Over at Quofda today the question asked what age was my favorite so far, and I think I'm going to go with age 18.
I was 18 when I graduated from high school and went off to my freshman year at college. All of the changes of leaving high school, moving to a dorm, meeting so many new people, doing things on my own, they all combined to make my 18th year the most interesting one of my life so far.
The Wife and I just joined a new gym that is literally a Par 5 away from our house, a Snap Fitness.
I've been a Gold's member for a few years now, and haven't stepped into a new gym since college. This gym is a lot smaller, but all the equipment is state-of-the-art and brand new Cybex VR3 machines and boy are they nice. You don't really appreciate nice gym equipment until you're on brand new machines and the difference is night and day. I mainly use plate loaded machines instead of cables because it reduces the impact of momentum on your movement, and Cybex has some really, really nice plate loaded machines.
The main reason I'm writing this entry is because I just got done doing what I've always dreamed of doing, and that's working out late at night. Did I mention that Snap Fitness is a 24-hour facility? I just got done with a killer chest and lower body workout at 1:30am. Suck on that Gold's!
I've been using eBay now for about 9 years (wow... that sounds too long) and in that time I've bought and sold many things. In the early years I bought my first set of golf clubs through eBay, bought and sold Magic The Gathering cards, bought and sold computers, and a lot of other random stuff. I'm not close to a Power Seller as I was mainly a purchaser in my transactions, but I've got a pretty good feel for how eBay works and things you need to do to protect yourself.
Having said all that, I made my first bad decision with eBay in December and have just now found out about it.
For Christmas I was looking around for a particular North Face jacket for The Wife, and no local stores carried her particular style/size/color combination, mainly because it's so popular that it sells out immediately. My only hope to find it was to turn to the Internet. I've bought so many things from websites over the years that I have no real trepidation about identity theft or fraud, mainly because I live and work on the web every day that I feel confident I can make good decisions.
After looking on some websites that all had the jacket at its exact retail cost, I decided to check out eBay to see if I could find a deal. The problem with buying clothing on eBay (hot brands at least) is that just because someone says NWT, New With Tags, doesn't mean that it actually is. Hell somebody could have tried jeans on completely naked and wore them for a day with the tags on before turning around and selling them on eBay as a "brand new" item. You never know what you're going to get unless you do your homework.
North Face jackets on eBay were going like hotcakes in the month of December, mainly because North Face jackets are insanely overpriced and everyone was looking to get a deal like I was. I bid, and lost, 4 separate auctions for the particular jacket I was looking for before finding an auction that was more favorable. The seller had a 350+ rating, nearly all positives (no negatives in the last 6 months), and he or she was listing the jacket as a brand new, authentic, North Face jacket of the particular style I was gunning for. After a furious bidding war, I ended up nabbing the jacket for about $40 less than retail after shipping costs were applied.
When the package came, it was shipped from China. This freaked me out a little bit initially, but once I opened it and found a pristine North Face jacket inside with all necessary tags, my mind was put at ease.
Unfortunately, only a few weeks after giving it as a gift for Christmas, some seams are pulling apart. Once The Wife saw what was going on, she showed me, and we decided to compare the jacket against my older North Face jacket from a few years ago. The logos were different. Her new jacket's embroidered logo looked sloppy and misaligned compared to my jacket's logo.
It was a fake.
I've been in contact with the seller and he or she has agreed to refund my money 100% once I give him the tracking number for the returned jacket. I actually believe he's going to do this, mainly because I paid over $100 for the jacket and he probably paid some factory in China 1/100th of that. He could set 100 fake Chinese jackets on fire and make it up with one eBay sale.
So now I'm going to mail the jacket back to him, and wait to see what happens. Best case scenario is that I get my money Paypal'd back to me and I apply it to a real North Face jacket. Worst case scenario is that I'm out the money AND the jacket, and I fight with eBay to get his account terminated for fraud. The seller has a lot of time and effort invested in his eBay feedback rating, so I have a hunch I'll be seeing a refund, but who really knows.
I guess the moral of the story is that even when you're 100% sure you're making a good decision, you really can't be sure after all. Oh, and if something is too good to be true, it usually is.
A bit ago I heard my neighbor outside raking leaves in his yard and I couldn't believe it... on Christmas? There's nothing better to do?
I remember when I was younger being totally bored the rest of Christmas day because no stores were open and I couldn't do much besides just sitting around with my friends. Now that I'm older there's not much to do (since we live so far away from our families) so we'll be cooking a turkey most of the afternoon to use the time. I could play some video games, but for me that's not really an all-day activity like it is for some people. Our gym is closed so I can't workout, the malls are probably closed so we can't walk around, and the turkey will be keeping us preoccupied most of the day so going to the movies is probably out too.
It's times like these that I should just sit down and read a book.
I'm starting in on one of my New Year's Resolutions early this year, and that's to pay more attention to my personal brand on the web, mainly as it relates to old sites I no longer update. I haven't updated this blog since July 2006 and now it's about to be January 2008! Better late than never!
It was very nice of TypePad to simply keep the account in suspended/deactivated status instead of deleting all the content. I hopped back in (username: "mike" since I was one of the first people to have a TypePad account!) and spent about 20 minutes deleting comment spam by the dozen. Then, since my old design was tied into CSS files and images that were residing on a server I no longer maintained, I downgraded my account and threw up a generic design.... at least for the moment. My new personal site (not a blog, but it will aggregate content I write from other sites) will be launching in a few weeks, so after that's done perhaps I'll put up a custom design here. Either way, I'm going to try to get back to posting but only about personal things, nothing about technology. It'll be hard for me but I used to do it for so long that I'm sure it'll be like riding a bicycle :)
So to people hitting this from your RSS reader, stop by and say hi! It's been so long that I don't think anyone is still subscribed, but hey, you never know.
My new Blackberry is slowly changing my life. We bought a house and move in a few weeks! Some idiot couldn't park and scratched the hell out of my new G35 :( My boy Adam came down to visit and now he wants to live here as well. My puppy is 42lbs now and growing still!
