new york new york

i went to new york city for the first time for a business trip last week & i'm excited to go back. not necessarily because it was everything i could ever want & more (though it was cool) but because i know there's so much more to see. i posted & mapped some pictures for your enjoyment. my snap judgments about the city will come later.

those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- benjamin franklin

a day on the farm

amy & i were invited to a weekend in southwestern kansas with rachel, dana & her boyfriend mark. mark is a crop consultant down there & one of his clients let us tag along on their corn harvest. we rode the grain cart, the combine & the truck that took the corn to the co-op for unloading. we were amazed at the efficiency & technology that goes into the process & the knowledge required for the good crops we city folk take for granted. being far removed from the sources of the objects of our consumption - food, clothes, computers, cars, etc. - allows us to lose sight of the fact that these things only get here because people are there to provide it. there is no longer a human element to the produce we buy. there is no longer a natural element because surrounded by the feats of man - buildings, infrastructure, machines - everything is seen as either a means or a hindrance to our own ends.

those are the thoughts, these are the pics.

kc air show

ames & i spent saturday at the kansas city air show strolling 'tween the planes & choppers, taking pictures & videos of everything i could. vml was great to us as they provided lunch & beer saving us over $50 so we didn't have to get the goods outside. i'll post more pics & vids as i can, but here's a little something to whet your appetite.

UPDATE: some pics from the weekend on my flickr site

jill long racing kent shockley's 3-jet engine equipped semi truck.



b-2 stealth bomber



harrier jump jet


a list of the planes i saw friday at work (and others) is here.

my sky is bluer than your sky

akin to highway cleanup sponsorships, adopt the sky has done the same for our friendly skies.

1984

when i first read george orwell's 1984 a couple years ago, it was more to understand (and partake in) the dystopian cultural references & themes than anything. [vain, i know. sue me.] one of the most fascinating parts throughout the novel was the telescreen, the tv that watches you, too. how did people let these things into their homes? and then, almost as if to answer that very question, comes this. it's an application designed by a handful of microsoft inventors that uses "cameras, remote controls and biometric sensors to detect the identity of the person viewing a TV, cellphone, or computer monitor display" in order to provide the most relevant advertising.

for example, amy's watching some gardening show on hgtv. this application will serve her ads promoting home depot's sale on plants & flowers. then i come home & turn on the history channel for some hoover dam/modern marvels action only to receive an vacation offer to the hoover dam. don't get me wrong, i'm all for contextual & relevant advertising. but there's gotta be a limit. seriously.

people: "wow, that's just like google does on the interwebs! that would be great! i'll take three, no, ten, and give them as christmas gifts!"

me: "oh, that's how the telescreens got in..."

i miss oregon

weirdos ftw.

thanks, wapo

quote

fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
- g.k. chesterton

thriller

michael jackson's early work (anything produced by quincy jones) is some of the best. music. ever. ever. thriller is not only the pinnacle of this portfolio, it's also the greatest selling album of all time. even as a kid i remember the novelty of this longer than usual song that was also a kind of short story. i even played the king of pop for halloween one year.

then i stumble on this. i've been to the philippines but i've never heard about life in a filipino prison so i can't actually vouch that this is the norm. i can, however, vouch that it's awesome and almost makes me want to serve a life sentence.

 
thank you thought bucket

bringing down the house

we finally got our house yesterday and we celebrated by dining on chipotle on the kitchen floor. and today, we followed up with tearing down the cabinet doors & related hardware. eventually we'll get around to painting over the original glaze circa 1962. that's 45 years of kitchen-nasty built up around hinges & hiding in cabinet nether-nooks.
  

good beer

i like good beer. that is, i like beer that is brewed to be enjoyed, not the glorified runoff made solely for overconsumption & non-sobriety. considering i learned to enjoy the brew in colorado & oregon, it all makes sense.

that said, i appreciate carlsberg's effort to prevent heinous ruinations of what is "probably the best beer in the world." i also appreciate, given my profession, a mockery of interweb fads.

faded

i came across this blog last week and it seemed to me that the blogger's observations only went so far.

he's talking about a new book entitled The Writing On The Wall: Economic and Historical Observations of New York's "Ghost Signs" put together by a 17 year-old son of a marketing prez. focusing on its industry for obvious reasons, ad age strolls through the biggest of apples with the book's author, ben, and his dad admiring & discussing the book's topic: fading advertisements. the cited ad age article learns:

“The lesson one gleans, however reluctantly, is that whatever seems absolutely immutable, isn't. Not what is advertised. Not how it is advertised.”

while i agree with him that neither products nor media are always permanent, we can't stop there. is anything on this earth "immutable," that is, it cannot be silenced, its "voice" lingering and our attention continuously in its hand?

