Very good day today: a major company to be named later will be the 2007 iTest's "title sponsor," meaning they will receive top billing on our various marketing materials, website, etc...effectively becoming a key partner in the continued growth of the organization.

I had an opportunity today to discuss the iTest as a capable recruiting tool for reaching the best and brightest across the country with this company's senior VP of talent management. This particular company has got a very sophisticated HR strategy - a strategy we're now a part of.

I'll name the company later, but the important part is that we've again achieved success in the fundraising arena. The iTest has taken a major step forward today.

And now, the first in what will be a hopefully infrequent series of posts that I'd like to call the GOOTUBE HALL OF SHAME:

Picard's Song

Just think about someone sitting there and creating this. If you can.

Tomorrow's Veteran's Day (or at least the corporate holiday equivalent) so I am up late, listening to music, perusing this fine internet we've got, reviewing the day's email (particularly regarding the iTest, as we inch toward closing out the contest year by December 1), and blogging.

Tomorrow, Lori and I head out to Gatlinburg to visit with a couple of college friends of ours while staying at a chalet up there. That'll be a fun diversion for the weekend before heading back on Sunday to see the Titans get back on their winning ways against a difficult Ravens team.

Check this article out. Someone in New York City has started making cubes out of GARBAGE. Yep...goes around picking up trash just right off the street, and sells cubes of it for $100 apiece. Check the part where the guy discusses the importance of packaging...obviously a critical piece of insight there. There is not one single human being on the planet unaffected by corporate marketing; not one individual who is immune from the carefully crafted messages of modern commercialism that are unescapable through the multitude of mass media channels.

Obviously, this is incredible, groundbreaking innovation to do something this radical. But often, its incremental innovation that wins, and not the earth-shattering, mind-blowing stuff like this "garbage cube" story. Think about the jump from the regular iPod to the video iPod, for example. Big step for Apple that kept profits rolling in as they began to slow. Or, at my particular current place of employment, someone had the bright idea to, all of a sudden, start including an updated number of personal vacation hours accrued on the weekly payroll stub. Sounds simple, but really wasn't...but was just the type of incremental innovative step that adds to the company's cultural fabric itself. I could go on and on with other examples.

The basic premise that incremental innovation rules the day over radical innovation, because you just can't wait for lightning to strike, extends well to our personal lives as well. We can't sit there and wait for change ... we have to force the issue where necessary. That one difficult first couple of hours you stop smoking, that unflinchingly difficult first step in the right direction, is the way out...and leads to another couple of hours, another couple of days, another couple of months, another successful story. Obviously, the smoking example could be exchanged for many other scenarios. Just like one incremental innovation in business, the medical realm, the legal realm, or anywhere else ... on top of another ... on top of another, and another, and another ... leads to a successful, best-in-class venture over the long-term.

Who are the innovators out there?

Steve Jobs. Easy one.

Barack O'bama. Any man with a book called "The Audacity of Hope" within him immediately commands my attention.

U2. Innovated so many times that I've lost count, from raising countless new guitar players on The Edge's delay-pedal signature sound to innovating the way that current bands embrace the coexistence of political causes with the realities and necessity of mass marketing.

Warren Buffett. Continues to shape the way we look at investing. A financial rock in the shifty seas of daytrading, get-rich-quick schemes, and other bad ideas.

Kay Tipton. Created a national champion caliber math team program in arguably the most difficult state to do so, Alabama, from scratch. That's innovation.

Bill Gates. Incredibly dynamic leader often mistaken for just another computer nerd, this guy rejected Harvard for a world-changing journey called Microsoft. Imagine telling your parents "no, I don't think I'm going to the best school in the country ... I think I'd rather create a computer in my garage." Right...

My dad. Suffered through the hardships of a family business, then literally started giving the money earned from the sale of the business back to the world through advocating media literacy education and very-public crusades against business practices that harm our culture. I don't know anyone who's done more for the state of Alabama than he has in just a few short years. Many innovations here that were components of the overall outcome.

