugins that I use to make the admin panel more user friendly.
And speaking of plugins…
If a particular plugin that you are using is hosted on the WordPress site in the repository (maybe elsewhere too), you can do a 2 Click upgrade of that plugin right from the control panel! AWESOME!!!
Great job guys! Absolutely stunning!
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Botanophobia
For some history on this post go here. Then see here and here for more fun reading.
Technorati Tags: botanophobia
Posted in Family, Fun, Holiday, Wow | No Comments »
George Carlin on age.
George Carlin’s Views on Aging
Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we’re kids? If you’re less than 10 years old, you’re so excited about aging that you think in fractions.
‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m four and a half!’ You’re never thirty-six and a half. You’re four and a half, going on five! That’s the key.
You get into your teens, now they can’t hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.
‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m gonna be 16!’ You could be 13, but hey, you’re gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life …
You become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!
But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There’s no fun now, you’re Just a sour-dumpling. What’s wrong? What’s changed?
You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you’re PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it’s all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone.
But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn’t think you would!
So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.
You’ve built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it’s a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!
You get into your 80’s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30 ; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn’t end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; ‘I Was JUST 92.’
Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. ‘I’m 100 and a half!’
May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!
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Are WI-FI Hotspots a thing of the past?
According to Ericsson’s Chief Marketing Officer they are.
The rapid growth of mobile broadband is set to make Wi-Fi hotspots irrelevant, according to an Ericsson executive.
“Hotspots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era,” claimed Ericsson’s chief marketing officer Johan Bergendahl, speaking to delegates at the European Computer Audit, Control and Security Conference in Stockholm. -=SOURCE=-
They simply aren’t needed any longer. With smart phones and other devices that use mobile broadband, it seems that “hot spots” are a thing of the past.
Several years ago, people were paying top dollar to access WI-FI hotspots at Starbucks, Truck Stops and other places including hotels. Now the expectation is that the WI-FI is free.
I frequently attend conference on Information Technology, mainly geared toward Law Enforcement applications. Several of them are held in Greensboro, NC and invariably at the Sheraton Four Seasons Conference Center. Great place. Lots of room for vendors and educational tracks. And of course, free WI-FI. Good thing to have when you have 2000 computer geeks running around.
The last one I attended was in August at that very location. What I found, more often than not was I was using my Verizon AirCard more than the hotel’s WI-FI. The download speeds are comparable to DSL and the reliability was better. I could connect with my ToughBook and Aircard, and walk around, open it up do what I had or wanted to do and close it back and keep walking. Never once losing connection. The same could NOT be said for the WI-FI.
And of course now, with the preponderance of smart phones, especially like the Blackberry and iPhone, why carry a laptop? You have everything you need in a package the size of a Pop Tart. Or smaller.
Yes… I do believe WI-FI hotspots are history. They simply don’t serve a purpose any longer. Even free ones.
Technorati Tags: WI-FI Hotspots, technology
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Congratulations are in order…
Each day I surpass my previous record of consecutive "days alive"!!!
This is a realization I came to this morning! Isn’t it grand?
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New Look for Scott’s Thoughts
I always look forward to new releases of WordPress themes and I use Weblog Tools Collection as my source. Generally, my only source.
Today’s selection came out and I found a great new free them called Uncrufty by Azmeen at HTNet.
I have been looking for a theme that was plain, minimalistic but had a header image I could change quickly and on a whim. Uncrufty meets that need PERFECTLY!!!
I had installed the theme earlier today but hadn’t had much of a chance to play with it. This evening when I came home I started tweaking it a little bit and found that when you went to a specific post, the right hand sidebar went away.
While I understand the functionality of this set up, I don’t particularly care for it. So I dropped a quick note into the author’s blog about the theme and the idea of releasing a version with the sidebars remaining in place throughout.
Exactly 40 minutes later, Uncrufty2sb was released!!!
Thank you Azmeen!!! That’s incredible service for a FREE WordPress Theme and I appreciate it!!!
Technorati Tags: WordPress, Themes,, WordPress+Themes
Posted in Blog, Bloggers, Wow | 2 Comments »
Strange Happenings… with a purpose…
A true story. All us old guys, especially veterans, remember this guy.
It happens every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembles a giant orange and is starting to dip into the blue ocean. Old Ed comes strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Clutched in his bony hand is a bucket of shrimp.
Ed walks to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now. Everybody’s gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts….and his bucket of shrimp.
Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing on the end of the pier. Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. If you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, “Thank you.Thank you.”
In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn’t leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place. Invariably, one of the gulls lands on his sea-bleached, weather-beaten hat - an old military hat he’s been wearing for years. When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away. Old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and goes home.
If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like “a funny old duck,” Or, “a guy that’s a sandwich shy of a picnic”. To onlookers, he’s just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.
To onlookers, rituals can look either very strange or very empty.
They may seem unimportant….maybe even a lot of nonsense. Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters. Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida. That’s too bad. They’d do well to know him better.
His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero back in World War II. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.
Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun, they fought sharks, most of all, they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were. They needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft.
Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap. It was a seagull! Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal - a very slight meal for eight men - of it. Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait……and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued.
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first lifesaving seagull. And he never stopped saying, “Thank you.” That’s why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.
(Max Lucado, In The Eye of the Storm, pp.221, 225-226)
PS: Eddie was also an Ace in WW I and started Eastern Airlines back in the 20’s. And of course, in Miami, The Rickenbacker Causeway was named for him.
Posted in Family, Forgiveness, Wow | 1 Comment »
Gotta Pack Much Book
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