There is a show running on MTV now called The Buried Life.  Four 20-somethings are going around the country fulfilling both their and others versions of  a bucket list, or things to do before they die.  The title came from a Matthew Arnold poem of the same name.  Like them, I thought this passage from the poem poignant:

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;

It made me start thinking of my unwritten list so I set off to put it on paper, or internet page if you will.  I realized a number of items I would add to the list I’ve already done.  With this in mind my list is not the normal 100 but set to 75 items.  After all I’m now in my mid-40 so I have less time than The Buried Life crew.

My list is full of silly items, serious ones, and some that might just be plain impossible to achieve.  The common factor in all of them though is that at least twice in my life I thought “Wouldn’t it be great if I…”.

So without further adieu here is my bucket list:

1.   Spend a week photographing NYC
2.   Get a tattoo
3.   Complete a cycling century
4.   See 170 lbs again
5.   Grow a pony tail
6.   Write and publish a short story
7.   Learn how to play a musical instrument
8.   Make a big donation to a charity
9.   Find my birth parents
10. Skydive
11. Shake the hand of a United State President, current or former
12. Ride a Harley (hopefully mine some day)
13. Make a cross-country drive and back
14. Hike the Appalachian Trail
15. Water ski
16. Snow ski
17. Go to space
18. Photograph Yellowstone National Park
19. Visit Mount Rushmore
20. Attend Mardi Gras in New Orleans
21. Quit smoking
22. Testify in a Congressional hearing
23. Shave with an old fashioned straight razor
24. Attend an Olympic event
25. Take my wife to Hawaii
26. Ride a galloping horse
27. Build something that lasts
28. Make a mark in the photography world
29. Climb to the top of the Washington Monument
30. Help someone find their religion
31. Scuba dive
32. Travel somewhere new and DON’T bring a camera
33. Ensure my family is taken care of for the future
34. Sing in a church choir
35. Learn to ballroom dance
36. Ride in a hot air balloon
37. Take a cruise
38. Travel – Bejing
39. Travel – Hong Kong
40. Travel – Tokyo
41. Travel – Scotland
42. Travel – Ireland
43. Travel – London
44. Revisit Barcelona, Spain
45. Revisit Rome, Italy
46. Travel – Moscow
47. Travel – Boston
48. Travel – visit all 50 states
49. Stand on the SkyDeck of the Willis (Sears) Tower in Chicago
50. Watch the sunrise at the Grand Canyon
51. Take a photo safari to shoot wildlife in the western United States
52. Sing karaoke
53. Have a photo taken of me and Jerry Lawler
54. Be an extra in a motion picture, or a commercial
55. Inspire someone
56. Make a New Year’s Resolution…and keep it
57. Milk a cow
58. Swim in the ocean with something enormous (whale, great white, whale shark, etc)
59. Keep a Bonsai tree for many years and pass it on
60. Attend the Kentucky Derby
61. Touch the Stanley Cup
62. Try escargot
63. Be happy with who I am
64. Spend a year without TV
65. Attend Burning Man
66. Get an earring
67. Be a better Christian and have a better relationship with God
68. Learn to surf
69. Attend SXSW
70. Attend a viewing at the Sundance Film Festival
71. Take my son to Key West
72. Witness a day where all my bills are paid up to date
73. Find a career that I truly love
74. Create and maintain a successful website
75. Invest in a new idea

What is on your list?

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It’s 11:44 pm and Unemployment Day One is coming to a close.  For those of you that did not know, my last day at WorthPoint was yesterday.  While WorthPoint is going well and has a bright future, the situation called for a layoff.  If I was in our CEO’s shoes I would have made the same decision so there is no hard feelings on my part.  I wish them the best of continued success and thank the staff there for a rewarding two years.

This brings me to today.  I woke up as usual, came downstairs, poured me a cup of coffee and realized I have a new job…finding my next job.  Finding this new position will require as much effort as if I was getting paid now for my work.  I plan to get up every morning, come downstairs and spend at least 8 hours a day online, on the phone, or walking the streets.

I’ll record my daily progress and actions here in the hopes that it may help someone else that is looking for work.

• Today was spent putting some final polish on my resume in preparations for some major promulgation of it.  I have already put it to good use as I’ve been approached by a couple of friends on LinkedIn about a possible opportunity.  Two resumes sent out.

• I spent about an hour this morning pouring through the Virginia Employment Commission portal.  For the second time in my life I’ve now filed for unemployment benefits.  Lets hope I can cancel them before I receive my first benefit.

• Sherri and I spent some time going over job sites and reviewing what types of positions are out there today.  We found some interesting ones and I’ve bookmarked them for review and possible submission.  The amount of job boards is somewhat overwhelming and you need to find the ones that cater to your industry.  I’ll cover this more in a future post.

• Updated my LinkedIn profile and requested referrals from previous co-workers.  I plan to spend more time on LinkedIn in the coming days.

