Dailing Phones...

I spent a little time in town today at the Obama Campaign's office in Tazewell. I made phone calls for about an hour. Most were to people in the county's Northern District, where I live.

I must admit that my mostive was somewhat selfish. I wanted the experience, wanted to be able to say I contributed (at least a little).

I called 30 or so phone numbers. The list I worked from was supposed to be undecided voters. No one was undecided. I got one or two disconnected numbers, 10 or 12 calls where no one answered and I maybe got to talk to an answering machine, a few strong Obama supporters, and few Democrats who said they were going ot vote for Obama because, well, after all they were Democrats. And I spoke to one nice lady who supports McCain and said she'd pray for my soul... Oh,well

After my 45 or 50 minutes I handed the phone to someone else and went about my business in town, which mostly involved buying groceries...

New Blogging Portfolio

For almost 18 months now I've been blogging for Creative Weblogging. CW has about 150 blogs on professional niche topics in English, Chinese, German, and French. But the economic crisis (can I say "recession") has hit ad revenues pretty hard and CW recently restructured it's arrangements with bloggers. For me the result has be a broader portfolio of blogs that I contribute to...

When I started with CW in May of 2007 I was writing about China, specifically about venture capital and private equity investment in China. The site is China Venture News, and I still blog there - though only once or twice a week now. A little over a year ago I picked up a second blog at CW: the Universities Weblog. I still blog there, as well.

In the last couple of weeks I've picked up a handful of other blogs at CW and I contribute to them about once a week. Three of them are on CW's Ecommerce and internet channel:

• The Search Engine Weblog
• Social Networking
• Web 2.0

Four more are on CW's Travel & Culture channel:

• The Flyaway Weblog (Budget Travel)
• Hidden Travel Gems (Offbeat Destinations)
• Wandalust
• Latina Viva (Latin American travel and culture)

Of course I also still have this blog - my personal blog. I have Twitter (a microblog - kind of a cross between blogging and instant messaging). And I have my education blog, The Green Cup (which I have neglected woefully in the last few weeks in favor of graduate classes and politics. And there's always my Facebook and MySpace pages...

The "S" Word...

It has been snowing off and on all day long. That is to say that periodically throughout the day it has spit snow. Nothing on the ground, mind you. Just a few flakes in the air. Still, October is a little early...