I like making lists of things. The latest is Statements which mean you're about to do something stupid. So far the leaders on this list are:

1. "What could possibly go wrong?"
2. "I can't believe this is actually going to work."
3. "Watch this!"

In other news, I bought a Motorola Droid. Yes, I finally gave up my stone-age cellphone ways and embraced the smart phone revolution. Android is the platform I like and Verizon is the carrier I refuse to leave and Motorola is even the manufacturer that I have preferred up until now, so if I was ever going to like a smart phone this was going to be it. I'd never know without taking the leap and trying it, and so far it has been good. I'm still a fan of separate devices like a separate camera, gps, and portable game system, but having the internet everywhere is good and you're only going to get that with a phone. Even those tasks for which I prefer the separate devices, the built in ones will come in handy at times when I wasn't prepared to have the separate ones.

And a side-effect of having the new phone is finally jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. I never did it before because it was another website I didn't want to waste time in front of, both reading and posting, but the phone makes it casual enough to be worth it.

Some crazy stuff has been going on with me lately and I thought now would be a good time for a quick update to let people know (meant to do it last week but I'm lazy). April was a very busy month. It started with trips to see my family for Passover and the usual trip to Pittsburgh for booth. We missed Hirsch but that gave me the current longest unbroken streak of 10 years. Then last week happened.

First, last Monday I ran 8 miles of the Boston Marathon. ( details )

Then on Tuesday I started a new job at Harmonix, the makers of Guitar Heroes 1 and 2 and currently the Rock Band series. ( details )

On Thursday I got a pretty shady invite to see a sneak preview of the new Star Trek movie. ( details )

My sisters told me to post about this so I will. Yesterday I was flying back from visiting my family for Passover. I checked in to my flight online from my laptop, but since I couldn't connect to the printer at my aunt's house, I "printed" my boarding pass to a PDF on my flash drive and then printed it off of their computer. I don't know how, but somehow I managed to accidentally print another copy of my outbound boarding pass from Wednesday instead of the return boarding pass for yesterday. I didn't even notice this until I was waiting in line to board the plane. Yep, the lady who checked my boarding pass when I checked my bag and the one who checked it at the security checkpoint both failed to notice that it was for the wrong day and airport. At that point I decided to pretend I hadn't noticed either. The gate agent also failed to notice that the boarding pass was for the wrong flight even though she tried to scan it (unsuccessfully?) before letting me on the plane. On the plane they called my name and asked my to press my call button, but once I did, they didn't even come talk to me. Presumably they were just checking that I was on the plane (since I had checked in, but not been correctly scanned at the gate), but it could have been anyone that pressed that call button. I guess now I almost understand how those people who were supposed to be going to Miami got on our flight bound for London a few years ago (luckily we told them before the plane left the gate).

For some reason I'm currently in love with Palladia. It's an HD digital cable TV channel that I get. I used to just use it as my go-to demo of my HD setup when people would come over. It was great for this because it was always showing beautiful crisp HD footage, usually of concerts. It is better than finding some show because you can watch it for a just a few minutes without getting wrapped up in the show. Lately I've realized I could enjoy watching it. It is amazing because it is a music channel that actually plays music 24/7. Even better, a lot of the time it is live music (concerts) instead of just music videos. It's funny because I was never even someone who liked watching MTV, music videos or anything.

Lately I've lamented the lack of other people (and specifically, girls) impulsive enough for me. More and more I realize how much I love adventures. Even failures/disasters can be great if they make a good story. I love the excitement in doing something unconventional, especially on a whim, just for the sake of doing it. I think this goes along with my philosophy of "doing the thing that is hard" and never backing down or shying away from a challenge. Doing things for the sake of an idea.

