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And while I understand that I haven’t really been visible on this blog in the past few weeks, as usual I’ve been working on a variety of different entries to upload in the coming days. I hope you take this opportunity to subscribe to our mailing list as well as follow us on Twitter @JVince81! And be on the lookout because new content is coming very soon!

This has been a pretty happy place for the last week and a half.

About a week and a half ago, nearly a one-third of the planet’s population began celebrating the Easter Triduum. The Easter Triduum is the three day period leading up to Easter Sunday and the celebration of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Certainly something for believers like me (and some 2.1 billion other believers in Christ) to celebrate.

On the first of two personal notes in this entry, one of the young men that I advised when he was an undergraduate in Sigma Pi Fraternity became a member of the Roman Catholic Church during the Easter Vigil mass. For him – and those of us who know him – this was also a reason for celebration.

After a solemn, joyous Holy Week the world then began preparing for the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Normally, I wouldn’t cite this as a reason for the world to celebrate. However, following the tragic, paparazzi-fueled death of his beloved mother Princess Diana, there were many people who saw this past Friday’s wedding as a sort of victory for civility. The Sun Newspaper (based out of the United Kingdom) estimated that up to 3 billion people might watch the wedding. I’ve read post-wedding viewership figures as high as 2 billion, so I don’t know the exact number of people who saw the wedding, but I’m sure that most folks out there either saw the wedding live or saw footage.

In any event, the adoring crowds in the United Kingdom reflected the joy and happiness that most people shared for the young bride and groom.

And on a personal note – this past Friday a good friend of mine got married. I was honored to be one of his groomsmen and the excitement of the wedding helped make this past weekend a really great one for me and the hundreds of people who are celebrating this wedding, too.

And then Sunday, May 1st came. For the more than 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world, we celebrated the beatification of Pope John Paul II – now known as Blessed John Paul II. The beatification mass was viewed around the world as a man who many knew as a world leader took the final step before being declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Certainly a reason for celebration among the faithful Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church communities!

Of course the only way for such an amazing week and a half period to come to completion was with the announcement that the United States had located, stormed, and killed the most wanted terrorist in the world. And not only was I excited about the confirmation of Osama bin Laden being killed, but I was proud about the way the United States citizens celebrated the victory. I posted this message on Facebook late last night about our national celebration:

When certain countries on the other side of the world celebrate a big event, radical extremists come out in the streets and burn effigies of world leaders and flags of other nations.

When America celebrates the death of a global mass murderer, we have men, women, young, old, Republicans, Democrats, black, white, Hispanic, etc. all celebrating together chanting “USA! USA! USA!”

We win. Again.

Followers of freedom and believers in liberty have a big reason to celebrate this news. Congratulations go out to the men and women of our military and intelligence services on a job well done.

As I posted on Twitter last night – I feel like this week and a half period of happiness and celebration is the beginning of something great for this world. Let’s hope that the good times keep on coming and that we continue to receive good news (or the Good News, as it were) in the coming days, weeks, and months! Enjoy!

Plus, from time to time I do find that I go on Twitter and bitch about something. For example, this morning I was listening to some blabbermouth on the radio and he was talking about education spending in New Jersey. I tweeted (that’s right, I “tweeted” a thought): Spend as much as you want on education – without proper support and reinforcement at home it’s all a waste.

And that’s the truth!

Anyway, if you haven’t already done so you should follow JerseySmarts.com on Twitter @JVince81. Just imagine – you can check my bullshit out directly on your smartphone as well as your own Twitter feed. Wonderful!

Read my babblings all day today on Twitter @JVince81

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you know that I don’t like this Twitter stuff. However, it’s one of the “in” things right now, so a few months back I put together a JerseySmarts.com Twitter account. Typically, it’s just an update whenever there is a new entry on the blog. However, I thought I’d spend today updating that Twitter feed with a bunch of my random thoughts. No, I don’t intend on doing this everyday like some vapid teenager, but I thought it might be fun to engage in this Twitter stuff for a day to see how it worked out.

So if you have a Twitter account, then now is the time to follow @JVince81. And feel free to tweet along with the insanity!

Frankly, it’s one of the dumbest things that I’ve ever done online. You get 140 characters to say what you’re doing or to give an update on what’s going on in your world. My response to this is – “Who cares?” Honestly, who cares what you’re doing right now in 140 characters or less? Seriously – get a job. Anyway, since this Twitter thing is taking over the world and it does seem to be pretty relevant in the grand scheme of social media, I opted to start a Twitter feed for JerseySmarts.com.

Honestly, I started the feed because I wanted to make sure that I have the “JerseySmarts” user name (which wasn’t a problem). Right now there are two tweets on the Twitter feed (how ridiculous of a sentence was that, by the way?). I’m going to incorporate some software into the back end of JerseySmarts.com that will allow for an automatic update of the Twitter feed each time there is a new entry on JerseySmarts.com. I think that’s the most productive use of that social media client for this website.

What do you think?

As you ponder that question and if you have Twitter, you should head over and follow JerseySmarts.com. You can use the button embedded in the right sidebar or you can click here. Enjoy!

