waiting for 2005
For those of you keeping score at home, I’m still waiting for DSL. Looks like it might not happen until January 4th, 2005. And that means I’m falling more and more behind with keepin’ up with the blogosphere.
cf. Holiday slowdown
The last time I switched hi-speed internet providers, August 2003, that was a different kind of painful.
disaster recovery
I’m deciding on where to put my financial efforts to help with the tsunami recovery: somewhere between worldvision.org and amazon.com (in partnership with Red Cross); the greatest need is for monies.
communicating like your life depended on it
Communication is hard work. But it is so necessary. Actively communicating is needed in every realm- within an organization (for-profit or non-profit), between organizations, from organizations to the public, between individuals, within a marriage, in all kinds of relationships. (and it can also be said that communication within oneself in the form of self-talk has its own kind of impact) And yet it’s so poorly done all over the place. I won’t gripe about why others don’t do it, nor speculate what their motives are.
I’ll admit that I’m not the greatest communicator. It just plain disappoints me that orgs and people withhold information, and thus fail to communicate. Communicating is written or its verbal. Public speaking is the #1 fear of Americans (and probably of most people around the world). Written communication, like blogging, works for some people. Experts say that most communication is non-verbal, but in actuality, most communication effectively happens because of words, written and spoken.
So I use words, typed words. Blogging has opened up a new world for me, and to millions of others. I don’t get to blog as often as I’d like, far short of the 5 hours a day that an A-list blogger spends on the art of it.
And in that process of actively communicating, we slowly learn how to communicate better, to do the hard work, and we find life.
blogging comes of age
It’s been a good year for blogging, blogs, and bloggers, as mainstream media (MSM) acknowledge its growing influence: Alpha Bloggers Shape the High-Tech Agenda (Newsweek), Blogs Have Their Day + 10 Things We Learned About Blogs (Time), ‘Blog’ Tops US Dictionary’s Words of the Year, et al.
I’ve been blogging since 1999, so it is wonderful to see blogging finally get its due recognition.
My dear wife encouraged me to make a late evening excursion to our neighborhood hotspot so I can get online with broadband. Our home is still without DSL, as we endure what is looking like a month-long ordeal to switch providers. Sad to report that it’s not happening before Christmas, and maybe won’t happen until 2005.
djchuang’s top 5 of 2004
At Bob Carlton’s evite, here’s my Top 5 for 2004, second half of it anyways:
Deconstructing McLaren
pseudo podcasting
overload schmoverload
40 Purpose-Driven Bullet Points
upgrade to 13,000 feet
This lil’ exercise was a little excruciating for me, since I don’t usually look back, or forward in time, I’d much prefer not to reminesce nor to plan ahead. I’m here in the moment, in the present, and that’s it for my attention span. 
But given my job responsibilities, and roles in the reality of life, I kinda have to do that kind of stuff.
