September 2006 Archives

Last night after work, I set out to break my current distance record in preparation for the Bucktown 5K -- my first 5K ever -- so I warmed up for a few minutes and then off I went...

I ran completely aimlessly. I ran where traffic told me to run. My headband was in full force...

I ended up going about 2.4 miles in about 23 minutes (here's my route). That's a 10-minute mile (roughly). Not that bad for me considering that I've probably never actually run 2.4 miles in my life...

I feel that I'll be ready in time but I guess I'll wait to see how my muscles react today. They're not so bad this morning, so we'll see...

Oh, and by the way, I ate toast for breakfast.

Excerpt from Live Music Blog...

I saw a fantastic show last night at the Riviera Theatre -- Sufjan Stevens & and his Magical Chinese Butterfly Brigade with opener My Brightest Diamond.

More thoughts to come as I digest but it was a great show and definitely worth catching on the current tour. Don't miss your chance...

Here's a new podcast to throw up in your favorite podcast downloader (read: iTunes) - subscribe here. Classic, rare and eclectic funk, jazz, trip hop, and more from London. The track lists look awesome, too...

Pod of Funk [http://funkpod.co.uk/]

More YouTube fun on a Sunday folks...

Thanks to my younger bro for sending this my way.

Ever want to have access to every single episode of The Simpsons? Yep, me too...

[AllSimps.com]

What about Futurama?

[AllFutus.com]

I felt like watching something I hadn't seen in a while last night, so KT and I threw on The Hudsucker Proxy, a movie directed/written/produced by the Coen Brothers.

I had no idea it was such a box office flop -- only grossing back $3M of the $25M it took to make the movie -- but I guess it makes sense in hindsight. 1994 was the year of Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Speed, and Dumb and Dummer (via imdb).

It shouldn't have stopped anyone from seeing it, and it's worth revisiting if you're looking for a fun movie with standard Coen Bros. nuances -- extremely witty and quick dialogue (with numerous spots of repetition), unbelievably thoughful cinematography, etc. -- it simply doesn't disappoint if you're a fan at all of Coen Bros. movies...

My favorite part of the movie is captured (in text) below, but it's only done proper justice when viewed on screen.

You punch in at 8:30 every morning, except you punch in at 7:30 following a business holiday, unless it's a Monday, then you punch in at 8 o'clock. Punch in late and they dock you. Incoming articles get a voucher, outgoing articles provide a voucher. Move any article without a voucher and they dock you. Letter size a green voucher, oversize a yellow voucher, parcel size a maroon voucher. Wrong color voucher and they dock you! 6787049A/6. That is your employee number. It will not be repeated! Without your employee number you cannot get your paycheck. Inter-office mail is code 37, intra-office mail 37-3, outside mail is 3-37. Code it wrong and they dock you! This has been your orientation. Is there anything you do not understand, is there anything you understand only partially? If you have not been fully oriented, you must file a complaint with personnel. File a faulty complaint and they dock you!

Awesome.

On Friday afternoon around 5pm, I got notice while walking through the train station that the "West line trains are operating under a tornado warning, delays blah blah blah..." as I headed for my North line train. "Interesting," I thought, "I wonder if the North lines are under the same warning and I just haven't heard yet..."

I stepped off my train about twenty minutes later to find some wild looking clouds looming overhead, and I proceeded to watch these clouds fly through our area from the comfort of my back porch. The wind wasn't fierce but it was blowing fairly strong until the rain began. Then the wind stopped. Then, at 6:15pm, we looked and saw that Cook County was under a tornado warning. It was expected to be at Humboldt Park at 6:25pm and downtown Chicago at 6:30pm.

Photos © Giant Ginkgo

Photo © evanembee

Check out some more photos here, here, and here...

It was crazy, I say!

