Facial hair has not really been my big thing. I have sported a goatee a while back and even a “soul patch” but I always ended up shaving it off to the cheers of my wife, parents and even my kids. But for the month of November, I’m getting scruffy again but this time for a cause – to raise awareness of prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men. I have joined a team over at Movember, a site that is evangelizing and organizing this growing movement, and I hope that you will contribute your support in this effort.
We start the month clean shaven. And then, let our Mo’s grow. Unfortunately, I look incredibly silly with just a mustache, so I’m going to try the goatee thing again. Here’s where I’m starting:
And who knows where I will end up! [click to continue…]
I’m scared. In 1 year, I will have a teenager. In 4 years, I will have a teenage driver. And I have two more daughters after that. Just writing the past few sentences has given me a few more grey hairs. While automobile safety has improved dramatically over the past few years, so have distractions. It’s a leapfrog race to keep drivers safe as gadgets and other things around vie for attention.
How many cars have you seen with drivers chatting away on the phone, or worse yet, texting. Taking your eyes off of the road just to read a quick text for a few seconds when hurtling down a freeway means that you have travelled several hundred feet without looking at the road. A lot can happen during that timeframe. But there are lots of other distractions apart from texting and cell phones, think about teenagers chatting away in a car or loud music playing, that is enough of a distraction alone.
As adults, we have one thing on our side though that teenagers don’t have – driving experience. But if you ask me, I think a lot of adults use this as an excuse to drive even more distracted (drinking coffee, putting on makeup, talking on the phone, playing with the radio and driving a lot of loud children). It’s a miracle that there aren’t MORE accidents.
But Ford is working on a nationwide program aim to help reduce the number of drivers age 15-19 who die every year. The numbers are pretty scary actually. Some sobering statistics:
- 3000-5000 teens are killed on American roads every year, according to government reports
- Most crashes occur within the first hundred miles on the road
- There are 4 key areas that contribute to 60 percent of teen crashes: driver distraction, speed space management, vehicle handling and hazard recognition
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by Michael Sheehan on July 27, 2011
in Cast of Dads, Consumer Electronics, Event, Gadgets, General, Hardware, Intel, Opinion, Tech News, video
A few weeks ago, I participated in the Intel “Upgrade Your Life” 2011 summit in Intel’s Santa Clara, CA campus. This was the second year I attended and after both summits, I always managed to walk away with a headache. But, not a “bad” headache by that definition, but a “good” one. Think about when you go for a very hard run or work out for a long time and your muscles hurt and are sore when you are done…it was THAT type of a headache. In about 8 hours, my mind had sucked in so much new information, that it literally hurt from all of the exercise.
The participants of the “Upgrade Your Life” 2011 event all seemed to have something in common, we were all bloggers and most of us were parents as well and many of us, like me, also write about technology. There were only 2 males/dads in the group, me and Jeff Sass (Jeff and I are 2/5ths of the Cast of Dads podcast), and we did a video recap of some of the things that impressed us about this event in this video “2/5ths of the Cast of Dads Get Their Brains Upgraded at Intel’s ‘Upgrade Your Life’ 2011 Event”. But I thought that I would dive into two other important topics that came from the Intel Labs group: Energy Conservation and Caring for the Elderly.
First off, I have always expressed how much I like the Labs division of companies and Intel’s is no exception. As part of the Intel Advisors program (another group I actively participate in with Intel), some of our best informational conference calls and presentations in my opinion were the ones where people from the Intel Labs group would present us with some new projects that they are working on. So, the two topics of this post and the videos below (from the “Upgrade Your Life” event) are from the Labs groups. There were other quite interesting demonstrations, but I found these two to be timely and critical to think about in this day and age.
I actually got a bit scared when listening to the presentations on these two topics: Energy Conservation and Caring for the Elderly. These are two topics that we need to be not only thinking about, but acting on NOW. And this is exactly what Intel is doing. [click to continue…]
by Michael Sheehan on July 18, 2011
in Cast of Dads, Consumer Electronics, Event, Gadgets, General, Hardware, Intel, Opinion, PodCast, Tech News, video
Last week, 2 of the Cast of Dads had the opportunity to visit Intel in Santa Clara, CA to participate in an annual event called “Upgrade Your Life.” This day-long summit was an opportunity for a variety of influential technology and parenting bloggers to convene to understand some of the initiatives that Intel participates in or drives – something beyond just “the manufacturing of chips.” Last Wednesday, Jeff Sass (Dadomatic.com) and I got to flip the saying from “Intel Inside” to “Inside Intel” as we learned more from the thought leaders within Intel.
Both Jeff and I are part of the Intel Advisors program as well and participated in last year’s Upgrade Your Life event in Portland, OR. Both of us will be providing addition insight, commentary and media from this event and will be posting it over the coming weeks. However, we recorded a quick overview of the event and a few things that we learned which we wanted to share (this video is also available here on YouTube):
It’s always a pleasure and a privilege to be invited to events, summits or meetings sponsored by large brands and industry leaders. If your brand or company is interested in sponsoring a trip for the Cast of Dads, please let us know! You can email us at: castofdads@gmail.com.
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