Today is my 15th Wedding Anniversary. What a tremendous experience it's been! Living on the road in the Southwest, graduate school, and two perfect children. There have been rough times, but on the whole I think we've been fortunate. Most importantly, I believe both of us have been successful at putting the relationship first. I hope we can grow old and gray together. Here's to another 15 years!
Thinking about the Hobart Hoedown, I noticed 
this slashdot posting about this article. That, in turn, reminded me of the Transparent Society writings by David Brin. If we built a grassroots set of web-enabled cameras along our street, published the feeds on the net, and kept 48 hour backups, would it make a difference?
Well that was a waste of time. I was interested when I saw that Howard Dean was doing grassroots organizing using Meetup. I went this evening to give it a try. I hope other meetings were better than this one. I got there and for the first 45 minutes, nothing happened. They apparently had intended to show a Dean speech using a laptop and data projector, but didn't have any speakers. Eventually, they decided to divide everyone into two groups. This seemed like a huge mistake, to me -- it seemed obvious to me that everyone should be welcomed and there should be some basic orientation regarding how the time would be spent. Instead, the unidentified organizer said, "People who are interested in organizing (said with an odd emphasis) should go over there. If you're not interested in organizing stay here." I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but figuring organizing was better than not organizing. Or at least I should find out what organizing was. But there wasn't really any place to stand. They'd left the data projector set up and I ended up standing in front of it. I stood there for 5 minutes, with it shining in my face. Someone disconnected the video cable and then it started flashing in my face, as it cycled through video inputs. I work with data projectors on a daily basis and train people on how to use them, so I finally went to put the projector on standby when the owner came over. "Hey! Whaddya think you're doing! The bulbs in this thing cost $600!" I decided at that point, that this was one person I didn't want to work with. I'll admit that I'm not thick-skinned, but I'm not thin-skinned either. So I left. I still think Dean looks like the best of the Democratic candidates. I expect there will be other opportunities to join the effort.