Jack Frost Must Die

“Even Rocky has good days and bad days.” That’s what my physical therapist told me about training.  No matter how good of shape you are in, you are going to have some bad days.

I was about a miles out yesterday when my body pulled a “Nancy Reagan” and involuntarily demanded that I “Just say NO” to running. My planned 7 mile run turned into two miles of misery, as my legs were suddenly as heavy as logs and all I could think about was how much I hated this long winter. Maybe it was the 500 foot elevation climb that I tackled at 6AM. Perhaps it was the three inches of fresh fallen snow, or the 20 degree weather that mysteriously returned AFTER 2 glorious days of warm weather.

Whatever it was…I’m now convinced that we need to band together and kill Jack Frost. Or at least mount a campaign to chain him to a wall. I’m talking full-on football tackle.  Tell everyone! We need to give Heat Miser a chance to mount a come back, and regain a foothold. If you like my plan, please feel free to vent in the comments and let everyone know all the terrible things you would like to do to Jack Frost, because I can tell you with 100% certainty that your spouse doesn’t want to listen to you rant on about how long this winter has been. My spouse got earplugs ages ago. I can whine, moan, rant, and rave about the cold - and he doesn’t even respond! I think he is possibly deaf.

If we all band together, I sense good days ahead. And remember, if you are having one of those bad days, a good day is only one bad day away from your next good day.  So have a good day.

Make Custom T-Shirts for Your Team

Check out my campaign.

If you need to make shirts for your Ragnar, Tough Mudder, or any sports team, it's super-easy.  You can sell them for a profit as a fundraiser (or not)


Sign up here:
It's dead easy. 
http://www.digitalwish.com/dw/digitalwish/teespring

Upload Your Artwork
Use the least number of colors to get the best price. The PNG file format works well.

Watch This Video
...if you need help getting started.

 Click HERE to Watch Video

Digital Wish gets an automatic donation for every shirt you sell, to support American schools!

I'm an Olympiad and I Have the Pin to Prove it!

"I should have been a bobsledder!" he says as he points to the sky.

Every few years the winter Olympics comes around and the entire family is subjected to a tirade of mysterious expertise on bobsledding, luge, and skeleton from Gordon.  So when the big five-OH came around and he begged and pleaded for that birthday fishing trip, we did what any good family member would have done.  We took him bobsledding.

It would be hard to describe the shock-and-awe you get when you stand on a bridge, five feet above the bobsled track as the four-man fiberglass coffin goes raging past at 70 miles an hour.  Suffice it to say, the TV does absolutely no justice to the 007-style danger that bobsledders live for. The back end of the sled is literally fish-tailing down the track. And, according to our newly-pinned Olympiad, everything starts out smooth enough, but about 20 seconds in, the sled starts shaking, and by the time you get up to full speed you feel like your entire body will be rattled apart. It was 47 seconds of sheer terror that's over as fast as it began. And, later when we stopped for that gold medal bottle of recovery whiskey, the liquor store man told us, "That's the fastest time he's ever heard of from a tourist!"

How to Name Your Ragnar (or Tough Mudder) Team

The Tough Mudder was a blast last year, but in hindsight, the one thing I wished I'd done differently was to get a really comical theme for our team and some funny costumes.  So this year, as I'm training for the Ragnar Relay - our team officially adopted the name "Bow Tie Beer Mafia". It's easy to imagine the black costumes, AK-47 squirt guns, and van antics that will take place! If you need help naming your Ragnar or Mudder team - here are some concepts to get you started...

Concept: Executive by day, beer drinker (or partier, or tough guy, or dog lover, or international spy) by night

• Work hard, play hard _______(bandits, beer guzzlers, gurus, squad...)
• The "Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult" team
• Blood Sweat n BEERS
• Beer Pressure
• I beer, therefore I am

Concept: Proof that beer is a better way of life (or bacon)

• The Black and Tans - Possible outfit is spray tans!
• The Brewski-nators
• The Baconators
• The Beer and Baconators
• The Bacon Brewinators
  
  

Concept: My bad ___ is badder than your sad ___  (i.e. smack talkin' ego mongers)

• My ____ is bigger than your _______ (leg, peeps, dogs, vans, shoes)
• Eat #%&* and Run

Concept: True Grit hard core (i.e. I wish I had a Harley, and yes...I love black leather)