Back when I was a youngster suburbanite in the early 90's, my friends and I were head-over-heels in love with a super funny skit show on MTV called The State. In fact, this show has had enough of a lasting effect on me that I still pull out a random quote or two from the memories I have of their better skits. It really made an impact.

That's why I'm super psyched to see the following...

From The-State.com...

Finally! THE STATE on iTunes
After ten years of popular demand, The State is available again! The first season of the 1993-95 MTV Series will be released on iTunes Music Store, starting Tuesday, September 26th. Depending on how many people download, MTV will release subsequent seasons, and then eventually, hopefully, a DVD.

The first season includes introductions of favorite State characters Doug, Louie, Barry & Levon. Featuring Kevin Allison, Michael Ian Black, Ben Garant, Todd Holoubek, Michael Patrick Jann, Kerri Kenney, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, Ken Marino, Michael Showalter and David Wain...

Very cool. Very cool, indeed...

Now if you excuse me, I've got to go whisper some sweet-nothins' to this pudding... (possibly the best skit the State ever put out and easily the one that made the largest impact on me -- i can't hear the name "Barry" without wanting to attach Sagittarius right behind it...)

Top 5 Google searches hitting Ward-o-blog lately...

• astronaut jones clip
• geek squad worth it or not
• jack bauer cell phone
• muscle dude blog
• S.M.A.R.T. Status Bad

Why would you search for a "muscle dude blog?" That doesn't make sense...

Today's a Flava Flav / Lego type of day if you ask me...

Last night after a day of work, I set out to hit my latest short term jogging goal: two miles without stopping. I'm pleased as punch to report that I hit this goal last night and I felt great afterwards. I made sure I had plenty of fuel to run on this time, plus I had some water before I went out on the streets. I think it helped.

I'm working up to 2.25 and hopefully I'll get to that tomorrow; today will be a cross-training day where I'll do some calisthenics, stationary bike, etc. Good stuff...

Some posts are up on the Live Music Blog that might be worth checking out: Willie Nelson Gets Narc'd Out, Podcast #046 - Lake Trout, and Download Roundup

Enjoy your Tuesday, folks!

I was hoping they'd appear for longer but the rest of the plot was pretty good, too...

[via]

I've always referred to these as Janet Jackson headsets but obviously the Madonna comparison easily stands up...

Irregardless, you gotta love it...

Update: My Name is Kate has some notes up on Steve's talk and there are some great pearls of wisdom in there. If you're continually interested in learning more about RSS, head on over there to read up...

This week has been an interesting week for me in more ways than one. I've been quite pensive this week, mostly due to the weather I suppose. Once the weather starts shifting from Summer to Fall, I'm reminded of returning to school, leaves falling, bad tree pollen allergies, and trying to fit in the last bits of being outdoors before it gets too cold for comfort...

Lately, though, I've been thinking long and hard about basic human psychology. Fundamentals, I guess. Maybe it's more philosophy, too, not just psychology. Maybe I need to go back to school...

I've been working on putting proper priority on eating better and working out, and over the past week or two, I feel that I've done a tremendous job of bringing these two things front and center in my daily thoughts. It's quite a triumph actually. Yesterday, I headed out on my first two-mile run ever in direct training for my upcoming 5K -- yes, I'm actually going to be running in the Bucktown 5K -- and unfortunately I didn't make it as far as I would have hoped (still hovering right above 1.5 miles). Regardless, I'm warming myself up for this feat and I think I'll accomplish my goal in time. That's good news for me and my motivation level...

I was going to head out to a concert last night but it just didn't happen. I think I got up around 7am yesterday -- I'm no longer able to sleep late on the weekends due to my early rising during the weekdays -- and trying to make it up until a 10pm show (with an opener) to see the band I wanted to see...yeah right! I just didn't have the wherewithall...