Hillary Clinton. Definitely an innovator in the way she redefined the role of the first lady from bystander to activist during her husband's tenure. How quickly we forget why she got where she is ... innovation.

Peter Ross. My boss while I spent some time in Beaufort, this man took control of a ship full of holes and almost immediately began using portfolio-leading technology to get occupancy up and instill a sense of mission to the project. Unafraid to incite change and challenge established company norms, he woke me up and got my attention, as well as my respect.

Tiger Woods. This guy is simply amazing. A black man dominating a white man's game, Tiger Woods COMPLETELY rewrote the rules of an entire professional sport while turning himself into his own brand which he continues to successfully use to market anything from Accenture to his own EA video game.

Jim Bradford. Took over as Dean of Vandy's Owen Grad School of Management right as I started business school there, and successfully crafted a magazine-rank-ascending strategy of slanting the school toward the obvious strength of health care management as well as the school's finance program. An incremental innovation, to be sure, but a good one that worked and has paved the way for more innovations later on.

Vince Young. Stared down a USC team full of future NFL players and beat them nearly singlehandedly, and then joined a Titans squad where his ascension into the starting role completely and noticeably changed the entire culture of the team from a downtrodden one into an upbeat, uptempo one. In the world of the NFL, for one guy to have such a profound impact is really amazing. Definitely an innovator.

Al Gore. Held the nation's hand in being the first to successfully articulate the imminent danger of global warming to the masses. But no, didn't invent the internet (THAT joke is DEFINITELY getting too old).

Bill Frist. Changed the way we view our elected officials by becoming the first real Congressional subject matter expert in the field of modern medicine. We have so many career politicians infesting Washington DC that the introduction of a guy who's actually gone and succeeded at another field first is quite refreshing. Another example of an innovator like this would be John Edwards, as well as Arnold Schwarzanegger.

Shigeru Miyamoto. The famous creator of Mario taught the world that video games don't have to be visceral to be captivating. Mario, Zelda, Metroid, you name it, this guy invented those franchises that drove Nintendo to be the only of the big three video game groups that was profitable in FY 06, and continues to spark the inventive culture that pervades Nintendo today.

Weird Al Yankovic. Practically invented an entire genre of music himself by crafting humorous reimaginings of popular songs and gaining popularity in his own right in the process. From infusing his music with polka to his fiendishly clever wordplays that carry his creative song concepts, this guy is as big of an innovator as anyone else in music right now.

I could go on, but why? You get the idea. Innovators are true to themselves, not deviating even slightly from their strategy just because there's skepticism greeting them at every turn. Once they've made up their mind to achieve an outcome, its pretty much over.

Anyway, off to Gatlinburg. Until next time.

I would be completely fine not hearing another word from John Kerry for the rest of my life. What a weak, pathetic man.

As bad as things have gone during Bush's tenure, does anyone really believe things would be better, on the whole, under John Kerry? I definitely don't, even though I've gone on record in this space saying that Bush is right on track to be considered the worst US President in history.

For me, as little attention as I try to pay to politics really boils down to a desire to have strong individuals running our government. Hillary Clinton has a fundamental, repeatedly-demonstrated inability to connect with lower and middle class Americans, but at least she has some backbone, so she might be OK if she softened her image a little bit and showed anything but unbridled ambition for power once in a while. The real candidate with promise within the Democrats is Barack Obama, who is a very impressive speaker who is quick on his feet in speaking and highly culturally literate. The prospect of having an African-American President to me is highly appealing, regardless of party, because I think such an event would provide a lot of positive momentum to effect change. The strongest candidate on the Republican side is our own Bill Frist, who has shown compassion in his office and is himself a strong speaker who talks with conviction.

