Thank you. All right, our next speaker is Steven Ragnarok. Steven is a professional student. And he's newly at GitHub. So congratulations, Steven. And he does a lot of teaching, especially with RailsBridge. So thank you for your contribution to the community. And apparently, this talk is at least partly my fault. I said something about how I didn't understand why people tried to teach Ruby without starting with the core of Ruby, which is objects. And Steven apparently took that to heart and did something pretty cool with it. So Steven Ragnarok telling you about sugar-free Ruby. Hi, my name is Steven. I'm going to be talking to you today about sugar-free Ruby, which is kind of my way of looking at Ruby in a way that emphasizes what Ruby is all about, which is objects to people who might be brand new to it. You're probably wondering who I am. My name is Steven. My last name is fake. That's not my real last name. I go by Nuclear Sandwich on the majority of the internet everywhere that I care about. And I was once pointed out in a bar as that guy with all the opinions. So I'm here to talk to you about teaching programming. Teaching programming is something that I do a lot of. It's something I love. And it's something that's genuinely important to the future of our field, our hobby, our love. Whatever you want to call programming to you, if we don't teach it, it's going to go away. All of you have teachers. Be they the authors of the books that you wrote, the teachers you had in school if you went to the boring educational route to programming, the parents who taught you about computers and how to program. Everyone here learns to program from probably a set of teachers.  There's one problem, though. Teaching programming is really hard, really hard. It's one of the most difficult things to introduce to someone who's never done it before. And there's a number of reasons why teaching programming is so hard. I think one of the biggest ones is that if you're teaching someone to program, that means you already know. And if you've been programming long enough, you've completely forgotten what it's actually like to learn to program. And that's a huge deal. There's plenty of assumptions that you make every day that somebody who's outside of the programming field wouldn't even think of. So that's one of the major difficulties. You have to relearn what it's like to be a total noob. And that takes a lot of empathy and a lot of work. The other reason is that as people, we tend to bogart our secrets. We don't want to dispense with knowledge freely because knowledge has a value. And you don't want to be giving something that's valuable away. So it's really hard to actually share with people what you've learned without trying to gain some value out of it. And whether that value is financial or in terms of social status, there's value in the knowledge that we have. And we wanna make sure that we get an equal trade for it. And it takes a while to realize how rewarding programming is in terms of rewarding you for the value of your knowledge and how to share it. In short, the big issue is that programming takes a lot of self reflection to teach. You have to do it constantly. You have to do it extensively. You constantly need to look at what you are doing and how you can be better. And we're great at that as programmers. We continually assess ourselves and how our programs look and comparing them to the programs we've written in the past and thinking of what the programs we might write in the future will look like. But it's another thing to take that skill and apply it to everything else we do. One of those things is teaching. But it's okay. Programming teaching is getting better. There are plenty of organizations out there now that are making a serious deal out of teaching programming. There's Living Social has the Hungry Academy. Railsbridge has started and there are plenty of Railsbridge workshops and groups starting up all over the United States. We have workshops happening in Europe and in Asia all over through Railsbridge and Rails Girls, Pie Ladies is a big thing. So there are groups out there dedicated to teaching and I'm gonna talk a little bit about some of those groups and my involvement with them and I'm gonna get into some of the ways that we're teaching Ruby and how we're doing that now and how we might do that better. So Coder Dojo is an organization dedicated to setting up kids' programming clubs all across the world and the whole idea behind Coder Dojo is that kids come in for a couple hours on a Saturday or a weekday evening before it gets too late and they learn about making games with Game Builder or fiddling around with the scratch visual programming environment, playing with Python. When the stars are aligned just so and Hackety Hack is working well then we get to use Hackety Hack. And this is really fantastic that we expose kids to all this stuff but really what kids are learning is that programming is fun and kids reward things that are fun by wanting to do them more often. We're instilling in them this idea that all this stuff that we do every day is awesome and that they wanna do more of it and that's really, really rewarding for them and for us, this is the way that we engage young programmers and it's the way that we need to continue to engage young programmers. One of the other groups I work with a lot is RailsBridge. You're gonna hear a lot about RailsBridge, we have a number of speakers who've been involved with the program and the organization. If you've never volunteered for a RailsBridge workshop, do it, you'll learn a lot about what you know about programming, you'll learn a lot about what you know about teaching, and you'll learn a lot about how to take all of that information back to the rest of your team. RailsBridge primarily holds workshops for women right now. We've done kids ruby workshops in the past and one of the things that we've done before and I really wanna start doing again is getting our workshop format and our curriculum into languages beyond just English. At RailsBridge, the big thing that we're trying to bring to our attendees is that, yeah, programming is hard, but it's only hard, it's not an impossible feat to learn to program for anyone in this room or in this world. It's something that is attainable by everyone and the main goal of the workshop is just demystifying that process and bringing that to everyone. So we use different techniques when we're working with kids at Coder Dojo than we would ever use working with women and minorities at RailsBridge. So with RailsBridge, one of the ways we accomplish this is we get all of the development tool set up out of the way the night before. All of the hideousness of getting ruby onto a Mac right now, we do it on a Friday night over pizza and drinks so that it's not part of the actual fun and joy of programming, it's not part of that process and we have the full day to focus on the act of programming itself and not on infrastructure because that stuff sucks. Even if you've been programming for 10 years, setting up a development machine isn't a lot of fun. And then we get to spend that whole day focusing on ruby for people who are brand new to it, mixing in a little bit of Rails or doing like a Ruby crash course and then going right into Rails depending on the past experience of the people in the group or just going whole hog and throwing a Rails app up on Heroku doing something fun with a day's work and that's really excellent. And so what all of this comes down to is that the real challenge in teaching Ruby is gonna be finding out why your pupils wanna learn Ruby, what is their goal, what do they want to achieve and how can you as a teacher actually help them realize that? So the easiest way to figure this out, I've discovered, believe it or not, is just to ask, why do you wanna learn Ruby? So I've had a bunch of answers to this.  