Blankbaby

Haircut and trim: Before and After

One of these things is not like the others

Lost and found around Apartment 2024

Sometimes living in a big building with lots of other people (many of whom are elderly) is a drag. I know Marisa would like some outdoor space, and I would prefer never having to engage in small talk while in the elevator.

That being said, there are some up sides to our current living situation: your chances of having something very odd happen are much higher.

My evidence is as follows:

The other day I was going to pick up something at a near by retailer. I doffed my baseball cap and made my way to the elevator bank down the hall from our apartment. In between two of the elevator banks is a small table which usually has nothing of interest on it. That day it had this on it:

A couple of days later the coat was gone and, I can only assume, a little person in Philadelphia was much warmer.

Data point two:

Our building has a bulletin board set up by the mail room where residents can post placards and announcements. I often read whatever is posted because I have an odd sense of humor... and people post some weird stuff.

How weird? Here's the most recent odd posting:

It takes a special person to not only post about a miraculous seat cushion, but go the extra mile and include an artist's rendering to help identify said cushion.

If the cushion is yours let me know and I'll pass along the contact number.

GE should still make advertisements like this

via todaysinspiration.blogspot.com

They are better than these silly dancing elephant ads.

Me in three (well, 60) of your words

A little while ago I asked folks to head on over to a wacky Web site and describe me in three words. Furthermore, I promised to post the results and here they are:

• anti-fruit & vegetable, moderate, and sharp
• aloof, witty, and introverted
• funny, interesting, and scottalicious
• clever, savvy, and erudite
• friendly, house-trained, and well-groomed
• zany, tall, and caring
• witty, dapper, and techie
• Gay, Large, and Stupid (I don't think this person is a Scott McNulty fan, but I could be wrong.)
• fluffy, puff, and marshmallows
• witty, smart, and conservative
• funny, smart, and brutal
• Unique, Hawaitastic, and prescient
• literate, mancandy, and blankbaby
• insightful, merry, and kind
• Philly, Food, and Writing
• smart, funny, and logical
• Savvy, Whimsical, and Gentle giant
• clever, friendly, and e-reader-addicted
• kindle, nook, and another kindle (This one is probably my favorite.)
• Knowledgeable, Enigmatic, and Shy

And that makes the top three words: smart, funny, witty. I'm blushing here!

Describe me in three words

I thought this blog was defunct, and I bet you did as well.

Actually, I've just been reading a lot as of late so I have been ignoring my blog readers (I think that the only people who read this blog now are my lovely wife Marisa and my friends Glenn and Julie... prove me wrong Internet!).

Anyway, over on Twitter I came across a Web site called ThreeWords. The idea is you setup an account and people can describe you using three words... so I thought why not ask my blog readers to explain me in three words. Click this link and list the three words that you think describe me best.

After awhile I'll write a blog post about the words that have been used! Won't that be fun?

Another installment of "How much change is in the cup?"

Answer later today. Get your guesses in!

 

Update: And the answer is $41.97:

I know it isn't that fair because who knew I had 120 quarters in there? I didn't!

Mr. Messy mug

When I saw this mug I was transported back to kindergarten. Since I'm rapidly aging I did what anyone would: I bought the mug in a desperate attempt to hang onto a shred of my youth as long as possible.

The last 7 Augusts of my life

I remember a time when people thought I was odd for having a blog (I'm odd for many reason, but blogging isn't one of them). When I started blogging 10 years ago no one knew what a blog was.

Now everyone knows what a blog is, but nobody seems to care about personal blogs. Blog have moved on, become corporate (I should know, I run a corporate blog!), become magazines... have become part of the wallpaper of our lives.

One of the greatest benefits of keeping a personal blog, though, is being able to delve into the archives and recall what you were doing at moments in the past... in your own words.

I thought it would be fun to see what I was doing, and thinking about, in each of the Augusts for which I have a blog archive. For some reason I have archives from August 2000 and then it skips to August 2003 so we'll consider 2001 and 2002 my 'Lost Augusts,' which would make a great title of a book.