On behalf of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, we wanted to let you and your organization know about two upcoming events that may be of interest to you.

On October 28, respected photographer Deborah Willis will unveil and discuss her new work entitled “Lincoln as Monument, Lincoln as Icon.” Held at the Essex County Historic Courthouse, this event will explore the various depictions of Abraham Lincoln in art and photography. Using examples ranging from the 1870s to the present, Willis will lead the audience in a discussion of this iconic American figure, and how changing artistic depictions of him have impacted public perception.

In addition to the presentation and discussion, attendees have the unique opportunity to take docent-led tours through the Historic Courthouse, and even take a photo with the Borglum statue of Abraham Lincoln prior to the presentation.

Deborah Willis’ show is also a wonderful opportunity for attendees and community members to familiarize themselves with Lincoln and his legacy prior to our town hall discussion on November 12 at the Newark Museum. A panel of esteemed speakers, including Pedro A. Noguera, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, Jeff Johnson, award-winning journalist, social activist and political commentator, and James O. Horton, Historian Emeritus at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, will lead a stimulating discussion on the topic of “The Humane City: Race, Ethnicity and Freedom in Urban America.”

Panelists will discuss issues surrounding our urban communities today, and how we can collectively utilize the resources available in those communities to work towards a more successful future. This event seeks to critically examine the current situation in urban America when viewed through the lens of differences in race and ethnicity, while bringing together a group of scholars who are willing to give their recommendations for how communities in urban America can best achieve their collective potential.

Both events are free and open to the public, but an RSVP is required. Please visit http://lincolnliveson.com/ for more information or to RSVP.

You can also connect with us and join the discussion today through Facebook http://facebook.com/Abraham.Lincoln.Bicentennial.Commission and Twitter http://twitter.com/lincoln200yrs.

Please share this information with other members of your organization, and anyone else that you believe may enjoy this opportunity. We hope that you will join us for these important and exciting events.

Again, if anyone decides to go to either of these events, please feel free to send us a report!

Second, I absolutely hate the way that MySpace pages can be overly manipulated. I was friends with some people who chose to completely screw up their MySpace pages to the point where you’d need a 50″ screen on an ultra high resolution just to see the entire page at once. Completely ridiculous. That’s one of the features that I like about Facebook – it doesn’t allow you to break their basic format (and I hope they never move in that direction).

As for the cancellation process on MySpace, I found it to be overly cumbersome. You have to choose to “cancel” your account two or three times and then when you get the e-mail confirmation, you have to click on a link and confirm the cancellation again. I’m sure the News Corp lawyers that run the legal end of MySpace have some reason for that process, but it’s a bit ridiculous. Just let people cancel and move on already.

So now that I’m off of MySpace and LinkedIn, I think that I’m only on Facebook. I have to go and check whether or not I have any outstanding online profiles at Yahoo, but I should be good at this point. I’m considering whether or not to get rid of the Google photo album, too. There is only a limited amount of space available and it’s a little annoying to upload pictures to both Facebook and Google. I guess I’ll rest on that one a little bit longer, too.

In the last year I’ve merged both of my blogs into the one that you’re reading now and deleted unnecessary profiles at MySpace, LinkedIn, and Plaxo. Frankly, after a while it just gets to be too much. I think that this is the fate that Twitter has ahead of it. By the way, has anyone noticed how Twitter is essentially the new AIM for a younger generation? Just an observation.

No more MySpace!

As for something like Twitter, I have no idea why anyone would be so crazy about that service. From what I can tell, Twitter allows people to post periodic updates on what they’re doing. If you’re “following” (i.e. “friends with”) that person, then you get updated as to what they’ve uploaded.

Really?

Is that what we choose to spend our time doing these days? How self-important must someone be to think that they need to update the world on their status every few minutes? Better yet – who has the time in their day to put up so many updates?! “I just got to work,” “My job stinks,” “Can’t wait for lunch break,” “End of the day is coming,” “Driving home now,” “Making dinner,” “Getting ready for sleep to do it all again tomorrow.”

SHUT UP, ASSHOLE! No one gives a shit about following your tweets about your mundane life!

The big competition in social networking sites seems to be Facebook and MySpace. I think what draws people to Facebook is that it isn’t as flexible as MySpace and, thus, not as potentially annoying. There is nothing more aggravating than going to someone’s MySpace page and having them blare the latest death metal song at you or some type of mopey, stupid love song. If it wasn’t for the fact that one or two of my family members are on MySpace and not Facebook, I’d delete my MySpace account completely and stick to Facebook.

I’ve begun to think about whether or not my LinkedIn profile is even worth it. LinkedIn is supposed to be for people who are trying to reconnect, but generally in a business sense. However, Facebook pretty much offers the same service. So I’m not sure if it’s worth it to keep a LinkedIn page up and running. Sure, I have some nice recommendations of my work on the LinkedIn page, but I can always get that somewhere on Facebook.

Anyway, I wonder what other people think about the social networking sites. Do we really need to have so many of them out there or have we reached overkill? I think it’s probably time to thin out the number of social networking sites out there…