I want in, how can I do this? Anyone who's coming, who sees what we have in this room right now and is coming from another programming environment is probably gonna be like, why are you guys all friends? Like this is great, this is something wonderful that we have and it's not the language that makes that so, it's the people but the people are gonna bring others into the language so we have to make sure that the people who know how to program but not in Ruby that their needs are met because if we spend the whole day teaching basic programming, they're gonna get bored and leave. And the last one are the people who are just curious about programming, never done anything beyond like a word document with a computer in their life or maybe even never used a computer in a serious fashion and just wanna know how they work. There's a driving curiosity as all of you know and many people of just how do I take this apart and figure out what's going on? Ruby's not the best language for that on a computer as I'll get into a little bit later but this is still a class of person who might ask you to teach them Ruby and it's good to know what they want out of it. So at this point, I'm gonna ask that you check your assumptions at the door and keep an open mind. I'm definitely up for debate about all of this but don't dismiss anything that's about to happen out of hand and if you are a hater, the doors are staged left now is a great time to have a coffee break. Great, no one's leaving, awesome. So what are we doing right now teaching Ruby? Well, we generally start with data types. So we've got some numbers, numbers are cool. We've got both integers and floats here and then we might talk about strings and symbols or maybe we'll just pretend symbols don't exist because they're hard to explain and then we'll talk about truth and false and our truth is true and false and bullying expressions and how those work in Ruby and then we'll go over like collection structures like arrays and hashes and then we'll maybe assign some variables and then maybe we'll use those variables in Ruby expressions and then we'll do some console output, good old puts, nothing beats puts and then we'll get into conditionals which is like the first kind of mental overhead of putting things together where we say if some condition holds true then do this one thing otherwise do something else or maybe do nothing at all and then we start talking about loops in like the pure computer science sense of the thing where we just step over and change a value and check an expression's truth value a bunch of times and then maybe if we're lucky, if we have time we might do something like food.upcase and actually talk about methods. So what's wrong with this picture? Did you guys feel like that went a little fast? I went through that pretty quickly and if you spent four hours on all those things the rush of information that just hit you is what that feels like to somebody who's completely new to Ruby. It just all comes at you way too quickly and that was purposeful to try and put you in the mindset of somebody who's new to this. So one of the things that's wrong with this picture one of the big things is that we introduced six whole disparate concepts before we even talked about the concept of a method which is pretty central to Ruby. I think you'll all agree. And what's worse is that we didn't even talk about classes or objects, right? Like the things that we hold dear to Ruby were just like that's hard, let's do conditional statements. So we don't actually teach the things that we love about our language and that doesn't make any sense. Why are we still doing this? I don't have a good answer for you. The best I can come up with is that the majority of people in this room actually let's do hands, hands are fun. Raise your hand if your first language was object-oriented. That's more than I expected. Raise your hand if when you first learned it you knew what object-oriented actually meant actually. All right, kinda, maybe, a little. Yeah, we all learned from venerable programming languages. These languages are awesome, don't get me wrong. I love me some C. I don't touch Pascal with a 10-foot pole. But anyway, Ruby is not a computer language and this is the part where I expect most of you to walk out the door. Ruby, like it runs on the computer but that's not central to what Ruby is. Not even a little bit. If I gave you a magic ball and said this language called Ruby runs on this ball then it wouldn't make any difference than if it runs on an Intel CPU or a PowerPC CPU. It doesn't matter to Ruby. There's nothing in Ruby that cares about the fact that it's running on a computer. So why are we teaching Ruby like it's computer programming language? Instead, let's teach objects. Let's let Ruby be the computer. Let's treat objects as the lowest level concept that we ever talk about with our students and see where that takes us. But Steven, if we try to teach objects and all of that other stuff that I already whirlwinded past you, everyone's head would explode. Well, yeah, it would, but their head was gonna explode anyway with all that stuff I just showed you. So instead, what I wanna do is teach objects and only introduce that other stuff that we started with when it actually matters towards furthering our goals, seeing what else Ruby has to offer. So don't just go ahead and teach them a whole bunch of things. Give them this idea, Ruby is objects. And then let that idea sink in through exploration. So the best tool for learning Ruby is IRB. We've all experienced that. It's wonderful. So what I'm gonna show you now are some code samples that you might bang into IRB when you're kind of pair learning with somebody who's brand new to Ruby and you're gonna be teaching them object-oriented programming through Ruby. So what's the first thing that you start with? Well, everything is an object. Five is an object, 42.0 is an object, hello is an object, and an array containing one, two, and three is an object. Everything in Ruby is an object. Object is an object. Class is an object. Seriously guys, everything is an object. Like, everything. Everything. Objects receive messages. Something crazy that happens here is they actually use send explicitly. And I do that for a really specific purpose. I've taken out everything that we love about Ruby in order to emphasize what's actually going on behind the scenes. So any method that you send to Ruby is a message sent to an object. And we all know that, that's great.  So let's actually send messages explicitly just for a little bit. I'm not gonna do this all day. In order to really review the fact that that's what's happening, everything here is intended to reveal what Ruby actually does when stuff happens. So you can send some messages, and I just have some example messages that we might send. And then we get to talk about the fact that objects have class. So you can get the class of an object with this really sweet method called class. So you send them a class message and you get back the object that represents that class.  They weren't kidding. When they said everything was an object, especially to people who come from other object-oriented languages, or as I like to call Java, procedural language with objects. It's really important that you emphasize this fact that objects and classes are one and the same, and classes are as dynamic as anything else in the system. So five has a fixed num class, four point not is a float, and the array containing he's crazy, which I know half of you are thinking right now, is actually an array. So now we get to talk about a narrative. And I like to teach with narratives because they give the user something to pay attention to that's not a bunch of technical mumbo jumbo. It gives them a thread to follow and an arc where they can kind of figure out where the information that they're receiving actually comes into play. And so my kind of demo right now is called the pen and the scribe. And like every good story, it begins with object.new. So this first concept that we have here, there's a message called new, which you can send to any class and you will get back a new object of that class. And we've just given this object a name, which is pen. So rather than talk about, well, this is a variable and we're setting a variable. We're giving a name to an object that we want to use. And now let's define a method on this object. So we're going to define a method called 2s because that string that we saw on the last slide wasn't all that pretty. So we've decided to dub this pen, a trusty pen. And now we can move on, we get back now, which is just an artifact of the method definition. And we can use this by sending the 2s message to our pen. And what's more, any time our pen needs to be represented as a string in Ruby, we'll get back that same string. This is wonderful. So we have our trusty pen and now we're going to introduce just a pinch of syntactic sugar to really drive home this concept. This is actually going to help the user link in their minds what's going on. And this is one of the reasons I start with a single object instead of starting with a defining a class because we see, we've defined this method pen or this method 2s on this pen. And now when we send that 2s message, we get the results of that method that we wrote. And that visual link is really key for some types of learners, but it doesn't hurt anyone else and it's a really wonderful thing. So do this more. And now we're just going to assume that everything in Ruby is magic and unicorns and rainbows and we're just going to pretend that a right method exists. And we're going to get an error. But we're going to get the best error in the entire Ruby language, which is a no method error. And this no method error is great because it tells us what we need to do. Assuming that we've been doing this the entire time, we know how to fix what happens when a method is undefined. We can just define that method. But instead of defining it with good old puts, we're going to use the kernel object explicitly. And we're going to do that because now is not the time to explain implicit receivers. Now is not the time to explain mixins or the fact that there's this kernel module that every object has access to and you can just kind of call methods on nothing and they'll work. That's a lot to take into if you are brand new to programming. So let's have this kernel object handy and let's use it explicitly. And we're just going to put this thing out to the console like you do. And now we can write anything because we can write any object to the console. And since everything in Ruby is an object, we can write anything. We can even write our own trusty pen. This is great. And after about five minutes, this is boring again because you've written all of the things that you care about and it's time to move forward and how might one move forward but adding a little bit of color to your life. So we have a feature request which is that we want to implement color. In order to do this, we want to have this pen contain an ink color and like any good Rubyist, we're just going to pretend that this works and see that it doesn't. And this is why no method error is the best thing in Ruby.  