Good Morning Internet

To all my friends here in the US, I hope you had a won­der­ful Thanks­giv­ing yes­ter­day, no mat­ter how you cel­e­brated it.

And to all of my friends out­side of the US, I hope you had an equally won­der­ful Thursday!

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I owe a lot of my inter­est in sci­ence and space explo­ration to my par­ents. Grow­ing up, my Dad took me on field trips to explore plan­ets and stars through tele­scopes in the dead of win­ter. My first up-close look at the Moon knocked my socks off. We put down blan­kets in the back­yard and counted mete­ors dur­ing show­ers. My par­ents bought sub­scrip­tions for me to kids’ sci­ence and space mag­a­zines, and I once got to spend a sum­mer at the the Mary­land Sci­ence Center’s plan­e­tar­ium in Baltimore.

A few years ago, when Mars and the Earth were closer to each other than they’d ever be in our life­times, my dad and I gazed at the Mar­t­ian polar ice caps through his tele­scope. It was stunning.

Just this past May, I was lucky enough to road trip down to Florida with my sis­ter and father to watch my first-ever space shut­tle launch, the launch of Space Shut­tle Atlantis, STS-132. Right now, I’m beside myself with excite­ment for the NASA Tweetup this weekend.

I’m so thank­ful that my par­ents intro­duced me to space at a young age. Just a few min­utes ago, I got this email from my dad:

The date for the next launch draws near and I’m excited even tho I’m not going! So I thought you might like to see this pic of your space shut­tle toy that I found clean­ing up today. Still in great work­ing con­di­tion!
0:-)

I totally remem­ber this toy. It was one of my favorites. Right now, I kind of want to go home and play with it.

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• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• 13 days until the NASA tweetup
• Video of this morning’s win­ter sol­stice lunar eclipse
• Seag­ull Cen­tury 2010
• The year of adven­ture continues

2009 was kind of a rough year for every­one. The econ­omy did a swan-dive into an empty pool and a lot of us lost our jobs.

This year, I declared, would be dif­fer­ent. While watch­ing Olympic hockey and a space shut­tle land­ing (I’m a mul­ti­tasker), I could tell this year would be filled with adven­tures. And wow, yes, it sure has. It’s been bet­ter than I had imag­ined, and I feel so lucky to have had so many expe­ri­ences this year. A quick ver­bal montage:

• Sur­vived the snowpocalypse
• Played a reunion show with Three Track Mind
• Turned 30
• Went to South by Southwest
• Saw the final (sched­uled) launch of Space Shut­tle Atlantis
• Went to MaxFunCon
• Quit an unful­fill­ing job
• Watched the World Cup
• Watched fire­works from my roof
• Met Tom Green
• Found an amaz­ing new job
• Started my sec­ond year of grad school

And now it’s Octo­ber. It’s autumn, my favorite sea­son, and I still have a few adven­tures before the year wraps up. Next week­end, I’m bik­ing 100 kilo­me­ters in the Seag­ull Cen­tury. In Novem­ber, I’m one of the lucky ones going to the NASA Tweetup for Space Shut­tle Discovery’s last trip to space. (That’s right: Two shut­tle launches in one year!) A week later I get to see my all-time favorite band, The Posies, play in DC. And then it’s the holidays.

I feel so incred­i­bly lucky. As I write this, I’m sit­ting at the same table where I was back in Feb­ru­ary, day­dream­ing about all these adven­tures. I couldn’t be hap­pier with how every­thing turned out. 2010 has been filled with expe­ri­ences, friends, and fam­ily I wouldn’t trade for anything.

What was your favorite adven­ture of 2010? How do you plan on top­ping it in 2011?

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• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• I’m lead­ing a panel at SXSW Interactive!
• The Posies at the 9:30 Club
• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• 13 days until the NASA tweetup

I saw the Posies for the very first time on June 26, 1996 dur­ing the tour for Amaz­ing Dis­grace. I was 16 years old and it was my first show at the 9:30 Club in Wash­ing­ton, DC. They played with an infec­tious inten­sity that fed the crowd, all of us fans who knew every word to every song. We delighted in the small vari­a­tions of the live ver­sions, pressed up against the stage as we savored each supremely loud note.

