In a day and age where people are tending to stray away from online handles and go by their real names, it’s interesting that we still use our old handles from 17 years ago. I find that fascinating.

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When she came up for Jess’s birthday party in December, she was a little late. We did think anything of it since anyone who knows Jess’s family know that they are collectively late about 98% of the time. It’s like gravity; that’s just a fact and it’s not going to change for anyone. Anyway, we never thought twice about it until we all got together later in the month for our belated Christmas. At my mother-in-law’s house, Jenn handed Jess a standard clothing box and said this was for both of us. I was intrigued since not too many people know we tend to wear each others underwear quite often. (let’s just forget I just typed that) When Jess opened up the box it was full of paperwork. At first I thought Jenn was trying to pass off some work onto us, when Jess started to really look at it. Here, when she was late to Jess’s birthday party, she was really shopping for us in downtown Wilkes-Barre. In this box were gift certificates to the local theater downtown, our favorite thai restaurant Thai Thai, and Barnes & Noble. Not only was this cool since all of these locations were on the same block downtown, but in with the certificates was a note from Jenn stating that this was a ‘date night’ and that she would come up when we decided to use these and babysit Jackson for the day. Awesome!

Flash forward to yesterday. We finally cashed in our Christmas present. In the morning we woke up, got dressed, and headed to Gavin’s baseball game. It has rained all morning, but by the time his game started at 11:30am, the sun was out and the skies were blue. We watched his game, and right at the end of the last inning, we left to go meet Jenn who was at our home. Since the field is only across the street from our house it was not that far to travel. About 1/4 of the way home, we met Jenn who was walking over to see us. We all walked back and gave Jenn the 10 minute down and dirty tour of Jackson’s world and what to expect. By 1:20pm, we were in the car, on the way to the theater to see ‘Iron Man 2′, and our official date night had started.

The movie, first and foremost, was awesome. Granted, I would have to say that I like the first one better simply for the fact that I LOVED watching him build his suit. But no matter how you look at it, the second movie kicked ass! After the movie, neither one of us was too hungry, so we walked over to Barnes & Noble. This is where a hilarious and weird thing happened.

As per our usual protocol when entering a book store, we walk in together and quickly go our separate directions. As much as we love each other, our tastes in literature rarely overlap. Usually I’m starships and Stargates, while she’s more, well, anything else really. So, we go our separate ways and browse. I head right for the Sci-Fi/fantasy section, my usual favorite place in any book store. While browsing, nothing really caught my eye. As I was looking at the last rack of books, one did catch my eye. The book was ‘Flash Forward’ by Robert J. Sawyer. This is the book the television series of the same name was based on. I know the book differs from the TV series since David Hewlett talked about it on Twitter while he was reading it. Since we had gift cards, and I didn’t have to worry about hitting my back coffers up to purchase this tome, I grabbed it and continued my browsing.

After another 20 minutes or so of browsing, I happen to run into my wife in the back of the store. I noticed she had a book in her hand. We walk over to each other to see what each of us had found. When we go about 6 feet away we both started laughing. Somehow, some way, without every discussing it, we both had picked the EXACT same book out to purchase. What the hell are the odds of that? Now, I can understand this event if we had talked about picking up the book the next time we were out. But to my knowledge, we have NEVER talked about the book at all, let alone buying it at some point. After laughing about how creepy and funny this event was, we ended up spending another 30 minutes or so looking at more books and left the store with a nice bounty of new editions for our bookshelves. After this, we headed straight for dinner at Thai Thai.

Dinner there was amazing as always. I decided to feast upon the ginger duck, and Jess had a whole, fried fish. Funny story about the fish actually. After Jess ordered the fish, our waitress came back over to our table about 2 minutes later and asked if she wanted the whole fish — fins, head, tail and all — or just fillets. My wife, not only being the adventurous type, but am amateur foodie as well, opted for the whole shebang. Impressed with her decision, I applaud he choice. Then a few minutes later, a look of dread come over her face. She had never asked how big said whole fish was. What if they bring our this huge 4ft fish that requires a separate table just to present it? What if it’s so big that every time she cut into it, the kinetic force of her knife make the tail flop and hit’s the fine couple siting next to us? Worried about being presented by a possible ichthyosaurs, she calls the waitress back over and inquires about the size of said fish. Much to her delight, she is told the fish will only be about 14″ long. Crisis overted.

After dinner, we go to do some more shopping and are home by 8pm. After thanking Jenn for watching Jackson all afternoon, she heads back home to New Jersey and we relax with Jackson for an hour or two. I say an hour or two since Jackson was asleep by 10pm and we were both in bed by 10:45pm. Even though it was an early bedtime for all of us (totally by choice), we had an awesome day!

Today is Mother’s Day, and Jackson and I are letting Jess sleep in as late as she wants to. we’ve been playing in his room for the better part of an hour now. Today’s is my last day off for a week, so I think we’re all going to spend it relaxing around the house together. A perfect end, to a perfect weekend. Mission accomplished.