August 2000: I saw some nuns, went to the dentist (twice!), and attended an Alumni Relations conference (I still remember the deafening sound of small talk).

August 2003: I'd been living in Philadelphia for about five months, and I was discovering the blogging community here. I was also obsessed with Macromedia (now Adobe) products for some reason.

August 2004: I watched some bad movies, thought about going to Ireland (spoiler alert: I haven't been to Ireland yet, I was excited to get a Pocket PC (hey, this was YEARS before the iPhone, people), and had my boss point out that I had a lot of gray hair (and she thought I was several years older than I actually was at the time).

August 2005: A neologism ('blankbabied') was coined and briefly in Wikipedia before their editors rejected it, was told "You would never be Jesus" which still holds true, looked back at the start of my blogging life (odd that here it is August, and once again I'm looking back at my blogging life), and stated once more my desire to go to Ireland.

August 2006: I went to see a Jonathan Coulton concert (before he got modestly famous), bought some books about libraries, shaved off my beard, and found out I was fat (I was as shocked as you are to here the news).

August 2007: I found that Sour Cream and Onion Quakes are quite tasty, purchased my first iPhone (and posted way too many pictures from it), created a promo video for a Viddler content with Marisa, and called Thad a jackass.

August 2008: I left TUAW, saw Neal Diamond in concert (for the second time), joined up with the merry crew at Macworld/MacUser (and I'll be blogging more over there soon!), and bought a new fridge.

August 2009: I created a blog for the purpose of posting pictures I wanted to Tweet (that blog has been abandoned), read a book, and and received a very cute key chain from Marisa.

Cool posters from Vintagraph

I was born in the wrong era. Well, maybe not since if I had been born in the 30's I wouldn't be able to enjoy all the gadgets (and blogs) that I spend so much of my time obsessing over.

Thankfully, Vintagraph is there to provide me with artwork so I can enjoy both my iPad and WPA produced posters. Isn't the world a wonderful place?

I have my eye on a few of their posters:

• 1939 Worlds Fair on San Francisco Bay: That's just an awesome work of art, don't you think?


• Chicago Worlds Fair: Whatever happen to Worlds Fairs, anyway? Judging by these posters they were awesome!


• Keep Your Teeth Clean: I keep a framed parody of this poster in my office.


• Port of Philadelphia: I've never been to the port of Philadelphia, but it sure looks busy!


• Rural Pennsylvania: I think this poster has the poorest execution of the lot (though it is still far better than anything I could draw) but I like it the most. I just enjoy the idea of a poster advertising rural PA.

Me, at BlogHer '10

Today (and tomorrow) I helped man Comcast's BlogHer booth. I'm not the most outgoing person in the world, but when I'm forced to be (like when I have to man a booth at a convention) I can hold my own.

I have to get way too early tomorrow

I have $42.47 and you don't

Earlier today I asked how much money was in this cup. There were a few guesses, and sadly they were all way, way off. That cup had almost $43 (the 90 quarters helped).

Score one for Scott!

How much change is in this cup?

Answer later today.

Tweet tweet, here's your password

One of the many reasons I love OS X is because it includes a tiny little program called "Keychain Access," which does more than one might assume. It is sort of a central place where OS X stores passwords, credentials, and the like.

I use Keychain Access fairly frequently to come up with random passwords for various things. Today, I needed to create a blog account for someone, so I turned to Keychain Access to create a memorable, but complex, password. See that third password option? Twitter!

When the Twitter obession crosses over into password utilities it is clear to me that all the cool kids are using some new, and little known, service. I wonder what it is.

There's a 5 o'clock in the morning?

I do not approve.

How To, Batman!

How To, Batman! is my latest Internet obsession (well, I watched a few episodes of it so I suppose "obsession" is a bit strong). If you need to figure out how to go green, dress for an interview, or taste some wine, How-To Batman has you covered.

