I saw this today and it’s entirely worth sharing. It’s from Chicago’s WGN weekend news team. They have been apparently working together for years and made up this little dance routine that they do during their first 2 minute commercial break. I must say that I was mesmerized.

There’s a short interview with Robert Jordan about the routine here.

OK, I’ve had the Grammy Awards on in the background all night. It’s been occassionally entertaining. Of course, overall, I have a lack of appreciation for most popular music these days. It’s no surprise. I haven’t liked mainstream music much since I bought my first punk LP in high school.

I have one criticism that I’d like to lay out there about the performance by a man whom I’ve seen live. Heck, I saw him in my youth with my parents at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis back in the 80s. Yup, it’s Mr. Neil Diamond.

I for one was rather depressed when I saw his performance at the Grammys. He’s got an amazing voice, and while it might not be what it was back in his heyday, he’s at least still got one that he can use. When he talked his way through ‘Sweet Caroline’ it just made me depressed. He should be able to do much better than that. Good lord, Neil. It’s a great honot to perform at these events. Step up to the plate for gosh sakes.

Oh well, I’m still a fan. Will probably still go see Super Diamond the next time they swing through town. The ‘real’ Neil is way too expensive for my budget these days. And heck, if he’s going to walk his way through one of my favorite sing-a-longs, I would have been depressed to have shelled out so much for a ticket anyway.

OK, so here’s something that I’ve noticed over the past two weeks. When I try to access LinkedIn in the evenings, I’ve been met head on with extremely long load times. That is even if I ever get a page on their site to reload.

Yeah, I’m willing to bet that everyone in the Pacific time zone is spending time after work burnishing their resume.

Heck, I just came across this list of 6 things that you shouldn’t do in a resume today. While I can see the points being made in this post, I have to say that I don’t necessarily agree wholeheartedly. There are word recognition software algorithms that are run on resumes, and while it might read as a more unique and special resume if you make the requested changes, you might miss out being picked up by the HR department’s resume scanner… Not a risk that I’m willing to take in these times.

I found this huge list of statistics over on the Harpers Index today. The one that stood out as the most egregious to me was the statistic on the amount of time that President GW Bush spent on vacation, or traveling to get to his vacations.

• Portion of his (GW Bush’s) presidency he has spent at or en route to vacation spots: 1/3

That just made me sick to see. Especially in light of his comment last week where he said (I paraphrase)

“You may not have agreed with all of the decisions that I made, but you’ll have to agree that at least I had the courage to make them.”

It surprises me that he was even around enough to “make” any decisions at all. And considering that it’s his job to make decisions, I don’t really need to give him any credit at all for that. Bah. His last week being the president, and he still has the ability to make me angry.

I’m all inspired after today’s inaugural speech, so hopefully many of these negative thoughts will go by the wayside.

Yup, looks like Shaquille O’Neil is now using the micro-blogging tool Twitter:

http://twitter.com/the_real_shaq

Looks to be almost as fun as following Darth Vader:

http://twitter.com/darthvader

Hey Shaq how about another batch of McDonald’s Fries? Yummmmmm.

It’s once again a foggy morning in Portland. I love them. It feels so cool and crisp when I walk out of the front door of my house, and I love the cold, moist air rushing into my lungs.

One thing that I’d like to request of all other Portland residents on these mornings. I’d like to ask that on these mornings everyone drive with their lights ON. I know that it isn’t necessary for you to see where you’re going, but it’s critical for everyone else on the road to see you. I had a couple of scares this morning where I almost merged into some gray cars on the freeway that didn’t have their lights on.

So, for the safety of all of us, help me out here, turn your headlights on.

Went to Ignite Portland 4 last night. My company was good enough to give some sponsor money to the event. I really love that my company can give some money to support local events where possible. I’m pretty proud that we’ve sponsored all of the events since the first Ignite Portland at Weiden and Kennedy.

Typically each sponsor is given a chance to speak for a short time in front of the audience, but this time the organizers asked for a video. I had a great time pulling together our video for the event. We have a ton of great people Extensis who have a good sense of humor and were willing to hit themselves in the head with a product box for the cause. Here’s the result:

Overall the crowd was very respectful and had a great time with all of the presentations and sponsor videos. To those who cheered our video, and those of other sponsors, thanks! To those who ‘boo-ed’ the Microsoft short recognition, you are disrespectful twats and a pox on your house. They were kind enough to sponsor the event that was FREE to you, so suck it up and act at least a little dignified – no matter what you think of their products. Didn’t your mother tell you that if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all?

When I was coming into the building this morning for work, there was a couple in the parking garage that were all aghast that they had to hand over their car keys to the parking attendant. Giving your keys to the parking attendant is required in my building if you’re blocking someone else in when you park. It’s not a huge deal to most people.

Yet, these folks were from Salem, and seemed to be bound and determined to be afraid of the “big city.” They rode the elevator up with me, and kept repeating their worries and itinerary to everyone in the elevator car.

“Oh, we’re just up here to check out our retirement with the PERS (public retirement plan) people and then we’re leaving right away!”

“I just don’t understand life in the ‘big city,’ that guy could steal everything out of our car while we’re gone!”

Good lord, people. Get over yourselves. I’m sure that you’ve heard all of the “bad” things that happen in Portland from the news, and immediately assume that every single one of them is going to happen to you while you’re up here. It’s a city, period.

As many bad things happen per capita in smaller towns. Heck, Salem is probably more dangerous per capita since the main jail and mental institution is there.

I repeat, get over it and simply relax. People are people everywhere, and those of us who happen to live in the big city aren’t all out to rob you blind, attack your grandmother and steal your organs. It’s your own xenophobia that your should be dealing with. Sheesh.

So, here’s out newest promo for Extensis Suitcase Fusion 2. It was done for us by CMD right in our own fair city of Portland Oregon. It’s a funny little piece that was mostly created for the Press. We dropped a bit of audio at the end about calling our PR person for interviews, and thought that it would be fun for everyone else to see.

I put it up on both YouTube and competing online video provider, Viddler. I definitely prefer Viddler, but will double-post to YouTube just because they were one of the first on the scene and have an audience. Here is the video as it is posted to both sites. You can see just how much better Viddler’s compression is.

The Viddler version:

The YouTube Version

Though, I do have to say that embedding a Viddler video into a WordPress.com blog is a bit of a pain in the patoot. WordPress.com needs better conversion of the embed code into their proprietary embed string. They do it OK with YouTube, but not so much with Viddler.

OK, I’m not enough of a narcissist to believe that everyone wants to know what I’m doing at all times. That being said, I find the micro-blogging service Twitter an interesting avenue for entertainment as well as work.

I use Twitter to track what’s going on in our market and with our customers, as well as an another way of publicizing our blog. It’s pretty handy the way that you can search it for specific keywords, and set up custom RSS feeds for those search terms. I’ve added a slew of them to my Netvibes page.

Entertainment wise, there are a ton of “fake” celebrities out there. In the vein of Fake Steve Jobs, there are a couple of fake microbloggers that can be incredibly funny to read. Here are just a few that I’ve found entertaining:

• Darth Vader
• Fake Sarah Palin

And here’s one that isn’t fake, but entertaining:

• Henry Rollins