Minnesota | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

When It’s This Cold (Part II)

Here’s my last weather-related post for a while. I couldn’t resist the update though, especially when we hit -22 Fahrenheit yesterday morning. Here was the Old Main thermostat reading:

As before, the setting on the right is the target temperature (69), while the big number is the actual indoor temperature. It’s a little warmer upstairs, but still awfully cold. There’s no way for the furnace to keep up in a big old house like ours. Yesterday’s high was -11, and we’re not talking wind chill.

So here’s a fun little video to illustrate the benefits of our SMUG North Annex (also known as the Lewis J. and LaVonne A. Aase Motor Fleet and Retreat Center.) When it’s this cold, I’m not spending much time in the attic, but I’m glad our vehicles have a slightly warmer place to be. It’s kind of amazing to watch the car thermometer reading drop after I backed out of the garage.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6sNad4S8IU]

And as I started to say (before my Flip batteries gave out), I really appreciate having a nice warm bus (with wifi) to ride instead of having to drive.

The good news: today we topped out at 2 degrees above zero, and tomorrow should be in the 20s.

This has been a hectic week, as I’ve been working on the launch of a major new work-related blog. I’m looking forward to telling you all about it later on next week.

Meanwhile, I expect now to be able to resume some of the regular SMUG curriculum development over the weekend.

When it’s this cold…

…it doesn’t matter where you set the thermostat. In the first photo below, you see the Old Main thermostat, with the target and actual temperature. The furnace just can’t keep up.

I tell people Minnesota weather isn’t that bad (which is better than “isn’t that good,” for those of you who don’t speak Minnesotan), and that we usually have 3 weeks a year in which the temperature stays below zero F.

This is one of those weeks.

I’m on the way to university of St.Thomas for a journalism seminar. The second photo is the traffic, which is making me late (but also enabling me to compose this post via WordPress for iPhone.)

No animals or humans were harmed or endangered in the writing of this post. Traffic was stop and go, with more stop than go.

Updated: When I got to St. Thomas (about 9:45), I added this video I shot during the stop and go traffic. It’s not my best work, because I was paying attention to the road (though I was only going about 3 mph), but I think the message is good for young people considering journalism or PR careers.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNW38ta84sI]

Flip Video of High School Sports

The Flip video camera, which SMUGgles know I like a lot, does a reasonably decent job of capturing video of sporting events, as long as they’re in a relatively small venue.

Here’s video I shot last night, of my daughter’s high school basketball team in their home opener. They won the game 68-40.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1eyB-OsUnE]

If you click through to view the video directly on YouTube (instead of embedded), you can choose “Watch in High Quality,” which is a significant improvement.

Maybe for the next game I’ll try a tripod with the Flip. I really like how it saves time in digitizing though, as compared with shooting miniDV and having to import the tape. Being able to just copy the files to the hard drive and import into iMovie instead of playing an entire tape to digitize and import cuts the production time roughly in half.

Here, for comparison, is a video I shot last year with a Panasonic MiniDV camera. I’m not sure what my encoding settings were (probably not very good), but the video I shot with the Flip seems to compare favorably with this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEz2iW8d0p0]

Given its relatively non-existent zoom (it only goes to 2x, and that’s a digital zoom, not optical), you need to be pretty close to the action to get decent game video with a Flip. But given its speed and ease of use, I think the quality is acceptable (provided you keep your finger from creeping into the viewfinder.)

Her Last High School Volleyball Game?

My daughter Rebekah and her team are in the second round of the Section 1AAA volleyball tournament tonight vs. Rochester Mayo. The high school, not the Clinic.

The Austin girls are 15-9 on the year and seeded 6th. They are underdogs tonight and in any remaining matches this year, but they had a close loss (3-2) to Mayo last time.

We hope they play again on Wednesday, but we’re proud of Bekah and her teammates. And we have the whole gang of her siblings (at least the ones still at home) here with Lisa and me to cheer them on.

Update: The girls played hard tonight. They lost the first game and then came back to tie the match at 1-1 before losing the next two. There were tears all around as the seniors’ high school volleyball careers came to an end, but we also got some good news that Bekah and her teammate Jolene were nominated to play in a state all-star game in November.

And at least we still have basketball season coming!

Blogging 401: LifeSource Blog on Organ Donation, Transplant

As Chancellor of Social Media University, Global I enjoy getting to do Extension Classes, on-site presentations with organizations interested in getting involved in social media.

I did one of these in May with LifeSource, the organ procurement organization for the upper midwest.

Even more than doing the presentations, though, it’s especially gratifying to see organizations move forward with their social media projects.

That’s why I was so delighted to get a note from Becky Ousley, saying that LifeSource was launching The Source, its blog for news and conversations about donation and transplantation.

Today’s post announces the LifeSource activities associated with the Minnesota State Fair, and its booth where people can register as donors. They’re planning lots of updates from the “Great Minnesota Get Together” as people stop by to share their stories.

In addition to having hosted the extension class, Becky and her blog co-author Susan are long-time SMUGgles, participating in the on-line learning opportunities available through SMUG.

Our goal with SMUG is to have people who have participated here launch their own blogs, particularly for business or organizational use. As they do, we’ll profile them here in the Capstone Projects section, the 400-level Blogging courses. And this will give others a chance to see what their fellow SMUGgles are doing.