Christmas in Vermont - 2009

Christmas in Vermont - 2009 Slideshow: Chris’s trip to Middlebury was created with TripAdvisor TripWow!

Happy Birthday Jeff

Jeff, Sarah & Amanda - Christmas 2005

@ Mom & Dad's house in Falmouth, MA

Happy 38th Birthday Jeff! It was six years ago today that I arrived on Hilton Head Island, SC. You and Aaron had played golf that Sunday and were watching college basketball, waiting for me to drive in from D.C. I arrived in time for dinner @RedFish, then we popped corks on a bottle of Cakebread @SantaFe, before watching a movie and crashing much too late. We were about 3 weeks away from opening Aqua and all was well. My mind starts spinning and I keep some of the memories burried deep when I start to remember all that's happened since then. Of course we had no way of knowing it then, but it would be your last birthday and to Mom, Dad, Missy, Mark & I you'll always be 32. After your car accident that August 2006, Missy moved to HHI and I'm happy to say is still here. Mark moved here to help with the business in Spring 2007 and was here until November 2008, when he re-joined Hertz and has been working in Vancouver, BC ever since. I talked with him this morning and he was thinking of you. Mom and Dad moved here in Spring 2009 and are living about 15 minutes away from us in Bluffton. I saw them this morning and gave them a hug. Sarah just turned 10 and rocked at basketball this winter. Amanda is about to turn 9, still loves gymnastics and talks about you all the time. Wish you were here to see how big they've gotten and to school me in golf. Karla and I played on Saturday, but it's just not the same without your trash talking. I miss you every day. Love, Chris

Artists

I've been doing some reading this morning about artists friends who are working from home. Since leaving behind my days of roving cub repoter, I've classified myself as an underpublished artist and thought it would be fun to shed some light on some of my friends who are plodding thru the muck.

Here is a fun link to my friend Heather's website http://www.yodelbug.com/index.htm - She offers "an online gallery shop filled with fun art for kids... fine art prints and wall decals, as well as originals upon special request." Heather and I went to high school together and lost touch along the way, but her work is whimsical and fun and I'm a big fan.

My friend Erica is a freelance artist based on Cape Cod, MA. A link to her work is http://www.wishastudios.com/  "Recently I’ve focused on digital illustration for business or private needs.   I enjoy creating images for organizations or events that are tailored to the client’s project.  Whether the subject is a family member, friend or furry one,  I strive to convey a likeness with accompanying personal detail." She describers her style as "bright & lively and finished digital images are illustrative yet uncluttered, lending themselves easily to a variety of uses." I've always thought it was pretty cool stuff and thought you might too.

Erica's husband Ben is one of my oldest friends, former roommate, workmate and all around good guy. He's a self described "independent photographer" who has trouble with labels and an obsession with all things hockey. I've been a fan of his work for nearly 20 years, so I might be a bit biased, but I think his work kicks ass. You can view his gallery and decide for yourself at  http://www.benshotme.com/ - Oh bye the way, he's got a running blog post that is friggin hilarious and borderline disturbing, but that's another story entirely.

So there you have it... Enjoy!

What did we do before Social Media?

Five years ago this week, a small team of people started working on a prototype of the service that we now know as Twitter. On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey (@jack) sent the first Tweet!

To celebrate this auspicious anniversary I'm sharing the story of how I've plunged head first into this new phenomenon we call Social Media.

Like many amateurs, I stuck my toes in the water by creating a Facebook profile. I added a my picture, filled in the stat sheet and before long was reconnecting with long lost high school friends, work collegues and college drinking buddies.

Wading in a bit further, I downloaded a few photos and created some albums and my profile page began to morph into an extension of likes and dislikes, photos, video's and instant chat.

I had joined Facebook because I was curious about free advertising for my business. Money was tight and I knew a few restauranteurs who were rapidly growing their fan base and gaining loyal fans. I created a business page and the real journey began.

In no time at all I was the local Facebook expert at work, helping co-workers, guests and business associates with their accounts. I would walk thru the dining room toward the bar and random guests would stop me to say they were fans.

Answering questions and building a list of social contacts would become invaluable to me not for the business they brought to my front door, but for the relationships and friendships that were beginning to grow.

Social media is all about making a connection with people and I found it effortless and a fun distraction to my daily grind.

I learned how to link our Open Table reservation system to my Facebook business page and all of a sudden my Facebook fans were utilizing my page for reservations. I linked YouTube video's and created photo albums of special events, then shared them on my page with amazing results.

Along the way I created a Twitter account for our restaurant, then a seperate one for myself and began linking posts from Facebook to Twitter and back again, sometimes just to see if I could.

I studied my business landing page stat sheets and learned pretty quick that people like pictures, so I snapped away with my Blackberry and posted them on the web. We hosted a wine & food pairing dinner with a Twitter friend of mine, Mike Cox, the winemaker from Schug Vineyards. I snapped photos of each course in real time and shared a virtual wine dinner with my friends.

