Conner's Blog

A trusted source, with knowledge of Twitter recently let it slip that Twitter is in trouble.  Due to Sunday’s poor outing by the Minnesota Vikings, and some poorly placed bets.  Twitter apparently owes money to the Mafia.  There have been reports of random people getting into people’s feeds, random DMs being sent to cell phones, and people suddenly having themselves stop following others. There is no doubt this information is related. There are unconfirmed reports that they failed to feed the hamsters recently due to lack of funds as they try and save some of their venture capital money to pay off the mob.

So grab the women and children, stock up on groceries, and start working on the underground bunker. Twitter will soon be run by Tony Soprano and friends.

For those of you who remember, I was participating in/freaking out about Powerpoint Karaoke last Thursday.  Here is video evidence that I didn’t back out.

Here is a collection of images from Art’s birthday party.  Stephanie posted some shortly after the party, I’m a little late to the game.

Dear potential future employers, please ignore this post when looking at my blog, I swear I’m a responsible adult.

I’m nearly blind without glasses or contacts.  When I wake up in the morning, I can make out the digits on my alarm clock, only because I bought a clock with very large digits.  I don’t actually known what my vision is without contacts, but I’m guessing it’s somewhere in the single digits over 20.

Normally this isn’t a problem, I’ve been living this way for years and am thankful every day for the wonder that is corrective lenses.  Occasionally though things happen, which make me really consider looking into Lasik.

Take this morning for instance.  I was driving down 35W on the way to work. Thankfully, it was a normal day and it was bumper-to-bumper stop and barely move traffic. I was enjoying some morning music, when suddenly I blinked and my left contact fell out of my eye.  Now this isn’t something that normally happens, I think it’s a sign I need to lay off the fun beverages for a while and drink more water.  But when you are in traffic and you are suddenly unable to see clearly out of one eye it creates a minor problem.  This problem was exacerbated by the fact that THERE WAS NOWHERE TO PULL OFF THE ROAD.

Now, I didn’t want to stop in the middle of the lane and put my contact back in, but I also needed to get it back in pronto so it didn’t dry up.  Otherwise, I was going to be driving down Cedar Avenue with either no depth perception or half my vision mostly worthless. Somehow stopping in the middle of the lane actually seemed the safer bet.

Thankfully, I was at a point in the construction where a shoulder miraculously appeared and I was able to safely leave the road and get my vision back.  However, I think I’m going to purchase a travel bottle of saline for my backpack so if something like this happens again I’m not in quite such a panic.  At least then, I have more time to find a safe place to leave the road before things reach a point of no return.

This morning I thought my Monday was going to go pretty well.  Then I got to the office and around 8:30 I noticed I wore this shirt.

Then a co-worker changed my day by giving me a silver star for paying her back the dollar I borrowed last week.

I guess on the bright side I didn’t suffer from an allergy attack or fail to wear a shirt to a customer’s house.

I’m starting to understand why those who don’t get social media don’t get social media.  Just check out all these reasons to avoid it.

• Why would you want to connect with a ton of people from all over the country and world?
• Why would you want to engage with people in your industry who might one day be a connection to a job or a potential positive addition to your company?
• It’s an awful thing to walk into a restaurant alone at lunch time and find out that someone you’ve been talking to for weeks about politics, sports, your interests, or current events is sitting in the corner table without a lunch partner.
• That first real life meetings is always awkward, sometimes these people are actually just as smart/funny/interesting in real life as they are online.
• Getting tickets to a show through a new friend who happens to know you love the band because you won’t shut up about it the weeks leading up to the sold out show feels almost like cheating.
• Getting a chance to meet an old media rock star who happens to also be a new media rock star in person and then have that person get the bar to sing you happy birthday because the mayor of Minneapolis declared your birthday the rock star’s day, well that’s embarrassing. (but really freaking cool)
• It’s always better to watch sports without forty other fans to provide commentary, the television announcers are always more intelligent.
• Raising money for charities was so much easier when you only had to cold call or knock on doors.
• Restaurant critics who work for a paper always know what they are talking about, a hundred people just like you providing instant feedback is completely unnecessary.
• Without social media you can still go see the new comedy that came out on Thursday on Saturday without knowing it is in fact, awful.
• Journalists are the best fact checkers, and having numerous trustworthy sources to tell you someone is full of crap is unnecessary.
• I’m too busy watching reality television to talk to real people online.
• Email isn’t social, it’s communication, and totally different.
• Social media is clogging the tubes and I won’t be able to watch my funny cat videos on Youtube.
• It’s easy to find the best restaurants in new cities, why ask your friends?
• This Internet thing is a fad and once it goes away you’ll lose all those friends anyway.

See there are countless reasons to stay away from social media, stop trying to convince everyone it’s cool.

• Barking Snow
• You can not only see your breath, you can pick it up off the ground
• The thermometer reads 120 above – water is still frozen
• Driving your car reminds you of your Big Wheel car’s plastic wheels.
• You start your car 15 minutes early and it hasn’t defrosted by the time you need to leave
• Your washer fluid freezes
• 5 layers is not enough
• While walking outside you notice the soles of your shoes becoming less flexible
• The exterior doors on your house start squeaking
• You are excited when you see 30 above in the weather forecast
• Ever conversation starts with some form of “it’s cold out there”
• You order pizza for delivery and it arrives as frozen pizza
• Your car cools down completely  in 30 minutes
• The guy who always wears shorts has to buy pants

The last seven days have been a little crazy.  I won’t share all my stories here, I’m giving you two that I had to share with everyone.

