THIS BLOG IS MOVING

the short story is this:  Google hosts my blogs, now that they are making a slow painful attempt to give all the features for personal users to professional users, i'm moving my blog to my professional account.

you're only seeing this if you came to this blog directly, instead of via my website.  after October 2011, if you want to read my ramblings you should access my blog via my website at:  http://www.richardvalenta.com

tie everything together

I have the tweets at twitter.com/rjvalenta and the blogs (this) and the facebook at faceook.com/rjvalenta - is it like IM?

some people use Yahoo messenger, some people use AIM, some use MSN, and now there's GTalk... plus with iMessage looming another could be added. using the Apple provided iChat covers a lot of this, but there's a lot to cover.

so I'm wondering if there's a way to centralize all this in some fashion that doesn't involve some foreign hosted Jabber system, and might be mobile.

and then, I'd like a way to cross post to all these systems. maybe the first 140 just go to a tweet or FB, but anything less than 140 doesn't make a blog... and each post having all the various posting options to Places and Foursquare or including pics...

now that I'm 40...

I'm thinking about immaculate homes and perfect bodies, who is keeping a clean home and who has a maid... or who wants a pass for bad eating with the 'occasional glass of wine' they keep on their hips, and those who eat properly.

and I wonder if the challenge is really all that big.

I once lost a ton of weight and looked awesome, but my social like was ruined... can someone do both?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Dickson Ave,Kirkwood,United States

10 years

i was laying in bed at home asleep and ignoring a call that went to my answering machine (yes, because this was when we still used answering machines).  i heard a friend coming through the speaker, laughing because 'some idiot crashed a Cessna into the World Trade Center'.

so i turned on CNN, and upon seeing the smoke called my friend Chris waking him up telling him he should turn on the TV.  we each laid there in silence, watching... and then, the second plane hit.

from there, it was an epic day.  my friend Alex had only been in town a few months after leaving school on the east coast against her parent's will and having not spoken to them.  she came over and called her parents.

my friend who had initially called me was scheduled to give a tour of our city to visiting foreign business delegates, but none of them could focus. the rest of us sat and waited for more to unfold.

now its 10 years later.

it took 10 years, but not until the last week did i hear the story of how the hijackers gained hold of the planes... how they started by just killing a random person in first class to instill fear in those there, and then instantly afterwards rushing the cockpit, killing the pilots.

and over & over in my mind i think to myself how we can go back to a society where small kids can still visit the cockpit and meet the pilots.  a society where travelers say goodbye at the gate, not rushed away by an airport cop from the drop-off lane.

but its more than that... go back to a society where people didn't live in fear of box-cutters, a society where we don't need to pawn off our security to a team of poorly educated ego hounds running invasive x-ray machines.

or maybe, it's move forward...

to a world where we're all educated and secure enough to know the balance between taking care of ourselves and that everyone deserves at least as much respect as we do.  we can't hold muslims accountable for the crazy radicals any more than they can hold all Christians for the crusades.  instead, we should partner with them, and together fight against the problems that leave us in the war which binds our hands today, finishing the problem as we memorialize those we lost.

the tweeter

Larry, this is not 'the Tweeter', this is a blog.  Twitter is considered a 'micro-blog', because as you should have noticed by now, you can only type 140 characters into each entry, whereas here i can type at length.

if you're still confused, this is me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/#!/rjvalenta

and this is me on the Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rjvalenta

now, go back to stalking everyone, you should be able to get your reports to others in order now.

PS - i don't care what you find on other people's pages, i'm happy you've got a national conversation going with old friends about it, but when those chicks want to chat those topics up, leave me out of it.

i had a great day

i went to a wedding last night, two people i used to work with got married after years together.  spoon went with me, which i appreciate because she tolerates not knowing anyone and she has an odd shy side.  by the end of the night, we were both beat, and she dropped me off at home.

last night i slept like a rock, i love that about life, sleeping is awesome.  i sleep best when my diet is good, when i get up early, when i exercise, when i avoid booze, and when i keep busy during the day... preferably with things that involve movement.  its not really shocking, eating poorly irritates the body in many ways, as does booze, and movement & exercise by nature are tiring.

i didn't drink much last night, i ate properly, drank a lot of water, and got to see a lot of great old friends in person.  really, its the 'in person' aspect of life which defines it, we get so caught up in the image we portray online and all the people we act like we have relationships with.  i'm lucky in that people are hard on me, they say what they think of me in person... and thankfully, it isn't always pleasant.

so today, i got up and announced that i was going to get something to eat.  i got a reply to go to the festival of nations with a few people and we did.  we spent a few hours walking around and trying foreign foods - awesome.  after, we met a few of the guys at a local favorite restaurant.  they all split many pitchers, but i didn't really drink until one of them dropped a beer in front of me assuming i was in a bad mood.

some great conversation spawned from this, talk of life and how people felt and saw things.  more people joined us (some invited and some not), the conversation continued as we sat outside, and after 5 hours a few of us moved on to another location for dinner.

four of us were left, and we had a great dinner.  laughter and more conversation, and jokes about happenings in the past.  we talked about anything from women to cars to investments and dreams.  we talked about plans to travel, plans to get healthier, plans to do more things.  one guy recently dropped his facebook page, so we talked about that... and the impact of people spending too much time online, or being too focused on making it their social life, and one guy who has once again has convinced many of the women that he's gay because of who he follows on twitter, ha (i purposely didn't touch that one, i'm tired of being blamed for people talking about that).

and the food was awesome, simple... not the healthiest, but fitting.  for the day, we had all stuffed ourselves.  everything was out on the table, for the day each one of us had talked about accomplishments and failures, pride and issues of complete embarrassment.  and really, thats where we showed the best part of ourselves... our ability to admit flaws and personal beliefs, and accept it ourselves and in each other and let go.

i dont mean to sound like some kinda weepy extra from Oprah, but there was just no bullshit... it was awesome.  no drama.  basically, it was 'this is me, you all know this is me, if you have anything you're not sure of ask, i'll tell you the truth, and if you don't like it, fuck off, ha'.

and that was a big topic for a while - one of the guys is a major boy scout, he always carries himself well, and while he enjoys the company of persons who act the fool he is big on being 'respectable'... and he's not going to act that way only part of the time, he makes his own decisions - and if someone doesn't like it they can kiss off.  of course, he's got nothing to hide and some would argue they do... but then one could ask, why they have to hide it...

and, in the end, the night wound down, and we went to leave... where we found someone had lost a few boxes of rubber gloves in the street, and each car that drove by popped like it was driving over a sheet of packing material.  we stood and watched and had a laugh and ended our 12 hours out & about to go home.

it was just a good day, it was not planned AT ALL.  it was just a few texts, and a few calls, and the decision that it was better to let go and have a day hanging out with people than laying around at home or keeping to some set of scheduled but unimportant ritual activities.  it just happened.

let life happen people, be yourself, hide nothing, and let life happen.