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!