My Annual Handball Trip

I'm out at 3-wall nationals right now in the middle of Ohio. It is an annual trip I've made for the past 7 or 8 years. The handball community is a wonderful thing. It just transcends some many communities. First, handball is a family. Not just your family (it's often to see generations of handball players from ages 13-75), everyone here is like family. When out at a national tournament you have people from California, Texas, Canada, Ireland, New York, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and of course Maryland and the DC area. This tournament is also a time I spend with my dad every year.

All the insanity of around of starting a business, makes it easy to forget. I did almost miss it, because I was working myself too much earlier this summer and for awhile there didn't think I would make the trip. It's important to remember there are other areas to life that need attention and give you balance. Traditions are a good force!

Philips VOIP841 Review Update

I've still been using the Philips VOIP841 and still love it.

Here are a few other issues / points I've noticed:

1. System Starting - Sometimes after being on for a long time it ends up non-responsive all it says is "System Starting" - Unplug the base station and plug it back in, always works for me.

2. Adding contacts - from the phone isn't the most intuitive. There is a "Add Contact" menu option in the main menu. I kept looking for it in the Contacts area.

3. Chat messages - I would love for the phone to support chat messages. It could handle it just like a text message on a mobile phone. I'm sure this is a tall order, but I still want it.

4. Contacts from your Skype account - Not sure when a syncing interval happens, but it's not near immediate. That's somewhat annoying. Maybe there should be a request updates from your account or something.

5. Amendment to my last review (#2 on the wish list) - The device DOES have a headset jack. For some reason I totally missed it.


Overall I still love the device. It's essential to my home office!

To Blog or Not to Blog

Every day I wonder if I should be blogging more. It's all the rage you know. Everyone is doing it! Honestly I am still trying to figure out why I should be doing it.

Why to do it?
1. It can enhance my "web persona" and drive traffic to my web business.
2. I can potentially help other people in the world with what I post.
3. I can practice informal writing and funnel abstract thoughts and ideas into something others are interested in.
4. Find out what this is all about and give blogging a chance.

Why not?
1. It takes time.
2. I hate feeding the hype machine and doing something EVERYONE is doing.
3. Worried about offending people.
4. I don't quite understand it.
5. I don't enjoy proclaiming myself as the master of some top 10 list or something that I may not be a subject matter expert on.
6. Fear my time is wasted in it and no one really cares what I think.


Personally blogging is tough for me. I'm not sure if it's the same for everyone else.

1. I have plenty of ideas on what to blog about but want to keep them in line with a certain topic. Is this a personal blog (all topics centric to me), or a blog on a certain topic?
2. Many of these ideas are incomplete thoughts, if I post something I want it to be complete, which takes time.
3. I am worried about what I say / put into writing and have to one day defend it when I don't even remember what I said. At the point of writing I am sure it made sense to me, but I don't like something out there that I may not agree with later.

After looking over my reasoning, I think a lot of the reasons not to do it boil down to discomfort. Discomfort in the medium. Discomfort in my own writing. Discomfort in the time it takes away from other things.

I'm going to give it a try. To be less formal and to just see if it's something I can get into and understand. See if I can find my blogging voice.