This is what greeted me yesterday when I opened my computer after napping all afternoon (hangovers are fun).
It is crazy to believe that I have been an eBay member since July 14, 2003. Back then everything had to come in my mom’s name since I did not have a debit or credit card.
To recap here are the items that pushed me over to the 100 feedback milestone this Christmas break:
-7 For All Mankind “Dojo” Women’s Jeans (sister wanted them)
-Armani Code by Georgio Armani Mens 2.5 Oz. Tester Bottle
-Burberry London for Men Spray 3 Oz.
-American Ninja (DVD)
-American Ninja 2/3 (DVD)
The very fact that Michael Dudikoff led to my 100 feedback was the reason for this post. Sorry, but do enjoy!
It has been a long time coming. Hi, I am back in the saddle again. The first semester at the VCU Brandcenter is long over and I am beginning to take back the physical detriment it caused my body. Weight gain aside, I am becoming so much more involved in the advertising process.
So where does that leave me for the second semester? Longing for some NBA Jam. Yes, the game franchise that began on SEGA Genesis has had more staying power than anything else I have encountered over the past month. Fans of Saturday Night Live will remember Andy Samburg’s turn as a victim of ADD (“Automatic Death Disease”) fulfilling his wish to commentate a professional basketball or football game. This skit completely describes my current mindset. Speak loudly and learn quickly from your own mistakes.
I suppose what I am trying to get at is that I am more serious than ever about becoming a good planner but not at the expense of fun. Hopefully, I can shut up now and begin to post what is on this mind of mine more often.
It sure has been awhile since I last checked into the office. Basically half a month to be exact. My excuse: stealing a wireless signal in muggy Richmond makes one look more than a little suspicious. Now that I have had working Internet (I like how I think of it like running water) for over a week now, I have had no excuse for abandoning my infant. Or is this thing a toddler now (the website is 5 months old now)? I thought I would upload some pictures of my blog’s analytics.
So here is my built-in blog stats generator:
Man, September 1st was a huge day for me. In fact, it is the biggest day for me ever with 203 hits. No new information in over 15 days and somehow I have the best day of my blog’s life. Crazy.
I’m a big fan of the second opinion so I also utilize Google Analytics to track my blog’s success. Here’s what it says for the same time period.
12 visits on August 1st. Phishy. Really phishy. Just goes to show folks that WordPress is built on some solid code, but most of the built-in plugins are awful at counting spider bots and “echo” pingbacks.
That’s all I really wanted to say. I’m back and ready to upload some fresh new stuff about my time at VCU and beyond. Get ready.
So my diploma showed up in our mailbox, sealed in a white canister yesterday. The shipping was $1.90. I presume that shipping to the lower 48 is the same. Assuming the bulk of the class of 2009 is around 3,200 that puts the total for shipping those parchments at $6,100. It really is fascinating to take a closer look at the costs involved with sending one semester’s worth of graduates their diplomas (couldn’t they curb costs by giving it to us directly on the stage?).
Physically seeing the document has also stirred a few emotions within me. I am officially an alumni. Am I okay with that? Sure, but can I keep some of my now-vintage Duke-Carolina t-shirts, pretty please? Another thing, I can now hang the accomplishment on a wall somewhere. Plus it actually looks a lot cooler than a trophy. Imagine what it would be like if you received a trophy upon completion of undergraduate study. What would a bachelor of the arts trophy look like? Would it involve a beer funnel and viking horns?
I apologize for the long gap between content. It isn’t that I am particuarly busy as I await my semester at VCU to start. Rather, I am finishing up some reading, Fallout 3 and watching a good deal of films I might not have time to see for many years. Crazy stuff. More soon.
Got a hot new piece of fiction here that I worked on during one of my many Goodwill donation center shifts this summer. This one is heavily influenced by Jay McInerney and my own childhood. I’m still not sure why I love writing about time periods I was not alive during.
Giant Bomb.com, for the unintiated, is a huge video game wikia that also licenses said database to companies and research firms while providing daily news and updates for surfers. The wiki part of the website just turned one yesterday and is now available as an iPhone application in the iTunes store. The site also has daily reviews, previews and content submissions by video game industry veterans Jeff Gerstmann, Vinny Caravella, Brad Shoemaker and Ryan Davis – all former Gamespot employees who left after the Eidos review bribery scandal in late 2007.
Each week the crew at Giant Bomb does a two-hour podcast wrap-up of the previous week and talks about upcoming releases, taste tests sodas and answer e-mails. It’s Car Talk with video games and not broadcasted live. Since I have only recently become enamored by the Fab Four I decided to send in an e-mail to see if it would be answered. To my surprise I got an answer. You can find the two minute snippet from yesterday’s Bombcast below. If you love video games at all make sure to subscribe in iTunes. Totally worth it.
I promise more delicious content in the coming days (I am currently at the beach and the reason why I haven’t been able to update as much).
I did want to let everyone who reads this thing know that I am currently in at Virginia Commonwealth University’sBrandcenter for communication strategy. Great news and I will hopefully have more shortly.
The news of Michael Jackson’s death didn’t hit me at all yesterday. I was too busy being down in the dumps after not receiving $1,000 scholarship grant from H&R Block (not that big of a deal in the long run). So how do I feel 24 hours later? Different. This afternoon I re-listened to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Dangerous and parts of Off The Wall at work. Michael Jackson left a considerable dent on my childhood but in retrospect I’m not sure I enjoy what I remember of him.