( Read More )

I do believe in recycling, at least somewhat, so I do not throw away any glass or plastic bottles or aluminum cans. In theory, when the pile gets big enough I take it to the recycle bin in the basement. But the recycle bin is often near full and so I need go down and check if there is room before I actually bring anything down there. And I'm lazy so I don't like taking 2 trips and so the pile grows, and the bigger it grows the lazier I become. I don't usually bother with the 5¢ deposit on a lot of the bottles, but recently I let the pile (of mostly beer bottles) get so big that it seemed like it might be worth getting some money out of it. Seemed like it would be worth it but it was a very bad idea.

( Because this happened )

Last week I was in Orlando for a trade show. On Thursday night two coworkers and I got on a bus and headed out to get some drinks. On the bus I got a call on my cell phone from a "Restricted number". I answered it and it was just a person singing the Star Spangled Banner. When they were done they hung up. I thought, "That was weird." Then I got another call, this time from a Boston (617) number that I didn't recognize. I thought, "here comes the explaination" but instead I got White Christmas. Who was this? A friend whose number I don't have or a friend of a friend's phone? Now that we had a number we decided to call back and sing a song of our own. We used Yrinee's phone and Schuyler sang Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. The next call was from a different number that told the story. I got a call from my number... except with 2 digits transposed. Aha! Even though they must have realized that they failed to prank their friend when they called me instead, now they must be together. The song battle went back and forth for about half an hour. We never had a conversation and never learned any more about our mystery drunken friends other than the name Naomi on one of their voicemails a time they didn't answer.

I'm back in Denver again, and after the travel disaster I had last week, I have to rave about the experience I had tonight. I'd always heard very good things about jetBlue, but I never had a chance to fly them until recently. My first jetBlue experience was back in April. It was as good as expected. Having DirectTV is really nice. On the way back, we were a little late and they couldn't get the TVs to work so they mailed everyone a $20 voucher for the inconvenience. (a make-good from an airline without me having to do anything for a problem with a service most airlines don't even have? amazing) Well tonight absolutely put me over the moon.

I have a lot of people counting on me for some work tomorrow morning at 7am. I booked a very late direct flight, 9:35pm to 11:54pm. I was very worried when at 9:05, when we should have been boarding, they announced that all westbound flights from Boston had been temporarily grounded due to weather over the midwest and they wouldn't even get another update for at least a half hour. So what does jetBlue do? Immediate change the flight plan to have us fly south (around the weather) and have us boarding less than 10 minutes late. The new route would have taken quite a bit longer by taking us well out of the way, but just like they planned, when the hold was released at 11pm we were able to turn sooner and not go as far south, while any other airline would still be sitting on the ground in Boston. We arrived only 25 minutes late. This is the most amazing above and beyond effort to get me to my destination I've ever seen from an airline. Wow.

P.S. Third cab I've taken in the last week and all of them have had their check engine light on, what gives?

My least on my apartment in Atlanta was up, and that was not somewhere I wanted to sign another one so I had to move out. Since I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do next, I'm not sure where I'm going to end up living. In the meantime, most of my stuff got put in storage and I'm heading home to Boston for a little while. Although the drive can be done in 2 days, I'm taking a week and making some stops.

Tuesday I packed up my car and left Atlanta. Well, first it didn't fit and I had to unpack the car, repack boxes, drive more stuff to storage, and then repack the car. But then, only 4 hours later than I wanted, I was on my way... until I ran out of gas. But then 1 hour later I was at it again. I spent the night with an Aunt and Uncle in Norfolk, VA.

Wednesday I drove to DC. There I saw Operation Spy at the Spy Museum. It's basically this interactive experience where you take on the role of a CIA agent in a foreign country trying to recover a stolen nuclear device. You control surveillance cameras, unscramble phone calls, sneak into a secure facility by disabling cameras and locks, search an office, crack a safe, and interrogate a suspect. It was awesome. I highly recommend it if you're in the area, but it is better if you go with a group of people you know (about 4). I saw my cousin Rachel and then had dinner with queiss, bluekirby, and kizzatz.

Thursday I drove to Philly where I had an interview. Then I went to Atlantic City to see how the fountain was doing. Now I'm in New York for the weekend.