A guy that I went to college with set out on a mission at the beginning of this year. He launched a blog tracking his attempts to get Kevin Costner to photograph of himself reading said blog.

He wrote post after post after post for months covering all things Costner. And in just about every one, he poked, prodded, and taunted Kevin Costner to take a simple picture. If this sounds insane, that’s because it is.

But somehow last week his plan worked. He got his picture of Costner.

I have no idea what this proves. But I’m sure that Evan Kessler is a very happy man.

It’s been a wild summer so far. Here are just a few of the changes that have unfolded.

I wrote a book… It’s a tech book about creating desktop gadgets for Windows Vista aimed at power users who want to wade into creating their own gadgets. It’s due for release on October 29th. The next great American novel it is not. But it is a book and it has my name on it. So that’s a little bit exciting. The folks at Wiley (the publisher) helped guide me along throughout the process. And although I enjoyed the process, I am also really glad to be done and have some free time back in my life again.

I changed jobs… But I’m still at Wharton. At the beginning of the summer, my boss Terry Ryan moved on to another position within the school. I moved into his position managing the school’s ColdFusion environment. I still get to do a mix of application development, some light server administration, and hopefully more community development amongst the distributed developers scattered throughout the school.

I merged blogs… The whole tech/personal division on this site was not working. So I merged the two streams back into one site. That’s one less WordPress install to worry about.

Thanks, YouTube.

If ever you find me suffering from delirium, a sense of suffocation, and eventual collapse… please pry the chicken nuggets away from me.

This morning mealtime moment has been brought to you by the Blankbaby Media Empire.

Fourth of July in Philly is going to be hot.

Hot pink.

I only have two molars left in my mouth that do not have some sort of filling. I’ve always been prone to cavities. Which makes me wonder why I stopped going to dentist after college.

I could blame poor dental insurance coverage, but really I have an irrational fear of dentists. It dates back to my childhood when I used to visit a fantastical dental wonderland of fun for children in Northeast Philly. That dentist has long since retired to Arizona last I heard from a grade-school classmate who started working for him after high school.

But I vividly remember this dentist telling a hygenist that his vacation condo had been destroyed by a hurricane and all of his property washed away. All the while he counted off multiple divets in my teeth for fillings with dollars signs flashing in his eyes. Thinking back on it now, I probably completely made this up in grade school as a bullshit story to tell other kids why I had so many cavities.

Anyway, I’m reaping the rewards of my paranoia now. My prize for returning to a proper regiment of oral hygeine: five cavities and one root canal. Two of the cavities will most likely require root canal at some point in the future. The root canal was actually the least painful procedure. It’s never good when drilling goes so deep the bit gets lodged in a tooth. Ouch.

I’ve been hearing a Fall Out Boy song over the past few weeks on Skin Radio but it annoyed me and I never really paid attention to it.

Today on Rhapsody I saw the song has been remixed by Kanye West. The blurb listed the hook lyric:

This ain’t a scene, it’s a goddamn arms race!

What the hell does that mean?

It’s been a few weeks since I tried to cancel an order with BestBuy that shipped to the wrong address. Still no package, and still no refund.

But I did receive a lovely message from BestBuy support:

Based on the U.S. Postal Service tracking information, your order for the Nintendo Wii game will be returned back to our BestBuy.com Return
Center. Please allow 14-21 days.

14-21 days? In Internet time that’s about five decades. Of course, I tried to reiterate my complaint in a somewhat calm and rational tone. And then I got this gem:

I apologize we did not meet your expectations with the delivery of your
order. Best Buy strives to make each experience you have with us
positive and as fun as possible, and we are disappointed if we don?t
live up to that expectation. To provide you with the most thorough and
accurate response, I have forwarded your email to our Research Team to
rectify your issue. The Research Team will get back to you via email
within 5 to 10 business days.

Holy shit, only 5 to 10 business days this time? Wow, my experience with BestBuy online just became like totally positive and… really… really… fun. Way to go BestBuy online!

Do not avert your eyes.

Come to the light.

I caught a segment on NPR this weekend about an ad campaign for confession in the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington DC. Monsignor Kevin Irwin, dean of theology and religious studies at Catholic University, was discussing a decline in confession attendance amongst US Catholics.

He went a step further to explain how the Church’s view of sin is changing, bringing focus to social injustices such as racism, classism and poverty. He also mentioned that some of the greatest areas of guilt amongst many Catholics today is having an overabundance of money, Internet addiction and mobile phone usage.

So by all means, if you spend too much time checking email on your cell phone, now is your chance to start anew.