zacharyc

I’ve been commuting a lot more. Every Monday morning I hop in the car and start with my favorite podcast, This American Life. (Short aside, I got into this show because of piece I posted about here). Three weeks ago I heard the first of a two part series on Harper High School. To say I was moved is a catastrophic understatement. This American Life chose Harper because they were in their home city of Chicago and last year there 28 shooting incidents with current and former students. The stories of the lives of the students is a strong juxtaposition with my own childhood. They are forced into gangs that are about protection, not crime. The school is the place they feel most safe. And it has been under a special grant to provide great services for these kids. The grant is ending next year, and many of the support positions will be losing funding. They are collecting donations to support these kids. ...

I’ve been talking about this for a while with a close circle of friends. I’d like to start a trend of donating $5 a month to different charitable causes. The goal being if I can get enough people behind the idea, we could make some significant impact to the charitable space. Each month, I’m going to come up with a new charity, and provide instructions for donating to them. I’ll try not to hit the same charity too often, but there are a couple of causes I feel particularly passionate about. ...

I saw this on Devour, this video embodies why I train for sports: The video and the music are compelling, so watch the video, but here are the words: There are no grand celebrations here. No speeches, no bright lights, but there are great athletes. Somehow we’ve come to believe that greatness is reserved for the chosen few, for the superstars. The truth is, greatness is for all of us. This is not about lowering expectations, it’s about raising them for every last one of us. Because greatness is not in one special place, and it is not in one special person. Greatness is wherever somebody is trying to find it. ...

A couple weeks ago my brother approached me to help him with building a website for Westport Rotary’s Lobster Fest. I obliged and helped build the site at: The Rotary’s Website. I started off by sketching a lobster in Paper: Then I started thinking, my goals in creating the site were: Provide more style than the standard rotary site Keep Westport Rotary looking professional, while still allowing the Lobster Fest to be fun Make the site clean and readable Use their Point of Sale (POS) system from Authorize.net In case they take it down, you can see it on my projects. For a look at where it started you can see the old page here. ...

I saw this video on napping: It occurs to me that there a several people I’d like to share this with, but my concern is some of these people won’t take the time to watch the video. To solve this problem I’m going to articulate the main points of it. Feel free to watch it, they probably say it better than I, but mine is written and theirs is in video form. Naps Are Good for you This isn’t entirely the case, but basically, taking a nap is quenching your body’s thirst. Especially right after lunch. ...