LiveSTRONG Day, May 13, 2008

Friends and Family,

TOMORROW, May 13th, 2008, is LiveSTRONG Day where you can show your support of cancer survivors everywhere by wearing YELLOW.

I'm sorry for the short notice, but would really appreciate it if you show your support to me and all of the Survivors out there! In fact, if you wear yellow tomorrow, snap a pic of yourself wearing yellow (or get someone to) and send me the pic! I'm collecting them this year! Send it by email, cell phone, Facebook, or pigeon!

Thanks!!!

Today's Student, Tomorrow's Worker

As many of you know, I work in the IT field. Last year I searched Google 5,617 times, composed over 5,000 emails, and read 3 printed books. This is interesting to me, because though I'm not yet a father, I wonder about the quality of the education my future children, and your children, will receive. Many classes today still teach the same way I learned -- I sat in a class of 20-30 students, with a printed textbook, and listened to my teacher speak or show me transparency slides. Today, the textbook is outdated the day it is printed and those static slides won't keep any child's attention. So, how are you kids being challenged and engaged to learn in the 21st century? Have you spoken to the teachers yourself and made them answer the question?

Please take 15 minutes to watch the two videos below. It's not about how they will learn in the future. I think they do an outstanding job of opening your mind to what your children face TODAY.

Watch: Did You Know? 2.0

Watch: A Vision of Students Today

Have a thought? Comment below. /jab

Weather in Tennessee

I know many of my readers are outside of Tennessee... just 2 days ago it was almost 75. They say if you don't like the weather, wait a minute...(yeah, taken with iPhone)

Lifehouse's Everything Skit

My brother recently shared this video with me and it is truly one of the most amazing skits I've seen performed. I hope you all enjoy it!

4 years, but who's counting?

Two posts in one day? Yeah, I need to thank people as I celebrate my 4th anniversary (I know I'll leave someone out, I'm sorry, I don't mean to. So, THANK YOU, too!)

THANK YOU...

• God, for opening my eyes, for the best doctors, medicine (though they can use a little more work) -- something with that Dimetapp grapey goodness would be great -- and for Your love.
• Stephanie -- for never leaving my side, for your tireless care, attention and love. I love you.
• Mom and Dad -- for always being there, for loaning me the brown leather couch in the bonus room with the brown blanket for hours of sleep, for the countless calls at all hours, for helping Stephanie. You guys are the best.
• Michael -- for your countless prayers and endless brotherly love. Sarah's getting a great one.
• My grandparents, Pa, Granny, and Babi -- for your prayers, love, and comforting words of encouragement.
• Chris -- you've been my best friend for half my life. Now that's either because you couldn't find anyone else to put up with you, or you're actually a good guy. :) Thanks for the hundreds of Pez.
  
• Doctor's Shipley, Guha, Conner, and Roberts -- for your care and your devotion to your work, which you do so incredibly well
• Oncology nurses of Tennessee Oncology -- angels on earth. Every single one of you. Thank you.
• ICU Nurses at Centennial -- for your limitless attention to patient needs, comfort, and well-being. You're amazing individuals.
• To countless friends, extended family, and complete strangers for all of your prayers and wonderful words of encouragement.

/JB

Faith

Having just celebrated four years of being cancer free I couldn't be more happy. As time has passed it has become easier for me to talk about what my family and I went through. Recently, I've shared the story I originally wrote in 2004 -- "Six Months in Heaven" -- with several friends that didn't even know me at the time. I have been asked a question by several people which they probably thought would be a tough one to answer.

The question, in a nutshell, is "How can you believe in [or love] God when faced with having cancer?"
The simple answer to this seemingly tough question lies in a single word -- Faith.

My copy of Webster's defines 'faith' as [1] allegiance to duty or a person, and [2] something that is believed with especially strong conviction. For many, seeing is believing. For me, Faith in God is believing even when you can't see.

Cancer was not punishment. It was a fierce, violent, physically damaging storm that I knew would end, but the end was never in sight. I had Faith then as I have it now, my friends, and every day since the sunsets are more and more beautiful.

Microsoft Home and CIW of the Future

Earlier this month I enjoyed another great trip to Seattle (pics) for Microsoft Sharepoint Conference 2008. The conference was really beneficial to our progress at work in leveraging Sharepoint for our intranet, collaboration, and data management to the extent possible. After the conference we were privileged to visit Redmond, Washington, at Microsoft's headquarters. There, in Building 33 -- better known as the Microsoft Executive Briefing Center -- Chris and I were invited to visit the Microsoft Home of the Future and the Center for Information Work.