He's even on Twitter!

via Sippey

Ambrose, my trusty old PowerBook G4

This computer has been sitting in my closet for a number of years, neglected and nearly forgotten. A couple months ago I got it into my head that I should totally put it up on Craigslist and get a couple bucks for it (this is a circa 2003 PowerBook G4 with a couple gigs of RAM and a 1 GHz G4 chip... that's right, Mac users, there was a time when Apple didn't use the same chips as almost every other computer maker!).

I got it out of the closet, slapped Snow Leopard on it and then just put it back into the closet.

Today, whilst avoiding working on my new book, I decided that the den really could do with a little tidying (which it invariably can. The den is 'my room' in the apartment, which means that Marisa generally allows me to keep it as cluttered as I like... within reason. Sometimes it is too much for her and she cleans up a bit... there is only one place in the entire apartment that is off limits to Marisa: my desk. It is generally a disaster area, and that's the way I like it. Marisa tried to convince me that it would really be OK if she just straightened up my desk for me from time to time... but I will have none of it! She even went so far as to clean it up thinking I wouldn't notice. Foolish woman). I spent a few hours recycling paper, shredding stuff, folding clothes, and generally acting outside my normal routine.

As I was putting some pants back in the closet I spied the above PowerBook sitting in its box. I thought, "Heck, I can put it up on Craigslist right now for $100 and be done with it." So I grabbed it, cleaned it up a little and took a few pictures of it.

All systems were go, but I had forgotten if I wiped the drive of all my data, so I plugged the PowerBook in and powered it up. Well, I should say I attempted to power it up since the PowerBook wasn't interested in working.

Dead. A dead PowerBook!

Now I can't even sell the damed thing so I'll probably end up recycling it.

Oddly enough, seven years ago this month I was making ready to move to Philadelphia, and I even wrote a blog post using this very PowerBook on a train to Philadelphia where I was going to sign the lease on my first Philly apartment (and I was totally right about moving my stuff up four flights of stairs. It sucked... and I was about 100 pounds heavier than I am now so I wasn't much help. Sean and Elisa moved most of the stuff for me... though I did buy lunch and dinner for them as I recall).

Also found in the PowerBook box was this:

I know what you're thinking, "Didn't Apple sell internal AirPort cards for the PowerBook G4?" They did! Since this was several years ago I couldn't afford to get the PowerBook with the AirPort card pre-installed. In fact, the only reason I got this PowerBook G4 was because Apple, in a rare move, decided that they had so messed up with the industrial design of the Titanium PowerBook (which I bought the moment it was announced at Macworld Expo 2001. You can check out Steve wowing the crowd with features like a 5 hour battery life, a built-in DVD player (OMG!), being 1 inch thick and made of titanium. "Like the spies planes," quoth Steve Jobs.) that they had a trade in program. You sent Apple your old and busted Titanium PowerBook (I named mine Timmy) and they would sell you a new, aluminum, PowerBook for a steal.

I sent in Timmy and anxiously waited to see if Apple would send me a new PowerBook (Timmy may or may not have had a run in with a full glass of water that necessitated me leaving the PowerBook off and upside down for a few days to dry out). Luckily, Timmy was up to snuff and Apple sent me Ambrose.

I was quite exited to get a new computer, and shortly there after I ordered an AirPort card. The card came, I disassembled the computer to install it... and the darn card didn't fit! I figured out that I was putting it in upside down (I'm clever!) and it slide right in. All that was standing between me and wirelessly surfing the Internet was a plugging in a small cable from the PowerBook to the AirPort card. The cable was pretty snug, and it was JUST a little too short to plug in, so I pulled on it a little. Nothing. I pulled a little more. Nothing. Finally I pulled a little more and, success! If by success I mean I ripped the cable right out of the PowerBook.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is they I bought this external WiFi card for my PowerBook.

