Let me know what you think!

We didn’t have a lot of money in our family at the time. I remember purchasing the Webelos Scout uniform (shirt, some patches maybe) was a significant purchase. But my parents were willing to support me in joining this fine organization if that was what I wanted to do.

My expectations were high when I joined. The reality turned out to be a little bit different. As I recall, having not been a Cub Scout in the Den I joined, I felt like an outsider. I also had pretty terrible social skills at the time, and didn’t really adapt well. At first I gave it my best shot to fit in and participate, but eventually felt like something wasn’t quite working for me there.

We never went camping. The most exciting part of being a Webelos Scout seemed to be the silver or gold candle we would burn at each meeting. That was our fire — maybe it symbolized a campfire, or burning stuff, or some kind of eternal flame of awesomeness. All I know is that we did some glue-gun projects, and burnt that candle at each meeting. During my short stint as a Webelos Scout we never even discussed going on a camping trip. That being my primary motivation for trying to break into this tight-knit group of young boys, I got discouraged. I gave up.

Ever since I’ve considered myself to be a Webelos Scout Dropout. Someone unfit to participate in that system of rules, achievements, honor, glory, companionship, excellence.

Recently I’ve had an opportunity to revisit this mental image in my head about who I am. I’ve thought of many fine men I know who are Eagle Scouts — they completed the Boy Scout journey, graduated basically with the highest honors. Now I know that not every Eagle Scout is a shining example of awesomeness, but that is basically what they aspire to be.  And the people I know who are Eagle Scouts I’ve developed a tremendous amount of respect for.  They seem to be able to get worthwhile things done in a way that is worth emulating.

I will never be an actual Eagle Scout. You have to graduate from that program before you turn 18. I’m 35 years old. Not gonna happen without time travel, and I don’t know if I would have turned out that different had I stuck to it at the time.

I got to thinking though, what am I holding on to by seeing myself as a broken Webelos Scout who could never have been an Eagle Scout. Not a productive way to see myself.

What makes an Eagle Scout a good person is their drive to be a good person, and their capable practice of good qualities that gradually tell people — yes, this is a good person. This is someone who is interested in helping the world.

Here is the Scout Oath:

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

And the Scout Law:

A Scout is:
Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful,
Friendly, Courteous, Kind,
Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty,
Brave, Clean, Reverent

It’s interesting to me that even though I haven’t thought about the Oath and the Law in many years, I realize that those are really important qualities to me. Those really do help define what it is to be an honorable, good, helpful person in this world.

I may still be a Webelos Scout Dropout, but I realize today that I do strive to fulfill those ideals every day.  I don’t have to accept for myself non-Eagle Scout qualities.

The motto of the Boy Scouts is “Be Prepared”. That starts in our thinking and our practice.  Every day we have an opportunity to act like an Eagle Scout.

I’m really grateful to have been able to directly assist the following non-profit organizations in my lifetime by working on their websites, training individuals how to use the tools to say what they want to say, and generally try to help them do their jobs better. Most of these folks are active clients. I love the opportunity to serve in this way and plan to continue doing so as long as I’m able.

• The Albert Baker Fund
• Monteverde Conservation League, U.S. (The Children’s Eternal Rainforest)
• Hope Adoption Agency
• IWantToHelpAfrica.org
• Chestnut Hill Benevolent Association
• The Solo Committee
• Joint Broadcast Committee for Colorado
• Daystar, Inc.
• Fern Lodge
• Wide Horizon
• Christian Science Churches in Michigan
• Christian Science Churches in North Carolina
• Christian Science in Austin, Texas
• Christian Science Society of Encinitas, CA
• First Church of Christ Scientist, Shreveport, LA
• First Church of Christ, Scientist, Ashland, Oregon
• First Church of Christ, Scientist, Burlington, Vermont
• First Church of Christ, Scientist, Hayward, California
• First Church of Christ, Scientist, Orinda, California
• First Church of Christ, Scientist, Renton, Washington
• Third Church of Christ, Scientist, Dallas, Texas
• First Church of Christ, Scientist, Yorba Linda, CA
• Association of Organizations of Christian Science Nursing (AOCSN)
• Bible Study Seminars
• Christian Science Nursing Network
• Organization of Residential Homes (ORH)
• Partnership for Christian Science Nursing
• The Commission For Accreditation Of Christian Science Nursing Organizations / Facilities, Inc.
• The Dominion Foundation

I may be missing an organization or two but I am very grateful to have been able to serve in this way.

Be Prepared.

YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9UjeTMb3Yk

Email verbs:

More here: http://inboxzero.tumblr.com/

More info about this Zen flowchart here.

We have 82 installations of WordPress on our servers and are excited for the new release of WordPress 3.1. There are a bunch of neat new features, but probably the thing that most of our clients will notice first is that there is a new admin bar that will show up for them. Should be fun managing the upgrades.

Read more about the new update here.

One of my goals for 2011 is to end it significantly more in shape than I started. I realize that this is a (very) common goal for many people, and one that many people start on and then let tail off as the year progresses.

Here are some of the steps I’m taking to give myself the best chance for success:

1) I’ve hired a personal trainer (through my local gym, In-Shape), to help me in 4 one-hour sessions per month for the next 3 months. The first session I had last week was a real eye-opener (everything felt hard to do) and in the future I will be focusing on building muscle, decreasing fat and improving endurance. Current weight (as of 1/11/2011): 214.8lb, 21.8% fat, 27.6 BMI. Belly fully puffed out is 45″. Target weight: 190lb

2) I purchased the awesome Withings Wifi Body Scale (almost exactly what Ben and I envisioned a number of years ago for our Collabofit project) that works so far perfectly. You step on the scale and it weighs you then sends the result to a server where you can track results. No more manual charting. There’s an iPhone app to display your weigh-ins (and it also can let you share the results, below). This will help track progress as the training happens. It connected without issue to my protected WiFi network and looks as sleek as if Apple had decided to get into the weight-measuring gadget market. Very impressive.

My latest weigh-in:

Pretty cool, huh!

This is a security release, so you should definitely upgrade your installations of WordPress!

Warning: require_once() [function.require-once]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(twitteroauth.php) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/fern:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp) in /home/fern/public_html/wp-content/plugins/twitter-tools/twitter-tools.php on line 1516

Here is the fix that I figured out would work — add the absolute path of the file into the plugin code and it should clear this up. Obviously this isn’t an ideal long-term solution. Hopefully Alex will incorporate this simple fix into the next version of the plugin. Note that this fix applies to Twitter Tools version 2.4.

In twitter-tools/twitter-tools.php change line 1516 to:
require_once(dirname (__FILE__) . '/twitteroauth.php');

And in twitter-tools/twitteroauth.php change line 10 to:
require_once(dirname (__FILE__) . '/OAuth.php');

In case you missed it, Old Spice has been making some very funny commercials using actor Isaiah Mustafa (@isaiahmustafa) including creating real-time responses to people on the Internet.

My top 10 favorites from the series (+ a few bonus ones):

Swan dive into the best night of your life: (making of)

I’m on a horse:

Responding to Ellen:

Responding to a 12755JDH (probably a robot):

Responding to Gizmodo:

To Gillete:

The manliest thing he’s ever done:

Giant old fashioned cellphone taking a call from ‘the wild’:

Happy birthday to you:

To @twitter – advice about taming wild whales:

Jobs involving snorkeling:

On shark dentistry:

To Gabe (not me):

What he can’t do:

On libraries:

To Anonymous:

Final wrap-up:

I hope you enjoyed those as much as I did. Just genius marketing. Excellent job!