It’s not getting their early, or staying late (although that helps).

It’s not making perfect use Disney’s fast pass system.

It’s not bringing handicapped people so you can use the handicap entrances, or getting special VIP access or funny buttons like “Just Married”.

All of these things can help you cruise through lines, but really, there easiest way to get through the disney lines fastest is to make the lines as short as possible. How do you do this?

Go to Disney during a tropical storm or hurricane.

Amber and I did just that today… and I must admit, despite getting “a little” wet, we had a great time.

Just thought I would share that.

Amber and I have been on our honeymoon for close to a week now. So far, it has been a blast.

Ok Monday, we hit the magic kingdom. Amber wasn’t in the best of moods, but by the end of the day Disney had worked it’s magic and convinced her she was having a good time.

Tuesday, we hit typhoon lagoon. All we really did was the lazy river. The funny part was that the moment we put our stuff in the locker, it started raining. We also hit downtown Disney a little, as well as orlando’s prime outlets and some big indoor mall. Amber will be coming home with a whole new wardobe from the Gap and Puma.

Wednesday, was Epcot. We got there a little late, but it worked for us. Someone leaving the park had a dream pass with 3 uses left on it. Combined with regular fast passed, we were able to do almost everything in the park.

We ate at the coral reef restuarant which is one of the many spots they filmed boy meets world. It was pretty cool and we have lots of pictures to share because Ashley sent amber her camera via mail (we had left it at home).

Amber loved illuminations, epcots fireworks show. It was pretty good.

We then caught the monorail to magic kingdom and hit 5 more rides. All of which amber loved. It’s amazing how easy it is to get ok rides when everyone is watching fireworks.

Thursday we took our first trip to universal studios. Amber and I had a good time but there is something about Disney that universal just hasn’t captured. We dined at the hard rock cafe where Amber picked up a pinned and a glass.

From there we went to blue man group. That was awesome. We had some of the best seats in the house. They put us right in the action. It was great. So far the biggest highlight for me.

Friday, we hit animal kingdom. Amber loved this place and probably wore out her digital camera. Amber didn’t want to hit the roller coaster here but we did almost everything else. Afterwards, we went and picked up our tickets for la numba as well as took a 30minute walk around Disney quest. We then stopped by another outlet mall where we again hit the gap and puma.

And so now, it’s Saturday. It was looking to be a sunny day when I started writing this, but now it’s raining. Amber is still sleeping. It’s been a great week. More most likely when I get home.

The rehersal dinner went really well. Lots of good food. I was hoping we would get to take some home, but alas green mill didn’t allow it, which as stupid. We paid for it.

My computers are now at the townhouse. From here on out, that’s what we will call home. After all, home is where the computer is. Right?

My laptop is with me. Thanks to my great timing, it seems my hard drive had decided to quit. Perhaps I really won’t bring a laptop on the honeymoon.

Well, I best get some sleep. Goodnight bachelor blog,

There’s been some talk of it becoming a subset of ourvows (which will become our family website). And who knows, maybe it will just continue to operate as it does now… Hey not everything needs to change right?

It’s strange looking around my room. My bed, gone. My Desk, gone. My video game collection, gone. All that’s left is a few boxes, my computers, and a makeshift twin sized bed. I suppose I could take a photo, but I like the imagery instead.

But I do know this, I’m feeling beat. I’ve been running at breakneck pace with work related things, wedding related things, and family related things. None of it really bad, it just keeps coming.

I haven’t even had time to play Pirates, or learn how to program my iphone.

But yeah… So why am I blogging? Because I know I need to slow down.. and this is my way of doing it.

But ok, I’m done typing now. Laterz.

Just thought you would like to know

So on a deep level here (as deep as I get that is), what does this all really mean?

I have no clue.

Despite all my logic, all my planning, all my knowledge, all my experiences, all my observations. I have to admit, I’m scared shitless when it comes to the possibility of outcomes that could happen as a result of this one event. But that’s just it….

