Outstanding Parks board meeting

I don’t know how I did it. I’m into my second week of an intense new job, getting up to speed with an extraordinarily sophisticated product, waking up before dawn to put in a full day before picking up the kids in the afternoon, and feeling flat-out exhausted most evenings. Still, somehow, somewhere, I found the energy to lead what might have been my best Parks board meeting yet.

I was dreading tonight’s meeting, knowing how behind-the-eight-ball I’ve felt over the past two weeks. The agenda was a heady one, with multiple votes to be taken on multiple projects. I thought we might be stuck there all night. The best I was hoping for was to get through it without nodding off in the middle of it. Honestly.

In spite of all this, though, everyone was in a jovial mood. The wisecracks were constantly flying, with everyone fair game for a little ribbing. With our packed agenda, we ran later than we usually do but no one seemed to mind. If that weren’t enough, every single vote tonight was unanimous. We have come together almost like one big family.

Where did all of this energy come from? Why do I feel so energized after meetings like tonight’s? I wish I knew these answers. A friend asked me tonight how I do this and my answer is I don’t know. It just seems to happen.

I was musing afterward that successfully leading a board (or any team, whether it be work colleagues, a sports team, or whatever) takes a light touch. It’s kind of like good sailing, where you just know what adjustment is needed in the sails to get the best performance. I imagine it’s also like leading a team of horses (like I would know, but humor me here), where you know the horses’ personalities and what it takes to get the best from each one. Good sports coaches do this constantly with their players. They know what it takes to get the best from each athlete, and – most importantly – how to put them in a position to succeed.

I’m not a coach (unless you count assistant coaching for little league baseball), I’ve never driven a team of horses, and I get to sail about once a year. Even so, every now and then I’ve seen magic happen in a meeting I’ve happened to lead. Few things to me are more fun than that.

Bored mom surfs porn on school computers

The paper covered a story (can’t link, sorry) about a North Raleigh mom who’s upset that she was able to figure out a way around the school’s Internet content filters. Mom Carolyn Homan has launched a crusade against this vile material being accessible from school computers:

“Kindergarten computers have access to porn,” Homan said at Tuesday’s board meeting, as she held up photos of graphic images she said came from Brassfield’s computers. “Filters filter out only a few sites such as Playboy, leaving billions of explicit videos and sites.”

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Endless Adolescence

Remember two years ago when I mused about how American society really suffers from not having a clear-cut bestowal of adulthood? It seems I am not alone in that thought. I’m reading a good book by psychologists called Escaping the Endless Adolescence which addresses this very idea.

Authors Joseph and Claudia Worrell Allen are clinical psychologists who have noted how the endless postponement of the promise of adulthood has made teenagers feel powerless, leaving them increasingly unable to cope with providing for themselves. Once a very quick phase one lived through in one’s teens, adolescence now stretches well into the 20s and beyond.

Kelly and I make lots of mistakes in raising our kids; indeed, parenting is one of the hardest jobs anyone can take on. One thing we’ve tried to stress to our kids is the importance of being responsible for themselves. Whether those lessons do any good remains to be seen but we’ve always spoken to our kids with respect of their ability to make their own decisions. They get plenty of practice in making their own decisions and have learned much from it.

I’ve just started the book and can’t wait to read the rest. I am glad someone is taking a good, fresh look at this crucial part of growing up.

LED bulbs: a bright idea

The three or four regular MT.Net readers know of my long history of griping about CFL bulbs. I’m a greenie, don’t get me wrong, but aside from the handful of CFL bulbs I bought when they were first introduced in the market the CFLs I’ve had have fizzled depressingly quickly. The culprit? Cheap electronics.

Imagine my surprise today when I was wandering through Costco and saw an end-cap stacked with LED bulbs on sale. These bulbs are normally $15 apiece but a manufacturer’s instant rebate knocks them down to under $5! What’s more, this rebate runs through the rest of 2013!
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BREAKING: Huge Meteor Explodes Over Russia.

