It’s been a tough few weeks but I’m getting back into the swing of things so regular posting will continue once again. This is what we have in store for the week:

1. A hilarious tale of karaoke
2. Great pictures from Shaunfest 2010
3. J2′s Mr. Pringles cards

As a start, I’d like to close out the puzzle post from a few months back. Shortly after the puzzle concluded, Kurt sent me his worksheet that he had taken notes on. I love how passionately a few MikeDiDonato.com readers took to the challenge. I think the picture below speaks for itself.

Page 1

Page 2

Ha!

Anyway, thanks to everyone for their patience given the lack of posts.
It’s good to be back.

Yours in Rock,
Mike D.

How long does a laptop last? How long have you kept your laptop?

Apparently, Mr. Ben has an aging computer and he’s interested in getting a new one – but he’s having a hard time deciding if it’s the best move.

Leave your answers in the comments

In other quick news, I’ll be taking a little more time off from normal mikedidonato.com posting this week. I appreciate your patience.

In the meantime, there will be a Roller Derby recap of Saturday’s bout as well as a highly anticipated review of the KFC double down courtesy of Shaun L. Stay tuned.

This week I will be taking a break from posts to settle out some stuff. I apologize for the inconvenience. In my absence, I encourage those of you with accounts to feel free to login and post some content of your own. I will happily post anything e-mailed to me as well: MikeDiDonato AT gmail D0T com

Yours,
Mike D.

Well, I decided to make one of my own. And sure enough, with the help of Sarah T and some helpful suggestions by a few others, I have almost completed the first challenging puzzle of MikeDiDonato.com. I’ll be posting it on the website next week.

There will be a prize for the first person to solve the puzzle. Hopefully it will be challenging but not impossible.

Go find your thinking caps. You may need them.

UPDATE: Comments appear to be working.

Sigh.

We’ll get there. Thanks for your patience.

My apologies for the lack of updates in the last day or so, my prep has taken a fair bit of time. Additionally, I’m trying to squeeze in as many extracurricular activities as I can, while I can.

Stay tuned!

For this reason when given the option to write in my own security question, I dig deeply into the obscure to find truly creative questions. Sometimes, this method fails me miserably.

I present to you exhibit 1.

I set my security question as: “What is your Secure Password?”

Seriously? Why would I do that?

So stupid.

I have designed a sweet t-shirt. Check it out:

It’s the perfect combo of Geekery and Rockery! All the while mocking corporate sponsership! I am going to be giving two of these t-shirts away. This is how it works.

There are three ways to get yourself entered in the drawing.

1. If you e-mail someone you know and tell them about my website (you must include a link to the website) and CC me in on the e-mail, then I will enter you into a drawing for a t-shirt. The person who sent the winning e-mail will receive a free t-shirt, and so too will the person who had the e-mail sent to them. For each person you send an e-mail to, you get one entry. One e-mail, one entry. If you send one e-mail to 8 people, you’ll only get one entry. If you send personalized e-mails to 8 people, then you’ll get 8 entries. E-mailing people who already openly read the blog doesn’t get you entries. Nor does e-mailing the same person multiple times. Please be respectful to the people you e-mail.

2. If you add a blog post about my website on your website and include a link to my website, you get two entries. Please e-mail me a link to your blog. Limit one blog post per person. If you are selected the winner via this method, you will receive two t-shirts in the mail.

3. If you share my blog via Google Reader you will get one entry – please make sure I’m following you first by sending me an e-mail. Limit one shared post per person. If you are selected the winner via this method, you will receive two t-shirts in the mail.

DEADLINE: The deadline is the end of Labor Day weekend (September 7th, 11:59pm EST). On September 8th, I’ll take those entries that I have received and randomly pick one lucky winner. I will mail out the winning t-shirts after I get the winners’ size and color requests.

Limit 15 entries per person.

I reserve all rights to deny entries to anyone I think might be spamming or stretching the rules in a way that’s sneaky or underhanded.

My e-mail address is: MikeDiDonato AT gmail D0T com

The t-shirt design above might change slightly between now and September 8th, but if it does it will only get more awesome. If the winner would prefer a Breakfast Squad t-shirt, then that’s cool too.

Good luck!!

Perhaps this is all old news to you veterans, but for me it was new and exciting. I know there are a fair number of readers of this site who don’t use Google Reader so I’ve decided to share the knowledge in hopes that perhaps you too can realize the awesomeness that is Google reader.

So here we go!

Average posts per week: 9.8
Commentary: Eh. kinda weak. I would feel better if we were closer to 12. I’ll try and step up my game.

Total Google Reader Mike D Subscribers: 26
Commentary: 26? eh… Perhaps we should have a contest to spread the love. Keep an eye out in the features section for an announcement.

Fun post graphs:

Commentary: No surprise on the day of the week thing, Mondays and Thursdays FTW. And the last 30 days look reasonably normal. A few more 3 post days than I was expecting, but I guess that’s the way things work around here. Time of day is also interesting, but mostly expected. Except for that 4am jammy. I have no idea what was going on then.

So there we have it! Thanks for reading.

Ha!

In other news, last night Shaun L. and I completed season one of Battlestar Gallactica. HOLY CRAP!! If you haven’t watched this series you must. INSAANE. This notice is especially for the Parents D. For Mom D, there’s plenty of character development and a strong plot. For Dad D there’s plenty of gun fights and robots! You guys will love it!