I’m doing this because despite all the possibilities, one thing holds true. That I want her to be a part of all of them. I want her to be there when JR makes it’s first million. I want her to be there when my first child is born. I want her to be the one that pushes me to be better. I want her to be the one that actually gets past my logic sometimes. I want her to figure out what’s bothering me. And most importantly, I want her happiness to come before mine (as much as is possible with me).

So why am I writing this? Is it to calm myself down? Is it be a sappy romantic?

Nope.

It’s non of these.

I’m writing this because sometime in the future, I will be fighting with Amber. I will be more frustrated than I ever have before. I may even ask myself, “why in the world did I marry this girl.” And when that happens, I tend to look to my past… And just maybe, I will look back to the posts surrounding my wedding day, and maybe that will be enough to remind me that it’s not the fight that’s happening that matters. All that matters is that she’s the one you want to fight with (so go make up already, your probably wrong anyway!)

I was updating my contact list.

I mentioned in a previous post that my iphone was able to copy my t-mobile sim card contacts from my previous phone, and import them in on the iphone. That was great. It meant at least for the last 3 days that I was able to know who was calling me without having to guess in the dark at the number. Caller ID is a lifeline for me when you need to know if it’s business or pleasure.

There was a problem though… My old sim card only contain 15 character names, and phone numbers. To make matters worse, I had made some custom modifications that allowed me to find types of people easier (For example, I prefixed all my clients with the letters BIZ).

For a lot of people, I also had multiple entries (home and mobile) because i didn’t like using my cell phones multi-phone number system (that and prior to my previous phone, my sim card had been in a nokia, where they didn’t have the multiple number feature).

Hey wow, there’s something worth mentioning… My sim card was an original Voicestream sim card (before t-mobile). The contacts had survived I believe 3 phones (Nokia 3390, Something In Between (didn’t have it long), Samsung E-315). It had been put in various other phones as well (Amber’s various modles for example). And in a computer card. The card has over 5 years worth of contact entries, and for the most part, covered anyone and everyone that ever seemed to call me (including places like Dell, Macys, Fridays, and Petco)

In any case, I made the decision to sync with my Google account, and start updating/properly formatting all of my contacts… At the moment I have roughly 127 contacts to weed through, and about 200 more to make sure get in there (new additions from the wedding invite list). Needless to say, by the time I’m done, by iphone (and Google) will know just about everyone I care to know, and then some (I store numbers I don’t want to answer as well).

All in all, it’s pretty crazy to see how our lives change from the point of view of a contact list… Our addresses, our phone numbers, our last names… These mundane details are at the essence of major changes in our lives. For example:

A good number of people had a last name change to be made in my phone… Why? They got Married.

A good number of people had address changes… Why? They graduated from highschool and went to college OR they graduated from college and moved into someplace else (*or back home*).

A good number of people had email address changes… No significant thing there.

All in all, I’m tempted to have the girl watching our guestbook hold my iphone for the night, and get photos of everyone to make sure my addressbook is as complete as possible… Odds are I wont… but we shall see.

Off to the top secret mission I’m working on (ok so it’s not that topic secret, but it’s dang cool). I’m sure I’ll have more on that later.

So far I have it doing the following for me:

• Geotagging and automatically uploading photos to my smug account
• Getting my email
• Providing me hours of training material in video form
• Making my contacts easier to use than ever.
• Making Facebook, Wordpress, Twitter, and Itunes easier to use than ever.
• Providing me pointless sound effects to improve my nerd factor.
• Handling all my voice calling needs
• And probably a half dozen other things (I think I have close to 20+ apps installed at this point)

In any case, this thing breeds innovation in me… I think I have a list of apps I would love to build for this thing (or at least try). So as a programmer, I quickly went and downloaded the SDK…

That went great until I discovered I needed to dev on a mac.

So I transfered the SDK to what I still consider to be a rather nice power pc quad style running 10.4.

Thought that would do it for me, except I guess I need Mac OS X 10.5 and an intel processor.

