More Birthday Trip to Aspen

Birthday Trip to Aspen - 1
Originally uploaded by LacyLu42.

Look at my handsome husband! A couple more photos added to the birthday set — I took actual film photos and had to get them developed!

Into in the Woods

Lacy in the Woods.JPG
Originally uploaded by LacyLu42.

This is maybe my new favorite picture of me. ;)

Brandon at the Cantina in Aspen

Brandon at the Cantina.JPG
Originally uploaded by LacyLu42.

Yesterday, we took off and drove up to Aspen to see some fall color and celebrate Brandon's birthday. click here to see all the photos!

Me sorting books

Me sorting books
Originally uploaded by LacyLu42.

I promised more photos of the blue hair, and now there are a few on my flickr page! This one and several others are from my volunteer day this Wednesday. My company gives us a day off to go volunteer for the cause of our choice. My group chose education, so we went and sorted donated books in the morning, then changed clothes and headed to a local high school to talk about our careers in the afternoon.

Volunteering

Yesterday, some coworkers and I volunteered to talk to some high school kids at West High in Denver about our careers and how we got here.



More photos to follow!

Corporate Safari

If anybody's even remotely interested in what I do at my job, I just found out that there's this funny video we made a couple of years ago, starring my friend Johnny D. :D

Hurricane Ike

Time to activate the circle of good vibrations, people.

My sister and brother in law, as well as my aunt and uncle and cousins all live in Houston and are currently figuring out what to do and where to go for Ike. Current predictions are saying there will be a 14-foot storm surge or more with winds in excess of 120 mph. The fear is that the storm could come right up the Houston ship canal and flood the city.

My parents, in Dallas, are reporting that the news is saying THEY could get as much as a foot of rain and 65mph winds.

I believe in the power of positive thinking, so if it crosses your mind in the next few days, please think positive thoughts for my family and all the residents of the Texas Gulf Coast.

Gwen, Lacy, and Brandon

Gwen, Lacy, and Brandon
Originally uploaded by jaredwbrown.

Just a fun photo of us and friend/coworker Gwen at friend/coworker Hannah's wedding.

Ambient Awareness and Social Networking

This article in the New York Times Magazine is a fascinating look at a particular kind of social networking that provides realtime updates about the minutiae of our lives. Services like Facebook and Twitter provide an opportunity for users to update friends on their "status" at any time of day with brief one or two-line descriptions of what they're doing.

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

The article also dives into the question of whether following or "friending" people on these sorts of sites truly constitutes a social relationship. Can I be friends with someone I've never physically met?

As I interviewed some of the most aggressively social people online — people who follow hundreds or even thousands of others — it became clear that the picture was a little more complex than this question would suggest. Many maintained that their circle of true intimates, their very close friends and family, had not become bigger. […]

But where their sociality had truly exploded was in their “weak ties” — loose acquaintances, people they knew less well. It might be someone they met at a conference, or someone from high school who recently “friended” them on Facebook, or somebody from last year’s holiday party. In their pre-Internet lives, these sorts of acquaintances would have quickly faded from their attention. But when one of these far-flung people suddenly posts a personal note to your feed, it is essentially a reminder that they exist.

And, according to the author, this social network of "weak ties" is incredibly powerful. I have a friend online — who, incidentally, I have only met once in person — who calls this, "the wisdom of the internets." She has a blog with a large (3,000+) following of avid readers. If she has a problem or a question, her cadre of readers is usually the first place she turns for advice.

This may seem like a strange new world to some, but for others, it's just how life is. Think about a generation younger than us who have never lived in a world without Facebook! The article makes some interesting conclusions about that, from a socialogical prospective as well.

The status update is becoming a literary genre, an answer to the dictum to "know thyself." It can even be a sort of zen reflection on life.

"Indeed, the question that floats eternally at the top of Twitter’s Web site — “What are you doing?” — can come to seem existentially freighted. What are you doing?"

Purple Cow

I never saw a Purple Cow; I never hope to See One; But I can Tell you, Anyhow, I'd rather See than Be One.

Well, Mr. Burgess, I have seen one. In my office. In the lobby. In fact, it scared the dickens out of me the first time I walked in and saw it. Apparently, our new tennants brought it. I have a feeling its one of those that they put on street corners and then auction off for charity.

But still. There's little more random that walking into work and staring down a purple cow.