Couch Surfing

Well I got signed up with couch surfing. I had heard about the site but I had never looked at it until I got the assignment. Quite honestly I'm not sure I'm (my wife) is down with the idea of having someone we don't know as a guest at our house. Need a little time with that one. Same situation with staying at a strange person's house also. I know the majority of people are good wholesome people etc. I'm just old school and kind of old too.

I did join the South East USA Motorcycle Riders group and met a guy named David from Jackson Tennessee. Maybe sometime we'll run into each other and have the good fortune to ride together some. That would be cool. Here's a link to my CS profile.

What Happens to Our Digital Selves When We're Gone?

I have to admit I haven't considered what will happen to any e-mail accounts, Twitter accounts etc when I'm gone. It seems obvious that these need to be shut down when we die. Do you have instructions written up for the executor of your estate yet? Me either. I read an article in the N&O this weekend about just this subject. The link below takes you to a site for a company called the Digital Beyond set up to help deal with these issues. As we continue to get older and more socially active online we all need to consider what we leave behind. Interesting dilemma that didn't exist 25 years ago.

http://www.thedigitalbeyond.com/

Moon Phases and Seasons

Well I guess I blew that one pretty badly. The original questions are listed below. Never mind my answers.

What causes the seasons/temperature differences on earth through the year?

What causes the phases of the moon from new moon to full moon?

I guess in some ways this reinforces all we've been hearing about our education system not teaching the sciences or mathematics very well. I did find it interesting that a person could be educated in East Tennessee and North Carolina (me) or in an Ivy League school and be equally incompetent. What a proud moment! I hope I don't actually need to apply this knowledge.

Is this the type of material for an online learning module? Would that work any better? You might assume the face to face method has not yielded stellar results. This activity showed me how little I know about this area of science. I hope the people I need to know this are good at it. I wonder if the moon is out tonight?

Daylight Saving Time

So I guess we'll be one more hour sleep deprived this week since we've switched back to daylight saving time. Don't get the wrong idea, I like having more daylight. I pulled together a short video speaking about daylight saving time and some stuff I learned reading an op/ed piece in the paper recently.Some interesting trivia regarding the US getting on a uniform time standard. The link to the article is here.

Glad to See Some Rain Finally

We finally got some appreciable rain today. The entire state is in some form of drought or excessively dry condition. After I filmed this video clip I saw on the weather that we got about 3/4 of an inch today. I honestly cannot remember the last time we had some decent rain.

Human Error Reduction Training

I attended some training earlier this week on human error reduction. The class was put on by a colleague from another site as part of a certification process to train these materials. The materials are the intellectual property of a company called Talsico a recognized authority on the subject of human error reduction and studies. I've attended some overview type classes and I'm in the final stages of being certified to train Process Picture Map (PPM) authors. Our site has hundreds of procedures and job aids that we will be converting to the PPM format over the next couple of years. The science and research behind it that I've seen so far makes so much sense.

New Application From a Raleigh Startup

Take a look at this article I looked at yesterday in the N&O. This is startup in Raleigh named Earthmark putting together an app that combines social networking, geo-location, photos, and YouTube clips. It seems sort of early for these guys but it sounds promising for them. A big part of innovation in the world isn't always a new invention so much as a new way to apply existing technologies. Pretty cool stuff.