It's Steve (now in blog form)

So I was inadvertently really obnoxious to one of the women in marketing today. I was headed back from a meeting and passed by the open swag closet. It seemed like a good idea to replenish my supply of MySpace paraphernalia (note: always a bonus when dealing with partners and staff to drop some swag here and there).

Anyway, one of the marketing ladies stuck her head while I was foraging in and hit me with a “Are you supposed to be in here?” Now here’s the problem. I had never seen her before. No idea who she was. That also means, she had no idea who I am or what I do. I’m sure I must have looked like some schmuck newbie employee stealing t-shirts. She was totally right to question me.

The problem is, I hit her back with “I’m Steve. I’m allowed to go pretty much anywhere I want here.” What a douchebag thing to say. From the look on her face, she clearly thought so too. So she walks off, I finish grabbing a goodie box, and now I feel bad for being a tool to her. Marketing girl, whoever you are, sorry for being a jerk.

I’m going to go home now and try not to say anything stupid for the rest of the day.

I love slow motion videos shot with high speed cameras. Here are some good ones.

Bullet through ballistics gel

Mixed bag
Water drips slowly
Sword cuts through bottle

Sword cuts through apple

Everybody likes popcorn

Ben and I watch a lot of PBS these days. I’ve come to the conclusion that most of the characters are designed to get kids comfortable with folks with severe personality disorders. A few of my favorites:

The Man in the Big Yellow Hat – The Man in the Big Yellow Hat is a tough one. My first assumption was that he has severe OCD. Everything I own has to be yellow or I’ll die. I have to wash my monkey eight times a day! etc. But OCD doesn’t explain the awesome New York penthouse, country house, or obvious lack of a regular job. I suspect that the MBYH is actually a NY boy toy for the theatrical crowd. It certainly explains his lifestyle, as well as the skin tight monochromatic threads and exotic pet. I love you, Andrew Lloyd Weber…

The Count – Now this guy definitely has OCD. I am counting the grains of sand on this beach. Ha ha ha ha It can’t be easy to fit into Sesame Street dressed like a pimp with that sort of rampant compulsion. Ten! Ten socially awkward situations! ha ha ha ha

Cookie Monster – It’s good that kids are getting prepared to run into heroin addicts on the street. What I like is when he actually gets the cookie, there is a brief moment of triumph followed by obvious self-loathing and remorse for what he’s become. Ride the dragon, Cookie Monster.

Thomas The Tank Engine – I can’t explain it, but these freakin’ trains just creep me out. If you’re going to anthropomorphize something, do it right. These are just animated enough to highlight how dead they are behind the eyes. Bad bad bad

Mickey Mouse – Sociopath to the core. He’s compelled to lie and self-aggrandize for no good reason. Why do you think everything in the world is in the shape of his head? He’s maniacally insane and driven to a single end of getting you to buy merchandise. He doesn’t really love you, no matter what he tells you to try and get you into the clubhouse.

Bob the Builder – The show isn’t very entertaining, but the message is pretty stable. Most of his dilemmas involve wanting to be a better craftsman. Sure, the fact that his equipment talks to him is a pretty clear indication of either dementia or meth abuse, a common affliction of the modern construction worker, but Bob isn’t a bad guy. Bravo, Bob.

They are so majestic. We must organize a field trip immediately. Anybody have a good reason we should visit the NY office?

Check out this video: Douchebag Beach

Soon I will have my power suit, and comeuppance will abound. COMEUPPANCE I TELL YOU!!

Check out this video: Robot Power Suit

I got some new tech toys recently. I’m really happy with one, the other is kind of stupid. Here goes:

The iPhone – This is kind of stupid. It does, however, do some stuff really well. We’ll talk good stuff first.

- The iPhone is the first to realize that applications should sit right on the desktop and not get shunted into some sort of weird file structure where they’re unfindable.

- Apple was also smart enough to route billing through iTunes rather than the carrier. Sorry AT&T, no 40% of every transaction for you

- The MySpace app is really freakin cool. I have to say, it’s the best mobile product we’ve ever built.

The bad:

- Typing on the touch screen is going to make me insane. Hate it hate it hate it!

- I was thinking of using it as my main business mail device. Problem is that I get about 1000 emails a day, and Apple seems to have forgotten to include any sort of mail search. “Where’s that mail from Tom? I guess I’ll just scroll for the next 3 hours.” That’s dumb.

- The battery is apparently based on cutting edge fruitfly technology. I swear, a phone really needs to have enough charge to last through at least a work day. If you aren’t charging every time you sit down, consider yourself iPhone-less by about 5PM.

New Digital Camera: My other new toy was a fancy new digital camera. It’s the Exilim 10 MegaPixel

This thing is awesome.

- 10 Megapixel
- Small enough to go in your pocket
- Best Shot Modes include Ebay mode, YouTube mode, white board mode

Best part is the special shutter settings. It can be set to wait until the camera and subject are momentarily still before shooting. It will also recognize a face and wait until it smiles before snapping the pic. Super handy with Ben. It’s impossible to predict when kids will actually smile.

The pic below is kind of cool from the Roman sculpture area at the Louvre. My camera recognized all of these as faces.