Why does it take a sporting event such as the Olympics to make the people of the world get along?

I am not speaking to the fact that the games are in China, not the controversy this fact has bred, but I am speaking to the basic Olympic values and principles.  While watching the opening ceremonies last night, I wasn’t struck by the grandeur of the show, which was magnificent, but by the athletes themselves.  As each country would finish the parade into the stadium, and then stand in the center area, I was struck by the camaraderie of it all.

Different ethniticities, political backgrounds, upbringings, pretty much any difference you could think of did not seem to exist for these men and women who had gathered from 206 different nations of the world.  They mingled, took photos, shaking hands and sharing in the moment they were sharing.  You would see basketball stars like Kobe Bryant having his picture taken with other athletes, then when he was done he would shake their hands and though you couldn’t hear him, his body language that he was asking them their names.  Why?  At least to my thought process, it was just an example that he may be a megastar in the United States, but on the global stage he is just another Olympian.

Is this sugar coated sentimentality on my part?  Of course it is.  I have no delusions of everyone holding hands and singing campfire songs together, but couldn’t we at least try to get along this well all of the time?  Does it have to be a special event every two years at the various Olympic events?  At the end of the day we are all human beings, we just have differing beliefs, but that doesn’t mean one is necessairly better than the other, and this does nothing but demonstrate that when we can all get on the same page, we can all act like the brothers and sisters we are.  How about taking this thought process we show every two years and extending it through out every day?

Feel free to mock, I know this is me just being caught up in the moment, but that doesn’t make it any less of a good idea.

Hard to believe it, but Splash Page Comics/AnimeUSA turns 22-years-old today.

Since I have gained so many followers over this past year, many of you may not even know about “my other life”.  Besides writing for Mashable, I have a “day job” working on the family business, AnimeUSA.  The store officially opened on August 4th, 1986 as a comic book store, but quickly started morphing over the years.

My mother had a costume shop in an old house on one of the major streets in Kirksville, and only 4 blocks from Truman University.  She didn’t have any use for the old garage, so at the age of 14, I asked if I could convert it into a comic book store.  After some convincing, the parents gave in and Splash Page Comics was born.  (For those who don’t know, a “splash page” is any page of a comic book that consists of only 1 panel taking up the entire page)

In 1993, mom was tiring of the costume business having been involved in it since she was 18, and I was quickly outgrowing the garage.  She opted to close the costume shop and give the bigger portion of the building over to the comic store.  We quickly outgrew that space and expanded into even more of the building.

1999 saw us doing so much business in anime products from Japan, we opened a sub-division named AnimeUSA.  We were traveling to more and more conventions around the country, and showing up at an anime show calling ourselves “Splash Page Comics” just didn’t make much sense.

By 2000, I was getting more involved with ecommerce, and our convention business was picking up so much that I was contemplating closing the retail store as it was holding its own, but was becoming a very small portion of our gross take, but the majority of our headaches.  I talked it over with a good friend of mine while we were flying to Japan together on a buying trip in August 2000, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

We were again on our way to Japan in August 2001, and he was with me again.  Again the subject came up (hey, it’s a 10 and 1/2 hour flight from Los Angeles), and after much hemming and hawing, I called my parents from Tokyo and told them to get ready to do it by the end of the year.

I returned from Tokyo just a little over a week before the events of 9/11, and that extended the time frame as we had other issues to deal with in regards to my dad’s job, and it just not being a priority on our minds.  I finally closed the retail store in December of 2001 after 15 years and 21 weeks of it being open.

We finally sold the building that in late 2002 when the gas station next door offered to buy it to expand their parking lot.  They offered us enough we could build a 3,000 square foot warehouse (the old building was 1,800 square feet and very broken up as it had been a house) on property we already owned, and we moved out in March 2003.

The warehouse is doing a beautiful job of keeping us contained, and it is so nice not going, “Which room is product x in?”  The old building was demolished in 2003, but I still smile every time I drive by it as I spent so much of my life there, but now I actually like the building we’re in as the old one was impossible to heat.