We didn't get like a no property or like a no actually like nothing happened here that is variable setting. What we had was a no method error. So Ruby has no method ink color equals for our trusty pen. Wow, that's crazy, right? Like didn't that look like variable assignment just now? It did to me when I first started Ruby. The fact that this is a method is kind of mind blowing but it's also kind of awesome because it means we know how to solve this problem yet again given the context of what we've already learned.  And now we can actually display this color by revisiting our 2S method and redefining it so that we have a trusty colorful pen and we can set our ink color to purple or if we teach too much we might set it to red. And now every time we evaluate our pen we'll get back our trusty purple pen and everything is great except that we're not actually printing color to the console and we're not gonna right away because who wants to deal with ANSI sequences on a day like today when we're doing great and having fun? So instead let's just make the text prettier. So let's actually implement a method that I call sparkly write and we'll use some hideous ASCII sparkles that I use whenever I don't have access to Emoji and what we're gonna do is we're just going to change the string that we're gonna write to the console by putting it inside some other text. But then what's gonna happen is we're gonna use this write method and what's funny is that we didn't specify to which object we are sending this write method. Well dear student, as it turns out if you don't specify the object you're sending a message to it sends it to itself. So our pens own write method is being called here by one of our other methods sparkly write and we can use this just like we do our regular old write method and everything is fantastic, great. And we have our trusty purple pen in wonderful sparkles. So now let's revisit that color issue but again, hence these sequences. Let's do something else. Let's instead generate an HTML P tag and do that. So next up is the most hideous slide in my deck because 30 column text does not a good code editor make but the complexity here is not in the string that's just some escapes to wrap around HTML style attributes. What we're doing instead is this conditional and unlike the first conditional that we introduced where it was just one of many things that are sort of unrelated this conditional is a way of accomplishing things under the context of our objects and their messages. So if we have an ink color on our pen we're just going to write a P tag with a particular style attribute that gives it that color. And if we don't, we're going to write it out like it's just a regular old P tag and now we can write anything we want in HTML and everything is fantastic. So what have we introduced at this point? Well, we've talked about objects and how objects send messages to each other and that we can define and use methods for responding to those messages. This is really key. This is something that I didn't learn about Ruby until I peeled back like eight layers of the onion around this weird looking basic like language that I had been fiddling with because Bash wasn't doing enough for me. We've done a lot of cool stuff and now it's time to bring out the big guns. It's time to get a little classy. So what we're going to do is we're not going to use the class syntactic sugar because that again that hides the fact that a class is just another type of object and we emphasize that a class is an object through two ways. We assign that class to a value in this case a constant scribe and we create that class with class.new. So class is a class that creates new classes. Everybody remember learning that?  This is great like that feeling of learning and so we can initialize our scribe and we can give it a pen and we're also going to create an array of items that this scribe is going to take note of throughout the session and then we're going to implement that note method just by taking in an item which is any old object and we're going to use the shovel method. Note that there's a dot in there that is a method not an operator syntax. We haven't talked about operator syntax yet. We're just dealing with objects and messages. So we use this shovel to just put that item on the end of the array and I don't have enough room on one slide. So now we get to actually teach our scribe how to write everything and we do that by sending a message. There's not a loop here, not in any way that we care about. This is just saying that each item we have in this array there's a method each that will just walk over and just say like well this method or this object and then I'm going to run this block of code and then next object and I'm going to run this block of code. Sure we know that somewhere in there a loop happens but who cares? Who really cares that a loop happens? We have an each method. So we use this each method, we write everything to the console and that's our scribe. So let's get a new scribe and I've dubbed my scribe Miello who you can all Wikipedia if you care and I've entrusted him with my trusty pen. I've given my pen away to Miello and he's going to hang on to that pen and use it to take note of things and later to write them down for me. So Miello's going to note the current time and he's going to note the fact that I'm just about done with this demo and then when I ask him to write everything he's going to do it and that's my story. So I've just shown you what it might look like to teach Ruby with objects or if you want to look at it a different way I've shown you what it's like to teach objects with Ruby. You could do this same thing in any other valid object oriented language as in not Java. I hate to bash but really it doesn't work the way it should. So why is this better? By starting with everything in Ruby as an object you give the student an axiom that they can then use whenever they're considering any other piece of information that you give them for the rest of their learning career. If everything in Ruby is an object I have a constant piece of knowledge to which I can place everything else around that. It's a root that you can hold on to. Something fundamental that you don't get when you jumble everything out at the beginning and then try to relate these things later. We also don't bombard people with new concepts. I didn't throw infinity new things at you and then be like now use all of those things and make a game. I introduced them only as they were needed to further the plot. And that just, again, it gives that a context so that you can use all that information. And once you understand how Ruby works introducing all of the things we love about Ruby like class syntax, like operator syntax, like all of this extra value add that Ruby has because Ruby loves us is really easy to digest and understand because they understand what's going on under the hood so to speak. We didn't bother teaching them about array offsets or pointers or any of that stuff because Ruby doesn't care. But what Ruby does care about are objects and how they interact with each other. So by teaching that as our base we've enabled them to better absorb any information that they'll learn about Ruby for the rest of their programming career. Thanks.