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I enjoy posting the wallpapers and they generate a lot of traffic, but I always thought having them on the front page of the site along with my blog entries detracted from the meaning of the blog posts. So, with a little bit of code, I have come to a happy compromise.

Wallpapers now have their own page, which can be accessed by clicking on the tab up top. In addition, you can now see what the latest wallpaper is by looking at the sidebar on the right. That will change automatically with every new wallpaper uploaded. All you need to do is click on the image and you’ll be transported to the entire wallpaper archive. So you see, the biggest change is that you won’t see the wallpaper posts on the main page anymore. If you’re concerned that you may miss a few, you can do one of two things. One, you can follow me on Twitter since I tweet every post (username: Twev1701) or you can go to the wallpaper page and subscribe to the wallpaper RSS feed. Either way, you’ll be notified as soon as a new wallpaper is posted.

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Back when I decided to start a moblog, I started it on a service called Buzznet. As a matter of fact, not only are they still around, but so is my original moblog. (insert link) It wasn’t until I started reading Kevin Rose’s blog that I got interested in TextAmerica. You see, back then he had just started using TextAmerica for his moblog, and always wanting to be on the bleeding edge, I got myself an account and started posting all my pictures there. Everything was fine and dandy. I really liked the service and it was pretty reliable. Then, in July 2006, they announced they were doing away with the free accounts all of us had grown to love and were going to start charging a fee to keep your account. Don’t quote me on this but I do believe that the fee was $99 a year. Then, to really piss people off, if you didn’t pay by a certain date, they deleted you free account. What a dick move, eh? Since that time, I have used flickr as my host for my moblog.

My original moblog on Buzznet still exists!

On a side note, TextAmerica didn’t last too long after that. They ended up shutting down in December 2007.

The old TextAmerica website

What I really miss about those days of using Buzznet and TextAmerica was the fun and newness of having a moblog. I used take pictures of anything and everything and throw it up there regardless if I thought someone might be interested or not. I tend to find myself catering to flickr users by constantly asking myself, “will they find this interesting?” before uploading a photo. I really need to reset my brain and go back to the mentality I had back when I first started my moblog. I should be posting photos because I like them, not because I’m hoping someone else will.

It’s almost the same thing I went through with Twitter a few months ago. I had to stop concerning myself with how often I tweeted and how many followers I had. Was I on Twitter for me or them? This is the way I need to approach my moblog from here on out. Back to basics.

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I need to be a better person.

Now, I’m not saying I’m a horrible person, although I am sure there are some out there who would disagree with me. What I need to be is more than I am right now. In 7 short months, I am slated to be a father. Having children is something I have always wanted whether I have admitted it in the past or not. But there is that underlying fear that I will not be good enough. They say the goal of every parent is to give their children a better life with more opportunities than what they had. I feel that I am up to the task, but at the same time, I am not naïve enough to think I’m not going to make some mistakes along the way. This got me thinking to something else that happened earlier today…

I was doing the dishes while Jess was making dinner when I commented about the shirt I was wearing. It was a shirt I purchased this past summer while on vacation in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time I had worn it since we got back from the trip in September. I accused my wife of shrinking it in the wash because it was rather tight on me. My wife gave me that wry smile that only a wife could give. “No honey, you’ve just put on a little more weight since then”, she explained. I had a hard time with this. I refused to believe I’ve put on enough weight to make a shirt I purchased 5 moths ago now tight on me. But, after thinking about it for a few seconds I knew she was right.

While I have come to the rationalization that I would rather be happy and slightly overweight than thin and miserable, there has to be a self-imposed cut off line. Becoming a father this year means I now longer have a choice in the matter. I need to be healthy enough to be around for my child. This was further reinforced about two hours ago when I was checking my friends on Twitter. One of the people I follow, David Hewlett, made a tweet about he and his son today. I also noticed that he changed his Twitter icon. Looking at his icon just solidified my what I had been thinking about since that comment. His picture is the kind of father I want to be. I can’t do that if I’m fat.

Onto a less visceral topic, I brought a new site design online tonight. It’s something I started working on last night and finished up this evening. I spent the last few hours tweaking it and making sure everything was 100% before bringing it online. As always, if you find any bugs, just throw me an email and I’ll get them fixed.

I also changed the background of my Twitter page tonight. I decided to finally sit down and make up a ‘bio’ background. Basically it’s just my contact information and some of the sites I run.

Thanks to the time change, it just went from 1:59am to 3:00am, so I think it’s time for bed. Audios!

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I’m going to be performing a social experiment. Will cutting off Twitter for 1 week make me more productive? I’ll let you know in 7 days 8^)

A blog post followed that message 48 hours later explaining the conditions of the experiment. After I posted that message on twitter, I shut off all cell phone notifications and didn’t load Twitter up 7 days even though I originally allowed myself to do it 3 times a day. I thought loading it up even once was like sneaking a cupcake after each meal while on a strict diet.

