Wynkoop Friday night tweetup

Awesome people!

9-11 remembrance from Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke

From my inbox today. Never forget!

 To:         All DOC Employees
From:       Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke
Subject:    Commemorating September 11

  
Fellow Commerce Employees:

 Eight years ago this morning, America endured one of its darkest
hours. The deadly terrorist attacks that saw planes crash into the
World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the fields of Pennsylvania
changed our country forever.  On that day, the Commerce Department
lost two of its own, and many of us grieved for the loss of friends,
family and colleagues.

 But in the ashes of that terrible day, we also witnessed the triumph
of the American spirit.  We saw firefighters and police officers
rushing into burning buildings with complete disregard for their own
safety, citizens turning out in droves to give blood and thousands of
volunteer rescuers who came from miles away to sift through the
burning rubble in the search for survivors. And on United Flight 93,
we saw a group of brave Americans band together to mount a heroic
assault against the plane’s hijackers.  The heroic actions we saw on
that day were a collective statement to the world, a statement about
the greatness of this country and its people.

 This morning, I ask you to join me in a moment of silence at 9:37 a.m.
to honor the friends, colleagues and loved ones we lost.

 I would also ask that you remember their sacrifice with action.  To
commemorate the selfless public service we witnessed from everyday
Americans on 9/11 and from our men and women in uniform in the years
since, I hope that we will all redouble our efforts to volunteer and
to serve our communities and our nation in any way we can.

 Thank you and God bless America.

Posted via email from CaffeinaTed

I hope your kids got to watch this important message…

My friends Terry Cabeen and James Baber had a lot to say about health care reform today (and they did so quite well I might add), Please check out Terry’s rant and also James’ two part take on the issue. Since @tcabeen and @quasijames handled the HCR front so well, I would like to back up two days to the president’s address to our nation’s children. What’s that you say? Your children didn’t get to see it during school because the administration cowered under pressure? Or worse yet, you yourself kept your children home? Whatever or whomever it was that denied your kids from receiving this important message of encouragement deserves a big giant #FAIL tag! At the very onset of announcing that this address was going to be made, the target audience was stated to be K-12th graders. That implied that the speech was to have a G-rating. There is not one president in our nation’s history whom I would not have completely trusted to deliver such an address, democrat or republican! Now what really got me going is this news release I recieved from our school district which basically labels the presidential address as “The Teaching of Controversial Issues,” and linked to a pdf version of that policy. CONTOROVERSIAL!?! Have you gone fucking MAD!?! Since when is wanting our kids to be the best they can be by studying hard and listening to their parents and teachers controversial??? The entire news release basically passed the buck to principals to decide what to do. The principal at my son’s high school passed the decision on to the teachers whether their students would take the 18 minutes to watch the speech. The result there was that my 17 year old son was not given the option to watch. The administration at my 13 year old’s middle school decided they would preview the live telecast, and “if found non-objectionable,” show it to the classes during the last period of the day. So my youngest did get to see it, but he said that many kids left early or were even picked up by their parents. I honestly could not believe all the energy that went into NOT giving our kids the opportunity to see the President of the United States offer his words of encouragement directly to each and every one of them! It should have been real easy, all they should have said was, “It will be shown to all classes, please send a note if you would like to request an alternative activity for your child.” But instead, my school district took the puss way out so they would not have to deal with wacko parents that somehow felt their rights were being trampled on! All this anger is not because I feel my children were cheated. I can only say that because my three kids already get more encouragement than they can handle from their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even cousins. But I can’t help but think of all the other little fledglings in the US who do not get that message from anyone at all. To see the faces of some of the students interviewed after the speech was like looking at a light bulb that was just switched on. Kids that perhaps for the first time thought to themselves, “I can be someone that makes a difference in this world.” Let me restate that there is no controversy here! I would hope this is what we ALL want for our children. What I saw in this address is what I want and expect from my country’s leaders. I want forward thinking presidents and congressmen that look down the road to see what can be done to make the journey a little easier for all of us. If you and your family have not seen President Obama’s address to our children, I encourage you to do so.

