ChrisGiddings.net

Wes Clark urges Clinton to abandon campaign...

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

If this is true... I am one of the happiest men on Earth!

For as long as I have loved Wes Clark, I have had sincere distaste for Hilary Clinton... his endorsement of her is something which has weighed heavily on me since it rang through the land last Autumn.

Wes... if it's true... please don't wait too long to make the suggestion public. Your campaign for the presidency may not have been successful... and as sad as I was for that... I will rejoice when Hilary concedes. She's not right for America.

Now if only Bill Richardson had hung in there a little longer... ;-)

AmericaBlog.com Article

I knew it!

Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

According to recent research older siblings really do receive the brunt of the discipline as compared to younger siblings.

I knew it!!!

MSNBC Article

A decrease in USA life expectancy... in some places...

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

It has been determined scientifically that certain counties in the United States have a trend towards lower life expectancy where most of the nation trends on a very well publicized higher life expectancy.

The article goes into male versus female life expectancy trends, disease trends and other information in order to come to its well founded and peer reviewed conclusion.

My good friend Paul was quick to note that the noted trends began during the Reagan presidency and have continued mostly unabated since then. It is however unmistakable that the trends are located in Republican controlled territory whereas Democrat controlled territory sees mostly increased life expectancy.

Obviously the causes for the trends had to have begun well before the trends themselves... but I do not believe the report goes into the origins of the trends.

The original report/article

New photos posted!

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

A LONG wait has been had, to be sure. However, I have posted new photos to my Flickr account. I will post links here and update the Photos page tonight.

Cincinnati Citizens Government Academy: Week 2

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400

This article is a follow-up from last week's entry on the Cincinnati Citizens Government Academy.

Last night I attended the second week of the Cincinnati Citizens Government Academy. This week's course was primarily composed of drier topics, but I was very interested in the aspects and areas they covered, including: building permits; developer assistance; city planning; vision and direction; transparency in process; multi-jurisdictional cooperation and marketing the city to developers and corporations.

While I won't recount all of the discussion which ensued during the evening I would like to note quite a few important (to me) details:

The Department of City Planning was disbanded in the mid-nineties after having been one of the best planning departments in the country just a few years prior. It was reformed during Autumn of 2007 with Carl Graves at the helm who had worked for Baltimore, Atlanta, DC and Cincinnati (in no particular order) and who is already very familiar with the city).
The former head of the code violations & inspections department retired in Autumn of 2007. Milton Dahoney Jr, Cincinnati's City Manager (discussed last week) took the opportunity to place this additional division under Mr. Graves' wing to increase efficiency for two departments that work frequently with each other. This also consolidated city departmental staff into a primary location.
The city has many many blighted properties which need to be torn down. These properties are often either abandoned, stale or condemned - BUT the city doesn't have the money to tear them all down or refurbish the important or historic ones and relies on grants from state and federal government to do so. According to our correspondent for the code violations group, they run out of money for properly reclamation and demolition long before they run out of properties to reclaim or demolish.
The city of Cincinnati has 52 distinct neighborhoods/boroughs, many of which have their own flair and feel. The Planning and Permits departments work with the local councils to assist in up and coming projects, feed [gap] financing into important or watershed projects and handle requests for joint development assistance ventures.

Re: The Age of the Mayor

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

I have been contemplating a run for the mayoral seat in my jurisdiction (Cincinnati, OH) for the past few years. My reason for doing so is that I believe in "trickle-up".

The idea that most everyone in politics wants a higher and more powerful position than they currently do is not a hidden one.

My thought is that successful changes made at the local level will be sought after at the county, state and federal levels by those very same people as they advance in their race to the top.

Most often I hear from other young hopefuls who are just as bright, energetic and engaged in real change... but they are down on their prospects because they don't want the system to change them into someone who works the system instead of improving it.

My 0.02

NOTE: This article is a response to this article on the Harvard Political Review.

Down with the dreaded Influenze... version 2.0

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Here I am hoping to make an awesome and insightful post about how I've been thinking about my Dad since the anniversary of his death is coming up... and what happens?

INFLUENZA

Much thanks to Anthony and Chandler for the share(s)!

I hate you both with the passion of a thousand rabid weasels each!

I am SO excited for sleep tonight.

Hello Weekly - Podcast

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Hello Weekly is a new podcast I'm throwing together for a J-Pop fan website I'm a member of is now online. I'm not sure if this is the eventual name or format... it IS just an example... but it should be fun. :-)

Progress!

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Since I posted my new years resolutions I have handily been able to meet my goals with them. Granted it's only been a couple weeks... but that's enough for me to be encouraged I suppose.

