Heroes and Homeless

With the holiday season right over the next hill, I've begun thinking about charity, volunteerism and giving back.

On the one hand, I've been a big proponent of "Support the Troops but Protest the War". Our troops - our citizens - our brothers, sisters, mothers, daughters, sons and husbands are over there fighting and giving their lives. I thought, and still do, that it was a mistake to go to war with Iraq. I strongly believe the US needs to hand over power to the UN and the UN needs to bring in a strongly Arab/Muslim-based Peacekeeping force. As long as we remain there, we will continue to fuel the insurgency and this will turn into the next Vietnam.

But like I said - our troops are over there and many of them will be staying over there for Christmas, Hannukah and Yule. Part of supporting them includes "adopting" a few and sending them presents, cookies and care packages. From what I've seen, a reat many of hese folks have Internet access. Why not encourage them to make Amazon.com wishlists. It's gotten to the point now where Amazon has almost anything one could want and at the minimum it could allow soliders to catalogue what they need. Those sending them the gifts don't necessarily have to use Amazon.

Yet with the birth of our first son, Kirky and I have been discussing holiday traditions we'd like to start - one of them includes reaching out to the homeless. Whether it be surving a holiday meal in a soup kitchen or helping coordinate donations of clothes, blankets and food - we feel it's important to instill in our child how it could always be worse, to cherish the things he has...etc.

So here we are with this war raging overseas....yet we often overlook domestic problems and people who ned help in our own country.

Why not give this season to both?

I've gone ahead and registered the domain heroesandhomeless.org. Nothing is there yet but I hope something will be in the next few weeks. Here's my idea:

My dream is to have a Web site where anyone can register to get an account - those who want to give gifts and those who wish to receive. Givers would buy a gift or two for both someone in the US who is homeless and a soldier overseas in Iraq or some other part of the world. In addition to many of our soldiers having online access, I'm aware of a great many homeless folk who do as well. Those who do not can convey their wishlists to shelter workers or volunteers willing to enter them into Amazon.com and submit them to the site.

Those willing to give gifts register with their location and have the option of selecting a homeless person (or family) in a nearby shelter as well as a soldier who may be from their area. This would allow the person to deliver the gift to the people directly (i.e. the shelter or soldier's family). If not, they can be assigned a random person and choose to have their gift shipped.

So what do people think? I think it's a balanced way to perform acts of charity this holiday season - take care of our people at home as well as our fighting solders overseas.

Obviously the idea is rough and there are several questions that need answering as well as needs to be addressed:

• Does Amazon.com deliver to Military APOs?
• Are there there groups who coordinate such giving to soldiers and the homeless? I am aware of soup kitchens, food pantries, shelters and the like but what about actual delivering and the concept of a wishlist?
• Who has the connectivity to host such a Web site?
• Who can help program the backend or identify applications that could be combined to meet the requirements for this idea?
• How can we validate homeless applications? Should we just allow shelters to register?
• Should I tweak or modify certain points to be more practical?
• Are there any other consideratons I need to take into account?
• Any other ideas?

This is a work-in-progress. If enough people take interest, I will start an email list. Please think about the above questions and post them in the comments. But most of all - pass this link on to anyone you might know who would be interested. This includes technologists, philanthropists, social workers, homeless shelters, military support organizations and other charity groups. If you'd like to email regarding this project, send a note to info@heroesandhomeless.org.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

More "Stuff About Me"

I haven't been posting lately because I'm trying to balance work and home life a little better and as a result, many of my "hobbies" are hurting. I use the term hobbies loosely because in many cases they mean a lot morer to me than that and sometimes require a lot more work.

I'm getting slightly better at being a dad. I can actually participate in comforting my son when he wakes up between feedings. The anxiety is all but gone and he seems a little more comfortable with me at night.

However he's teething and has one tooth with several others on the way. That combined with a sudden bout of nasal congestion made for a long night. But the best thing? I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH - My mother-in-law came downstairs about 11pm and offered to stay the night with the baby so all Kirky had to do was feed him and we could sleep. We still had the monitor on slightly and caught drips and drabs of his fussiness but that was one of the nicest things she's ever done - and it's not the first time she's done it. I still don't know how two parents do it alone - we're very, very lucky to have such a helpful woman assisting us.