if i think of myself as one of these signs, i can picture myself going in & out of mindshare (brightness of paint for the sake of the illustration) as i go through high school college and from town to town after that. in each community i'm in at the time, it rarely occurs to me that most of these people will likely forget who i am (or vice versa) within a period of time proportional to the depth to which i knew them (except in the strange cases when you remember someone who you don't remember, like victor in middle school). even so, i generally conduct myself in a way that will maintain my good legacy as if they'll remember me beyond their grave.

i'm going to bet that, when we're not thinking about it, we simultaneously believe ourselves and our actions to be immutable while knowing their finite, even shortlived, prominence. that's the longing for legacy: the building of tombs, the battling for territory and the unending pursuit of success that makes one's name great.

way back when, somebody made their living by these then-bright advertisements. others "learned" of their "need" from these now weary proclamations. these "ghost signs" presumably fulfilled their purpose for a time. they satisfied the needs of their makers only temporarily until other needs arose as the bigger & better arrived as it always does, always too soon. and so i have to ask myself (and my imaginary readers) how does (can?) one transcend the power of memory? how does one leave a legacy that inspires life, not fading into quaint, nostalgic wonder of irrelevant days.

wii need to exercise

 
as i previously mentioned i'm wanting to run a race in september and my current shape is softer rounder heavier than it should be. my plan was to commence a disciplined & specially formulated training plan and enjoy the results. to be honest, i haven't run since that initial post but ames & i have played a few games of tennis. not surprisingly, the former high-school tennis star has given this rookie a good runaround on the court. and then, as if to interrupt my precious momentum, comes this. the nintendo wii (which i've wanted since launch anyway) breaks out the geek-fitness accessory of the century. now, in lieu of my current humid-heat-assisted weight loss program i can jump around in the comfort of our own home.

UPDATE: now i really need a wii.

we're number one! we're number one!

turns out that my peeps are pretty good at getting new business. i'd like to say i had a hand in this but i wasn't here in '06. regardless, i consider myself fortunate to be among people whom other people want to work with. maybe someday i'll be someone someone wants to work with....

fat man running

i like to think i can take a hint. and i realize that since i've taken to office jobs in chairs all day, i've acquired what doctors call a little bit of a weight problem. so when i get two emails this week concerning running, i take notice. to start, i work for an awesome company that gives back to its community. 8am on september 9 will mark the beginning of the vml sponsored, 5th annual head for the cure and i fully intend to participate in this event. it's a fundraiser for brain cancer research and was started in memory of a former vml-er who died of said illness.

i stumbled on adidas' myspace page (it's work related, i promise), fill out a brief form and the next thing i know, i get an email from adidas welcoming me to the first week of my "customized training schedule." customized? i answered two questions, how can it be that customized? i appreciate their focused interest in my health & effective training regimen, but two criteria is no basis for the custom label. anyway, lesson one introduces the "warm-up." i'll let you know how that goes.

my goal is to write about the process in a sort of circular accountability deal: i run so i have something to write & write because the training letter reminded me to.

foreign hilarity

we americans are a proud folk. (ok, maybe i'm projecting my own inadequacies onto the population at large, but for the sake of my point, let's just roll with it.) we're self-conscious and aware of how others perceive ourselves. that's why we never see the same game show goodness as they get in japan. we like our bob barker and wearing our own clothes. i really think we're too proud of ourselves to look so goofy playing goofy games. we'd rather look cool and with it than have a little fun at our own (and others') expense. and it's kind of sad when you think about it. living life isn't important anymore. this isn't to say that we are without fun. youtube & karaoke wouldn't be around were that the case. but as a culture, we typically reject that which trades fun for foolishness. like i said, it's kinda sad when you think about it. so stop thinking about it and watch this hilarious japanese game show clip.

home movies clip of the week

"they taste like old man mouth"

google pwns all

we all know google is out to organize the world's information, but who knew they would do it by giving out usernames & passwords? i mean, for all you know, haxxor joe could be writing this entry just to screw around. it won't be a very long post because this is a pretty boring blog that nobody reads.

quote

why not go out on a limb, that's where the fruit is.
- mark twain

thank you, down the avenue

in the news

last week we (digital insights group at vml) were the featured subject of an article in the wall street journal. referring several times to the agility with which we handle the interwebs, they mention a couple high profile clients and the solutions our work provided them. it's a good 101 on what i do, even though i had nothing to do with the projects contained therein.

if nothing else, it's awesome pr for seer and vml. within mere days we (not me) had several calls from big companies with lots of money wanting us to work with them. apparently, people read the wall street journal.

thanks, ariel, for the pdf & image. if my blog made any money, i'd buy you cheesehead in return for your links.