The Final Week in NJ

Alright so I haven't updated too much lately, obviously, but I swear that's only due to being busy. Actually that's almost a bold faced lie; I didn't do too much this weekend but, alas, I have some updating to do. Firstly, I just finished this ridiculous report of social media that I've been working on. And I say ridiculous because it's huge! Check this thing out:

So what that huge packet is is a report on how all the staff members of the Bonner Foundation feel about social media/ what they think we should use, as well as reports on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Email, Wikis, Blogs, and YouTube and how we will be using them. It's hefty to say the least, and what I spent the past week and a half writing. We'll see how it goes tomorrow when I present it.
   So it's my last week here in New Jersey and I'm pretty excited to be heading home. It's been nice to be hear but I'm reading to get back to a place I know. Bonner is actually hosting a conference in Princeton this week so it's going to be a hectic one leading right up until Saturday morning when I'll be leaving here to drive home. Luckily, the intrepid Corey Bridges is coming along for that ride...so expect some fun stuff to come out of that.

   Anyway, as I was walking back from lunch today, which, by the way, Panera Bread in Princeton is like a bread warzone at lunchtime, I walked by one of the celebrities I'd heard about in Princeton since I've been here. Now, when you get to Princeton people usually tell you about all the super smart/famous people that live around Princeton or went there and still hangout, but you I never expected to see anyone. Well, today I walked right by Professor Cornel West - the famous author and civil rights activist.

   I think he was actually wearing exactly this. I found a great quote from him which seems very appropriate for working at the Bonner Foundation, or simply appropriate for why we do service: "You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people, if you don't serve the people." It's pretty humbling to walk by a guy like this who didn't seem to have any overly large ego or anything. And he talked to everyone that stopped him - very cool. I wish I'd chit-chatted with him!
   Well, that's all I have right now, but I'm sure I'll have something else this week. Take care all -Jack

Oh yeah, I just remembered this: So I went out on Saturday to see what was up in the malls here so I walked into this store and got a text message and pulled out my iPhone and this guy, with a beard that made me have immediate beard envy, starts talking to me about it and how he just got an iPhone 4. So he takes out his 4.0 and starts showing what it can do and all this stuff, and pretty much now I'm in love with that brick of technology..so I get to browsing around the store and the guy starts talking about music and whatnot (of you know me, easy topic) and we get chitchatting and well, short story shorter, I bought some shorts due to 1) Awesome beard, 2) Awesome iPhone demo 3) Super outgoing hilarious sales person. Let this be a lesson that if you aspire to be a clothing salesperson in the mall..this guy was exemplary.

Surveys

This is some pretty interesting stuff
http://www.askmen.com/specials/2010_great_male_survey/

Birdday Tuesday

So we had a bird get stuck in the office basement today. Here's the (to me) hilarious video to prove it:

Birdday Tuesday

So we had a bird get stuck in the office basement today. Here's the (to me) hilarious video to prove it:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/video/video.php?v=1389054692031&ref=mf

Tuesdays

I've been at work for 1.5 hours now and this is as far as I've gotten. This article is due at noon. Or 2. I have no idea.

Woohoo Tuesday!

Making New Friends

So today was a big day! Firstly, sorry about not updating lately. Work has been, well, work. And not super exciting. We finished national reviews and blahblahblah. Second, SEE INCEPTION. If you do one thing in the next week, go see that movie. it's absolutely amazing. Amazzziinnngg!  Ok, let's get to the fun stuff. 
   So, I saw Inception Friday night (once again: awesome), and basically just did errands, a little shopping and whatnot yesterday so that brings us to today. Today I began by going to get some gas. Not exciting right? Well I stopped to get some groceries and when I was walking back to my car I heard this old man yelling my way. I guess he was really yelling for anyone, but no one would stop and help him (I even saw a guy walk to him, and then walk off). Realizing that this motorist was hailing me, I walked over to the guy, who had an oxygen mask/thing in his nose, and he tells me his car stalled. So he asks if I can push the car for him, which I did, and then tried to pay me, which was crazy so I said no, and then he went on his way. How in the world do you walk by a guy in an oxygen mask asking for help? Definitely gave me something to think about all day. Anyway now the adventure starts. In the afternoon we went down to Jersey Shore to attempt to get some tan on.

