I try to avoid navel-gazing on this site. I’ve shared a lot of little low resolution photos, but I generally don’t write your eyes off regarding stuff about me.
But since people have been asking:
- I got my private pilot certificate on February 9th. The very next day, the same plane I flew had an engine failure and a forced emergency landing. A wing and the spinner didn’t do so well. I’m glad I wasn’t there that day.
- My hiptop I was auctioning on eBay was “won” by a Nigerian-based scam. I wasn’t fooled by the fake PayPal email and the non-existant shipping address for the “British American Embassy In Nigeria (BAEN).” eBay finally refunded the fees and deleted the auction page. They wouldn’t let me give a second chance offer to the previous bidder, so now I’m auctioning car exhaust whistles for fun. The hiptop3 and everything else is all sealed up in a box ready to ship. Anyone want it before I unpack it all and put it back on eBay?
- Living off of my Nokia 6610 hasn’t been too bad. Weird.
- I’m barely in the March 2007 issue of Minnesota Monthly.
- I have a geeky interview on Technology Evangelist where I blather on about the early days of moblogging, device usability vs device features, the non-existant “holy grail” phone and my overall cluelessness of what I’m “going to do next.” You can even watch it in HD. When it comes to vlog production, these Technology Evangelist guys pull out all the stops.
- My aunt Laura saw my faded gnome on my front steps that I got from my sister for Christmas a couple years ago. She took it and repainted it. It looks better than new! Thanks, Laura!
- The Deets picks up and runs with a story based off of a photo I put on Flickr regarding Pizza Lucé’s coupon ripoff.
- After a lot of Dodgeball.com evangelizing over the last two years, I’ve decided not to use it anymore. A lot of my friends stopped using it too, some a lot earlier than others.
I’ll have a bigger post about the Non-Existant Rise and Fall of Mobile Social Networking in Minneapolis another day.
- I’ll be back on Chasing Windmills very soon. I can’t tell you how it will pan out but you’ll probably see me get “rejected,” just not anything like last time.
- Writing traditional blog posts that actually have substance is a royal pain in the ass. I have two in the queue that I’ve been working on for a week but when all is said and done it won’t look like I put more than a half hour into them.
Anyone want to go flying? Let’s go. These days I’m flying an old Piper Warrior out of Lake Elmo but that may change soon too. I’m shopping flight clubs and fractional ownership. I haven’t found a perfect fit yet. Yesterday I flew to Winona and back. Tomorrow if the weather is okay I’m doing the same thing to Hinckley.
This is my 1,000th post on this site.
This evening I have put my Hiptop3 on eBay. I’ll now live off of a basic Nokia 6610 for awhile. Here’s a bit of my blogging history:
I started blogging not long after the launch of blogger.com in 2000. It was an ugly page that I hosted off of my slow DSL connection running Apache on Windows 98 (yeah, I know) with content that would remind people of a kid getting a LiveJournal account for the first time. I quit that, deleted all the content and decided for the most part it was a waste of time. Of course, at that time in my life there were a lot of changes and I decided to run off to Bulgaria for a short bit as well as follow the Flaming Lips around the UK a couple times amongst a few other things.
The original hiptop in 2002 was my dream come true: A mobile phone that has an actual data connection, POP email, AOL Instant Messenger and a QWERTY keyboard. It was affordable and didn’t require all the corporate back-end junk that the Blackberry devices at the time needed. I got a hiptop right after they came out.
I started “blogging” again after I found Mike Popovic’s Hiptop Nation (my first post). I decided that I wouldn’t write much of anything; I can just post random low-resolution 120×90 photos directly from my device, to a website and not say much else… all without using a computer. This was really quite cutting edge in 2002! I then also joined up with a few other mobloggers when SKHOLLA started on April 1st, 2003 (my first post). These two sites over the years became the base of a rather tight but widely spread community where we all saw tiny daily pictorial insights into each other’s lives. Through different parties and numerous travels many of us have met now each other. I was even featured as the official “hip user” at hiptop.com back in May 2005.
I started migrating most of my stuff to this site a couple years ago and continued to religiously post to both community moblogs up until today.
I’ve had internet connectivity on my hip for over 4 years. I’ve been posting low resolution photos from a device for just as long, even after it stopped being cool 3 years ago!
Now I’m taking a break. I’m not entirely sure what the new content of this site will be, but I’m not going to stop publishing. I’ll also likely be getting the internet back at my fingertips in June. Hopefully I will survive until then. 
A shout-out to some of the many people I’ve met over the years through the hiptop community… some of them now good friends: George, Kale, Rick, Ed, Chris, Jonathan, Ben, Jenn, Mike, James, Kim, Ernie, Jake, Jim, Brendan, Brian, Michael, Shelly, Shaun, Sami, Walter, and more… and to the people I haven’t met yet, but am sure I will at some point: Mike, Matt, Regan, Lori and Heidi.
I’m glad I go eastbound to the suburbs from Minneapolis in the morning and back to the city in the evening.
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Posted 06 February 2007
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Last night I met the man behind Banana Name. Check it out, monkeys.
P.S. Here’s my banana!
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Posted 04 February 2007
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Mindy and I were at 4 games to 4… I was clearly winning the last round (see last photo) and she guesses “is it Eric?” She owned me.
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Posted 04 February 2007
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Roommate Allen was out late last night and had his car parked on a residential street in Lakeville, MN. When he got back to his car there was a ticket from Dakota County but there was no offense listed. It contained his personal information, his car’s information, the location of the car and a court date if he wants to plead not guilty to… no offense. As far as he is aware, he was legally parked. He also did not get a fine schedule but did get an envelope.
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Posted 04 February 2007
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Over 35 people came over last night to enjoy some beers from DUO Brewing Co. I had time to take only a few photos. Dave took some more photos and Bill and Ed wrote more about it. Good times and great beer.
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Posted 04 February 2007
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