I won't be voting in next Tuesday's widely-publicized brawl between Harold Ford Jr. and Bob Corker - I've already decided to express my sentiments with complete apathy toward the entire proceeding. Harold Ford Jr. is a member of a family known for corruption, and is tough to take seriously. Bob Corker hasn't done enough to separate himself from the President's failed domestic policies as well as hasn't expressed clearly enough his stance on how to get out of Iraq, but is a self-made entrepreneur who has made a fortune in the business world. (Note to Democrats: that is a huge plus, not a negative. Please note accordingly. The government could use someone who knows how to run a show without swimming in red ink. Thanks.)

And while I suppose the assumption would be that a man that rich would be out of touch, John Kerry comes and reminds us that self-made wealth is not a requirement to not understand basic American culture and have some semblance of respect for other humans different than you, much less our own armed forces.

Whatever. This entire election is a gargantuan waste of time. Until either party demonstrates they have the right goals in mind and the ability to build the bi-partisan consensus required to achieve those goals, I want no part of it. Someone come along and please prove me wrong...the sooner, the better.

Wednesday, November 1, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Bradley Metrock, President (bradley@ahsimc.com)

iTest crowns 2006 national champion, announces plans for expansion

(Nashville, TN) - The 2006 iTest culminated today in the crowning of a new national champion math team. "Quagga" cruised to victory in posting a brilliant 97.5 score out of a possible 100 points, besting runner-up "BARK" by a full 9 points.

Quagga team captain Shobhit Vishnoi attends the Hammond Academy in Columbia, South Carolina. Other team members include Yannik Pitcan (Lake Howell High School, Florida), Arnav Tripathy (East Chapel Hill High School, North Carolina), Rui Yang (Miami Palmetto Senior High School, Florida), and Alex Zhai (University Laboratory High School, Illinois).

These team members overcame geographical distances by working together using the internet. For the first time, iTest competitors had access to a variety of collaborative tools built into the competition's own webpage, which all students could utilize in delegating test questions and tracking team progress.

"The iTest combines the collaborative power of the internet with the educational power of team-based problem solving to create unprecedented opportunity for today's students," remarked iTest President and founder Bradley Metrock. "As a result, the iTest has attracted a diverse group of the nation's brightest young intellects to learn more mathematics and build their team-based social skills."

The organization's mission is to augment the United States educational system through competition by providing free contests across a variety of high school subjects; the iTest piloted a computer science competition earlier this year, and plans another pilot of a languages competition for release sometime in 2008.

"As the iTest expands into other subjects, a community where young people can network and meet lifelong friends will be created," noted iTest Chief Operations Officer Dave Cowart. "It's our job to use the social networking phenomenon to positively impact the lifelong education of our nation's youth."

The iTest, a product of parent non-profit organization AHSIMC, is the largest online mathematics competition and the fastest-growing academic competition in America. The iTest is made available for free to all students, educators, and schools thanks to generous contributions by corporate sponsors and charitable interests. High school students also have free access to monthly "challenge" problems, as well as a national ranking system for 'mathletes' to promote competition and continued math education throughout the school year.

###

The iTest announced earlier tonight the impending launch of the iTest Ranking System and the Tournament of Champions to be held in March.

Think "March Madness" ... the top 64 students, as determined by a composite index score based on the iTest, the AMC 12, and the USAMTS (both others are national competitions) will square off in one-on-one seeded matches until one winner remains.

Over the course of the year, the rankings of students based on these indicators will be kept on the iTest website, and virtual trophies will be awarded to students (to be shown on their iTest page profiles) over the course of the year.

It's an exciting new program for the iTest as its both a great way to keep students engaged in mathematics education over the course of the year, as well as a nice opportunity to hold a unique style of competition to bookend the year with iTest events. A competition like this, held online and designed to pit the best of the best against one another, doesn't exist outside of this new Tournament of Champions. It should be a lot of fun to design and implement in time for March '07.

"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."

- H L Mencken


Tomorrow marks the last day of the Tri-Command project review, so I'll be leaving Beaufort tomorrow afternoon. I leave with mixed emotions, for a lot of reasons which I could never dive into here.