That is all ;)
Haha, exactly like I said ;)
The bottom right corner of the homepage, with more pictures available here! Sweet!
Update: RIT updated that spot and Eleni is replaced with some random chick. Her pic can still be found here.
I don't know how Paul does it, and neither does Colin. For those of you who don't know, Paul is (my boss?) the genius behind 9rules. Can't wait to hang out with him again in about a month down in Austin!
9ruler extraordinaire Koray has tagged me, thus insisting I perpetuate this meme of personal list-making. Because I'm a sucker for when anybody links to me, I must continue the trend :)
McDonald's burger flipper, Taco Bell shell stuffer, driving range attendant, Creative Director.
Matrix (any of them), Bad Boys (I and II), Super Troopers, Office Space.
Utica, NY; Batavia, IL; Fairfax, VA; Kearny, NJ.
Law & Order (the original and SVU, not CI), Family Guy, Daily Show, CNBC Power Lunch.
Disney World, Busch Gardens in VA, Niagara Falls, Las Vegas.
Technorati, Digg, Bloglines, and 9rules.
Pad Thai, General Tso chicken, Pad Ka Prow (Thai basil chicken), crab cakes.
North Carolina, Las Vegas, Tampa, on the couch watching Family Guy.
Boo ya!
I just learned that I won Best Designer of the Year and 9rules won Best Site of the Year over at Marie Cox's Artypapers.com! I've won other awards in the past, but being marked as the best designer from all of 2005 really takes the cake, I'm extremely touched and honored.
2005 was a big year for me, and I very much appreciate all the support that my readers and friends have given. This past year I graduated from college, took a full-time job, quit a full-time job, moved with my girlfriend to a new state, and am now doing really well with Business Logs and 9rules.
We've got some amazing things in store for 9rules this coming year, maybe even in the next week or two ;)
Happy holidays everybody.
I have a very large announcement to make:
I'm now blogging, blog consulting, and running a blog network full-time.
I also now live in beautiful Raleigh, North Carolina with my beautiful girlfriend in our beautiful apartment.
Just because I'm pulling a Kottke (sort of) doesn't mean you guys have to support me. The goal is to support myself through these blog-related efforts, so we'll see how it goes. I figure that if I can't turn the 50,000 people that visited 9rules the other day into some sort of rent money, then I'm no good at what I do. And I usually think I'm good at what I do :)
This means that there will be more article-length entries (like these two) and some more goodies of which I cannot speak about yet.
This means I can now work harder than ever to make The 9rules Network more useful for readers and writers of great content sites. The feedback so far has been absolutely incredible, and I'd like to thank everyone who checked out the new 9rules site and gave us any feedback. We're trying very hard to listen to our network members and readers, so keep the feedback flowin'.
Hopefully, this will also mean that I'll be blogging more frequently here, but you never know. I try to make it a point to only write about interesting things so I don't bore my audience, so when more posts start showing up on this blog that only means that more interesting things have been happening to me. We'll see what happens :)
I would never have been in this position had it not been for my readers. Thanks for everything, y'all.
Thomas "Mike" Rundle has been the city commissioner of Lawrence, Kansas for a few years now, and I first found out about him when I was searching for domain names since he's snatched all the good ones related to my name. If you Google "Mike Rundle" I come up first in the results, however he's always held steady at number 2. I've actually conversed with him a few years back so I know he's a good guy.
For the past year, Mike has been the mayor of Lawrence as well, and while stepping down from the post a few weeks ago he announced that unbeknownst to the voters, Mike had been the city's first gay mayor and that he was proud to come out to his fellow Lawrencians. He didn't want to expose his sexuality earlier for fear that it would blind certain townsfolk and not let him do the great job he wanted to do as the city's leader.
I want to say congratulations to my Kansian alter ego for it's tough to expose something like that to the public, and I wish him well in his political career from here on out. Great job, Mike.
I moved to New Jersey this past Monday and have been unpacking and putting together IKEA goodies all week. This is my first time living alone, and nobody ever really prepares you for the lack of sound in your apartment when you're the only one there. I've found that there are periods of time where I don't say anything for hours and hours, which is completely abnormal for me since I've lived with/near people all my life. If I don't have music playing in the background all the time it gets a little too eery for my liking.
My 1-bedroom apartment sits on the first floor of a 5-floor apartment building in Kearny, NJ. Kearny is about 5 miles north of Newark (also known as: "The Scariest Place You've Never Been") and 10 miles west of the Empire State Building in Manhattan. So far I've gotten lost really badly just once, and have made a few wrong turns but managed to find my way fairly quickly. I've gotten a parking ticket, and have been informed by an elderly guy in my building that my apartment is haunted because his girlfriend died here a few years ago; such information, whether I believe it or not, messes with my mind late at night and makes me even more uncomfortable here.
On the upside, my apartment is really nice (hardwood floors, massive living room) and I finally bought a dart board which probably keeps my neighbors up the whole night. I'm currently pilfering a neighbor's Wifi network they foolishly (but thankfully!) left wide open, so as of right now I don't have a need for broadband yet. Friday night I'll be driving back home to see the 'rents, then I'll continue on to RIT to stay with Eleni till Sunday. Nothing says "I ain't afraid of no ghosts" quite like leaving for a few days :)
I'm sure you all are wondering why I moved to the armpit of America, and it's because of my new job. I'll be doing the usual there — user experience and interface design, information architecture — and after work I'll still be fulfilling my Business Logs and 9rules duties. My goal is to be as busy as possible during the week so I don't notice that I'm lonely, and then make enough money to see my girlfriend as much as possible. Currently the plans are working out just as I had hoped.
And a big whatup goes out to the 30+ Bloglines subscribers that made a part of their daily dish just in the past few weeks. Thanks!
As of this past Monday afternoon, I am now a college graduate.
As of right now, I'm enjoying beautiful weather in North Carolina.
As of next Tuesday, I'll be in Las Vegas for four days.
And as of the following Tuesday, I'll be heading to Florida and Texas for some web geek partying.