• Most of the afternoon and evening I spent building a new site which I launched a little while ago.  Marc Benton Online is my social media resume which gathers in one place my professional and online experience along with all the places that make up my online identity.  I’m pretty proud of this and looking forward to hearing what you think.

Until tomorrow…

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Sherri had a great idea of setting up the tripod and snapping off photos of our back deck during the snowstorm.  We used one of our spare Powershot S5IS since we didn’t want to monopolize our main cameras.  She took photos over about a 30 hour period and I created a slideshow video in an old copy of Premier Elements.

She uploaded it to weather.com yesterday and we just received reports from friends that they saw it on the Weather Channel.  We’re thrilled.

Can you spot the falling tree?

Let us know what you think of it.

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I’ve realized my life will not support a 365 photography project. The three times I’ve attempted it have resulted in failure after about 30 days or so. Maybe someday my life will normalize and become a little more structured but until that day comes I can POST a photo a day. Hence my new photoblog, Marc-a-Day.

This photoblog uses the DuoTone theme for Wordpress that is the evolution of the popular Monotone theme.  The background color dynamically changes for each post to present the best accent for the photo.  I’m pretty happy with this one, so far it’s been easy to customize and SEO friendly.

Stop by and let me know what you think.

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My absence from the online community I hold dear is slowly coming to an end.  My sometimes self induced and mostly work induced hiatus has allowed many of my projects and plans to suffer.  I am slowly but surely reversing that trend.

I’ve spent the past two weeks taking inventory of my online assets, something I would suggest everyone do at least once a year.  Just like spring cleaning the house, your online space can get cluttered.  This was a long and sometimes confusing process due to the number of sites, services and assets I involve myself with.  In fact it is still on going.  The goal is to streamline my online presence into a circular path where each node feeds the next.  My various interests should not be separate entities but a series of pieces that flow into each other to create a complete picture of who I am, what I’m looking for, and what I can provide for you.

The initial plan is to rebrand and redesign this site, create a professional photography services site, publish a social media resume page (more on that in a future post), and a new daily photoblog.   These are assets that I will own the domain and be 100% responsible for the content and functionality.  Then there are other sites I utilize like Facebook, LinkedIn, SmugMug and Twitter where I have limited control over my content and very little in the functionality side.  Last year I did not do much to integrate my sites and these services other than reposting blog articles.  To be truly successful online you must find the recipe that uses all of these ingredients in healthy balanced portions.  I’m pulling my chair up to the buffet and loading my plate with what I believe will sustain me best.

Here’s my plans for the upcoming months:

• I’m working with a talented graphics artist now to create new logos.  My plan is to have similar branding across all of my work whenever I can.
• Once the logos are complete I will start work on redesigning this site, removing the User 40.0 moniker and creating new content.   I expect this to be completed and launched in late February.
• Tonight I’ve launched a new photoblog named Marc-a-Day.  If you can’t get enough of me here then go check it out and get some of me everyday.  This is not me taking a photo a day, I’ve failed too many times at that, but I will post a new, hopefully interesting, image a day.
• Two more sites will soon to follow, a new photography service offering along with an expanded social resume site.  I currently have a domain at marcbentonresume.com with a small social profile but I plan to expand this to include more of my professional background and also include a video or two on it.
• Photoblogging DC was both a success and failure.  Success as I was able to talk a number of truly talented photographers to contribute and our daily visits were steadily growing.  The failure was in the way the site was designed.  It was dependent on one person to format and publish the posts, something that eventually I was unable to keep up with.  I hope by the Spring to bring this site back with a better design where our contributors will have more functionality in the system.
• Sherri and I plan to organize more photowalks through this site and the Photowalk DC Facebook group.  Look for a late-February event announced soon.

We’ve recently kicked off a new decade.  Its time to let go of the baggage of the past and start anew.  I hope we all enjoy the trip together.

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My wife snapped a couple of shots with me and some friends I made at Long Branch Farm this weekend.

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Fellow photoblogger and online friend Jason D Moore recently achieved two milestones on his site.  First was his 1000th post followed a few weeks later with the celebration of his 7th anniversary of his site.

After seeing Jason’s Facebook status on his 7th year, it got me thinking about my time online.  Thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine I pulled up my first site that used my old URL mbenton.com (which now redirects here).  It appears I just passed my 10th anniversary online.

My first entry was dated 9/6/1999:

Wecome to my website. Please be patient while I find the time to work on it. In the next few months I expect to build a site that hopefully will become a usable resource for Software Engineers. Topics I am most interested in are XML, Java, JavaScript, HTML, UML, and CMM procedures.
Please check back soon.
marc…

Here’s a screenshot of the original site:

In 1999 Wordpress, Movable Type and other blogging and CMS solutions were nonexistent.  This site was lovingly built by hand with my trusty windows VI emulator (Lemmy).  Lots of tables, no CSS.  Surprisingly though I had little cross browser issues.

The purpose of my original site was quite honestly to grab some acreage on the internet and stake my name out there.  Looking back now I realize I did not have a focus on what I wanted to accomplish.  Due to this my updates were slow.  I did have some good resources such as software language guides on the site, some of which I still use at times today such as the color index page.  Overall though it was not a resource that would keep people coming back.

