Detours through the Universe

Billions and Billions of years ago, our universe began...no wait...this isn't a Carl Sagan retrospective, this is my blog. Sorry about that folks, I kind of got lost in the universe.

Every once in a while normal routines in life take detours. Such has been true for me in 2009 so far, but in a good way. I will be returning to blogging on MTMD, but probably with a curtailed schedule through the year. Gone is the year of 200+ posts. On this blog at least.

So let me catch you up to date:


INSIDE GOVERNMENT
Inside Government is my other blog and it's developing a life of its own. In the first four months of its existence, we have been syndicated by Blogburst, built a Facebook community, and a Twitter Follower Network of close to 1200 which grows daily. The really cool thing about our Twitter Network though is that it includes United States Governors, All Major News Networks, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, personalities like Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly, David Gregory and Nancy Pelosi's Daughter, Senators Chris Dodd and Claire McCaskill, Representative John Boehner, Governor Granholm of Michigan, Governor Arnold of California, and so many other state and local news media, television anchors, pundits and people like you and me. It's a great mix.

We're working hard on raising the bar on Inside Government and with the direction the site is taking and its growing readership, it is becoming my primary blog for a whole host of reasons. I encourage you all to check it out, especially our recent post that explains what a Trillion Dollars is even in terms that Carl Sagan would understand. And even Henson had a video that made a guest appearance with one of our posts.


International Whitewater Hall of Fame
There are a number of projects at work that take up a large portion of my time, including being the project manager for the International Whitewater Hall of Fame (IWHoF). It's one of those awesome things about working in the whitewater industry. I get to do some really cool stuff. Administering IWHoF and the Annual Election Process is one of them. But this year, we decided to revamp our website and develop a Facebook Community to extend our reach in the US and Worldwide especially. So not only is this a labor of love that I happen to get paid for, it's taken a huge part of my time that I used to spend blogging on MTMD.

We migrated from a really old and clunky website to a Wordpress-based blog platform for ease of content management. We also migrated web hosting and mail servers. There were a number of reasons for this, and every one had a time-saving and cost-saving advantage. I encourage you to check it out at http://www.iwhof.org. The site is 100% better than it was, but we're looking forward to adding a great deal of functionality and interactivity in the coming year. We've even installed an awesome translation plug-in that automatically translates our blog into 42 languages completely in the background. It's a plus when your organization is an international one.


Nantahala Outdoor Center
This, of course, is where I work. NOC--the largest whitewater rafting and outfitting company in the United States and perhaps the world. It's truly an awesome place, and guess what, now we're getting into blogging. We've just started a few new blogs for Rafting, Fishing, a General Blog to pull all the info together, and still to come an Outfitter Store Blog. We're adding twitter, we're adding widgets, we're tweaking themes, and you guessed it, I'm in the middle of this one as well.

It's really exciting to be able to do all this awesome blogging and networking building and get paid for it, however, it IS a lot of blogging, and that's why MTMD is suffering just a little bit.

The Future of MTMD
MTMD is NOT going away, however. I'm just going to scale down a bit. I have a number of posts to make, or to incorporate into other posts, such as this one:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! Yes, today is my mother's birthday. It's also the Ides of March, so Beware the Ides of March!



I also have a few coffee reviews to post. Recently I was lucky enough to receive a pound of 100% Kona Coffee and a pound of 100% Jamaican Blue Coffee. I guess if you blog about coffee, coffee distributors appreciate you tipping your mug to them, and I'm happy to write honest reviews and express my thanks for the generosity of these distributors every chance I get. Thank you Chad! The reviews will be up soon.

Plus the usual mix of content that MTMD is known for, as well as the honoring of the next Pulsar.

ENTRECARD
However, in terms of dropping cards, there just isn't enough time in the day. That doesn't mean I won't visit EntreCard blogs any more, of course I'll still read my favorites. But I can't take two hours out of my day to drop 600 Cards, and with Graham's new EntreCard economy, it looks like Inside Government will be dropped from EntreCard anyway because on a site like that, I just can't put the EntreCard widget above the fold. Dropping 300 cards is more manageable, but still a major time committment. I will try to drop on my favorites at least a few times a week though.

So that's where we are, where I've been, what's been keeping me busy. Blogging, twittering, facebook community building. Oh, and Twilight.


I am absolutely hooked on Twilight. I've read the first two books and I'm halfway through the third. I am captivated by the story that is unfolding, the unique take on the vampire/werewolf lore, and like Snow Falling on Cedars, the incredibly palpable atmosphere that permeates every page of the writing. There's a lot to admire in the Twilight series and I can't wait for the second movie.

So, what have all of you been up to? Ken, Amy, Rox, Margaret, Ms. Mecomber? I do miss you guys.

Thanks for reading.