Sadly, that leaves me with no solution that I can find in my house… Amber has a solution for me though: Go and buy her a mac (that I can then use to do whatever it is I want to do). Seems a bit excessive, especially since she wants a laptop, and the most I’d probably be willing to pay for to do my dev work on would be a mac mini (If it’s not going to be my primary, why worry about it).

So my question is this: Anyone know of a place that provides remote desktop style mac hosting that I could use for dev work that has a month to month plan in the 10 to 20 dollar range :-)? That would be ideal. I know MediaTemple is beta testing something but they dont have a price listed :-(.

It probably isn’t all that important… Afterall.. when the heck am I going to find the time to develope an app for the iphone… I’ve got a million other things to do… Not to mention getting married.

Well I was partially right. We got there, and I believe just before I got there a shipment of 16G black iphones had arrived (exactly what I was looking for). A line had begun to form (we were 5th). I then realized in my rush to get there that I had completely forgotten to bring my account number for t-mobile. John, owing me a few computer favors, logged into my t-mobile account and got the account number for me (which was a good thing).

We waited in line for about 30 minutes, and then had the guy rush us through the process… All and all, it went fairly well.

But let me say, I’m about as impressed as I thought I wouldn’t be (say what?). Here’s the list of problems I really hope Apple takes care of between now and the next firmware update.

• There’s something wrong with the Bluetooth profile that won’t allow it to pair with my car. It’s possible it’s my car, and I’m going to try patching it, but supposidly, apple fixed this in the 1.1.0 firmware, and then broke it again in the 2.0.
• There’s something wrong with the GPS that when the 3G is turned on, it behaves incorrectly. There are easy enough fixes for it, but man is it annoying when it geotags a photo to Massachutes.
• Can’t turn any mp3 into a ringtone… I don’t care about DRM, they should undo this.
• Can’t sync calendar with Google Calendar… This has to be coming right? Or at least an App to do so.
• I really feel there should be a thumb gesture to simulate the home button… When I’m in thumb only mode, that button is not the easiest in the word to get to with my thumb.
• And lastly, and this one I knew going into it: you can’t tether… which is just stupid.

On the upside, I’m happy with quite a few things:

• I was very happy I was able to stick my t-mobile sim card in it, and copy the contacts from the sim card to the iphone. Worked perfectly… Now I just need to go through and rename them all because they were perfectly formatted for my old cell phone, not my new one.
• I am so-so with the camera, but love smugshot. Expect to see “recently taken photos” added to rinsefirst in the near future. The only problem is the geotaggings ability to place me correctly on a map.
• I love the app store, and have already downloaded:
  A Bible
  A lightsabre
  World 9
  Smugshot
  Wordpress
  AIM
  Remote
  Tap Tap Revenge
  Wordpress (which I used to update last night)
• I also love youtube… I swear they built this thing around playing youtube videos… They look o-so-pretty. I can watch my Numa Video where ever now.

So yeah, back to work I go… way to much to do.

Since then, I haven’t had to many problems, but I’m still not recommending it to my clients… Just to risky…

But, I do feel that this is worth sharing for those of you who may be looking for insane amounts of bandwidth and insane amounts of storage with fairly decent email support, and ok uptime. Basically their called “invitation codes” and they are these funny little codes that give you a ton of extra resources at dreamhost.

So that said, if your looking for the following:

• Up our plan features to 2TB disk and 20TB bandwidth!
• Give $150 off a 5-year signup or $200 off a 10-year signup!

drop me an email or comment and i’ll hook you up with an invite code.

For the last 3 years, I have been one of the millions of American’s without health insurance. Not because I can’t afford it. Not because my company doesn’t provide it (I could make it), but simply because I didn’t feel it was something I needed.

Since age 12, I have been to the doctor maybe twice for things that actually required medical attention. The rest of the trips were either mandidated by the public schooling system, or by my parents. Both things that I went for, probably could have been skipped with little to no trouble, it was just nice to have the assurance I was ok.

