Moving to say the least.
I attended the Homfront Heroes Gala 2007The room was filled with the full spectrum the US Military can offer.  Veterans from pretty much every war, current soldiers and their families and some civilians. 

 Ah!  There was also this Canadian guy with a French accent who received a prize for the Best Support to Military Families.  He also announced the donation of free lifetime accounts to all children of fallen US soldiers from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 To explain the type of night… I started to chat with the couple sitting to my right and the spouse asks me to explain my services.  Well 2 phrases into my explanation tear drops start falling from here eyes.  She says ‘sorry, please continue, I will explain’.  I finished my explanation pretty much there and she explained.  ‘  I lost my father in the Vietnam War when I was 6 years old.  I still remember his laugh.  You don’t understand the power of your services, keep on doing what you are doing, it’s beautiful’.   

 My presentation was at the end of the night and as I was reading the speech prepared by my PR company, I didn’t agree with many words as I felt they were inappropriate and completely overboard.  The writer said ‘trust me; your speech will be the less patriotic of all speeches that night’.  Well he was right, the conviction and determination in the voices that night had me stirred.  I read a lot about democracy and freedom and none of the current democracies could have emerged without the courage and sacrifice of military men and women.  

 The result of those sacrifices has been my freedoms.  To these brave men and women I say thank you.  I was humbled by the recognition and the applause I got from the audience as I announced the donation and mostly when I received my award.  You see, they briefly explained my service as I received my award, I saw many eyes that were intrigued.
 My announcement was the final presentation of the night.  As I went through the motions of my speech explaining the service and the donation I tried not to look at the 5yr old child sitting feet’s away with a framed picture of his dad who is serving in Iraq.  It was quite simply overwhelming, the buzz in the crowd as I explained the service and the claps I received from the donation announcement.
 The final moment of the night was after the reception when a Lewis Lee Millett Jr. , a veteran came to see me.  He shook my hand, took my shoulder and In a faint emotional voice he said ‘What you are doing is important, keep at it young man.  As he walked away, I opened my hand and he had gave me a medallion of the National Memorial for Prisoners of war and Missing in Action.
 My next task is to reach all the families of fallen soldiers.  This will be done through a series of articles in the military press and magazine.  I will also be a host on the Military Wife Talk Radio.
 I wasn’t sure I knew what I was getting into when I took the decision of donating accounts to children of fallen soldiers.  Well I am still unsure of what’s to come but I do know one thing…  This is bigger than me and it feels right.

Our sincere apologies for the downtime on the site today.  It has been our longest ‘downtime’ since launching the site.  It has been a long day to say the least but my main concern is obviously the collected data i.e. capsules that members have created.   The backups for our data are located in 3 different physical locations and none have been affected from this outage since it only affected the capacity to provide connectivity.

 
Two major call centers were affected today in Ottawa and I spoke to the owner of a VOIP company (the one who hosts our 1-888 #)  and let’s say he was even more stressed than me for obvious reasons.
Please find attached a memo we received from the president of the data centre who hosts our main servers in Ottawa/Canada.

 
As I reflected on today’s event, it is even clearer that connectivity (although important) is not our main concern… preserving your memories is.

 
Sincerely
David Ryan
President and Creator
Electronic Time Capsule Inc.
 

Gentlemen
The outage which is still in effect is caused by a major cut to Fibre Cable in The Train Yards area- beside the new Walmart store All Rogers, GT/Bell customers have been affected that are downtown and serviced at the various downtown Datacenters- both Voice and Data- many thousands apparently.
I personally visited the accident site at 3:30PM.  Given the amount of cable to be replaced and the splicing work to be done, my estimate is that service should be restored prior to midnight tonight- the Carriers say another 4 hours but….
I have been in touch with Senior Management at all Carriers concerned and I have asked for a formal response to explain this situation
My sincerest apologies for this inconvenience
As you can see I am writing from my outside Rogers email which is still working
I will follow up with you post reactivation.

We will be in Toronto this weekend for the Baby Time Show.  Come and visit us at booth 124!

www.babytime.ca

We did our first non-web advertising by having a presence at a trade show.   We won a prize for the innovation of the year.
 

We got to present our service to a multitude of people and the response was quite surprising!
 

We would like to thank the people at www.viedefamille.ca for their support and help with our first trade show.
 

Jennifer is our weekly contest winner, Please find following her reason for choosing our services. 

Congratulations Jennifer and as we say at Electronic Time Capsule…. Share it Forward!

I found your website after realizing that the paper journals in my nightstand for my boys aged 1 and 3 have not had an entry in over 5 months. I also have tons of digital pics and no one knows the reason Ryan or Andrew was smiling so big in this picture or that. So, I thought this would be an easy, fast and efficient way of keeping it all together.

A nice article mentionning us and our service from a donation we did at Rohnert Park Elementary School (California).

http://www.thecommunityvoice.com/articles/2006/11/27/news/news04.txt