Videos of the Grand kids at Brandon and Ashley’s

Last minute of the third period.

Making Space with Lego

Fire in Gaylord

More links to the story: From TVC Record-Eagle:  Here,  here, and here.

From the Gaylord Herald-Times

Update 2: Here’s a story about the aftermath from TV 9&10 news.

UPDATE 1: Video of the first minute of when I was on the scene. The structure is fully involved. I do have some commentary (really explaining to my wife what was happening with the embers on the roofs of the adjacent buildings. I’m a fire weather program leader at work.) . I also reworded my choppy sentences from the original story I tapped out with my phone on scene.

There was a fire in Gaylord Wednesday night (5/19/2010). We saw it as we were heading home from the church after youth group. It was an abandoned building in downtown Gaylord, right on Main street. It was right next to a store and building that people from our church own. I’ll write more when I can. Here are some pictures.

Fair Use What Does It Entail?

Earlier tonight, my wife began posting some videos of our daughter in a school play. In fact, I wanted to create a post of the play list to show here as well. However, someone from the school saw them and asked her if she would take them down so the school doesn’t get into trouble with the Rogers and Hammerstein Organization who licenses the performances. My wife had gone to bed, and since they were on her Facebook account, I couldn’t take them down. However, I thought this would fall under fair use for what we had done? Don’t get me wrong, the school is afraid of being sued and I don’t want to impinge on somebody’s copyright, but can’t I take the excerpts of my daughter and put them somewhere so that my parents can see them (In fact, all I shot were the scenes that she was in, and pretty much only her.)?

I did some digging and Center for Social Media has put together a Code of Best Practices for fair use. The one I think that fits this situation is this:

4.Reproducing, reposting or quoting in order to memorialize, preserve, or rescue an experience, an event, or a cultural phenomenon 

Isn’t that what any parent would be doing if their child were in a play and you are just trying to get their scenes? Is this appropriate for fair use? I need some help with this. Anyone have an answer?

Darker Side of Sin City

Nightline – Darker Side of Sin City This was pointed out to me by the XXXChurch people. There is a whole other world under Las Vegas. Wow.

Pregraduation prep in the fall

I watched one of the the Youth Specialities podcasts and they mentioned that we should start working with our graduating seniors now so that when they graduate next year they can transition into a college world easier. Interesting thoughts on how to do it.

The American Democratic Debate Process

I often feel that the extreme right and extreme left pull us into this kind of discourse. Not because they have any new ideas, but they just can’t bring themselves to agree at all with the other side.

iGens and Nobody’s Happy

I was listening to the Net @ Night podcast with Leo Laporte and Sarah Lane (standing in for Amber MacArthur) the other night. Somehow the subject they started talking about was a portion of the Conan O’Brien show from earlier in the week. This was an interesting, because Scot McKnight, a theologian and blogger that I regularly read just got done with a series about the book Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled–and More Miserable Than Ever Before. Both of these hit on the unique subject that with everything we have, people are more miserable. I see this with the youth group kids and the some people in church. Listening to the podcast Money Life with Chuck Bentley, he has been hammering the fact that we have put ourselves into debt to buy things that end up making us miserable. So we keep trying to earn money to buy our happiness, only to be unfulfilled. I won’t go into details, but there are people that I am close to that they haven’t figured that out yet. In fact, they once told me that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I think that in the coming years, that America will realize that we need to change…

Wild Ride

My boss sent this around on email. I kept wanting to yell, “let go!”