No soda
No coffee
More milk, wster and tea
More time with the cat
Eat out less frequently

Next on my list I need to tackle exercise if I want to meet my goals for losing weight and becoming healthier.

Recommended Addition to iTunes

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

This is a suggestion I submitted this evening as a feature enhancement to iTunes. Contact me if you agree or have a different idea on how to handle this.

Over time I have amassed a rather healthy sized iTunes library. A great deal of my library is music. Even so, music takes up very little space compared to the other content which iTunes handles the organization of for me.

I could certainly go through the painful process of manually managing the locations for the different content types iTunes handles for me. However, it would take me a large amount of time to handle this unfortunately complex issue.

Instead, it would be nice if iTunes had the ability to designate different locations for different content types. While I might take this time to specify specific categories for myself, I imagine others may desire additional categories or different categories altogether. That being the case I think handling my request by providing 'smart organization' options in the iTunes preferences you open iTunes to much greater organizational customizability without necessarily making the interface much more complex for end users.

Using a similar interface as iTunes already does for smart-playlists to allow users to select either a pre-determined selection of content types or a dynamically generated list of content types would be perfect in this scenario. A user would simply choose to create a new content rule and specify their selected parameters for organization. Following those parameters iTunes would then provide an option for the user to have iTunes keep their library organized so that new matching content would be handled by the smart-organization rule.

Thus if I buy a new TV Show or TV Show episode via the iTunes Store it would download, and then iTunes would simply transfer the downloaded file to the rule's specified destination and iTunes would check if the destination was on a separate drive deleting the originally downloaded file if so needed (obviously not deleting the file if it has not been completely and successfully downloaded).

As my iTunes library grows in excess of 2TB (due to HD video podcasts, hoards of music, TONS of TV Shows and several movies all from the iTMS as well as compatible content from other sources) it seems that I either need to transfer my stash to a RAID based storage array (commonly too expensive for most people - myself included), setup a SAN based storage system (again too expensive - and often complicated for most users) or wait until drives exceeding 2TB in size are produced and sold at an affordable price.

Barring any of these things occurring soon... I feel it prudent for iTunes to outgrow it's single library location limitation and broaden its view to encompass multiple possible storage locations.

The solution I have described above is simple enough for basic users to control their storage locations easily, but powerful enough for seasoned and power users to setup very complex rules for organization. While my needs are to simply separate my content out to multiple drives (TV, Music, Podcasts, Music Videos, Movies, Audiobooks, PDF accompaniment files) I can imagine some of us would desire much more granular control. Enough to say I would like "all" "TV Shows" of the "Genre" "Drama" with original air dates between "10/01/2005" and "07/01/2008" to be placed in the following location "Drive-Name".

I thank you for being patient and reading through my suggestions for iTunes this round. I truly hope my suggestion is passed on as I feel it warrants merit (or I obviously wouldn't have suggested it).

New Years Resolutions

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Well, it's another new year here on Earth and we get to work on completing another revolution around the sun. In so doing there's a tradition of setting milestones (goals) for yourself in seeking to better one or more parts of your life as an individual.

For 2008 I have a rather stressful and heavy handed collection of milestones that seek to break most of the limitations I have had over the years.

Become more fiscally reticent.

Eat at home more frequently
Eat less per meal (ties into another milestone)
Pack lunch for consumption at work
Buy less on iTunes (an easy habit to fall into)
Place a hold on non-emergency projects such as remodeling, purchasing furniture and returning to school.
Use the heat and air conditioning less frequently

Lose weight and keep it off

No more soda/pop/cola, drink only water and tea. This means I will also drop sugar or sugar-replacement based beverages such as "Crystal Light" and sweetened teas.
No more coffee
Maintain an Asian diet. I need to consumer even more rice and tofu. I need to eat meat only occasionally and only to supplement tofu in a meal for taste or texture. Fewer sweets, more bland but tasty treats.
Eat more fish. More specifically frozen fish such as Tilapia or Flounder which are both very cost effective.
Less pasta. It might be tasty and delicious but eating pasta comes with eating pasta sauce and that's not going to help me. Unless it's home-made, which isn't hard to make... but is time consuming and doesn't keep as well. I'll replace pasta with more frequent rice eating.
No more noodles at home. I have a habit of making delicious noodles at home. Prepackaged noodles are not particularly healthy, are usually covered in more salt than I need and are smothered in preservatives. Replacing these with rice at home and eating noodles out once a week should satisfy my cravings for noodle-y deliciousness.
Eat out once per week. By eating out once a week I give myself something to look forward to. Additionally it should be a pattern with which I can enjoy time at home more frequently and appreciate the things I have.
Alternate eat-out locations. By selecting a number of places to visit for my weekly food excursions I wet my palette with different tastes and foods while allowing myself to experiment with ideas of different things I can make at home on my own. It will also let me keep my favorite destinations from getting tired or old as well as build an even greater appreciation for the tastes and foods I already enjoy.

