"This, then, is the dilemma all gods must accept: that they can no longer be completely sovereign over their finest creations." --Kevin Kelly

The Most Artifically-Generated Hype award goes to...

mlife for their current marketing comapign "What is mlife?". Radio, television and online ads exclaim vaguely how mlife will change my life forever, but leave me hanging as to specifics. Each ad ends with the question, "What is mlife?" which is apparently what I'm supposed to be asking myself, my friends, and my family priest.

If you decide to seek out information online, you will be rewarded with a hype-stuffed Web site, plastered with marketese. There is so little content on www.mlife.com, that you'll actually leave the site with less content than you arrived with.

However, the brilliant people at mlife are offering $1000.00 to someone who takes a guess at what mlife is. BUT you don't have to be right. An answer like, "The name of the Pope's hat." is perfectly fine. So I invite you to enter the contest -- and be creative.

Because hey, a thousand bucks from a bad advertising firm is still a thousand bucks.

Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned American capitalism?

WTC medallions anger relatives

In keeping with the theme of morbid links here, check out the Living Dead Dolls. These deliciously evil creatures come in a variety of poses including, Damien, The Easter Bunny, and Lizzie Borden. I know that Tara has been eyeing these dolls up for some time. I don't blame her, they are really cool.

Edward Gorey is one of Tara's favorite author/illustrators. He apparently has over 100 published books and collections of his artwork. It can all be veiwed at the Goreyography - An Eclectic Galleria.

This will probably be most interesting to Tara, but I was just visiting the Movable Type site and noticed that entries can be categorized not only chrononlogically, but also alphabetically. They give a great example of this at 75orless, where they categorize reviews of albums according to the artist/album. Pretty cool. Tara, I think you could really make good use of this with your idea for the internet dictionary thing.

I am working remotely from my office this week (and next) in CT. While I am here, not only do I not have access to my work email, but it seems I can't even get to my personal email. The computers here seem to have incredibly old versions of browsers which do not recognize many of the current languages such as Javascript, CSS and others. Last night I ended up having Tara read my email to me over the phone. Pathetic.

This past week, I had the unique pleasure of eating dinner at the Seoul/Tokyo Restaurant in Hartford, CT. This magnificent place offers both Korean and Japanese foods all under one roof. While we were there, we tried some Kirin Beer a Japanese beer with a great flavor and almost no aftertaste. Good Stuff. I am hoping that this week when our group has to go out to dinner, we pick this place for one of the nights!

Today was a pretty warm day here in the Boston area. It reminded us that Spring is only a few months away and that the warm weather will be here to stay. What immediately comes to mind when you think of Spring? Flowers? No. Warmer weather? Nope. That's right. Everyone thinks of Marshmallow Peeps. This annual springtime treat is a classic. The Peeps company which has been around for over 3 generations proudly brings you through what they call Peepsville, a virtual community for this "sweet" organization. If you are interested in the process of how peeps are made, make sure you take the Factory tour.

It is infrequent that I insist that people visit a website that I post here on the site. In this case, you must go visit the The Official Ninja Homepage: REAL Ultimate Power!!!!!!!!!. This guy from UCLA has the real deal and total story on how super sweet and hard core ninjas are. Apparently they are totally sweet and wail hard.

It was only a matter of time until one of these guys showed up dead.
Excite News

I learned how to create stylesheets this week from a fantastic CSS tutorial by Steve Mulder on Webmonkey. The impetus is that I wanted to learn how to change the stylesheets that Movable Type uses on Liloia.com, but I have already found a use for my new CSS knowledge at work—doing some tricky text-positioning.

If you don't know CSS yet, go learn now. Don't be a loser like me and wait 2 years.

My book review was published this month.

It's my first little printy thing at CIO with my very own byline. Yay.

