I had a burst of creative energy last weekend and put together a couple new music demos of progressions that have been in my head, and occasionally been plinked on my guitar, for awhile now. Check ‘em out. The new ones are Fade and Rising. I would like feedback as I develop these songs — so feel free to leave comments (on this post is fine), constructive critique, etc. Keep in mind that the purpose of demos like these are simply to give an idea of what the music might sound like. They are undeveloped, and currently do not include little niceties like vocals, musical bridges, intros, cool finishes, etc.

Almost anyone working in Office-America has used PowerPoint to create a presentation of some sort. There is an 80% chance that said presentation was nothing less than painful to the recipient audience — unless the author was one of the 20%’ers out there who are learned in the ways of PowerPoint zen. I have been an 80%’er in the past, and have created my share of eyeball bleeding, bullet-point-strewn, “good lord, when will this be over” presentations. However, now I have no excuse; and soon shan’t you either. Check out this fantastic PowerPoint presentation (somewhat paradoxically) on how to create great PowerPoint presentations. Talk about walking the walk…

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I know… it is a sad time for video resume lovers the world over. I admit it. I did it. I removed the video resume that brought me so much undue fame acknowledgment. I figured nobody would even notice, but mere days after I did the nefarious deed, my friend David Cohen relayed his tale of grief, that he had tried in vain to show it to a friend.

Why would I do such a rash thing, you might ask? Well, for one the video was over a year old – which, in Internet time, puts it in about the same bin as animated gifs and Ace of Base. Besides that, I am no longer looking for a job, and haven’t been since about a month after I posted the video. So to have an outdated video resume floating around seems counterintuitive. Oh, and I swore if I received one more YouTube comment approval notice for a viagra ad, porn site, or other spamtacular post on my work of art grainy webcam opus, bad things were going to happen. Very bad things. *dun-dun-duuuuuun*

Yes, I even made this abnormally cute, fuzzy thing cry. Ok, I admit it, I just wanted a good excuse to post the photo of this abnormally cute, fuzzy thing. Hopefully it will offer you some consolation in this matter. Enjoy.

My cousin’s five month old cocker spaniel puppy apparently took a liking to the taste of margaritas. At this year’s family holiday festivities we all turned around to find her slamming one down!

As with most “moments” these days, the incident was captured on video:

And here’s a paparazzi photo capturing her muzzle deep in the sauce:

After reading my friend Adam’s blog post about an unstable, emo minivan driver who doesn’t let his clear misunderstanding of the unwritten rules of the road stop him from being a model anger-management poster child jerk, I was in the process of writing a response comment and decided it was more suited to a blog post. Read his post first, and then see my response:

Admittedly, I get aggravated at times when people drive “too slow” in the far left lane, as it is universal driving code a weak suggestion that the left lane of a highway is reserved for Autobahn longers and Andretti wannabes, as advised by the signs that read “Slower Traffic Keep Right”. But, this second lane my friend speaks of is what is referred to as the “kiss-my-ass lane”, for if you want to travel 55 mph in that or any other lane right of the leftmost, that is your pedal pressing prerogative. I would like to see said minivan survive against the Porsches and Audis traveling the leftmost lane of the Autobahn. Good game, sir. Minivan FTL. But I digress… the small-statured minivan driver was clearly in the wrong and I give my friend a slap on the butt followed by a verbal “good hustle” for holding his ground in the no-man’s-land lane against this perpetrator of universal driving code.