The black mic in his back and ready to react.    This is a cool motherfuckin' shirt. Look at this.  Look at this Superman shirt that I then got. Fresh off the presses at superherostuff.com. I ain't being paid to say that. I saw it on website.  So let's get to this article that movie pilot done wrote about me. I was flabbergasted. Magnus Sight just sent me this link. Shout yourself out. I didn't know it was going to be an article about me. I saw that you sent me a link and I just clicked on it. And I opened a separate tab while I continued to go through comments. So I didn't know.  Let me read this. This says the title is something that I've been thinking for a long time anyway. This is what it says. It says Tyrone Magnus needs to be in the superhero film. It says for those who are confused as to who I'm talking about, Tyrone Magnus is a YouTuber who reacts to viral videos, articles, and many other things. He is a big superhero nut, considering he calls himself the Black Viking who wields the dark mule there. That's right. Thor's Mortis counterpart, the Black Tiger, the Black Kryptonian and Immortal. But let me continue. As a Magnus Sight, when he calls his sub... As a Magnus Sight, what he calls his subscribers, I think he is such a fun and incredibly cool YouTuber who has earned his way to my top five YouTubers after watching his videos for over a year. Thanks, I appreciate that for real. He is currently on a journey to get one million subscribers and I hope you all help him. Appreciate that too. Now on to why I made this article. Tyrone Magnus's page describes him also as an actor and voiceover actor. So Will is watching videos and I see how much he loves superheroes and how much fun he has with his videos. I honestly think he could pull off playing a superhero or even a supervillain. Says first, he has the charm. Every video he either makes me laugh or smile, especially the video where he reacted to an article of mine. Yeah, I do read movie pilot. I've been on movie pilot for a long time. I've been in my feed for a while on Facebook. Second, his physique and deep voice are perfect that are both for a superhero or villain. Recently he reacted and reviewed the Fantastic Four teaser and in it, he repeated the monologue from the trailer. Personally, I thought he sounded cooler than the trailer although the actual speech was awesomely done. Says third, the guy is so much fun to watch. Again, referring to his Fantastic Four video in the intro, he did. The video made me grin and laugh big time. Heck, most of his intros are awesome. From the funny ones to the actual cool ones like his reptile Mortal Kombat 10 video or Star Wars The Force Awakens video. So putting someone that fun on the big screen is sure to get a lot of fatness. Now, when I first see Magnus in terms of superheroes, I immediately think of Luke Cage. I get that a lot. Luke Cage of the Black Marine Lantern, aka Power Man. Unfortunately, microculture is already cast as that character. But Magnus is also a voiceover actor. So I could see him as an animated Luke Cage. Let's see here. However, I have a few other choices for characters that Magnus could play such as Jefferson Pierce aka Black Lightning. One of the first African-American superheroes in comic history, whether he is the first or not is unknown to me and I love this character. Black Lightning looked pretty cool. And to give sort of an example of Magnus' physique for a hero, I fiddled with Photoshop and made this. While he is a bit more of an obscure character for audiences, I think people could come to love him especially if this guy is playing him. Next, there is Emerald Crusader, John Stuart, aka Green Lantern, Lantern of Sector 2814.  Says Sucky Photoshop, I know. But it's just to give you an idea. Here's the thing though. I am not that big a fan of John Stuart. He always seemed mad to me, but there have been times where the movie version of the character has been better than the comic version such as Blade, Thor, et cetera. By the off chance Tyrone actually reads this article, you're dead right, I'm reading this article right now. Woo, that's right movie pilot. You're on my number one list right now. Make sure that I continue to go to your website for all movie news. I've been coming to you, but now you're number one. Yeah, let's see here. I want him to show off his epic voice while reading. The Green Lantern Oath, as if he were in a scene just to show movie pilot and the people that I think would do check out movie pilot an example of what he can do. Let's see here. See, the villain has weakened John Stuart immensely and is forced to be on one knee, but Stuart finds that the will to continue the fight so he speaks out in brightest day and blackest night. No evil shall escape my sight that those who worship evils might beware. My power, Green Lanterns Oath! You know what's funny? I never knew the Green Lanterns Oath with some practice on that.  Man, I'll make that work, believe that. Believe that. What better way to show off an epic voice than with the epic Green Lantern line? Yeah. Now, what really got me intrigued in him possibly playing a villain was what I talked about earlier when he spoke the Fantastic Four trailer speech. So I created a monologue of my own for my own original story in the future and I thought it would be another read for him. So, let me see something here. Am I supposed to read this in a, ah, okay, okay. So he wants me to read this like a villain. Okay, mercy, mercy. You beg for it, yet when received you squander it. Wasted, you all scatter about your world like insects.  You will know what it's like to actually feel small and as I take away your hope, your will, your light. Then for mercy and you will remember my name, Malice. How did I do? Woo. All right, so next, have the chills. I hope so. Well, I hope people actually liked this article and please check out Tyrone Magnus' channel. That's right, subscribe right now and make sure you go to a movie pilot. Make sure you're following him for all his moving news. And it says, help him get to one million subscribers. Woo, ain't that cool? I really, really, really appreciate that support from you for real, man. And this is incredible, man. I'm gonna upload this video. I hope I did well enough with your monologue for you and you need me, let me know, man.  I'll scratch yours. So if you need me to do something for you, let me know. I got you, all right? I appreciate it. Magnus Ice, let me know what you think about movie pilot. Supporting me, supporting Thor's Mortar Scouterpot, the black Kryptonian, the black tiger and possibly the future Luke Cage, maybe John Stewart. Hmm, who knows? One million subscribers. Woo.


Welcome to the economy in you and another episode here in a beautiful day in Hawaii and our guest today we have some special guests. We have a long time celebrity Linda Koba, welcome to the economy in you. Thank you. You had to say long time. Thanks a lot. And we have of course the venerable David Benson. Thank you for joining us today David. And this is kind of an interesting conversation we're going to have today because this has to do with two things. One the rotary club celebrating 100 years in existence. The other is a sort of a plighted park in the middle of Waikiki and how we're going to bring those two together.  Well I was visiting the Waikiki neighborhood board and they were talking about a park some place in Waikiki and then Linda mentioned that a long time ago the mayor wanted a park. In fact it was before Caldwell I believe it was some mayors ago and they I looked at the location and it was kind of dilapidated a little block in the right. And it smacked to have been the middle of beautiful Waikiki I mean you got Royal Hawaiian Avenue on one side and you know what else. Seaside. Seaside. And the Loha Drive. Right in the middle of everything and it's just ugly. Well it looks like somebody was going to build something and never did. Never did. Well they tore all those condos or not condos there old wooden shacks that were there and just tore them down and then put a fence around it so people wouldn't sleep in there. Or park their cars there. Or park their cars. You know. But then the city parked all their vehicles there when they were cleaning up place they put pipes and narrative. Oh yeah. Yeah. They used it when they were doing construction along the Alawai. Can you imagine being in one of those beautiful apartments there right in the middle of Waikiki and looking down at something that looks like a garbage mall. Yeah. You know there was just there's no beauty to it there's no view and pretty soon the Rotary Club of Honolulu and other clubs throughout the state of Hawaii will be getting together and creating a fabulous park complete with the history of Rotary. Rotary is worldwide and worldwide it celebrated its centennial in 2005 and Hawaii is celebrating the centennial because our Rotary Club the Rotary Club of Honolulu turned 100 years last year. Right. Last Rotary year. You've been involved in Rotary for quite some time. I've been a member of the Rotary Club of Honolulu since they finally let broads into the clubs. There was a problem that the gentlemen just didn't think women fit and in a way they were right because they weren't involved in business back in 1987 when they finally allowed Rotary to open the doors to females. That's actually quite interesting because you know my mother is an entrepreneur and we set up a company that did substance abuse education prevention for years and she was very entrepreneurial and so when organizations like the Rotary Club opened their doors to women it creates new opportunities for them. Absolutely. And it's and to me it's an ohana. It's people of like-minded interests, people who want to make a difference in their own communities and around the world. They want to help Rotary end polio. We're almost there. We're this close to ending polio worldwide. Isn't that amazing? Yes. There