Work(ing Title)

Yesterday Rory thought it was high time he did some work, and so naturally, he chose to sit with me in our EvNet Lounge and conduct the strangest interview I’ve ever been a part of. His title bears repeating, “Jesse Lewin on knowing Steve Jobs, working at Apple, and posing with Bono,” as they are all things of which I am guilty.

Note the Helio and Twitter references during the interview, and otherwise just enjoy Rory talking a mile-a-minute. If you can’t watch the video in your browser, that’s probably because you aren’t using Internet Explorer with Windows Media Video. You can download the interview and watch it with VLC, or drop by your friendly software retailer and explain your problem. They’ll set you up with a little app called Parallels and sort you out ;)

Anyone who knows me knows me knows that I would never read anything by Kevin Smith. That said, some of you probably know that I have some televised wrestling heritage, and that fact was apparently not lost on Eric when he sent me this clip:

As it is obviously hilarious, I responded to his email, sarcastically suggesting that his friends and I could raise some money to buy an Ultimate Warrior impersonation from our man Eric. Well what began as friendly ball-busting has taken a turn into weirdville. Eric has challenged Jocko and I to a Ultimate Warrior imitation video deathmatch.

There’s a suggestion on the table to cast the net a bit wider, in some absurd effort to increase the volume of political-aspiration-crushing content. I’m happy to welcome anyone who wants to make a fool of themselves–join the club motherfucker. All I can say, is that I will do my family proud, and that if I ever rise into the rarified air of my chosen industry, that this will most certainly be known as my Ballmer Developers video.

And so we arrive at the finals of this little fiasco. The votes were tallied and the top five were Versace 1, Versace 2, Ray-Ban 2, Ray-Ban 3, and Modo 2, in order of popularity. However this afternoon upon returning to my friendly neighborhood LensCrafters, two of the top five had vanished.

First, in place of Pappy’s favorite Ray-Ban 2, I present its English sibling Burberry 1. Second, I have grandfathered Modo 1 into the finals, on account of it being my personal favorite. Exercise your opportunity to affect the face you’ll no doubt see a lot of, as I’m becoming far too accustomed to these blasted self portraits.

It started snowing about forty minutes ago, just as I arrived to work. So here I sit with my warm cuppa and battle the evil that abounds. I put on socks for the first time this week, which hopefully will help counteract the serious discomfort from yesterday. I must have eaten something that didn’t play well, because I went home in the middle of the day and just about fell asleep.

The rest of the week is looking up though. I’ll be in the gym for the first time in weeks, so I should continue to shrink out of my clothes. Also this weekend will be one of the few where all I have before me is cleaning my apartment and organizing my life, which is fun in a slightly spikey sort of way.

I managed to squeak by with minimal fanfare this year, and now I can just get on with being 26. So far the year has been excellent, with a pleasing if torturous dream topping off a pleasant night’s sleep, and a day of work that can thus far be described as productive. This afternoon will see a handful more text posts for Vista Week on 10, as well as some research into work-related travel in the coming months.

Eric has a tradition of making birthday resolutions as opposed to New Year’s ones, and I’m going to sample his kung-fu this year.

– I’m going to get much more aggressive about publishing my photos I take in a timely manner (as I hope to make photography one of my work responsibilities). I’ve been treating my Flickr photostream as more of a bucket than a stream, and that’s just not right. The increased output should help breath life into this humble blog once the ReDesign gets done.

– Also on the docket is to adhere my monthly life to some financial planning. Cha-Ching may help with this second goal, but for the moment one Excel spreadsheet is going to track my expenditures.

– My last idea comes from a quote by an unidentified friend of Supermarathoner Dean Karnazes:

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!! What a ride!”

This mantra should allow me some sufficiently reckless decisions (yipee).

Thank you to those who threw me some love yesterday. It is geniunely warming to see people reach out and show they’re thinking of me. I would’ve loved to share the day with each of you (some more than others), and hopefully you’ll all be able to make it to the as-yet-unnanounced 2007 Party Against.