I write this blog offline. Zoomtown has been down in my part of town since Friday. There's a broken part that they tell me should be delivered today. Now, I've been on Cincinnati Bell's high speed network for over ten years – I was a beta tester when we first arrived to town – and this is the first major outage I've had. Not bad for a company trying to keep such a wide area network going. Still, I'll be very, very happy when the connection is returned. It's amazing how many times we've casually wanted to access the internet and how much a part of our daily lives it is. Guess that's a positive statement for Informatics.

In the midst of recruiting over 60 teams to this year's 48 Hour Film Project I've started working on the Alzheimer's project again. I can't believe how busy it has been – that I haven't been able to work on it until now, when Jarrod got the rough cut and audio sync done in December. Academic life is supposed to be slow and relaxing, right? After all, I only teach three classes a week for a total of seven and a half hours, and have summers off. And yet I really, really haven't had the chance to dedicate time to what really is the most important project I have going. The EMB division is important. And the new C4I building. But this movie has personal as well as professional meaning to me. I suppose that's factored into why I haven't been able to work on it.

As many of you know, my dad has Alzheimer's Disease. He's 63 years old and has probably had it for 10 years or so. Like all families, we can see the signs now but completely missed them at the time. Over the weekend my wife was going through some of our storage bins looking for a fife I had in my boyhood. She found a card my father gave me on my graduation from high school … what strikes me is how ruthless this disease is as it hardens the mind – in essence regressing the victim back in time to where thoughts are more simple. My father is a brilliant man – you can see it in his words he wrote over twenty years ago. And you can see glimpses of it as he plays with my daughter now. It brought me to tears when I read the encouragement he gave me on that card, and gives me a sense of melancholy as I think about it now. But that's mainly due to my sense of loss – the loss of "Dad-that-was". And that loss is significant. But he is still an amazing man, and a wonderful Pappy – or grandfather. My daughter loves him more than anyone outside of Mammy (grandma) Kim and me. And for that I'm happy every single day.

So, work continues on the Alzheimer's project. I've moved away from referring to it by the working title, "The Forgetting Project" as that title is similar to the title of an Alzheimer's documentary, "The Forgetting". But we need to call it something. "Simple Thoughts" is my current favorite, but that will probably change. Anyway, to keep information flowing (or, really, to start info flowing) about the movie I've set up a MySpace profile for Red Thread Media – the production company I started to create "media with a message." Eventually there will be more details on the Red Thread website (www.redthreadmedia.org) but for now (since I don't have time to design and program the site) most of the info will come through MySpace. The profile is located at http://www.myspace.com/redthreadmedia. If you're a participant in the movie, or just want to know what's happening with it, check these two online places out.

I'm off to talk with another high school filmmaking class. More as we approach the 48HFP this weekend.