Category Archives: Uncategorized

We are under attack… 10 years later.

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10 Years ago I walked into the offices of Mass AV which were then located on Cambridge Street in Burlington.  I was just back from my friend Matt Dillon’s wedding after spending my honeymoon in Italy.  While I was away we had installed a 42" LCD monitor in the lobby. It had a TV feed on and people were watching the first tower at WTC smoke. When the 2nd plane hit the tower I gasped and uttered the words we are under attack. I should not have said it but it just came out.  I went back to my desk and sat in shock like everyone at work that day.  A few hours later the Executive director of the Canadian -US woodworking conference called me from the Hynes Convention Center telling me they had been shut down and asked to leave the building. All sky scrapers in the US had become targets and all planes were grounded.  The executive director asked me if he could get a refund and what he should do, I told him he should go home to his family if he could. I put him on hold and walked into John Lally’s office he was my boss and president of MassAV then. I explained the situation and he took the call. 
I remember that day, I remember trying to call all my friends in NYC to make sure they were ok. I remember going home and knowing my job had changed also and that our business was about to go away for awhile. I wondered what it is I could do to help, to change things. I felt helpless, and that is never a good feeling.

Watching the replays over the years does not help, I try not to watch them now. Not because I don’t care, but because it reminds me how frail we are, how frail I am. It reminds me that in a blink of an eye it can all be gone.

I have signs taped up in my apartment that say “I will not waste this day for it is a gift”. Some days I waste them still, but not as much as I used to. We should never take life for granted, we should cherish every moment. We should live everyday as best we can. We should never forget those we lost, but we should also live our lives fully and not waste them. Those that died that day would want us live our lives to the fullest otherwise their sacrifice is in vain.

Hey @rcnconnects when am I getting reconnected?

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I have cable for my kids and I do work from home editing video and uploading it for clients. Upload speed needs to be good otherwise it is a long hurry up and wait proposition. I had called RCN quite a few times about it was warned that if they came out and found nothing wrong it would cost me 75.00 which put me off. I finally broke down after 9 months and made the service demand. They came out and tech said that my modem had been recalled about a year earlier. This became a credit. RCN could have avoided it by just coming out with out the 75.00 threat but oh well. Not listening to their customer cost them. Now my service has been out a week and RCN has no idea when it will be fixed. Comcast has called me and told me that RCN is so hurting financially they might not recover and that the readon why its not being fixed fadt is because RCN does not own their own network. Nice business practice comcast, kicking RCN when they are down. I hate cable companies, @comcastcares , @rcnconnects they both suck. Comcast charges you twice what RCN will charge you, but you get what you pay for with RCN . I have been using my neighbors wifi to work from home this week. So RCN when is my service going to be reconnected?

So what happened between Friday and Monday?

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Money

Money, money money.

“ It was mayhem at the stock market today. S&P 500 and Dow Jones went down while gold price per ounce went up. US markets today fell on fears of financial crisis in the Eurozone and the credit rating downgrade in the US, but not quite as much as was being feared.”

In terms I understand it’s like everyone got fricken really nervous. It was like saying you had a bomb in your sneaker at the airport. Everyone got nervous and started devaluing companies stocks.

My friend Peter said it best when he mentioned “what made Ford stock less valuable other then panic?”

The answer is nothing. When did we become Greece? Does it suddenly say United Greece of America? Are we so stupid to let ourselves default? Thank you China for scolding the USA and saying such nice things about our credit rating. Hey China, I would be saying good things if you want your money back. Since your our biggest Capital one bill I’d keep it on the down low.

Yes today the markets tumbled a bit. It will rebound, tomorrow might be a great day to buy stock in fact.

In China there is an expression Wei-Chi (crisis) which translates into “danger plus opportunity” …

Headline from http://www.timeswireservice.com Picture from: kaderz on photbucket.com

Google+ my thoughts, not that you care.

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Google-logo-plus-0fbe8f0119f4a902429a5991af5db563

Google+ is catching on and I admit to being a habitual user. I won’t post pictures of my kids on it ever, and I am not certain I will continue using google+ past Movember. Here are my thoughts about it.

It reminds me of buzz but with better sharing. Its more like Twitter then it is Facebook. You can spark up conversations and get feedback.Unfortunately for me I am boring and uninteresting and nobody cares what I think enough to even comment. This is both a blessing and a curse.

Bruce Garber was hanging out the other day and I joined in, that was cool, and we talked face to face and got caught up. Bruce also showed me the video share capabilities. That was cool. The problem is I really don’t like or trust youtube as a video platform. I send clients to vimeo. I think of youtube as hit or miss video. It’s a great video platform for people with accutely short attention spans. I put qik videos on youtube but thats about it.

Google+ reunited me with lots of people that just would not engage with me on facebook. I’m not sure they will engage me here either. I just find it curious that they re-added me. Was it courtesy? or were they missing not communicating with me?

I read an article this week that stated that a majority (75%) of all google+ users are a male geeks, 20% were women ( Geek or not) and 5 percent were something else or Not committed either way.

This is one of those blog posts that does not end itself, Until now.

