I’ve been thinking of buying a bike for some time, and lately I’ve gotten more serious about it. As a result, I’ve spent a lot more time looking at classified ads. This has proven to be a fairly frustrating method of bike shopping because nothing is ever exactly what you want. Either the bike is missing features or the price is too high.

Anyway, I got home from work today and decided to do my regular check of the online classifieds (craigslist and ksl.com). I clicked into the road bikes section, and all of a sudden, there she was, the bike I had been looking for, at a killer price. I could hardly believe my eyes. The bike had just been posted, so I hurried and called the poster.

Me: “Hey, I’m calling about the bike.”

Him: “Wow. That was fast.”

The bike was in Park City, so I called my brother and told him that if he’d drive from Salt Lake to Park City to Provo to help me get this bike back home, I’d pay for gas. My brother hates paying for gas, and there was no way the bike was fitting in Jezebel, so he agreed.

When we got up there, I took one look at the bike and knew that this was definitely a steal. I handed the guy a bunch of bills and he handed me the keys to the bike (lock). He also commented on how quick I was to call.  “Here’s how it went,” he said. “I walked outside, took a picture of the bike, went back inside and posted the ad, and was just leaning back in my chair after publishing the ad when you called.”

I guess some things were just meant to be. Here are a couple of pictures of my new baby:

Me: “But a blog post has to have a good punchline.”

Brian: “Wenches.”

As I was driving home tonight, I passed by something that smelled strongly of donuts. My first instinct was to hit the brakes and look for cops. There weren’t any, but my next thought was that my response to the smell had made sense because, after all, one never knows when one might develop a new cop-sensing superpower.

I would just like to announce to the world that I am a gigantic wuss.

That is all.

Here’s a quick list of highlights from today:

8:00 AM – I walk into the office and notice that my coworker who always locks his computer has left it unlocked for the first time. I commemorate the occasion by changing his background to cute, cuddly puppies and kittens.

11:00 AM – I find a video called Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag about the annual air combat exercises held by the U.S. Air Force. Somewhere, my inner ten-year-old self starts drooling.

3:00 PM – Our HR Manager walks into our office and hands me and my two office mates little sqooshy rubber balls. A sqooshy ball fight quickly ensues, ending with me pegging one of my coworkers in the face. Totally awesome.

6:00 PM – I rekindle my love for documentary filmmaking by stepping behind the camcorder lens to capture my little sister’s 20th birthday party. My camera privileges are quickly revoked.

6:45 PM – My brother and I arm wrestle for a solid two minutes before we call it a draw, much to my chagrine.

10:00 PM – I go to the gym to make sure I beat my brother next time. While there, I determine that PC Laptops have the most annoying commercials since Totally Awesome Computers. Their tagline is “PC Laptops, where we love you!” Insultingly stupid commercials + obnoxious CEO on TV = not feeling the love.

11:30 PM – After giving up the search for a link to the kitten picture I put on my coworker’s desktop because of some disturbing search results for “kitten,” I decide to give it up and go to bed.

Too tired to say much more than this: I’m having a healthy-eating competition, and if I lose, I have to clean a girl’s bathroom. Needless to say, I’m sufficiently motivated. So don’t ask me to eat anything fatty, sugary, greasy, or delicious, because it’s against the rules. I’m NOT cleaning that bathroom.

If you tried to hit Towering Intellect yesterday and were unable to get the site to show up, I apologize. I was performing my first successful blog brain transplant, and, well, there were a couple of complications.

Since Towering Intellect’s beginnings, way back in 2005, it has been generously hosted by my buddy Preston, the guy that first got me into blogging, Internet marketing, and 90% of the other cool stuff that I love today. Anyway, this week I decided to upgrade my version of WordPress to the most recent release (finally). However, when I tried to access my site, I found that the access password had been changed.

So here I stood at the crossroads with a decision to make. Do I call Preston and harass him about my blog (yet again), further imposing on his hospitality, or do I transfer my blog over to my own hosting account so Preston doesn’t have to worry about me any more? It seemed like a no-brainer (pun!).

Anyway, to make a long story short(er) and less technical, after a few bumps, bruises, and DNS issues, I got my blog moved over to my own host, and the backend is now running the latest version of WordPress. Sexy. So to all you readers who tried to check up on TI and were denied, I apologize, and I hope the improved performance and security of my upgraded blog will makeup for it.

Let me say two things about where I work. First of all, our engineers are really busy, so getting extra engineering cycles is nigh impossible. Second of all, Rock Band is the official company obsession. We have an XBox 360 hooked up to a projector and sound system in our break room, and Rock Band is continually on. Coincidentally, it seems like it’s always the engineers who are playing it.