And this was definitely the Jersey Shore that you see in the hit MTV show. Take a moment and create a picture of what you would expect that to look like..ok yeah, so it looked exactly like that. Anyway, so I'm laying there getting my Snookie (tan) on and there's this amusing group of  'guidos' behind us. They were having hilarious conversations such as "MY MOM JUST CALLED SHOULD I CALL HER BACK!?" and "I KNEW SHE WAS A YANKEES FAN! I KNEW IT MAN SHE'S FROM SOUTH JOISEY!" Anyway, I digress, as I was lying there, minding my own business, the leader of this pack walks over to me and quaintly says "Hey dere, lemme get a pikcha with da tannest man on da beach!" (IE me. I'm not tan.) I reply "of course". So I stand up, and his friend clicks a picture of us and the original guy goes "Freddy Tan! (me) Hey Freddy Tan come meet my friends." Of course I obliged him and walked over to the pack of party-goers and was promptly introduced as "Fred Tan, the tannest guy in Belmar! This is the next star of Jersey Shore!" So I meet all of this guy, "Bobby"'s friends and take pictures with them all - because I'm an alien to them - and Bobby says "Let's go meet some girls, Fred!"
   At that, Bobby takes me on a tour of the beach meeting people, introducing me as "The Next Jersey Shore Star" and taking pictures with everyone we met. I decided to go with it and tell everyone I was "Snowflake", the opposite of Snookie, and to look for me on the next season. A few people actually jumped up and took photos with me too! Haha. I think the best quote to come from my campaign as Fred Tan was when Bobby asked a girl, who was laying with her boyfriend, if she 'wanted' me: "You want Fred Tan? No? Well, baby, what's Freddy Tan spelled backwards? BOBBY!!".

    After my run at stardom on the beach, Bobby and I went back to his group of friends where I was invited to go clubbing with them and meet more people. Bobby and his friends decided to start playing volleyball next so we parted ways and I went back to my little piece of the beach. A few times Bobby called me back to "run security" on girls that were walking around his volleyball game. In the picture above, that's Bobby in the red. The whole ordeal was hilarious. They all continued telling me how I was now part of the Jersey Shore and taking photos with me, it was great. Bobby wasn't happy to see me go as he yelled "No shirts for Fred Tan!" But I told him we had to leave and that was the last of Bobby. Man, what a good time.
My new Guido friends:

No big deal, I'm just a Jersey Shore celebrity.

On another note, MTV's The Hills had it's series finale. omgi'msotornuphowcaniliveanymore. Just kidding, this may be the best day ever.

A real update

Hey everyone! So I figured I should come on here and actually update with what I'm doing right now for this SoS. So, ya know how we do CLAs and positions and all that? Remember how sometimes it's not "good enough" and we have to rewrite them? Well, I'm currently doing Bonner national reviews. This means that all of us in the office have a list of schools and have to review the Summer period of Bonner work. Also, we have to go back to the Fall of 2008 and review eeevveerryyy position, CLA, and training and enrichment that a school has done. Exciting. Actually, it kind of is. it's really interesting to see what's going on at the other schools. Also, The Foundation is really good at giving us a bunch of projects at once, so I'm currently working with two other people to bring all Bonner's social media into the "useful" state. It should be pretty cool. The vision we're working with is going to be an activist blog, a lot like this one, that also posts to Twitter and Facebook..but it's not going to be dumb, boring stuff - it'll actually be interesting. Also, this PolicyOptions.org thing is shaping up. I think we're talking about making some algorithm (or adapting one) that will take all the service news and import it to one big feed. Or something. I dunno. If you're really interested in what I'm on about go to http://techmeme.com/.....this site is one of the first to do this, but it's for technology.
Anyway, have fun all!

Hilarious

I found this hilarious

Saturdays

Just quickly, I meant to put up these two photos lately:
Firstly, why do all these mannequin children look like Justin Bieber?? Disgusting.

Secondly, I drive by this sign everyday and I have no idea who Amy is, what shes does, or why she's so important - but clearly someone in the community is excited she's "back"

Heat Waves

I am in New Jersey right? Because as far as I can tell, the Jersey Shore crew and myself are on the sun. To corroborate this story, I hopped in my car after work (around 5:05, mind you) to see this:

I didn't even know my car could figure out it was this hot. AND, I was in the shade. Ridiculous! I'm currently losing all my body mass through the liquid sweating from me as I type you this. But I'll struggle through, for you need something to read!

So, unless you're horribly un-American, you probably realized our country's birthday was last Sunday. So, I drove up to Cohoes, NY to meet up with a friend and we both drove to Boston, Mass. on Friday night to celebrate with some friends. (PS, there's a Bonner Foundation update at the end, so skip to that if interested!)

