Share the Gift of Life

In Oklahoma we have an organization named LifeShare - Transplant Donor Services of Oklahoma (each state has their own organization).  Each year LifeShare produces a newspaper insert for distribution in all newspapers in the state of Oklahoma.  A few years back David Weckler (see previous posts 1 and 2) was the front page story for the insert (link to article).  I just received a copy of this year's insert and saw the picture of another friend's son, Tommy Edwards.

Both of these young men (David age 8 and Tommy age 15) left their families much earlier than anyone should, but both had lived a full life in their few years.  Each shared laughter and happiness with just about every person they bumped into during their comings and goings.  Not only did they encourage people during their life, they also encouraged several more after their deaths.

The families of David and Tommy recognized the fact that their sons would have wanted to share as much life as they possibly could, and as such, made the life giving decision during a very painful and traumatic period of their life.  They allowed for others to live as a result of the death of a loved one.

 

I have been registered as an organ donor for as long as I can remember.  I have heard plenty of people attempt to make arguments against being a donor, with the most used line being:

If I'm a listed as a donor, emergency room staff won't work as hard to save me in case of a major accident

All I have to say to that is: HOGWASH!  If you are sick or injured and admitted to a hospital, the number one priority will always be to save your life.  Organ donation can only be considered after brain death has been declared by a physician.

 

Some facts about Donation:

• More than 94,000 people are on the nationwide organ donation transplant waiting list and tens of thousands more are in need of corneas and other tissue.
• Last year, 6,582 of those on the national list died.
• In 2005, 32% of those on the waiting list received a transplant, equaling 28,108 organ transplants.
• Nationwide, 44,329 cornea transplants were performed (283 in Oklahoma)
• Every 11 minutes another name is added to the waiting list.
• Every 90 minutes someone on the waiting list dies.

DonateLife.net is nationwide 'clearinghouse' of information for organ donation.  On their homepage is a map of the United States with links to each states primary organ donation registration center.  If you haven't registered as a donor yet, please take a few minutes to seriously consider the option.  I have a feeling if you had a family member on the waiting list, you would want as many people as possible signed up as a donor.

DonateLife.net has several advertising pieces on their site to promote registration.  This one jumped out the most to me, so I thought I would share it here:

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A day early

I am posting this a day early because I don't plan on firing up the laptop on Thanksgiving day.

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The best shirt I have seen this season

With Christmas quickly approaching, our mailbox has been inundated with various catalogs.  Over the years we might have purchased half a dozen items from a few of the catalog vendors, but there is no way we have purchased enough (in my mind) to merit the volume of catalogs we receive.

 

We recently received the Signals catalog.  This has always been a family favorite for "window shopping" as it normally contains several cool things, including clever shirts.  Some examples include:
   "Always Late But Worth the Wait"
   "50 is the new 30"
   "Veni, Vidi, Volo In Domum Redire" (Translated: I Came, I Saw, I Want To Go Home)

   "Am I getting older or is the supermarket playing great music?"

   "Mom, Dad, I'm Gaelic"

   "Embarrassing my children: Just one more service I offer"

 

But the best shirt (hoodie) I found had to be:

 

NOTE:

In case you don't recognize the seals below the text, they represent America's Armed Forces:
   Marine Corps
   Army
   Navy
   Air Force
   Coast Guard

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Test post (with pic)

Well, I saw an opportunity to 'upgrade' my blog to the blogger beta, which would be linked to my GMail account.  After the upgrade, I found that neither of the programs that I normally use to post my blog entries no longer worked ....AAARRRRGGGHHHH!

 

After spending plenty of time with Google, I ran across "Windows Live Writer" and installed it.  After initializing it, I think I might just like this one better than what I had been using.  This ties directly to my blog template, so I am able to see exactly how the formatting and spacing looks, prior to posting.
      

Inserting pictures appears to be much better.  The image is displayed immediately, borders (drop shadow and photopaper) are an option and image effects can be done on the fly.

 

 

 

The last item to check for my template design is the blockquote tag

My template is supposed to indent and italicize the text.  Also, at the top left of the quoted text is to be a light gray double-quote image. 

So far ... so good

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Not a political blog, but...

As my faithful readers are aware, I normally don’t make political ‘statements’ in my blog.  However, the below cartoon was sent to me about a month ago and I stored it away in my “blog fodder” file.  Most of the items in this file are of a humorous or personal nature, but some are very serious.  For whatever reason, I have decided to finally post this entry.

First, a little history.  When I was growing up, my father was a military physician and in the early 1970’s we were stationed in Germany.  This was a wonderful opportunity as we were able to travel and see places many people only dream of seeing (or end up using the internet for virtual-visits).  One of the most vivid memories I have is one of visiting a concentration camp memorial site.  While the visuals there have always stayed with me, over the years my memory was that the camp we visited was Auschwitz, probably because it is one of the most famous camps.  While doing research for this entry (sometimes I do more than just copy/paste), I found that Auschwitz is in Poland and I don’t remember us ever visiting there.  However, when scanning through the list of Holocaust Museums, when I saw the word Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site it all came back to me.

While the Virtual Tour offered on the site will never equal an in-person visit, at least the technology we have today will allow more people than would have been able.

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Garfield Randomizer

...so this guy noticed that Garfield comics make just as much sense if you throw random panels together, and sometimes are actually pretty funny. He got a cease and desist letter. So he made the code available for people who wanted to try it for themselves. Here we go!

This is what I got the third time I hit the Go button (which cycles the images):

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Euro-English right around the corner

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. 

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English". 

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. 

The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. 

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. 

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. 

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. 

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. 

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". 

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. 

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. 