So I guess you can ssay, medically, I’ve been pretty blessed… So I figured, I’d use that to my advantage.

Now, I’m getting married. My choice of not having healthcare affects others in more than just an emotional way if I get sick, and therefore, it’s time for me to get coverage again. I don’t mind paying for it, but here are just a few observations I’ve had that I think are stupid:

• I don’t think a physical is necessary. The risk should be the insurance companies, not the clients. I’m alive aren’t I? I suppose I could have cancer or something, but are they really going to find that in a basic physical? Probably not. Maybe it’s for stats.
• I think it’s stupid that hospitals charge insurance companies less than they charge people without insurance. This is where I think the scam all starts… Why is it, Blue Cross Blue Shield will pay $60.00 for a physical, and I have to pay $100 out of pocket if I don’t have coverage… Don’t tell me it’s because the insurance arranged a lower price. They aren’t giving you more business, your just giving them cuts because they want them… It tells me that somewhere in the system (probably multiple places), prices are inflated.
• I don’t think doctors should be able to be sued for malpractice, UNLESS it appears to be a recurring theme or can be proved easily in court that the actions the doctor took were very much intentional. Being the 1 in 100 person that dies in surgery is just that: bad luck. The fact of the matter is, the insurance companies seem to control both ends of the game… Forcing doctors to get malpractice insurance, and forcing patience to get health insurance. There is no way to beat the system.
• I think it’s stupid you can’t move a person from one healthcare plan to another without resetting their coverage… For example: Amber is covered right now, and my have something wrong with her. When she get’s married, her coverage drops, which is why we would be needing to transfer her to a new family plan. The problem is, even if we stay with the company she is with now, when her current coverage drops, and her new one begins, the thing she is being treated for now will fall into the category of a prexisting condition, and will no longer be covered post marriage. How stupid is that?

So you can see, I rather hate it.. And the sad part is, I can really see only 2 solutions.

Solution A: We get rid of all the health rules/laws all together, thereby making malpractice impossible, and making people pay like they normally would.. But then we would have to get rid of the rules that say doctors have to treat people… Might not be a bad thing in a country that believes in freedom, but it’s a horrible thing in a country that believe in equality.

Solution B: We get public healthcare. I believe this would probably lower the overall quality of healthcare for a majority of people, I do think it would be everyone on the same playing ground. You’d be covered for life, and that would be that.

Alas: it’s not republican vs. democrat. It’s freedom vs. equality. It’s always freedom vs. equality. You can’t have both.

There are a few games like that in my life.. Tetris being the most obvious one. I own a few different versions of various mario titles as well (for example, I have super mario 64 on my N64, and DS).

There’s 1 title though, that I own 2 copies of on the same system, on purpose. (I have a few dupes for classic NES because of gifting, etc.)

I own two copies of the Chrono Trigger for the Super Nintendo. One of which is plastic wrapped by gamestop.

Chrono Trigger has to be by far and away one of my most favorite games of all time. It’s story, was well beyond it’s time. It’s multiple possible outcomes based on character action is great. It is… by far and away, the one thing I remember most about 5th grade.

Personally though, it hasn’t gotten the attention it deserved in the modern era. The game was released at the end of the SNES’s lifecycle, so not as many people had a chance to buy it.

But the time has come for it to return.

Chrono Trigger Is Coming to the Nintendo DS

I leave you with that.

I can’t let myself buy one though.

The Iphone 3G is by far and away, one of the coolest phones out there. Apple didn’t their homework, and now that the App store is open, I can do nothing but drool over some of the software already released. For example, if I went to ATT right now and bought one, I would be downloading the SmugMug App (found here) in seconds… Which would be so dang cool because I’ve been looking for a simple camera that could GeoTag my photos for me.

Not to mention at least one of the tetris clones that would have been released today.

But there’s at least a few reasons, one of which is a deal breaker for more, that I simply can not let myself get one. And they all stem from one simple fact, that I think eventually, will kill Apple.