Microsoft Home of the Future
I enjoyed this tour more than the CIW, personally. It starts in an Asian-style entry way where when the doorbell rings the homeowner's cell phone chirps with an image of the visitor. The owner can then choose options to ask the visitor to leave a message or even unlock the door remotely. Once inside, the house -- "Grace" -- tells where the members of the family are, the weather and a few reminders. "Grace" presents herself visually using OLED technology, hidden behind the painted wall. We saw pervasive use of RFID tags in place of today's more common UPC labels. The RFID technology allows for items -- decorations, greeting cards, anything -- to be tagged with meta-data. The house 'knows' what items are on the kitchen counter, what ingredients are missing from the recipe that's being projected onto the counter. The dining room can be redecorated on the fly for the child's party -- changing wall projections, and even projecting interactive placemats on the table that the kids can play with. There's way too much to mention here, but wildly entertaining.

Microsoft Center for Information Work
Still impressive was the CIW. In this room there were a multitude of workstations. Some had what appeared to be three 20" projection screens, some were tablets, many flat panels, and even haptic-based input panels (aka multi-touch). We saw voicemails converted to text on the fly and placed into your Inbox with emails, meetings, and more -- with the system able to filter out what you don't want or what is lower priority. Advanced videoconferencing was shown with Microsoft's Roundtable device, along with Office Communication Server to demonstrate the ability to be "seated" across from a panel of speakers even in a standard office environment setting.

"Across the Universe"

This week I had the pleasure of watching (in Blu-ray goodness) one of the past year's greatest movies -- "Across the Universe".

This movie tells a story of love, war, hope and peace told through the music of the Beatles. Nearly 20 Beatle hits, sung in a myriad of ways, provide one of the most amazing soundtracks I've heard. One scene in particular, centered around 'Let It Be' is one of the most heart-wrenching scenes, depicting the Detroit riots in the early 60's.

I encourage you to make this one of the next movies you see.

...and we're back!

Hey, friends! Sorry about the hiatus. Work and life got a bit hectic in January. Coming soon... more witty banter. :)

2007: A Year in Review

On New Year's Eve I like to take a moment to look back on the year that is soon coming to an end. This year Stephanie and I welcome new children into our extended families:

• Jacob Pawlowski - our nephew, joined the family in January
• Maya Grace Clay - a cousin born to Paige Lemons and Jordan Clay in August
• Molly Jewel Biggs - a cousin born to Duane and Beth Biggs in October

Our new[er] Acura TL, which we joyously acquired this year, was able to stretch it's legs on the road with travels to Asheville, North Carolina, to see the Biltmore Estate, multiple trips to Cincinnati to visit family and participate in the year's Heartwalk, and to Fort Walton Beach, Florida. In Florida we attended the wedding of Stephanie's brother Greg to his new wife, Laura. Her daughter Lauren also joins our ever-growing family.

This fall Stephanie began a new job with HCA as a Primary Therapist and I was appointed Director of Information Technology at Vanderbilt University Law School.

Overall, our entire family was blessed this year with good health and wellness. Steph and I celebrated a wonderful 3.5 years of my being cancer free!

I'm looking forward to a wonderful 2008, which as of now, we know will bring the marriage of my brother to his fiance, Sarah Miller, as well as more family additions as Andy & Stephanie Biggs grow their family one more time. Thank you all for being a part of our lives this year, whether we see you daily, weekly, ocassionally, or just via this blog.

Jason Bradley KIA

Jason Bradley KIA

My brother being the genius he is decided to give me a nerf LongShot (read: sniper rifle) for Christmas. The gun splits into two weapons. Epic battles were fought between Michael and I on Christmas Eve night... some were won, others were lost (shown here). Yes, I "died" while changing the clip.

Story of Stuff

Today a relative shared a video with me that I agree to be a great message about the importance of voting and taking action in our own lives. You'll need 10 minutes or so to watch, but it's well worth the time.

James Andrew Hutzel

This weekend's trip to Cincinnati for an early Thanksgiving gathering turned tragic. Stephanie's grandfather, Mr. James A. Hutzel, passed away Saturday morning due to declining health. He was 87. We obviously didn't live close to Steph's grandparents, but I did have the pleasure of meeting them and spending time with them nearly a dozen times. Grandpa Hutzel was a man with a good sense of humor, loved his family dearly, and will truly be missed.