The first happened on the morning of the 1st.  I spent New years in Grand Forks and was up partying with my friends until 2 in the morning.  After celebrating with champagne, playing a ton of the new Guitar Hero, and drinking like we were still in college, a few of us sat down to play Cranium.  It was during this game that I started to get a little itchy.  My friends have dogs that occasionally cause this but this just kept getting worse.  Within a half hour of first noticing the itching my face has swollen up.

I had never had an allergic reaction like this before.  Thankfully I wasn’t having breathing problems, but it was still scary.  I ended up getting a ride to the ER from a friend who had went home and wasn’t drinking.  After a couple of shots I was feeling much better and my face looked normal again.  I have no idea what it was that I reacted to, I’m blaming it on the cheap champagne, and I’m keeping Benedryl on hand from now on just in case. I’m also going to look into getting to an allergist sometime to so I know what to look out for.

The second event happened this morning.  I went through my usual morning routine, though I had to speed it up a bit since I could not drag myself out of bed.  Usually I get up, shower, put on everything but a shirt and then eat breakfast and all the other morning stuff.  Well this morning I skipped an important step.  First, I you need to know that my job entails meeting customers where it’s convenient for them, whether at home, work, or a coffee shop.  Well this morning when I arrived at my customer’s home and went to remove my jacket, and realized that I had forgotten to put on a shirt.  I had an undershirt on, but apparently never finished off my attire.  I’m not sure if the customer noticed or not, and I honestly don’t want to know, but sitting in the dining room for an hour was extremely uncomfortable.

• Acceleration – Usually leads to the creation of item I during the first snow storm.  Formation is combated using item S.
• Brake Lights – These light the way down 35W during every snowstorm.
• Creep – What drivers experience when it’s either snowing or has snowed.
• Death Grip – How a percentage of drivers hold the wheel, panicking at the first flake and don’t top until the last ice melts off Lake Minnetonka.
• Early – As in leaving early today, a failed attempt by workers to beat the weather, foiled by every other worker attempting it at the same time.
• Fall – A 4-5 day period of gorgeous color and temperature that proceeds winter.
• Gas Mileage – Falls dramatically due to warming up your car and of course item C
• Happy Hour – Something you frequently miss due to item C.
• Ice – The savior of auto body shops.
• Jumper Cables – Magical items that can win new friends in the office parking lot.
• Keyboard – A useful item on your cell phone to keep insanity at bay during item C.
• Lights – Mythical objects on the front of your car that are meant to light the road, due to item S they become worthless after 5 minutes on the road.
• Matchbook Mark – The Nickname of the drivers who refuse to scrape their windshield and drive with a matchbook sized area to see through until their car defrosts itself.
• Negative – Used to describe temperatures
• Overcast – Contained in 99% of weather forecasts from October – March.
• Panic Braking – Slamming on your brakes as hard as possible  on icy roads and pressing harder when your car fails to stop.
• Quadrupled – Describes how long your commute is when it snows the first five times.
• Rust – The creation of which is accelerated to Usain Bolt speed due to item S.
• Salt/Sand/Silt – A few of the key ingredients of the car destroying mixture created by MNDOT.
• Traction – Frequently taken for granted, many drivers seem shocked to lose it during the first blizzard.
• Useless – A term used to describe, brakes, wipers, windows, mirrors, and lights during an ice/snow storm
• Vacation – Something many Minnesota residence do in January, February, or March to stave off insanity.
• White – A color seen for 10-15 minutes after each snow storm which is then replaced by brown.
• X-rated – The inside of your car while experiencing item C.
• Yeti – What you may look like after spending 5 minutes brushing off your car during a blizzard.
• Zero – A magical temperature reached occasionally in February.

This winter hasn’t been too bad, but this week nearly drove me over a cliff due to the traffic.  Can we all agree to drive 10-15 mph slower and stop getting into accidents every three minutes?

Being unwilling to disappoint Emily, I decided to post a Friday edition of yesterday’s post.  I was going for funny not creepy, not sure if I accomplished this.  :)

1. Shave your head, nothing says don’t stalk me quite like making it impossible for me to steal your hair to save in the page of my favorite video game manual
2. Change your email password, how else am I supposed to know what your plans on Thursday night are
3. Switch which coffee shop you go to every morning, I only travel two miles from home, so if you just move to the Starbucks closer to work I won’t be able to be there
4. Hang out with your girlfriends more often, too many cute girls in a room terrifies me
5. Defriend me on Facebook, I’m only away from my computer for three hours or so and if I can’t stalk you there outside of that time, well I’ll find someone else
6. Let me overhear you bashing Battlestar Gallactica, no girlfriend of mine could hate that show
7. You could also say Startrek is better than Star Wars, no one worth stalking would believe that
8. Stop leaving your receipts behind at restaurants, nothing says I don’t like you quite like keeping me from increasing my collection.
9. Use your back door, there are no good hiding places for me and my camera back there
10. Talk to me, honestly I’ll run away and never come back

During the writing of this post I did a search for “how to stalk someone”, anyone want to take bets on how long before the Burnsville police are knocking on my door.