:)
I found a video online a few weeks back that a bunch of my friends linked me to, and I'm going to link you guys to it as well: Weatherman has Tourettes Outbreak (Warning: foul language at the end ...... that's what makes it so funny!)
So I watched this video (some of my readers have probably already seen it) and I almost died laughing not because of what happens, but because I know this guy! His name is Matt DiNardo, and he's been a meteorologist in the Utica area. In fact, I've played golf with him before!
Just for the record .... I beat him.
What coming back from the casino at 4:30am looks like. Nope, I don't know why my hand is there either, oh well.
Last night I got a straight flush (7-8-9 of clubs) while playing three-card poker at Turning Stone Casino. The payout was 40:1, so you can imagine the black chips flowing forth into my hand while my gaping jaw hit the table and my eyes got as large as golf balls. Right after I won that absurd amount of money (which was desperately needed by the way, I'm a pauper in real life) I ran over to the 3-6 Hold 'Em table where my two friends were playing and I couldn't spit the words out of my mouth fast enough. I ran directly to the cage, cashed my dough, and laughed a little bit as the big-faced bills spilled into my awaiting hands.
I walked briskly out to the lobby and pulled my cellphone out in dramatic twisty/showy flair in order to call my girl and tell her the good news. As I got it out, I saw a girl with a drink cart and I decided that I wanted to grab a Coke before I made the call. She got the soda out, and as I pulled the wad of green out of my pocket in order to tip her, all my money flew dramatically out of my hand and landed on the floor and on her drink cart. We both immediately bent over to pick up my bills, and when I bent over I forgot that I had a soda in my hand so I promptly spilled that all over my cellphone which was in my other hand. I didn't pay attention to it at the time for I was trying to get my money, but after the money was accounted for I noticed that my screen no longer worked and the phone was vibrating constantly. About two hours later my phone miraculously decided to turn on, so I called Eleni and then decided that I'd go to Verizon today in order for them to check it out.
While waiting at the Verizon store (aka, the last ring of hell) this kid started talking to me about this LG phone I was looking at. Turns out he's an IT person at LeMoyne college near Syracuse, and we got to chatting about multi-processor motherboard design, the benefits of 64-bit applications, Raid-0 SATA hard drive configurations, and other fun stuff. Then he decided to tell me his life story.
In highschool, as a Sophomore, he decided to hack into his high school's network in order to snoop and see what he could find. Turns out he hit the motherload, and found a directory simply named "Tests" which had all midterms and finals for every class in the highschool. He and his friends stored every piece of data found in the folder locally, and then sold the questions and answers to the tests to excited students at $100 a pop which netted him slightly over $8k in profit.
From the profits acquired by his wrongdoings, he and his friends decided to totally geek-out and build a rocket-propelled lake kayak using jet fuel stolen from a Lockheed Martin secure facility in Syracuse, NY. The only reason they did that, is because at the time, the guy I'll call Matt M. happened to have a cozy little internship at Lockheed doing Department of Defense goodies. So he used his security clearance to gain access to the jet hanger, then sneakily made it past some security guards late at night and stole 100+ octane jet fuel for their satanic creation.
That weekend they went up to White Lake and attached the kayak to the rocket engine (!!!!) they made out of all industrial-quality parts. Unfortunately, they cheaped-out on the hoses attaching the fuel tank to the engine, and the rocket blew up and burnt down a train car that was behind the testing grounds. As the train car kept burning, they booked it out of there in Matt's car. Unfortunately, as they were driving away, State Police cruisers rolled up on them after noticing the blaze and brought them to jail.
After Matt's father posted bail, the guys found out that one of the students who bought the final exam answers decided to rat them out, and now they were being brought in on federal hacking charges via co-operation between the State Police and FBI investigators. Matt was only 16 years old, but was facing life in prison because of the Three Strikes law and the three felony charges that lay in front of him — hacking, arson, trespassing and theft of government property.
Luckily, Matt's father is a bigtime physician in the Utica area and was able to pull some high-powered attorneys for his young son facing life in prison. The legal team managed to combine all three felony charges into one criminal mischief misdemeanor, and Matt got away with 200 hours of community service (which he only did 10, and forged the rest.)
Even if the story is totally false, damn do you meet some interesting people all because of spilt soda :)
I'm posting this from my bestfriend Dan's house after he just got done unwrapping his new silver iPod Mini. He's jumping around the house so excitedly, and I'm semi-proud of myself that I could keep the surprise to myself for such a long time without letting the cat out of the bag. This post doesn't have much content in it, but I wanted to let my readers know what's been going on in my life sans-blogging.
My portfolio site, phark.net, will be finally going live sometime this vacation. I've been working on it off and on for awhile now, and I'm excited to be showing the world soon. Let's hope I find the time to push it live over the next few days :)
Next Wednesday through the New Year I'll be down with my girlfriend in NYC, so there won't be much internet access to be had. Then January 2nd I go back to RIT and finish up the last 7 weeks of my college career, and after that I'll be heading out to the real world in some fashion.
Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah everybody! See ya next year!
I remember in the movie Office Space, Peter and his buddy talking about what they would do if they "didn't have to work" — where the answer to that question is your true calling in life. Well if I "didn't have to work", I'd most definitely want to be in one of these positions, so the following are my dream jobs:
Lead Human Factors Researcher at IDEO. IDEO is an internationally known design firm that specializes in moving from research, to prototype, to product very successfully. They make stuff you can pick up with your hands, interact with, and put on a shelf. I want to lead a team of 3-4 people whose sole purpose is to speak with people in the target audience and get their feedback about the product we're designing or redesigning. I want to sit down with a potential user, buy them coffee, and speak openly and intelligently about their feelings regarding this product. What are they trying to accomplish? What emotions or fears stand in the way of accomplishing that goal? What other products have they used, and what was their experience? Then I would take that information, generate reports and presentations, and others working on the project would take my advice and weave it directly into the product's design.