Katie and I started watching the Showtime series Weeds on DVD this weekend; so far, it's been interesting to say the least. The first episode really does a fantastic job of setting the entire premise -- a widow left with two kids and a suburban soccor mom reputation starts dealing marijuana to get by -- and the characters are *interesting* as you'd imagine in any dark comedy/drama series. I'll report back once we get through the season, but so far, it's Desperate Housewives with Kevin Nealon finally landing a role that seems suited for him and a pot twist thrown in for cable television's sake...good times.

Apple made major news this week with their "Showtime" release featuring new iPod shuffles, new iPod Nanos, movie downloads through the iTunes Music Store, etc. etc. Read all about here, here, and here.

On the other side of that coin, Microsoft made major news this week with the unveiling of their Zune digital device (otherwise known as an MP3 player with extras). They actually invited influential music bloggers to the unveiling in the hopes that they'd write about it and give it good reviews and whatnot. They spruced all that up with a direct shot into the indie music crowd, announcing that CSS and Band of Horses are going to be part of the early marketing efforts. Interesting approach, and I have a feeling it just might work for them...

What's going on with you?

Image lovlingly poached from here

I've been spending an unbelievable amount of time on email lately. I guess that's what happens when you do spend most of your time online -- while at work and while at play -- but it still seems a tad excessive if you want to think about it from a productivity standpoint. It's so hard to stay focused when you've got that much to process, so I'll be spending some time this week reading up on email tips and whatnot...

Maybe I need to start chat conversations more? Turn off email notifications (already done)? Only check email once an hour to stay focused on more offline tasks? Etc. etc...

Now for some crowd participation...

Add up all your emails from the past week -- Monday, Sept. 4 through Sunday, Sept. 10 -- both from work and home and drop the number in the comments...

My Total: 803 emails **

** -- Note: may not include a couple of deletes that i wasn't paying attention nor needed anymore...

I recently published a little intro to something new I'm doing with Live Music Blog -- the Music network -- so I thought I'd share a little bit about that over here on my personal blog.

When I started my music blog -- I'll be honest here -- I had really starry eyes. I had visions of me taking in oodles and oodles of advertising revenue, enough to swim in even. I pictured myself backstage at Bonnaroo hobnobbing with the live music elite, all of that good stuff.

Another thing I envisioned was that me and my friends would start a network to band together and get some more power over some of the weaker music sites I was frequenting. I just felt that we could do it better, I really did.

Fast forward to two years later and I'm now the coordinator behind the Music network, a group of music web publishers (sites, blogs, databases, what-have-you's) that have willingly joined together to allow advertisers to target our audiences quickly and efficiently. What's more, this allows us publishers to band together more quickly and easily to score press passes to events, share resources, share contacts, drinks, etc. It's all in good fun. We should be meeting each other. We should be linking to each other on del.icio.us. All that good stuff.

All in all, I'm pleased to be a part of it, especially from the organizational aspect of the network and bringing publishers on-board. I'm inherently a social person but over the years I've grown more and more distanced from *networking* or *socializing* just for the hell of it. "Hey, what did you do last weekend?" "So, tell me what you do at your company? Could we work together, etc.?" This forces me back into the game which should hopefully keep me as fresh, as sharp, and as keen as I'll ever be.

Beware...I guess?

Check out the Music network if a) you're a web publisher that focuses on music or music-related topics or b) you're an advertiser with an advertising budget burning a hole in your pocket. You won't be sorry.

Happy Labor Day, dudes!

It's cool and rainy in Chicago today -- I'm not actually fully complaining about that -- so I'm catching up on some blog maintenance.

What's everyone else up to?

As a fun Labor Day computer project, I might try installing Ubuntu desktop this weekend...

I was running Linux for a little while a few years back -- an earlier version of Mandrake -- and I actually enjoyed the experience. A lot of simple (and power) computing on Linux is easily powered through the terminal and I tend to be a keyboard shortcut guru as much as I possibly can. Ubuntu might be a good warmup for a full transition to OSX at some point in the future.

Who the hell knows, though?

Anyone got any fun Linux experiences to share?