I know many of you are probably getting into the holiday season. San Jose (and I’m sure other cities) have had holiday decorations up around town for a couple of weeks now. In downtown San Jose, you can already go ice skating, and the tree lighting ceremony will be Nov. 28 at Christmas in the Park. (More info on that here). And I’m sure holiday festivities are starting around the South Bay each day.

But I have to admit, I’m becoming somewhat of a humbug. It started two years ago, actually. All the stress of buying gifts for people seemed futile. The people I was buying for didn’t need anything. I didn’t want anything from them, except maybe some time to spend together over dinner or drinks. So last year I decided - no gifts. Instead, I would be giving my precious (and few) hard-earned dollars to those who needed it. Did my friends and family miss the presents? Not one bit. Especially when I told my mom, who works for the Girl Scouts, that I was donating money to her organization. And I told my pet-loving friend I’d be donating to the local SPCA. They didn’t mind one bit.

Call me Charlie Brown, but the holidays have become so focused on presents, that I’m afraid people are forgetting about those who will be the coldest, the hungriest this season.

Now more than ever we need to keep those less fortunate in mind. We’re facing an economic “recession” (a euphemism, I’m convinced), and the local foodbanks will be seeing more hungry, hopeful faces this holiday season than they’ve seen in a few decades.

As a board member of a local nonprofit, I can tell you firsthand that charities are hurting. They’ve been hurting for the last couple of winters, but this year is bad. People are scared, and are grabbing that wallet tight - for good reason. But we can’t forget that our neighbors need our help. Even if it’s $20, or 10 cans of food.

To raise awareness that charities need your help, the Silicon Valley Open Arms Coalition was created by local funders and nonprofits. The website gives several ways for people to contribute this holiday season, depending on which organization they’d like to support. Some of the nonprofits involved are First 5, Second Harvest Food Bank, Sobrato Family Foundation, Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, and The Health Trust.

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FC Gold Pride players Barnhart, Buehler and Hamm

Women’s professional soccer returns to the Bay Area this spring. A return of women’s soccer since the San Jose CyberRays of the defunct Women’s United Soccer Association.

Los Altos residents Brian and Nancy NeSmith are the owners of the Bay Area’s team in the new Women’s Professional Soccer league.

Suzanne’s post covers the introduction of the team’s name, FC Gold Pride. Some think Golden Pride would be a more appropriate name.

The NeSmith’s believe a fun, family friendly league will be more successful than the WUSA. the league will stress keeping costs down.

Los Altos native Albertin Montoya will be the Pride’s coach and some of the Pride’s players attended Stanford, Santa Clara University, and UC Berkeley.

Montoya, an assistant coach for the Stanford University women’s team and previously an assistant coach at Santa Clara University, began his collegiate playing career (a midfielder) at North Carolina State and was an Atlantic Coast Conference First Team selection in 1994. He later transferred to Santa Clara and received player of the year awards with the Broncos.

Players from local universities include Nicole “Barnie” Barnhart (goalkeeper), Rachel Buehler (defender), Tracy Hamm (defender), and Leslie “Ozzy” Osborne (midfielder). Ms. Barnhart and Ms. Buehler are 2008 Olympic gold medalist.

The Pride will play their home games beginning April 2009 at 10,300-seat Buck Shaw Stadium. The other teams in the league’s inaugural season are Los Angeles, New York/New Jersey, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis and Washington, D.C. With Dallas, Atlanta and Philadelphia scheduled to join the league in 2010.

The soccer season has been over for a few weeks now, and I’ve been meaning to hammer out a long post for even longer. But there’s a couple of headlines that have popped up recently in the off-season news roundups at the Merc, at the Quakes’ official site, and also over with our friends at Center Line Soccer. So I’ll give the Readers’ Digest version:

• Our fabulous new friend Darren Huckerby has been named Major League Soccer’s Newcomer of the Year. That’s because he is awesome.
• The Tottenham Hotspurs, an English Premiership League team, recently announced a partnership with the Quakes in which the Spurs get to help develop the untapped and massive youth soccer talent pool here in NorCal, and the Quakes get to stare slack-jawed at the mighty EPL team and learn via osmosis. There’s a bit of confusion, however, because many of the Hotspurs top-tier dealmakers have been sacked. No real word on exactly how that affects the agreement.
• MLS Cup playoffs kick off tomorrow night as the Chicago Fire faces the Columbus Crew, and Real Salt Lake squares off against the New York Red Bulls. It all starts 7:30 pm Eastern on ESPN2. I anticipate my payola from ESPN2 any day now.
• Ian over at The Offsides recapped the top 5 Quakes games this season. I missed one of those games, but thank God I didn’t miss the game listed as No. 1. It was truly spectacular.
• I attended a charity dinner the night before our 2-0 trouncing of Toronto FC in our season finale. I got to meet several players. I have pictures. I am waiting for some lazy bums to send me theirs. Then I will post like a mad fangirl.

