And when I describe to coworkers and friends that I read people's blogs, and that I have one of my own, I get strange looks and questions like "Don't you have to be awfully self-involved to have a blog?"

In Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, he speaks to the spread of ideas and of people as Mavens (the trusted experts), Salesmen (the cheerleaders and persuaders), and Connectors (the propagators).

In todays society, we are inundanted with marketing & advertising via all of our media: television, radio, email, the web. You cannot avoid it.

I love to express my opinions, but I hate imposing them on people who aren't interested. In fact, if you want to share/propagate ideas, its much more effective with an audience that is seeking than one which is sought.

Blogging provides a conduit (a medium) for the Gladwell's mavens, salesmen and connectors to operate over the geographically indifferent Internet. This conduit is not intrusive, but rather thrives on the notion of referral, reference and relationships. It is a very efficient and self correcting "machine" for the spread of ideas of any sort.

Tapping into these efficient social networks is every Marketers dream, but the network is very tuned to sellouts and disingenuity. Amazon's Customer testimonials, Epinions, and the like are Marketing attempts to tap into the same principles. But the blogosphere is not about marketing, its about ideas.

These ideas are not of just what to by, who to vote for, or the issue of the day, but also about raising children, roasting coffee, or even merely appreciation of the everyday.

Blogs are a peephole into our collective minds, values and thoughts. They are yet another medium that people are using to connect themselves to each other.

Why might my CEO care about blogs?

• Internal Blogs: enabling the connection of the employees' to each other and their mutual best interests (presumably the interests of the company)


• External Blogs: to the extent that the company is concerned with being transparently connected to customers, partners, prospective employees, shareholders or the communities the company is part of.

But this time of year is Performance Appraisal season. This is not the week that I want to be giving managers (either my manager or the one's who report to me) disease.

PS. Check out the floods in Pittsburgh.

After it arrived, I rearrange the TV stand in the basement and set it all up. Of course, its still ridiculous that the initial setup requires an analog phone line, but okay.

After trying multi-room viewing, I was shocked at the poor transfer times. It could have been a modem line running between these devices. A pair of 85% quality 802.11b connections running in Infrastructure mode was just plain acceptable.

So I took advantage of the Cat 5E cabling and switch I had just run over to the TV for Xbox live and bought 2 Linksys USB200M ethernet adapters and 100 Ft of Cable to wire the family room TiVo. Performance appears acceptable, some time along I'll post metrics.

I've taken on a new role at work. I thought before that I was spending my time with people, but I find that the first month of a new position (especially a managerial one) is really spending time with people. I will need to continue improving my note taking. Referring to previous notes is really the challenging part.

The most effective way is bringing out old sheets of paper that the notes were on. I find it useful to transcribe the notes. I've actually register http://www.jhorman.org/wikidpad. It doesn't have all the features of a Wiki that I would like (such as Backlinking and image embedding), but so far its comfortable.

The transcription process is useful because it forces me to revisit the notes such that I can take action in a "down" moment or make connections that previously hadn't occurred to me.

Hmmm, I'll get back to you on this stuff later. Breakfast is here, and its our last day in our Stamford offices.

A baby shower, a farewell BBQ, and my folks visiting. It was a nice weekend.

I found myself carrying Kieran to the back of the church during the ceremony (I don't even recall much of the ceremony). Shortly thereafter I was joined by Lori's uncle Michael and his son, Christopher. Poor Michael, I've been watching him lug his kids to the back of the church for years.... Wait a minute, I was back here first...

Then it occurred to me, like the flashback at the end of the sixth sense. The man in front of us on the plane trying to move to a "forward seat." The people in the hotel deciding to wait for the next elevator. The cousins helping with the hotel luggage cart. It all flew into place like a great mosaic: We have become the family with little kids, living life by the seat of our pacifiers, juice cups and Barney videos. *Sigh*....

I guess I'm somewhat reassured by the knowing, yet sympathetic laugh that Michael gave me in the church foyer. We've still got a couple of years to go...

Maura got to ride in a row boat. And my mother and my second cousin treated us to a pretty decent Fireworks display on the end of the dock.

Quite honestly, he sold it too cheap! Because he just sold out every software engineer at any company with a legal department. He just gave everyone a reason to not trust the people they work with, and to make our jobs harder. We are now going to have to jump through formalism, and bureaucracy to serve our clients needs, because one guy broke the code in such a stupid way. He got $100k for all the pain and misery we all are going to have to go through. And his buddy already made his money back and more

Way to go, A-hole! While I feel for you going to jail, I'm not overly sympathetic.

And Lori let me go out and buy a new car. I hope her uncle will forgive me for not buying it from him in Pittsburgh, but I didn't want to have to get it all the way home:

Our in-laws both live in Pittsburgh, so I expect this will not be the last I see of him and his family. It would be entirely unsuprising if we worked together again someday. But I imagine the visits will be few and far between.

The strangest part of learning about this has been our kids. Lori and I benefitted from watching Mike and Maggie survive their twin boys first few years before Maura was born. It was an invaluable experience and we are grateful to have been a part of their family life. I stopped Lori from mentioning it to Maura the other day. The way she follows the boys around, its almost puppy love. I get a little choked up thinking about Maura missing her big boyfriends. When she understands it will likely be fine, I think the worst part is my own imagination of her perspective.

Blah Blah Blah.... Good luck, we'll miss you, thank you for everything.

So we headed up to Vermont for Labor Day weekend.  It was a fairly uneventful weekend, but yet still seemed full to me.   I guess I'm not accustomed to it, but 6 hours in the car with a 3 year old girl and a 1 year old boy feels like 12 hours.  Maura is doing great with the potty training.  We present Kieran to his great grand mother, Morna, finally. 

Maura has the occassional tantrum and those are challenging, but I think its likely a normal phenomenon.  We're back from the trip and I'll be trying to find some pictures.   We had gone through some old family photos at my folks house, some where just too funny. 

I'm going to have to devote some time to this blog again, its been far too bare.  Hmmm topic ideas:

• Excessive Knits (Photography, Coffee, Syrup, etc...)
• Crazy Kids
• Funny things s/he says
• Toys

Morgan has finally made Nora an "official" Johnston.  Maura has been recreationally been bringing the bride to the edge of tears with comments like "Nora Johnston" and "Nora, you're my aunt!

It was a wonderful wedding.  Of course, we have a ton of pictures.