1. I received my Kung Fu sword. Pete has offered his services in taking some sweet photographs of the weapon with his fancy-shmancy camera. After photos are taken, you can rest assured that they will be posted here. I’m also thinking that if I can somehow take the coloring and match properties to the current banner, perhaps I’ll update mikedidonato.com’s look.

2. I’m working on a sizable mikedidonato.com project. It’s going to be a research paper of sorts that explores some geekery. I’m very excited about it, though it will be weeks, if not months, before I have amassed satisfactory amounts of knowledge to post the results. Still though, get pumped that fun geekery is in the making. It will appear in the feature section.

3. Did I tell y’all that I got a promotion at work a few months ago? I leveled up from Mechanical Engineer to Engineered Systems Product Manager. OSNAP! Look out!

4. Climbing is going very well. On Sunday, I led Broadway (5.8) at Ragged Mountain without fault. It was ridiculously smooth. This is exciting because, so far, I’ve only ever successfully led 5.8′s under the burden of heavy stress and nervousness. Being the leader can be rather stressful. Perhaps I will soon be able to begin working 5.9′s without getting too wigged out and failing miserably.

5. I got the new eating well magazine and will be trying a melon soup this week. If it doesn’t explode with summery tastes and flavors I will be sorely disappointed. Stay tuned for reports of success or failure.

There’s a hidden theme in today’s post (probably obvious to some). Can you find it and identify all the instances?

The ads themselves didn’t bother me at all and the google drop simply meant fewer passers by. Despite this, today I removed the advertisements from the website. This doesn’t mean I won’t sell out again, I assure you that I will – but I’d like to do it with a little more finesse. I’m hoping to switch my advertising type to one that’s more centered on specific local businesses. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll make it work, but I’ll probably be testing a few things in the background over the coming months. We’ll see how well it comes together.

*especially hilarious about the betrayal was Jon and Schenk’s disclaimer removing all responsibility to any potential advertising frustrations.

The Mission:
Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).

Why 1001 Days?
Many people have created lists in the past – frequently simple goals such as New Year’s resolutions. The key to beating procrastination is to set a deadline that is realistic. 1001 Days (about 2.75 years) is a better period of time than a year, because it allows you several seasons to complete the tasks, which is better for organizing and timing some tasks such as overseas trips or outdoor activities.

I think I might put some thought into this and give it a shot.

Stay tuned for a list of 101 things.

Essentially it’s a job where they pay you to do really awesome stuff in Australia. Be still my heart! I can do awesome stuff!!

It’s obviously a way way long shot, but when something like this comes up you really gotta give it a go.

So this is my game plan. I will introduce myself and give them some reason to think I’m great. Then I will say “My friends would probably describe me as…”

and then BANG – BANG – BANG – BANG – BANG – BANG
6-10 super fast maximum 3 second clips get fired off with short videos of my friends describing me. Do you have a web camera? would you be willing to help me out? If the answer is a definite ‘yes’ then take a clip of yourself describing me. you can use introductory words like “Mike D is” or “I’d describe Mike D as” if you’d like… or you can just say descriptive words like “Awesome.” “wicked sweet at cool things”, “eats too much!” whatever you’d like.

Then I’ll edit your videos into mine, add some clips from the kung fu party tricks and various old Vimeos, and hopefully I’ll have a one minute video that will do me proud.

And even if I don’t get even considered for the sweet job, at a minimum I’ll have a new and improved ‘about’ page that will help herd in tons of new readers and great contributors to the comments sections.

Rock on!

e-mail me with questions or videos!
MikeDiDonato AT gmail D0T com

There are still a bunch of folks with posting power so don’t delete me from your Google Reader just yet. And when I return I promise a wealth of stunning stories of freezing adventure.

Medal Count and
More Medal Count by Patrick

Adjective War

Unicode by J2

The Animal Chicken fights – including Rhino and Baboon

Worst Post 2008:

No Nominations! All right! But there were definitely bad posts. Every poptart post for example.

Best Comment 2008:
Aaron’s response to Dinosaurs and their Estimated Weights

I guess Aaron wins by default. Unless there’s a write in.

Best Comment String 2008:
Let’s not make any sense

Adjective war

I’ll accept nominations until Tuesday evening. You can vote on Christmas Eve and all the results will be posted on either Christmas day or the day after Christmas.

Awesome!

I want to vamp up two sections of this website. The first is ‘favorite posts.’ If you look at the bar on the left and scroll down you’ll come to a list of favorite posts. Do any of you have any favorite posts that you think I should include in the list?

The second section is the About me page. Right now it’s passable, but not awesome. It definitely needs new photos. Any other suggestions?

Rock,
Mike D.

She has an avid appreciation for sweaters and she and Whitney invented ‘Sweater Thursday’ awhile back. As you can see from the image above, Jobonga has thrown the gauntlet for yet another winter season. She encourages us to Commence Sweatering.

I still have a few photos from last year that I need to post of eager people wearing sweaters. If you’d like to participate, wear a flashy sweater tomorrow and then take a picture of yourself in said sweater. E-mail the picture over to me at:

MikeDiDonato AT gmail D0T com

and I will add your picture to the pile in the feature section tomorrow. Get stoked. It’s going to be sweatery.