I knew the campus was going to explode Tuesday night. And that’s where I wanted to be. I wanted to see for myself the reaction of such a historical moment in the faces of the young voters that helped make it happen. So when I heard the television announce Obama’s win, I grabbed my keys and jumped into the car, barreling towards the San Jose State campus.

It seems that I had just missed the celebration near the Tommie Smith and John Carlos statue. According to the Spartan Daily, about 150 students spontaneously gathered around the iconic statue screaming their heads off.

I also found this clip from CNN’s iReport (some language NSFW). You can see just how pitch black the area around the statue is. This celebration was impromptu, but people knew exactly where they wanted to stand at this moment, right beside two of SJSU’s own black history icons, that total darkness couldn’t keep them away.

I didn’t arrive on the scene until that larger group splintered into pockets of excitement and migrated towards more well-lit areas of campus. Out in the plaza area in front of the dorms, students were hugging, high-fiving and occasionally breaking out into chants of “O-ba-ma!”

I followed a friend into the dorms where a group of about 75-100 students crammed into a meeting room to watch both McCain’s and Obama’s speeches. (See the Spartan Daily’s video here.) The RAs brought in stacks of pizza and it was gone in 20 minutes. People were excited. People were jumping. People were hugging and screaming and accidentally knocking over soda. Some were gasping, some were silent, and some were obviously disappointed at the election results. But everyone seemed to be in agreement on two things: both speeches hit just the right tones, and there was simply not enough pizza.

I walked out of the building only to find some of the more rambunctious students ride a shopping cart down a sloping walkway, thrashing their vocal chords with screams of “OOOOOOBAAAAAMMAAAA!” all the way down. A group of black students beat-boxed and improvised rap lyrics to mark the occasion. Another group hugged every moving thing that passed their way. I could still hear all the commotion on my way back to my car.

Knowing that SJSU couldn’t have been the only celebratory hotspot in the neighborhood, I drove downtown with my windows down and listened out for any whoops and hollers. Some came from an occasional bar or two, some came from bicycle bells ringing, but not a whole lot of outright festivities. So I drove down a little further, turned the corner, and found exactly what I was looking for: a group of about 30 people marching down the streets, chanting, singing, waving to honking cars and celebrating every little bit of feedback sent their way.

I wanted to jump out of my car and take some pictures, but alas, I forgot my camera AND my phone.

So to those of you who were witness to that crowd — or heck, if you have pictures of ANY Election Day revelries/pity parties around the South Bay — please post them in the comments. I and everyone else would love to see them.

KFRC was home to Merv Griffin in the 40’s (swing music) and Dr. Don Rose in the 60’s (Top 40) when the station was on the AM dial at 610. The station has gone through a number of format changes over the years. CBS bought KFRC, leaving the AM dial ending up at 99.7 FM. More format changes with KFRC becoming Movin’ 99.7 playing dance music. About a year later CBS’ Free FM shock-talk format at 106.9 was dropped and 106.9 FM became the new home for KFRC playing a classic hits format. Got it so far? Try this.

If you have not already heard, Monday the KFRC on-air staff was told that they were history; KFRC would start simulcasting KCBS all news broadcasts beginning Monday, October 27.

This past season the A’s were on KFRC, it has been suggested that they helped lower the station’s ratings but were not at all the main reason for the poor numbers. Jumping around the dial and format changes did not help. Low ratings and KCBS wanting to expand its audience, younger listeners who hang out on the FM dial being a reason for the move.

KFRC’s Classic Hits have not completely disappeared; the classic hits will continue to be available as streaming audio at KFRC.com and on KFRC-HD2; however, you will not hear Dave Sholin, Celeste Perry, Sue Hall, Jay Coffey, and Ben Fong-Torres.

If this turns out to be a positive move for KCBS, will KGO and KLIV be next?

The season of giving is upon us, and as a board member of a local charity, I have to spread the news!

Local nonprofit Second Harvest Food Bank has kicked off its annual food and fund drive. Spokesperson Lynn Crocker says they hope to surpass last year’s cash intake of $6.7 million. Between now and the middle of January, the organization hopes to raise $8 million in cash and 1.7 million pounds of food.

Crocker says the economic downturn, layoffs, and high food prices have resulted in an unprecedented number of people seeking food assistance, many for the very first time. For more information about the food drive and giveaway, please visit their website.

Second Harvest is one of the largest food banks in the county, but it’s not the only place people rely on for food during their holidays, so let’s spread the love! Here are a few other charities looking for some support this season, so they can keep on giving.