After an encore in which they destroyed their gui­tars and drum set, we still didn’t have enough. The club turned on its lights and brought up the house music. We didn’t leave. We cheered and chanted. The tech crew packed away the micro­phones and broke down what was left of the drums. About half of the audi­ence cleared out and left the rest of us beg­ging fool­ishly for more. Ken stepped back on stage, plead­ing with us, explain­ing they just destroyed their equip­ment and couldn’t play another encore. For some rea­son, that didn’t seem like a good enough excuse. We stood firm and he ducked backstage.

Moments later, some­one brought out a pair of stools, fol­lowed by Jon Auer and Ken Stringfel­low, armed with acoustic gui­tars. They asked us sit on stage with them. Then, as if know­ing exactly what we wanted to hear, they dug deep into their cat­a­log, took requests, and even cov­ered “I Am the Cos­mos” and “Sur­ren­der”. And then, finally, after essen­tially giv­ing us two com­plete shows in one, they exited the stage for the last time.

In the months that fol­lowed, I learned all of their songs on my gui­tar. I exper­i­mented with the crazy alter­nate tun­ings they used. I con­nected with some­one on the Dear 23 mail­ing list who sent me a tape of the show, recorded right off the 9:30 Club sound­board. I started to write my own songs. Because of that show, I got more seri­ously into music than I had been before. I was furi­ous that their tal­ent and on-stage charisma hadn’t brought the Posies the super-stardom so many mediocre artists enjoyed at that time, but secretly I was happy that nobody else in my school lis­tened to them. I felt like I was in a secret club. I became obsessed with find­ing other rel­a­tively unknown and obscure bands. My friends would joke that I car­ried around a book of CDs that “no one ever heard of.”

After the “Amaz­ing Dis­grace” tour, it was a few years before the Posies returned to DC. I saw them at both the the old and new Black Cat on acoustic and full-band tours. I saw Ken Stringfel­low open for Juliana Hat­field. I saw Jon Auer on his solo tour. Most recently, at SXSW this year, I saw Jon and Ken, also mem­bers of Big Star, per­form in the trib­ute to Alex Chilton mere days after his shock­ing and unex­pected death.

On Wednes­day, Novem­ber 17, the Posies return to the 9:30 Club with Bren­don Ben­son and Aque­duct. That’s a ridicu­lously cool lineup. It’s going to be a sort of home­com­ing for me, a return to the spot where my love of music and live per­for­mances began half a life­time ago.

Tick­ets just went on pre-sale.

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From my rooftop, we had a panoramic view and could see every fire­work set off in the city. On the left-hand side of this photo, you can see fire­works over the Inner Har­bor. On the right-hand side,  you can see fire­works set off by criminals.

I hope you had a happy and safe Inde­pen­dence Day. Now get back to work!

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A few moments ago, while get­ting ready for work, I checked the weather and saw this forecast:

It’s sup­posed to hit 104 degrees today. That’s 40º C for those of you who speak metric.

Last week, the air con­di­tion­ing in my cor­ner of the office didn’t work very well. I hope some­one fixed it over the weekend. 

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A few years ago, I started buy­ing glasses online and haven’t looked back since. The prices are far cheaper than what I had found in doc­tors’ offices or eye­wear store­fronts, and the qual­ity has been just as high. An excel­lent resource for research and ven­dor reviews is the blog Glassy Eyes, which turned me on to a cou­ple of great online retailers.

This time, I tried some­thing new and went with a com­pany called Warby Parker, which I first heard of from Put This On. Warby Parker’s selec­tion is great and very well-priced at $95. I picked out a pair of frames called Hux­ley, entered my pre­scrip­tion, and checked out.

Within an hour, I got a phone call from Brian at Warby Parker. He believed I might have made a mis­take when enter­ing my pre­scrip­tion because of the huge dif­fer­ence between my right and left eyes (+0.75 sphere and +1.25 cylin­der in the right, +5.00 sphere and +1.50 in the left). He said they rarely see a dis­crep­ancy that large between eyes, which I can believe. I’m special.

No, I assured him, my left eye is actu­ally that much weaker than my right eye, but thanks for point­ing out my short­com­ings. (My exact words were, “Thanks for double-checking!”) I’d never had a com­pany con­firm my pre­scrip­tion before, so I was simul­ta­ne­ously bewil­dered, embar­rassed, and impressed with their swift attention.