There are a million little facts about the history of the business I’ve left out as you would with any 22 year history, but this is a good general over view of the history.  Still, it’s impossible I’ve been doing this for well over two decades now.  Yikes!

I’m not thrilled to report that the Missouri flooding is finally in my general vicinity.

Remember back in March I told you I was in no danger from the Missouri flooding?  Well, the Chariton River, a normally very tiny river you can throw a rock across, has gone eight feet above its flood stage, as you can see in the picture to the right.  (you can click on it for a slightly larger view)  It has begun to receded some, but now it is currently raining again, so who knows what it’s going to do now.

Some roads in my area have shut down, naturally, but luckily this is all still six miles from me, with little chance of reaching me due to distance and the number of valleys and such between me and it.

At the oppisite end of my town, the golf course’s private lake is breaking through it’s retaining wall, and they are having the city police shutting off roads and directing traffic.  It’s one thing for a river to flood, but I would love to know who is paying for protection from a private lake flooding out a section of town.

Just like last year, I rang in my birthday by working on a list for Mashable.

Man I hate being predictable!

It was a butt-kicker of a list though, and took over eleven hours to complete (I can’t say what the subject was until it’s published), but it’s finally done.  The funny thing was I didn’t look up at the clock until it was done, and then it took me a second to go, “Oh… I’m 37 now… wheee”, and I went backk to hand coding some special image codes we use.

I am a wild man unleashed, let me tell ya.

Anyway, I always find it amusing now what my big plans are for my birthday, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I even cared about it.  At some point it just becomes another day, and all it changes is me double checking when I fill out a survey if I’m marking the right age-range section.

The good news is that I am actually probably in the best shape of my life.  Despite still being heavy set, I am lifting weights 3 - 4 times a week, and have more muscle mass than I’ve ever had.  My pants are about at the point of falling off of me, but I don’t want to buy new ones quite yet.  And in a true test of weight loss… my airplane seat belt was the loosest on my last weekend than it has been in a long, long time.  So, despite my creeping age, I seem to be doing okay.

Either way, it’s my 37th… the countdown to 40 continues.

We’ve lived in my current house for 23 years. Also on my property is my maternal grandmother’s house and my company warehouse. All three buildings are serviced by the same county water account, so when we pay the bill, it covers all three buildings at once.

The water meter is about 500 feet from my front door, deep in the woods, buried in a ground canister.  To read it, you have to lift the lid, kneel down, reach in to wipe muck and dirt off the glass, and then cover it back up.  Well, several years ago my father went to check it out, and sure enough there was a large snake in the hole.  From then on out, we got the water district to agree to allow us to do an annual reading where we paid them a large sum up front, we would read the meter before the next annual payment, and at that time we would settle up any difference.

All of this was done strictly for safety as none of us wanted to be reaching in to a ground hole with potential snakes more than we absolutely had to.  I know… we’re crazy like that.

This all has worked out without any hiccups for several years now, but at some point the water district has decided to suspend this sort of payment plan without telling us.  As we have been waiting on our annual “go read your meter” letter, we didn’t get anything, so we thought we had the date wrong.  Today I had to run to town to meet a semi truck bringing us a large shipment, and they couldn’t get down our road to deliver it, when done, I called the folks to check in with them since they are on the road, only to learn the property had no water.

It seems my grandmother, who turned 88 today, had called her and informed her that she had no water.  Well, it turned out we had no water at all, and the reason was that we hadn’t received a letter telling us we have to return to reading the meter, and we have to pay by check.

Now, here are my problems with this:

1) In 23 years, we have never missed a payment, but you miss one payment by a week or so when you aren’t even aware the system has changed, and they turn you off?  I am all for paying bills, but seeing as water is essential for life, and there are states passing laws saying you can’t turn off electricity to the elderly in the winter no matter what, there has to be a different system than turning off water.