The good thing, though, is that I am happy to announce that Peter Ross has joined the iTest as the newest member of the iTest Advisory Board. The first member that I've added to the Board in well over a year, Peter brings a wealth of business experience and personal contacts into the fold that should really help us continue to grow.

Off to bed ... later.

Einstein's three rules of work:

1) From clutter, find simplicity.
2) From discord, find harmony.
3) From difficulty, find opportunity.


Headed to Beaufort this week for a Project Review, which is one of my favorite work-related experiences. Its an opportunity to get in on the strategic planning and long-range problem solving that goes on at a military project, which is highly interesting and something I succeeded at while living at the project for six months.

Then its off to Cincinnati to visit Lori's friend Sarah for a weekend.

Then the weekend after that, Hetesh and Evan both head up here to visit.

Busy as usual...and then November begins with the nationwide awards announcement for the 2006 iTest, and the long-range planning for the next competition year begins on the IT side and the marketing side as well.

I guess I'll sleep next year.

The Titans are finally starting Vince Young tomorrow against Dallas, replacing the truly-horrid Kerry Collins at QB. Great move...let the Vince Young era begin!

About a week or two ago, the iTest Board of Directors had a long discussion about whether we should continue to run our student logo-creation contest, our side event where students create logos for the next year's competition from which we select a winner to actually use. I was on the side of continuing to do the contest for the long-term, but am beginning to change my mind.

While the nature of the iTest and the way we implement new features every year - in essence, almost making it an entirely new event every year, to some extent - could call for changing the logo every year, I am beginning to think it may be more powerful and more effective to be able to have a unique visual identifier that stays constant throughout the life of the iTest as an organization.

I got to thinking about this today when I was in Academy Sports and Outdoors with Lori, looking around for some exercise equipment, when I noticed the Nike "swoosh" and got started thinking about what simple symbol the iTest might be able to use like that. I think the "i" in iTest, perhaps with the dot colored like in our current 2006 logo, might be a good fit...

Time to play some Halo. Later.

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer, in the long run, than outright exposure. Life is a daring adventure, or it is nothing."

- Helen Keller


I have had a couple of strangely unrelated conversations recently pertaining to the concept of risk. If you look at anyone who's accomplished anything of note in this world, risk was involved.

People love to stand on the sidelines and criticize risk takers. It happens in countless ordinary situations - a girl taking a chance and violating social norms to ask a guy out, for example - as well as in the most extreme situations, such as a daredevil jumping the Grand Canyon or something. There is no shortage of people ready to line up and ridicule someone who takes a risk, and (gasp) fails.

I'd prefer to use a more established business person as an example, but in this case, let's go young: the guy who created Facebook.com now stands to have more personal wealth than he can possibly ever spend because he went out on a limb and followed his intuition in building the Facebook concept and pursuing a passion. And he's only 22 years old.

I love stories like that. I really enjoy hearing about people pursuing what they enjoy, as it usually ends up successful. On the other hand, people who simply don't get it are cancerous. Negativity is like a virus...it spreads and kills everything it touches.

Of course, you have to love those people who confuse reality with pessimism. Those are absolutely not interchangeable terms. Those people are also to be avoided.

Why not face this world with confidence? We were all put here by God. And for a reason. We were all given unique talents which we use to face the world. We were all given the ability to conquer demons and pass tests in front of us.

The greatest reward I've received for taking on risk was meeting my wife. She is so special and incredible that I can't imagine life without her ... but looking back, it was just one lazy decision (among hundreds) that could've altered the future.

There's another individual I know who is working right now to open up his own bar / restaurant / coffee hangout type of place, and I always make a point to ask him how he's progressing. This is a guy who seems to me to be incredibly determined, so I always know there's progress to hear about. And one day, if that's what's meant to be, I know that will happen for him.

The bottom line point I suppose I'm trying to make here is that there is no one on the face of this planet who should stand in your way of making your dream a reality. It doesn't matter what relationship someone has to you - if they are negative and preventing you from realizing your vision, your aspirations, your great huge super-big plans for the world - then ELIMINATE them from your world, either permanently or temporarily, and get back to being and thinking positively.

