Blankbaby

ERMAHGERD, SHAMPOO!!

Amazon is much more excited about my shampoo order than I am.

Techcrunch approves this baby

Marissa Mayer is having a good week. She's the new CEO of Yahoo! and she's having a baby. Plus, Techcrunch seems to approve of her family planning:

The 37-year-old Mayer has been married to entrepreneur and Founders’ Den managing partner Zack Bogue for several years now, so it makes sense for them to add to their family at this point.

Our new loveseat

Marisa and I continue to collect furniture with this loveseat from Pottery Barn as our latest addition (though it won't be delivered for a couple of months).

Marisa wanted a neutral color, but I told her they were all boring so we went with red instead. I win!

How To Launch A Nuclear Missile In The 1960′s - Scouting NY

The How To Launch A Nuclear Missile In The 1960′sblog post ends with this uplifting moment. Imagine it. You've trained all your life, sat for hours doing nothing a missile silo, and finally your job is done. Here's what you do next:

The silo crew, now having done its mission, gets to kick back and wait to die.

Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

Oddly enough, I don't think I would be married to Marisa if it hadn't been for Steve Jobs.

Allow me to explain: the first time Marisa and I ever hung out for more than a few minutes alone with one another was when I helped her diagnosis an iBook with a failing hard drive. I spent hours sitting at the dining room table (which is now our dining room table) running diagnostics and what have you. That is where our friend began, over that piece of silicon and plastic which wouldn't have existed without Steve. Over time (ok, a long time) our friendship deepened into love and eventually we figured out that we should be together.

Thanks for that, Steve.

I don't really have anything profound to say about his death, other than 56 is too young for anyone to die: world changer or not.

This much change!

I went to the bank to change my change into REAL money, and they gave me $50.60 (minus a service change, DAMN YOU TD BANK!).

And how did I end up with 144 quarters?

How much change?

Answer here later today!

I'm no God expert...

But if I learned anything from 13 years of Catholic school (K-12th grade, thank you very much) it is that God is constantly judging you. He knows when you're asleep, and he knows when you're doing something you shouldn't. Heck, he even knows when you're thinking about doing something you shouldn't (and even THAT is a sin).

You would think Harold Camping, the "The world is going to end on May 21st dude," would know as much but it seems he doesn't:

Harold Camping Breaks Silence, Predicts October 21 Rapture, Christian News:

'On May 21, this last weekend, this is where the spiritual aspect of it really comes through. God again brought judgment on the world. We didn’t see any difference but God brought Judgment Day to bear upon the whole world. The whole world is under Judgment Day and it will continue right up until Oct. 21, 2011 and by that time the whole world will be destroyed,' he proclaimed.

At least he sticks to his convictions despite all evidence to the contrary. Isn't that what faith is all about?

416 People like: Income tax

That's actually higher than I would have guessed.

Color's app description: corrected

Here's what Color's app store description says:

Here's how I think it should read:

Oh, grandpa is drunk and passed out again

How to kill a pirate

That's what I thought this blog post was about. Sadly, I was mistaken.

See America

I don't know what it is, perhaps because I am getting older, or because I feel more settled... but I've been on a bit of a home furnishings kick.

I haven't ordered these framed posters yet (because Marisa rightly pointed out that I already have lots of art that needs framing) but I'm blogging it to remember them.

Something about this particular style appeals to me. Given my love of Mission and Arts and Crafts stuff, it is clear I was born about 70 or 80 years too late (though, what did people DO at work without computers and the Internet? Seriously, what did they do? Did they mimeograph funny pictures of cats and send them to one another via inter-office mail?).

Conspicuous Consumption Friday: iPad pre-order edition

Note: I wrote this last Friday, but neglected to hit the 'Send to Weblog' button in MarsEdit. Travel back in time with me, won't you? All the way to March 12, 2010!

To say that I enjoy Apple products might be a slight understatement. I'm a fan.

You probably have heard of the iPad, thanks to Apple's truly remarkable marketing power (so powerful, it is, that it doesn't even APPEAR to be marketing to most people... even those in the press. I recall earlier this year a former Apple PR person wrote a post, which I can't find, describing how Apple sometimes leaks stories to the press itself. The scandal!). Anyway, you might not have known that iPads are now available for pre-order. In fact, they became available to pre-order this morning at 8:30am.

Here's my order confirmation:

Notice the time, 05:35 AM PST. Yep, I was on my computer at exactly 8:30am pre-ordering a silly gadget. My order would have gone through a few minutes earlier but Apple's store was having a little trouble, so I had to reload the page.

Clearly, I need help but at least I don't live on the West Coast so I didn't have to wake up at 5am to order a device I've never even touched. That would just be silly.

I know what you're thinking, "Scott, why didn't you get the iPad with 3G wireless access and more memory?" Because I ALWAYS have my iPhone with me, so my iPad doesn't need to have 3G (plus WiFi is plentiful in the places that I find myself most often) and I don't think I'll putting much music or movies on my iPad. 16 GB is good enough for now (and I'll eventually replace this iPad with the newer, shiner one that Apple is almost certainly already planning to release).

From the high tech to the low tech, My orgy of buying continued! I also nabbed myself one of 200 Bit Monsters Letterpress Prints from Simple Bits.

I did this without consulting Marisa, though when I showed it to her she said, "That's totally you." Which, I suppose, is a good thing. I am fairly certain that she would never have purchased something like that herself, but marriage is all about compromise (and we haven't yet had the discussion as to where we will be displaying this... especially since I'll need to get it framed first and I have about 8 other odds and ends that I need to get framed that I've had for varying lengths of time. The placement discussion might take awhile to get to).