• Milpitas Food Pantry

• Sacred Heart Community Services
  

• Salvation Army
  

• Cupertino Community Services
  

And of course, my post wouldn’t be complete without a plug for my own charity - TurningWheels for Kids! Our San Jose-based charity raises money throughout the year to buy new bikes for local underprivileged children in Santa Clara County. Each December, our bikes are assembled by hundreds of volunteers and distributed to the kids in the community who need them most. Last year we assembled and distributed more than 2,000 bikes, and we hope to do the same this year. Bikes are important to kids for many reasons - the main two being health and responsibility. We love promoting healthy lifestyles among our youth, and we need your help! Just as other charities in the county, we’re experiencing higher costs and need more donations than normal. For more information about our charity, please visit the TurningWheels for Kids website . Our organization was built on $10 donations, and we still love them!

No, not another post about politics.

We are talking about a cool new Gmail feature from Gmail Labs called Mail Goggles.

Late at night when you are a bit too sleepy or maybe had one too many adult beverages Mail Goggles steps in to make sure you really want to send that email, the one that next morning you may very much regret having sent.

How does Mail Goggles check that you are coherent? It gives you a math quiz! Yikes!

Good news is that you can set the level of difficulty to those math problems. Even if I were to set the difficulty level to remedial, my email probably never would be sent.

Enable Mail Goggles under Labs under Settings when logged into Gmail.

By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend; however, you can adjust days and times in the General settings.

A few other features under Labs include Custom keyboard shortcuts; Mark as Read Button; and one that I definitely need, Forgotten Attachment Detector.

Bottom line, your email will not be sent if you had too much to drink or you are inept at math.

Gary’s excellent post reminded all of you to register before Oct. 20. Go do that. Now. You should also be informed about what you’re voting for, so here’s where to go for information. (If this list is too overwhelming, I would stick with smartvoter.org, easyvoter.org and politifact.com.)

LOCAL

Smart Voter
Enter your address and see everything that will be on the ballot in your neighborhood — every person running for your district, every measure that applies to your area. If you did not already get your voters’ guide in the mail, this is the perfect place to start.

County election offices
Since this blog covers much of the South Bay, you may be located in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Mateo or Alameda counties. Here is where you can register to vote, check if you’re registered and download information on local elections.

San Jose Mercury News Elections section
You can make an argument about bias one way or the other, but never mind that — it does have good information that could help you decide on local issues.

STATE

California Voter Information Guide
The official voter guide from the Secretary of State. This is the online version of what you should have received in your snail-mail box.

Easy Voter
A plain-English site that spells out nicely who is running, what the California propositions mean, and who is opposed to what and why.

Secretary of State elections
This site outlines how to get ON the ballot, whether as a candidate or introducing an initiative. It’s too late for this election, naturally, but a good resource nonetheless.

NATIONAL

Politifact
If you’re tired of trying to figure out which national candidate to believe, this is a great resource to see quickly who just lied about what.

Factcheck
Another great fact-checking resource From the Annenberg Public Policy Center. This goes more in-depth than Politifact.

Open Secrets
Follow the money: see who is donating to candidates and elected officials.

EDITED TO ADD:

Project Vote Smart
Look up your candidates and current office-holders by zip code, then easily find their voting record, public statements, speeches and videos. This site excels with the lesser-known local and state representatives. An invaluable resource.

Glassbooth
Still not sure who you’re voting for in the presidential race? This site will quiz you on your core values and match you with a candidate.

There are a couple of guys wandering around the country offering magic potions, each magic potion having its own ingredients to cure all of your grievances. They want to be your best friend. Well, they want to be your friend at least until early November.

If you are planning to vote in the November 4 Presidential General Election and you have never registered before or you need to re-register you must do so by October 20.

You will need to re-register if you have moved, changed your name or wish to change the political party from your previous registration.

You can download and print a form from the Registrar of Voters Website here. Look for the Register to Vote link on the left.

You can also pick up the registration forms at post offices, libraries, and most local government offices and at the registrar’s office, 1555 Berger Drive, Building 2, San Jose.

Mailed registration forms that are postmarked no later than October 20 will be accepted. Voters may also return the forms to the registrar’s office no later than October 20.

If you are uncertain that you are registered to vote, check here.

More voter information on the Secretary of State Website here.

Registrar of Voter’s Office: 408-299-8683

If Metblogs is a city, hub.metblogs is the playground. We kept hearing from people that one of their favorite parts of Metblogs was meeting and interacting with readers and writers from other parts of the world, as well as getting requests for more ways that readers could be involved besides just posting comments. We thought about this for a while and decided that with a network like this, a giant community area where folks from all over the world could hang out, post photos and videos, talk with each other, form groups, play games, send messages, and do about a million other things was probably a pretty fun idea. The Hub is that.

If you have any tech ideas or suggestions join this group and speak up. See you on hub.metblogs!

San Jose Group