During my Twitter-less week, I did a lot. I got more done at work with less interruptions. Both at home and at work my cell phone vibrating with a new text message wasn’t constantly bothering me. Also while at home I wasn’t constantly feeling the need to reload Twitter to see what everyone was up to. After 3 days of this it really hit home that I was reading about what others were doing and spending more time tweeting about what I was doing than actually doing things. This was a lot of wasted time and productivity. For instance, during my week off I completely rearranged and rewired the living room, shopped and purchased a new car for my wife, spent less time in from of a computer screen literally doing nothing, started organizing our attic, and decorated for Halloween.

I’m sure you asking why I wouldn’t normally do those things if I was using Twitter the way I was before the experiment. The thing is, I would have gotten them done, but they would have been wrought with interruptions and delays. For instance, I was able to literally work or a solid 6 hours one day on the living room, without so much as a text message or Twitterrific chirping from the computer room. I was getting so much done without interruptions, that I continued my experiment for almost another few days after my original end date. My first post experiment tweet did not happen until the evening of September 21, 2008. Following that, it took another 4 days for me to post again, and this time it was a link to picture of Jess’s new car. I really didn’t start using Twitter again until September 26, 2008, and when I did decide to use it again, it was with a set of newly self-imposed rules.

My rules for my Twitter use are as follows:
1) I only check Twitter when I am not doing anything.
2) I only can have 2 people’s tweets going to my cell phone at any given time. Currently, this is my wife and Leo Laporte for TWiT updates.
3) I will only tweet from my cell phone when I am not doing anything. No longer will I stop or postpone the activity I am about to tweet about for the sake of tweeting. My case in point is my trip to the Renaissance Faire. I tweeted when we were leaving the house, and when we left the Faire. I never tweeted while there.
4) I can only use my web browser to check Twitter. No more using 3rd party programs like Twitterrific that update every few minutes.

To someone who doesn’t use Twitter, this all must sound like some sort of post addiction rant. In a way, it kind of is. I have what can be described as an ‘obsessive personality’. When I find something I like, I latch onto it for dear life. Twitter seemed to feed that monster something fierce.

So in the end, was my experiment a success? Did I find the answers I originally sought out? I would have to say ‘yes’ to both questions. I now use Twitter in a totally different fashion, and have come to appreciate it for what it should be used for – micro blogging. In the absence of Twitter, I found myself blogging a lot more. I had to remember that this is what I used to do before Twitter, and it should be what I continue to do with Twitter. The one thing I have changed slightly is now I log all my tweets from everyday on my blog, but they are not displayed for my readers. I like to think of this as a hidden archive for me to look through one day.

In the end, I have learned that Twitter is like all the finest things in life – great in moderation.

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On Tuesday night, I realized at about 7pm that I had spent most of my last day of vacation on the computer. Not that this is a bad thing, not an uncommon event in my life, but I had an epiphany. I had spent most of the day refreshing Twitter, and ready social sites. In essence, I had spent my day micro-blogging about doing nothing and reading about what everyone else was doing.

That’s really when it hit me. I didn’t do anything because I was watching, via text, what everyone else was doing all day. To me, this realization made me feel quite pathetic.

So, right then and there, I knew I had to make a change. Looking for the most extreme case of this behavior, I immediately thought of Twitter. Between tweeting and receiving tweets from all my friends, I typically log about a 1,000 text messages a month on my phone. I sat down and did the quick math. Making a typical tweet from my phone cost me about 20 seconds. Reading the average tweet should be about 5 seconds. In an atypical month, about 3/2 of my texts are received, and the remaining 1/3 are sent. That equals about 56 minutes a month reading tweets and almost 2 hours sending tweets from my phone.

No wonder I don’t get things done in the course of my day!

That was a no brainer. I quickly turned off text notifications from Twitter to my cell phone. Once I did that, I honestly felt a littler liberated. Feeling all powerful, I decided to kick it up a notch. I then decided not use Twitter for the next 7 days and see if I become more productive. All I will allow myself is the luxury to check Twitter 3 times a day via my computer at home. So far, I can honestly say I feel more productive, especially at work. It can get quite annoying when you’re trying to work and your pocket keeps vibrating. Even worse than a vibrating pocket is simply ignoring them. By the time I go on lunch, I have a solid 40 tweets from the morning.

Also liberating is the feeling that I need to tweet everything that I am doing. Instead of deciding to go to lunch, stopping, tweeting about it, and then actually going to lunch, I just go to lunch now.

I’ll probably end up going back to Twitter once this experiment is over, but I won’t be the hardcore user I used to be. I’m not even sure I’ll turn cell phone notifications back on. I kind of like not being constantly distracted by my vibrating thigh.

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