John’s Blog

In July we traveled to West Virginia for Peg’s Family Reunion, and did a little bit of touring around. Unfortunately those blog entries were lost in an inexcusable failure to backup my files prior to upgrading WordPress… Grrr.

But anyway, in the past couple of days we’ve visited the New River Bridge, the Beckley Coal Mining Exhibition, Moundsville, and the Customs House in Wheeling, in an attempt to introduce some Culture and History into our lives…

The New River Bridge has some incredible view. It’s VERY high over the river. We crossed that as we drove to Beckley for the Exhibition Coal Mine. The Exhibition is impressive – a retired coal mine was purchased by the City of Beckley to demonstrate the inner workings of a coal mine circa 1900. There is more modern equipment on display as well, but the docents (ours was Marvin – totally an enjoyable tour) describe how mining used to be done before all of the safety advances.

The Adena Indians populated the middle Ohio River valley circa 1000BC..100BC. They occasionally buried “significant” individuals in burial mounds, one of which is still in existence in Moundsville WV, just south of Wheeling.

Our last bit of History and Culture was a trip to the Customs House in Wheeling WV, also known as the West Virginia Independence Hall, which was where the Virginia separatists gathered and voted to secede from Virginia and form the new state of West Virginia.

Great fun, and we even learned something!

I have lately been playing with Facebook and today I discovered what might be a Godsend for a scatterbrain like myself – Remember The Milk – a task management tool from a bunch of blokes Down Under. From anywhere, you can access your list of things to do. No more excuses (well, I’m sure I’ll still come up with them, but I won’t be as convincing).

Also, if you’re a fan of the Firefox browser (maybe others?) get the StumbleUpon AddOn. It’s just brilliant. Plug in your interests, and click on the Stumble! button to find yourself at a random page that you’ll probably enjoy. Try not to use it at work – your productivity will suffer…

I’ve been having fun of late playing with Twitter, (I was accidentally invited by my friend Adam), and Facebook, (invited by my niece Susenn). Facebook is pure fun social networking, and I’ve reconnected with some friends, which is cool. Twitter allows you to post what you’re doing so your friends can see. If you’re going down to the local, they might join you.

Another good connecting point is LinkedIn, which is social networking, ostensibly for business purposes. Sort of like a more formal Facebook…

Facebook and Twitter are for fun, but I totally recommend signing up for LinkedIn – you can never tell when someone from your past is going to come up with a job for you. I’ve always gotten jobs by recommendation. Never been on a cold call – and I’ve been in this business for 25 years.