Hello Happy Pitbulls

Time to update your HHP subscription

The end of an era is here.  I have moved my blog over to Wordpress.  I'm still at www.hellohappypitbulls.com, but it you are subscribed to my RSS feed, time to update.  Thanks for visiting.

What to do with my blog...

I am awake trying to make good use of the hour we're losing today with daylight savings time and it's leading me to think about how I am active in the social media world.

For the last year, I have been interacting with friends and family on Facebook.
Marilyn Clark's Profile | Create Your Badge

Facebook has evolved to the point that it can now handle a lot of the information I typically have shared on this blog (and it's various predecessors) for the past 6 years. 

I've also been spending my energy on Twitter.  I have both personal and professional connections there and have built up a good network of people that I communicate with on a regular basis.

Professionally, I maintain a profile on Linked In and am also participating in Govloop, a social media site for government communities.

With so many social outlets for my various interests, I am wondering whether this long format blog should continue into the future.  I guess I have to keep thinking on it, unless someone has any thoughts about it...

Still alive and kicking

It seems that Facebook and Twitter and Govloop have become acceptable outlets for my social media activities.  When I started this blog (now actually six years ago), there really was nothing of the sort for interacting with friends, colleagues, strangers, fans, and the like.

I have been working pretty intensely at work, which is partially due to the craziness of Furlough Friday Frenzy.  The reality of furlough Fridays sunk in last week when I got my paycheck -- it was short the amount of my car payment.  So not only will we be paying increased Vehicle License Fees and higher taxes across the board, we're also making less.  Still, as a CA State employee with just over 7 years of service, I am grateful to have a job.  And I am still working just as hard as when I received my full salary.

On the health front, Blinky, my pituitary adenoma, is trying to get some attention from me by getting active.  At my last check-up, my bromocriptine dose got bumped up.  I still think there's a stress/pituitary tumor correlation, but no one is fessing up to it.

My left ankle seems to be going through some issues too.  I am just over 11 months from the surgery on the righ ankle and now my left ankle is bugging -- subluxation of the peroneal tendon.  My doctor is going to try some orthotics to shift over the weight to the inside of my foot (again, I have some freaky anatomy that's causing the weight to be primarily on my 2nd toe, rather than the first one.  My Shamrock'n Half Marathon is on hold for another year.  I got up to 7-8 miles in training and I decided not to take a chance of my tenton getting all gnarly like the right one.

So, still trying to figure out whether I want to keep this blog going, now that I have other, quicker outlets.  I guess I'll know when it's done.

How would you like your government?

There's a magical transformation happening on the Internet.  Have you noticed?

Not only is your newspaper allowing you to interact and provide feedback, but your government is too.  Locally, the first place this happened was with Matt Rexroad's blog.  As a candidate and now as a county supervisor, Matt gets it.  Matt combines personal, professional and political topics on his blog, and engages the community in sometimes lively discussions about important local issues.

The State of California is catching on too, with a YouTube channel representing many government agencies, podcasts, commenting on assembly bills, and a handful of blogs and other social media activity.

And the Federal government is completely rocking it out with a number of social media tools and channels. I'm excited about the change that's come to the web, and it was on it's way before the new administration.  My hope is that the new administration will deliver on the promise of transparency the transformation will be more profound.

I am working with a group of government employees on the Social Media Subcouncil of the Federal Web Managers Council to help make a case for the continued use of social media in goverment to engage and involve citizens, to increase collaboration within and between government agencies, and to improve government services.

Transparency. Participation. Collaboration.

What does this mean to you?

Where's Marilyn?

I just had to read about this on another blog: I guess I have been in hibernation. It's been 2 weeks since my last post.  Where the heck have I been?

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll see that I've more or less recovered from my bronchitis, and spent a bunch of time in San Francisco at a conference.  If you follow me on Twitter, you'll see that I've been spending a lot more of my time writing in short, 140-character bursts, than spending time writing here.  I guess I'm guilty of being a bit lazy.  I've also been spending lots of time on Facebook. Are you my friend yet? Friend me up!

My 25th high school reunion is coming up next year, so there's this flurry of activity and reconnecting happening with my old pals.  I went to a tiny school.  I don't even think there were 100 people in my graduating class.  The problem is, I blocked out a lot of those years from my memory.  It's kinda fun seeing what everyone is up to and how they are mostly normal people now (relatively speaking, of course).  Facebook is a great way to reconnect with people...I've even found people from my 10th grade Jewish summer camp in the Berkshires!

There's been lots of celebration about the change that's going on in our country.  Have you seen the new transition web site: change.gov? I am enormously encouraged by what I am seeing in terms of openness in the upcoming administration.  I made comments previously here about how the candidates embraced web 2.0 concepts during the campaigns, but then questioned whether they could make the transition to candidate 2.0 to president 2.0.  I think that's where we are going.