Brian emailed me a cou­ple hours later. He said it would cost an addi­tional $30 for the high-index lenses needed. That’s a pretty stan­dard charge, and the new total ($125) was still far lower than what it would be at a glasses shop, so I agreed.

A lit­tle over a week later, I received a voice­mail from Katie at Warby Parker. She apol­o­gized for the delay, but they were finally giv­ing up. My pre­scrip­tion was out of their lab’s range.

How­ever, In order to apol­o­gize for the delay and ulti­mate inabil­ity to ful­fill my order, they sent me the the Hux­leys for free so I can have the lenses made by another com­pany. A cou­ple days later, the frames arrived via Pri­or­ity Mail, and they looked fan­tas­tic. The hinges felt sturdy, the plas­tic durable, and they looked sharp on my big head.

Though they weren’t able to com­plete my order, Warby Parker gave me some of the most per­sonal, atten­tive cus­tomer ser­vice I’ve ever encoun­tered. I always felt like some­one was han­dling my pre­scrip­tion with care and that their pri­mary con­cern was mak­ing me happy. I don’t remem­ber the last time a com­pany made me feel that way. Swoon.

If you’re look­ing for a pair of glasses, I highly rec­om­mend you check them out. Their frames are of excel­lent qual­ity, and you will have peo­ple like Brian and Katie work­ing to make sure your pre­scrip­tion is done right. My only hope is that they can part­ner with a lab capa­ble of ful­fill­ing stronger pre­scrip­tions for those of us with weak eyes.

So, does any­body know a good place that can put lenses into exist­ing frames?

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I started two exper­i­ments last week, which I talked about on my last pod­cast episode. The goals are to go a month with­out eat­ing out or watch­ing tele­vi­sion. The ideas seemed sim­ple and I hoped they would save me money and open up hours of time for cre­ativ­ity and productivity.

Over the course of one week­end, I’ve already bro­ken all my rules. This is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

I think I picked the absolute worst pos­si­ble set of 30 days to try these exper­i­ments. Almost imme­di­ately, I added an excep­tion to the “no TV” rule for World Cup games. I still think that’s a valid excep­tion, see­ing how the World Cup comes around once every four years. But that some­how acted as a gate­way to me watch­ing five episodes of Mad Men this week­end, too.

Simul­ta­ne­ously, I failed on the “don’t eat out” front. Like the World Cup, I was lured away from my goal (Ha!) of avoid­ing restau­rants and sav­ing money by Dukem, an amaz­ing Ethiopian restau­rant in Mt. Ver­non. I jus­ti­fied the expense and vio­la­tion of my newly-formed rule with two excuses. First, I was out with friends. Sec­ond, it was Fri­day and the first day of the World Cup. If those weren’t rea­sons to cel­e­brate, I rea­soned, noth­ing was.

The flood­gates opened. It was Hon­fest in my neigh­bor­hood all week­end, and my willpower suc­cumbed to the food ven­dors. Guilty and slightly depressed about fail­ing, but also angry at myself for choos­ing the most incon­ve­nient month for these exper­i­ments, I went home and sunk a few more hours into World Cup view­ing, men­tally re-writing the rules to add an “except on week­ends” clause to my rules.

But this morn­ing, with renewed resolve, I’m tack­ling my goals again. I will bring my lunch with me to work every day. Episodes of Mad Men and the queue of TV shows I have lined up on Net­flix will have to wait. I’m going to cook for myself every night. The take-out menus have been placed out of sight to pre­vent fur­ther lapses.

Sure, I stum­bled hard this first week­end. But for the rest of the 30 days, I’m going to buckle down, focus, and see if I can spend more time cre­at­ing things while wast­ing less money and time.

Except for World Cup games. I’d hate myself for skip­ping those.

Oh, and new episodes of Futu­rama, of course.

I’m screwed.

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Look, Com­cast, we need to talk.

It’s been a wild few years. I invited you into my home at a time when I lived in a small base­ment stu­dio apart­ment and needed Inter­net access. I had been with DSL for a few months, but we both knew I was just set­tling. You promised me more chan­nels than I had ever seen in one place, many in star­tling, breath­tak­ing clar­ity. I ditched Ver­i­zon and signed up with you and your attrac­tive pro­mo­tional rate.

