Arlen Ward dot com

Since school wrapped up there hasn’t been a lot of activity on this blog. I do apologize, but really it has been due to a shift in how I spend my time. While I was working on my PhD all my “spare” time was spent working on research and writing. I was up to my eyeballs in sciency-researchy things.

It’s a bit different now. I spend my time on Cub Scout stuff. As I just put on the updated “About Me” page, I was a Cub Scout and a Boy Scout when I was growing up. I became an Eagle Scout in 1989 (Yay Troop 13!). After losing track of the scouting program in college I got back into it when my son reached the age to join Cub Scouts. Going into it I knew I wanted him to have a great time, and what’s the best way to make that happen? Well we have a fantastic Pack in our neighborhood and we both agreed it was the group for us. I was the Tiger Den Leader for that first year, and it was a lot of fun. We had 6 boys in the den and spent our time learning about the community we live in and getting familiar with the scouting program.

We had so much fun that after that first year I was asked to be the Cubmaster, responsible for the program we brought to all 70 boys that span first through fifth grade. I started with that in September, and I am still having a blast!

I haven’t been posting these things to the blog, thinking I would be diving back into the science before too long. But after looking at my tweets and facebook updates for the last year, there’s really no reason why I should incorporate all of it into the blog. As a scout leader, I use the internet as a great resource when looking for ideas and inspiration. I might as well add my part to it, providing my experiences for others to come across. And the other nerdy stuff will still show up on occasion.

So here’s your fair warning: there will be a lot more posts related to Cub Scouts, the Boy Scouts of America, and specifically our pack.

I just have to mention how much I like Google Reader.

It works very well for collecting all the things I have been reading on a daily basis into one spot. The bad thing is that it keeps track of the number of items “read” in a day, to the tune of 300 plus every day. By read I mean most of them are a quick scan for something interesting. The ones that are interesting, I share on a public page, which is summarized and linked to here. It seems to work for a blogroll until I find a decent RSS feed aggregator.

So I am sort of a filtering service, pointing out the interesting things from the internet, or at least from the 41 (and growing!) current subscriptions on my reader page.

I have added some pictures to the gallery from recent outings.

I took some pictures at the church after the decorations went up for the Advent season.

The rest of those pictures can be found here, under the South Broadway album.

We also took a trip to the Glass Studio for C & H Glassworks for a glass blowing demonstration.

You can find more pictures from the field trip here, also under the South Broadway album.

A little more of my corner of the internet is furnished. I have added all the quasi-legal disclaimers to a page called, believe it or not, disclaimer. You can visit it in all its glory, and take note that it will change in the future, without notice here in the weblog.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled rants and sciency stuff.

Hello and welcome to my little corner of the internet! Hopefully over the next weeks and months I will be able to add content, links, and news that will be of interest to family, friends, collaborators, visitors, or random internet stalkers.

Thanks for stopping by!