I saw someone commented on the old typos, but did you notice that the font is off? I don't know why but the font on this one post is different from all your others, and it doesn't look intentional…

Patrice Beverly
Volunteer Maryland

"It was a big day at Twitter HQ today and it's not even noon yet. We saw 5x normal tweets-per-second and about 4x tweets-per-minute as this chart illustrates. Overall, Twitter sailed smoothly through the inauguration but at the peak, some folks did experience a 2-5 minute delay receiving updates. We'll be analyzing this later today so that during the next massively shared global event there is no appreciable delay. Exciting!"

I think they're getting the hang of it. :)

There's nothing mandatory about it. He's proposing policies that increase opportunities to do public service and benefits for those people who participate.

I appreciate the topic of this post and it's actually something that came up today during a board meeting I attended where I work. I work at a non-profit and service is almost inherent in this type of job. For those of you who work for for-profits, service could also be defined as reaching out to those in your community and examining what opportunities there might be for volunteer service, both as an individual and maybe as a company. I work for United Way and am a bit biased regarding charity, particularly charitable giving through the workplace; but as a Gen Y-er with a smaller disposable income, I appreciate opportunities for volunteer service rather than just financial contributions.

However, we have become a nation of things. We need more and more two cars is not enough we need three. Bigger TV's, Bigger houses, Bigger computers and more money. It seems absurd that anyone needs to earn even a million dollars to perform a job but how many people earn more money then I will ever see in a lifetime. Those sports players and presidents of large companies have inflated what we think we should be earning. There is an awful sense of entitlement. Some of this I believe started when mothers went back to work. I work full time but we tend to want to buy the kids love or for reasons of guilt.

Right now I work in a not-for-profit that has a mission of improving peoples lives. We are financially hurting and in the 30+ years of its existance had to lay-off a person. We have clientele that use excuses "we only earn $200,000 a year we can't afford to pay for speech therapy" and then we see them driving off in a Mercedes SUV. Ha!!! As a Gen-Xer I think going back a few years in time will be good for us. A time when families spent time together and everyone didn't have everything! Will Obama be our "savior"? no but he may be a good start at a rude awakening for the United States. I am not surprised that other countries don't like us. We like new and shiny and revere what is old and beautiful.

There are people here in the US that know what it means to serve their community, to volunteer and work hard in service to others. I don't think you can pass a law that requires people to serve, any more than you could pass a law mandating people to be "good", however you might define that. How about instead we each find something that inspires us to be better citizens, and find ways of contributing to our communities? We don't need our new president to tell us we need to do that, but it's nice to know that he understands the importance. For the selfish people out there: don't worry, you won't have to do anything. Just pay attention, though, and you'll learn something.