2) It’s the 21st century and I can’t set up an automatic bank draw or put a credit/debit card on file?  No, I had to run back to town with a check and pay it in person to get the water turned back on by this evening.  It has been so long since I wrote a check, I had to actually think about it as I did it.

3) Supposedly we will be getting wireless meters which will allow them to read the meter remotely, great concept, but why not just let us finally move the stupid meter out of the hole?  It’s been there since before we bought the property, so it pre-dates us, but they’ve never allowed us to move it to someplace more sensible, like the side of a building.

So, yes, I only lost water for a few hours, but considering I have an 88-year-old grandmother to watch over, it’s annoying and worrisome.  What annoys the most is how many companies insist on not updating their system.  We have the same problem with our trash collection in that they only take checks.  I know this sounds incredibely whiny, but… I don’t have time to write checks.  As of today I am the only one home for three weeks solid, I’m working two jobs, and I adore companies that just allow me to use a debit card to pay so I don’t have to think about it.  It’s off my mind, they get their money and everyone gets to go home happy.

Come on folks, its 2008, catch the heck up with the rest of us would ya?

I’ve been getting numerous phone calls and emails asking if I am near the current flooding in my state, and I can thankfully report that I am not. All of it is at the opposite end of the state from me, and seems to be fairly isolated.

This seems like an interesting time to bring up the 1993 floods though. Now there were some floods.  The picture to the left is the capital of Missouri, Jefferson City, as it appeared at the height of those floods.  It’s not normally quite that water logged, not by a long shot.

What essentially happened back there was a higher than normal snowfall in the north of the country start melting in the spring, and that started raising the river levels at the top of the Mississippi river.  As it started moving south we saw rising levels, but not anything horrible.  Where we got screwed was when we had insane amounts of rain, like months with no break in the rains.  That added to the already swollen rivers, and then they joined with others and it turned into a domino effect.

Kirksville is luckily not close to any major rivers, but we  got turned into a virtual island, and actually started having problems getting mail and groceries due to routes being cut off.

I knew we were screwed when I headed to Quincy, IL on July 1st to take the train to Chicago for a business trip.  Quincy has two major bridges across the Mississippi, and as I crossed the east bound one, I saw the water way, WAY higher than it should have been.  I called my family and told them I was sure the bridge would be closed while I was gone, they laughed.

On July 3rd they called me and told me the bridge was closed.  I still remind them of this.

When I was headed back on July 5th, my train was 90 minutes late leaving Chicago, we then were stopped on the tracks for another 90 minutes as it turned out our original crew never made it due to flooding, and our replacement crew had worked too long, so yet another replacement crew had to be brought out to us.  Three hours late I got to Quincy, and I made the dumbest drive of my life to get home as it looked like I was going to lose the west bound bridge soon and be stuck on the wrong side of the river for several hundred miles.

So, after the stupidest drive of my life due to being far too tired, it turned out the west bound didn’t close for a few days, but it did finally.   As more time passed, we ended up with hundreds of miles where there was no way to cross the river, an this lasted for months.  By the time we were done, we had worked our way up to it being “a thousand year flood”.  In other words, in theory, we would only see floods of this magnitude once in a thousand years, but that doesn’t stop us from all getting nervous if we have two days in a row of rain come spring time.

Luckily the current floods are far south, so it will be difficult for them to feed any of the other major rivers.  This isn’t to dismiss the damage they are doing, not by a long shot, but with everyone asking me if we’re okay, it’s just to much of a chance to look back 15 years.

Why, or why, must cheese lure me in like a sailor, crashing against the rocks to the Siren’s song?

I have been trying to lose weight for a little over a year, and while I have lost 50+ pounds, slimmed up quite a bit, lost several pants sizes, toned up, and drastically changed my eating habits… I CAN’T GIVE UP CHEESE!  It’s like a lovely dairy infused drug, and no matter how many times I say to myself, “this is horrible for me,” I can’t stop eating it!