Okay, only have a second here, but I am training with my new job here in Meriden, CT. Things are going well so far, but I am always concerned about getting it all right. I am working with 5 other people, 4 of which are also mostly brand new, all of whom are cool. Erin, Maura, Adam, Nello, and Yun; don't know a whole lot about them yet, but we are the team. We have three more weeks of this and I am missing my peeps at home. More later!

My very own employer, IDG, comes in 21st on Fortune's Top 100 Companies to Work For list. If we're #21, the first 20 companies must leave little chocolates on your keyboard at night or something because IDG is really fantastic - even in a tough year. And yes, the kitchens ARE still stocked with gourmet coffee and popcorn.

Is it too good to be true or have we really reached a new era in commercial airline flight?

I'm apparently the weblog-twin of Heather of Harrumph!. Does she have a son with one extraordinarily large eye as well?

Today Salon has a sickeningly gut-wrenching story about the people who were the real losers in the Enron conspira.. er.. collapse. People whose retirement savings' were made up of only Enron stock - they believed in their company and gave everything to support it. Now those accounts are gone, retirement plans have been scrapped and one woman sits in the dark at night for fear her electric bill will get too high.

How could something so good have become so bad? I love bad candy because of the sweet paradox it creates. Candy evokes sugary goodness, but bad candy can be anything from tarry, cola-flavored doggie doo to mucous-filled gel cups. Makes you appreciate the Zen-like simplicity inherent in the Kit Kat, no?

Today is baby Scott Morey's first day on earth - let's hope it's a great one!

Scott Morey
10:48 pm on January 21
8 lbs, 14 oz.

So far...so good. I had my first day of work today with Perkin-Elmer, and it was all right. There are about 30 people in the Customer Support department, all of whom do a wide variety of tasks relating to customers and so far they all seem very nice. I really didn't get a chance to talk to anyone that much yet, I spent most of the day training with Phil, one of the more senior people there.

I did get the chance to talk to one guy a bit, ummm I think his name was Fred, but I am not sure. Sorry dude, I'll get it right. He seemed like a cool guy, originally from Long Island making a go of it here in Boston. I can really admire that. It is basically the same thing that Tara, Trevor and I have done over the last five years. (Although Trev has only really done it for 3.5 of those) You know, just go someplace cool and see if we can make a good life for ourselves.

I am feeling really positive about this new opportunity and what it may bring. To be perfectly honest, the last year or so has not been all that great, but I didn't lose hope because I believe that all things have their place. That some of what happens to us is meant to fill certain needs that we have and that in the end, as long as we are true to ourselves, good things will happen. Anyway, enough of that jabber.

I know there's no such word as molden, but you get the idea. Those prime-time award shows are stale, monotonous and shatter the delusions of many people that their favorite celebrities are actually witty and interesting people.

Case-in-point: Jennifer Connelly. She's alluring and smoldering on screen, but her Golden Globe acceptance speech was nothing short of long-winded nothingness delivered in a perfect monotone worthy of paranoid-schizophrenic John Nash himself. After the fifth person thanking his cousin's lawyer's pet chinchilla, I tune out. Literally. Even the vapid Sex and the City (while waiting for Project Greenlight) was better than watching Kate Hudson read off a list of names with less enthusiasm than my dentist could muster.

Even the celebrities themselves looked bored and disgusted. Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton didn't even pretend to be interested — they huddled in a corner and constantly whispered back and forth. They're the freaks in the back of the class making fun of everyone else. (They also give great interviews, in which there are long, awkward silences while both of them just stare intently at the interviewer.

But I make it a point never to criticize and run, so here's some advice from me (the consumer who's supposed to be watching this drivel) on how to make the award shows more interesting, useful and highly-rated (you know, for the myriad celebrities that read our weblog...)

Don't thank people no one has ever heard of. I don't care if Bob Finkelstein saved you from drowning last week - thank him later. Names are boring, people don't listen and you're definitely going to leave someone out. Not to mention that reading a list of names makes you look like a substitute teacher taking attendance. Which leads me to...