Apple is not open enough as far as features and development goes.

It’s the reason they can’t get the same market share as windows… How do you expect Mac OS X to be “more popular” than windows, when you won’t let, Dell, HP, IBM, etc. sell computers with your OS on it? Is it a great OS? Definently… But if you thought Microsoft was a cruel monopoly, wait to see what happens if you let Mac OS X rule the world… Oh wait, isn’t that what’s happening with the Iphone?

So let’s actually see where the problems start for me:

#1 - It’s still locked into ATT. This isn’t a deal breaker for me, but really.. Why? Why can’t you let it be with Verizon, or T-Mobile. I realize T-Mobile’s 3G network isn’t rolling out til later this year, but seriously… Why AT&T Only? This is like the same stupid mistake you made when you refused to work with only one type of processor *Power PC*… Oh wait, you still do that *Intel*.

#2 - It’s still not an open application framework. This isn’t a deal breaker for me either. I don’t have time to develop my own apps… But heck, if Google can release a decent OS for a phone, and get someone like HTC to put some solid hardware behind it, Apple, I’m afraid to say it, but your going to be in trouble… Then again, your still capitlizing on the entire ipod market… But eh. Google not only released it’s framework for developers months before release, but it’s letting anyone build anything they want… How great is that.. I expect to see a smugmug app for Android in no time… So that might be a simple reason right there to wait for it.

#3 - You still can’t tether the iphone - Ok, this one is the deal breaker for me. Why in the world would you disable a phone and prevent it from being used as a modem for a computer. They did it with the first gen phones, and they did it again with this phone. Perhaps they’ll let someone build an app that fixes this, but there must be a reason… and I can’t believe that it’s ATT saying we don’t have the bandwidth… After all, every one of their other enterprise phones seems to be able to tether. If I’m going to buy a phone that has data powers, I expect to be able to use those data powers with my laptop in the event I need more power than the phone can supply… And for that reason alone, I can’t let myself get an Iphone.

So where does that leave me?

I think I’m still finding myself holding out for the HTC Touch Pro. It won’t be as slick a touch screen, but it will have a keyboard. It won’t sync nicely with itunes, but it will let me put any winmobile application on it. It won’t be as expensive, but I’ll probably be able to put Android on it when Android is released.

If a phone company is reading this… This is what I want in a phone:

• Tethering
• Bluetooth
• Wifi
• 3G (or 4G) and Quad Band
• Slide out keyboard
• Camera with decent shutter speed (and ability to instantly upload photos to something)
• Music (Mp3)
• Video (record and playback)
• Recording calls to mp3 feature (that would ROCK)
• Dual Touch
• Open development framework
• Full screen webbrowsing (simulated 1024×768 or higher with zoom feature)
• Good Calendar
• Good Contacts
• Good Email

I think that’s everything… You’d think given that I’m using a standard flip phone, I’d be happy with even just some of those features:-).

I was trying to figure out if there is anything I really wanted to do before I was married that I didn’t think I could do once I was married. To be honest, there isn’t to much I could think of that isn’t allowed once your married… but perhaps the general public has an idea and would like to post it here…

In any case, I’m finding that wedding spending drops significantly the last month before the wedding. Almost everything get’s paid for in advance (or at the time of the wedding)… So I’m enjoying this lull simply by looking at my bank balances and saying “Yes! it didn’t go down again today!” (I treat my bank balance like the stock market, because it is… In fact, I should build a ticker for it)

I’m also someone enjoying the mood over here at JR. We’re insanely busy, but there’s a reason for it… I’m trying to get every project on the docket wrapped up by August 1st. It should mean no projects in August, which is Good, because I have other plans for Joe, and Dan will be gone. I think it will be interesting to come back and besides whatever piled up while I was gone, not have any major projects to work on. It could be bad from a bank perspective, but from a “time to get some things we’ve been waiting to do for a long time” perspective, it’s going to be great.

In any case, So much to do, so little time.