Yes, this is the entire point of the post… my cheese addiction.  I love it sliced… melted… cold… room temperature… as a sauce… as a side… fried… as a main course, I don’t care, I just love cheese.  Cheddar, Mozzarella, Jack, American, Bleu, Provolone, Parmesan… it doesn’t really matter, if it’s classified as cheese, I want to consume it.

Except cheese in a can, that stuff is just nasty.  You can keep that.

So, yes, I am a man on a diet who can’t give up his life-long cheese “problem”, but don’t they say that’s the first step?  Admitting you have the problem?  Is there such a thing as a “cheese intervention”?

Adam Ostrow over at Mashable.com was the one to bring the “beta” coffee offer from Joffrey’s Coffee to my attention.

The idea is simple in that up to 10,000 bloggers can go to their site, fill out the form, and not only will you get some free coffee, but you’ll also get a link back to your blog from them. The links are a little momentous to pick through, but Google should pick it up and count it as a little bit of link love for you.

The free coffee you’ll receive is a new flavor named “Jamican Me Crazy” which is a blend of caramel, vanilla and coffee liqueur. I’m not one to thrill to flavored coffee, but it’s free, and I’m a sucker for free. Hopefully it will be good, but if it’s not, I’m out 30-seconds of my time filling out their form.

Last time I looked, they were still under 1,000 slots filled, so there is still plenty of time for my readers to run over and snap up one of those 10,000 spots.

I have mocked the idea of “beta” tests before, and this one is such an obvious gimmick to get bloggers to talk about it, and… wait… aw man! I fell for their obvious marketing gimmick! -sips coffee- Curses.

A little while back I downloaded Google Talk on to my beloved BlackBerry 8830.  It’s a great little piece of software that gives me all of my normal Google Talk functionalities: status, chats, saves the chat histories to my account, and so on.

Now, here’s the problem.  I downloaded the program and set it up with my editors that every night I go to bed, log in on my phone, and set my status to “Sleeping/msgs fwd to phone”. (I hate text speech, but it’s needed here)  The idea was that I have bosses all over the planet, I actually do not blog for anyone who lives in the United States, so sometimes they need to reach me at odd hours.  Since it’s a work situation, I am perfectly okay with them waking me up to say “Hey, your article needs an imge corrected” or “Can you rework piece X?”

However, the problem is my friends have decided I’m not actually sleeping, and just being a lazy butt that hasn’t changed his status.  I have been woken up several mornings now, well before my alarm going off, to “Hey, Sean, are you asleep?”… No, my status message says that for fun… My answers are usually the Internet equivalent of a grunt, and then they continue to talk since I am obviously awake… YOU WOKE ME UP!

I have spoken all the friends who have done this, and vowed not to repeat their transgressions, but it got me to thinking about other things, such as are we TOO connected now?  It’s nice to be able to log in once in awhile to check on things, but with all of the abilities to stay connected now, it’s like I lways have a tether on my leg.

Yes, I realize I could just turn it off, but I feel with the international flavor of my bosses, I have made the right choice to let them get a hold of me.  Now if I could just get all of my friends to believe my status message a bit more so I could get some sleep!  It’s the Internet folks, I would assume you know how to read!

(and, as a note to the few who have done it, we’ve talked and you know I’m not THAT annoyed… just slightly)

I recently wrote a list for Mashable about preparing for your death on the Internet. It was actually inspired by a story I came across for another list I was working on (I swear, I make lists in my sleep now). It was a blog post done by a blogger who had been killed in Iraq. He had the forethought to write a post to be published after his death, and posted by a friend when they got the news he had died.

There’s nothing to say about that except that it touched me, and it made me wonder what would happen to my online presence if I was to suddenly die. Thus was born the “death list”.

It may seem like an odd thing to sit around and think about it, but with our online lives becoming such a vital part of our everyday lives, it has to be adressed. I have always thought about my eventual death in real world terms, even to the point I made my will when I was 18, but the online part of life just had not crossed my mind before, which surprised me.

