Category: Miscellaneous

For those of you who may (or may not) be interested, I have started a new chapter of my career as a Solution Director with HS2 Solutions. We employ highly talented people (myself excepted) who are experts in solving complex business, marketing, and technical problems.

Just playing with the recording features of my camera. Not too bad?

I need your help. Many of you are familiar with the event I have been involved with over the past three years for the MSU Alumni Club of Metro Chicago called SpartyBall (www.spartyball.com). SpartyBall is on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 The event has raised almost $20,000 for the new scholarship and this year we have the pleasure of awarding the 2008 Distinguished Alumni Award to Jeannie and Ed James.

The evening includes a premium bar, strolling dinner, live entertainment and a silent auction. The University has been very supportive of the event sending President Simon, Provost Wilcox and Sparty in past years. We are pleased to announce that Athletic Director Mark Hollis will be attending this year. You can see previous pics on Flickr at http://flickr.com/photos/chicagospartans/sets/72157601860046698/ .

SpartyBall is personally very important to me. I am appreciative of the education that I received from MSU (both in the classroom and outside of the classroom) and this is my way to give back to MSU. We have put a tremendous amount of effort, time and creativity into this endeavor and we are very proud of what we have accomplished in 2006 and 2007. However there is still a lot to do to make our third annual SpartyBall a success.

I am asking you to support this event. How, you ask? Well let me tell you!

· Buy a ticket and come to the event! (buy now! buy online! www.spartyball.com, special rates for recent grads)

· Tell a friend – pass this along to your Spartan network

My hope is that you could all be there to celebrate the third year of an innovative event not only for the Chicago club, but all the regional MSU alumni clubs. As we hoped, other regional clubs are now using SpartyBall as a template and producing similar events in their city.

For those of you outside of the Chicago area – we have fabulous hotel rates at the Hard Rock Hotel ($179 per night) if you want to make it a weekend in Chicago. Chicago is a blast this time of year and I can guarantee you will have an amazing time and I can almost guarantee 70 degree weather on March 1st*!

If you can’t attend, please forward this to other Spartans who may be interested. This event is a blast and a great way to meet other Spartans and support a good cause.

All of the event information is on our website at www.spartyball.com. If you have any questions, just let me know! Thanks for your support!

–John

Well, Erin and I have returned from our latest expedition. We spent Labor Day at Rock Island State Park in Wisconsin. The trip was enjoyable but too short. One of our big accomplishments on this trip is that we packed everything in our backs (Erin’s photo and John’s photo)  for the trip. This was unlike some other people there who took everything including the kitchen sink onto the island with them (see photographic proof).

All in all, it was a fun trip and you can view all of our pictures here.

If you are having trouble viewing photos from our recent vacation on this website, you can also view the pictures on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/chicagotraveler/. It appears that the 5 year old computer that runs this website and the myriad of free software that I use to serve it is not quite enough to handle all of the interested parties. 🙂