Category: OC Adventures
An Experiment in Social Media [updated!]
Tonight when I came home from work there was a helicopter flying over our neighborhood. So I went online and searched the usual places for news: OC Register and Google News. When they turned up blank I went to Twitter. I found that my local police department had a twitter account so I sent them a message.
As of this post I have yet to receive a response. I then did a search in twitter with the keyword “irvine”. This turned up a lot of tweets on the concert tonight. But weeding through that mess I found some people were actually talking about all the police activity in Irvine.
I checked the radio, nothing. Saw the ABC 7 chopper in the air, so I asked them what’s going on and they still have not replied either. Back to my search:
This twitter user actually was notifying the OC Register, to what was going on. Still nothing on their twitter account yet.
Possibly the most exciting tweet of the ones I saw tonight about the action. But still no answers. Things get even more interesting with this next tweet:
This was the apex of the action this evening. Later I saw:
That seems to be the end of it. As of this posting I have not seen anything more about the police activity in Irvine. I did call the Irvine police department’s non-emergency line. They said they have detained someone, and everything is ok now. Then the operator said she had 80,000 other calls and had to go.
The experiments outcome? Twitter provided more information to me than any other medium when the action was actually happening. Nothing was on TV, or the major networks websites. The twitter accounts like the Irvine Police, OC Register, etc, did not have anything about the events that were unfolding in my city. The lesson I learned tonight? Twitter is great for instant information, but the whole story cannot be told in 140 characters. I look forward to reading about whatever it is that happened tomorrow morning.
This has been a great experiment for me, especially since I begin my Social Media class next week at UCI. Of course, the class is online!
UPDATE: Irvine Police Tweet and post press release. This was VERY close to our house. I’m glad everything was resolved and no one was hurt. I think it is very cool that the IPD tweeted this!
Bike Ride
I think the picture above would have turned out much better with my SLR, but I really don’t want to lug around such a big camera while out on a bike ride. Today I left the house around 8am in search of some good deals and a great bike ride. I was only able to satisfy one of those however. I went to three garage sales. The first one was pretty good, seemed like nice folks, didn’t have much out, but there were some DVDs that I should have probably asked how much they were, but I hate it when people don’t mark things with prices, its garage sale 101! The next sale was a total bust, they hardly had anything out. The last place I stopped at was equally disappointing.
The best part about the ride was ride. While disappointed in the garage sales, I did have a good time and it made my bike ride interesting. I printed out the map above before I went so I could find everything. I thought I might see some other garage sales while I was out that didn’t have anything listed on craigslist, which is where I found out about the ones that I went to. Irvine has great bike paths, I really enjoy riding them and am thankful that they are there.
Garage Sales
Here is a map of garage sales I may visit tomorrow morning:
5.8 Earthquake in Chino Hills
Shook pretty good here in Irinve thought too! Hope everyone is ok.
OC Podcasters MeetUp & Fox Sports Grill
I had a great time at the MeetUp for OC Podcasters as usual. However, I had another sub-par experience at Fox Sports Grill. All the staff there is great. Actually, really nice people. The only problem is I can never find anything good on the menu.
To date I have had the turkey burger, by the way the best one at the spectrum is at the Yardhouse, the buffalo chicken burger, which was extremely hot. It came with onion rings that were more like onion strings (very limp and not crispy at all). The fries there are good.
Also, although I am not a big beer drinker I do really like the Blue Moon beer they have there on tap. I have also had the sliders there, they are ok, but not really good. I’m just trying to find something that is very good there. I once tried the chicken fingers, reasoning that no one can really screw those up. But once again they were not what I was expecting. I really want to find something good at this place since it seems that many groups I meet friends/collegues like to eat here. Can anyone reccomend something on the menu that is REALLY good?
MS Walk
Last Saturday Michelle and I participated in the MS Walk at UCI. My company always participates in the event. Here are the photos.
OC Podcasters
I had a great time at the meetup last night. I’m really glad that I went. I was really tired when I got back from the gym, but I recovered and made the trek down to Aliso Viejo and I’m glad that I did. We went out to dinner afterwards to a sports bar that was close. I was out a little late, but it was more than worth it to see all my podcasting buddies! I’m looking forward to the next meetup!
Link: OC Podcasters
OC Food Ratings from OC Health Department
Really cool web app that shows health violations for your favorite OC restaurants.
Irvine gets 11th
New study says Irvine is 11th safest city in US. Mission Viejo takes top spot.
A controversial new study based on annual FBI crime statistics names Mission Viejo the safest city in the nation. via LA Times