via Gregg Newsom

Open Space is an awesome format for meeting and conferencing. The Day Of Dot Net Conferences have been promoting it with varying success.

Personally, I love it when a conference has space set aside for Open Spaces, if the conference isn’t entirely open space format. There are only so many times I can sit through another presentation about something I have seen before. Open Spaces does provide an alternative for us overly selective types.

More importantly, it provides a place for you to get out of it exactly what you put into it. What do I mean by this? How many times have you said “yeah, that would be awesome” to some idea when you were talking with someone at a conference? Open Spaces provides the means to make that idea a reality. Next time this happens to you, please grab that person with whom you were speaking and march directly to the open spaces room and begin working, planning, designing, developing, whatever-ing. Maybe make a pit-stop at the Open Spaces board on the way.

I can’t wait for the upcoming development tools focused open space event at SRT Solutions. I love my tools. I’m passionate about my tools. Like any good craftsman, I have my favorite hammer, my favorite saw, and my favorite drill. I feel crippled without my own tools. Ask a craftsman to build you something and give him unfamiliar second rate tools and see what happens   You probably will not like the results.

Ben Carey made me do it.

http://22books.com/lists/show/92/Life

I have to say I’m a little surprised at my own list of books that changed my life. I’m also disappointed by how short it is, but I guess I just haven’t read that many life changing things.

Not life changing, but definitely entertaining are John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and the sequel The Ghost Brigades. I finally read The Ghost Brigades last week and IMO it is every bit as good as the first.

Currently, I am reading Orson Scott Card’s Shadow of the Hegemon, Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and Marc Weissbluth’s Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (I swear I’ll get this back to Dianne sooner or later.)

Whoa, everyone else was doing it, so why can’t I?

I have to admit the Hunting point definitely surprised me.

I have to admit I learned a new word when taking the test. Actually it was the pre-test background information. Dyscalculia is a word I had to look up. I’d always told people I was slightly dyslexic with numbers. I had never heard of dyscalculia before. I realized I had it when I was 16 or 17 in a high school math class, possibly calculus, when I received the results of a test and the teacher said, “I gave your credit for this one. Everything was right. You just had numbers switched around in your final answer.”

Thank god for partial credit, I passed calculus. I’m glad I didn’t have “You build bridge. It fall down. NO PARTIAL CREDIT.” instructor.

So now I claim to have a mild case of self-diagnosed dyscalculia. Add that to my “who is he” profile.

http://michaeleatonconsulting.com/blog/archive/2007/09/28/political-messing-with-the-pledge-of-allegiance.aspx

Like most of my U.S. readers, I grew up saying the Pledge — 13 years of public education. 13 years of saying the Pledge. 13 years of never once seeing anything wrong with it. 13 years of thinking it’d ever change.

But why pledge allegiance to the flag every day?

I don’t pledge my allegiance to my wife and child or even my Christian God every day! I do it by action.

I pledge allegiance to logic, wisdom and God and I pray that the flag falls under one of those things. But if “the flag” (this nation) is stupid, evil, and wrong. Then it does not have my allegiance.

Lets think about the very concept of requiring students to recite this. You are requiring that they make a statement about their allegiance. Merriam-Webster defines allegiance as

1 a : the obligation of a feudal vassal to his liege lord b (1) : the fidelity owed by a subject or citizen to a sovereign or government (2) : the obligation of an alien to the government under which the alien resides
2 : devotion or loyalty to a person, group, or cause

I thought this was America, land of the free and home of the brave. I do not believe that allegiance and obligation of a feudal vassal (the student) to his liege lord (the state) mixes with the liberty on which this country was founded. Take a huge step back for a minute and compare this requirement to the watching of the media broadcasts in Orwell’s 1984. I don’t see it as being so different.

Instead of requiring students to recite some fascist poem how about teaching them to think freely, make their own decisions, take responsibility and be accountable for themselves and their actions.

I’m amazed at what I scored!

Curse you Keith Elder for stealing that 5 minutes from my life. Praise you Keith Elder for making me laugh when I found out that I am 67% Jazz! 

I AM
67%
JAZZTake the Transformers Quiz

As a former LOVER of the powerpuff girls (I still have two VHS from cartoon network of original airs from season one) I was intrigued by this post. If Bronwen, Elaine and Lorraine are like the powerpuff girls, then sign me up! I’m a rowdy-rough boy!

So I was reading my blog roll, which is basically all that I do all day long because it is 2221 rss feeds. (I love you bloglines.) At the very bottom of my list is a nice blog that I subscribed to recently called “Get Rich Slowly“.  There was a great post where the author references an old This American Life episode with Dave Ramsey, so I just had to look this up!
I usually like This American Life although sometimes the topic will bore me, or it will have some political overtones with which that I disagree.
This episode the introduction lasts about 2min 30sec if you want to skip the congressman stuff. Dave Ramsey stuff starts around four minutes and the first call question is pure Dave. Susan Drury points out that Dave’s callers are often not calling about money. Its a great listen. I highly recommend.