User Experience Designer at BMW Group DesignworksUSA. DesignworksUSA is BMW AG's North American design arm. DW has worked on the Z4, the X5, and the new Rolls Royce Phantom (which I happen to see driving around Bethesda, MD last weekend!) and is continually working and competing with the design headquarters in Munich for the latest BMW designs. I want to be in a position where I can design the interior space of an automobile based on usability testing, research, and interface design best practices. I'd love to measure where the average hand comes down on the door arm rest for the average driver, and stick the power window buttons perfectly right there. Or to make a center console arm rest move with the chair so that if the seat is lowered, so does the rest. Or to make an in-car entertainment/computer system that isn't as awful as the iDrive. When a consumer buys a new car, I'd like to think that many hours of ergonomic research went into the design of the inside of the car as well as the outside.
So what are your dream jobs?
Tomorrow I'm driving down to North Carolina, can't wait for the nice weather!
The reason you ask? Usually my travels are motivated by a girl or money, and I can tell you this trip is definitely not about the money ;)
Expect pictures when I come home. See ya then!
And bam! Here are the pics. Wow, what an amazing weekend.
My super-updated résumé! Better than ever! (PDF, 65KB)
I'm graduating from RIT at the end of February, and by the end of March I'd like to be gainfully employed full-time somewhere, preferably on the east coast, and most preferably somewhere north of Washington, D.C. But if you can make a good case, I'd be willing to move anywhere in the United States.
For what type of position you ask? I would love to be a user interface designer, a human factors researcher, an information architect, a usabilityer (Matto's term), or any combination of the four. Have you any openings in your organization? I'm pretty good at what I do.
I've done work for small companies (Dunn Solutions Group), Fortune 500 corporations (Xerox), and even the U.S. Government (Northrop Grumman) so even though I'm young I have a fair amount of experience.
I am one of three co-founders of Business Logs, a communication and design firm that specializes in using weblogs for business. I designed the company website, as well as The Car Blog, a weblog/magazine for auto enthusiasts.
If you would like to get in touch with me, my email address is mike{at}businesslogs.com.
You can check out an older version of my portfolio in PDF, or I can send you an updated version via email.
Thanks!
Check out Gilbert Lee's Holiday Gift Guide! He asked a bunch of famous designers (and me; I'm not famous but love the association!) about what they would recommend as good gifts this Chrismahanukwaanzakah season, and there's a really wide assortment of cool stuff.
I just spent the last three hours of my time setting up my flickr photo album and personal profile. Wow, it's cool — thanks for the tip Alex.
Went to go see Bill Clinton at Hamilton College, and it was amazing. I went up and shook his hand afterwards (but forgot to ask if he was going to take the Secretary General position at the U.N. ..... darn!)
While driving to the Thruway from my friend Amy's house I saw the aurora borealis ("Northern Lights") for only the second time in my life.
Only 5 miles from my exit on the New York State Thruway I hit a deer head-on at around 75-80mph. It exploded in flash of bones and entrails. Read more about it at The Car Blog.
Sorry I'm not writing more, but I'm wicked tired.
I've been neglecting the "college life" portion of my blog recently, so it's time to jump off the notoriety-generating posts and stub out some fun stuff.
I had been waiting to check out Oasis, a semi-famous Lebanese restaurant in downtown Rochester for awhile, so the other night my friend Mariah and I hit it up. I'm used to Greek food, so when I ordered Tzatziki and Pita the waitress looked at me and whispered, "We're Lebanese ... not Greek. We don't have that," so I felt a bit dumb. Rye and I both had the Chicken Parmigiana, which was more like Marsala because of the wine-based sauce, but it was still great. I had never had Falafel before, so I was forced to try it and it was alright I suppose — nothing to write home to mom about. After that she and I drove over to everybody's favorite coffee spot in Rochester, Spot Coffee.
Rye just bought a new 17" Powerbook, so I had to help get it "configured" (Rye: "Mike, I bought this extra AirPort card cause the Apple person told me I need it, can you install it for me?" Me: "Umm, you already have one installed"). Spot has free wi-fi access which I would have been using as well except I recently sold my two laptops so I had to work analog style for a few hours. Megan, one of our best friends, met us there with her laptop, so then all three of us were iPod-grooving and trying to get work done. Instead of getting real homework accomplished, Rye asked me if I could set her up with a weblog so I had her go to Blogger and start one. Check it out, she's really excited about it :) BTW: when she says I was "drawing letters" I actually was developing some custom type work for a design coming down the pipe. Oooooh, I love teasers!
Right now I'm listening to the Babylon Rewound album from Thievery Corporation (bought at iTunes Music Store, of course) and it's some really amazing semi-slow Latin trance. I have their other albums, and recently stumbled across this one and had to buy it — I think I'm addicted.
So what's new with you guys?
I've always thought that you can tell absolutely everything about a person from the music they listen to. Music is a large part of my life, so here's what I've been listening to recently with iTunes links that go straight to the music if you wanna hear a little sample. Psychoanalytical feedback is always appreciated ;)
Dry Your Eyes Mate by The Streets.
My good friend Megan recently turned me on to this one-man, Brit-pop, raw and underground "group" and I really haven't turned back. One guy, talking over pseudo-techno beats with purpose and reality, and he's seriously amazing.
So Com Voce by Thievery Corporation.
I was browsing around the iTunes Music Store the other day and noticed a lot of people interested in Thievery stuff. New-age galactic trance meets upbeat vocals and Latin American percussion.
Everything in its Right Place by Radiohead.
That link doesn't actually go to that song because Apple hasn't gotten permission yet to sell Radiohead music on iTMS, but instead goes to Christopher O'Riley playing that song on piano :) I've gotten back into this band after shelving them for a few years, and I'm glad they're back on my playlist.
The District Sleeps Alone by The Postal Service.
I discovered this group over the summer thanks to a tip from Keith and really love every song on their album. I think it's also fitting to like this song considering I lived in DC this summer, so it holds a little more meaning than it normally would.
Bouncing Around the Room by Phish.
This is my all-time favorite Phish song.
Password by Paul Oakenfold.
