100,000 miles!!!!!!!!!

I already tweeted about this, but I think this accomplishment deserves an entire blog post dedicated to it.

Today, February 17, 2009 my stylin’ 2000 Pontiac Grand Am reached 100,000 miles as I drove past a Yahoo! building in Santa Clara. Here’s the proof:

I think it’s pretty safe to say that this is the greatest accomplishment of my life. Well, this and when my last car reached 100,000 miles.

Now where do I go from here? 200,000 miles?? 300,000 miles??? 88mph back in time???? Do you think the “Service Engine Soon” light would interfere with a flux capacitor?

1 Comment / Posted in: Cool, travel

Lala.com + Last.fm scrobbling = pure bliss

I’ve been using lala.com for a few weeks now. It’s a great service. It lets you sync your music library with their servers so you can play your music library from anywhere with an internet connection. No reason to bring my iPod to and from work anymore. But the one caveat I had with the service was that I couldn’t keep track of my music listening trends on Last.fm like I can with iTunes or my iPod.

Until now!

Lala.com is now beta testing scrobbling your listens onto your Last.fm account! All I had to do was click on the “Tell us” link on the top left of the site and ask for the feature to be activated in my account. Within an hour, I got a reply and it was activated in my account. I’ve been scrobbling all day from lala.com. It works great so far!

Oh, and I got the tip from a lala.com reply to me on Twitter. They’ve since deleted the tweet, probably to keep the beta testing limited, or because they don’t want to be associated with me. Either way, it’s fine by me.

Update (7/12/09): It looks like the “Tell us” link no longer exists. Try asking in this form: http://www.lala.com/#contactsupport

Update (10/27/09): As Andrew pointed out in the comments below, the location to enable the feature has moved. “My Lala” > “Settings” > “Beta” link/tab at the top right.

10 Comments / Posted in: music, Tech

25 Random Things [-facebook, +blog]

Doing the trendy Facebook “25 random things” thing on my blog instead of Facebook because blogs are a better medium. Also, Facebook is dumb, and my blog is cool.

1. I’m already stuck on #1 of this list.
2. During the course of my life I’ve sustained several joint injuries, all of which occurred on only the left side of my body.
3. I like making big life changes every couple of years. I’m due for another.
4. My first job was at McDonald’s. I’ve seen things that to this day keep me awake at night.
5. When I was 6, I spit on a woman’s head from the very top inside the Statue of Liberty, causing a huge commotion throughout the entire inside of the statue. I didn’t get caught. I wasn’t aiming for anyone, but it was still awesome.
6. I used to keep track of how many times I dislocated my left shoulder. I lost count around 40.
7. I drove across the US in under four days, by myself, in the middle of winter, dodging three major winter storms. I would totally do it again.
8. I didn’t show up for my first scheduled day of work at Google. Although it wasn’t my fault. HR emailed me with the wrong start date.
9. I used to be an extremely picky eater, excessively picky in fact. However, after one semester of college I miraculously saw the light and started eating everything. Everything except beets. I do not understand beets.
10. One of my favorite things to do is to wander with no direction in a big city for hours or days.
11. I once opened a bottle of seltzer water for Sergey Brin. He was having trouble with the twist-off cap, and I had just come out of the gym.
12. I like to think that I’ve made it through life so far without making a single enemy, although I’m sure someone out there probably dislikes me.
13. I grew up in one of the snowiest cities in the U.S (Fulton, NY). I now live in California where when on rare occasions when it actually rains, people completely freak out on the roads.
14. I can think of two separate occasions where I had to use quick snow-driving maneuvers to save myself and others from a serious automobile accident. (Here’s a tip to remember when you’re sliding full speed towards another car, one second to impact: Don’t use your brakes. Seriously.)
15. I’ve slid down a homemade 200 ft. slip and slide into a giant mud pit.
16. I did a lot of stupid things with my friends in high school. I’m amazed that all of us turned out okay.
17. I fully expected to be living in Boston after graduating from college. The California/Google thing just sort of happened.
18. If I could have any superpower it would be the ability to teleport myself.
19. I wore a full duct tape suit (hat and shoes included) for an entire day in high school.
20. I get very uncomfortable when staff at a restaurant treat me excessively nicely. I understand it’s part of their job, but I just want to communicate at an even level. Is that so wrong?
21. I have only two memories of my paternal grandfather. One is what he smelled like — a mixture of pipe tobacco and wood. The other is his thumb-less hand. He lost the thumb in a farming accident. The story, as I’ve been told, is that immediately after it happened, he paused, calmly examined the injury and proclaimed, “Well, that’s the end of that.”
22. In college I once drank an entire bottle of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce for $26. My night was ruined, but I was $26 richer.
23. I’m always listening to music, but I always draw a blank when someone asks me “What music are you listening to lately?”
24. Career paths that I considered at various points in my life, mostly in order: ghostbuster, movie star, professional hockey player, musician, meteorologist, doctor, physicist, network administrator, web designer, marketer, search quality strategist, webmaster, entrepreneur, homeless, professional solver-of-world-problems.  I’m still not ruling any of them out.
25. I’ve worked my ass off to get where I am today, but still consider myself extremely lucky. At the same time, I believe there is much more to life and I’m continuously searching for what my purpose is.

3 Comments / Posted in: pointless