You are worth far too much to tolerate interference in living a fulfilling, gratifying life. Take a risk ... and another ... and another ... and one day you'll be wondering how it all got started.

I remember the day back in March of 2004 when I first conceived of what an online math competition might be like.

On September 16, 2006, I experienced it.

The first two years of the iTest, while successful by any reasonable measure, were not true to the vision of the project. They were temporary stopgaps - a training-wheels version of the real deal.

After the 2005 test suffered some critical typos and received a fair share of criticism, it was back to the drawing board for me. Those first couple of months were difficult, but they were important...I had to re-commit myself to a project that had suddenly soured.

The long-term vision of the company has been to deliver a suite of educational competitions across a variety of subjects all for free, augmenting the US educational system through competition. A unique approach, but one that got us distracted: toying with expansion prevented us from doing what we should've focused on all along...nailing one subject cold before we expand.

So 2006 was like I was having to re-invent the company all over again. The key was to get "back to basics" - eschew designs on artificial growth and get back to real, organic expansion through word-of-mouth built around a core product. And like any good sports team, after a lackluster season, what do you do? Go out and get yourself some new talent.

Enter Thomas Mildorf, the MIT student with a profound gift for dreaming up math questions, and a highly regarded individual among the national math community. He became the 2006 iTest's heavy hitter overnight. I structured an incentive-based deal for him to write over half of the contest, and he accepted, and that was the first step in the right direction.

Next was fast-forwarding our technological capabilities in accordance with our long-term strategy. Here, I turned to Dave Cowart and Evan to get the job done. Evan handled the upkeep of content on our informational (corporate) page, while Dave built from scratch the software that would later be used to run the 2006 iTest in a way that no academic competition has ever been run EVER. How awesome is that?

Next after that was the step to change our marketing approach to a more practical, slimmed-down version of the 2005 marketing campaign. In 2005, we bombarded schools early on (in April before the September competition) with a massive folder of information that included a mousepad. The mousepad did succeed in getting us eyeballs by teachers and students using it next to their school computers, but it was too high of a cost...and it was eventually outweighed by the fact that teachers simply forgot about the competition come September, even with that mousepad sitting there, since it had been months since receiving the packet and thinking about the event.

This year, we hit schools with a nice oversized postcard with our key messages more clearly communicated than before, and we hit them right before the event. As in just 2-3 weeks before.

The result? Doubling of the number of teams that submitted tests, doubling of the number of schools signed up, and an explosion of the "reach" of the competition from 31,000 students to 55,000 students nationwide.

Those three decisions - upgrading the test, upgrading our technology, and tweaking our marketing - have helped completely redefine the brand, moving the iTest closer to the immovable object that it should become in time.

I took a lot of pride in writing the test for the event. That was probably the hardest thing about the past 12 months was ceding such a chunk of the testwriting - a big ego hit. It hard letting go of something you enjoy doing and take pride in, even when you know its for the best. I was able to write part of the test - still hanging on, at least symbolically, to part of the testwriting process - while turning over the keys to the real meat of it all to a more capable hand.

As we got students registered and logging on to our system in the days leading up to the competition, the excitement and hype surrounding the competition was palpable. And I don't think we disappointed anyone. I invented the idea of the iTest Warmups on the spot, helping us build an early buzz and get more registrants into the system quicker, and then we delivered the main event: the 2006 exam.

Students collaborated on the exam using our software, sharing their answers with their teammates and leaving ideas, thoughts, and directives for each other on the blog on each team's main page. And even better, the blog on the main page enabled students and teachers alike to correspond from all over the country, as if the entirety of the United States were congregated in a massive auditorium somewhere sharing one common experience.

As someone close to academic competitions for most of my life, I understand the sea change this represents, for better or worse: THIS SIMPLY HAS NEVER, EVER BEEN DONE BEFORE.

