Wow the last few days have been quite a whirl wind! On Sunday I was lucky enough to get to a Bela Fleck and the Fleck­tones show. And it was sooo good. I was also lucky enough to spend time after the show talk­ing with Victor and Roy (Future­Man) about their dif­fer­ent projects and inter­ests. More to come on this…

On Monday I accepted a new job at the Big Yellow Box. I’ll be han­dling the project man­age­ment on our new online com­mu­nity efforts. I also have decided to move! It’s not a big one, I’m just moving to the upstairs apart­ment, but I’m really look­ing for­ward to it!

I’ve found that I like it when my life is in flux!

Went to a They Might be Giants con­cert last night at the “U of R” last night… and they rocked the house as usual. TMBG always holds a spe­cial place in my heart. I’ve meet great friends at con­certs; Flood was the first alter­na­tive album I bought; and New York City off of Fac­tory Show Room is one of my favorite songs of all time. Plus it was the first live show I’d been to in a while. The set list included:

• James K. Polk
• You’re not the boss of me now (the theme from Mal­colm in the Middle)
• Edith Head
• Spider
• Fingertips
• The Guitar
• Why does the sun shine
• Robot Parade
• She’s actual size
• Bird­house in my Soul
• Dr Worm
• Anna Ng
• Par­ti­cal Man
• Istambul
• and of course New York City

All and all absolutely bril­liant. There were a few others that I missed. My friends Aaron and Maria were up for the happy good­ness. A lot of bounc­ing up and down was had by all.

Actu­ally this is the week­end of con­certs. Tomor­row I head for Geneva, NY to take in Bela Fleck and the Fleck­tones. I’ve had the chance to meet a few of the mem­bers of the band, Victor and Future­Man. Not only are they great musi­cians, but they’re great people as well. In fact we just had Vic on Kodak.com for a chat about his bass and Nature Camp. Pho­tog­ra­pher Greg Kessler did an amaz­ing photo essay of the camp. They were both on-​line to share photos and tell sto­ries from the camp and the road. This was the first of these events that I pro­duced end to end. Which was a learn­ing expe­ri­ence and a half.

One of the things I want to do with this site is use it both as a test­ing and sound­ing ground for some of the com­mu­nal idea’s that I’ve been work­ing on. Hope­fully there will be more to say about that in the days and weeks to come…

While it doesn’t take Florida into account I can’t wait for the speeches to see how close they were.

I can’t say how enthused I am about the elec­tion and the “collective kick in the butt” it’s giving us as a nation. Of course if they don’t resolve things soon the media blitz will prob­a­bly shoot us as a coun­try right past action and into the wait­ing hands of apathy.

Also I’m dis­ap­pointed in all of this cov­er­age that no one has made a ha-​do that Mel Car­na­han won the senate seat in Mis­souri. Only in Amer­ica can the dead vote and hold office. *Cringe* Sorry for the taste­less of that com­ment. If some­one dies in office there is a run off to figure out who will take his or her seat (see Sony Bono). How­ever if some­one dies and wins an elec­tion the gov­er­nor of the state, not the people choose the person to sit in their place. Isn’t that remotely disturbing?

Oh yeah what hasn’t been dis­turb­ing so far? Isn’t it great? ;-)

… at least accord­ing to CNN and I have to marvel at this elec­tion. It’s a bit­ter­sweet mix. I had really hoped that the Green Party might have raised enough votes to bring another poten­tial 3rd party into the mix. Unfor­tu­nately that wasn’t to be. I’m rather depressed at the late vote switch­ing that was going on. There’s a great Chi­nese phrase “Eat Bitter”; it’s the con­cept that one must be able to endure pain to accom­plish a task. If people are truly com­mit­ted to the idea of a multi party system, they need to be pre­pared to endure pain for it to come to pass.

This entire Florida sit­u­a­tion is amaz­ing. To think that after being told by main­stream media that people were at an apa­thetic peak, we would be shown such a lesson in the power of the voter. I’d like to think that this could help rekin­dle a spark of hope. If not in the polit­i­cal system at least in the role of the indi­vid­ual in the selec­tion of gov­ern­ment offices.

As for the polit­i­cal system, I can’t ring myself to believe that the close­ness of this race is because the coun­try has become so inter­nally divided. Per­son­ally I chalk it up to the sad lack of choices in can­di­date. Which to start a cir­cu­lar argu­ment goes back to the two party system that has a grip on this coun­try. See above :-P

Expe­ri­enc­ing my first online elec­tion is fas­ci­nat­ing! As I’ve been work­ing on get­ting this page up I’ve been tuning into CNN.com. What a brave new world that has such things in it…

I’m elect­ing to start a lot of stuff tonight. A new home­page, a new job, and my first ”blog” hope­fully of many.