February In Review

• Went to Ignite Seattle with K&J. Interesting approach, where each speaker has 20 slides that they can show for 15 seconds each, resulting in a 5-minute presentation. It was crowded but turned out okay.
• Started alpha-testing J's new book site, Bookton.
• Regarding the couple items I had left to do from my last post, I did replace the few regular light bulbs in my house that remain on for any real length of time with CFLs, but I did not get a low-flow shower head. So, I went 1-1 there. I don't like to lose, so I will go look for one tomorrow.
• I was thinking it would be nice to volunteer once a month this year, but I didn't volunteer last month. I was avoiding volunteering for Seattle Park and Rec again because it seems like the easy way out to just default to a place that I can go to at the last minute with no advanced planning. Then again, the couple times I started to look, I couldn't find anything I wanted to do. I'm going to modify my goal. I'd like to average one volunteer event per month this year. So, now I'm behind and need to catch up.
• I have stopped reading RSS feeds on a daily basis. There are certain activities that I engage in every once and a while that have a really low value-to-time-consumed ratio, and reading feeds regularly is one of them. I try to avoid these things when I become aware of them, so, at least for now, regular feed reading is out. I still check certain (usually low-volume) feeds on occasion, though.
• Finished a book:
  
  Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
  by John Taylor Gatto
  
  I enjoyed it. It's a collection of essays, and I especially liked an essay called, "We Need Less School, Not More," wherein the author talks about, among other things, the difference between networks and communities. It really resonated with me. I've tended to avoid networks because they've usually not felt "good," and I think the author does a great job of identifying just why that might be.

January Volunteering

As I expected, my party crashing yesterday was acceptible. Not only that, but more of it was encouraged! I volunteered for Seattle Park and Recreation doing restoration work at Colman Park. Here's the back story, as it was told to me:

1. A judge buys a house on a hill overlooking Colman Park.
2. Judge starts draining his sewage down the hill into the park.
3. City figures this out and tells him to fix it.
4. Judge realizes he would have a great view of Lake Washington if only those darned park trees weren't in the way.
5. Judge tells his gardener to cut down the trees.
6. Gardener starts chopping trees down.
7. City comes back to make sure the judge isn't still draining his sewage into the park and sees the gardener out there doing his thing.
8. City sues judge.
9. Judge agrees to pay $500,000 to restore the park.
10. Judge tries to get his homeowners insurance to cover the cost, going as far as suing the insurance company after they rejected his claim. (Not sure how that all played out. Hopefully he didn't win.)

The audacity!

Anyway, it felt good to get out there and help. I plan on doing a lot more volunteering this year.