Now, as I prepare to restructure the company to better prepare us for the repercussions of our turnaround, I get to pause just for a brief moment and say thanks to the people who made this possible.

The iTest is an idea that has come to pass that now has tremendous value to the educational system - precisely where we wanted to go. Now as long as we don't take a step backward in '07, we should be in excellent position to capitalize on our turnaround.

2006 iTest is underway ... I'll have a long blog post about it here after it has concluded. This year's event is going extremely well and has been improved in several significant ways from last year...but we've still got a long way to go. Students and teachers have been emailing me with praise for this year's competition and I hope that continues! Obviously people are enjoying themselves, the test, and the online software, which is great.

On another note, this story just disgusts me. I've seen some disgusting human beings, believe me, but this is just pathetic and really pretty sad.

Ne-Yo - "Sexy Love"

I first heard this song driving to work one morning here back in Nashville ... you know when you hear the way certain songs open, and you know its just going to be a great tune? BIG, driving beat, with Neptunes-esque synthesizers bouncing around...and a very simple, memorable vocal melody. Love this tune ... download it!

Students are getting registered, creating teams, and getting ready for the 2006 iTest. This is a big year for us, because even though participation may be unpredictable this year because we're trying out some new marketing tactics ... we have a brand new piece of software developed in house and a much more polished test than last year. The word of mouth after this year's event should be much better than it was last year. The emphasis on driving the core business and building the foundation of the iTest back after last year will pay off.

Enjoying a peaceful Labor Day weekend, watching some college football yesterday and getting in some Saint's Row, Dead Rising, and Enchanted Arms. Went out with Lori the past couple of nights to a couple of my favorite restaurants, Five and Diner (in Cool Springs) and Logan's, in honor of my birthday on Monday.

I'll be 26 on September 4. That's old! Since my last birthday, I've worked a solid year at the same company and have spent six of those months in Beaufort, SC ... away from Nashville. I've begun to reposition the iTest as a much more technologically-intensive enterprise, a strategic move that is not even half complete yet. And I continue to mull pulling the trigger on another opportunity that's out there.

By the time I turn 27, Lori will have passed the bar and begun work here in town, which will be a whole new adventure to add to everything else going on right now. What else will have happened by the time next September rolls around? It'll be fun finding out.

Been about a month since my last post ... a lot has happened since then.

Returned from Beaufort on August 1 to Nashville. Miss the guys at Tri-Command, but Nashville's my home. Went down at visited shortly thereafter, for a couple of days in the middle of August, and will head back again to coincide with their project review in the middle of October.

Attended Ben Stark's wedding and even got to play a song there. Great stuff. The wedding was beautiful (once again at Benton Chapel) and it was a very joyful event. Saw Mike and Jeff and Jacob, and got to talk everything from Jeff's wedding next year to Jacob's aspirations of opening up a coffee establishment in DC to Mike's new job in Tampa.

The iTest approaches and we are ready. A mailer goes out this week to schools and we unveil the new piece of software we've been developing to handle the test and student load. It will be a transitional year but one that will well position the iTest for the next few years to be a fulfilling, enjoyable experience for students and to really penetrate into hard-to-reach low-income markets to get more students learning math.

My brother has picked up an XBox 360 and the world just isn't the same. He has already trashed my records in Marble Blast and is reaching untouchable status in Geometry Wars. He hasn't yet picked up Capcom's campy zombie game Dead Rising yet, but like him, you should go get it and play it if you've got a 360. One of the best games to date for the system.

That's it for now...I'll try not to make it another month before posting again.

On a blogging kick here for a while ... and it will get back to this way more and more as I transition back full time to Nashville out of Beaufort ...

GameSpot featured this piece asking the editors of the site if there were only 5 games they could take with them to a deserted island, what would they be?

They give some pretty interesting answers, so you ought to check that out. Mine are:

1. Halo 2. This is a pretty simple choice. The number of hours I've spent playing Halo 2 with friends online, if I actually had access to that number, has got to be really scary. Like Michael Jackson scary. The game just doesn't get old. Easily the best first person shooter of all time, and a contender for best multiplayer game ever in any genre.