Anyway, it is letterpressed which I think is cool and it features some pixalated creatures (monsters, I suppose) which I also enjoy. You can watch the process that went into make this by checking out this movie (maybe they were making my print during the filming!).

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."

Marisa likes me

She got me that cute little keychain. Awww.

Indiana Scott

My life is an adventure, I tells ya!

More job changes (for people I know)

It looks like something is in the water, or the economy.. depending on how you look at it. Two of my friends (both of whom I met at Wharton) are in job transitions of their own.

Roz (a.k.a Stellargirl) is a victim of the economic meltdown. She was recently laid off from her job and is looking at it as an opportunity rather than a problem. That being said, she would rather not be unemployed if you, or someone you know, is looking for a kick ass tech person to hire for front end work, or generally web geek stuff... she might be the gal for you.

On the other hand, Terry Ryan, who was one of my bosses at Wharton, just willingly handed in his resignation today. Terry has been at Penn forever and a day, and he is responsible for my first job shift at Wharton. I'm sure he'll do wonderful things where ever he ends up!

Change is in the air!

Holy crap, I wrote a book

Scott McNulty watchers (and you know you're one of them) might have been wondering, 'What the heck has Scott been up to?' I haven't been blogging here, I haven't really been posting much to MacUser, I haven't been posting new episodes of Fork You... what have I been doing?

It turns out that I've been writing a book (I'm as shocked as you are). That's right, on December 12 (or there abouts) you'll be able to walk into any of a number of fine bookstores and pickup a copy of 'Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read' by yours truly (I'm told that some Barnes and Noble stores will have a special display with my books. Cool, huh?).

This book is the perfect stocking stuffer for anyone, no matter whether they are interested in WordPress or not (they will surely be interested in my witty and sparkling prose) and if you buy a copy via this link I even get a little kickback from Amazon (double score!).

I'll post more about how I came to write this book in due course, but I just wanted to share the fact that I have written a book that will soon be published and in bookstores everywhere (by a real publisher, no less). Ain't that cool?

Star Trek trailer is online

Marisa and I went to see Quantum of Solace Friday night (opening night) for one reason only: I wanted to see the new trailer for J.J. Abram's forthcoming Star Trek movie called, simply, 'Star Trek.'

The Bond flick was pretty good (I have it on good authority that Daniel Craig is 'dreamy') but the Star Trek trailer was frickin' awesome. Sadly, it made me want to see the Trek movie immediately, and it isn't coming out until May 8th, 2009.

Until then I'll just watch the trailers in glorious QuickTime here on Apple's trailer site.

I need a bigger tv

My iPhone home screen

Pretty cool, huh?

Airs Appliances in Philadelphia: good people, better prices

I'm generally of the opinion that you can almost always find things cheaper on the internet than you can in a brick and mortar store, and forget about finding good deals at small local places. This goes double for large appliances.

Airs Appliances in Philadelphia (1119 Chestnut Street for those of you in the area) has proven me wrong. Not only did we get a great deal, we got great service as well. If you're looking to buy an appliance in the Philly area you are doing yourself a disservice by not stopping by and chatting with the good folks at Air.

Why was I in Airs?

Marisa and I have been talking about getting a new refrigerator for a little bit. It would seem the success of the washer/dry combo unit has emboldened Marisa's zeal for gussying up the kitchen (which I approve of, mind you).

Our current refrigerator irks me to no end. I think it is pretty ugly, and since Marisa is a world class foodie it is often packed to the gills with all sorts of food. That's not a bad thing, but I can never find anything! And with all that hippy food in there there is hardly any room for 'Scott approved' foodstuffs (mostly Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, and yes I am well aware of the dangers of diet soda). We were both in favor of getting a new fridge.

The world of refrigerators is a wild and varied place. There are awesome professional fridges, very cool retro fridges (which are super tiny), and many more in-between. The space that we have to work with is pretty narrow, in fridge terms. It would seem that manufacturers are making fridges that are about 35 inches wide, which works well for most people. We have a space that, at most, can take a fridge 33 inches wide. We thought we would be stuck with some bottom of the barrel fridge, but we were wrong.

Helen at Airs steered us towards the LG LFC20760, which has everything we wanted:

• French doors
• Freezer on the bottom
• Comes in plain white (the floor model was stainless steel, but you can't put magnets on a stainless steel refrigerator, which is about 50% of the purpose of a fridge, if you ask me).

We were in fridge heaven!

We had no plans to actually buy a fridge while we were in Airs' lovely Center City showroom, mind you. We just wanted to get our hands on some fridges before we ordered one from the web. However, the price ($1139.95) was better than anything we saw on the internet for the same class of refrigerator and it even included delivery (which none of the places on the web did). Marisa looked at me and said, "Are we going to buy a refrigerator today?" I said, "It sure looks like it!" And so we did.

It'll be delivered on the 18th, and Marisa can't wait. My only question is: what do we buy next?

Newly Cohabitating: Episode 1

As you know, Marisa and I are in the process of moving in together (well, I'm moving a selection of my crap into her place) and so our newest project was born.

I give you Newly Cohabitating: Episode 1. Yes, we've started an audio podcast! If we do it again we'll launch a blog and all that good crap. Give it a listen (it is about 10 minutes long) and let us know if you want more.

One word title for this picture

Awkward.