I'm really pretty glad nobody has been foolish enough to tag me for the Ice Bucket Challenge.  Aside from my general automatic resistance to coercive memes, what does the IBC offer anyone but a chance to be seen  - not being seen writing out a big check to a charity because that would be boring - but to seem to support a charity (by sending them a lot less money than you *could*) and maybe look a little bad-ass by inflicting icy discomfort upon yourself.

My charitable giving habits are not lavish, but they are also not driven by peer pressure and surely won't be mentioned on social media.  What causes I might support are my business and I regret that someone just might get offended when a challenge like this is brushed off.

I think that it's nice for the ALS charity to have a whole lotta cash come in that they would not have gotten, but what other charities are now not getting money they would have gotten and how many others are going to try and replicate ICB and generate windfall donations?

Maybe the net effect will be good, in the "awareness raising" kind of good and maybe in 4 months nobody will even remember it and countless attempted follow ons will have already faded from conscious memory.

Oh and YOU DAMN KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!

No screen shots this time Tom but the same kind of thing happens in Chrome that I posted about yesterday. The header text starts out with something that looks like a 36/48pt font and as I scroll (arrow - I'm a keyboard kind of guy) it gets smaller and smaller until it finds its nadirFont around 14/16pt. Related: nadirFont is a weird thing to say - anytime.

Right now I'm wondering what happens when I past in a URL? Can I make text into a hyper link such as: The Cutting-Edge Butter Knife of Your Dreams Is Finally Here. Holy Mackerel! I think it did it. If it didn't and you really are dreaming about butter knives, then I'll post this as just plain text: http://www.wired.com/2014/08/the-worlds-best-butterknife/?mbid=social_twitter

I'm off to go buy a knife I don't need but do so clearly NEED. See y'all on OPW tomorrow.

How's school, you ask? Since it's also work, that's two questions in one. Does that break the One Post Wonder rule? Hmm. 

Short answer: Pretty good. Although that may be because my first class doesn't meet until Monday. This is the Week Of All The Meetings In The World, coming on the heels of a three-day work retreat, and interspersed with All The Deadlines In The World, so it's pretty hectic. 

Or, it should be. I am lethargic and resistant and having to trick myself into doing tasks that must be completed. My current trick bait is playing Fallen London.

As a matter of fact, I think I'll go beat up some mysterious clay men or get drunk on honey for a while before I get back to writing this book chapter outline.

Took another kizomba class last night. The instructor said straight up that "Angolans don't dance kizomba like this, traditional kizomba has a little more distance, but 'kizomba feeling' is very close."

That fits with what I see when I watch kizomba videos on the interwebs. The people who invented the dance don't feel the need to be quite so far in each other's space. Interesting.

On the One Post Wonder front, here's what's new in the last couple of days:

• Counter for new posts, also for new comments and followers
• Page title also includes a count of notices and new posts waiting
• Added clearly labeled "Edit Profile Picture" button to "Me" page
• Started "signing" emails to keep them out of spam folders– maybe

Also, I've received a welcome offer of help with the visual design side of things, which is awesome, and we'll see where that leads.

In the near future I plan to add a nightly email digest, sent only if you haven't been on the site. This will be something you can shut off, of course.

A challenge for you: follow two new people today, and comment on two posts.

Hey OPW: Long time listener; first time poster. I've got a couple of observations:

1. Am I missing the profile editing option? Most folks here looks like dogs but some are decidedly more human like. Is there a way that we can change our own avatars?

2. The attached photos come from IE. I popped over to IE to see if there profile editing option were there (typing via Chrome). I mean no disrespect by thinking that might have worked but I checked anyhow. One thing I did not was how things looked when I was reading a scrolling about. It is a little funny. That is IE11 on a Win7x64 machine. Thought I'd share. 

That's it for now. I won't bug you again until tomorrow at the earliest. 

I've been dabbling in the boardgame culture over the last few years.  Well, I've been playing them for years.  I remember whiling away time playing boardgames as a kid, mostly with myself, as is appropriate for an introvert.  Monopoly, Payday, Sorry, Stock Ticker (where I was mostly just fascinated by watching the commodities go up and down)...Clue, alas, was too hard to play alone, but I did once in a while talk other people into playing with me.  Then there was the more role-playing like ones, Divine Right and Dungeon and the ones we clipped out of Dragon Magazine (of which File 13 was always my favourite, although I found King of The Tabletop tantalizing).  Talisman, a few years later.  Or the minigames, Demonlord and Illuminati (and a few real solitaire games, Barbarian Prince and Star Smuggler).  Wow, that was more than I thought.  I also remember reading a number of reviews in Games Magazine, and some of them sounded interesting, but I never sought them out.  But it was still mostly role-playing games and computer games that dominated my attention.