are so many opportunities to serve here at home and around the world and at the same time do it with friends who are well respected and that's like ohana. Yeah. And it's a wonderful feeling to know that you've helped people and that you are helping people and people are helping you and it's just a really nice group of people. So we're going to drag them in. You're going to drag them all in. Okay. So the nice thing about it is worldwide and no matter where you are. And this park is going to represent the celebration of... It's going to celebrate 100 years of Rotary in Hawaii. Uh-huh. It's going to celebrate 100 years of Waikiki, which is really quite interesting as we dig into it a little bit more. I didn't know that. Yeah, we're going to find out some things about Waikiki and it's going to be displayed on large rocks that are engraved, 10 of them, one for each decade right around the park and the rocks will be in a garden and we'll have gardens all the way around the inside of the park. The Rotarians will plant. The Rotarians will plant and everybody else will get to use. Yes. Now feature this big lot here that's going to have a two-foot moss rock wall around it with a four-foot fence, an iron fence like the palace has around it, with three gates, a big gate on the low-head drive which will be the main entrance and then two gates, one on the seaside and one on Royal Hawaiian, will be shutting it at 10 o'clock at night and opening it in the morning. Keep it private as far as people in there, sprinklers will go on at night and keep it nice and green. That's the primary function of the sprinklers, but it does have some ancillary benefits as well. Finished with this park, we're going to gift it back to the city. They will maintain it along with Rotarians from all the clubs in Hikiki and surrounding areas. It's a wonderful project for the clubs. We have something like 50 rotary clubs throughout the state of Hawaii and they can choose or not to participate in this, go down there and dig holes and plant trees and maintain it during the year and also at the same time share their history. Oh, we're on rock number seven. We were, you know, that was a long time ago, but we were, you know, rock number seven. It also celebrates the Rotary Foundation, which is worldwide. It is the way that Rotarians can contribute to the Paul Harris Fund, Paul Harris-founded Rotary. And that money goes to projects all around the world or even here. Here in Hawaii. Yes. And that's 100 years old this year. So everything's 100, except me. That is, Dave didn't say anything. And me. So now this project is getting underway and now the funding aspect of this is going to come from where? You. Yes. You and you. And anyone who cares to contribute to the beauty of Waikiki and Rotarians will be doing fundraising projects and they will reach into their pockets and all of the money will go tax deductible into the Rotary Foundation, which we have, and then it will be brought right back out to be used to install the fencing, to plant the gardens, to fix the grass. And can you imagine walking through that beautiful area on gorgeous paths and areas to picnic and places to take your kids and learn the history of Waikiki and Rotary and. I tell you, I would not want to be a tree in this garden. But there will be trees in there. We're keeping the big banyan trees that are in the middle. We're taking down a lot of the old dilapidated trees that are actually not worth keeping they're kind of sick and we had a guy come in and look at them and take their pulse and stuff and he's gone, but we're going to put some new trees in, you know, the city has a rule. Obamacare. You put one back here. I see the Obamacare of trees are going to, some will live in, some will out. Bandage. So this is this is kind of an interesting idea. Now, the thing is, is though, you're going to have to have some sort of events and such in order to sort of get all of this going. You know, you'd be surprised when Rotarians are asked to contribute their members dig into their pockets, their clubs do things that make a difference in the community. For example, the Weinberg project, you get 25 Rotarians there and Weinberg will give you to do a project and Weinberg will give you $10,000 and we can put that toward the park. I mean, there are so many ways to to raise the money, but it's mostly asking you and me and you and we've sent all this information out to all the club presidents in the state all 50 clubs. And we've already had some response. For example, Kauai has suggested that they're going to try to pull their five clubs together and sponsor one of the gardens. We're going to have 10 gardens. That's a lot of gardens. That's interesting. Isn't it? Oh, look at how big is our, how big is our? It's 35,000 square feet. Absolutely. It's a pretty big lot. Big lot. And the walkway will be around the inside of the wall, but between the walkway and the wall on the inside will be gardens all the way around, Hawaiian plants, trying to keep the Hawaiiana into it as much as we can, indigenous plants, some colorful plants. And with these rocks and the plants, and then the middle part will be kind of rolling hills. It's not going to be flat. It'll be just kind of mounds. An interesting thing on the Manukai-Roy Hawaiian corner, there's going to be a platform there of grass that's two feet higher than the rest of it where we can have entertainment. Oh, cool. And we've talked to the Marriott, which is right there, and with ideas of, I mean, we could even bring the Roy Hawaiian Band in to play for the community, to bring a string ensemble in to play for the community, to have an elderly ka-puna to sit there and read stories to kids on a Saturday or something, and there's all kinds of ideas. Halao, giving them someplace to perform. Halao to perform. Something for everybody that lives in the area. And can you imagine how many Rotarians and visitors in visiting Hawai'i will come into that park to look at a hundred years of Rotary? Well, let's talk about that. We're going to go take a quick break, and we'll be back in about one minute. I'm Chris Leatham here with Economy in the U.S. Stay tuned for more, Aloha. Aloha. My name is Justina Spiritu, and I'm the co-host of Hawai'i Farmer's series. This is my co-host, Matthew Johnson, and you can catch us every Thursday at 4 p.m. at thinktechhawaii.com. What do we talk about, Matt? So on Hawai'i Farmer's series, we're going to be bringing on the farmers and also supporter of farmers, including restaurants, cuters, as well as government supporters and nonprofits to hear their background stories and understanding our local ag community just a little bit better. Yeah, essentially, there's a lot more that goes into farming and the local food community beyond just producing the food. And we want to feature and get the background story on all these folks and see how we all work together as a community. So join us every Thursday. Aloha. And hi. We're back. I'm Chris Leatham with Economy in U.S. Today's guest is David Benson from the Bobby Benson Foundation, but also with the Rotary Club and Linda Kobel. Thank you again for being here. We're talking about this park, the Centennial Park. Is that the official title for the Centennial Park? It's going to be located in the middle of Waikiki, but of course, you're taking up parking space by putting this park in here, right? At the same time now, however, though, we are making an area for tour buses so that they will be able to offload their visitors and their audiences and be able to walk around and look at the history of Rotary in no way. Can I set up the first coffee shop inside here? I want to set up a Starbucks in the middle of the park. Maybe on the busload in the middle of the park. Interesting. Tour buses pick up and drop off tourists all around that whole area. But there's no parking for them for tour buses. They're car parking places, but there's no place for them to park. So they drive around, drive around, drive around. And of course that annoys everybody because they have air brakes. And they're waiting for their turn to jump in and load. So what we've done is we've taken 12 feet off of the Manukai Street side. And we're going to give that back to the city, working with the city to include that out there where they can stage their buses, sit there, and when it's time to go they can go out there. Well, that makes a lot of sense. Yes, it does. They're thrilled. It's something that they've really needed and it's working hand in hand. And the agreement that we've been talking about and we're still talking about is we give you 12 feet and you help with the sidewalks outside the park. That's a good idea. It'll make it all look nice. And can you imagine the number of hotels who would be interested? It's one more location their guests can go. It's within walking distance of just about every great hotel we've got in Waikiki. Well, there's a lot of people. You know, it goes to the quality of life, you know, because parks make a community. And having a place where people can go and walk and, you know, they get home from work and they're kids. They want to go out and play with their kids a little bit and the kids can come out here and socialize. And it'll be safe. Yes. And it will be something that will be beautiful, historic. They can learn from each rock and they can at the same time have fun. That's right. That's right. It's the best. And of course, you know, I do want to emphasize, I don't want this freak coming on at 10 o'clock if we're having a late event. We'll control it. We'll control it. I'm looking at you. He controls everything. No. You know, it's so interesting. Every club in Hawaii, there is 50 of them, each club has the choice of doing what it is that the community in the vicinity needs done. And that is one of the joys of being a Rotarian.  