In an attempt to bring you more into my digital realm, there are a few things I want to share. Together these make a digital "Day in the Life Of" for when I'm not working, though I'm very close to starting a work weblog too:

• My OPML file - OPML is a format used to aggregate RSS and Atom feeds into one file. Basically this contains all the Web sites I read throughout the day and updates for me every 15 minutes. It includes everything from News to Friend's sites. I don't update it that often as it sits on my system. I use SharpReader as my newsreader though it currently lacks support to read password-protected LiveJournal entries and I wish it used OPML as its native storage format.
• My Delicious site - Del.icio.us is a site that makes it incredibly easy to store links. Because it is done online there's less of a chance I loose everything in a crash. I store EVERYTHING there. Stuff I want to read later, stuff I want to remember and stuff that's just cool to watch. It has an RSS feed to you can watch it in your newsreader and see when I add something new. I'm going to make more of an effort to add some "commentary" to links and at some point it will become a mini-blog.
• The Music I listen to - AudioScrobbler has a plugin for iTunes for Windows that essentially "records" the metadata of what you listen to on their Web site. It allows you to rate music as well as see who else shares your listening habits.
• The Things I Covet - With the holidays rapidly approaching, I thought I'd toss up my Amazon wish list. Not only does it contain things I want, but I use it as a storage place for books, movies and music that look interesting along with the occasional cool gadget. Be sure to check out the movies and music items because according to a spirited discussion this morning with Kirky, I have way too many books I dont read already. You can also see my Amazon listmania lists and reviews here.
• My Movies - Well, this one is not yet functional. I use the Internet Movie DataBase to store a lot of information about the movies I watch, what I think of them, and what I want to see. Unfortunately, IMDB doesn't let you share this information nor is there an up-to-date plugin for MovableType to aggregate it. Hopefully this will be added in the future.
• Google Me - I'm still the only B.K. DeLong out there and there certainly is a loads of information about me to be found on Google. Probably things I've even forgot.

I'll add more stuff to this list as I think about it or remember it's around. At some point, I need to redesign this site and add all these links to a sidebar. But that will have to wait until the elusive dimension of time affords me more of it.

Can't Make It Through The Vote

It's 11:47pm ET and I'm off to bed. It's 197 to 188 EV with Bush in the lead, 39,601,467 to 37,337,639 for the actual vote. There are 16 states left to weigh in according to CNN.

• New Hampshire
• Florida
• Ohio
• Michigan
• Wisconsin
• Minnesota
• Iowa
• Montana
• Colorado
• Washington
• Oregon
• New Mexico
• Arizona
• Nevada
• Hawaii
• Alaska

The Kerry camp has unofficially conceeded Florida and Arizona is all but Bush's. Everything seems to be following today's polls from Electoral Vote Predictor 2004 minus Florida. I see potentially Kerry getting Wisconsin and Ohio as well.

TCTC - Too Close To Call. I hate to say it. Time to sleep - if I can.

Make Your Vote Count! Report Election Incidents!

I would have included this in my previous post but I think it was important enough to warrant its own item. With all the craziness that happened in Florida in the last election, civil rights groups have banded together to help ensure a fair election. It is VITAL that you spread this information to friends, family, peers and coworkers. If they have ANY issues at the polls, they should report them.

First and foremost is the Election Protection 2004 Hotline: 1-866-OUR-VOTE. People should call this to report any issues that need addressing today or if they're still at the polls and need help. Print out that number and put it in your wallet or purse.

If you want to check and see the incidents being reported, go to the Election Incident Response System, part of the EP2004 project. Click on a state and you can drill down into counties for election incident details.

Finally, if you come across any posts in message rooms, IRC chats, chat boards, weblogs or livejournals about election incidents or problems, report them to VoteProblem.org, also managed by the same folks who create EIRS. Be sure to include the URL for the problem in the irst field where you dictate what happened.

Please, spread the word to EVERYONE.

Voting Complete

This morning Kirky and I arrived at Ward 3, Precinct 1 in Salem, MA at 6:47. When we arrived there were already 12 people in line - quite unusual from the past few years when we were second or third in line at 7am.

According to my watch, the poll opened at 6:59am ET and we went in to vote. The woman ahead of us had tried to register for an absentee ballot 2 weeks earlier but had not received it as of last night and wanted to vote in-person. There seemed to be some initial confusion as to what to do but it sounded as if they got her to sign some sort of affidavit stating she did not end up voting absentee and allowed her to cast a ballot.

While we were at the booth, someone's ballot got stuck in the Accu-Vote machine as it was being tallied and it took about 5 minutes to fix it and re-run it through. When we got to the machine I noticed we were 10 and 11 as far as votes being counted and upon leaving the polling location around 7:10am ET I counted 24 additional people in line.

Both of us voted for John Kerry, John Tierney, and John Keenan. It was a John kind of day.

UPDATE: Technorati and other sites are starting to catch "Web votes" by embedding rel="vote-for", rel="vote-against" or rel="vote-abstain" in HREFS linking to sites for candidates they support. I've embedded the code in my site.