This one has no link because the song is from the Swordfish soundtrack.
We Phonograph All Injuries by Local Fields.
Local Fields is the experimental DJ group from Ben Recht, PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab. He works on diagramming complex systems using harmonic blah blah blah blah blah, go download his stuff cause it's free and awesome.
Broken Glass by The Crystal Method.
Crystal Meth really knows how to boost the bass in all their songs, and their album "Legion of Boom" is no exception. Go cop it.
Out of Control by The Chemical Brothers.
This song was released 5 years ago, but it still rocks.
The Luckiest by Ben Folds.
My favorite BF5 song, the live version. Most of my away messages on AIM come from his lyrics on this track, so listen carefully.
And that about wraps it up!
And my stereo and some CDs were stolen.
My stereo was worth a few hundred dollars and the CDs weren't worth much but were mainly mix CDs I had received from friends. The money doesn't bother me — it was the one-hour vacuum job I had to do in order to get every shard of glass out of my seats and floor that pisses me off. I have better things to do with my time than to negotiate money talk with my insurance company and get my door window replaced when I have to drive back to college on Tuesday.
You'd think that in a casino parking lot there would be better security. Go figure.
Hey everyone.
My good friend and business partner Paul Scrivens lives in Tampa, Florida as Hurricane Charlie is working its way directly at his area spinning at 110mph (as of 11:30am eastern, August 13th). If you're a religious person, please work him somehow into your prayers. If not, then just keep him in your mind as it passes through. Thanks.
Now here's a cause that everyone can get excited about: the Daily Prophet Literacy Quest Book Drive.
My friend Heather runs a tax-exempt non-profit organization that uses the allure of the Harry Potter book series to pique children's interest in reading and writing. She's helped thousands and thousands of kids around the world read more, and now she will be spreading the book-love to our soldiers stationed abroad as well.
It's very simple — if you have books that you no longer need or wish to donate, please send them to the address she lists on her company's homepage, and she will then gather them up and mail them to our troops overseas. Heather has been in constant contact with platoons in Iraq, and they are very excited to be getting some reading material to make the time over there a bit more bearable.
So please, donate what you can, and feel special that someone far from their home will benefit from your giving.
Sorry about the design guys, I caught the redesign bug on Saturday night so I'll be messing with this site until it looks decent again. Which very well may take a long time :)
I really wanted this post to coincide with the very first weblog post I ever wrote for this site, but totally forgot about the actual date :) It was posted last July 7th — when I was working/living in Chicagoland — and it represented the beginning of something truly amazing.
Since that first TypePad post, I have written 169 more (in a year, not too shabby) and am loving the weblog medium more each day. Now that it is 1 year old, I'd like to share with everyone things that have happened in my life this past weblog year, my favorite posts, and what's to come.
Job in Chicago. Got a UI design job at Streams (now part of Dunn Solutions Group) where I worked on UI and UX (user experience) design, and forced CSS down designers' throats. I'm sure they appreciated that :)
Image Replacement. What started it all, the Accessible Image Replacement weblog entry that was mentioned on Zeldman, Stopdesign, SimpleBits, Mezzoblue, and a whole bunch more. That entry hit #5 on Blogdex for a three-day period, landed me a web magazine editorship (on the DL at the moment), and an invitation to the "big boys club" of web designers. Nothing is more rewarding than receiving dozens of email messages a week thanking me for the technique, with commercial website URLs that use the method. The reason you're here right now is because of that, otherwise, you would never have heard of me.
Leaving the Girl. Not too much to say here, I ended a sucky relationship and my entire life turned around for the better.
Cool Roommates. I've blogged about 2 out of the 3 (Adam and Chad), but they were all major factors in how great last year was for me. They play golf, design websites, write PHP, and love cars... what more could I ask for?
USATODAY Interview. I was interviewed for an article in the USATODAY regarding the Eolas lawsuit against Microsoft. I thought it was kinda cool, my parents and entire freakin' extended family thought it was much cooler :)
Virginia + Job + Girl. The only reason that I am working in Virginia this summer is because of my amazing friend Heather. She was interviewed by the same guy from the USATODAY with whom I spoke, and I found her website through his. Her family let me stay with them during the interview process, and I really can't say enough about her. She's the best ;)
The Company. BusinessLogs was launched a little over a month ago, and it's been one big whirlwind since then. Book editing offers, magazine interviews, tons of web publicity, and great clients have made it all very exciting. I can't wait to see how it all turns out. It wouldn't have happened without Matto and Paul, so cheers to them as usual!
The great thing about this website is that I can contact my readers from anywhere in the world. It doesn't matter if I'm in Virginia, at some random Wifi-enabled Panera in Chicago, chillin' with Paul in Tampa, or at school in Rochester. Besides my family and friends, this website is one of only a few true constants in my life, and it will always remain that way. I start my final year as an undergraduate at RIT in the fall, and may end up staying there for my Masters for the following year. Either way, I'm extremely excited about going back and writing about all the events yet to come.
This website will continue to change (sooner rather than later... and by sooner I mean real soon), the content will still be as varied as ever, and I'll still be writing for only one reason — my readers. The reason I write in my weblog so much is because I get about a thousand people a day here to read what's on my plate at the moment. Nothing excites me more than to see an unfamilar name leave a comment somewhere, because they took the time out of their own schedule to tell me their thoughts about my thoughts. That invisible connection is what draws me back day after day, and this website would not be anything without you. My readers are what makes this website thrive, and I owe it all to you.
Thanks for a great year everyone, and I'm sure that these next 12 months will be even more interesting. Graduating from college. Getting a job — or staying for grad school. Love, college life, usability, design, technology, golf and just plain old random shit.
Mazel Tov! *cling*
I went to go see both of these movies, and happened to enjoy Fahrenheit 9/11 more because I am definitely more Liberal than I am Christian. And by "not that Christian", I mean I'm Jewish.