Let's do something. Yes. And you all come together and you make a difference. And the same thing goes with neglected children or the homeless or, you know, drug, you name it. Or you just look at a community and you can see what they need. Yes. And Rotarians fulfill that need. And they do it with joy. And you know, you're passing on your values. You know, one of the things that we talk about today in a society where we have so many broken homes and broken families is that oftentimes values don't get passed on. Right. And the community has an opportunity to pass on the values of being a Rotarian. And so, and these are important values. These are odd values about entrepreneurship, hard work. That's right. Hard work is a key. I mean, I can just see myself trying to dig a hole. Interesting point that was made the other day. Somebody asked me, says, well, you know, what's in it for us? And that's, we talked about Rotary. And it's not in our community, but neither is Bangladesh or India or any other places where we've done matching grants and done good things for people. And we talked about when Rotary sees a problem, whether it's in Kailua or in Honolulu or Manor, wherever it is, we can all come together, no matter where we live or if we're on the another island, we can write a check. I mean, there's all kinds of things that we can do, but we'll all pitch in to do it. The ability to mobilize and get things accomplished. It's about doing something that's going to make the community a better place, whether it's our community or somebody else's or in another country or another state. Yeah, it's just the best. So now, if people wanted to find out more about this project or they wanted to contribute, how would they contribute or find out more, get more information from the Rotary Club? Who did they contact? Well, they can contact me. Email me at dcbenson at aol.com. Did you hear that? He's has an AOL account. Yeah, I know. He's so old. Yeah, yeah. He used to be prodigy. DC Benson at prodigy. But we're hoping to put up a website that people can go to and put on right now. Well, you're working on a website, actually. There's a website coming up. Yeah. That's what I heard. I've heard it directly from your developer that he is working on a website. And the other thing, all the money is going to go to the Districts Foundation. It's 100% tax deductible. Right at checkout to District 5,000 Foundation, put down in a note park or Centennial Park, and mail it to our Rotary Club office, which is on Queen Street. Was it 805? Or you can send it directly to the foundation. Yeah. And all that information will be posted? 705 Queen Street. Yeah, Rotary Club of Honolulu, 705 Queen Street, Honolulu 13. Now, do we have an anticipated groundbreaking for this? Well, we're going to have a blessing, a private small blessing before we do anything. We open the gate and start doing things there. We're thinking of putting a tent down there on Saturdays with a lot of this information where people can come and talk to us about what's happening, where if they want to make a donation, they can do it right then and there. When we have about 175,000 of our 400 that we're looking at, we're going to break ground. And it's going to be a very public display. It's going to be Hawaiian. It's going to be the mayor. It's going to be Rotary officials, Rotarians, Waikiki businessmen. It's going to be everybody. We'll have a big group down there and break ground. And we're hoping the bulldozer will be there and fire up and start working. As soon as we've got everything lined up, we've got the people to make the wall. We've got the people of the fence and the gates. And the rocks. Now, what happens if we run across any Hawaiian bones? Well, they have a program at Waikiki where any bones that are found in construction are re-interned on the corner of Kapahulu and Kalakaua in that little area there that's... Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, because so many of the buildings there, when they were building them, they did find burial grounds. Oh, I'm sure they have. Some high-ranking, some low-ranking, some just, you know, bones. Of course, some of the guys from California that were working here would find bones, like chicken bones and stuff, and call the boss. We found bones, take the day off till we get the police down here. And they found out that the Kentucky Fried Chicken had been opened next to work. So it was quite humorous. But no, if there are any bones or anything there, or like the mayor said, if we find out that one of these trees was planted by Queen Lillilu Kalani, it had to stay. So far, we don't have any information. Okay. How would you know that? Well, we're not really going to dig down deep. Yeah. We're going to scrape off the gravel and the coral and stuff and bring in dirt. And then it's going to be sod put on it. So we're going to build up rather than sink down. Yeah, okay. All right. That should mitigate a lot of those issues then. Yeah. And what we're looking for right now are sewer lines, water lines, electrical lines that might be underground. Yeah, that's forever a problem. Yeah. That is forever a problem. We'll find that because there's six meters, water meters for that property. So there used to be a lot of buildings there. Yeah. Yeah, that's always an issue in Hawaii. I know having done some of that work myself, I've run across that problem. So we'll find out where that is and how it's going to be. There's going to be water and electricity there that we'll be using. So it'll be lit in the evening. Well, this really sounds like a wonderful project. The idea that it's going to be something contributed privately and then passed on to the state to take care of. Exactly. I can't even imagine a better use of the land. We do need more park space, you know, Kakaako, Waikiki, all of this area. We have not met our requirements for having public space and so this will definitely contribute to that effort. Well, it's going to be, not because I'm involved in it, but from the design and what we're doing, it's going to be one of the most beautiful parks you've ever seen. Oh, that sounds great. It's just the way it's designed and the way it's going to end up. People are going to love this park. Filled with history of Waikiki, of Rotary and of Rotary Foundation, 100 years of service above self, celebrated in one beautiful location that so many people who already live in the neighborhood can look down and admire instead of the crap that's there now. Yeah, yeah. And they really enjoy that, enjoy the park. Imagine all the people in Royal Cuyahio that live on that side. Everyone who looks down at this park, that's from the 35th floor. Yeah, yeah. And actually, one of the side benefits I can see already is going to have an impact on property values. Sure, you have an area that's dilapidated and it's been gentrified. There's always a bump, you know. And we also hope that it will encourage more people to explore Rotary and realize that, man, if they do this and think of what they could do in our neighborhood, and the camaraderie, the being together, working on one common goal is just, it's hard to describe the feeling in your heart. It's kind of a magical thing. Yeah, it's just the best. It just happens, you know, because you can feel it coming in and experience it and it just all comes together. And you get something accomplished and it's just wonderful. And I look forward to seeing all this effort as it comes to fruition. I'm looking forward to working on your website a little bit and getting that out. Oh, that's great. Very good. Go for it. Yes. Terrific. And so for all those out there, if you haven't learned about Rotary, it might be a great time to reach out and call one of the local Rotary clubs and see if you can get an invite. Just go to Rotary.org and learn about what Rotary is doing at home and around the world. And Rotary is always an expanding organization. Yes. Yes, we have almost three million Rotarians worldwide and we're continuing to try to grow. Okay. Well, thank you so much for both of you for being here and coming on The Economy In You. We're here with Think Tech, OIE. And if you ever have a chance to meet Jay Fidel here, come by and say hello. And again, thank you again, and I'm Chris Latham with The Economy In You, and we'll see you again in two weeks. Thanks.