One direct benefit of hosting and building my own site was an increase of my own knowledge that could be brought to bear in my professional life.  At the time I was a government contractor supporting the USMC.  DoD code then was still mostly client/server using C, C++ and some Java. Web technology was the new frontier.  I’m happy to say my teams helped blaze the trail by implementing XML and HTML in much of our software baselines and helped to set the stage for improved data sharing between USMC and service intelligence systems.  Much of this success was due to our own personal uses of these technologies in our private lives.

Just over two years ago I relaunched with Movable Type and a new focus on social media.  Also about that time my wife and I rediscovered photography and my postings about this subject gradually increased.  Eventually I switched to Wordpress and rebranded as a photoblog.  Today I feel better about my online presence than I ever have before.  I still have times of slow updates due to work schedule but I am becoming more consistent.  Its all about focus and finding one that reflects your passion.  Digital photography is mine.

I congratulate Jason on his seven years.  He’s shown focus and consistency for quite some time.  While I may say I’ve been online for 10 years, when I compare my efforts against Jason’s or some of my other favorite photobloggers its more like 2 years.  Here’s hoping 10 years from now we’re all still here with fresh and relevant content with our new holographic blog posts (possibly a new Wordpress plugin???).

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Today I’m posting a couple of shots my daughter took on our night outing into DC this week.  I’m very proud of what she was able to do with as little experience with a DSLR that she has.  Just think of what she could do if she practiced.

Do me a favor and show her some encouragement by leaving her a comment here or click the image and leaving one on her Flickr page.  Thanks!

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My childhood memories took a doube kick to the gut today with the loss of first Farrah Fawcett this morning followed by the afternoon announcement of Michael Jackson’s passing.  Both of these were icons of my past and for better or worse, helped form who I am today.

I think I first saw Farrah in a 1974 episode of The Six Million Dollar Man with her then husband Lee Majors.  Even in second grade I remember being jealous of Lee. A few years later she became an Angel which threw her into the spotlight and provided me with more opportunities to watch her.  When the famous poster came out I used to stare at it even though I was too young to know why.  She was a classic beauty.  Sure the poster accentuated certain charms that draws a young boys attention but there was much more in the image.  In the 70’s and over the next few decades she was the epitome of femininity. Her voice had a certain Marilyn Monroe quality (even up until her death), her hair was unbelievable, and her most stunning asset was her smile.  People say that models promote an image that little girls cannot live up to but she was different.  Without intending too Farrah made me appreciate a woman’s face, voice and personality instead of oogling at other parts.  Thanks Farrah for being such a classic beauty.

Very few on this earth will know exactly what sins Michael Jackson did or did not commit on this earth but I’m sure he’s answering for them now.  When I was in high school we all knew he was a little weird (remember his monkey?) but everyone was a fan.  He was the King of Pop afterall.  When the Thriller video was released in 1983 on MTV it was preceeded by more hype than any Spiderman or Batman movie sequel.  I remember being at a friends house where about 10 of us gathered around the tv to watch it.  Hearing any track from Thiller takes me back to high school.  No matter what you think of him I dare you to listen to Thriller without having any part of your body move to the rythym.  As a young kid that normally listened to Motley Crue, Ratt or other “hair bands”, Michael’s albums made me appreciate other types of music.  That lesson has stuck with me today and you’d know if you saw all the tracks on my iPod.  Thanks Michael for providing me the music to remember my early days.

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While surfing the net for Wordpress photoblog themes to include in my presentation on photoblogging at WordCamp I came across Autofocus by Allan Cole.  This theme really stood out to me as the epitome of a photoblog with it’s minimalistic approach. The photo is really the subject of the post, no sidebars or widgets to draw your eye away from the image.  I started to think of a way to utilize this theme in a new project.  Yes thats a little backwards for most projects, normally the project is defined and then a theme identified.  This was a unique case though.

Last month I launched PhotoBlogging DC.  Just like the theme, my purpose was minimalistic:  Bring together and spotlight photos from some of the Washington DC and surrounding area’s talented photographers.

To begin I sent out invitations to contribute to about 15 of my photography friends.  Word spread and as of today we are up to 32 contributors.  Our photographers are of all experience levels, amateur to professional, but they all have one thing in common…they all have a love of photography.  So far I have not turned any prospective contributor away and all but one of the original 15 invites were accepted (you know who you are ).

I didn’t set any hard rules for photo submissions other than they needed to be taken within the DC and surrounding area.  I’ve defined that area as North to the border of Baltimore, West to the Shenandoah Mountains, South to Fredricksburg, and all points East.  This gives us a broad range of subjects from the monuments on the mall to horses in Loudon county.

Each day a new photo is posted so be sure and visit the site and subscribe to our RSS feed.  We also released new badges today so consider adding one to your site.  If you would like to become a PBDC contributor then contact me or leave a comment here with a link to a sample of your photos.

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