From what I've seen on the news (not Fox News mind you) and from friends, Church leaders have been encouraging everyone to go see The Passion like it is your Heaven-Sent duty as a Christian on Earth. So maybe this means Hollywood, Mel Gibson, and his millions of dollars represent the Second Coming, but to me it's just a movie.
A Christian going to see The Passion is like a Liberal viewing Fahrenheit 9/11. Both movies are preaching to their own choir, and at the end you just want to get up and cheer. Well not at The Passion, 'cause that would be tacky, but you get the idea.
I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 in a small independent theater in Doylestown, PA — a town founded by a well-known homosexual and hundreds of hippies — so already the town is slanted a wee bit to the left. Everyone in the theater was connected, and everyone appeared to be talking and quite excited about it. People were laughing at some of Dubya's comments (that Moore stripped out of context and juxtaposed along with some horrific scenes, but who cares), crying with the bad parts, and then gave a standing ovation at the end. For those few hours we all shared a common bond.
I don't know any Liberals who saw Fahrenheit 9/11 and weren't moved by it. I know lots of Conservatives who were moved by it as well, but their movements typically involved them folding down 4 of their fingers and moving their legs toward the door. In the same sense, I thought The Passion was just one long, mediocre, middle-of-a-story with no discernable beginning nor end. Then I was told afterwards that I should have read The New Testament before I went to go see it because then I wouldn't be asking so many stupid questions throughout the movie. Oops, my bad.
Are there any Christians in the audience who thought The Passion sucked? Any Liberals who thought that Fahrenheit 9/11 was a load of crap? I'm really interested in hearing from y'all minorities.
No this weblog post didn't show up in your inbox marked "Spam" by your favorite email program, I am actually writing this.
My weight has fluctuated my whole life — I'm built like a running-back and sometimes I have the muscle mass to pull that image off. But when I get lazy, I start to look like a retired offensive lineman. Just in the past month or so I've lost 15lbs by doing a few simple things, and I wanted to let you know what they are.
Drink water. I'm not talking about your average "a few 8oz glasses a day", I'm talking about 1-2 gallons a day. Hungry? Drink water. Thirsty? Drink water. On your way from the living room to the kitchen? Drink water. I carry around one of those almost-unbreakable 32oz plastic jugs everywhere I go, and I drink from it so much that it's almost an unconscious thing now. For one week straight, substitute everything you drink for water, and try to drink at least a gallon of water a day. You'll be amazed at how sweet diet drinks taste after drinking gallons of water a day — I can't even stomach drinking regular Coke or Dr. Pepper anymore, and that's a good thing. Diet Pepsi with lemon is my new nirvana, and guess what? I don't waste precious calories anymore by drinking them.
Don't snack on crackers or pretzels. Pretzels look harmless, but they're bad news bears. Dropping your worthless carb count is a good way to lose some weight, and to do that you need to stop eating superfluous carbohydrates. Pretzels and crackers? Bad. Whole-grain bread and rice? Much less bad.
Substitute strawberries for the usual crap. What have you eaten in the past 24 hours that maybe wasn't so healthy? A candybar last night, a Pop-Tart this morning, maybe you're about to finish off a Krispy Kreme box right now? Instead of feeling guilty about eating garbage, throw it away and go buy some strawberries. If you're always needing that sweet-fix, eat strawberries with every meal — whatever it takes to get you away from downing empty sugar calories. Heck, I'm eating a strawberry as I write this.
Eat less. You've heard this a million times, but the best way to lose weight is to just take in less calories. Substitute a meal everyday for some carrots or a nice big jug of water. If you're used to eating massive amounts of food each time, cut it back, and after awhile your stomach will get used to it. I eat General Tso chicken and white rice every weekday at 11:30am, and that fills me up until way after I get out of work. When I get home I snack on carrots and drink more water, and I'm never, ever hungry.
I'm not a licensed health professional, but the above tips worked for me, so I thought I'd share. And contrary to popular belief, Jared didn't lose all that weight by simply eating Subway sandwiches — what you don't know is that Subway was 50 miles away and he jogged both ways. So take it from Jared and I folks, you should exercise as well.
After the Summer of 2002 ended, I haven't had more than a few days at my real home in Upstate NY. Whenever I had a vacation break from school in my Sophomore year, I spent it in Chicagoland. Home for a few days around Christmas, one day at Thanksgiving, and a few days during Spring Break — but other than that I was gone. Either in Rochester, Western Pennsylvania, Connecticutt or Illinois, I travel a lot.
This summer is no different because now I live in Fairfax VA and work near DC. Another summer void of "vacation" because I have to fulfill my college's requirements of having 9 months of real work experience prior to graduation. This summer is my last 3-month block of Co-Op, so after this I'm done. Well, until I go into the "real world" :)
Last summer I watched Kane County fireworks somewhere near Batavia IL, but the real story was what happened the summer before last.
I took an Amtrak train to Chicago from Utica NY, and it was a few hours late getting to Utica from Boston. At every single stop along the way, the train was a few more hours late. Also, it didn't help that we only went around 40mph the times we were actually moving, so when I arrived in Chicago, the trainride clocked in at a cool 24 hours. Yup, a car ride would only take 9.5, but the train took a full day.
People were so upset because of the train delays that there was actually a mutiny. Passengers overthrew attendents in the food bar, they gave away all free food and drinks, and no Amtrak person on the train had any control over the situation. People were screaming, yelling, getting into fights, and drinking heavily. I just sat in my seat, looking at my cellphone that ran out of battery power 6+ hours ago, and waited for some sign that we were getting close.
Even though it's 80F and sunny outside every single day down here in Virginia, sometimes it's just nice to take a break. Last weekend I went to Philadelphia and New Jersey, this weekend I'm going to drive back up to Utica NY and hang out with all my friends up there. Everyone I know laments the fact that I'm always in a different part of the country when summer rolls around, because that's generally when college kids get to hang out. Last summer I only got back to Upstate NY once, so I'm making a point to travel up there more often this summer.