We had our broadcast this morning for intervals of sanity. I'll try to remember to link that channel in the description below. It's just a weekly chat about art and life, sometimes humorous and sometimes serious that I have with some friends of mine, once a week, every Sunday, life permitting. Anyway, we did that this morning. Fun fact, I was broadcasting in my pajamas. Anyway, with the daylight savings time change and everything, yeah, there was no way I was going to be able to get up and get a shower before. I'm on the West Coast, everybody gets up much earlier than I do, so yeah. Then I spent the rest of the morning sorting through really old records that I don't think we even knew we had when we moved. And so we only need to keep seven years, we usually keep 10. And we had going back to 1998, so that is a lot more than 10 years. So we'll see that all that whole while. That's got to go to this secure shredding place. So after lunch, the husband's going to help me get it bagged up and downstairs and in my car. Because yeah, that's going to be a thing. Anyway, so I did that the rest of the morning and now I'm going to go downstairs and I'm going to have some lunch. I need to work on another merch design that's rolling around inside my brain. I'm also going to be releasing stickers with the different merch designs on them. And hopefully I will have them for you all by the time this goes live. And if I do, the links will be in the description below. So the hands that say be a decent human will be one sticker.  Pardon my English or French pardon my language, I should say. Let's turn the light off in there. So anyway, those will be two stickers and then then the new one, which I'm not going to tell you about. I will be releasing it on t-shirts and stickers along with other merchandise, probably through Redbubble and Society 6. I'll make sure to link it all for you. I'm going to go work on that today. It's going to be one of my jobs. And yeah, I'll be back. Morning. It is Monday morning, March 11th. I think I actually should know this because I've already been on and off the computer doing website updates and social media posts and adding a couple listings to the Etsy shop. It is 7.51 a.m. And yes, I got all that done. I'm sorry. It's 8.51 a.m. The clock on my car is wrong. Um, I got all that done before. Yeah, now. Now we're going to head out.  We are going to have to pay. We already know that. I've got some documents in the back in case you didn't hear the paper rustling in the back. Um, then I have to take to the secure shredding place. I don't know how much that's going to cost, but I guess we'll find out. And what else? I've got to go to the hardware store. I've got to go to Dollar Tree. I don't know. I've got a whole list of stuff. So we're going to try to get it all done today. And I'll bring you with me. It's going to be interesting. That's all I know. We're going to get the two super important ones done first, which is the mailing and also the shredding. I did come out with two new stickers in the Etsy shop. I listed them this morning. I've actually had the stickers for a while since before I moved from California to Oregon. And they just sort of got filed away and a little bit misplaced. But I found them this morning. I actually kind of forgot about them, to be honest. And it didn't take me long to figure out where I put them. Anyway, I listed them in the Etsy shop. And they are currently available. There are two new designs coming out. And I ordered the stickers yesterday. So as soon as they come in, they'll get packaged up and listed. I am going to be where I can switching out some of the product packaging in the Etsy store from plastic to some sort of paper. Whether it's a glycine bag or it's package free or I'm not sure exactly yet. When I do have to use plastic, I'm going to try to use the biodegradable type. So we're going to be working on that. One of the things I got to pick up today is another five gallon bucket with another lid so that I have a spare. Somebody is tailgating me. Holy cow. Exactly where I'm going. Anyway, all right, I'm going to get my stuff done and I will be back. A conversation about USPS. Anyway, we'll get into it. We're tracking an important pack. They don't do step-by-step tracking like other delivery services do like UPS or FedEx. So anyway, I got all my daily postings done this morning just now. I got my call into the insurance company that I've been needing to do for like a week, to be honest. So he's going to be sending me an email in a little bit that I need to follow up on. I need to do some more laundry. I think there's a load of wet clothes in the washing machine. So I need to stick those in the dryer and take a shower probably because you see my sweater. That means I'm in pyjamas. My hair, yeah, anyway. I haven't gotten any actual art done yet today, but I did get a bunch of stuff matted and packaged ready for sale in the Etsy shop. I haven't listed it yet, but it is for sale. I will link the section with original art in the description below. It is all original art. It hasn't even been scanned or anything. So this is stuff that won't be reprinted and stuff that's okay for me to sell. I have a couple of pieces that I did inspired by other artists or that I love too much to sell, at least the original. The originals I love too much to sell. I will be having probably my daughter photograph them. She's a professional photographer, not me. And have her photograph them so that we can sell the reprints. But as of yet, I haven't done that. She is busy with her day job. Anyway, I and I've been on the computer. I don't know since just before nine o'clock this morning. So anyway, all of that is done. The pinecone pulp and other paper pulp jarred selections of things getting ready for a whole bunch of spring paper making, as soon as it warms up enough, are all cleared off and done. I'm ready actually to do some artwork and to do some journaling and the drying shelves are clear. But first, I'm going to see about grabbing something to eat after I go feed the deer some deer corn. And I take care of the paint sludge that's on the back patio. So I have an idea for double bagging a bunch of cardboard that I have from cleaning up some stuff this morning. I'm going to double bag the cardboard and then I'm going to dump the sludge in there and let it dry. And then the whole thing can just go in the trash. So all right, I'm going to do that. So I make a point almost every morning of coming out and putting food out for the deer. I leave a little trail of corn from the corner where I know they go live over to the blue bull. You see the blue bull? That's bandits old food bull. And we do sort of miss having a pet. I think we've sort of semi-adopted the deer. Anyway, so we're using his old bull to feed the deer. And now I am out here. It's very late in the afternoon with another cup of deer corn. The bull is empty. So that's the first time since we started this that the bull has been empty in just a few hours. Usually it takes a full day, day and a half. So I'm not sure who's eating it, but somebody's hungry. I kind of wish we had a deer camera. Something maybe even that we could get a live feed from. I would put that on my other YouTube channel. I do have a spare YouTube channel. I would like we could make it the deer cam. Do y'all know how to do that? Because if you do, can you leave me some tips? I sure would be interested. That would be a lot of fun. Maybe something that people could access like from their tablets or if we had an address they could just access the deer live feed deer cam. I know it's a cool idea. I could hang it on my fence. So it's still on my property. Technically the bull's on the... That's not technically my property, but I could move it at some point so that the deer can still find it. And it's on my property. It would be so cool. If you guys have any ideas, let me know. All right, I'm gonna give them some more corn and I'll be back. Good morning. It is Wednesday morning. March 13th, I think. Pretty sure. 9 0 9 a.m approximately. I only know these things because I've already been up since like 6 30 working on the computer. So yeah. Yeah, it's been an interesting morning. I got the memorial piece done for our sweet bandit who passed away. I'll insert a picture here somewhere. I got that done finally this morning. I got the last coat of clear on it last night and then this morning I was able to attach the rest of the pieces. So that can get hung up now. I need to get... Oh, command strips well and out. I am headed out. I've got to go to the grocery store. I've got to go to the office supply store and the liquor store because you can't buy liquor at the grocery store in Oregon. It's one of those states. There's a few of them across the country. Anyway. I'm going to go to craft warehouse first. Craft warehouse is a smallish chain here in Oregon of craft and fabric supplies.  