Then there was a lot of family card games, Hand & Foot Canasta being the most common, with a side of Cribbage or Gin, or maybe Uno.  The party games, Balderdash and Taboo and Scattergories.  Maybe a little bit of Yahtzee.

But one day there was that copy of Settlers of Catan.  What was that?  It looked kind of intriguing.  We picked it up, tried it out...it was interesting, but we didn't take it out that often.  We had young kids, after all, and they'd probably swallow the pieces; they were certainly too young to play it.  Let's drag out the Sorry instead, or the Monopoly.

When they were older, though, I thought we'd try out some of these other games I kept seeing around.  Runebound was interesting, though full of little pieces that did mostly end up getting lost.  Cosmic Encounter...was a little disappointing.  Carcassonne, well, that was interesting, building maps with little tiles.  (Except when people were mean and didn't give you the last tile you needed to fill in that one hole that was driving you nuts...)

At some point, not sure when it was, I ended up invited to a party with some friends where there were going to be boardgames.  I got to watch the end of Ticket To Ride, and then...I don't even remember what was next.  Cards Against Humanity, perhaps.  Or Dominion and Pandemic.  But I was beginning to realize that maybe there were other people out there who might like to play games to.  I didn't always feel like going out, but once in a while I did.

And then this web-series came out, I don't know if you heard of it?  Okay, fine, I'd been following Wil Wheaton online off and on since he was first blogging back in the early 2000s, and this Tabletop thing sounded like fun.  So I watched it, often with my kids, and I began to realize how much was out there.  I can't buy everything, of course, but it's great to see this stuff and get more of an idea what the game's like than just peering at the bottom of the box.

So now we've got some Munchkin and 7 Wonders (my current favourite) and Killer Bunnies and Apple To Apples, and the Order of the Stick boardgame (another favourite, but one that requires more of a time investment), and it's not unknown to have a family game weekend where we go through almost everything in the cupboard.  And a few more regular game evenings with friends, with Elder Sign and Shadow Hunters and Star Trek Catan.  Even tried a few of the advanced-level ones, like Tzol'kin and Power Grid; supported a Kickstarter for Machine of Death.  There can still be weeks that go by where the games don't come out; there's still computer games, and books, and other things to do, and sometimes the negotiations get a little wearying.  My youngest is getting close to being able to play without help; she plays Ticket To Ride on her own, though we quietly overlook the fact that she doesn't know how to complete her routes.  It's not an obsession.  But it's still a lot of fun, from time to time.

I just ordered a novel on Amazon. I ordered it because I heard about it on One Post Wonder. As one does.

For next term's MBA courses (he said a fortnight after Spring term ended, three full weeks before first Fall lecture) one of my two electives is a strategy-area course on sustainability. I've settled on strategy as my area of concentration because I have developed a kink for pushing the big levers that will Get Stuff Done and sustainability addresses my grar at the short-termism endemic in business that has leaked through to society at large.

Naturally I bought the course textbooks already. They arrived today and in the less than an hour I've been home since work ended I've read through the beginning material of both and the afterword of one. It's clear these books will give me specific problems to think about and, with the prof's guidance and classroom participation, tools to address them meaningfully. One can expect me to blurt out somewhat well-formed thoughts and ideas about social, economic, and environmental stewardship with greater frequency from now through mid-December.

The books themselves are Reconstructing Value by Kurucz, Colbert, and Wheeler (structured as a business textbook) and Capitalism at the Crossroads by Hart (appears to be built as a general business book, with an Al Gore preface and a Fisk Johnson foreword). I am glad to have the structure imposed on me to read both these books deeply and consider the contents thoroughly.

Although business books tend to overpromise, I'm intrigued that these two promise to change the way the reader thinks. I believe I have fewer and healthier assumptions than the average businessman, while continuing to run periodically into the brick wall of my societal programming.

... and I am a wordy bastard. Things I will likely digress upon in coming days: * This odd little guitar I now own (and learning to play it)* My ongoing career as a part-time professional magician* Fairs, Festivals and Foolishness* How, against all logic and reason, I am still married. 

This weekend I will be doing 8 minutes or so at a local variety show hosted at a local theater that Ami and I have become participant-patrons of, the Overtime Theater in San Antonio.   I've been doing stuff with their Cabaret for... about 2 years now. We're at the point where the producer told me "You have 8 minutes. I know it'll be good."

Now I have the unusual challenge of coming up with something that'll eat up about 8 minutes every month. I do my best not to repeat myself.  I think I've repeated myself twice in 2 years (10 performances a year as 2 months I'm out of town when the show happens).

I have performed magic, I have juggled, and I have gibbered helplessly while endlessly pouring water out of a small pitcher into a lucite wine glass and drinking it.  There are worse second jobs. 

I appreciate my friends, who have been the most supportive awesome people - particularly since I ended my engagement late last year.