Nick Bastian's Blog

Once again, it's time for our (7th) annual turkey drive! On Sunday Nov. 22nd, I will be delivering turkeys to Phoenix Rescue Mission as they prepare to feed the homeless on Thanksgiving Day.

I believe that many people have a desire to help others this time of year but find it difficult to do so because our lives are so busy. This year, the shelters need a LOT of help. If you would like to help by making a financial donation, we will do all of the work for you! I'll be purchasing frozen turkeys Sunday morning to deliver to the Phoenix Rescue Mission. (I can provide receipts from the mission if needed.) Please feel free to contact me with any questions or donations.

If you are able to donate one dollar or a hundred ( or more), I am able to purchase frozen turkeys all at once for delivery to the mission on Sunday morning. Over the years, we have found this the easiest way to help the most people. I can give you my address or I can pick up donations up until Saturday the 21st. You can always email me at nick (at) nickbastian (dot) com or call me for more info! I am out and about a LOT, so it makes picking up your donation pretty easy! :-)

Last year, with the help of my friend Rob, we were able to deliver over 875 pounds of turkey for needy families! Big thanks to Rob Sell at Sell Home Inspections for all he does. Thankfully, Rob has really stepped in to be a huge help to me in hauling all of these birds. We both have a BLAST delivering them and want to thank everyone for your donations to such a great cause.

Please help. Every single penny is GREATLY appreciated. We want to make it easy for everyone to help others this Thanksgiving. I would also like to wish you and your families a wonderful holiday season!

If you are an agent that sells homes near transit lines or that feels like living near a light rail system could be a benefit to home owners or investors, I would ask that you contact your local transit authority to get your area added to the Walk Score system.

Walk Score is a great tool we have used for quite some time to allow people to “score” a home based on it’s “walk-ability.” While I believe it is a great tool, I hadn’t really been quite as excited as one might think, mostly because their algorithm hadn’t included public transportation, mainly, light rail.

Recently, that excitement has changed slightly as I have seen several blog posts about new transportation data being used in evaluating a Walk Score. The reason I say slightly is because the Phoenix Metro area does not yet have the super cool transit functionality built into the search. ( Flagstaff has it!?!)

Getting the data necessary to add transportation to the Walk Score system is easy. There is a form we can all fill out to request our transit agency to submit a transit feed to make it happen. If you are interested in transportation or are interested in living near the light rail line, please fill out that form and let them know.

Please feel free to leave a comment here and add to the discussion BUT, please also head over to the blog post I wrote about this topic on the Rail Life blog and leave a comment there as well. I would like to get some reactions from some of the "transit geeks" that read the Rail Life blog and it would be great to have them see what some of the people from Active Rain have to say about the Walk Score information. If you are not familiar with Walk Score, you might want to check them out. It is a fun way to tell people how "walk able" their neighborhood.

Ok, who is using Google Wave? As you can see form the following blog post written by my friend Bill Risser, we are going to meet on Monday to try and dive a little deeper into some of it's features.

You are welcome to join us in person or online. If you have a Google Wave account, please feel free to connect with me so that we can chat on Monday at 10am ( AZ time) I am nickbastian@googlewave <dot>com

I have heard good things and not so good things about Google Wave which is understandable for a new product. I have nt used it much yet but see some interesting possibilities. Please feel free to join us!