A very Hot summer poem

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What is this, if not passion
The feeling of something unusual
Waiting to be caressed, wanting to explode,
What if I get that heavenly touch
For which my body has been aching
Will I remain what I am
Or will the entwining of the bodies
Lead me to something ethereal
I am confused, do not know how to react
But what I know is that I yearn for that touch
A soothing touch of caress
And a wild sensation of fulfillment.

I adore the woman who sent this.

Anyone know the author?

Jackass meet the Stupid human trick

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When I was a kid I loved to skateboard and I was kinda dumb also. I would skate down Hanson lane until my parents caught me. My skateboard would be confiscated but I’d get another one and or rescue mine from the trash. One dumb day I decided it was a good idea to slalom skate on a tow line behind a car. This was before good equipment was designed so I had sneakers on and gloves I think. I won’t mention the driver, but after about mile into our stupid human trick we had the cops chasing us. My friend thought it was a good idea to drive off and ended up speeding down the soap box derby hill on quaker ridge, forgetting that I was now on a skate board doing about 60 right behind him. When the siren came on he pulled over and I rode down the off ramp to Pine brook boulevard. I thought I was clear until another cop came and got me. I remember not getting my skateboard back that day and also talking my way out of a JD card. I think New Rochelle was the last city to stop issuing them. It was the 70’s, the JD cards were so 1950’s but more importantly lost in all this was the first ever jackass meets the stupid human trick.

So Apple, where exactly did my pictures go?

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Overview_herobox_20101020

I renewed my flickr account yesterday for Skip Bensley aka Brilliant Video. I noticed however that lots of pictures were missing.
I had shot 100’s of pictures for MITX, Social Media Club Boston, and at other social events and the pictures were gone. It wasn’t that they
were not visible because of the lapsed account mind you they were gone baby gone. It appears that when I transferred all my data
off of my old editing Machine to the new one that the pictures did not all transfer. It also appears that Iphoto 11 overrides your settings for
Iphoto 09. It might have been good to note before I linked my accounts, but that part was done automatically.

Ahhhh the sweet irony in convenience programming is astounding sometimes. Fortunately I backed up these pictures and I will be uploading them again.
So if you see tweets about pictures that are old, or some pictures that you have seen flash by on friend feed don’t despair you are not in a time warp.
My new Apple computer is.

Cheers

Skip Bensley
http://about.me/SkipBensley

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field I’ll meet you there” – Rumi

Please consider the environment when forwarding, responding to or printing this email.

Bye Bye Netflix

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Netflix has decided to double their initial offering, making me pay twice as much for the streaming movies and one at a time DVD’s. 
Here is the nice letter I got from Netflix today.
Dear ROBERT, ( I hate that,  nobody calls me Robert btw except people with badges that say Robert do you know how fast you were going?)

We are separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into two separate plans to better reflect the costs of each. Now our members have a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan, or both.

Your current $9.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs will be split into 2 distinct plans:

   Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs) for $7.99 a month
   Plan 2: Unlimited DVDs, 1 out at-a-time (no streaming) for $7.99 a month

Your price for getting both of these plans will be $15.98 a month ($7.99 + $7.99). You don’t need to do anything to continue your memberships for both unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs.

These prices will start for charges on or after September 1, 2011.

You can easily change or cancel your unlimited streaming plan, unlimited DVD plan, or both, by going to the Plan Change page in Your Account.

We realize you have many choices for home entertainment, and we thank you for your business. As always, if you have questions, please feel free to call us at 1-888-357-1516.

–The Netflix Team

Dear Netflix team  I don’t want to change, and I don’t want to pay you more money for the privilege to make that choice. Its nice that you pull this crap after most of your
competition has died off, that’s very cable TV of you to do. I suspect I am not the only customer you have angered with this change, and I certainly won’t be the last.
Good Luck with everything.
Skip

Geneva Illinois

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I was born in Chicago but I lived in Geneva Illinois growing up until I was 6. I had a few pals Steve lemon, Mark ST Pierre, and John folk. I was a bit younger but I was brave. When they made a club house in the attic of a garage I climbed the ladder with the big kids. I learned to ride a big bike by accident when I stole my sisters new bike and my grand mother called me to get home. Riding the bike back home was my first ride. Geneva has grown lots since I lived there but it still maintains a small town atmosphere. In the winter all the shops have Christmas lights and it’s like a Norman Rockwell painting. I did not live in Geneva long, but I have fond memories of the stores, the store owners and that the people were all very nice. Everyone knew everybody else and you went to Benson’s for boys stuff and to Marilyn Michaels for girls stuff. You bought gifts at the little traveler, and you browsed the 5&10 like everyone else in town on Saturday’s. I imagine they are all still pretty nice today. I will have to go back sometime and find out.
(Photo from coolkayaker1 )

Is social media making you a lazy real friend?

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I find that social media is getting in the way of getting to know people better. I have had many people on Facebook that I have had almost no connection with. Ideally I thought I would get to know that person better personally but the opposite happened. I lost contact with a few people I really wanted to get to know better. Life is funny that way. I trimmed my list again recently. I deleted people I had no contact with at all and people who never responded to emails I sent them. Rude might be fashionable in some circles but not mine.