dmuth's blog

Hello Neighbors,

Our flower beds at Normandy Park are looking neglected, and we would like to spruce them up for our SABA 5K (Sunday,Oct.23rd).

There are many ways to help:

1) Fall Clean Up on Saturday, Oct. 15th from 10:00-12:00 (if not raining). Bring your shovels and gardening gloves and help us pull weeds.

2) Volunteer to "Adopt a Spot"--it can be a small or big section to maintain throughout the year. Just drop Emi Lievano an email at emiliacl@mindspring.com so that she can keep track of the areas.

3) Pull a weed or two--as you walk by or play at the park.

4) Volunteer to coordinate a garden clean-up/planting with a group of friends and neighbors. This would be good for a boy or girl scout troop activity.

Your help will keep our neighborhood looking beautiful!

We can't do it without you!

Hi folks,

I rolled out a few changes on the website tonight:

1) Facebook "like" buttons on every page.

2) Support for the Open Graph protocol! This is a way to identify pages to different social media networks. For example, now that this is present, if anyone clicks on the aforementioned "like" button, a message is posted to their Facebook wall that they liked the page. Free publicity!

3) Google +1 support. This is Google's competitor to Facebook. Just as awesome.

4) A few weeks ago, I upgraded our server due to some speed issues. Here's a before and after graph of our CPU performance:

Enjoy!

SABA 5K Race Flyer 2011

I've been hard at work adding some new features to the website. In no particular order:

- Advanced user profiles with social network integration. Are you on Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, or another social network? Let us know by adding them to your user profile. Want to see what they look like with an existing setup? Here's my user profile as a sample.

- Buddylists. What the name implies. Users on the site can now become "buddies". just click on a user's name and then click the the link that reads, "become this user's buddy".

- Private messages. With so much email being caught by spam filters these days, insure that your messages don't get filtered. Go to the message center to send a private, secure message to another user on this website.

That's all I have for now, but more changes are on the way. Watch this website for more details!

Hi everyone,

This Saturday, our neighborhood judges will be out taking a look at all the house decorations. They will select the 3 best decorated houses in the neighborhood. If you are interested in helping with the judging, please contact me.

This Sunday evening, 12/20, is the night for this year's Luminaria Night. We have luminaria bags and candles available for purchase. A set of 10 bags and 10 candles is only $5 and create a beautiful glow for your house. The sets are available at Diane Wilder's house at 807 Aubrey. There is a chest on her front porch so you do not need to call ahead. Simply leave a check for $5 made out to SABA in the envelope in the chest when you pick up your supplies.

Also, the Luminaria Night Celebration is this Sunday at Normandy Park from 5:00 to 7:30. Please come join your neighbors for a little holiday cheer, caroling, and more luminaria as we celebrate the season and the winter solstice. Please contact me if you are interested in volunteering for this event. We will announce the winners of the House Decoration Contest at the Luminaria Night Celebration

Hope to see you there as we all enjoy our neighborhood-wide celebration of light on one of the shortest days of the year.

Bill Gardner
SABA Volunteer Coordinator
wingardner AT earthlink.net

I just completed an upgrade of the SABA website to Drupal version 6. Most of the upgrade went well, and I wanted to give a brief list of major changes:

- I updated the voting system. Users can now vote on posts right from the front page, as well as comments made on posts.

- I blocked about 400 spammers who signed up here. If I accidentally blocked your account (you won't be able to log in if I did), please contact us and let us know what your account name is, and I'll fix it.

- I added better captchas around the site, to try and keep spammers from registering.

- Many many "under the hood" fixes, which should make the site faster and more responsive.

Enjoy!

-- Doug

Below is a map of the SABA 5K event.

The green and red icons represent the start and stop of the race, respectively.

The yellow icons are the kilometer markers. Click on any of them to view details on the marker.

View SABA 5K in a larger map

Folks, here's the latest news on the upcoming 5K event

It will be held on Oct 11 at 9:00 am. The race starts and ends at Normandy Park. There will be a 5k and a 1 mile. People are welcome to run or walk either. The 5k will be professionally timed. The registration fee is $15. Families of 3 can register for $40 and families of 4 can register for $50. The first 100 registrants get a t-shirt We will have online registration but it is not set up yet but expect it soon. We will send out an announcement when it is available. Businesses may sponsor the event with a donation of $50 or more if they want their logo displayed on the t-shirt. We will need the logo by 9/18. Details for providing the logo can be provided to anyone interested. One-line listings on the shirt are available for anyone (individuals, families, dedications, companies) for a $25 donation. If people are interest in supporting the event, they can contact Erica Keagy at ekeagy AT comcast DOT net.

Volunteers are also needed for the event to help with set-up, on-sire registration, safety marshals for the course, and clean-up. If people would like to volunteer for the event, they can contact me at my usual email address. Ken Keagy will design a logo that can be included on the website as soon as he has it done. Let me know if you need any other info.

The following three logo designs were donated to us by Ken Keagy of Simmer Creative. Ken lives in our neighborhood and volunteered his services to support SABA.

The logos are presented in black and white to help us concentrate on the design. Once a logo design is selected work will begin on the selection of colors.

So please vote for the logo which you believe will be best for SABA moving forward. Voting will conclude at the end of April May.

Proposed Logos (pick one):

Cast Your Vote Here!

It was nice meeting folks in person at Luminaria Night. The feeling has almost returned to my toes now.

If you have pictures, please share them by posting a blog entry here. (If you don't have an account, please sign up for one).

Here are some the pictures I took:

If anyone wants to see the full set, they're all at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmuth/sets/72157611505857532/

Enjoy!

-- Doug