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!