Also, I stumbled upon this site as well: http://obamacto.org/, a site that is gathering info from the wisdom of "the crowd" regarding technology priorities for the yet-to-be-appointed Chief Technology Officer in the Obama campaign.

Other things?  The Dead Pool.  RIP to those who have recently passed:

• Mitch Mitchell (drummer from Jimi Hendrix Experience)
• Yma Sumac
• Michael Crichton
• Studs Turkel

And November, I remember my mom, who passed away November 12, 2000.  As I said on Twitter, it's gotten easier, but I don't miss her any less.

Oh, and on a lighter note: Dustin Pedroia wins the MVP!!!  (Sadly, I was briefly friends with his imposter on Facebook, but I won't give up my campaign to get him to be grand marshall at the Woodland Christmas Parade!)

I miss my blog

That's not the first time I have used that title for a blog post.  This happens every now and then - the frenetic pace of work and life and everything in between catches up with me.

I realize I have had a hectic month:

• Work presentation in Las Vegas
• Conference in San Jose
• Out sick 4 days out of 5 last week
• Three days in training this week

I don't usually travel that much, and it's caused some craziness in life as I try to keep up with the scary amount of email I get each day.

Family stuff has been nutty too. My niece is leaving for college tomorrow and I'm sad.  We've spent lots of time with her over the last couple years and now she's flying the coop!

I have so many things to write about, my head is swirling!  I have to use little tweets to get info bursts out throughout the day until I can settle in to write.

Anyone else have a hectic August?

To post, or not to post?

I've had a lot going on in my life, both at home and at work, and it makes me not feel like blogging.  And at the same time, it makes me feel like blogging even more. Sometimes I wish I had a secret blog where I can rant and rave about fun stuff like "good times" with my dad, random stuff at work, or how I really feel about some heated issues.

This week is off to a rough start. Work is crazy; lots of changes going on. Regardless of how prepared I am to face each day, I realize the second I step foot in the door, all bets are off.  The best skill I have developed (or at least I think I have) is the ability to roll with it throughout the day.  Especially the stuff I can't control. 

Easier said than done.

Other topics that I feel strongly about have been fodder for conversation.  Gay marriage. iPhones. Twitter.  So many opinions. So many options.

When it comes right down to it, whether you're talking about same sex marriage or whether to use a paper or electronic organization system, it all comes down to this: being open to other people's opinions, preferences, belief systems, etc.  Respect.  You know?

I've been privy to some conversations lately that I just can't fathom.  I know I am being cryptic here.  Just too big to really go into here, since I can barely articulate it in conversation.

So with that.  I'm out until some inspiration strikes.

Ball Girl Goes Viral

This video has been flying around the web for a little bit now, and now that it's hit the Ogilvy 360 Degree Influence Site, I figured it was time for me to talk about it.

First of all, this was filmed in Fresno at a AAA baseball game featuring the Fresno Grizzlies and the Tacoma Rainiers.  How cool am I that I'm completely looped into the Pacific Coast League?  Of course, our Sacramento River Cats play these guys all the time.

Do I care whether this is a great viral video or whether it's on- or off-brand?  Not so much.  I just wanted to state that I'm still irritated about the person who yesterday sent me a 5MB .wav file and clogged up my email at work.  First of all, stop sending me crap at work.  We DO have a policy about that. It did however remind me I wanted to pop this on my blog.

In the meantime, I am working to find ways to incorporate elements of social media into the workplace. My team has a blog (which they sometimes need prodding to remember to post there rather than emailing to everyone).  I'm hoping some pilot efforts like this will help demonstrate the value of social media to team building, productivity, and information sharing.  Just wait until we get to social tagging.  Just downloaded Daniela Barbosa's new ebook The Taxonomy Folksonomy Cookbook.  In an organization full of internal jargon, acronyms, and internally focused intranet sites, this might be the answer to creating a more structured, user-centric world.

In the meantime: check out the ball girl!

Oh yeah, please vote for me

Hi nice readers. Some of you are family and friends.  Some are co-workers.  Some are strangers.  Some of you got here by searching for things like Secret Squirrel, koi fish tattoos, "pitchers" of pitbulls, Peter Burns plastic surgery, or most recently, the "festival of poo", whatever that is.

The reason you got here is that at one time or another, I wrote about one of those topics and more.  And for that, I was nominated (by a dog, no less) for Best Blog About Stuff in the 2008 Blogger's Choice Awards. So what does that mean?  I'm not sure, but I could use a few more votes. I'm planning to attend Blog World in Las Vegas this fall, and it would be cool to go there with more than 2 votes.

I also got nominated in a few other categories, if you are so inclined to vote.  See the badges on the right side of my blog.

Thanks all!

The post that introduced me to Dooce

Ever since I read this post I have been hooked.  Those who know Mike and me will understand.  Poop stories make us laugh.