Anyway, today one of the engineers came into our office and offered to give us an extra day of his development time (with his boss’s encouragement) if someone in marketing could beat him at a Rock Band tug of war. We were obviously stoked at the possibility of getting some extra work done, so my fellow marketers and I headed for the break room to determine which of us would take the challenge. The problem (and the genius of the challenge) is that nobody in marketing plays guitar hero, probably because engineering has monopolized it. Anyway, after about a half hour of half-assed simulated guitar playing, it was determined that I sucked the least. So tomorrow I go head to head with a programmer to try to get us some engineering time. *sigh* The things I do to get my work done… I’ll let you know how it goes.

Update: Yeah, I totally got worked.

Tags: work, guitar hero, challenge, lazy

Spending all day on the Internet has its perks. One of those perks is that I come across some pretty awesome sites along the way. Here’s a couple I thought were really cool.

http://www.ecodazoo.com/ – This may be the most amazing use of Flash I’ve ever seen. It loads quickly, and once it’s loaded, the 3d animation is smooth as glass. Pay particular attention to the details – the way the walls of the foldout book houses pop in and out depending on your point of view, the way the shadows dance, and the lens flare when your view faces the sun. Delicious.

http://the1secondfilm.com/ – Like the website name says, these guys are making a 1-second film – with an hourlong documentary for the end credits. The novel part is that they’re allowing anyone, and I mean anyone to be a producer. Just front as little as a dollar and you’ll be included in the credits. You’ll be in good company if you fork over. Kevin Bacon, Keifer Sutherland, Tom Green, Pierce Brosnan, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Green have all donated. Oh yeah, all proceeds go to charity, so you’ll also be helping out as well. Make sure you watch the YouTube videos posted all over the site. It’s worth it.

Tags: video, links, flash, cool, interesting

Sometimes life gives you lemons, but what happens when it gives you The Rash to end all Rashes? This past couple of weeks, I decided to take a hit for the team and find out.

I started out by detaching my ACL from my knee-bone. This step was actually not as bad as some have said. I thought it was kind of like the band-aid principle. When you first tear it off, it hurts like hell, and then the pain goes away. However, it really did hurt a lot, which is why I think so many people avoid this Route to Rashiness. Once my ACL was good and detached, I walked around on it for a few days, just to make sure it was good and torn. I could feel my knee slipping around while I tried to walk down stairs, so I knew I was on the right track!

The next step was pretty straightforward. I paid an orthopedic surgeon an obscene amount of money to cut my leg open, strip out a piece of my hamstring, and then use said hamstring piece to reattach my ACL to the bone. The surgery went well, and they sent me home to recuperate for the next stage of the experiment.

After a fun-filled week of Percocet and little yogurt cups, I was in good enough shape to go see the doctor again so I could get The Rash Riot underway. At the doctor’s office, they stripped off my old bandages and replaced them with new, compact steri-strips. And just to make sure that a) the strips didn’t go anywhere and b) that I would get The Rash of my life, they used some medical glue to tamp those strips down. One appointment and another prescription for pain meds later, I was on my way to The Rash!

–Warning! The following paragraphs contain graphic descriptions that may be unsuitable for small children and those who hate awesomeness in all of its forms–

Two days later, I finally had some results! Large, angry blisters had formed underneath the steri-strips, and there was blister juice oozing out all over the place. Yum yum. In addition, I also noticed a small amount of swelling around the knee. In order to give The Rash enough time to really run its course, I decided not to do anything about said Rash until the weekend was upon me, at which point, the doctor’s office was closed. Perfect, and entire weekend of incubation! And I made good use of the weekend, watching with pride as my leg swelled to nearly twice its normal size, whilst becoming increasingly itchy.

By the end of the weekend, I knew that I had to go for broke with The Rash, so rather than go see the doctor on Monday, I jumped on a plane to Seattle to attend a conference for a couple of days! This was the right choice for The Rash experiment. By the time I returned from Seattle, My leg looked like a plump sausage. Or a Lil’ Smokey, which I tend to enjoy more. What was even better was that The Rash, discontented with being confined to my leg, decided to spread everywhere. And I do mean EVERYWHERE. At this point, The Rash had truly become THE RASH. I was eating Benadryl like a fat kid eats cake, just to survive. By the time I got home from Seattle and into the doctor’s office, I was convinced that my life had evolved into one gigantic itch that I could never scratch enough.

Thankfully, this was the beginning of the end of The Rash. Two days of intravenously-delivered steroids and antibiotics and an oral regimen of more of the same (plus more benadryl) and I was on the road to recovery. As of the time of this writing, I’m still a bit rashy and more itchy than I should be. But I’m getting there. So thanks for asking, Erin.

Note: I have pictures, but I have to get them off my camera, which requires me to find a special cable that apparently doesn’t want to be found. But I’ll get it. And then you’ll have your pictures.

Tags: rash, seattle, smx advanced, allergy