Concerned Citizens

This weekend I took my annual trip to Houston for MLB and other things. The Astros were playing the St. Louis Cardinals and ended up splitting the two games I attended. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to enjoy it with my friend I always do the trip with. Work issues kept him in San Antonio so I made the trip by myself. With a hotel pre-purchased through Priceline and a presentation to the Texas Festivals and Events Convention I had to go. Read more…

While I was checking my RSS feed today I saw this obituary about a true friend who passed away Christmas Eve from a tramatic fall. Joe Patrick Bean was an editorial writer for the San Antonio Express-News when I first met him. I can’t really recall the year I knew him but in the time I had around him I soaked up so much knowledge and insight on politics and life. In your life only a few people really make the impact to shape your life and Joe Patrick was one of those for me along with Rob Blanchard. It’s hard to put into words the grief I feel knowing a person like Joe Patrick is no longer among us but I can truly say he made a mark. I only wish I had spent time with him at this point in my life.

Joe Patrick Bean, may you rest in peace no.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted to the blog and a lot of that has to do with a slump in composition. I can honestly say it’s not because of a slump in thoughts. There’s so much swirling around in my mind regarding the governor’s race, the state of the Bexar County Democratic Party, health care reform, and many other topics. The challenge is pulling those together in a blog with so much going on in life. Today I looked at my blog and realized the last item was about State Rep. Mike Villarreal’s thoughts about running for statewide office. Mike’s a good friend so I decided to the delete the item, especially since he decided to run for re-election and remain my state representative. Today I found another blog in the city and it’s given me inspiration. You really should check out TheFBM, a local blog that has a similar slant to mine. I’m looking forward to many good reads from it and it’s contributors. To answer the question about the title, I plan to get back into the blogging mode as I spend time at home with my family. Look for more to come in the coming days.

I know I’ve neglected this blog for a while but moving can be a little bit of a strain sometimes. It’s not that I’ve shelved the project. It’s just that I needed to get to a point where I actually “live” downtown and get some things situated here. I’m almost there but there is always something you miss. However, I’ve started settling in as a downtown resident. Going to bed with this view of the city is great. Having Mi Tierra right across the street for breakfast tacos is great. Meeting the residents of the building who have also made the plunge downtown has been great. There is just so much to explore now that I’m a resident of the area. I hope to have a longer blog post coming tonight or this weekend about the experience. Until then, I’m learning the commute (5 minutes late can mean 10-15 minutes difference getting through the traffic jam around USAA), I’m discovering grocery shopping, and I’m figuring out I’m not a designer and have to lean on my creative friends for help.

I’m sorry for not posting a new entry lately. I’m moving downtown this weekend to The Vistana to start my downtown living experience. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do and this arrangement seems to work the best for me at this point. I can try it out for a year and if it doesn’t suit me, I can move back to a different place next year. However, I really feel this is going to be a great experience. Because of all the changes I’ve been too busy to post. It’s not because I don’t have anything to write about. There’s plenty out there in the world. Hopefully, on Sunday morning I’ll have a great posting about what it feels like to wake up downtown. More to come in.

Due to a bug in the iNove theme that was causing Internet Explorer to hang I had to change themes. I could have probably debugged it but the effort was getting to be more than it was worth. I’m trying a new theme out to see how it works. It’s similar to iNove but has a few options I like. Sorry for the changes but I wanted to make sure the blog was compatible with all browsers.

Tomorrow Americans will celebrate Memorial Day in many ways. Over the years it has become a time to kick off the summer, start the vacations, and dig out the barbecue grills. It’s become the start of the summer travel season and many trips are based around this 3 day weekend. But its origins and traditions are vastly different than our current practices. Originally known as Decoration Day it was created in 1868 under General Order No. 11 by Major General John A. Logan, commanding general of the Grand Army of the Republic. In 1971 Congress declared it a national holiday to be celebrated the last Monday of May. Read more…

After fighting a 3 month battle with the spambots I finally stopped my blog from being continually blitzed with spam about everything from Viagra to some sexual acts I’d like to forget. The CAPTCHA plugin was the final ingredient in the secret sauce that plugged all the holes. Up until I implemented it I was having to clean out up to 30 items daily from the spam bucket in comments. The Akismet plugin helped prevent them from entering the comment stream automatically but I still had to clean them out myself. That was becoming a daily chore that wasn’t too terribly hard but was annoying to say the least. Now, with the CAPTCHA plugin, I no longer have that chore to deal with.

While browsing one of my favorite blogs around the city, ComeTUgether, I found the video clip to this year’s Trinity University Library Flash Rave. Checking YouTube I found this has become a phenomena among university’s across the nation with Flash Raves happening at UNC-Chapel Hill, UK, … It’s a way for students to blow off some steam before a hard week of finals. My opinion? Where were these things when I was going to college? I love it. So here’s the YouTube clip to TU’s incarnation of the Library Flash Rave and a sampling of others after the break. BTW, in case you haven’t checked out ComeTUgether, it’s a great collaboration blog by some students at Trinity University. Enjoy.

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I just got back from Kansas City after watching the 1st/2nd Rounds of the NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament. While we didn’t have the wild ride games of Miami or other sites it was great to watch college basketball at the point where Cinderellas are made or giants fall. Memphis was one of those that almost fell during the first game of the tournament. They pulled it out against Cal State-Northridge and went on to handily beat Maryland in the 2nd round. I tried to post a few items in the blog during the trip and there’s a piece on KC’s strategic vision in an earlier post. For now I’m going to take a couple days break to regroup and recover. I’ve been traveling too much over the past three weeks and need to get a few things done around the house first. But I’ll be back in a few days.

After years with my original hosting platform, the one I registered my first domain with, I had to finally part ways due to a lack of support for the WordPress environment. The platform was originally selected for the Windows server and ASP development environment. That is no longer relevant when looking at Web 2.0 tools such as WordPress. While the platform supported the environment it had several problems and lacked in performance. I have since acquired an account with Host Monster and have been very pleased since. There are still a few things I need to close gap on but the blog should function properly. Look forward to new features and functions in the future as I expanded within this new hosting platform.

March is turning out to be a busy month for me, including trips on the weekends. Postings may be a little slower than normal due to this hectic schedule. But the experiences over the next month will be great and I’m up for the schedule. Hopefully I’ll be able to provide insight while traveling, from technology to politics to sports. Add to that the political schedule of San Antonio and you have one crazy month. Read more…