Is this it?!

I donated my 40th Birthday to Charity Water.

I injoy a glass of water every morning, right when I wake up.

Throughout the day, I have another 6 to 10 glasses.

At the 2012 #WDS conference this year, I saw the founder of Charity Water, Scott Harrison share his story about Water and access to clean versions of it around the world.

Bottom line, many folks around the globe still DON’T have access to clean water, even though the technology is available to help all get it.

Charity Water has a Birthday Campaign that I thought was a lot of fun, and instead of being narcissistic on my 40th, it’ll be fun to contribute and be a small part of helping folks all over the world get clean water.

So – instead of just saying Happy Birthday Sean – why not donate something?

Cheers and Happy New Year!

Sean

I am less than a year from turning 40 as of January 2012 and I’ve been thinking a lot about my time on this earth…

Been thinking:
– that I may be about 1/2 way through life (If life expectancy is 80)
– How do I want to spend the next 40 years. Is it any different than the first 40
– How can I make the biggest positive impact on the people who’s lives I come in touch with
– What do I need to change to keep my body in optimal health (versus the ease of staying healthy as a young person)
– Where do I want to spend the remaining time?

I don’t know the answers to the above, but I injoy thinking about them, and embracing the change in all of them.

I’ve been asking older people that I have met recently, what they think about being +40 – and any wisdom about it that I might learn from.

I think this was the Summer of 2005.

It’s been I’m not sure how many years since I updated the look and feel of my blog. Personal blogging has also taken a backseat to helping others to blog/write to larger audiences and connecting with travelers.

I re-used Matt Haughey blog’s layout for my blog (thank-you sir). I like the simplicity of it. Matt is a PacNorthWest Bloke that I have never met, but have always admired from afar.

Thanks to my colleagues Bogdan and Mihai for making quick work on the change as well.

Over the years, folks have told me, the snapshot of me is scary. When I get around to it, I’ll change it.

Hope you like it.

Lots of donation drives are popping up around the Japan Tsunami. Much like PG, I don’t donate to organizations that are non-profit, but the executives earn more than I do.

“[Separately, does anyone have good ideas for how to contribute to disaster relief in Japan? I can’t donate to the Red Cross because I have an agreement not to donate money to organizations whose employees make more than I do (the Form 990 for the American Red Cross (available from guidestar.org) reveals that James Hrouda collected $648,000 in 2009; Mary Elcano took $538,000 off the top; Brian Rhoa raked off $400,000; Mary-Alice Frank took home $541,000; Theresa Bischoff, Elizabeth O’Neill, Gail McGovern, and William Moore all earned $400,000 or more).]”

Via PG

Good thoughts by Louis CK on How Great we have it today in the modern world

If they are are USA based, or general law/copyright abiding country (UK, Australia)
1) Contact them, ask to remove
2) If no, or no answer – contact ISP for removal.
3) Lawyers – last idea – most expensive – and most don’t know what they are doing online.

If they are based in countries like…Russia, Eastern Europe, Philippines, China
1) Contact them, ask to remove
2) If no, or no answer – contact ISP for removal.
3) No lawyers – barking up the wrong tree that will cost you tonnes of money, and get you nowhere

We have had to just “live with it” sometimes. Gotta figure out the time vs reward on this. Can be very time consuming!

There are also content tracking services like http://www.copyscape.com/ that can help. We don’t use them, but it’s pretty easy to find dup/copied content using search engines.

More in depth steps on what todo at WMW.

I’ve really slacked off on the blog lately. I’ve been blogging of sorts since 2000 or so and it’s funny to see it is so mainstream now. A girl at the gym today came up to and told me she wanted to start a blog on beauty stuff. I said, “Go for it!”

Been a bit more active on micro blogging stuff. SEKeener Twitter if you want to follow me over there.

Some interesting articles on all the USA economy stuff happening this week:

• Why the Stock Market keeps melting down
• Making sense of the Brokerage Bust

Travel Market
It’s fair to say that things are slowing down. This is the time that I start getting excited. All the bubble boyz will have a harder time in a slowing market no doubt and it gives us more room to continue to work on things that make us unique. We are still super excited at BootsnAll about the future of travel and travel information services online and are going full speed ahead. It’ll be interesting to see what companies in our space that get 5 to 15 million in capital:

– do with that money? BootsnAll can build all that technology for waaaaaaaaaaay cheaper…so I am guessing it’s for marketing?
– how will they give there investors a ROI on that money. I’m guessing they’d want 10x on that.
– what are they gonna do that is unique, folks understand and provide actual value for travelers, and that they will use.

Travel Blogging
We were one of the 1st to get into it, so many folks are into it now – there is a lot of noise. Sometimes we are adding to that noise – but I reckon overall, we are building great content and products that travelers want. Have a look at our Amsterdam Travel Guide. I was talking with Roger (the writer of that guide) today and looking really deep into that site and it is frickin’ amazing. So much depth, so much quality content, and so many reasons for folks that are visiting that town to want to read that – it blew me away. Yes – we could use a better design etc, but it is really on the right track for a site that is 1 year old this month.

Other stuff

• My Cubbies are cruising along, hopefully into the playoffs. If so, see you in Chicago in October
• I reckon we will pull out of this economic stuff at some point and am not gonna panic. You shouldn’t either. Tell your friend, family member, colleague that you love ’em and chill. The world and economies go through cycles and always has. Stressing about it won’t make it go away or help.
• Thinking I might re-design this thing to better reflect the microblogging stuff that is really easier for me todo

Cheers and Happy Northern Hemisphere Fall.

Some random stuff…

– A thought and pix from the Cubs game
– A friend that died recently
– Life, getting crap, does it matter?
– Marriage/Babies

(more…)

Imported this into iMovie and got this editted in about 10 minutes. Never used the program before. Pretty damn easy. I reckon I could do it in 1 minute now since I won’t have to fiddle around next time. Hello to the boyz from TMBC.