I was pretty astounded by this one enormous (hill/mountain?) on the way to NY. Doesn't look too intimidating via iPhone photo but it was huuuge. Anyway, we basically spent three days/nights on a friend's balcony BBQing and heckling those who walked by. And by heckling, I mean being overly excited that America was having a birthday. We even yelled it in Spanish a bunch of times! Now that's multicultural. I just took some fun photos throughout Boston, so I'll throw 'em up here:
We found this ridiculously, unneededly, seemingly racist cereal while shopping for grilling supplies. Apparently they sell White Woman, Asian Lady, and Midlife Crisis flavor (and let's be serious, you know those two on the left aren't just friends).

We also got some ice cream at this awesome place in Quincy Market and naturally I made my cone Super American Pride Flavor: (Which, if you're wondering is mint chocolate chip AKA the best ice cream)

Later we decided to get our culture on and bought some pizza. Which is my favorite food ever, by the way.
They had some special that was like fresh asparagus and cheese or something but it doesn't actually matter because they advertised it with this:

Brilliant. Well, I did bring my real camera with me but I didn't snap a ton of photos with it - mainly because I know Boston pretty well..I know, selfish. I'm sorry guys! But I'll post what I did!
I have some kind of infatuation with telephone poles. They're completely mesmerizing to me! I'm like some kind of cat with one of those little mice that squeaks. Hours pass.

  This guy ended up upside down on his head balanced on another dude's head.

This group of street performers is always around Quincy Market. I'm pretty sure they make bank; they're super mean to the audience and really, for employed dancers...just ok. But this guy jumped three dancers and a little boy for the finale.

So from there we ended up going to see fireworks at some place we heard you could maybe see fireworks..you really couldn't, so I just fiddled with my camera for a bit:

Yup, that about wraps up 4th of July, 2010. Got stuck in about 7 hours of traffic on the way home!
But, I bet you're dying to know what's been happening at the Bonner Foundation lately, eh? Well, Bobby is now President; Wayne is moving to Atlanta, GA, shortly, and we've hit the ground running with this PolicyOptions website. So, what is it? Well, it's going to be a directory/database of every piece of legislation/news/data articles/campaigns/etc that hit's the internet within the service oriented world. Currently, we're populating the website with information on hunger/poverty/obesity information and making it usable to the general public. You can actually go on there now and see the research that myself, as well as the other interns, have been doing the past few days.

PolicyOptions.org

Check it out and see what we've been doing. The site should eventually end up like a Facebook news feed full of relevant, searchable data on service topics. Also, we finally submitted our changes/evaluation of the Results conference today..we'll see how that goes! Plus, got another intern today..some new-to-highschool assistant, and another highschool senior helping research. Oh my how office dynamics change!

Well, keep it chilled out everyone. I for one, can't seem to find that cold air!

Happy America Weekend

So I thought I had a bad commute:

Not as bad as Russia.
Anyway, it's the weekend of the fourth of July! Woohoo independence! What are you all doing for it? I'm driving up to New York to meet up with a friend and then were going to Boston to see a bunch of friends. Anyway, not a ton of update. Had a screw in my tire this morning =( got it dealt with luckily.
Hey check this out! So what we're working on here right now at Bonner is this (kind of secret) website called PolicyOptions.org. The website is going to eventually be a news feed of all the current news involving any service/policy issues that we made need while doing community service! You can check out the site if you want, it's basic right now and still in massive testing...you can even see some of the fake parts of the site which is funny. Anyway, we're 'populating' the site with some test info all about Hunger and Poverty right now to get it up and running. Hopefully this will become a huge site in the next few years. Anyway, I'll update after the 4th! Go America!

Hilarious

Obviously this is a bad translation gone wrong, but in this economy, it's hilarious

Washington, D.C.

Oh, hello; I didn't see you there. I was just updating this here blog of mine. What's that? You're interested? Well give me a second and I'll fill you in on what's been going on lately on my end.
So Sunday morning I caught a train to Washington, D.C. for the Results International Conference and 30th anniversary.

 In sum: it was pretty sweet. We had Sunday and Monday to attend a few workshops and get briefed on what we were going to lobby for on Tuesday. Oh yeah, and Monday night I met up with a recent Stetson grad in Georgetown and checked out that amazing, classic town and university. So cool.

So yeah, I said lobby. Now, I wasn't 100% sure what this entailed, but come Monday night I was pretty clear on what was happening the next morning. Our team was to go over to the U.S. Senate and House office buildings and actually meet with aides, Senators, and House Reps and lobby to them in person.
The morning began in the same room that the Titanic Investigation and McCarthy Trials happened with a speech from Dick Durbin - who, if you don't know the name, is the second most powerful person in the U.S. Senate.

