Ultranormal

  • Everybody Come Down

    The Delgados’ Everybody Come Down makes me think of little kids running around, uncontrollable in their joy and energy. It builds tempo, has those great jangling guitars, and relentless beat. It reminds me of Max when he gets beaned up (or Tim).\
    It also sounds a little like The Breeders Cannonball, but better and more fun.\
    The rest of the album (Universal Audio) is great too. Very well put together pop rock, with some really punchy lyrics.

  • My Personal Superhero Theme Song

    I helped out my pal Jon with a CSS/Javascript question this morning, and he penned this Superhero Theme Song for me. Why? I have no idea, but he did it, and I have to share it.\
    Kevin’s Superhero Theme:\
    Kev-i-i-i-n! Kevin Lawver!\
    Hero to-o-o-o the common man!\
    Mi-i-i-ighty! Mighty Lawver!\
    helps out whene’er he can!\
    With a HO! and a HEY! and a DEEDLE DOO DEE!\
    It’s up and away he GO-O-O-O-OES!\
    On a horse made of candy\
    Through the desert of hope!\
    Kevin Lawver, and h-i-i-i-is … fi-i-i-i-i-ine … hoo-o-o-o-o-oes! (whip crack!)\
    KEVIN!\
    — By Jon Morris

  • Yellow Pages on the Go

    How cool is this? I found out this morning that AOL has an IM bot for Yellow Pages. So, next time I’m out of town and need to find a movie theater or restaurant, I can just send an IM from my Sidekick to AOLYellowPages and get what I need.\
    I love IM bots for mobile stuff. Short messages, text interface, no waiting for images and pages to download that may or may not render on the Sidekick’s craptacular browser. I use ZolaOnAOL to get headlines, and play games while waiting in lines. I hear there’s a mythical bot for MapQuest too, but I haven’t found that one yet.\
    AOLJournals will let you post to an AOL blog, but yeah… I know most people who read this don’t have one of those.\
    Any other IM bots I should know about?

  • Interesting Developments

    Big changes at work coming next week. I’ll be doing something different, playing a different role, and it will hopefully be big. Big is good.\
    In other news, I got new pants. Not just any pants, smaller pants. I’ve dropped two pants sizes in the past year. My only new year’s resolution this year is to continue. My goal is to lose fifty pounds this year. That would bring my weight loss to a grand total of one hundred pounds. It won’t be easy, but I’ll get it done. It’s only a pound a week… small steps, small changes, gradual improvements.\
    And it’s only January, and I already can’t wait for SXSW.

  • Klanko

    My pal Jon is a genius (he says he’s retarded, so I guess that makes him a savant). His latest Klanko is amazing. It’s my favorite piece of his yet (and I loved the Klanko Discovers His Middle Finger so much, I bought the original artwork). Read it now, before Open Book makes you pay for it.

  • I Feel Professional

    Wow, Anil went and mentioned my class on the Six Apart Professional Network. That’s like getting your cat on the cover of Cat Fancy or something.\
    If you’re coming here from there, the class is for beginners, and covers basics like installation, editing and customizing templates, provides annotated copies of the default templates and goes over some useful/fun plugins. If you’re comfortable doing those things, then the class probably isn’t for you.

  • A Stunning Realization

    So, I’m cleaning out my old e-mail, deleting everything older than a year, and I just realized that in 2004, I received and stored (which means it’s not counting spam) over 24,000 pieces of e-mail to my work address, and over 1,400 (not counting things that get moved to other folders like listservs, comments on my site, breaking news, etc) to my personal e-mail addresses.\
    I have no way of knowing how much spam I got, but since my real-to-spam ratio on my personal address is about 1:4 (I have one address that just gets slammed) and on my AOL account, it’s probably 10:1, that’s almost 10,000 pieces of spam last year.\
    So, more than 25,400 pieces of e-mail passed through my inbox. That’s about 70 a day. I’m sure there are people who get more e-mail than I do, but wow. That’s just crazy. I can guarantee that I read all of them, and more than half required me to either send a response or do something. I’m surprised I do anything else.\
    If only I could figure out how many IM’s I got last year…

  • From One Nerd to Another

    Battlestar Galactica is coming back. Next week, they’re playing it on NBC, and on Sci-Fi. As a nerd who grew up as a huge Battlestar fan, PLEASE watch it. If you don’t watch it, at least TiVo it. Consider it a personal favor to me. I’ve seen the first five episodes (thank you, SkyOne and BitTorrent) of the new series, and it’s awesome (or, as Napoleon would say, sweet). It’s very well made, is a lot of fun, and seeing those Vipers again is like being seven all over again.\
    If we support good sci-fi, the networks will make more of it. The last great sci-fi show to be on a regular network, Firefly, died too soon. Let’s not let the same thing happen to this one (and if anyone wants to come over next week, the Battlestar mini-series should show up – I missed it the first time it was on because I was out of the country).\
    I’m begging you. Please watch it or TiVo it. Come on, for me?

  • Bloggie Nominations

    I figured that since I spent so much time on this list, I should share it. If you have your own list o’ faves, go nominate them.\
    Here are my nominations. If I left out a category, it’s because I didn’t nominate anyone for that category. Reviewing the list, it looks like Dooce and Photodude are my favorite blogs, and that’s pretty much true. Here’s the rest of the list:

  • Christmas Thoughts

    When you have a five year-old, Christmas is more about damage control and survival than pondering on the birth of our Savior. Max had a complete meltdown Christmas Eve that involved a lot of crying, declarations of love and then some sleeping. He was fine on Christmas morning, but he’s been a bit of a loose cannon the past week or so. Christmas is too much, too built up, too all-encompassing and for too long. It’s also probably impossible to change it, what with the stores putting up Christmas decorations before our Thanksgiving turkey is even purchased, and Santa showing up all over the place before all the leaves are off the trees.\
    Not that I don’t like Christmas. I really, really do. I love finding the right present for the people I love, and I get all excited to see their faces when they open presents. But, it’s one day. There shouldn’t be two months of build-up, three weeks of insane specials and commercials on TV that get our kids all wound up to the point that they break before the day even gets here.\
    I’m not sure what to do. Maybe we’ll go on TV-sabbatical the week before Christmas, just to avoid all the hype. But, we still have to go to the grocery store, to church, etc…\
    All in all, we had a really good Christmas. Max got to open two kids’ worth of presents (Brian hasn’t quite got it yet, and was more interested in eating the boxes than playing with new toys), we had ham, and got to hang out with the family. Max and I got new video games, which we’re having lots of fun with (Ratchet & Clank 3 and Paper Mario), and I have this week off.\
    OK, maybe Christmas isn’t so bad after all. Still, I could do without the crying.