Three out of four is not bad....

Busy day for March 31, 2012.... Started at 7:15am with a Kiwanis Blood Drive.  Got the room all set up and situated for the drive. Food table was stocked with snacks, food, and coffee.  The problem was that the supply truck for the Red Cross never showed up.  GRRRRR.  Don't know the details of what happened yet but I will let you know when I find out.  Early April Fools Joke?

Next up Toastmasters Division 6 contest.  Got to be the Sergeant at Arms and Ballot counter.  Escorted contestants to the sound proof booth and preparation areas.  Interesting experience for doing both duties for the first time for the Toastmasters at a contest.  The after contest hang out was cool at the IHOP too.  Tasty.

Also helping KDHX with their phone drive to collect funds for the station.  It's a 10 day process biannually.  It's a great station.  Member supported.  They can play pretty much anything, as long as it complies with the rules of broadcasting stuff.  You should give it a listen.  I'd bet there is something there for you, if you give it a sufficiently long listen.

Three out of four events that happened successfully is not bad at all.

Change The World

Changing the world is not as hard as it seems.  It does not matter if you're the small fish in the pond or the top dog.  We can all do things that can have an impact on the world.  It can be the little thing such as picking up a piece of litter.  The little things count even if no one is around to observe it.  You can make a different.

The cool stuff I'm doing, you can do to.  You can have the influence over your world.  You can be the person behind the scenes too.  It does not have to start out as some big thing that you have to organize.  There are organizations out there that are out to improve situations of the community and the world.  The Kiwanis, Rotary, or United Way are all great places to start out volunteering and making a difference.  Alternatively if you feel shy and reluctant to meet up with new strange people you can work on it with the Toastmasters.

Anyway's I'm going to be at the KDHX radio station tonight (7p to 9p) and tomorrow (5pm to 7pm).  Give me a call and support a great radio station.  The number is 314-664-3688.

FIRST Robotics Regional March 2012

This past weekend the FIRST Robotics Regional competition were held this past weekend (March 22 - 24, 2012).  It is a neat event.  This years goal for the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is the Rebound Rumble, where teams are tasked with collecting and shooting foam basketballs into basketball hoops.  The first day had more cooperation on some of the bridges.  It got more interesting as the day progressed and bugs got worked out of the robots.  The second day really got good.  Robots were tweaked and got better in time.  Scores evened out between the red and blue teams.  There were many more rounds where there were higher scores of 50+ points for teams.  The final rounds really got good with really good shooting and balancing on bridges.  Teams really got aggressive on defense and attempting to get three bots on the balancing bridges.  Lots of robot tipping as well.

It is a neat even to volunteer for.  Sign up to volunteer for them if you get a chance at www.usfirst.org

Edit (4/15/2012):
Finally got around to emptying the camera.  Photos are below of some of the neat stuff going on.

Great concert at Sheldon Concert Hall with Hayes Carll

Got to hang out at the Sheldon Concert Hall with KDHX on March 18, 2012.  Neat show.  Got to see Hayes Carll and the opening act of Honey Honey.  Not a bad gig to put in a few hours of work for a show with awesome music.  There were funny stories, great music, and great people.

Should be an interesting start to the volunteering season.  Coming up next weekend is the FIRST Robotics Regional completion.  The following weekend of March 31, 2012 there is going to be a Kiwanis Blood Drive at the Public Safety Building in O'Fallon, from 9am to 1pm.  I then run over to the Toastmasters Regional Contest later that afternoon and a KDHX phone drive.  Looking forward to the madness.

Slow Winter...or not.

Winter time is the slow time of the year.   There is not much that goes on.  I did manage help out KDHX with a few concerts at the Sheldon.  The specific shows were Jay Farrar show and the Todd Snider show.  Volunteering is cool.  Some times you get to be behind the scenes and see stuff not many people get to see.  I didn't see a large part of the Sheldon Concert Hall but I've seen more than most.  KDHX membership drive is coming up again.  Seems like it was only a few months since the last one in October.  If you would like to send in a few bucks, it wold be appreciated. 

Also helped out the O'Fallon Kiwanis a few times in the last few months.  There was the Salvation Army Bell Ringing in December.  Recently we has spaghetti dinner.  It was good as always.  Don't know how we did by the numbers though. 

I am also a fully trained secretary by the Toastmasters.  Kinda sucks that I've been out of service since mid-December.  Life of a student but I am only 4 classes away from a Masters in Information Technology Management.  I am on a mission to document all of these experiences.  I've got 87 hours between August and December for 2011 and I want to beat that this year.

And I have moved this blog over to blogger.  Figure I'd try it out for a while.