3.5 Years

The news is in. Cancer Free for 3.5 years. Amen.

Leopard + Parallels + Vista = Awesome

This week we received our new 24" iMac at work that we will use to test various services across multiple platforms and browsers. It arrived with the Leopard DVD in the box -- which was promptly installed. Leopard is nice. CoverFlow is handy and the new dock is awesome. We installed Parallels 3.0 on the iMac (and the Leopard update for Parallels) and promptly began installing Vista Ultimate into a virtual machine. Once Vista was installed and running we turned on Coherence Mode in Parallels and WOW -- incredibly nice. Peep the screenshot below. You'll see an IE window from Vista, a Finder window from Leopard (showing CoverFlow view of fonts), and the OS X and Start menus along the top. The best of both worlds? I think so.

GOOG411 - it's free, use it

I get the frequent occasional call from a friend or family member which starts with "are you near a computer" and generally, quickly followed by "I need you to look up a number for me." It's almost always for a business/company listing. While I'm generally one to help out where I can, I also feel it can be discourteous at times.

That said, allow me to repeat share with you a very important number:

1-800-GOOG411

(1-800-466-4411)

I beg you. I implore you. Put this number in your mobile phone's speed dial. Put this number by the phones in your house. This number will find any non-residential listing that you want, using only your voice, and will not cost you a dime. You will not hear any advertisements.

Embrace Google, for it is good. See how it works.

Veramyst - clears the allergies, makes you blind, maybe

On Wednesday night I'm watching NBC and a commercial is forced upon me for Veramyst. Now, suffering from the occasional allergy, I pay attention. If you get the chance to see this commercial, watch it, you'll enjoy it. It will help with allergies (maybe). It (may) cause a fungal infection in your nose. Interestingly enough, it (may) also cause glaucoma and cataracts! And, as if that wasn't enough, about midway through the commercial is some fine print at the bottom of the screen which reads "It is not completely known how Veramyst works." Yeah.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

October is breast cancer awareness month. Find out what you can do to help at www.cancer.org today.

NBC Pilots: Journeyman, Chuck, and Bionic Woman

Thanks to the miracle that is Tivo, and to the partnership with Amazon's Unbox service, NBC is offering broadband-connected Tivo users the ability to download the commercial-free pilots for NBC's fall shows gratis.

I snagged Journeyman, Chuck, and Bionic Woman.

Let's start with "Chuck". The general idea is that Chuck receives an email from his former college roommate shortly before said roommate is killed. The email contains "all of the government's secrets subliminally embedded" into images. (Don't get me started on how the email transmitted millions of images in about a second.) Chuck is a nerd and works for the TV equivalent of Geek Squad. He's assigned a hot attractive CIA agent to protect him against those that would harm him. The show also features Sarah Lancaster ("What About Brian?") as Chuck's sister. This show is over-the-top -- the action shots, the plot, all of it. It's only hope is that the ladies in the show keep enough guys interested to prevent early cancellation.

"Bionic Woman" is interesting and dark. Yes, the story loosely follows the original. Her name is Jamie Sommers. As many of you will recall -- you take one attractive, young, and seriously injured woman and implant fifty million dollars of nano-hardware and you get one Bionic Woman. She sees incredibly far away, can hear anything she wants, has super strength and a lot of people want to kill her (because she wasn't their first choice of a candidate for the uber-secret program). I expect this show will last at least one season. It's well shot, has good special effects and kept my attention.

Finally, "Journeyman" is a modern day "Quantum Leap" sans Al and with a lot more leaping. Dan randomly is put into the past, some of which is quite familiar to him. He comes back to present day randomly but each time he's in the past he learns a little more of what he's there for. His present day family thinks he is crazy, but can he prove otherwise? The pilot was very well made... I loved it and hope to see this show excel.

So, if you have Tivo and don't want to wait -- start clicking!

Remembering Babi

She was my grandmother. She was one of my best friends. She was a wonderful Christian woman who respected everyone and earned the respect of all who met her. She was "Babi".

As her two grandchildren, she taught Michael and I a great many things. She showed everyone how to be a better person and we would all do well to remember, refine and exemplify those lessons in our own lives.

It was two years ago today that Babi passed away. She has been missed by all. This world is a lesser place without her in it. She is with God and the angels, and even Heaven itself is enriched by her being there.

We miss you, Babi.