Spinvox

I signed up with SpinVox over the weekend, thanks to a post from Guy Kawasaki.  What is SpinVox?  Well, you should go to their website to check it out, but a quick summary is this: it converts your voice mail into email and/or text messages.  Seriously…how cool is that?

I already have somebody at Sunset check my work voice mails a couple of times a day, jot them down in an email and send them to me.  Don’t judge!  It’s the way I work best.  Seriously, before this happened I was having a hard time responding to everybody.  I hate to say it, but voice mail is just an antiquated technology in my opinion.  Now I get the email pushed straight to my phone or to my inbox and I don’t have to listen to a five minute message just to get somebody’s phone number.

Right now I just have SpinVox on my cell phone, but if my tests over the next few days work out well, I’ll have my work voice mail forwarded to it as well.  Here is an example of a call I made to myself:

Actual call: “This is a test for myself.  I’m calling Matt Singley.  Please call back Mr. McKenney at [insert phone number here]. It’s 5:03pm.  Thank you.”

Here is what I received via email about five minutes later: “This is a test for myself.  I’m calling Matt Finley.  Please call back Mr McKinney(?) at [the correct phone number]. It’s 5:03pm. Thank you. -Powered by SpinVox”

Wow.  Close enough.  If they only mess up my name I’m a happy man.  They got the time right and the call back number right as well.  Way to go SpinVox!  I’ll keep reporting how this is working for me, but I’m feeling pretty optimistic right now!

Another worthy tech interruption in my "seven big questions" series.

It seems that Xbox 360 will be supporting IPTV a little later this year.  This post over at Engadget broke the news…

What is it?  Simply put, it’s television over the internet (Internet Protocol TeleVision).  I think this is a brilliant move for Microsoft.  How will they win the console wars?  By moving beyond the typical console structure.  While Sony and Nintendo just keep cranking out better gaming systems, Microsoft is cranking out a better service.  A brilliant move!  Kings to you, Microsoft!

Google Reader Trends

I logged into my Google Reader this morning and noticed a little link at the top that would allow me to look at my reading “trends”.  Cool, says I.

A click later shows me what my morning blog reading habits are like.  According to Google, I subscribe to 62 blogs and in the last month have read over 1,200 articles, starred 11 of them (it’s like adding them to your favorites, I do this for later review or closer inspection) and have shared 0.  Frankly, I haven’t even thought about sharing anything through this reader, but maybe I’ll give it a shot soon.

I like that I can look at my viewing habits by day of the week and time of the day also.  BTW…7am is by far my mostly popular reading time, and Friday dominates the week, according to the trends graphs.  Cool stuff!

Last updated: December 31, 2008. Some of the comments don’t make sense because I had to delete or change some of the numbers. I need to pick up the pace, I only have 43 things crossed off!

Following is a list of things that I would like to accomplish in the next 1,000 days.  Some are easy, some will require quite a bit of effort.  All are interesting to me for some reason or another. This was originally posted on January 1, 2007.

