Ok, this has been stickied.

Paul... .. your analogies and insight were such a great read!  Would you be interested in writing for OH somewhere? Probably not much interest in the particular theme of yours above outside of this forum, but you're pretty articulate in relaying concepts. OHMag, I know, had some men's stuff, but I'm not sure I've heard one way or another of any regular column. Perhaps you and Dx (and/or others?) might want to put something together. "The Locker Room" comes to mind. I'm feeling in your writing.... WMD-grade world out there. What a pain in the rear (or worse) I'm thinking to be subjected to such a feeling of periodic helter-skelter drive-by spewing. I remember the high school locker room having approximately one entrance, which was also the exit... way down the hall. Kinda safe feeling -- though I always took it for granted at the time. And then, abruptly, one envisions raiding pom-pom squads racing through with estrogen-tipped spears, trying to march people out because not enough people had assembled on the cheerleading field outside. Yich!  I'd hate to feel that way, if I'm understanding the feeling correctly.  For my part, thinking back, I always did feel a little "out of place" in certain ways around so many of the people here (I started out here a guy nerd in his 20's building stuff for an audience that was mostly 20 years older, 85% of the other gender and with many other differences). It didn't phase me much, though, on one hand because I kind of felt out of place more or less everywhere in life. And, in that, I suppose, more than anything else I felt very much at home. I didn't have obesity personally in my life, but I spent most of my years spending most of my time dealing, in all kinds of ways, with other people not seeing me for who I knew I was. Anything that connected with the theme of liberating human potential, helping people become more of who they are and who they can become... that's really powerful for me. I can't say quite how many months it will be, but I'll be happy once we're finally done with some final infrastructure overhaul to be able to do the yahoo groups thing. My original goal was that by 2003 anyone would be able to start their own group here and keep it public, private, open, by invitation only, etc -- their choice. On the other hand, there are a lot of things I'd planned by 2003, think of it, that I'm still looking forward to, but, oh well, that's the challenge, isn't it. Forum owners should be able to upload word/excel/pdf/whatever up to lots of megabytes.  What else.... underline... We have that in our content management system, I saw... hmm.. three editors here.. but neither #2 nor #3 seem to have underline. (I wonder what happens when one pastes underlined text from, say, word here.) I'll add underlining to the list. Spell checking... same case. I rejected the english system of spelling once, or twice. Or 5 times. Didn't suit me. By the time I was about... about 30 years old, I finally figured to give it up and conform. Strange, though, I swear that MS Word trains people how to spell subliminally. When I back space to correct a typo, it's subconsious. Ditto for mispellings now; my fingers don't let the red underlining last for a few milliseconds. Anyway, thanks for the suggestions! Regardng the draffic-drumming stop-ins... do you get that much here? (Sorry if I sound a bit like a dufus here, not having been around much; I'm a little embarassed actually. Dx had invited me, but I was always too tied up I feared getting started on stuff and then making a mess of things if I got pulled away). I know that there is (or at least was) a sticky post feature that posts to all forums. People stop by here trying to drum up interest in other things often in particular? Regarding feature/content publicity, I'm working on getting all features screenable, so that they can work "inside" any particular area or forum, without users ever having to go outside the forum to make use of them. Data supplied could be done so to show up either/only according to however the user wants (public to all, public to only me, public only to friends, public only to members of specific forums). I'm looking forward to that. The reason I was asking about goals was because the current thing is absolutely silly/stupid as-is, but a good start. Not terribly useful for 50 people, for example (of whatever gender) to each have the same goal, but because they each described it in slightly different ways (ex: "spend more time playing with my kids" vs. "spend more time to play with my kids") it winds up as 50 little goals, each with one huge member count of a whopping 1.  Also, even for cases (out of 3,000 goals, I could only find about 10) where the current system is actually able to show a _group_ of people -- say, as in, like, maybe, kindof, perhaps just a little social networking, maybe?? -- you wind up on the page (well, I do, at least) and say "ok... nice.... and.. .. and now what?".  No message board... or, more importantly, no further statement of detail or meaning or status of why the goal was important to them or where they stood on it or anything else.  And this goes on for 3,000 goals.  Part of the reason I was posting was to see if I was the only one who thought the whole thing was starting to look at least a little like some twisted practical joke.  (I can never be sure sometimes;  as often as not, I actually AM in my own world).  