2. Baseball Mogul. The Baseball Mogul series (particularly the 2007 version) is incredibly addictive for anyone who's ever wanted to be a general manager of a baseball team. Another game that simply does not ever get old. From grabbing a critical piece of a playoff run at the trade deadline, to adding a team option or a player option for a 5th year to a big contract to a marquee player in order to get the contract negotiated, to finding out that when you signed Randy Johnson, he went and taught a couple of your double-A players his slider and made them better ... the game is really easy to grasp and hard to turn off.

3. Civilization 4. Again, a game that doesn't get old (which is a theme, cause I'm on a desert island for forever!) and is a total masterpiece. The strategy behind whether you try to win through sheer might, or try to take over the world through economic strategy or diplomatic tactics, along with the completely customizable set of game conditions, provides for infinitely many ways to play the game. The whole franchise is awesome, but Civ 4 really moves this series closer than ever to perfection.

4. The Final Fantasy series. I'm cheating here by taking an entire series instead of one game, but what a series of games we're talking about. The epic, timeless stories that these games weave have always been what has made me such a fan of them, but the gameplay on top of the story is what makes them accessible to such a large number of people across the world. Anyone who has ever completed a Final Fantasy game understands what I'm talking about here. They are definitely coming with me to this island!

5. SimCity / Metal Marines / ActRaiser / Super Mario World. Again, I'm cheating (sue me), but I've got to take all of them. These were my four favorite games (by far) on the SNES, and while most people are familiar with the first one and last one, Metal Marines and ActRaiser were two lesser-known games that I played the hell out of when I was younger. Forget that the graphics are dated with all the PS11's and XBox 36,000,000's coming out ... back in the day of Nintendo and Super Nintendo, the graphics weren't what sold games. These games were genuinely unforgettable to play and were extremely creative in how they approached storytelling and often fused different genres together in ways that hadn't been done before.

An honorable mention goes to Brain Age for Nintendo DS. There have been no shortage of people giving me weird looks as I do Sudoku puzzles and the speed-based "100 Simple Math Calculations" mini games on there while I sit on a plane waiting to leave or head back to Nashville. Incredibly fun game with a number of actually useful, intelligent mini-games to play.

Everywhere you turn right now, whether its the business press, popular press, mainstream TV, whatever, they're talking about environmental issues and the importance of taking action in the face of an incredibly hot summer and other visible evidence of global warming. Its been interesting to see an issue that has been muted and ignored for so long finally become credible in what feels like overnight.

Random thought: US education will be that next "overnight" issue of importance sometime over the next 5 years.

Candidate wants to be 'None of the Above'

Interesting idea. And the guy's from Tennessee. Major points for actually taking initiative to do something and try to effect change instead of sitting on the sidelines and just complaining...even despite the futility of it...

iTest registration postcards head out in about 30 days to hit schools right at that critical beginning of school year time. And I'm cutting back on physical mailout material (from those nice, big folders from last year) in order to invest in some online advertising that will go out at about the same time and leading into September.

Seattle managed to pull out a win against the Yankees yesterday. Gil Meche has really turned a corner in his development and might be a legitimate #2 starter behind Felix Hernandez. Assuming Felix keeps progressing back to that dominant starter he was a year ago....he's nearly there.

Bush used his first veto of his entire presidency to overrule the stem cell bill?? I would think he'd have something better to use that on than this. I don't particularly want to die to a disease that could've been cured through stem-cell research while these embryos we put up on a pedestal stay intact sitting in some refrigerator somewhere. Thanks, but no thanks. Can we get back to discussing tax reform please, Mr. President?

And in a final note in this blog of random musings, MSNBC reports that more than half of bloggers are under 30 years old. The interconnectivity of our generation is really pretty incredible. For people my age not to be taking advantage of the time we live in, to use any of the various social networking tools at our disposal to express yourself and to stay in communication with friends across the world, is an incredible loss.