I want to wish everyone a safe and fun Independence Day (if you live in the States, if not, then enjoy a nice July weekend!) and please make sure to stay on the lookout for anything that looks suspicious. I don't know if the terror alert was boosted, but it is a major holiday, so please do not let your guard down. Take care everyone, and I'll see you next week.
Inasmuch as girls love their shoes, I love watches. I spent a good percentage of my Bar Mitzvah bounty on my first real watch — a nice stainless steel chronograph shipped from Switzerland. I had that watch for 5 years until it was stolen sometime around my freshman year of college.
After that, I bought a watch when I was still with that chick from Chicago. I bought it in Illinois, and funny enough, I lost it while on a trip to go see her. What happened was that I stopped off at a gas station rest room somewhere in the middle of Ohio. I took it off and put it on the sink while I washed my hands, and promptly forgot about it. So I made it out of the parking lot, back onto I-90 for about a 1/2 mile, and made a u-turn to go back and get it. When I got there, it was gone, and no one could tell me if anyone had used the bathroom in the last 5 minutes after I left. I always thought that watch story was symbolic of that relationship, but maybe that's just me :)
I went to Nordstrom's the other day with Heather just to poke around. I ended up in front of the watch display (what a surprise) and was trying some of them on. Now I'm not a quick watch-shopper — it usually takes me months of searching in order to pick one that is somewhat cool. Cause, hey, I'm going to be wearing that thing until I lose it!
I tried on a steel bracelet watch from Kenneth Cole, and before I looked at the price tag I told Heather that I wouldn't buy it if it was over $75. So I turn the tag over and it says $95. Okay, this is not my watch. Moving on.
I walk around the other side of the island and spot the watch that is shown to the right, a leather strap with a really huge face. I'm not really into leather strap watches, but I figured I'd try it on anyway. It was amazing — chronograph/date — I just had to have it! I flipped the pricetag over to see it was double what I wanted to spend....
....so I bought it immediately!
My good buddy Adam is now on co-op at McNeil pharma in Philadelphia, PA. This past weekend, my friend Dan and I drove there to hang out, hit the beach in South Jersey, etc.
I took a whole bunch of pictures, check them out!
While visiting one of my favorite weblogs, the gorgeous Gina's scribbling.net, I stumbled across an entry on her favorite software apps. Through one of the comments, I found a web application called "Brainworks" which analyzes how your brain processes information. Take a quiz, find out if you are left/right brained, and then see if you are better off with auditory/visual information. Sounded cool, so took this quiz.
Before I took it, I already knew I was very much centered in processing. I'm equally at home with art as I am logic, so I was expecting something along those lines. Plus I knew I was a visual learner... I mean I draw arrows over class notes like you wouldn't believe. What I found was actually remarkably true!
The full text of the summary:
Mike, you possess an interesting balance of hemispheric and sensory characteristics, with a slight right-brain dominance and a slight preference for visual processing.
Since neither of these is completely centered, you lack the indecision and second-guessing associated with other patterns. You have a distinct preference for creativity and intuition with seemingly sufficient verbal skills to be able to translate in any meaningful way to yourself and others.
You tend to see things in "wholes" without surrendering the ability to attend to details. You can give them sufficient notice to be able to utitlize and incorporate them as part of an overall pattern.
In the same way, while you are active and process information simultaneously, you demonstrate a capacity for sequencing as well as reflection which allows for some "inner dialogue."
All in all, you are likely to be quite content with yourself and your style although at times it will not necessarily be appreciated by others. You have sufficient confidence to not second-guess yourself, but rather to use your critical faculties in a way that enhances, rather than limits, your creativity.
You can learn in either mode although far more efficiently within the visual mode. It is likely that in listening to conversations or lecture materials you simultaneously translate into pictures which enhance and elaborate on the meaning.
It is most likely that you will gravitate towards those endeavors which are predominantly visual but include some logic or structuring. You may either work particularly hard at cultivating your auditory skills or risk "missing out" on being able to efficiently process what you learn. Your own intuitive skills will at times interfere with your capacity to listen to others, which is something else you may need to take into account.
My heart is pounding as I write this. I have butterflies fluttering in my stomach worse than I ever have had before. My fingers are shaking as they strike the keys on the keyboard because I can't contain my excitement anymore. And guess what y'all? I don't have to contain anything anymore, because...
BusinessLogs (businesslogs.com) is officially live, public, accessible, and rockin'!
We will be writing a detailed case study of the design process at a later date, but for now, I want to thank each and every single person who linked to us and got the word out. You are the reason we will be successful, and Los Tres Amigos wish to thank you very much.
Comments are off on this entry so we can keep all conversation regarding the company contained on Paul's weblog. I think it'll be easiest that way. Please comment over there, Matthew, Paul and myself will be watching the developments like a hawk for the next few days :)
After almost 8 hours of travel time, I finally made it to my new home for the summer — a townhouse in Fairfax, VA.
Last time I drove down here it only took me 6.5 hours (from Rochester) and that was with little traffic and gratuitous amounts of speed. Now that my parents were following me and we were driving on Memorial Day weekend, needless to say it took a bit longer :)
Right now I'm sitting on my deck, with my Wifi-enabled laptop in front of me, and not a care in the world. 1 o'clock in the morning and 70 degrees, what's better than that?
I brought my dad's 5MP Sony Cybershot down for the summer, so expect more pictures on this blog than ever before. I took a few for a soon-to-be-written post, but tonight I want to show you what my bedroom currently looks like:
Note the blow-up air mattress .000001% inflated, the Powerbook resting on the camping chair, the G5 crying in the corner from lack of network access, "A New Kind of Science" by Stephen Wolfram (thick black book next to red bag) just dying to be read, "Time Travel in Einstein's Universe" peeking out of the duffel bag, and a box full o' clothes with no home.
This summer's off to a great start already!
And so ends another productive year here at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
This year was filled with ups, and even higher ups. No real downs to speak of. The beginning of the year kinda sucked, but then everything started falling into place around Thanksgiving time and never looked back. I met a lot of cool people, worked (and am working on) a ton of amazing projects, and have lots of stuff planned for the upcoming months. I'll be home for a week, then I'm off to Fairfax, Virginia to work as a User Interface designer at Northrop Grumman for the summer. Don't worry, I'll be back here in the fall.