In any case, I'm the one who designed the system. It was only a Phase I (started out as a "new years resolutions" kind of theme) and I was surprised how long it wound up staying out there collecting all these onesies and a few twosies here and there. So, when I was posting, my primary feeling was one of wondering if I was on the right track at all as I was writing up my Phase II specs (that have a lot to do with helping people -- who might be interested -- in forming groups of similarly interested people. Also, at another level, it's kind of silly to be driving a company withou staying very closely in tune with that people are really wanting and striving for. Some opportunity, perhaps for more targeted service via better awareness of what peopl want.  Your forum-specific privacy-related feedback is great. Thanks. Regarding driving additional traffic / advertising, that reminds me... I'm having a type of mid(?) life crisis these days (or maybe its just that time of month for me?) where "new" starts off as "alien" and, well, _stays_ as "alien".  [Could I be getting.... o l d ??]  Take these google ads for example. The only thing I hate, at a type of gut level, more than google ads is the face that by now I've gotten used to them -- everywhere. Or, more to the point, I've gotten used to being annoyed by them -- everywhere, so it kind of lingers there as an annoyance that's there, but I'm so used to it that I don't notice it, but that doesn't make it go away, and, even if I'm used to it, that doesn't make it any less "alien".  Thankfully, that goal system was google-free and banner free (from what I saw).  {No idea why there in particular -- I have a team of people who puts things up and together.} Question -- thinking about one of your statements above....  would you be interested in a "men's subset", if not outright "men's forum" within every other forum here?  Ex: a "men's forum" within your state board?  That type of multidirectional subsetting can get somewhat mindboggling pretty quick (for me at least -- but that's easy to do) considering the different subsets. Ex: a DS subforum for the TX board. A Men's subforum of the TX board. A post op subforum of a men's subforum within the RNY forum, etc, etc. Oh, I forgot earlier... regarding features.  Would you like tools here to help you hook up with every WLS support group known to man?  (I'll leave pun intention inferences to the reader). If so, that was something I started working on years ago. I hope to get around to it. I don't know if you knew but OH,Inc recently acquired OH Events & Chapters. There had been a small number of acquisition targets that had been on our horizon and that one hit Q1.  The acquision... acquision..... **** spell check please? ....  ok  ... acquire... so.. acquisition... my final answer... the thing brought some new resources and experience into the company and I'm excited to see where things will be going. Hopefully some of my original plan will make its way to reality this year. The core value of this company, in my mind all along, has been the power of the web site to put stuff together automatically. 2005 and 2006 were veeeeeeeeeeeery long and dark years as the entire IT infrastructure was operated on. (Kind of like building a cement slab under your two story shack while you're still entertaining guests in that shack), so a whole heck of a lot of often very well intended people inefficiency came to kind of rule the day. Fortunately we're over that hump. No telling what the next completely unexpected humps will be, but at least I can see stuff being pretty damn exciting looking ahead if at least 2 out of every 7 things goes well as planned. Speaking of which...  (planning)....  you're pretty darn insightful above. ok....  7 months before I was born, I sprouted testicals and they masculinized my female-by-default phenotype and that included my corpus collosum that wound up assuming the characteristically less integrative stance, and so, over 30 years later,  when I'm trying to have a conversation on the phone with my parents and my wife is frantically -- deparately trying to signal me about what I AM supposed to say to my parents about getting together for dinner versus what I'm NOT supposed to say, I don't have the slightest clue what the %^&*I(( she's trying to say and I have to simply put the phone down in frustration and say "Open your mouth and TELL me... what do you want? I don't read _this_" -- I say as I convulse some lopsided gesticulative fling.  Aka -- a typical male.  I can definitely multi-task, but definitely not in that particular type sensory polymodal way. To the point. Goal oriented. It comes naturally... that left hemisphere thing.  So, if someone were to ask me my goals... would that be easier for me or harder for me, than if I were female?  And, is this intuitive?  I'm feeling a lot of levels to that one.  Comes naturally, therefore doesn't need to be coached or coaxed and not much interest in being coached or coaxed on the matter.  On the other hand, comes naturally, therefore could better relate to it and therefore have more of an interest in it.  I could see it both ways. "Revealing goals reduces competitive advantage".  Makes me wonder...  within my own company... going through the history of all the staff I've had, of which people (male vs female) were most versus least receptive to communicating and discussing company or department goals...  not sure if I notice a gender bias there, but the statement makes me wonder.. (We're in the middle of some major planning at work this month). Anyway, more again another time. Again, thanks for the insight.  I'm a bit sleep deprived here today, so I'm sure the above could have benefitted from a coherence-checker. -EAK'07

