Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Who remembers the TV show Cheers? Lots of us do. I'm old enough to have watched it when it was in production, but it's still in syndication all over the world. I'd like to draw your attention to the lyrics of the theme song.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name
By: Gary Portnoy & Judy Hart Angelo

Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.

You wanna go where people know,
people are all the same,
You wanna go where everybody knows your name.

Quite profound really. The song captures what everybody feels. The lyrics are just as true today as they were 20+ years ago. People want to go somewhere where when they walk in the door everyone says "Norm!" (or whatever their name is). The song is a challenge to me to be more friendly to everyone I meet. Maybe I can provide that Cheers experience for them. Just a random thought. Hope you found it useful.

Stuff that Makes My Life Easier

There are several web based tools that make my life immensely easier. These are things I use to stay (somewhat) organized, informed and save time.

del.icio.us - When I first saw this I never thought I would find it useful. Since I started using it I wonder how I ever got along without it. Del.icio.us allows me to store all my bookmarks on the web, accessible from anywhere. I can tag my bookmarks with keywords to organize them and then I can search and browse the bookmarks by keyword. Very handy when I know what I want, but can't remember the name of the web site. Also, I can view the keywords as a "cloud". The keywords in the cloud become bigger as more items are tagged with that keyword. That helps me see what tag I am using the most.

Google Reader - I use this as my news aggregator and to subscribe to the rss feeds of all my favorite blogs. Instead of jumping from site to site to read all the updates, any new updates are delivered to Google Reader where I can browse them in one, central place. A person needs to have a Google ID use this service.

Google Docs - This is a web based spreadsheet and word processor. It's very handy to be able to create and edit documents anywhere there's a web connection and not have to depend on the presence of a specific office suite. Again a Google ID is required to use this service.

Twitter - Answers the question 'What am I doing?". If anyone wants to know what I'm up to, it's posted at Twitter. Also, I've linked it to my Facebook status so that any Twitter updates also update my Facebook status. This is another tool I never thought I would find useful. However, I've found "micro-blogging" to be an effective way to let people know what I'm doing.

Babel Fish - I have some Italian, Dutch and French speaking friends. I can impress them with my language skills by translating what I want to say with Babel Fish. They know I don't speak their language, and their english is better than mine, but they appreciate the effort and it's fun to learn something new.

Spring Training Impressions

My impressions of the Tigers so far: Wow, they are going to mash this year. They have a lineup where Gary Sheffield is just an ordinary, average guy. It's going to be fun watching these guys.

The big concern is the bullpen. With Zumaya hurt, Rodney hurt and Todd Jones still looking for the strike zone, holding a lead could be interesting. It won't be a big deal for this lineup to score early and often. What could prove to be the Tiger's glaring weakness is the 7th-9th innings. If I'm the opposition I'm thinking all I need to do is stay within a few runs of the Tigers until we can get into the Tigers bullpen. I'm no Todd Jones hater. Most of the time he does a great job. I just hope Mr. Jones finds whatever he needs to fix real soon.