I have a MySpace page and to this day I loathe the entire experience there. It’s completely self-contained, difficult to configure to your liking, littered with junk, and basically unusable for actually finding and/or getting in touch with anyone.

When facebook launched and started to catch on, I heard about all these gimmicks and thought it too would go the way of myspace, lots of focus on “personalizing” your page to your liking, regardless of how intolerable it may be to actually use your page.

Facebook took a different approach by opening up many of their APIs. This allowed people to build applications that use facebook through a well-documented and proper interface instead of more-or-less hacking their way into it.

My wife signed up a few weeks back and invited me to join. I, as I usually do with invited to trendy web applications, ignored it and went about my business. A few nights back I finally bit the bullet and registered for the site and I must say that compared to the other social networking sites, they have done an extraordinary job of decluttering things and letting people oly do as much as they care to do.

I’ve already gotten in touch with a few old friends and wasn’t forced into wading through gobs of flashing backgrounds and transparent text to do it. The site itself is very secure and through the privacy interface allows you (by default) to keep yourself well isolated from strangers.

So far I’ve been pretty impressed with the simplicity, and the facebook-sponsored applications are not half bad. They work far better than cobbled-together junk that you often find out in the interweb. Now, there are still tons of “useless” things that litter facebook, things that I would definitely not bother with on a going-forward basis, but they are all optional and can’t be moved up into the “main content” area of anyone’s profile. That’s really nice because it keeps the meat of the profile page consistent and you’re only bombarded with the time-wasters if you choose to peruse their profile further.

So, two-thumbs up for facebook at this time. I’ll follow up if I’ve been duped. :-)

Oh, and my profile is www.facebook.co…

-Chris

It appears that one of the neatest marketing gimmicks that has ever befallen mankind has befallen mankind in Burbank, CA (among other places). Turns out, this Kwik-E-Mart is about 2 minutes from my place of work in sunny Burbank, so I stopped by after work today.

I’ve been a long-time Simpsons nut, and to see something like this was just too cool. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but they did a nice job of dressing the place up and it brought a smile to my face. You can go here to see all the pics I took.

Also, I took the pictures using my new Blackberry 8300, aka the “Curve”, so I apologize now for the saturation and grain of the pics. I will admit though, for a cellphone cam, the pics look awfully good.

There are only a few of these around the US, and you can locate the nearest to you here.

I also got the comic book that they distribute at the stores (grabbed the last one by guessing the exact number an employee wrote on a piece of paper. woohoo!) and a collector’s cup.

Pretty fun time, and as you can see from the pictures, it was a popular place. They had policemen at the door and in the parking lot just to keep the rabid, ne’er-do-well Simpsons maniacs from trashing the joint. :-)

-Chris

See www.freedom-to-… for the info, but basically, that number was used to encrypt a copyrighted work (A haiku) and I was given explicit rights to decrypt the work my the encryptor.

You better watch out!! :-D

-Chris

Why do you think, after all these years, do I still call you “Andy” when the whole world calls you “Andrew”? Moreover, why do you tolerate it?

-Chris

WHITESNAKE ROCKS. See you on the tour!

-Chris

If you want something answered, let me know and I’ll list it up there…

Also, check THIS out!! It’s like those fridge magnets from the olden days! It updated your movements in realtime to the server, so you can share in the fun with others…

Comment with the funniest poems you can make.

OH! If you’re wondering about all those fancy icons underneath every post, those are links to the many, many, many link aggregator sites around the internet. Now the whole world can be made aware of my musings! yay!

-Chris

GAH!!!

-Chris

However, that’s all behind me. It’s a new day and I’m blogging like it’s 1999.

So, what’s been happening…

Emma’s 5.5 months old now. She couldn’t be any cuter and I just love her to death. She is doing all kinds of cool things now, not limited to: rolling over (both directions), moving in reverse, singing, screaming, crying, pooping, eating, laughing, and pooping. I mention pooping twice because she poops with more fervor and sheep prowess than all those other activities combined. Pictures are a-plenty and you can find the Photo Album link on the right…

Jaime is doing great. She loves being a mom more everyday, and she is darn good at it. It’s like she was born to be a mom and has always known exactly what to do. I am so proud of her! She has started working part time at the newspaper, which is where she worked prior to Emma’s arrival. She gets to work her own hours and full time from home and she’s making a great wage doing it! She’s really keeping busy though. She and Emma have been taking regular day trips to go shopping, grab some lunch, or maybe visit friends. Emma loves traveling (until she’s ready to go home) and usually puts on a good show for the various crowds.

Norbert is just great. He is still a dog. He is still very small.

I’ve been working/churching/babying/gaming with my time.

I recently went to California for some job interviews with Technicolor. They all went very well and I anticipate hearing back very soon.

I know, I know…

“Why do you want to move!?” – I’ll gladly tell you! With a large amount of truthiness, we don’t want to move. We love it here. We have good friends, a great church, great jobs, a great house, our family is close, and we can see snow periodically. There’s no compelling reason for us to move to California.

“Sooo, why are you even thinking about it?!” – I’ll gladly tell you! Three years ago, when things at Thomson in Indy were looking a bit bleak, I sought after a couple of positions in California. At the time, Jaime and I decided we would turn my career over to God and stop worrying about it. We prayed that if God wanted us to move to California, He would provide me a job out there, and take care of the moving/finances to facilitate our move. He chose not to do that, but we continued to pray.

“Why did you keep praying about it!?” – I’ll gladly tell you! I don’t know… :-P

So, that’s the scoop on Cali. I’ll post again when I hear one way or the other about my tentative migration westward.

I continue to play World of Warcraft in my spare time. It’s still pretty fun and they’ve been making a lot of big improvements in time for summer. The nerd in me loves the strategy, but the man in me loves the competition…what can I say?

I grow weary of this post…more to come.

-Chris

If you must know, I landed a record deal with a major label and have been working on some tracks with my band. The most popular so far is a Christmas tune made famous long ago by some great singers. You can click this link: media.putfile.c… to hear my version which will be released later this year on a Christmas compilation.

Let me know what you think. It took us about 30 takes to get all the parts working together seamlessly, as it’s a tough arrangement.

-Chris

WOW.

-Chris