Hi guys. I posted this on the CA board just now. Thought I might post it here as well. I had the Goals system introduced here to help members get what they want, but hooking up with and supporting one another. Have you seen / used the goal system? I was browsing through it today and noticed some of the more common themes. We'll be launching a next version of this system (so stay tuned). Check out some of your peers. Know what you want and good luck getting what you want! Do you want to................ Have abalanced Life (not all work) http://obesityhelp.com/goals/uzone,goals/action,viewGoal/tab,friends/?pkid=401&key=92c 6490d7faecfb6184c4c72cff61f2f Weigh less than my husband http://obesityhelp.com/goals/uzone,goals/action,viewGoal/tab,all/?pkid=437&key=6e645d2 e91ae273560125f774148b075 So, any "Weigh less than my wife" goals here?? Weigh under 200 lbs http://obesityhelp.com/goals/uzone,goals/action,viewGoal/tab,all/?pkid=1276&key=5ad817 43ba12b136b25a4e1720528aab Exercise on a regular basis http://obesityhelp.com/goals/uzone,goals/action,viewGoal/tab,all/?pkid=232&key=219ebc6 0695c718f9ba6866e94ea05c4 Get more organized at home http://obesityhelp.com/goals/uzone,goals/action,viewGoal/tab,all/?pkid=762&key=06d5a0a dac8adfdb30a857bb835e6bbd Go out in public without being ashamed of how I look http://obesityhelp.com/goals/uzone,goals/action,viewGoal/tab,all/?pkid=1236&key=246b86 7340f201d7f8d2f2e4a592b055 

Thanks Dx. Hey, I'd like to code something into the signup process here so that any time a new member signs up who is a male they receive an invitation to participtate in this group. With that in mind...   could you please write a description of this group that could be used?

Hi. I did a search from our data base (top of the page) and found some things contributed over the years: This page highlights the word "cold" http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/information/dbsearc h.php?Search_Word=cold

Here were some results I found: http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/information/questio n.php?N=a1073599649&Search_Word=cold

http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/information/questio n.php?N=1063969962&Search_Word=cold

http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/information/questio n.php?N=n1054909030&Search_Word=cold

http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/information/questio n.php?N=w1049772502&Search_Word=cold

http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/information/questio n.php?N=p1036328684&Search_Word=cold

http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/information/questio n.php?N=o1005691290&Search_Word=cold

http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/information/questio n.php?N=s1069984893&Search_Word=cold

http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/information/questio n.php?N=a1005453632&Search_Word=cold Guess it's pretty common! Hope that helps.

Where is it safe to like DEVO any more these days, I've wondered.  History Channel is sad, me thinks (ex: "Modern Marvels" read Three Gorges Dam), compared to History International Channel (ex: at least some coverage to stuff taking place before 1980).