I think. And yeah. And then do my other errands and then come home. I think that's it for this morning. I there's a lot going on. You've already seen a couple of other... You see me. I was right. I'd left the light. One in which I was cleaning out my salvage bin. That's literally a bin of junk. Things I find, collect, were are given that don't have any other category. Bottle caps and empty cans. Pieces of cardboard as you saw. There's lots of weird stuff in there. It was way past time to clean it out, which I did. And now it's too dark in here. Now it's too bright. Anyway, it was way past time for me to clean it out. There were some things in there I know. I knew I was never going to use. And some things that's time were just past it for lots of reasons, which I won't get into. But they have to go away. So I did that. I finished bandits. Tribute piece, which I said are ready today. Got all my errands run. I made a new... See, now I got to turn lights back on. Holy cow, hold on. I made a new watercolor palette. I said earlier I bought paints I didn't really need. So Craft Warehouse had Emgram on sale. And they had this small packs of Emgram. This is the Pacific Northwest watercolor set. It was half off. I couldn't resist. Emgram is kind of expensive paint, so... And I like the idea of having a Pacific Northwest set of paints. I have a couple of desert sets. And I love them. They have lots of yellows and turquoise in them. This one is very cool. It has a couple of warm colors in it, but it's very much representing the Pacific Northwest and colors you could use to make interesting paintings of the Pacific Northwest. So I added Daniel Smith Buff, Daniel Smith... Daniel Smith and Anthaquidone Red and Blick in Sepia. The other five colors are from the set. I had the Daniel Smith ones already. So it is here. Drying. Gonna put it all back. So once you fill up watercolor pan set or you've painted with one, you shouldn't close it. You should leave it open until the paints are completely dry. Now in the case of a new set like this one, it's going to have to be open for like a week. If I was just painting with it, like I would just leave it open overnight and then close it the next day and put it away. You should never close them wet, especially one like Emgram because they're made with honey as a binder instead of gum arabic. And they don't dry completely. So they stay kind of moist. So they don't dry down like the other paints do. So yeah, you need to leave it open. I've seen a couple posts on that today when I was doing some research on the selection of colors for the palette. And yeah, don't close it until it's dry. Uh, what else? I've got my table all set up, ready to art journal tomorrow. I have five journals out. I'm going to work on one while that's drying, work on the other one. And then while that's drying, work on the next one. Like, yeah, I'll probably do that for a couple of days and try to clear up some bits and pieces. I still haven't done anything with my artist trading coins. I mentioned that a few vlogs back and I created a new template for coins. A back and some fronts. I still haven't done anything with them. They're just sitting here. So that's going to be something I want to do. But yeah, so anyway, I'm going to go downstairs now and have some water. I'm really thirsty, which is not a good sign. I haven't had, I drink a lot of water normally and I haven't had that much today. So I'm going to go do that. I'm going to watch my soap opera, General Hospital. Been a fan since it was in black and white. And try to figure out what we're going to do for dinner. I'm pretty sure the husband doesn't want leftovers for a third night in a row. So maybe chicken quesadillas. I do have the stuff for that. So yeah, maybe. All right. That's it for right now. I'll see you tomorrow. Hey guys, it's Thursday, March 14th, 2.50pm. Don't get excited. I only know that because the iPad's in front of me. See, I'm eating some lunch. Finally, I know it's kind of late. I got a message late last night from our cleaning lady. Is it okay if I come by tomorrow to clean? Yeah. I was going to message her anyway to see if she could come by. So anyway, so she was here doing that today and that, you know, I'm not able to get anything done while she's here. I love her. I love that she comes by, but I just, you know, yeah. So anyway, I got nothing done. I chatted with my friends, Cindy Utter and Lindy Lissard most of the morning. Did some posting online, my daily morning posts. I intended to maybe do some art upstairs yet. None of that happened. It just didn't happen. So anyway, now I'm eating lunch. I'm going to catch up on some YouTube videos and some messages and stuff like that. And maybe I'll get some other stuff done. We'll see. I'll be back. I've already been upstairs to do mine and you're sort of getting a close-up shot of my face, my messy bed hair because I've got my pajamas on. Nobody needs that view. So I've already been upstairs. I've done daily postings, wrapped up in Etsy order that's got to go out, got prepped for the day. I'm going to work on some art journaling today. Picked out a few options for new lighting for the house outside and sent the links off to my husband who is upstairs working in his office. So I don't want to disturb him, but we need to do something about the lighting outside. Anyway, what else? We also need to do something about painting the house outside. So we have a few color choices for that. I need to fill out the paperwork for the HOA and send that off because we want to get the house painted. But we need to kind of do the electrical first before the house gets painted. So I also have some retractable awnings in the back. I need to do a little research and find a company in the Portland area that can refurb those. One of them is electronic and on a remote and the other one's manual. So I'd like to kind of have them both be on a switch or something. And they're also like not a great color. So I'd like to replace them. So yeah, we'll see. Kids are coming over for dinner tonight. I think we're gonna go run and get some takeout barbecue for dinner. And yeah, that's all I can think about right now. That's all I can think of. So I'm gonna go actually take a shower and get dressed because you know, it's a thing. And yeah, then head upstairs and we'll see what happens. I'll be back. Gonna go check on the status of the deer corn bowl. All for my brother and they're helping us disassemble, well disconnect and drain the hot tub that's here in the house. If you're seeing this clip, you just saw a little clip of my dad working on the electrics and we found out there's a hose underneath the hot tub to drain it. Woohoo, because we were thinking we had to siphon things, but we don't have to. So we're gonna get it all drained and then I have a disposal company coming by to give me an estimate on actually picking it up and hauling it off. If one of my parents' friends doesn't want it. So we're waiting to hear back from them. We were hoping there was a guy in the neighborhood that he might want it, but he's decided not. So we'll see what happens with my dad's and mom's friend. My guess is we have to pay to take it away. I'll let y'all know. I'll be back. Hey guys, 3 p.m. on Saturday and it's been a long day. I'm going upstairs to put something away. Hang on, it's gonna get really dark for a second. Anyway, it's been a long day. I didn't get done anything that I anticipated getting done, but that being said we did get the, as you saw, hot tub disassembled, broken up, whatever you want to call it now to the backyard and the junk people are coming in the morning to pick it up and we got some stuff. My parents were here. They took some stuff I was giving away. They wanted or my brother did. So it's all good. It was a big, big, big project. Anyway, it's all done now. So I think and we don't have an intervals of sanity broadcast tomorrow. Too many of us have other obligations that popped up. And so not me, but you know others and can't really do a group chat broadcast with only like two people. Well, I guess you could, but it's not the point. So we can do it with one or two missing, but there's more than that. So anyway, so we're going to put that off for a week and we'll be back a week from tomorrow. And so I think tomorrow, the husband and I are going to, when the junk people come, I think we're going to go out and go explore the neighborhood, maybe explore a new mall. Still looking for a footstool for the living room. So I've grabbed the big huge one from the library, but it's really too big, but it's better than nothing. So I was still looking for a footstool. So cross your fingers. And that that's it for the moment. I hope that you've had an interesting week and a good one. It's been an interesting one for me, but it's all good. And yeah, we're going to keep going forward, making more art and working on things and getting stuff done and working around the house, doing some DIY. So it's all good. I'll bring you with me when I can. That's it for the moment. I hope you all have had a great one. Don't forget to like share and subscribe if you want to stalk me on social media, support the free content on the channel, send me happy mail, all that stuff's in the description below. There's a link for a site called Linktree. If you click on it, you're going to find all my social media sites. You're going to find my Patreon, my Etsy shop, my Amazon store, my tip jar, like all of it. My happy mail address is also in the description below. And yeah, you can send me, I like happy mail. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please leave them here on the video. And if you're a member of one of my Facebook groups, especially a life of art and self expression, don't be afraid to ask me a question over there. That works. All right, that's it for now. I hope you all have a great evening and go do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. And I'll see you later. Bye guys.


From 1923, when the buildings were built until about three years ago, this was the offices of Fulton Supply Company. Today, it's a multi-family residence. It's an adaptive reuse, a historic rehab of three contiguous properties. We had a number of objectives in mind in design. First, we wanted to achieve considerable energy efficiency. We had blower tests with South Face and Georgia Power to determine where all the major air leaks were. We used six-inch insulation board on the roof which had been previously uninsulated. Instead of using central air conditioning with ducts, we built this with no ducts whatsoever. In addition to that, we used LED lighting throughout the building. All of our kitchen and bath appliances are energy star rated. It's smart business. I think any builder, developer or owner who's planning any significant size project will be well advised to check out the current programs for energy efficiency, both residential and commercial, that are being offered by Georgia Power.