His situation reminds me of the time on 400N when I saw an SUV driver pull out a hand-gat (looked to be about a .45 caliber handgun cum rocket launcher) and point it out the driver side window at the operator of a smaller vehicle who he had an obvious disagreement with moments earlier over left-lane speed. No shots were fired, but it was proof positive that there are people driving on my road who would benefit from professional counseling. I wonder how easy it would be to mount aircraft guns on the front of my car…

Amazon.com has finally debuted their new iTunes competition: AmazonMP3. Well, okay, it’s not the most creative name, but I am impressed thus far with the product offering:

• MP3’s encoded at 256 kbps – yes, that’s good. We like high-fidelity sound.
• DRM-free – translation: no copy protection, so you are free to put it on whatever device you wish
• 89 cents per song – for more than half of the catalog, and slightly more for other songs. I saw some that were 99 cents. That’s still way cheaper than iTunes’ $1.30 per song for DRM-free MP3’s

I downloaded a couple songs today and it was smooth as butter. The only sticky point for me was that I had mixed emotions about the downloader applet. I like it better than iTunes as far as it’s simplicity, but I can’t help but feel like it is not necessary. Anytime I have to install a program (or applet) on my computer for something as simple as downloading a music file, I feel like there is something wrong with the picture. Less is more!

That aside, I will be using Amazon to download my mp3’s. Thank you, Amazon, for listening to my consumer voice and giving me what I want: DRM free MP3’s at a reasonable price. Apple, please take note. Amen.

Step 1: Go to Jott.com and create an account.
Step 2: Program the Jott phone number (1-866-JOTT-123) into your mobile phone.
Step 3: Whenever you need to write a note, send yourself a reminder, or add snake oil to the grocery list; you simply call the number and leave yourself a Jott. The note is then transcribed and sent to your email (and/or sent as a text message to your phone, if you choose). You can also send the Jott to other people in your address book.

What makes this the best little web app ever ever ever?

First of all it’s simple and effective, which is always a good thing.

Second, it transcribes your voice note and emails it to you. “Are you kidding me?” No, I’m serial [sic]. In fact, I am blown away at the accuracy of the transcription. You can even spell out a word and it knows not to transcribe “…that’s spelled S-H-I-H space T-Z-U”, but instead it appears properly in the transcribed sentence, “the quick brown shih tzu jumped over the fence.” Foxy.

No longer do I need to tell someone, “send me an email and remind me” when I am not in a position to make a note. I can just Jott it in about twenty seconds. Heck, if you want, you can even use Jott to send a message directly to your Twitter blog. If you haven’t already, you owe it to yourself to start using this wonderful new tool.

I won’t say that I’m famous, but my mug made it onto national television this morning for about five seconds (check out the video in the upper-right corner). Now, if I can just find another ten seconds somewhere to round out my requisite fifteen…

Right around time 00:48 in this video of a segment that aired on Good Morning America you’ll see a clip from the video resume that has brought me so much attention from the newspapers. It is interesting how the stories have shifted from reporting on how great and cutting edge video resumes are to how they really don’t work all that well at landing a job. It’s like they’re their own little dot com bubble!

Seriously though, a video resume is merely an accessory to help present an image of the candidate. If anyone lands a job simply because they had a good video resume, I would be disappointed in the hiring company. The more relevant question to ask is, “did you get an interview as a result of your video resume?”

Yet another newspaper has decided that they like my video resume! I was featured in an article in today’s Atlanta Journal & Constitution on video resumes. If I were looking for a job, I should try to get one with a newspaper company after seeing their affinity for my webcamming. There was an unfortunate error in the article which falsely claims I was offered the job that I created the video resume for. I was not offered the job and am not sure why the AJC misrepresented that fact. There is a time line mistake, as well. Despite the inaccuracies, it was a good article and I was featured in far more of it than I would have expected. The full color photo on the front page of the AJC Jobs section was a nice touch, too. Papa, my paternal grandfather, unknowingly discovered the photo and article this morning and called my parents around 7:30am because he was so excited. Hearing about that made my day.

7/26/2007 Update: I asked the AJC to correct the error asap. They will be running a correction bit in next Sunday’s paper and they have already corrected the online article.

8/09/2007 Update: Here is the correction bit that the AJC ran in the July 29th newspaper.

Thanks to The Amazing Kemp (that should be her stage handle, anyway), I now have some fun headshots to begin making my portfolio. So far, this one is my favorite. I touched it up a little in Photoshop as well as made it black and white. You can click on the thumbnail for a larger image.