Pay off school loans.

next

Pay off some personal debts

much

Join a martial art

Aikido

Fix my car

Progressive

No more games!

Spore

Reaffirm commitments

TastyRamen

CincyUpdate

Launch in 5... 4...

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Late December 2007 I launched the new layout and design for ChrisGiddings.net. The design itself is the smallest of the changes coming to the site.

The observant may have noted the new forums have gone live and are ready and waiting... for your posts of course! A myriad of topic areas exist on the forums including subsections for in politics, entertainment, food, life, general discussion and more.

I do plan on a wide array of additional features here on the site as well, which I hope will allow me to add quite a bit more content for your consumption. Here's a brief list:

More media - this includes photos, movies, audio and Flash content
More politics - historical, current, and rants from both sides of the isle are likely to ensue
More food - who doesn't like to eat? Let's add more food content including recipes, photos, videos and more
Strong information architecture - information on candidates, genealogical research, search engine optimization, content development and some extra surprises

Enjoy!

Down with the dreaded Influenza

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I'll write about how my new job is going in a future post. Suffice to say for now it is keeping me busy. In the meantime I am down with the dreaded Influenza and it's rather unpleasant. Back to bed with me.

Scholarships

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Okay, so I've never really talked about the philanthropic gene that seems to run through my veins. I'm almost always helping people, and I really, really enjoy doing so. Since I'll finally be making enough money to warrant really helping people I'm considering setting up a number of college scholarships. I'm not intending to change the world through them, but maybe helps a couple students each year to follow their dreams. To do this though I will need to set up a non profit organization [IRS recognized 501(c)3] which would control and disperse the funds. I'm curious if anyone on OKC has any tips or suggestions on going about this. Here are some details on what I would like to do offer. --- 1) Joshua Reed Giddings Equality Scholarship - Awarded to a promising student in Ashtabula County, Ohio for the college of their choice after acceptance. - $2500 to the student with the best essay of at least 1500 words covering the state and causes of equality disparity in the United States and how they feel the issues would best be tackled. 2) Harold Lee Giddings Under-performer Scholarship - Awarded to a promising but under-performing student in Glen Burnie, Maryland for the college of their choice after acceptance. - $2500 to the student providing teacher recommendations, holding a high school GPA of 1.8 to 2.8 and who has the best written essay of at least 1500 words covering the causes, effects and possible remedies to violent crime. 3) Christopher Aaron Giddings Urban Vision Scholarship - Awarded to a promising student living and attending school in the greater Cincinnati, Ohio area for the college of their choice after acceptance. - $2500 to the student with the best essay of at least 1500 words covering the history or and a vision for transforming Cincinnati into something greater. The essay also should cover the steps to achieving their envisioned 'new' Cincinnati. 4) Larry W. Giddings Scholarship for Political Vision - Awarded to a promising student attending college in the United States of America majoring in Political Science for the school of their choice after acceptance. - $2500 to the student with the best essay describing their understanding of American constitutional ideals, how they feel our nation has run astray of those ideals, and what they think it will take to return to those ideals while still providing forward progress. The essay should be at least 1500 words. --- $10k in scholarships doesn't really warrant a staff or anything, but I would like to be able to provide students who hold a vision or goal the opportunity to follow their dreams as I continue to do.

I'm Hired!!!

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Just got an official offer from Comair (the regional airline subsidiary of Delta) today. I get flight benefits, full health, dental, eye and life insurance plus 401k options and I believe I get to participate in a stock purchase plan after a while. The salary is more than competitive for what they've described me doing (we'll see how that pans out). I'm really excited for this opportunity. The salary is enough for me to have decided to push back my return to school by a couple years. If I plan it right I'll be able to pay off my school loans from ITT Tech, save and pay for my full 5 year college (contingencies you know ;-) ) attendance and maybe get a new car or something. I think it's a good fit. Their culture seems fun and relaxed. The techs their are largely Apple people and are pretty excited to have an ex-Apple employee join their ranks... even though I was just a retail employee. So, in short, I am really looking forward to a comfortable lifestyle now with plenty of travel opportunity in the mix. :-)