Meteor explodes over Russia


Yesterday, a huge meteor exploded 12 miles over the heads of the Russians citizens of Chelyabinsk.
Watching all the videos on Slate’s Bad Astronomy page, I was struck by how frightening it must’ve been to witness this event. It’s pretty sobering to see this rock hurtling towards you, knowing there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

It made me wonder how close this was to what the dinosaurs saw right before their world ended. I also wondered if this was a preview of how our world might end.

Apparently, at about 09:30 local time, a very big meteor burned up over Chelyabinsk, a city in Russia just east of the Ural mountains, and about 1500 kilometers east of Moscow. The fireball was incredibly bright, rivaling the Sun! There was a pretty big sonic boom from the fireball, which set off car alarms and shattered windows.

via BREAKING: Huge Meteor Explodes Over Russia..

Chopping veggies or copying code?

Last night while I was chopping vegetables for tonight’s supper, I thought about my service in the Navy. At the time I was a cryptologic technician, which included a security clearance and sounded pretty futuristic. In actuality, I learned how to copy Morse Code: the oldest form of electronic communication available. I haven’t used either my Morse Code nor my security clearance in a job ever since.

It made me wonder whether I should’ve used my Navy training to become a cook. Now there’s a skill that will never be out of demand! The cooks on the ship really had respect, too, because if you treated them right they might get you an extra can of coffee or give you dibs on certain foods.

There’s also a kind of zen involved in chopping vegetables, a meditative state where one simply zones out and lets one’s hands do the work. At the same time, though, listening to Morse can also put one into a sort of trance, with the stream of dots and dashes requiring a certain kind of focus and having a certain kind of rhythm.

At the end of the day, however, no one wants to eat dots or dashes!

Chaperoning double-standard

In a fit of madness or something, I signed up months ago to chaperone my daughter’s fifth-grade class on a trip to DC. Being that I am her father, I figured this might pose some logistical problems in that I couldn’t both take her and her friends around the city and stay with them at the hotel at night. Same sex only, right? I figured all the parents would have to accept this.

Wrong. I discovered last week that the moms going on the trip are cleared to stay with their sons and his friends. Apparently it’s just the dads who aren’t allowed to stay with their opposite-sex child and her friends.
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in Rant | 227 Words

Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office? – Esquire

This is a wonderful but sobering look at all our postal service does for us, and the potential cost if we lose it.

“This is the time collectively to think about the postal service,” Adra says from his office in Arlington, Virginia. He’s an assistant inspector general and heads the postal service’s internal think tank, the Risk Analysis Research Center. “This is a transformative moment. We’re like Kodak, Polaroid, IBM with mainframe, and if we don’t plan for this disruptive technology, if we ignore it, we’ll be in trouble.”

via Print – Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office? – Esquire.

Highlights of 2012: Parks board fun

The year 2012 was the start of my second year as chair of Raleigh’s Parks, Recreation, and Greenway Advisory Board (PRGAB). It’s been a busy year, too, I might add.

I continued to speak on behalf of the board at a number of park dedications and groundbreakings, among them the House Creek Greenway Dedication, Carolina Pines Community Center, Jaycees Community Center Dedication, Five Points Center for Active Adults Dedication, Buffalo Road Aquatic Center Dedication, Anne Gordon Center for Active Adults Dedication, Historic Chavis Carousel Groundbreaking, Method Road Playground Dedication, the “Function at the Junction” where Wake Forest’s greenway meets Raleigh’s, and probably a few other events I’m forgetting. It seems that these have become so routine that I don’t even blog about every one!
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Highlights of 2012: Volunteering fun

As if serving on my city boards weren’t enough last year, I embarked on even more volunteer opportunities!

Around the start of the year I came across Little Raleigh Radio and soon got heavily involved, becoming its first board chair. I’ve continued to help organize the station and we’re in pretty good shape to be granted an FCC license this coming October.

I’ve also long been a fan of world music. After missing the AfroCubism show at the N.C. Museum of Art, I called up the show sponsor, Friends of World Music, and soon wound up volunteering for the organization. The highlight of this volunteer effort to date was the Tinariwen show at Carrboro’s ArtsCenter.

I look forward to continuing more of my volunteering in 2013 and helping make great things happen in Raleigh!