Dude You're Getting' a Dell

Last night at our holiday party at Tortilla Flats, we encountered a celebrity of the past.... Some of you may remember the "Dude you're gettin' a Dell" guy. He was the stoner persona that represented the younger generation of the Dell market. During the height of the campaign in 2003, he was arrested and charged for buying a bag of weed in NYC; it was a huge scandal all over the news. Dell thought he should not be a living example of his on screen persona and dropped him from the campaign. Anyway, he works and hangs out at Tortilla Flats in the Meat packing district. My lucky co-worker can now say she got asked out by the "Dell dude"!

Poconos and horses

Thanksgiving in the Poconos was ultimate relaxation. I was hoping to snowboard but the mountains were bare. However a nearby stable offering horseback riding allowed us to visit their four legged friends. The last 2 rows of photos are 3 ponies eager for attention, the horse up top thought we had food hidden in our palms, he was moving his lips more rapidly than Mr. Ed... Nature is always better when you live in a dirty city.

UFC in Jersey

How appropriate, let's make sure all the meatheads stay where they belong. I can say that because I went to UFC 78 Validation and am advid fan, but don't consider myself to be in the meathead category. I'm sure they would have had it in New York but NY law does not sanction the sport. It was a fun time and this was my first time at a fight so i was weary of who would be attending. I've only seen the fans on tv, veins popping out of their foreheads and screaming like rabid animals. But despite my discriminations, everyone seemed very civilized. It made me realize that the spectators actually view Ultimate Fighting as a highly trained sport that uses a good deal of strategy and skill, rather than sole brute force. With the exception of almost getting in to a fight with a couple of knuckle-heads standing in line, it was a grand night of intellect, discussion, brewskis and blood.

If you happened to catch UFC 78 on pay per view, you probably missed the most exciting fights, the prelims. I'm not going to talk about the fights, but the main event (Rashad Evans vs. Michael Bisping) was somewhat boring, Evans winning by split decision, and the main undercard (Houston Alexander vs. Thiago Silva), was totally disappoining, Silva winning by premature stoppage. If you want to read about all the fights in depth, go to here (mmamania.com) it's a great blog all about UFC/MMA.

Iphone love

Just got an iphone and I can't believe how much it rocks. Now I'll be
able to post via mobile, not that I couldn't before. But now I seem
more compelled to. Design, functionality and overall coolness factor
gets me really amped. It's not perfect yet, there are a few
drawbacks, some with at&t and some w/ apple, but hopefully that'll be
resolved with future updates. Advice to those on the fence, don't wait
it's totally worth it, esp for the price.

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Sent from my iphone bitches

Do you have Wacom Claw hand?

If you feel like you're getting the claw hand from holding the frickin' wacom pen too long. I've just invented a new attachment which will remedy that. All you need is a plastic easter egg, an exacto knife and some tape. It takes a little bit of time to get use to it, but trust me, it totally helps with the claw-hand. Depending on how big your hand is you may want to put the big end of the egg on the bottom instead of the small end (as pictured). I flipped the egg b/c it fit my hand better. Try it out, it may help!

Future of web design

Went to the future of web design conference yesterday. Overall i give it a 2 out of 5. The majority of the speakers sucked. I don't know if it had anything to do with the terrible sound problems or the fact that we couldn't see any one's presentation. Who'd ever think that there would be a problem with seeing screen projections in a room made up of windows? FYI (to the conference), learn from the movie theater people, they seem to know what they're doing.... Anyway the conference was not a total lost. There were a few good speakers to mention of, Joshua Davis (programable flash design), Jina Bolton (future of CSS3), John Snook (Ajax), Jeffery Kalmikoff (threadlist - teeshirt design community) all gave good presentations and interesting insights about web design and where it's going. I have to say though, it's good to go to these kind of events and see & hear from industry leaders. It sparks ideas and inspiration for your own work. If anything it's at least a motivational boost.

Here's a cool screenshot from Joshua Davis's presentation. It's a flash app that creates a picture of Chuck Close's face with wiggling worms:

It's a cold day in....

I officially took my winter clothing out of storage today. Sigh.

Is this a hoax?

Please let me know if you know of anyone who might be interested!

Scott rescued 6 black lab (mix) puppies out of the middle of the road on Saturday. PLEASE help me find them homes - otherwise, it's Animal Control - which means they only have 5 days. We've bathed them, sprayed them for fleas and wormed them....but we can't keep them. They are currently in a kennel in my basement since I don't have a fence. I've lost count of the number of rescue groups that I've contacted, only to be turned down due to no room. Please check with every dog person you know to see if they need a puppy.

Suzanne Spence
sspence82@gmail.com

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This morning my coworker forwarded me this email. Like a good samaritan I forwarded it on to my friend, asking him if he wanted to adopt any of these adorable pups, hoping to keep them out of the doggy gas chamber. A couple of hours had past and the friend who I had initially informed., told me that his coworker showed him the exact same email. Apparently this email had spread extremely fast. As somewhat of a joke I said, "It's a hoax!!!", wondering who would abandon a litter of black Labs on the side of the road..... As a test, I asked another friend about this email and they got the exact same thing? HMMMM, I can't believe how fast this spread., but he apparently called for the puppies and told that they were gone., So maybe it was real. But I still have my suspicions.

Mini-Kiss

As promised I found mini-Kiss. However they are much bigger (in popularity) than mini-MJ, because they actually do ticketed shows, you can't find them in the subways. This performance is from the Jimmy Kimmel show. I love it at the end when Jimmy ask mini-gene if they ever do other impersonations like The Village People and mini-gene answers "no we want girls man!"

