03 | April | 2008 | Direct Marketing Observations

I was sent this yesterday via email and yes I wrote about Dr. Pausch awhile back, but I thought that the more exposure, or the more people that will see this “lecture”, the better off humanity will be because of it. It will only consume about 12 minutes of your time, but really, what is 12 minutes of your life when listening to a man who has but a few months to live?

Here also is an update on Randy’s current health:
April 2, 2008: Getting back into the fight

For those of you familiar with boxing, I would describe the weeks since my heart & kidney failure to be a “standing eight count.” I got knocked down pretty good and needed time to gather myself. Now I’m back on my feet; still a little wobbly, but ready to engage in the fight again.Yesterday’s CT and MRI scans showed that I’ve added a new, 11th tumor (small), and that a few of my original 10 tumors have grown, but only negligibly so. My biggest tumor is about 2.5cm in diameter. Given that I’ve been off chemo for six weeks, this was jumping-up-and-down good news, for two reasons:

1) It means the cancer has not grown like craxy, a big fear since stopping chemo.

2) Since all my tumors are in my liver, that means certain liver-specific treatments are possible.

I’m typing this from a recovery room; I just had a biopsy taken of my tumor tissue; that will be sent to TGEN in arizona, where they will run some tests to see if they can identify which chemotherapy drugs might be most effective on my particular tumors.

My next step will probably be embolization with theraspheres; a liver specific treatment that has a very low rate of side effects, and won’t make me feel crappy like systemic chemo does.

The fight is rejoined; I’ve got much more energy now — I hope to be back on the bike in a week or so.

I was watching American Idol last night with the kids and we saw according to the girls, dreamy dread guy, Jason Castro. One of the kids asked how are dreads made, and I said, “Uhhh… you don’t bathe for a really long time and with mud, right?” Apparently I was way off base. For those of you just like me, here is a good site telling us all how Dreadlocks are created. For those times when you are randomly asked how dreads are made.

Driving down the street the other day, one of the kids asked about why gold and silver are so valuable. I proceeded to tell them about all the gold in Fort Knox. I figured it would be a good moment to reflect on it being the place that Goldfinger wanted to rob in one of the more memorable James Bond Movies. They didn’t really like that part of the answer. Although, It might have been because of my descriptive story of how Oddjob threw his hat to cut off the statues head. Huh? What’s dad talking about?

However, upon further research, This site that I came upon might be a good one for the kids. It not only explains the US government in a very engaging fashion, but also the U.S. Treasury It’s a fun and very interactive site as well.

Speaking of cool kid sites; and in an effort to enrich their lives beyond killer graphics in Call To Duty IV, check out this site for the New York Philharmonic for Kids. Want to keep children engaged in music, any music? classical music? Then, here is one that will captivate.

So you just hit a town, you got some free time that night and you wanna keep it clean. So you decide to see some live music. You grab the “local” local paper or you checked out Flavorpill

and now you just have to figure out how to get there since you have zero clue. Check out Gruvr,

It’s a map based live music locator that shows you where all the live music is, in a radius that you can control. LBS for you live music junkies out there. Very cool, easy to use and it’s quick.

And you thought I could go this long without mentioning something about another interesting social media site? Hah! Well…You know how everyone sometimes sits around and someone will offer up their two cents on why not do this, this way, and that maybe they should do this, that way? Did that make sense? Well anywho, now there is a site called, lo and behold, “WhyNot?” It’s a social site that allows you to communicate, submit and exchange your ideas with others. Based on a popular book, of the same name, the site is an extension of the book that simply provides solutions to problems big and small. That should at least get you to Sunday.

Am I missing a site that would compliment the topics above? Shoot it on over and I will add it to the next list.