Meet Finding The Frame

So I guess you don’t really know this, but I’ve been cheating on you. I didn’t really mean it, well actually I did, but I started yet another blog. We’ve been spending a lot of time together, and now I thought it was time to bring you in on the circle of trust and introduce you to Finding The Frame – the mobile-iest phone blog ever.

No longer a zombie project, Finding The Frame has been reborn as supreme hotness

No longer a zombie project, Finding The Frame has been reborn as supreme hotness

Introduction

Finding The Frame is my newest phone blog. The old Palm Treo 680 has been upgraded to a Palm Pre, and I thought it was time to let the phone stretch it’s legs a little. The new blog is just like the old “Phoning It In” blog, but with better quality images, a simple layout, and geo tagged posts whenever possible.

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Every Once And A While You Find A Gem

Craigslist.com is quite the mixed bag. From shady escort services to shady “new” game consoles, it’s got it all. In fact I even got my current job through Craigslist. I often look around the forsale and wanted sections. Today I came across this. It’s not electronic, but its still shady.

New Girlfriend Wanted The old one sucks..erm the current one

20090318_221832_spokanecraigslistorg_p_800

People on Craigslist are so honest, how can you not love them?

Where’s the VH1 Behind The Craigslist Ads show? What’s the story? I’d love to know. I have yet to find the complementary “Boyfriend Wanted, current one is a jerk” post.

5 Things The Seattle PI Should Do To Survive

Now that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is taking the big plunge and going online only, it has stepped away from a peer group of newspapers that have just been dipping their toes online up to this point. Needless to say, the PI represents the great American journalism experiment on whether “traditional” news sources have a future in the new world. Unfortunately for the PI and hundreds of newspapers across the nation, they’re playing catch-up. So to help usher in this new era and make sure they do it right, here’s my list of the five highest priority items they must embrace immediately or regret they never did.

Loose the current site

Step one is the most dramatic of them all. Tuesday March 17th was the last print edition of the PI and their Web site still looked like this… Read the rest of this entry »

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What Happens to Laid Off Journalists?

Editor’s note: The following was originally written Oct 27, 2008 at 10:46pm. For whatever reason I never published it and left it as a draft (one of many). Whatever, enjoy…


They get bored. Real bored.

I’ve spent a good two weeks on a fresh resume. I’ve sent in apps and sat down on interviews. Everything you are supposed to do when you’re currently looking for jobs. This is because my severance from my previous job resembles the combined amount of cash between your summer lawn mowing gig and that piggy bank you swore you’d never break. It’s not the companies fault. It’s my fault for not working there long enough. However if I worked there long enough I wouldn’t be getting a severance in the first place – but that’s neither here nor there.

Back to the boredom. Because that’s why someone like me has time to write a post on boredom in the first place. Today, Monday, represents the first day that I am not at work. Last Friday was the last day and cliche as it was, I walked out with a box full of crap from my desk. I even dragged my feet on the way out, waiting for someone to start the slow clap, ala the movie Rudy. It didn’t happen.

But what does happen on your infinite day off is this. You discover the world that non-journalist have been knee deep in for years.

For example today I rediscovered Facebook, again, for the first time. That is to say I was all over it like it was four years ago and I was trying to collect more friends that my most hatted college classmate. Facebook is fine and dandy, but once I got over the initial rush of approving the 30 or so random groups and friend requests that I had neglected since January, I literally just stared at the screen like an elderly person who just doesn’t “get” the Internet.

But that wasn’t able to keep my attention long enough. After all that was a mere two hours out of my day in which I had many more to kill. Later I would gravitate to Mario Kart Wii as another solution. I battled with bananas, mushrooms and blue shells to crush my comical opponents in order to sap another larger portion of my day away.

Even later, I would go to the bank to generate an accurate timeline for when I officially would go broke. I walked, you know, because I had the time.

Finally in desperation I read the Internet. All of it.

That pretty much sums up my Monday. Who knows what wild and crazy adventures will occur Tuesday? I’ve got a full day to find out.

My Morning And Your Future

I had a dream last night. Well I actually had a few, but the one I’m talking about was right before the one where I was trying to sneak around a security Roomba. My feeling was if it found me there was trouble was to be had.