Another business owner told me how she lives and dies by Trip Advisor reviews for her restaurant, so I launched a campaign with my Facebook & Twitter friends to post reviews of our restaurant and sure enough we leapfrogged up the island popularity charts, going from #51 to #7 in less than six weeks.

By this time I was all in.

I attended a Sysco Food Show in Columbia, SC and cornered their tech people about how to increase my website visibility in Google search engines, then I stayed up late that night and became an expert in Google Maps.

Just the other day I found myself wishing for a toothache after I got a an email update that someone had stolen the Mayorship of my dentist office on Four Square.

Wikipedia defines Foursquare as, "a location-based social networking website, software for mobile devices.

"This service is available to users with GPS-enabled mobile devices, such as Smartphones. Users "check-in" at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by running the application and selecting from a list of venues that the application locates nearby. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes "badges".

"The service was created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Crowley had previously founded the similar project Dodgeball as his graduate thesis project in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. Google bought Dodgeball in 2005 and shut it down in 2009, replacing it with Google Latitude.

"Dodgeball user interactions were based on SMS technology, rather than an application. . Foursquare is the second iteration of the same idea, that people can use mobile devices to interact with their environment.

"As of December 2010, the company reported it had 6 million registered users. On September 1, 2010, the World Economic Forum announced the company as a Technology Pioneer for 2011.^"

I was introduced to Foursquare pretty early on and recognized the promotion potential it had for my business. We gave away logo'd poker chips for check-ins and the chef put together a special appetizer for repeat guests who became the mayor.

This spring our business fell victim to the economy, so we had to shut our doors and I lost my job.

I created a LinkedIn account and shared my plight with my tech-savy friends. I updated my profile, grew my connections list and received recommendations for past performance in a matter of days.

I've barely scratched the surface with some of the applications that consume my friends; like Yelp and Stumble and Digg and Flicker and Gowalla and Untapped, just to name a few. I don't have a YouTube account, but for some reason think I should.

Now I've found Blogger, which I'm told could someday lead to an addiction to Word Press and I wonder, where will we all go from here?

Why would anyone want to drink Green Beer?

My wife asked me this question before the Hilton Head Island St. Patrick's Day Parade last weekend and It's been bothering me ever since.

Being that I'm half Irish, I guess she figures I'm an authority on all things surrounding St. Patrick's Day.

I'd call myself a beer purist. My wife calls me a beer snob. Either way, I've always wondered why anyone would ruin a perfectly good beer with food coloring.

In honor of the holiday, I'm keeping an open mind this year and am doing a little research to see what other people are saying on the subject.

First, I'm going to digress with a side trip to the fridge for a Sam Adams Noble Pils and a fresh stack of thin mints, then it's off to Google for some answers.

The recipe seems simple enough: Add a drop of food coloring to the bottom of a pint glass, Add beer and Stir. Prep time - 10 seconds. Festive meter - off the charts.

That's it! This works for any beer. If you're going for Kryptonite Green, then light beer is best. Darker beers like stout will have a nice green head atop their normally dark bodies.

It comes as no surprise to me that the Sierra Club is continuing their annual Blogging about Going Green for St. Patrick's Day. This year they're promoting that party-goers should ride their bike to the bar to reduce the carbon footprint.

I scoured their archives to find a 2008 Blog about some of the up and coming "Green Breweries," including New Belgium, CO; Sierra Nevada, CA; and Otter Creek, VT - all of which utilize solar, wind or water to power their machinery and thus produce their own version of Green Beer.

Alan Shaw of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune summed it up for me when he wrote, "I don’t understand the green beer thing. Sure, I guess it’s just supposed to be fun, but can’t we have a little respect for beer? At least don’t put green dye in craft beer. That would be like pouring sugar in good wine or ketchup all over a gourmet meal."

I'd have to say I agree. I guess I just can't seem to get past why anyone would pollute good beer.

But don't let me stop you. Raise your mug and give Green Beer a try for yourself. Have a Happy St. Patrick's Day! Cheers!

10 Green Beer Facts

• Fact: Works best in lighter colored beer
• Fact: Any green food dye works
• Fact: No change in taste
• Fact: Best with chilled beer mug or glass
• Fact: Ginger ale works for children
• Fact: Doesn't work well in dark beer, but turns foam green
• Fact: Best when adding food dye first
• Fact: Green Beer is most commonly associated with St. Patrick's Day 
• Fact: Today is St. Patrick’s Day, honoring the patron saint of Ireland, who died exactly 1,550 years ago in 461
• Fact: Four leaf clovers are indeed rare, but they aren't exactly one in a million. It is estimated that there is one four leaf clover for every 10,000 three-leaf ones.