Posted via web from CaffeinaTed

HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Posterous

via mashable.com

Posterous really is KING! What are you waiting for?

Posted via web from CaffeinaTed

Game Time! GO BUFFS!

Download now or watch on posterous

0906091706.3g2 (175 KB)

Posted via email from CaffeinaTed

#IgniteBoulder makes me think of these scenes…

via youtube.com

One of the best movies ever! Good luck to all of the speakers tonight, they are gonna need a new roof on the Boulder Theater!

Posted via web from CaffeinaTED

My own Corona Beer Commercial

This is a shot that I took from one of my favorite locations. This is my very own Corona sitting on the rail of at Snoopy's Pier right on the edge of Corpus Christi Bay, Texas, a place where all your troubles get put on hold! For a city boy like me, it was crazy to see guys pull their fishing boats up to the pier, flawlessly tie off, and jump out for some fish and chips and a beer before returning home with their own bounty. What a great life!

Posted via email from Totally Tekee

Gone But Not Forgotten…

My father has been tearing up the heavens for almost 16 years now. I was a young man of 26 when he passed away that rainy July morning. As I look back during this Father’s Day weekend, I remember lots of good times and lots of bad times, both of which I continue to try and learn from in raising my own three children. Dad and I had many disagreements, as do I with my kids. By the same token though, Dad shared an abundance of good times and “stupid humor,” as I do with my daughter and two sons. But there are two things that stand out the most for me. Two things that lifted me and carried me past the fact that I was too young to lose my father. One was his eternally optimistic views on life. He was always able to cheer anyone up and help them see the brighter side of things, if not in spoken words, you could find it in his poetry and campfire songs. In fact, within hours of his passing, the rain stopped and the most fantastic triple rainbow appeared. I know that it was sent from him and it was the sign I needed to know that everything would be alright, the glass would always remain half full. The other thing that I learned from my Dad was giving 100% devotion to the woman you choose to be your wife. Dad loved my mother with all of his heart since the day they met until, I am sure, this day in his afterlife. They had many friends come and go and lots of ups and downs, but Dad was always in my mom’s corner, faithfully. If nothing else, these are the same two gifts I intend to leave behind for my children and grandchildren (someday) because I think these two simple morals have served me pretty well. Happy Father’s Day…

My workbench…

Testing mobile picture upload to Posterous. This is one of my workspaces in the lab.
 

Posted via email from Totally Tekee

@Tekee – "I'm out there Jerry, and I'm LOVIN' every minute of it!"

I take a lot of shit around my house for “Twittering.” It’s OK with me, because at this house we all have our own things that make us happy and we respect each other for that. I must admit though that from the perspective of my non-tweeting family it is has to seem quite strange. 140 characters at a time… connecting with people I have not met? How can that happen? How can that mean anything? I don’t know but it did and it does. For those that have seen my previous blog posts, you know that I have always been somewhat of a 140 character kind of guy, so I’ve really taken a liking to Twitter and surprisingly vice versa! To tell the truth, this will be the longest blog posting I’ve ever done so please don’t be too critical.

What has driven me to do this particular post is the change it seems to have brought out in me. The unexpected result of “@Tekee” is that I have become more thoughtful in my daily, in-person interactions with people. I notice a more connective, firmer handshake with eye contact that really says “I’m glad to meet you!” I have become a better listener as well, even finding myself wanting to learn Spanish so I can have more meaningful conversations with my custodian at work. The game typically is that I’ll ask him how to say a particular phrase in Spanish and then we laugh together as I try to spit it out. That’s the point here I guess, don’t be afraid to reach out and connect with people, there are a lot of good ones out there who have great things to offer.

So to all my twitter friends I say thank you for making twitter a fun place to be, you are ALL characters, but at the same time you are far more than 140 characters!