And don't give me the complete BS of "I don't want to be out on the internet lest I lose my job." Like I've blogged before, as our technological generation continues to exit school and invades the workforce, that misperception that "social internet presence" = irresponsibility will change completely. On the other hand, I have seen two separate instances of drunk/drug pictures out on the internet costing two different people jobs this week though...putting pictures like that of yourself out on the 'net will probably remain a really stupid thing to do!

Back in Beaufort...here until August 1, at which point I'll be spending a week every month here, but will no longer have an apartment or anything like that. It'll be back to normal in Nashville. Lori has been great about dealing with a potentially difficult situation and I am looking forward to being back for her. I will miss Tri-Command's staff a lot but I will look forward to my trips back down there to visit. Its one of the best groups of people, in terms of both talent and personality, that I've probably ever seen anywhere.

On a lighter note, Xbox Live Arcade has finally announced a release schedule for the rest of the summer, so I can have some additional gameage to play while I'm down here. Frogger was just released today to download for $5 so I've been playing that for a while. Its the way I unwind...now I think I'm going to get back to it.

I am up way later than I should be for a 6:22 AM flight out of Nashville...

I paid a Vandy student to do some computer work for me while I was out of town, the major part of which was to rescue the data from two old computers and combine it on a new 250 GB drive he was to install.

I got the computer back from him today and am completely intrigued by the contents of the old drives, which are probably in the neighborhood of 5-7 years old. I've got plenty of old music, which I have spent serious time importing much of it into my current iTunes setup to get on my iPod. But I also have plenty of MY old music, from dual or 3-track keyboard instrumental pieces to piano+vox 1-minute song ideas to full demos of songs like "Black and White" that are pretty crazy to hear after all these years. It really tells a story, but interestingly, some of it is actually good and might be usable someday in the next album I'll record.

Plenty of old assignments from college were saved, including an interesting WWII report that was the only document I bothered to open while sorting through some of the stuff earlier tonight. An old journal of mine, running through the first years of college, is on there...now THAT was interesting. All my NES and SNES emulated games are there, as well as a full version of the one and only Duke Nukem 3D too. All sorts of Vanderbilt Music Society material is there, as well as mp3s from a Pub "Battle of the Bands" event. VMS not making a compilation CD of that stuff and selling it on the Card is still a huge mistake.

It is pretty insane to look back at that stuff, have it come back so clearly to me where I was then, and then see what's happening now and what God had in store for me. I am MARRIED to my beautiful wife. I have a nice little business with the iTest, as well as a great full-time job. I actually draw a revenue stream (modest as it may be!) from JBF500 royalty payments (as well as my instrumental disc obviously). And I've got my sights set on another album sometime in the next 5 years which might actually display some talent!

Looking back then, it was such a time of uncertainty for me for so many reasons. Family reasons, personal reasons, non-existent only-in-my-head reasons ... all sorts of reasons.

Which of course lead to plenty of excuses. Yeah, lots of excuses for why some things happened and others didn't.

So where I might have had a night of horror by going back and subjecting myself to some of those memories, much like it might be for someone to look back in a high school yearbook decades later...its not really like that at all. Its a feeling of understanding how blessed I am to be here and able to do precisely what it is I want to be doing...understanding how great it is to not take life as it is now for granted, and really seeking to help other people get over the stuff I went through.

Anything I can do to instill that invincible feeling of confidence in other people, I do it. Mainly, convincing people that hey, we live in a world with 6 billion people in it ... someone will ALWAYS have something negative and nasty to say about what you're doing. Someone will always take offense when others figure out how to express themselves and gain that personal identity everyone looks for. If someone's going to disapprove of your actions NO MATTER WHAT, then why not do what you want to do in the brief life you've got?

OK, enough of this late-night rambling! Off to Beaufort tomorrow morning (actually, THIS MORNING!) to begin about a week-and-a-half of work down there, including the TCMH project review. I'll see you later...