However the dream I would like to highlight now is the one where I was back in Japan. Actually I was hanging out in Osaka (reoccurring) but later returned to my hotel in Tokyo (never been). The odd thing was my Tokyo hotel room looked a lot like my old Kobe apartment, but without furniture… blah blah blah …then there was an earthquake. A big one. I wasn’t alarmed though. In fact I was scrambling through about three point and shoot cameras to try and take a picture (of what?).

I dream often of being back in Japan. Never before with an earthquake though. The strange thing is when I decided to look at the USGS site for earthquakes today I discovered “Earthquake rattles Alaska’s largest city“. It now looks like I was dreaming of an earthquake when this one was occurring.

I now feel it is my duty, as my psycic abilities are becoming increasingly more accurate, to warn you about the Terminator security Roombas to come. Don’t trust them.

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AT&T Wants To Play Footsie With Me

Just because it's "official" doesn't mean that it isn't spam.

I’ve never felt so popular before. I recieved a whole bunch of txt messages from AT&T all at the same time tonight. However I was too busy driving to figure out why my phone was vibrating nonstop as it recieved 20+ messages in a row. All of the messages were the same – thanking me for feedback, none of which I sent. It’s like AT&T was flirting with me. Sorry AT&T, the feeling isn’t mutual.

I no ♥ U cause IMO U sux. FYI U need 2 die in fire. no more txt msgs

:( — Brian

Anyone else get hit with tons of txt messages from AT&T around 8pm tonight? No? Just me. Um kay. Thanks.

UPDATE 2009-01-23: I’m not alone. Read the comments.

CSPAN Smashes Inaguration Coverage Through Your Face

Looking back, it was kind of a special day. Today’s inauguration of President Barack Obama shows us all how far we’ve come and how much farther we need to go. You know in the Internet sense.

Today, as I was at work, I was unable to find myself a TV to huddle around. So as I sat in my cold, windowless office pondering if the world still existed outside – let alone a presidential inauguration – I decided to grab some streams online and see what was going on. Here’s what happened.

Worst stream by far! In fairness Hulu was carrying a feed from Fox News. It's not like I was expecting them to work hard to keep that stream going.

Hulu – THE ULTIMATE FAIL

After demonstrating impressive live streaming during the presidential debates just a few months ago, Hulu was my first choice. The player was quick to load and the video quickly connected. However this is where the experience ended.

Although the sound and picture were decent, they were absolutely out of sync. The image on the left was captured during the actual swearing in.

Red flags really went off when I noticed “Obama” looked a lot like Yo-Yo Ma and that Chief Justice John Roberts was apparently speaking through his clarinet. Read the rest of this entry »

Sunshine, It’s Like Staring At The Sun

The Sun is freaking dying

The Sun is freaking dying

In my head, I’m still trying to digest and make sense of the movie Sunshine (2007). From the trailer it looked like an over the top movie that I would generally avoid. Large scale disaster movies have never been very appealing to me. This has started back as far as the crappy 70’s versions such as Earthquake (1974) and The Towering Inferno (1974). I generally mark up these movies to be about hundreds of stupid people running into glass doors because they are either too stupid or panic too much to open them. Seriously, check them out. It’s a reoccurring theme.

Anyway back to horrible disaster movies. Contemporary disaster imaginings have reached theaters as competing studio efforts at asteroid movies, all the rage in 1998, with such offerings as Deep Impact (1998) and Armageddon (1998). These movies also do very very much suck. It’s basically what you are forced to watch on TV when you are stuck at home with nothing to do and you are between The Price is Right episodes (w/ Bob Barker that is).

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Soo much freakin snow

No joke. As reported on Spokesman.com, Spokane saw 23.3 inches of snow in about 34 hours. Mother nature showed no mercy as it basically shut down the city filling the air with the sound of groaning 2-stroke snow blowers and that very specific sound of car ties whining as they spin for traction.

Look I even have evidence.

Amanda poses as she demonstrates just how much snow 23 inches is.

Amanda poses as she demonstrates just how much snow 23 inches is.

However not everything in the city was closed. As most of the city was indeed shut down, one fast food, [PLUG] Domino’s Pizza, remained open for business. In fact not only were they not struggling to stay open, they seemed to be busier than ever. After all they were still making deliveries.

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Graduated

That’s it. And just like a Band-Aid and it’s over. A long, awkward Band-Aid that was removed at the pace of Frank Blethen’s action packed speech.

Amanda Vilbrandt is now Cougar alumni.

Now begins the search for food and the quest to get out of town as soon as possible.

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