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze first plas. 
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Note to applicant

When completing a job application, some questions are asked in pairs, so that if one is answered with a negative response, the follow-up question doesn't require an answer.

Example: If you answer the question "Have you ever been arrested?" with 'no', don't answer the follow-up question of "Why?" with 'I was never caught'.

Just something to think about.…

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It's Gametime! Part Deux

I shared several weeks back about the emails I send out to all the students prior to home football games for the athletic department (see post).  Without getting into all the details of the message being sent out today, I do have a funny piece to tell about it.

Setup:
The game is against the Baylor Bears and this is the primary image in this week’s email:


After a message is sent out, I normally send a follow-up message to the approver to let them know the distribution process has been completed.  This week, besides just a simple “DONE”, I included: “I feel sorry for the guy who was originally in the picture, but is now missing.  All of his friends got their picture shared with the entire campus, and he got turned into a ghost!   ;-)”

The reply back from the approver made me chuckle, because their four word reply was simply:  It was Boone Pickens!

For those of you who don’t know the recent history of OSU and T. Boone Pickens, enjoy a few quality moments with Google (search words already coded into the link).

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T3 Series Personal Mobility Vehicles

My brother sent me an IM chat this morning with a link to http://www.t3motion.com/, which is a new product being marketed to police and security departments. The information on their website indicates they are not being advertised as a replacement for motorcycles or bikes, but as an additional tool for getting officers on the scene quickly and without being out of breath. Additional pieces indicate they aren’t in competition with Segway, even though Segway just had a massive recall. From what I remember about the time I was in the Chicago Airport, I would say the simple fact the T3 is a trike instead of a balanced two-wheeler gives it a huge selling feature. When the Chicago officers bailed off their Segways, the units fell over on their handlebars, which can’t be good for them over time.

Back to the T3… During lunch I looked around their website and found where they mention “Unlimited Range” due to swap-able power modules (fancy name of batteries). After I thought about that feature for a little bit, I decided to contact the company and ask if they were considering the possibility of a trunk-mounted charger base to be housed in patrol cars. This way, if an officer on a T3 needs to swap out batteries, there would already be some in the field (no need to send on officer all the way back to the station to retrieve them).

After sitting through their call controller, I finally was speaking with a young lady in marketing. I provided the idea to her and she asked me to hold while she found someone better suited to speak with me. A few seconds later she came back on and said, “Please hold for a second while I transfer you to Neil, the president of the company” then transfered me quite quickly. When Neil answered, I inquired if I heard correctly that I was being transfered to the president, to which he laughed and replied “Yes”.

Long story short: Neil advised that no one had come up with the idea of battery charges being in patrol cars so they would be closer to the T3 officers. He mentioned it made perfect sense and he was glad I called with the idea. He also asked for my contact info (I have no idea why). Here is an image of the new T3 series:


For those of you who visit the site and look at the Product Literature link:
I shared with Neil the absurdity of the shotgun positioning on page 2. He agreed, but added that a few departments have inquired about shotgun mounts. I’m sure they would most likely be totally enclosed cases, like for ATV riders (like these).

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Revolutionary war ... in an alternate reality

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Honorary "Ludite"

This weekend I have been seriously thinking about becoming a card-carrying "Luddite". Here is what has happened this week:
1. Wednesday: I finally got around to processing a service call on my laptop computer. The only problem was it needed 'jumper-cables' to get started. Even with a fully charged battery, it wanted the power cord plugged in before it would boot-up. After trying a new battery and running diagnostics on the device, Dell sent a new motherboard to arrive on Thursday (in the possession on an on-site technician).
2. Thursday: The tech arrived and changed the motherboard. When I was checking everything out afterward, we discovered many new problems when it was on it's port replicator (docking station). Another call to Dell .. new motherboard and port replicator enroute.
3. Friday: Return of the Dell tech, with new parts in hand. After short visit, all appears to be working fine!
4. Saturday: Just before leaving town, my Pocket PC device locked up, which normally requires a simple restart to fix. For some reason, this reset resulted in the SD card getting completely wiped clean. I only store about 50% of my applications on the card, including the PPC backups. As such, I am limping along the rest of the weekend with limited data (oh, well ... I have a backup on my office machine)
5. Saturday evening & Sunday afternoon: Laptop computer stability has dropped to zilch! It was either experiencing BSDs, lock-ups or rebooting on it's own. WinDiag and Dell Diagnostics (which revealed no problems on Wednesday) revealed memory problems. Another call to Dell and motherboard number three, with memory as well, will be shipped and I should expect them on Tuesday.
 
Three motherboards in four business days!?! If this doesn't resolve it, Dell is offering a complete system exchange (Dell's 'Lemon Law' policy). Thank goodness for Dell CompleteCare policy!
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Think it got quiet in this news room studio?

I wonder what everyone in the the studio thought when the police sketch was pasted right next to this newscaster?  Now, I am not implying that this guy is guilty, but I bet he caught some grief after the news show was over.


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The "Evolution of Dance" guy is coming to town

I have posted his video on my blog before and even have it on my personal website (view the video here).  The OSU Career Services department has scheduled Judson Laipply to appear at both the OSU-Tulsa and OSU-Stillwater campuses on Monday November 13th:

Event: Judson Laipply – The Evolution of Dance Guy
Time: 3:00 – 4:00 pm
Location: OSUTulsa Auditorium - Tulsa Campus
Description: "Choices, opportunities in life..."

Event: Judson Laipply – The Evolution of Dance Guy
Time: 7:30-8:30 pm
Location: Wes Watkins Center – Stillwater Campus
Description: "Choices, opportunities in life…"

I just got off the phone with the Career Services office to confirm this is an “open to the public” opportunity …. and it is.  So, if you are close to either of these locations, you might think about attending.
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