Anyway, I'll be recycling Ambrose at some point, but he was a good computer (I'm keeping my G4 Cube though!).

Canada, Tom Brokaw style

I've got to admit that I enjoy the taped segments, like this one explaining Canada to Americans, that NBC puts together for the Olympics a little more than the Olympics themselves (but I am rooting for the USA. I mean, I'm not a god damn pinko bastard or anything).

[via The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century who is a real live Canadian! Who knew they had the Internet in Canada?).]

Balloon boy

"Helpful" is not a word that many people would use to describe me. I generally try and stay out of the way when some sort of physical labor is required (I have soft man hands after all).

Marisa, being the nice woman that she is, offered to throw Angie a baby shower. What does this mean to me? It means, of course, that I have "volunteered" to help with some of the logistics. OK, so I didn't volunteer at all... and I wasn't all that helpful but I did have to run a couple of errands that day of the shower.

Errand number one (and the subject of this blog post): go to our local Hallmark store and purchase some balloons. This is the sort of task that I do not excel at. I require, in these situations, very clear instructions: number of balloons, required colors, and so on. Marisa armed me with one of the paper napkins that she bought for the shower and said, "Tell the person at the store that you want balloons that match this napkin."

Marisa didn't pin the napkin to my sleeve, but I could tell she wanted to.

I took myself over to the Hallmark store, waited for the nice lady to have a free moment, and pounced. I pulled the paper napkin out of my pocket and said, "I need 12 balloons that match this napkin."

She looked at me for a moment and replied, "A woman sent you here."

2009 in pictures (and video!)

Last year you got 2008 in pictures, and now you get 2009 in pictures (aren't you lucky!):

January 2009

I went to Macworld (I didn't know it at the time, but it might have been my last Macworld trip! Though who knows what the future will bring):

I took a picture wearing bunny ears that I use for my Twitter picture:

I started my new job at Comcast and took a picture of the view from my office (I'm not in that office any more, so the view has changed):

February

I bought some candy (must have had a slow February!).

March

Took my picture with the World Series trophy.

April

Saw the cherry blossoms in DC:

Got my fancy new business cards:

Gruber admitted he has a man-crush on me (you have to read the Flickr comments to get this one):

May

Drank some Pepsi with real sugar in it:

Went to Lancaster and visited Central Market:

Took this cool picture:

June

Bought my wedding ring (Marisa's took a bit more effort):

Visited a bunch of cool places in Philly:

July

I had a lovely 4th:

Lobsters went on vacation before I did:

August

Marisa bought me a nice keychain:

September

I saw a tiny frog:

Ahh, right, I got married:

October

We went on our honeymoon:

I had no cell service in Vermont (grr!):

I had lots of pancakes and maple syrup:

I had a cow (HAHAHAAHA):

We stayed at a fancy pants resort that Marisa really liked (against her hippy roots):

We visited Albany and saw the Egg:

We slept in an Airstream (wouldn't recommend it):

We were super cute:

I went back to work and created this video:

November

I bought yet another camera and took this neat picture:

I broke my iPhone and had to get a 3GS to replace it:

Barcamp! W00t.

I saw some 3D stuff:

December

I enjoyed the Yulelog in HD:

And got some geeky ornaments:

Wedding/Honeymoon pictures

Marisa and I got married a couple of months ago and I haven't put up any pictures! We took a bunch both at the wedding itself and during our honeymoon. I've collected some of the pics I like best in this post, but if you want to see them all they are on Flickr:

• Wedding Pictures
• Wedding Pictures by Albert Yee
• Airstream and Vanderbilt Mansion
• New York State Capitol tour
• Fort Ticonderoga
• Whiteface Lodge
• Billings Marsh Rockefeller/King Arthur
• Bennington, VT

Here are the ones that I thought I would highlight on the blog:

The Wedding

First, we'll start with the wedding pictures. Most of these were taken by our good friend, and great photographer, Albert Yee (I'll point out which ones weren't!).

