It never fails... just like high school all over again

I remember when I was in high school, I'd procrastinate writing any kind of term paper, saving it til the last weekend to write all 20 pages. My theory was that if I started writing the paper a month in advance and finished a week early, I wouldn't write as good a paper as I could, because I would tell myself that I had a week to look it over. And of course wouldn't look it over as critically. I told myself that if I had the deadline of 4 hours looming, I would really buckle down and make sure it was really good. But inevitably the weekend the paper was due was always the nicest weekend of the year or something really cool was happening, and I would waste that day hunched over the computer. Today is that day. I put off designing a newsstand for a friend for the past month. Of course it's due tomorrow and of course the weather is beautiful out right now and I am hunched over a computer. But of course, he is going to get a better product had I started a month ago.

Phanavision

Anybody who knows me, knows that I am a big baseball fan, and especially a Phillies fan and an even bigger fan of longtime Phillies play-by-play announcer Harry Kalas. For the first 29 years of my life I never listened to a Phils game without hearing the sweet baritone of Harry. To use the cliche that everyone else has been using, he was the soundtrack to my summers. When he died in early April, I decided to design and make a few hundred Harry Kalas t-shirts in his memory. I lost a lot of money on the deal but hopefully I made a lot of people happy for people that have gotten them. My buddy Bo from college was nice enough to invite me to the NLCS clincher on Wednesday, and I was lucky enough to get my shirt on the Phanavision for the second time this season! This time I got a picture of it!

winning streak

I've been on a little winning streak this year and especially this week and I hope it keeps going. I'm going to brag a little. Call it braggadocio. Just because I like that word. A few months ago one of the projects I was working on won a gold design award for Best Assisted Living Community. That was cool. Last week, my buddy Blake and I won 25 bucks at our local watering hole for having the best score in quizzo. More impressive was that we won every round we played, and we were drunk. And we didn't even play the first round! That says something about our competition. This week I got an email from a person who runs the Design Philadelphia website that I was a finalist in the bike rack competition. Admittedly I wasn't the winner but I was among 3 finalists and won 100 bucks! Not bad for an hours worth of work!http://designphiladelphia.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/bike-rack-design-competition-winners-announced/#more-2562

speaking of...

Kind of in the same vein as the checkbooks post earlier, I was thinking about things that have fallen to the wayside. Apparently nobody uses checks anymore. At least most retail businesses don't accept them. I verified this this morning with Henry, the barista at my Starbucks. He said they don't accept checks anymore. Anyway, having given up facebook I have a lot of free time on my hands. It gets me thinking about more and more random things and has overall been a pretty rewarding experience which I don't regret. Admittedly I have given in to other equally ridiculous hobbies, ie checking my match.com profile. Not something I am particularly proud of but not too embarrassed to admit. Match is like facebook minus the ridiculous status updates and dudes. There are a lot of ugly girls though, and I am ready to go cold turkey on that too.
Ok, getting back to the point of this post if it even has one. No one is reading anyway so it's okay for me to ramble. I was thinking about things no one uses anymore. Last week I thought about rejoining Friendster. Remember Friendster? It was like a baby facebook but not nearly as cool. Only losers joined it and you couldn't really do anything with it but accumulate friends and email them. A few days ago I actually went to the site and tried to sign in with my usual passwords and usernames. None worked and I didn't really feel like trying that hard to sign up and see what it was all about again. But the other thing I looked into was AOL instant messenger. Do people still use that? I signed on a few minutes ago and three loser friends were signed in. So I guess only a few losers still use instant messenger for all of you who were wondering. I won't say which friends were signed on to protect the guilty. (proof that only losers use aol.... look at that aol picture. first of all they are talking about threads, and is that guy in the picture the mask? you know, that movie with cher with the guy with big deformed head?)

checkbooks

I was thinking yesterday how infrequently I use my checkbook. Ever since I discovered how to do bill pay on my bank's website I really haven't written any checks. The only checks I really write are for stupid things, like paying my friend my fantasy football dues. I want to bring back check writing. I can't remember the last time I saw someone write a check for an actual purchase. Maybe when I was six and went to the grocery store with my mom was the last time. I was just wondering if cashiers would even know what to do if I wrote out a check. If I went to WaWa and bought two cokes and a newspaper and wrote out a check would they accept it? Or if I went to the bar, and at the end of the night wanted to pay my tab and was like "oh no, don't run the card, here, I am going to write you a check. Who do I make that out to?" Better yet,what if I bought two beers at a crowded bar and tried to pay the 6 bucks with a check? "sorry buddy can you move over a second? Thanks. Just need a solid surface to put this down. Thanks."
Someone should try this with me.