Without further adieu…

1. Complete (at a minimum) basic guitar lessons
2. Scuba dive in warm water again
3. Teach Chloe how to ride a bike
4. Live like a homeless person for one night
5. Do 25 chin ups, 50 push ups and 100 sit ups back to back to back
6. Share a Cuban cigar and a glass of scotch with Ted Broadway on a warm summer night
7. Teach Nick how to shoot a rifle
8. Memorize the book of James
9. Go to an opera
10. Run a 5k in 27 minutes or less
11. Run a 5k in 24 minutes or less
12. Run a 5k in 21 minutes or less
13. Attend my 20th Mexico mission trip in 20 years
14. Play a song on the guitar at some sort of a social gathering
15. Listen to the audio tapes that my father made just before he died (this was one of the most emotionally challenging and satisfying things that I have ever done)
16. Read the manuscript my father wrote before he died
17. Take Nick camping for the weekend and give him the “birds and bees” talk
18. Paint a picture that hangs in our house
19. Go horseback riding
20. Bench press 225 lbs once
21. Bench press 225 lbs five times
22. Bench press 225 lbs ten times
23. Do something kind for each of my neighbors but not tell them it was me
24. Run a half marathon….even if it kills me!
25. Keep my Outlook Inbox at zero messages each night when I go home for one full business week
26. Ride my bike more than 30 miles at once
27. Ride a train somewhere (MAX/BART/Muni don’t count)
28. Go to the Portland Getty Art Museum without a timeline and just walk around and look at things
29. Go to the Portland Japanese Gardens
30. Read something by T.S. Elliot
31. Take each of my kids on a “just me and daddy” day at the park without their siblings
32. Get a tattoo
33. Learn how to ride a motorcycle
34. Weigh 175 pounds
35. Become a level 7 in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 55 in Call of Duty 4
36. Read all of Erwin McManus’ books
37. Visit a country farther south than Mexico
38. Have my garage organized enough to fit two cars in it at once
39. Pursue professional voice work
40. Try eating eggplant again (I had it at Panda Express…it was pretty good actually)
41. Get new glasses
42. Finish installing the baseboard mouldings in my house
43. Take one personal retreat per quarter in hopes of improving myself
44. Visit a Baha’i center
45. Spend an afternoon browsing around Powell’s bookstore without an agenda
46. Read a book by A.W. Tozer
47. Go to the firing range to polish up my skills
48. Take the family to Disneyland
49. Make a batch of my own beer
50. Make a batch of my own cheese
51. Attend the Pendleton Roundup
52. Go rafting down the Deschutes
53. Stay for a weekend in Sunriver with my family
54. Finish painting the walls in the entry of my home
55. Clean out my Contacts in Outlook
56. Attend a David Crowder*Band concert
57. Get a massage
58. Buy a new belt
59. Make an entry into Wikipedia
60. Go wine tasting
61. Take an audit class of something at the local community college, just to keep the brain moving
62. Connect my Xbox360, My Media Center Edition desktop and my Zune all seamlessly together
63. Use the Google 15 for 30 days. Why?  Because it’s there. (an interesting tool…you should check it out!)
64. Make it for a full year without taking prescription medication for my AS or Crohn’s
65. Remove the TV from my bedroom
66. Have a 24 season premier party (off the hook goodness!)
67. Don’t eat a meal at a restaurant for 14 days
68. Set up blogs for everyone on Management Team (my part is finished…now it’s up to them to actually post)
69. Install new windows in my home
70. Be more patient (hard to measure, but I’ll know)
71. Pray more
72. Journal (my written journal…not my blog…) three times per week for three months straight
73. Work out a plan so that I am more available to staff …but a plan that doesn’t kill me in the process
74. Get an administrative assistant (which will probably help with #73)
75. Put up a blog post once a day for a week that summarizes what we are doing in the Operations Department at Sunset Presbyterian Church Bel Air Presbyterian Church
76. Follow through completely on my commitment to Jay to work out with him like a madman for the month of January (this wasn’t easy…but I did it!)
77. Learn how to swim the butterfly.  I was on the swim team for years and still couldn’t do this…
78. Learn how to swing dance
79. Learn how to tango
80. Have a photograph published in a magazine or on a prominent blog/website
81. Juggle with four balls.  No jokes please.  I can juggle three quite well, four is beyond me right now
82. Get a new passport (mine was stolen in Mexico last year)
83. Clean out my closet and give unecessary clothing to charity
84. Go sailing
85. Buy another house
86. Make a list of 100 things that make me happy besides money
87. Get another tattoo
88. Send a message in a bottle
89. Write down my life story…or at least the highlights.  Keep the copy in my safe at home
90. Go back to my rheumatologist and ask him why I don’t need medication for my AS anymore
91. Go back to my gastrointerologist and ask him why I don’t need medication for my Crohn’s anymore
92. See how many jumbo sized marshmellows I can fit into my mouth at once
93. Read Animal Farm again
94. Take my family to a Portland Winterhawks hockey LA Galaxy soccer game
95. Publish on a top 20 blog (in the world)
96. Build a water fall (or some sort of water thing) in my backyard
97. Build a sweet tree house for my kids
98. Help somebody I love to quit smoking
99. Openly share my faith with somebody, with zero assumptions. Just to share, not to convert. I love hearing what others believe as well.
100. Be the man God wants me to be

As I conquer this list I will put a strikethrough on the task completed.  This should be quite an adventure!