Watching Hockey with Stephanie

by on April 2, 2013 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Blog, Humor

[dc]T[/dc]here are times, as rare as they are, when Stephanie agrees to watch hockey with me. Not that Stephanie isn’t a sports fan. Far from it—she loves college basketball and football—she just isn’t exactly an NHL fan.

Let's Go Red Wings 117/365

Photo by me, via my Flickr photostream.

Since I suffered through watched the Michigan State University and Duke game¹ with her, Stephanie returned the favor and watched Sunday’s Detroit Red Wings lopsided loss game against the Chicago Blackhawks. Fair’s fair, right?

The charm of watching anything with Stephanie, especially sports, is her stream of questions and observations—as our Star Wars marathon showcased. This, of course, leads to plenty of hilarity.

 Goal Scoring

“What’s the most goals ever scored in a game?” she asked.

“I don’t remember.”

“What?! You can name every Stanley Cup winner since you were born, and you can’t remember the most goals scored?”

“It also depends on how you look at it. Do you mean goals scored by the winning team, or by both teams, or–”

“I don’t care how you look at it, I just wanna know what’s the record for most goals scored!”²

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NCAA Bracket Madness Post Script

by on April 1, 2013 at 8:20 pm
Posted In: Blog, Humor

[dc]G[/dc]avin, the man responsible for my filling out an NCAA basketball tournament bracket, is not pleased with his own results.

ncaa bracket tweet

Hey, I resemble that tweet.

The, ahem, mascot bracket in question, is mine of course. I enjoy a good fantasy sport trash talking though, especially when Empire Strikes Back is invoked. Sadly, the Billikens did not make it to the Championship as I hoped.

They didn’t even make it to the Final Four.

Or the Elite Eight.

Or the Sweet Sixteen.

Oh well. There’s always next year. Maybe 2014 will be the year of the Zips.

Another sore spot: I was nearly run out of town for picking the Duke Blue Devils over the Michigan State University Spartans in my bracket as a joke. When my prediction proved true, I feared for my life. People in this town take that thing pretty seriously.

 

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Season Two of Downton Abbey: A Satire of the First?

by on March 30, 2013 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Blog, Humor

[dc]I[/dc] finished watching the second season of Downton Abbey recently. I enjoyed it, as I did the first, but for a different reason.

melty downton abbey

Note: Not the Phantom of the Opera. Or the Elephant Man. (Image © original source)

I think the second season is really a straight-faced satire of the first season. I’m going to get spoilery here, so come back later after viewing the season if you don’t want to know what happens.

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There’s An App For That 2.0 Presentation Recap

by on March 28, 2013 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Blog, News

[dc]I[/dc] had the honor of being asked to speak at the Lansing chapter of the Michigan Technology Network (MITN)’s There’s An App For That 2.0 event on Tuesday evening.

astrid evernote hootsuite goodreads wordrpress apps

Officially official. Photo by me. Photo of me by Becky Johns Photography.

The skinny on MITN Lansing, from their website:

The Michigan Technology Network (MITN) is a statewide organization driven to enhance the development of technology professionals through education and networking events with a focus on community involvement.

The purpose of There’s an App For That was for presenters to share some of their favorite smartphone and/or iPad apps. My presentation focused on productivity and creativity, as well as management of WordPress and social media.

A bit of trivia: Of the six presenters, I was the only one who used an Android phone. I quickly became envious of the iPhone’s video-out function, as I had to use a document camera to project my smartphone’s screen.¹

Here’s the list of apps I presented and my reasons for using each. All of these apps are free, but most feature premium upgrades.

 1. Astrid – Task Lists and 21st Century Honey Do’s

The TL;DR: Astrid is a simple task management app, which took the place of Wunderlist on my phone after an upgrade² made that program practically useless. Tasks are viewable on astrid.com too.

Why I Use the Astrid App: I joked in my introduction about being productive and creative at the same time is like herding cats. I function better with a to-do list. Astrid lets you create multiple lists, which comes in handy for separating tasks. You can also create lists with no due date, allowing me to have a catch-all Open list for random things I need to do eventually.

Astrid also lets users assign tasks to each other. Stephanie and I use this feature, with tasks ranging from ‘buy milk!’ to ‘get addresses for Christmas cards.’ I made a joke here about the days of finding darling, handwritten notes from Stephanie on the fridge are gone, and now I get cold, impersonal emails and alerts.

The Astrid feature I use the most is the screen widgets—my Today task list and my Open task list are always the first thing I see.

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