This first picture was taken by yours truly. Marisa thought that perhaps she would have enough time to take her own wedding pictures.

While Marisa and I were exchanging vows I thought I saw a random dog walk past. But I knew that no one had brought a dog with them. Turns out the neighbor's dogs stopped by to wish us well (this pic was snapped by David Kirpan).

Ah, the pro pictures begin!

Marisa has a very large family.

I don't. Behind me are my brother and mother. Behind Marisa are her parents and her sister.

Raina played a song before we said our vows.

About to take the plunge.

Different people. Different shoes.

Kissing! In public! Shocking.

My good friend David Kirpan manned my camera during the ceremony and managed to get this picture. Good job, Dave!

Marisa, being Marisa, made all of our wedding cakes herself. Here you see a destroyed flourless chocolate cake (which we made on Fork You once, video and recipe here).

My relatives made the trek out to Philadelphia to attend (ain't they nice!).

My mom, her brother, and her sister.

The Honeymoon

The whole honeymoon plan was founded on visiting Bennington Potters (for Marisa), and so that was our first stop.

Marisa also loves thrift stores, so we had to go here.

All around Bennington they had these painted Moose. This one is the covered bridge moose which features a picture of the bed & breakfast we stayed at painted on its flank (I thought that was pretty cool).

My iPhone (and Blackberry and wireless data card) got no service for most of the trip, which was actually quite nice.

A nice steeple. I just like the way this picture came out.

The first place we stayed at in Vermont was the Inn On Covered Bridge Green, which was just lovely. Norman Rockwell used to own this house... though we didn't actually stay in the house proper. There is a little honeymoon cottage in the back (which used to be called the 'corn crib') that we stayed in. I'm certain that Marisa and I will be back to this place again.

This is what was painted on that moose.

We left Vermont and went to Lake Placid, New York and stayed at the White Face Lodge, which was very nice indeed. They had brownies waiting for us in our room. You can't beat that!

I thought this was a picture of Lake Placid, but I'm pretty sure it is actually Lake Mirror... either way it is pretty.

Since I booked the Honeymoon package we also received some free champagne. It was pretty good.

Of course Marisa bought some jars.

And I demanded we visit some historical sites! This is Fort Ticonderoga.

Us being cute.

A cannon.

The Kings Garden which is right next to the Fort. We actually happened to visit when some sort of farmers' market was going on so we managed to buy some vegetables.

We also hit the Billings Farm & Museum which is neat (and I only heard about it because I was listening in on someone else's conversation at the Vermont Country Store).

This was outside of some tourist trap that we ventured into (and where we bought some rare Cabot cheeses that aren't available in these parts).

The Egg in Albany, NY. Since we were driving through Albany I thought it would be fun to take the Capitol Building tour.

The Library in the New York State Capitol.

A string of lights on our Airstream trailer.

We stayed in an airstream (the one pictured above) at Kate's Lazy Meadow, which is surrounded by beauty. Marisa and I were both glad we only booked one night, however, since the trailer was tiny!

I thought this was a cool picture.

And there we are being cute again!

Moo

I got married!

I don't think I mentioned this on the blog before, but two week ago I got married to Marisa (who knew?).

Marisa thoughtfully posted our vows, if you want to check them out.

Yes, I wore a Hawaiian shirt at the wedding. Marisa has some pictures here and I have some here (thanks for taking most of the pictures with my camera, David!). We'll be posting some more shortly.

I interviewed the Wiggles

The Wiggles. Kids go crazy for them, and until recently I had very little idea who the heck they were. That all changed last week when I sat down to interview them for my day job (yes, I was in the same room with them even though it might not look that way in the video).

They were nice guys, and I enjoyed chatting with them.

When I joined Comcast I wasn't expecting to interview anyone, but it turns out I quite enjoy it (I'll leave it up to you whether or not I'm any good at it!). Here's a link to the YouTube video if you're reading this in a newsreader or something.