It’s hard to hate Michael Jackson, well, it is hard to hate Michael Jackson if you knew him before the mid-1990s. I can clearly remember a VHS recording my dad made of the music video of Jam wherein Michael played basketball in a rundown gym with none other than Michael Jordan. Everything from the fact that I was watching it on a big screen television set to the fact that it was on MTV made him the “man” in my opinion. I grew up listening to Thriller each year during the weeks leading up to Halloween because my dad made a mix tape with assorted “monster-related” songs (i.e. Purple People Eater, Ghostbuster’s Theme, etc.). The first cassette tape I put in my first home audio player was Sting’s Mercury Falling. The second cassette tape I put in my audio player was Michael Jackson’s HIStory.
Michael Jackson gave me a link to R&B which was a wildly exotic world for me at the tender age of 8 or 9. I grew up loving jazz mainly because I knew that the jazz greats (excluding Kenny G.) were black and that was something I could never be. Michael Jackson gave the world R&B by making it mainstream. Sure, Motown and disco did a lot to help the music genre but it was Michael’s tender ballads and fancy footwork that set the world on fire.
The past decade hasn’t been easy for Michael or the rest of his fan base. I still haven’t listened to Invincible, his last major effort at a career revitalization. To me Michael Jackson stopped being “cool” after his duet with Janet Jackson in 1996’s Scream. The music video, another Jackson tool, shows just how amazing his effect on music was. Who else could command a music video that cost the same as many major motion pictures of the same time period? Michael. His allegations of sexual molestation and constant abuse of pain killers haven’t helped his situation. Nor has his gross negligence of his financial spending (he spent thousands of dollars on candy and ice cream). In short, Michael’s fantasy life may have provided him refuge from his abusive childhood but it only led to his public downfall.
After listening to Thriller today I can officially say that I enjoy every one of the nine songs on that album outside of his duet with Paul McCartney (The Girl Is Mine). I also noticed that the only song where Michael sounds aggressive or angry is Billie Jean (Beat It and Thriller have a distinct tongue-in-cheek to them). I kind of enjoy the Smooth Criminal that inhabited Michael’s earlier efforts. When it came time to preaching his messages of global peace, racial equality and love I don’t think the world was quite ready.
I think Thriller’sThe Lady In My Life is the best send-off I can think of for his tumultuous career. Everything from the jazz guitar to the disco-esque keyboards give the song a beautiful sound that almost made me cry. If only Michael evolved that sound instead of heading in a popier direction. Thanks for all you gave us, MJ. You single-handedly proved that disco isn’t dead and that we can never Blame It On The Boogie.
Even When We’re Old And Gray
I Will Love You More Each Day
‘Cause You Will Always Be The Lady In My Life
So this short story kind of materialized out of a nap I had. Some of the events in this story happened while others have happened while I was at a concert I didn’t really care to be at. Have you thought of anything that “blew your mind” at a concert?
This is what greeted me yesterday when I opened my computer after napping all afternoon (hangovers are fun).
As follows (thought I would put them in writing this year):
It has been a long time coming. Hi, I am back in the saddle again. The first semester at the VCU Brandcenter is long over and I am beginning to take back the physical detriment it caused my body. Weight gain aside, I am becoming so much more involved in the advertising process.
It sure has been awhile since I last checked into the office. Basically half a month to be exact. My excuse: stealing a wireless signal in muggy Richmond makes one look more than a little suspicious. Now that I have had working Internet (I like how I think of it like running water) for over a week now, I have had no excuse for abandoning my infant. Or is this thing a toddler now (the website is 5 months old now)? I thought I would upload some pictures of my blog’s analytics.
12 visits on August 1st. Phishy. Really phishy. Just goes to show folks that WordPress is built on some solid code, but most of the built-in plugins are awful at counting spider bots and “echo” pingbacks.
So my diploma showed up in our mailbox, sealed in a white canister yesterday. The shipping was $1.90. I presume that shipping to the lower 48 is the same. Assuming the bulk of the class of 2009 is around 3,200 that puts the total for shipping those parchments at $6,100. It really is fascinating to take a closer look at the costs involved with sending one semester’s worth of graduates their diplomas (couldn’t they curb costs by giving it to us directly on the stage?).
Got a hot new piece of fiction here that I worked on during one of my many Goodwill donation center shifts this summer. This one is heavily influenced by Jay McInerney and my own childhood. I’m still not sure why I love writing about time periods I was not alive during.
Giant Bomb.com, for the unintiated, is a huge video game wikia that also licenses said database to companies and research firms while providing daily news and updates for surfers. The wiki part of the website just turned one yesterday and is now available as an iPhone application in the iTunes store. The site also has daily reviews, previews and content submissions by video game industry veterans Jeff Gerstmann, Vinny Caravella, Brad Shoemaker and Ryan Davis – all former Gamespot employees who left after the Eidos review 
I promise more delicious content in the coming days (I am currently at the beach and the reason why I haven’t been able to update as much).
The news of Michael Jackson’s death didn’t hit me at all yesterday. I was too busy being down in the dumps after not receiving $1,000 scholarship grant from H&R Block (not that big of a deal in the long run). So how do I feel 24 hours later? Different. This afternoon I re-listened to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Dangerous and parts of Off The Wall at work. Michael Jackson left a considerable dent on my childhood but in retrospect I’m not sure I enjoy what I remember of him.
So this short story kind of materialized out of a nap I had. Some of the events in this story happened while others have happened while I was at a concert I didn’t really care to be at. Have you thought of anything that “blew your mind” at a concert?