I just found another mini-sensation, mini-Britney! It's so awful I'm not posting it on my blog, but will give you the link. Here it is.

Mini Michael Jackson

About 1 & 1/2 years ago I encountered a Mini Michael Jackson in the Union Square subway. He's probably about 3 feet in height, has perfected the dance movements of MJ, and has even added some 21st century flare to it. Just to get this out of the way, this mini impersonator is not a child prodigy but a little person, if that's the correct term. This Friday, deep in the Times Square subway station, I was blessed to receive another random encounter with this pint sized moon-walker. Luckily i had my trusty camera and videoed his performance of Beat It. This weekend I shared my video with some friends and was made aware that mini-MJ is not the only mini impersonator to entertain the bowels of NYC. Somewhere, there is mini-Kiss, and apparently the mini-Gene Simons has an extremely long mini tongue. I will be on the look out for them, so stay tuned.

A story of love, or a load of crap?

We've all seen the story about the surrogate cat that adopting abandoned puppies, the mother tiger taking in piglets as her own young, and the tortoise and hippo duo. Well here's another heart touching story about an orphaned monkey and his new found companion, which happens to be a pigeon. Ohh how convenient.... Common, now they're just insulting our intelligence! What's next an elephant with an ant-farm? What's gonna happen when the bird takes the monkey to side of cliff and tries to teach him to fly. I'll tell you what, dead-ass monkey! Yeah yeah, i'm sooo cruel. But this will never happen because the story is fake, made up by a bunch of con-artists from a zoo in china. Let me tell what really happened:
A hungry carnivorous chimp, perched up in tree, spotted a pigeon on the ground. He leaped off the branch at the pigeon with one thing mind, pigeon ala king. He obviously captured and killed the bird. Zoo keepers or maybe an onlooker caught everything on video. Instead of submitting it to When Animals Attack, this cleaver manipulator grabbed the still image of the exact moment when the monkey captured the pigeon. When taken out of context, it looks like the two are in an amorous embrace. Do you remember when the someone caught their dog and cat fighting in a room? But when they sent it out, it was written as love story. See pic below


Let's get real and stop encouraging these wannabe soap-opera writers. We need start seeing the true harsh reality of the wild kingdom. Let's bring back The Under Sea World of Jacque Cousteau, the Crocodile Hunter and other such shows. They are accurate! This on the other hand is fake, the Care Bears are fake, Rocky and Bullwinkle is fake. Let's remember that!

Baseball at Shea

This year the Amazings are in the running for the pennant. But the crowds at Shea were surprisingly low. I mean not incredibly low, but I got to move seats 3 times, eventually making it down to the near bottom. Going to the first level requires you showing your ticket to the ushers, making sure you really did pay for what you're getting. Here's a few pictures of the view. I didn't take a shot of our first seats in the upper deck, because it sucked so bad. But you can definitely see the difference between the last 2 seats. The crowds also get more rowdy as you get lower. I guess the real fans don't bother with shitty seats, and there's no sense in cheering when you nobody can hear you.

Cindy, an avid Mets fan, told me to eat the sausage and peppers, a Shea stadium classic. When your wash that down with your favorite beer and the Mets win, that's as close as you can get to perfection. Ohh yeah, the Mets beat the Atlanta Braves that night, 3-2.

Hezzy for Trapezy

Pier 40 on the west side hwy. offers trapeze lessons. Yesterday a bunch of us from the office went out there and had a swinging time.

Pacemaker

Attention all bedroom DJs!!! this will save you so much space you'll actually have room for a bed. I'm so overwhelmed about this technology that i can't even express my excitement. It's like the iphone for DJ's but better. Can you imagine fitting 2 turntables, 1 mixer and a crate of records in the palm of your hand? Well here it is. Beat matching, faders, filters, audio controls, and 120 gig hard drive! The only thing i didn't see was the ability to scratch, but i'm sure that will be available on the next software update. Check out the official website here, and pics of people trying it out here. It's suppose to be released this fall and no one seems to know what the pricing will be. I'm assuming it won't be that cheep.

Coolest site ever

The site EYE-PROJECT , takes video clips and pictures people post, then maps them out to create 1 big video or still image. Each video clip/picture that acts as a pixel, is posted by anyone along with a message. Ludicrous! this takes the Mona Lisa to the next level bitches!!! video creating video, luckily we have the bandwidth, but if you don't it'll take forever.

Type ring

Super cool type writer rings. It looks like a real type-ball from the electric typewriters. But if you look closely, it's not actually from the real type-balls. The letters are facing wrong way. The real ones would be flipped, reading backwards. That way when you punch someone in the face you'll be able to read the letters on their forehead correctly. This is the link to artist who created these.

Magic Wheel

Found this alternative to the scooter, it says you can go up to 20 mph on this thing but i don't know. Check out this page, for more details and a video which shows some losers riding around. I'm holding out for a mini-longboard skateboard.

Word of the day: Plethora

I love it when movies entertain us, while teaching us at the same time. The Three Amigos is a classic comedic flick with a plethora of insights.

Deutsch bank fire

I just so happened to be by the WTC site on Saturday at the same time of the Deutsch bank fire. There was a really bad burning plastic smell, and tons of tourist standing around watching. Two fire fighters died from carbon monoxide poisoning. I learned that the Deutsch bank building is in the process of being demolished, but has taken over 6 years because of all the asbestos contained in the structure. That morning, before the fire, my friend said to me that the weather felt oddly similar to the weather on 9-11.