That's Dick Durbin in the photo right above. He's a pretty cool dude!
Ok so we broke off into lobby teams for our states..I went with Florida and was with four people who were prepared beyond anyone at the conference in my opinion. This was clearly not their first time at the rodeo. So we started in the Senate building and met with Senator Lemieux's aide. After that we were attempting to get to the House office building but got lost, told some people we were "lobbyists", got some awesome "Official House Business" tag and got access to the Representative's subway between the office buildings (which is like an awesome, glorified mining car that the senators will ride with you)

Some of the lobby team^^

This is the sweet subway car
The next photo is when I was walking in the tunnel between the buildings to meet with Tampa Bay Rep Kathy Castor ya know, no big deal. (?!?!?!!!!)

The rest of the photos are just cool things I came across. The iPhone camera isn't too bad during the day!

The Capitol building

This is right outside of Union Station

We went to the Lincoln Memorial at 3:25am and we were the only people there. Well, we were the only people there after some guy with this group of three people crossed the boundary and touched Lincoln..to which a Federal Police Officer told the guy he'd throw him in jail for years for it, but that "tonight's your lucky night". Pretty crazy being around this thing and the reflection pond without a single person around. It's enormous.

Anyway. We lobbied on Tuesday which was insanely fun and interesting. Wednesday we were at the Results HQ debriefing and having a strategy session. It was a pretty useful meeting.
Here's where things get a little more interesting. So we're planned to leave at 10:25am on a train on Thursday morning. Pretty standard right? Go to train, get on, come home. Well, not for me!  It has been forever since I've ridden a train for actual state-to-state travel so I forgot that in order to get back on a train one needs to bring one of those tickets you got originally back to the station. I get to the train station about 30 minutes before my train and realize I have no way of getting on this thing; so I run to the Amtrak counter and get stuck in an enormous line. Luckily I aggravated an already overly-aggravated Amtrak worker enough that he skipped me to this grreeat Amtrak dude who was like "OMG LET'S GET YOU ON THAT TRAIN!!" so I bought a new ticket, and sprinted through the station Mission Impossible style - like, if things were blowing up around me I totally would have lived - but regardless, I get to the gate, and the train taking off, and my travel partner pissseedd off. So, I walk back through the, luckily not blown up from my sprinting, Union Station and the Amtrak guy just goes "Didn't make it didja?" "Nope". Luckily we had a friend driving back to Durty Jersey from the conference so we called him and he gave us a ride back...which we probably should have done from step one; we didn't even need a train back. Anyway, now I'm back in NJ and pretty much ready for this weekend. I took a few photos on my real camera which I traipsed along with me all week for like 10 photos ha. Anyway, I'll upload those later. Hope all is well in your neck of the woods, readers! If you read this...comment! Let me know how you are doing. This feel like such a one sided conversation!
-Jack

Ok so good morning and week everyone! I'm updating this from the browser on my phone so I don't know how good looking this post will be by I figured I should post something about what i'm doing right now. Yesterday I caught a train to Washington DC for the Results conference and 30th anniversary. Results is an organization dedicated to ending poverty and hunger and they definitely get results from their work. Were going to be on Capitol Hill tomorrow lobbying for...something and it should be pretty interesting. Were here til Thursday so I'll definitely get some photos and what not once I'm on a real computer. Finally, Australian accents are awesome. I want one!

This Town Is Crazy

Princeton is such a gorgeous place - it's ridiculous.
I walked by this on the way to work today:

I feel like I'm stuck in some kind of movie walking around here...people keep saying it looks like Harry Potter..I'll admit, I know nothing about Harry Potter.
Ever seen this before?

I walked into a coffee shop here and these were on the counter. It's apparently called "latte art". I don't even know what a latte is! Anyway, super duper slow day here at the office. New Jersey Americore workers get these things called "energy days" now on Fridays which basically means they're not really allowed to work. So it's kind of like interns running the ship today - which means we've been multitasking between work and watching USA tie their second World Cup game. Also, I stumbled upon this yesterday: 75% of New Jerseyans Don't Like NJ. Take that NJ!
Anyway, Jared Smith and I are off to D.C. Sunday morning (at 7:30am??!!!!) for the Results conference. We've got to make a bunch of videos about it, so I'll definitely post one up here once we make/edit them. Hope you're all doing well!

Too Good To be True?

This seems to hilarious to be true, but I don't doubt it.

"Student Throws Puppy at Hells Angels - Escapes on Bulldozer"
http://jalopnik.com/5564966/student-throws-puppy-at-hells-angels-escapes-on-bulldozer

No Road To Follow

So everyone had a hard time getting to work this morning because they decided today was the day to close the road, and then tear it completely out once we got into our parking lot. So about 2 hours into our day we were faced with this:

Yeah, that's about a 7 inch drop from our driveway to the dirt under the concrete. Needless to say, none of us could leave work. Luckily, Wayne invited the foreman into the Foundation around 10ish and told him he and his crew could use our bathroom and get water from our place whenever they wanted..in turn, they built us a ramp so we could all leave at the end of the day! It was pretty sweet.
One more photo for tonight: This is one of the dogs that lives in the house I'm in. She looked so sad!

