Good Morning and welcome to another perfect July day!

While sitting in the office Wednesday morning, I saw a television commercial targeting parents of young children. The commercial showed a mother with a young child at a park. The mother puts her head down for a second and the child is gone. The panicked Mom looks around and doesn't see the child. The visual cuts to a white van driving out of the park. The Mom then reaches into her bag and pulls out some kind of child GPS tracker. You put one part on your child and the other part beeps when it's close. The tracker works fine in the commercial and the smiling boy comes out of the woods with a red balloon.
Now, I'm one to think we have enough gadgets in our pockets. We have cell phones, keyless car entry buttons, garage-door openers and everything else. Why get another gadget?
Then again... Meet Brendan.
He's 7-years old, a free-spirit and can be, well, a handful.
During dinner Wednesday night, we were talking about heading to the library for a puppet show. Brendan, as he's apt to do, finished dinner first, left the table and starting tumbling around on the couch.
You keep half an eye to make sure he doesn't run outside, then get back to eating or cleaning up or just resting.
There's still plenty of time for the puppet show, so we get ready to go, but there's no Brendan.
Everybody starts calmly looking around the house. We check the play room. We check the bathroom. We check his bedroom. His brother's bedroom. His sister's bedroom.
No Brendan.
We start yelling his name.
No Brendan.
We check around outside.
No Brendan.
We go back inside and yell his name louder.
No Brendan.
His mom, getting close to full panic mode, takes a quick ride around the block to see if he just sort of wandered.
No Brendan.
We yell louder. People are staring to stare at the house (or avoid it).
No Brendan.
Check the garage.
No Brendan.
Mom grabs the phone. Dials a 9.
"Hi Mom."
Huh?!?
There's Brendan. Big Smile. Starting to laugh.
"I was just playing hide and seek in this box."
It's not a game if nobody else is playing. Unfortunately, and a 7-year old is (hopefully) never going to understand this, but we live in a world where you quickly go from a playful search to thinking (believing?) the worst.
We are lucky. It was just a child playing around. Of course, our heads are another story.
Not to push a product, I (and everybody else in the house) know what this is like:

Good Morning Mr. and Mrs. Delaware County and all the ships at sea!

Well, here we are a week and change into the Summer Olympics and, once again, the 'experts' have been proved wrong.
For weeks leading up to the Games, there was a lot of talk about how everything is going stale. How the Games don't matter any more. How China can't possibly get everything together.
Well, thanks to Michael Phelps, some inspired gymnasts and ferocious back-and-forth in beach volleyball, the Games do matter.
When you see an 9-year old boy, who up until last week had never seen a swim meet or a volleyball game, jumping up and cheering, well, the perspective has changed.
There are always going to be be nice stories and the like at the Olympic games. When you have so many people gathered in one spot for an extended period of time, that's bound to happen.
While the national pride thing may not be as big as it once was, it's fun to watch the best athletes in the world going head-to-head.
With Tiger Woods not playing golf, the Phillies doing an August swoon and the NFL not really relevant for a couple of weeks, the Olympics have really saved the summer.
It's not only fun to watch, but really inspiring.


If you have any cool links or photos, send them along to onlinedelco@gmail.com

GOOD MORNING, DELAWARE COUNTY!

Maybe it's just me, but who in the world is Shigeru Miyamoto?
Did this person come up with a miracle cure for cancer? Did he give away billions to help others? Did he come up with an alternative energy source so we don't have to fund the houses in the South of France for the CEOs of oil companies? I know, maybe Shigeru Miyamoto is personally bringing down the government of China and its questionable human rights stance?
How about this, Shigeru Miyamoto is a video game designer.
He was also named the No. 1 most influential person in a Time magazine poll.
Shigeru Miyamoto, the designer of such world changing things as Donkey Kong and the Legend of Zelda, narrowly beat out somebody named Rain for the top spot. Rain, by the way, is described as a 'Korean pop sensation' whatever that is.
Television comic Steven Colbert came in a distant third, followed quickly by Heidi Klum and Tyra Banks.
Here's the whole list
OK, now, I can only assume there was some serious ballot stuffing for this list. After all, if a guy can design Donkey Kong, he can probably bust into the online voting and give himself, say, a million votes.
Still, this is a little disturbing. How are any of these five people influential at all? Have they done anything to better our lives. The only Rain I know of will be falling later this afternoon. While it makes the grass grow and the flowers look pretty, I don't think it's very influential. It's certainly not influential when we have to pull out the lawnmower.
So, this can only lead to the next logical question: Who is the most influencial person in Delaware County?
Are there any? I'd be willing to bet if there was such a poll, the top spot would be going to somebody sitting in prison or something like that. Maybe that guy who used to walk around the Hook in his bare feet.
A vote like that would be scary. Hey, even Gil Spencer would probably break the top five.
We all need a break:


If you have any cool links or photos or want to vote for an influential person, send an e-mail to onlinedelco@gmail.com or leave a comment at the end.