Just thought you would like to know.

5 servers related to me had some sort of major issue today… Here’s the quick list:

• Wario (adamantinearts.org) started the morning with a Ruby on Rails process gone mad
• Luigi (One of Jr’s primary webservers) decided to shutdown SSH, thereby making it impossible to do anything with. Was forced to reboot it about 2:30 today. Still not sure what killed SSH.
• Princess and Mario (JR’s DNS servers) BOTH decided to die at around 3:20ish today. Thus taking down EVERY SITE JR’s runs. Problem believes to have stemmed from a bad piece of data that was inserted into the primary DNS database.
• Basecamp (Not a JR server but a product JR uses for project management) decided to go down at 9:30 today for scheduled maintence.

So how do you deal with days like today?

A bowl of ice cream.

I got to thinking about stealing.

Stealing in my mind is a very interesting concept. Almost every major culture out there includes some rule about not taking things from others, etc. It is so important that God made it one of the 10 commandments.

We all know it sucks when someone takes something from us without asking. It doesn’t matter if it’s a physical item, an idea, or just a “word” we considered ours. We have come to accept that taking certain things, or taking from certain people is acceptable. Looking at my own life, I’m sure the #1 thing people steal from me is “Time”, which is also probably the most acceptable thing by the public to steal. I’m also sure I’m 100% ok with it, and that it’s also probably the thing I steal most from other people. Then there’s things in the grey area of movies, music, and ideas. And then there are the things we all seem to agree are just wrong… Like money… No one wants their money stolen.

But in all honesty… There is something about stealing that I can’t quite figure out. It’s hard to explain, but let me continue and maybe the contradiction will appear as I rant. Let’s start with the following sentence:

Stealing implies taking something from someone.

Let’s change the world view here a little bit, and assume that nothing on Earth is truly ours. So to make up for that, the sentence becomes:

Stealing implies taking something from someone who thinks what your taking belongs to them.

So if something is stolen, someone else (besides the theif) must believe it belongs to them…

Now, this is where things get more interesting…

For me as a Christian, I believe that all things belong to God, and are given or “leased” to us by God. Ultimatley, the only person we are capable of stealing from is God, but yet, the bible generally calls that coveting or idol worship when taking it from God… So why then take the time to point it out in the 10 commandments? Does it get back to this idea of “how the other party feels about what your doing”.  Is the Bible simply trying to say to us another way, “Don’t do things that make others feel bad?”

So let’s take this concept, and see if we have a simply way to figure out what is “stealing” and what “isn’t” and apply it to my wonderfully complex example… And perhaps, maybe it will be in line with actual law… I’ll do my best to list a lot of examples with some of my thoughts and see if it leads anywhere…

I’m walking down a public street, and see a naked woman flaunting her body to you (she isn’t hiding).

• Remembering this event in your mind
  This seems silly, but is easily acceptable by most people for this most basic example. The woman for the most part can’t really stop it anymore, and she isn’t being hurt by you remembering the event.
  Not Stealing - Most likely Legal
• Telling a friend about the event, in detail
  Almost everyone does this, but again, most likely it wouldn’t bother the woman.
  Not stealing - Most likely Legal
• Telling the woman’s parents about what you saw, in detail
  Now were into weird cases… The woman would most likely NOT like this because it “steals” her reputation… Or did she give it up by doing what she did? Curious how that is… By our rules above it’s probably stealing, others would argue it’s given.
  Unsure on Stealing - Most likely legal
• Painting a picture of the woman from memory for yourself
  Now we’re getting into a fun area… A remembered event be represented artistically on paper. The woman again probably wouldn’t care because she wouldn’t know about it.
  Not stealing - Most likely Legal
• Painting a picture of the woman from memory and distributing it
  Similiar to telling the woman’s parents. It seems the key to it mattering is the woman noticing it, or feeling it.
  Unsure on Stealing - Most likely legal
• Taking a photograph for yourself
  Again, assuming the woman lets you take the photograph, everything is most likely ok. If she doesn’t let you take the photograph (or doesn’t know), it’s probably stealing if the woman finds out, and most likely illegal… So this could be the border line for some reason…
  Not stealing - Most likely Legal
• Distributing a photograph you took
  Now this is where it seems to turn in both directions… This would most likely anger the woman (again assuming she didn’t given you permission to distribute). This is also where the law most likely steps in and says you went to far by using someone’s image.
  Stealing? - Most likely illegal

