hail from 2011

glitchy beeks

Glitch yours here.

Hoss

Meet Hoss. He is a thumbnail hidden somewhere in my MP3 folder. This is the view I get when I look at the parent directory of my MP3s. It's obviously a Lagwagon album, but I don't have that album in my collection. It must be mistakenly associated with some folder or MP3. I have no idea, I have never been able to find him or figure it out. He's been with me for at least 7 years and I don't see him going anywhere anytime soon.

albums of the aughts (+1)

oooooooh yeah! Has it really been 1 year since my last attempt to bring the blog back?! Oh well... here we are. It happened. I blame twitter. This could be my last hurrah, but I want to have another go at it. Who knows? At the very least, I want make sure my "albums of the decade" posts see the light of day. We'll see what happens.


To kickoff the return, over the next 11 days I'll be listing my top 5 albums for each year of the 2000's, followed by my picks for 2010. This post is so old, it's not even lame anymore. It's Starter jackets. I've thought about this list for nearly 2 years (unfortunately), so at least I feel very comfortable with my picks. I tried to stay true to what my level of appreciation was in each of the corresponding years, while also adjusting for lasting the test of time. This is a list of "my favs", not a "best of". Please share your thoughts.

beek is back! Part II: The Evil Magician

Office Depot nonbargains

I absolutely hate shopping at Office Depot, but sometimes I crave the variety they offer. Anyway... I thought I would swing by the pens aisle and see if they had my Pilot G-2 07 black pens on sale. Well... it had a yellow tag, but after further investigation... it was the exact opposite of a sale. Way to take advantage of parents shopping for their kids' back to school crap. Ass clowns.

parkway time

I forgot I had this pic. I took it with my phone while I was on the Parkway going to the airport in Pittsburgh. If you can see it in the red circle, this friendly motorist has a digital clock facing out his back window. Purpose? Your guess is as good as mine. It definitely didn't help relieve my anxiety about getting to the airport on time.

LBJ GNV

Look... sometimes I have random consecutive thoughts. I heard about Lebron James' MVP shirt he was wearing, which is a spin-off of the RUN DMC logo... but reminded me of Less Than Jake's GNV FLA cover art. So I mashed them together. That's how we got here. I really don't know what all of this means.

hibernation complete.

I can't believe I've only had 2 posts in the last 3 months! Ridiculous. Unacceptable. I suppose twitter sorta filled the void for me with sharing websites and thoughts, but my blogging hibernation was mainly because of my focus on finishing my PhD. And... I'm happy to say that I successfully defended my dissertation last week and things are looking up for me. That was a huge stress relief. I'm amazed at how poorly I handled stress the past few months and what an unhappy person I had become. It taught me a good bit about myself and it was a much greater mental struggle than I had bargained for. I'm forever grateful to my family and friends for their support and putting up with my miserable ass.

Now I'm back to my original form and the buffoonery has returned. I have a lot of rants and ideas built up, so I'll be back to my regularly scheduled blogging from this point on. Thanks for bearing with me... now let's have some fun!

git happy!

I know I've been neglecting the blog, but I'll be back soon in full force. Until then... check me out on twitter... and GIT HAPPY!

Remembering products without commercials

I started my day (like usual) by going to hulu and watching last night's Daily Show with Jon Stewart. And shows on hulu always begin with "The following program is brought to you with limited commercial interruption by _____." But this time it said "...with NO commercial interruption by VISA." Excellent! And that got me thinking (and blogging) that VISA chose to not waste my time with ineffective, throwaway commercials, but rather just proposed the slogan "Let's go commercial-free." Is this not admirable? But with a giant company like VISA, they are taking little risk that they won't be remembered. Similar to how Radiohead took little risk in letting the buyer choose the price of their most recent album "In Rainbows". I doubt that other companies (like Fred Savage Sausage) would have the cohones to waste their advertising dollars on a 10 second uncommercial. But long commercials don't always work either. In fact, I saw the full frickin' trailer for Taken for about 2 weeks straight and I still had absolutely no urge to see Liam Neeson's "very particular set of skills".

Obviously, no commercials has been done before in some capacity. I remember some sponsors constantly on screen during the World Cup, for example. And they usually brag "without commercial interruption by ____". But what if more and more TV shows started going "commercial-free" or with purely product placement. Would it still be special? Will they reach a point where they overdo it and we actually don't even notice the companies that are making our lives commercial-free? I doubt we will ever get that far, but I still find it interesting to talk about... and I'm talking because VISA didn't show me a commercial this morning.

By the way, for those of you who didn't see Jon Stewart's interview with Jim Cramer last week, I highly recommend watching it.

provocative dog grooming (Dayton, OH)

ds2, originally uploaded by beekface.

The NHT has an official logo

(Now Hear This)

ice cube stalagmites!

Check it out! I found some stalagmites on my ice cubes! No drips from the ceiling or anything, so I was really creeped out. Apparently this phenomenon is known as ice spikes. I use bottled water for ice cubes, because my sink is absolutely disgusting. So I guess that was part of the reason. crazy crazy.

Amazon jobs

Amazon bottle, originally uploaded by beekface.

OK... this is really just a test post from flickr. I got a new BlackBerry and flickr is a lot slickr than Picasa on the phone, so I'll do phone uploads there. I'll provide the link later.

The other point I was going to make was that I was surprised to see Amazon at the Penn Sate Career Fair I went to last week. Surprised because it's a company that I've never seen physically represented, so that was neat. I just talked to them briefly, but it seemed like they only had jobs for Computer Science majors and some warehousing/distribution stuff (amazon.com/careers). I'm sure it's neat technical junk, but they said the only research facility they have is in Seattle, and I'm not looking to go there unless it's for Boeing. But I did snag a sweet water bottle, as seen in the pic. (Also, check out that geeky Valentine's robot I got! Its got a rad tie.)

A Reader Omen

It seems that I'm a little behind on my Metal Underground feed. Note taken!... please leave my soul alone.
Also, this is a good chance to share my "top" feeds (the ones I read every day). They're all highly recommended and let me know if you are curious about any.
What are your "top" feeds?

Letterman's Great Moments in Presidential Speeches Montage

Adios amigo.

geico is invading my brain!

In case anybody else got the "Somebody's Watching Me" remix by Mysto & Pizzi stuck in their head from the dozens of Geico commercials during football this weekend, here is the full track:

Nut Buttons

Why is this not the name of a punk band? Or maybe a pet name for a significant other? A curse word? How about a turtle? There are a lot of possibilities here and I'm glad that on January 5th, 2009 I said these two words consecutively.

What are your ideas?


(Best Week Ever)

flying in style

I guess these aren't that new, but there are official NFL planes for US Air with special team paint jobs. I believe they have ones for Phoenix, Charlotte, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh (for the Cardinals, Panthers, Eagles, and Steelers, respectively). I had a chance to fly in the Steelers plane from Orlando to Pittsburgh during Thanksgiving. The US Air employee even took this picture for me outside of the terminal so I didn't have to shoot through the glass.