After reading The 4-Hour Workweek, it is even sweeter to hear stories about people who decide not just to go for the brass ring, but to take it with all the might of Atlas. This afternoon I met such a person – John Gerard, who will be famous in 31 days.

I first heard about John and his story from my cousin Nina, who used to work with John, only later to hear about it from blogging guru Darren Rowse. You can read John’s story and why he is doing this cross-country trek to get to Hollywood, California from Syracuse, New York to meet Jay Leno on The Tonight Show on day 31 of his journey.

John was in Chicago for a few days and today I met up with him. He is someone like any of us, and he utilizing the Internet and his background in television to help fulfill this goal. Tomorrow morning (Thursday, September 5) he will be on the WGN-TV Morning Show, so if you are in Chicagoland be sure to see him live.

His Web site, famousin31days.com, features videos and information on his journey. Check back for progress on his trip and where he may be, which possibly could be near you.

Good luck John, and safe travels!

Diversions • (1) Comments • Permalink

I am finally introducing the world my very first blog, sourcegate.

This is an ongoing compilation project of technical tips, notes and Web sites I use and refer to in my capacity as an Internet consultant and entrepreneur. Rather than keep an offline record of these notes or store links as bookmarks, I am making this information – all non proprietary to Dunkirk Systems, of course – available for all. As I find resources or develop something of interest, I will post it there. I am also in the process of entering past bookmarks and notes and should be caught up soon.

As I said, this is my first blog. Long before I launched The Hot Iron, I started sourcegate using a different blog platform. When I discovered ExpressionEngine, I decided to shelve the old software and eventually migrate to the EE platform, and a little later than I had hoped it is now live.

You can subscribe to the feed or listen to it with the Odiogo feed. Commenting is also turned on, as I am interested if these tips are useful – or not – to you, or if you have any suggestions for a topic or category. If there is nothing of interest in sourcegate right now, check back later, as it will always expand as my mind expands!

Technology • (0) Comments • Permalink

I just got in on the early bird registration for DOMAINfest, a conference for the domain name industry. It will be January 21-23 in Hollywood, CA. Many companies, consultants and individuals (commonly referred to as “domainers”) will be there.

As you may have read from my past posts on domain names, this is an area I have great interest in and spend much time working with clients in selecting and managing their domain names. I hope from the tracks and presentations to gain a greater insight into the industry, and meet many of the people in person who write the blogs I read on a regular basis.

And did I say it is in January in southern California? Not that it will be much different in temperature from Chicago!

Please let me know if you or anyone you know are going to DOMAINfest. Early bird registration ends at the end of the week.

Business • Domain Names • (0) Comments • Permalink

Congratulations to Dr. Pete Meyers for relaunching his blog, debabblog as User Effect, at usereffect.com. Where his former blog talked about demystifying technology, woven throughout his posts was usability and the operability of software and Web sites. This change is a natural one, and along with it introduces a nice clean design and a cool logo to boot. He has also carried forward his archive of blog posts and all of his current and past writings are available for your review and pondering.

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This past weekend the Boston Red Sox came to Chicago to play 4 games against the White Sox. As much as there were 2 teams of players, the games were a little slanted towards the 2004 World Champions, as the BoSox beat the Pale Hose 11-3, 10-1, 14-2 and 11-1. That is a combined score of 46-7! Normally this would be the place to place an analogy referencing rain, but with the storms and flooding throughout the Midwest, I will leave that one alone.

As a native New Englander and a Red Sox fan since my youth, it was nice to see the Red Sox sweep, and nice to see people in the team’s colors getting confused on the streets of Chicago with all of the closures due to construction and filming of Batman.

Go Red Sox, and good luck against the Yankees this week!

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