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A Personal Note

MikeM — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 04:02:54 +0000

Today is my 10th wedding anniversary. As many of you know, I’ve been living apart from my wife because of my job, though she will finally be joining me in South Carolina next month! To top it off, my wife is actually even further away than normal, as she is traveling in Greece as part of her job! (The last big commitment she wanted to live up to before leaving.)

If you had asked me 10 years ago how we would be celebrating this anniversary, I don’t think I would have guessed this in a million chances.

This weekend I am also missing my High School’s 25 year reunion. (Yeah, I’m getting old!) If you had asked me then where I would be living, again, I don’t think South Carolina would have even been a consideration. I don’t think I had even heard of Greenville, so I know I couldn’t have guessed that!

My point? Life’s an adventure. You never really know where you’ll end up, and if you’re open to it, life will surprise you. Ten years ago, I was getting married, something I swore I would never do again. Sometimes, you meet someone who you want to break all your rules for, and once you start breaking those rules, the adventure begins. I haven’t regretted any of the adventure, even the challenges of this past year. In fact, all of the challenges along the way in this adventure have only served to make me a better man, and made our relationship stronger than anything I could have imagined on our wedding day.

Then again, it’s fairly obvious that I simple wasn’t thinking big enough back then. I won’t make that mistake again. Now I know that our adventure may take us anywhere, and we’ll get through it, together. And still, 10 years from now, I hope I’m just as amazed by where life has taken us as I am today!

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New Features Added to Community Site

MikeM — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 22:09:32 +0000

I just posted a note over on the Survivor’s Network about ome new features I’ve added there, but wanted to share it here as well in the hopes that folks will check it out and start getting involved over there a bit more!

I’ve been testing a few new things in the hopes of getting folks to check in and get involved in the new site. One, a Twitter integration called Tweetstream, that lets you both share your twitter status updates on this site, and update twitter when you post something new here. You can enable it by going to your profile, edit profile then clicking the “Settings” link. You’ll see a new Tweetstream link from that window and just follow along the instructions.

You can also now post video or photos embedded into a status update or forum post by simply copying the URL where it’s located, and the embed plugin will do the rest, provided that the URL is from any of these sites:

* YouTube
* Blip.tv
* Vimeo
* DailyMotion
* Flickr
* Hulu
* Viddler
* Qik
* Revision3
* Photobucket
* Scribd
* WordPress.tv

Hope you enjoy!

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First Carnival Against Child Abuse of 2010

MikeM — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:51:43 +0000

Paul, from Mind Parts does a great job, not just in hosting the Carnival this month, but also explaining why the Carnival is very cool:

The purpose of the Carnival is to be a place where important posts are shared with others who may not be frequent readers of an author’s blog. I, myself, have realized that I cannot follow all the blogs I want to follow, so the monthly Carnival gives me a chance to see what else is out there. There are so many wonderful bloggers and you are all doing a wonderful service not only to yourselves, but to the cause of ending child abuse and recovering from child abuse. My sincere thanks to all of you.

I couldn’t agree more, and I’ll be over to his post to check out the other entries in this month’s edition!

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Why I’m thankful for Social Networking

MikeM — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:45:41 +0000

Reposted from my other blog, because it applies to the readers here just as much!

As we in the US get ready to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow, many of us like to blog about the things we are thankful for. Each year, as I dwell on that thought, certain things always come to the forefront. I’m always thankful for the life I have, for the people who love me, for our health and well-being, etc. This year isn’t any different, I recognize how incredibly lucky and blessed I am to have what I have, but at the same time I’m also feeling thankful for all of the connections I’ve made through the wonders of technology, especially social networking.

In the 8 years since I started a technology blog, which has morphed into this site, then adding the Child Abuse Survivor site, and things like Twitter and Facebook, I’ve gotten to know so many wonderful people that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to know. I’ve reconnected with friends from long ago, and had the opportunity to keep in better contact with my large Irish-Catholic family that has managed to spread it’s way across the country. I’ve been able to use the tools to learn more about the people I see regularly, connecting with them over shared interests, learning more about my coworkers and friends than I managed to learn before.

Being naturally introverted, and sometimes painfully shy, I can easily recognize how much the ability to follow and connect with people online allows me to be much more social than I normally am in a public situation. It can be near impossible for me to strike up a conversation with someone I don’t know, let alone try to “work a room” at an event. On the other hand, if I have already connected with others who will be at the event online, that becomes much, much easier.

The last 12 months has been a bit of a watershed in regards to connecting with people online, and building relationships that I am very thankful for. Part of that is the growing use of the tools by everyone, part of it is the pure happenstance of events occurring this year that provided opportunities to meet and connect. I’ve had a happy convergence of family events (traveling to NY, my cousin’s wedding), professional opportunities (speaking at ILTA 09, doing social networking presentations in the office), the start up of the Abuse Survivors network, and lots of old friends creating Facebook accounts that have fueled those connections, but it’s the communication platforms provided to us now that have made it easy to stay in touch with those folks.

So, while I’m not one to go on about the inherent wonderfulness of what is, essentially, just a tool. I am thankful for all of the relationships that have grown out of using these tools, whether they be a reestablishing of an old relationship, or the growth of a completely new one. Either way, I’m blessed to be in touch with so many people who teach me, inspire me by their actions, make me laugh, support me, encourage me, and entertain me to no end!

I hope you all enjoy the day, whether it’s a holiday in your homeland or not, and know that I am thankful for you.

Thankful

New Groups on the Network

MikeM — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:56:43 +0000

Over at the Survivor Network, folks are finally starting to get the hang of the Groups feature. We’ve had a couple of new ones added, the first for those of the Christian Faith to talk about how their faith plays a role in their healing, and the second a place to discuss the portrayal of survivors in TV and movies.

We’re also up to 246 members, with a lot of the new folks getting involved and starting a bunch of new discussions. Makes me glad to see them feeling comfortable and part of the community. If you haven’t joined and checked it out yet, what are you waiting for?

Support Groups

Merry Christmas to All….

MikeM — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:02:56 +0000

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