This Year's Challenge

As I mentioned in my New Year's post, last year I was able to successfully quit smoking. However, it did come at a price - I gained 30 pounds. Since coming back from Japan and prior to quitting smoking I had already put on 20-30 pounds. So that's about 60 pounds in 5 or 6 years. That's pretty bad.

Now, the reality of it is that the last 30 pounds is what really made it bad. That gain in weight was a direct result of quitting something that is even more dangerous and damaging to my health - smoking. Last year, I knew I was gaining weight and eating more "snacks". I made a conscious decision to not worry about it until this year, or rather after a full year of not smoking. I completed that full year so it is time for this year's challenge.

Sharing Links on Google is Hard

Okay, so I was just generally playing around but most particularly because my wife is doing a lot of studying lately. In particular she is studying Hyland Software's modules and things since she now works there with me. But just as importantly, and due to company requirements she is studying ECM, or Enterprise Content Management.

So I was trying to figure out an easy way for us to collaborate on sharing information, notes, and links to various sites. Being a Google fanboy, at least outside of work, I tried a couple of different things. I tried to create a collection in Google docs but that only lets you create "office" like documents, not share links unless they are embedded in the document.

Then I remember Google bookmarks and went there. Then I realized that they had taken away lists, and therefore, the ability to share your bookmarks stored there with anybody else - which to be really blunt makes the whole thing completely and totally useless (particularly since Chrome has such a great bookmark feature that you can sync across machines for straight up non-shared bookmarks that you do not intend to "share")

Now I guess I could go out and create a google site for it which makes the most sense in many, many ways. My document collections could all be presented there, I'd have the ability for straight up content and I'd be able to create a links collection. Like http://www.neohawk.org/home/mylinks

But all of that seems like overkill in today's "social" world. It strikes me that there should be an easy way for me to have "pages", links, documents that are as easy to update and maintain as posting updates to my +Google+ stream. And to direct certain posts certain "circles", or limited group of people.

Or you would think that Google would have a way to share links. But it doesn't which is fairly mind-boggling. So much so that I think I'm missing something, but for the life of me I cannot figure out why it's so hard to share links a la Del.icio.us using Google.

Happy New Year from the Neohawk.org Family

I tweeted and posted very short messages at midnight. However, those were scheduled as I really didn’t want to struggle to get them through to the network as the rest of the United States did as well. I wanted to take my time for a real New Year’s greeting.

Hopefully this post will fulfill that greeting.

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2011 was a year of transition for the Neohawk.org family. Overall a good year but what’s a good year without some stress to make sure the gray hairs arrive. Here’s the rundown.

Elly finished her freshman year at American University on the Dean’s List and now an “Honor’s Student”. She spent the summer at home working at Target but took off for AU as soon as she could. And this time she pretty much took everything with her, sort of a message to us that she ain’t coming back to Cleveland “to visit”. It’s bittersweet. I cannot help but be proud and excited for her. At the same time it’s sad to think that it’s over already and that she’s her own person now and not my little Elly.

One of the best things for us her parents was the fact that Elly has had the chance to take up dancing again. She is taking a Ballet class as part of her schedule but she also participated in two other performances as well. Arisa and I went to see the AU in Motion (Facebook page) in November. The show overall was tremendous. Given there was wide array of dancers from good to bad, from classical ballet to hip hop and Bollywood. The dancers clearly had worked hard on everything and the show was fun. To be honest though Elly stood out. That’s largely because her piece is designed that way (she was the Sugar Plum Fairy) but also because she was the by far the best ballet dancer.

Happy New Year! 明けましておめでとうございます

Happy New Year! 明けましておめでとうございます