• Dirtbag Hardcore
• The Down and Dirty _________ (motorheads, bulldogs…)
• (or irony) The Down and Dirty _________ (pink faeries, sunflowers, pansies…)
• The Mother Truckin’ Raginators

Concept: Gross is really funny

• Scum sucking bottom dwellers - just think, what would the costumes be?
• Mud Eaters

Concept: We’re cute but we’ll still mow you down

• Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy (as in “Ragnar Run, I barely noticed that...I feel like running 100 miles today by myself…”)
• Goody Gumdrops - Take that!
• Pink Pansey Pickers
• The Fabulous Frolicking Fairy Flappers (Tuu tuus required)
• The Marvelous Merry Mafia Mongers (Tuu Tuus with big guns)

Concept: Get a crazy theme  (i.e. who is going to organize costumes????)

• The Hula Girls (grass skirts, preferrably short, with coconut bras - it might chaff though!)
• The Parrot Heads (buffet flower shirts)
• The Palm Pirates ( Hawaiin garb with eye patches - which of course, conveniently double for sweat headbands.)
• The Pirate Rat Bastards (Black pirate gear, all the way - AAARRRRGH!)
• The Flapper Girls (20’s sequins, boys in dresses….)

Concept: Something with Dozen - for those 12 member teams

• Dirty Dozen
• Dozen in the Oven (What rhymes with dozen?)

Once you've named your team, you might need T-shirts printed. If you build your T-shirts through www.digitalwish.org - you can sell them at cost and the Digital Wish charity automatically gets a donation to support schools.  If you sell them at a profit, you get to pick your favorite school to receive the proceeds. 

Watch this video to get started.

Technology for Change: Heather Chirtea, Digital Wish

Singlebrook talks with Heather Chirtea, founder of non-profit, Digital Wish about her mission to help bring and integrate technology into classrooms across the country.

Singlebrook: Could you tell us a little about how you got the idea for Digital Wish and how it’s evolved into the non-profit it is today?
Heather Chirtea: I got the idea when I had just moved to a new area. My kids were enrolled in the local elementary school, and it was going through a school closure and consolidation process. Almost all the parents wanted to keep the school open, and I personally loved the idea of my kids going to a small school, so we started a fundraising project to renovate the school and fix it up instead of closing it. The kids went on a letter writing campaign to let the community know what we needed: to get the school repainted, to get a new playground, and to do all the necessary renovations. Between 62 kids writing letters and some grants I wrote, we were able to successfully renovate the school and keep it open. We had over 130 community members out of an 800 person community show up to volunteer. It was exciting to see the school go from a kind run-down, shabby place to a vibrant community center with a new playground and baseball field. The renovation was also a big lesson because so many of the community members said they knew the school was going to close and really wanted to help but just didn’t know how.

- See more at: http://singlebrook.com/blog/technology-for-change-heather-chirtea-digital-wish#sthash.4G0CvI8s.dpuf

The Social Networking Beast

I've been developing software for years. Yes, I remember Authorware! My latest software project is a social networking site at http://www.digitalwish.com/. Wow! What an eye opener. Developing social networking "software" for Web 2.0, bears no resemblance to the production processes we used when developing CD-ROM games, or even web subscription services. Anyone considering it, should be aware of a few things first!



You can't plan in the same way. When I was developing computer games, I'd write a 500 page spec to describe every feature in the program. The team could be managed easily because there was a clear and distinct roadmap. Staff trust factor=low. "Follow the spec or it's not going to work!" Development time was very noisy with everyone cross checking that audio matches graphics, matches characters, matches storyline..." Only 10% of a budget would be allocated to testing.


With social networking, we have a 1-3 page spec, that resembles a "To Do List." No one is given a roadmap. Staff trust factor=high. "Make me an address book feature and let me know when it's done!" Development time is very quiet. A programmer will work silently for weeks until the fateful day of "Hey, check this out..." That's when testing begins. And I don't mean testing, I mean testing and re-testing and re-testing again. As much as 70-80% of our effort (and budgets) will be spent on re-working features that are already built. This is where we figure out how to make those features that attract users.


Web 2.0 development is the definition of change in the purest sense. Beware of approaching Web 2.0 development with a software mindset. Your budgets will be skewed in the wrong direction, and you'll never have enough development time left to "make magic!"