So, what do you do? How do you even know when or how it will happen? The blogger I mentioned above, Major Andrew Olmdstead, at least had a clue what might happen. For all I know I could die at the age of 98 from the bite of a badger, or I might keel over tomorrow as I tear the hair from my head over having accidentally turned the TV to the Rachael Ray show, you just never know what’s going to happen.

And, as I said, worrying about what will happen with your online persona may seem silly, but it is such an integrated part of my life, I have to. When Adam Finley, a blogger for TV Squad, was killed by colliding with a bus while riding his bike, his coworkers didn’t know for a few days. If I don’t set up some sort of system to alert people, you might all be coming by this blog for a year, thinking I just turned in to some lazy ass who never updates. Who would tell my bosses at Mashable? I’ve never met any of my co-workers in blogging, I don’t even have phone numbers for a goodly number of them. Would my social networking profiles stay on the web for an eternity? Would my membership to NaughtyGrandmas.com keep auto renewing?!? (note: I randomly picked that name… then learned it was a real website… I then died a little inside)

For now, I plan to write some sort of “I was killed by a rabid squirrel” post, that I will keep up-to-date as time goes on, and I am talking with someone about posting it for me when they would get the notice I had passed. I am also making a list of all my accounts on every site I belong to, the usernames, and the passwords so my family or someone else can go in and deactivate all the accounts. I’m not thrilled about writing all that information down somewhere as I then have to worry about keeping that physical list safe, but I’ll figure something out.

This post doesn’t serve much purpose beyond telling you I plan to do all of this, but I also hoped it might motivate some of you to start thinking about your plans for that inevitable moment that comes to every one. Are you prepared? Do you have a will? Someone that will let your blog readers know that you have moved on to signing the choir invisible?

No matter how old you are, it’s never the wrong time to start thinking about this stuff, no matter how depressing you may find the subject, just remember how bad it could be folks if you didn’t plan. I’ve found the best way to get around it is to keep a sense of humor about the whole thing, as you can see from this post. Sure, I don’t want to die anytime soon, but I also realize I have no control over this, it will happen when it happens, and it’s better to be prepared, because you sure don’t get a second shot at this.

Ugh… yeah, like pretty much every other American, I ate too much. And, yes, this picture was my dinner. Damn my weakness for stuffing!

Something interesting happened though: Why did I take a picture of my meal?

Over the past few years I have become friends with a woman from a foreign country in the Souther hemisphere (I won’t say which country as she would die of embarrassment if I identified her), and she is fascinated with Thanksgiving. Her only exposure to it has been via movies and American television shows. This has led her to have a very romanticized idea of what Thanksgiving is all about. I explained to her the true history of the holiday, but she still has this idea of how families gather and it’s all cheery and sweet.

There’s no denying it’s a good time most of the time, but nothing like the movies portray, of course. It’s interesting to ponder just how much our culture has permeated culture all around the world. I had a friend from England who told me how people would call 911 in an emergency as opposed to their 999 number. The reason being they remembered it from seeing it on American television shows.

Is this a healthy thing? Sure, in the case of my one friend, she just thinks the day sounds like fun, and it gave me an endless source of amusement. But, in the case of 911, not so much. There’s no way to stop this from happening, but you have to wonder what else it may be leading to.

You know, there are a lot of things I can do in this world.  I can assemble a brand new computer and have it on the network about ten minutes after UPS delivers it.  I can run two companies from the same desk.  I do a fair job at being a writer.  There is one place I fall flat on my face though.

Cars.

I’m lucky if I can remember where the gas goes, let alone doing anything technical.  So imagine my fun filled week when my main car, a 1999 Chevy Tahoe, had it’s battery die on me.

Now, I am sure you are saying, “Duh, Sean!  Just get some jumper cables and jump it!”  I tried that.  I suck at jumping a car and I never got it started.

Next up was the battery charger.  A-ha!  After two hours of running it on the charger, I got it started!

Now, two days later, it is sitting at work… dead again.  I have NO clue what’s wrong with it, and no clue why the battery died again.  And to make life more fun, it has to make a run to the east coast starting on Tuesday.

I hate cars.