Finally, I'm pretty sure I met my arch-nemesis driving home today. The only detail I can remember through my blind rage fury was a plastic fake license plate and the words "Nina Love". I hope I never see this human being again

We'll Always Win, England!

If you know me, you know that I have a completely irrational (fake) hatred of the British and more so of the Canadians. This soccer game that is currently happening is the perfect fodder for other people like myself to come together and hate the British. I don't care who wins or loses this game (because I know we'll win), but it's making some great talk. So, I didn't write this article - but I wish I did..It's pretty much verbatim how I would have written a "How to Hate England" guide. So, from Gawker.com I give you the guide on "How to Hate England":

Gawker's Guide on How to Hate England

A Couple Photos from SLI

Hey everyone..so a couple photos from SLI have been posted so I'm going to vainly post a couple that I'm in and maybe some others that look interesting! Click "read more"!

A Few Photos

So, Here are just a few photos from today:

What doesn't fit? Found this putting my lunch in the fridge.

Found this in the store room..along with some other goodies. Hilarious at 10am hahaha

Day three of my internship found me gardening...luckily all of these are still alive

Finally, apparently if I like Texts From Last Night I like Obama. I mean, it's true, but funny Facebook knows.
-Jack

Some Photos

So today was the day of rest after SLI so I snapped some photos of Princeton. For ease, I put them on Facebook...here's the link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=242262&id=607389965&l=3d825c1654

Kentuckalicious

So here I am in Kentucky for Bonner's 20th "Bonnerversary" and Summer Leadership Institute. It's, I think 5 of our adventure, and day 3 of the actual conference and, seemingly, it's going really well. We're at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky at which is a pretty small town but contains a lot of...hmm...character. I'm trying to figure out the best way to portray some of the aspect of this place but doing so correctly in a way that would give you, the reader, and accurate experience of what is happening here is tough. Maybe through a mix of stories and pictures I can do so. Let's start with the ride here:
We left Princeton on Monday morning and drove to West Virginia where we decided to stay the night before finishing up the ride to Berea. Now, that may seem straight forward enough but at some point we stopped off to stretch, or eat, or dance, or something, and our GPS decided it was time for some back road action. And by back road action I mean legitimate mountain driving with no cell phones or civilization. We new it was bad when we saw a hand painted "He's not my President" sign staked in the ground next to the road. I'm 96% sure that the idea of  'internet' in this area was best served by carrier pigeons.

So, after about an hour or so of being totally lost we ended up somehow on an on ramp for the highway that seemed to mythically appear out of thin...country side.
Fast forward to Kentucky where we got to Berea to begin setting this conference up around 4ish. So, we're carrying supplies and whatnot across the streets to and fro where they needed to go and we get a call from..someone..in Berea saying that we were jay-walking too much. We're in this town like 20 minutes and already on their blacklist. At this point we decided it would be a good idea to use the crosswalks as none of us wanted to meet what is invariably the one "sheriff" of this town (Bad movies start like that!). As the lights changed from don't walk to walk I heard something that is still making me laugh/taking me aback and it sounded like this: "Ya cun nowa cross KENTukI Avenew". Hard to read? Yeah, the cross walks here have a THICK southern accent and compel you to cross the road when the lights change. It's a little creepy.

I'm happy this conference is going so well. We've been meeting at 8am and working until about 12am every day so it's definitely been some work. It's weird to have come into this job a week before the conference and like, literally, hit the ground running. It feels like we planned this conference in two weeks when obviously it's been months of planning. Anyway, here are some photos from Kentucky and SLI

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 Pretty much without a doubt the most manly shirt ever. New band uniform? I think so.

This would be us, being lost in the mountains:

Really Kentucky? Jean diapers? Wouldn't that be kinda chaffy? 

This was one of the opening morning ceremonies. Wayne Meisel, the President of Bonner, is retiring so there's been a lot of closing ceremony type things for him and his 20 years of dedication.

I saw a broken down car at a gas station and was going to get out an ask the guy if he needed any help when I saw this:

Yup, that'd be a Ford Ranger with the "R" taken off to spell out "anger". Needless to say, I stayed in the van as this man gave me a cold hard stare while we made what felt like an 83 point turn.

This is Alfredo Escobar's mural painting for the Bonner Foundation for the 20th Anniversary...he let anyone work on it.