So you can see, the concept of stealing entirely seems to hinge on how the woman could feel in the situation, regardless of what she could have done to prevent it in the first place. So from a personal standpoint, I probably will continue to believe that stealing is taking something from someone they don’t want you to take, regardless of whether or not they really have ownership of it.

Now how do I balance what I just said, with a scenario coming in the near future for the world, hopefully me.

It’s called an eyetap.

Eyetaps are basically things that record what your eye sees.

My intentions would be to document my life, both for myself, and for anyone who wanted to see (the video could and possibly would be uploaded to the web). That said, if a person wearing an eyetap sees a naked woman on the street, and it immediatly publishes to a worldwide blog and becomes #1 on youtube, is it stealing?

Does an eyetap fall into the category of a “memory”? Therefore, it’s fair because my eye’s saw it, so can the computer… And the computer can share that memory just like I can share mine with my friends? It’s on all the time afterall? It’s not simply an intentional photograph.

Or does an eyetap fall into the category of a photograph? Something that was purposely snapped solely to remember a single event. It has a very precise intention, where as the eyetap’s is much more general.

Perhaps it all falls back to what I said before:

It only matters what the other person feels about the event.

It doesn’t matter if it’s real time or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s legal or not. If someone doesn’t want to be recorded with an eyetap, or wants to have their image removed from the eyetap’s video feed, that does seem to be what needs to be done. If someone get’s recorded and then put up on the internet without them wanting to be, an apology and request for forgiveness is due. That is of course, what would make the other person feel good right?

It makes me wish everyone realized nothing is theirs, especially information, and as such, the global norm would be to share/give everything*. But alas, that’s not the world we live in.

Well today, for the first time in awhile, I had the radio on. Jack FM (104.1) to be exact.

What I was suprirsed at was how 3 or 4 commercials got my brain to pull away from the monitor. To be honest, most of the time, the commercials were just playing the background… I wasn’t even paying attention.

But there were at least 3 today that got me to go “Is that what they really said”. For example:

There was a McDonalds Commercial that said something like, “American’s built this nation on <something>. American’s gave <blah blah, I wasn’t listening close enough>. And Americans invented the McDonald’s Chicken Sandwitch.” it was one of those things where my brain was listening just enough to know that the last thing didn’t fit, and my attention got pulled.

There was another one where an ad said “it was included in the vip gift bags at the Sundance film festival”. Why did that pull my brain? Because I’m pretty sure (not 100%) that this was an ad for some sort of facial medicine… My brain thought, why would I care if the people at Sundance got this drug in their gift basket? It made no sense, and sure enough my brain turned to listen  (although in this case, I missed the brand, so it still didn’t do the trick).

It makes me want to run an Ad tomorrow that completely doesn’t make sense… Or at least contains things that dont make sense… Just to see how many heads it turns at the work place… Did he really say what I thought he said?

In any case, I have to admit, I like working the with radio on now.

Looking back now, it’s hard not to reminence about all the great times I had there as a student… MSA truly is a special place.. There are very few schools I believe that create as much community as that one… We’re an odd bunch, and we love each other more for it.

It’s rough though. This was what I believe may have been the last great class at MSA. Sure, eventually the other classes may live up to them… but I don’t know… There was something about the bunches of kids that attened the first, second, and third years of MSA that seemed special. The Bartz’s and Joe will be very very difficult to replace, and probably never will be…

But alas, I am not good with writing like this… so instead… I will post another pointless youtube video… This one I did… and is really just yet another test of something…