Feel free to say something useful or interesting to your captive audience. Even if it doesn't have to do with your award, give us anything other than a list of names. A recipe for your grandmother's award-winning chili, advice on how to get stains out of silk, your personal stock picks or your opinion on any topic whatsoever.

Kiss all 59 people on your way back from getting your award. I don't know about you, but watching 2 minutes of someone scooting around tables and schmoozing is not entertainment — unless someone trips.

So here are some things that have happened or run through my head today:

• I have given more thought to the whole Grad School/MBA thing. I think it is really important to take my time with this decision and I don't want to rush into something just to get into school. For now I am going to work on studying for my GMAT and learning what schools are in the area.
• I have to spend a lot of time tomorrow getting ready for my first day of work on Monday. This means dragging out the iron. For the last year, both of the companies that I worked for had very casual dress codes and wrinkles were almost a state of mind. Maybe I need to buy some spray starch too. We will see.
• Today, I setup a new blog in the Liloia.com franchise. From this day forward you will also be able to access the deep thoughts of the NJ Gillet consortium of our family at The Gillet's . They are pretty weird, but they don't bite. "Won't you buy them, take them home and try them"
• No matter what anyone tells you, do not rent the movie "Made" starring Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn. Had the movie been about Jon Favreau's character Bobby and the struggles he had, it would have been a decent movie. Vaughn's character Ricky was so irritating and annoying that it distracted from the movie, and you wondered (hoped) on a second by second basis if someone was going to kill him in the next scene.

That's it.

Bryan and Christine have a new computer, a cable connection and no idea where to go online! So I sat and thought - which sites would I recommend for someone ready to explore the World Wide Web? Take a look at the first wave of my bookmark picks:

SPECIFICALLY FOR BRYAN & CHRISTINE:
Hong Kong International School
http://www.hkis.edu.hk/default.htm
Hey B, remember this? For everyone else, this is where the Gillet Clan went to school for almost 4 years. Here's their description, "Graciously situated with water and mountain vistas in a world-class Asian city, Hong Kong International School offers a quality American-style education in a Christian context. The school thrives on its culturally diverse, international community while teaching respect for all religious beliefs."

Freehold Township Home Page
http://www.twp.freehold.nj.us/
Get some general town and event info. Town home pages are generally boring and useless, but by the year 2050, we'll all be able to pay parking tickets online, buy tickets for town events, view recycling schedules, view maps of the town, participate in town forums, and even watch webcasts of town meetings. Oh and have flying cars.

Classmates.com Manalapan High School Forum
http://www.classmates.com
This is a school reunion site that allows you to keep in touch with high school friends. They'll try to wring some money out of you for a premium membership, but I don't think it's worth it. Just stick to the free forums and get a peek at what everyone is up to. Did you know that a friend of mine from high school is a mayor now? How could anyone possibly top that... :)

FUN & GAMES:
Queendom.com
http://www.queendom.com/tests/index.html
I love online surveys and quizzes. They have everything from classic IQ tests to romantic space profiles and concentration tests. Everything is free and everything is fun!

READING:
Salon
http://www.salon.com
Salon has a lot of great features and editorials. They have a news wire that's updated often as well. Keep an eye out for the stories with gold stars next to them - those are stories for premium members that can only be accessed with membership. Read the free items for a while first to see if Salon is worth paying $30.00 a year for. If not, there's enough free content to keep you coming back a few times a week.

Slashdot
http://slashdot.org/
The tagline is "news for nerds", but Slashdot covers so many interesting topics like media, science, and current news that it's really accessible to anyone. If you register for free, you can participate in the discussion after each post and possibly someday have a turn at being a moderator!

JOB SEARCH:
Monster
http://www.monster.com
I found my current position at Monster as did Dave. Arguably the best site online for job searching. Simple to use, lots of responses when you enter your resume and not a lot of garbage emails from them. (Like Techalert.com who I can't get to stop sending me job alerts no matter how many times I unsubscribe). Start with the "Search Jobs link" and get an idea of what's out there for you. Try slightly different keywords in your searches to uncover employment treasures!