My roommates Joe and Chad are graduating from RIT tomorrow, and I want to wish them the best of luck. They both happen to be continuing on to grad school here, so they won't be going very far :) They're both actually staying in my apartment too, so hell, it's like they're not even graduating!
I'm not really big on graduation ceremonies, even though I know a ton of people are. I don't really see graduating from RIT (or highschool for that matter) such a large accomplishment for me. Obviously I'm not knocking on any recent graduates, not at all, it's just that personally I don't care whether I walk across the stage or not. I'm just not feeling it.
If graduation doesn't bring me a sense of accomplishment, then what does? I'll tell you: landing a $50k project based on a presentation I worked on for months, designing a website that gets international fame from the web community (my peers), discovering a new CSS technique that helps out hundreds of web designers around the globe, or an interviewer finally realizing that I can talk the talk and walk it too.
That is what I'm working for. Graduating from college is just a steppingstone for me to bigger and better things, and I treat it as such. I do just enough work here to keep my grades up where I want them to be, and devote the rest of my time to more worthy efforts. What can I say, it's just my philosophy on life.
We stole this glass from Don Pablo's, and my roommates thought it would be cool if I could suspend it in mid-air without using my hands. So this is what I came up with :)
And I want to point out that both zeldman and behaviordesign launched their new websites — both are incredible, check them out.
I had a lot of time on my hands while driving back from my main man MO's place, so instead of contemplating the universe and solving whirrled peas, I was simply thinking about how easy it is for people to get in touch with me.
So basically, I'm on a generic instant messenger client every moment of every day. When I'm not currently at my computer, you can tell how long I've been away from it (say, 15 minutes). Then if you get really inquisitive, you can check my away message and find out exactly where I am, and usually when I'll be back.
If knowing "when I'll be back" isn't enough, you can call my cellphone. If I don't pickup or leave it in my car (like usual, stupid me) then you can leave a voicemail which I'll receive the instant I see my cellphone once again. Still not good enough?
You can send me an email. If I forgot to fire-up my messaging client, and if my cellphone is on silent, most likely I'm in front of a computer somewhere (either my place, or in the labs, or whatever), and I'll be checking my email feverishly just in case something important lands there. And if none of those work, here's what you do.
Leave a comment on my weblog. Not only will it show up at the top of the homepage indicating you recently commented, but I check my weblog for recent comments wherever I am. Make it say something completely off-topic like "MIKE YOU IDIOT... you were supposed to meet me at Chili's a half-hour ago, where are you?" so I pick up on it right away and call your cellphone.
And if none of those work, and you're not really in a rush to contact me, feel free to send me a postcard. I may forget to pickup my mail for a few days, but I'm sure sometime in the next week I'll get it and promptly forget to call you for a few days. But that's just me.
I wanted to write this post a bit earlier in the week, but only now have I found time to actually do it. This afternoon I have a group psychology presentation worth a nice chunk of my grade, and instead of using Powerpoint my group decided to attack it through the web browser (hmm... I wonder who came up with the idea of not using a Microsoft product? lol). So anyway, our professor uses a Mac, so this website I put together will be displayed on Safari only. Check it out:
I'll be working on it up until we present at 4pm, so if you see any changes to the site before then I promise they're intentional. So back to the topic at hand, Chicago.
Tomorrow after my presentation is over — 5:30pm or so — I'll be hopping in the car and driving straight to Chicagoland. If traffic is sparse and cops are nice, I'll get to my friend Mariah's place around 2am central time. She lives downtown and said I could stay with her while on my trip... she's the best!
During the day on Thursday I'm going to stop by the old office and say hi to people, then later on I'll be attending seriouSeries #3. Hopefully I'll get to holla at Jason Fried, and if not, at least I can hobnob with a room full of web celebrities. Friday I'm going to hang out with Matthew and then drive back home that night.
So why is this trip a big deal for me? Well, at least once a month for the past two years I had been driving to Chicagoland to see my ex-gf who lived out there. After doing that dance for awhile, I actually lived and worked in Chicago for all of last summer. While there I grew very fond of the city and thought of it as my "home away from home" — but since we broke up last November I haven't been back.
So here's my big chance. Finally I get to roll up into Chicago and not have to think about the crappy relationship that I was once in. I don't have to deal with the emotional drama she burdened me with for almost two years. I don't have to think about the argument we got in the last time I was there, or the argument waiting for my arrival, or how I don't even want to be in the relationship anymore.
Now, there is only the city. There is only me in my car, driving downtown, doing the things I want to be doing with no pressure whatsoever. It's me driving 9 hours to be somewhere for a day and a half, and then driving 9 hours back to where I started. It's 18 hours alone in my car spent so I can be back where I love.
It's me driving 18 hours so I can be free.
I get my best work done at night. If you didn't notice, the vast majority of the entries in my weblog are written/published around 3am or later. This year I've turned into quite the night owl, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I haven't gone to bed before 3:30am in a few months. The reason I do this is two-fold: 1) my earliest class starts at noon, and 2) there's nothing like working when no one is around to IM you or randomly call your cellphone. I've always loved the solitude of night time — whether it involved starting a 9 hour driving adventure at 10pm, or playing cards at the casino all night for no particular reason.
I'm sitting here around 2:30am, listening to John Mayer while BBEdit, Photoshop, and Safari (my best friends!) are waiting patiently until I need their services. From my apartment window I overlook a very scenic part of campus while snow flakes rush down from the black sky. Snow is accumulating on the tops of cars, and I am sitting comfortably in my room taking it all in. There is no place I would rather be at this very moment.
When the entire world around you is absolutely silent, the connection one feels to one's immediate surroundings is greatly amplified. This connection works invisibly to flush out all the pent-up creativity that builds inside of me during the day, flowing gracefully into the rigid structure of XHTML and CSS that is open on my screen.
Oh, and Happy Passover everybody.