I was so naïve back then.

Let’s face the facts. I tried to love your dig­i­tal cable ser­vice. I pre­tended not to care when the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel dropped out, some­times for days, even when you tried to blame it on me.

Maybe I should have lis­tened to my friends. They tried to warn me about you, but I couldn’t resist the way you streamed Net­flix in HD.

Over the course of our rela­tion­ship, you sent me five faulty cable boxes. Five! Who does that? When­ever some­one came to swap equip­ment, you charged me thirty bucks. It should have only taken me two or three ser­vice appoint­ments to real­ize you had no respect for me.

Also, your embar­rass­ingly out-of-date user inter­face should have been a major red flag.

Oh, remem­ber when I moved to a new apart­ment in a dif­fer­ent neigh­bor­hood? You acted like you didn’t even know me and raised my rates with­out warn­ing. Sure, I tried to call and talk to you about it, but you put me on hold. For over an hour. I believed you when you said my call was impor­tant to you, but now I’m not so sure.

Don’t get me wrong, we had some great times, too! You still have the fastest broad­band in the city. Remem­ber all those movie trailer down­loads? The hours spent play­ing Xbox? The HD movie rentals? They wouldn’t have been the same with­out you. And you have a great crew of peo­ple on Twit­ter cov­er­ing for you.

I’m a dif­fer­ent per­son now. Insanely fast down­stream used to be enough for me, but now I need some­thing more. I need reli­a­bil­ity and con­sis­tency. I need to know my rates won’t change arbi­trar­ily. I need some­one I can count on for Inter­net access with­out always try­ing to turn it into a Triple Play.

I’d ask you to please not call with your “spe­cial offers”, and I’d ask you to not mail me glossy ads of happy-looking peo­ple enjoy­ing your ser­vices. But I know you’ll do those things anyway.

I’m box­ing up your things, and I’ll drop them by your office on my way home from work. Hope­fully, we can end this with civil­ity and with­out mak­ing a scene.

But if you charge me with a “Break-Up Fee”, I’m call­ing the police.

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Photo by Flickr user ragnar1984

I turned six on March 6, 1986. I was fas­ci­nated with how often the num­ber six was involved with my birth­day that year, prob­a­bly because I had recently fig­ured out num­bers and patterns.

Here in Mary­land, we often have our first spring-like days around my birth­day, and in 1986 it was warm enough to have my birth­day party outside.

It was a Smurfs-themed birth­day party. There were Smurfs plates, Smurfs cups, and a plas­tic Smurfs table­cloth with a waxy tex­ture that, for some rea­son, I can still remem­ber clearly.

There was a gang of six-year-olds run­ning around the back­yard. We played Pin the Tail on the Don­key out­side under the warm March sun­light, the game hung on an out­side wall. My par­ents had dec­o­rated the back­yard patio with stream­ers and bal­loons, some even in the nearby trees, which to my six-year-old eyes seemed out­ra­geous and excit­ing. That might have also been the year we set up plas­tic bowl­ing pins and con­verted a hall­way into a bowl­ing lane, but that game might be from another child­hood birth­day that I’m blend­ing into this one.

Though it was Smurfs-themed party, with almost all dec­o­ra­tions and acces­sories fol­low­ing a Smurfy blue color scheme, I was adamant that I have a green birth­day cake. I think my mom tried to talk me out of it, but I was res­olute. (Again, I might be pluck­ing that detail from another birth­day, but I’m pretty sure it’s right.)

24 (!) years later, we’re expe­ri­enc­ing a mix of rain and snow mix today. But right on sched­ule, the tem­per­a­tures are expected rise into the 50s with sunny skies on my birth­day this Sat­ur­day. I’m not sure why the first signs of spring seem to usu­ally coin­cide with my birth­day (or, let’s be hon­est, everybody’s early-March birth­day in Mary­land), but I’ll take it. It seems like a good way to kick off a new year and decade.

I’m not sure what made me think about my sixth birth­day, but it was def­i­nitely one of my favorites. I think it set the tone for what I expected out of all sub­se­quent birth­days. While I won’t be play­ing Pin the Tail on the Don­key this week­end (mostly because I couldn’t fig­ure out how to fit that into my plans with­out seem­ing like a big weirdo), I’m excited about warmer weather and a week­end spent with friends and family.

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