SHOPPING:
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/
They don't call it Earth's Biggest Selection for nothing! Amazon can be a little intimidating at first, but it's fantastic when you have a specific item in mind. Start with a wish list - you'll see the link for it in the upper right corner of their main page. This is a list of items that your friends (and sisters!) can look through when they're trying to get you a gift. People can order items straight off the list and have them delivered right to you. They give you a list of iems to start with, but you can also use the site search box to look for books, CDs, movies and computer games that you'd like to add too. After you've made a wish list, use their notification feature to let your friends (and sisters!)
know where they can find the list.

eBay
http://www.ebay.com
You can get lost for hours browsing the racks at eBay - it's a garage sale for the planet. If I had to estimate, I would say that 25% of the items are pure garbage, 40% are nice, but either too much money, useless to you, or easier to get offline, 25% are "hey that's a good deal" and 10% of the items are "Oh my god, I can't believe I found that!" the trick is learning how to weed out the first two categories before you even look at the auction. The best way to get to know eBay is to do random searches for things you like. So try a few test searches from the front page, like "Jackie Chan movie" (30 items), "cotton quilt fabric" (173 items), etc. Poke around for a while before trying an auction.

BUILDING YOUR OWN SITE:
Yahoo! GeoCities
http://geocities.yahoo.com/home
Not as homey and personal as it once was, GeoCities is still free for those who want to try their hand at a home page. It's a good place to get your feet wet with HTML and the workings of the Web.

That's plenty to get you started. I'll have more bookmarks for you in the future - don't worry, I have hundreds in my list. We'll go to all corners of the Web by the time we're done. Have fun!

This Monday I start at my new job with the Perkin Elmer Life Science Customer Support department. I am really looking forward to it, but I am a little nervous. New people, new tasks, a whole new way of working. Especially since the last time I really worked for an established company was over 15 months ago.

Don't get me wrong, CareScout and LearningBrands.com were both real organizations with great ideas and promise, but they were much more fluid and new than working with a large corporation. Anyway, that isn't a big deal. I am just looking forward to learning the ropes and contributing again to a team.

The most interesting point so far, is that I can start graduate school right away. Or at least as soon as I identify where I would like to go and apply! I need to find a school that offers an MBA program either at night or on the weekends. I am sure that won't be a problem, but I want to make sure that I am thourough. If you have any ideas or suggestions in this regard for the Boston area, pass it along to me. Well, wish me luck.

"I am incredibly nervous that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals... The business world will consider the past successes as nothing but an elaborate accounting hoax." — Enron executive, Sherron S. Watkins' August letter to Enron CEO Kenneth Lay

I've been incredibly busy this week - there are some fantastic new projects at work that I'm having a lot of fun working on. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get back to a few people who have written me messages (sorry Mom!). So in the interim, here's what's up with me:

• I just passed my one-year anniversary at work. It's still a ton of fun. But the Pirate's Booty is not nearly as cheesy as it used to be. This is why.

• I've read K-PAX, Geeks, Little Altars Everywhere, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Orbiting the Giant Hairball in the past two weeks. And I'm working on Neuromancer now. They are all very good, Geeks reads like the magazine piece it was conceived as, K-PAX brings up ideas that stick in your head like scambled eggs in a non-Teflon pan, Little Altars and Divine Secrets go down easy like mimosas at brunch, but pack a kick that you're not aware of until later and Hairball is something that you have to reread several times throughout your life to derive the full benefit from it.

• I'm attempting to learn ColdFusion. I'd love to learn to put together some of the neat applications we use at work.

• I'm in the throes of a liloia.com redesign - complete with new graphics and formatting. Should be done by the end of the month, hope you like it. No floating Dutch girls though.

• Dave got me Baldur's Gate II and I'm spending every free moment (what a joke) learning how to play this incredibly complex game. The trick is that it won't work on my machine - only Dave's - so I cannot access multiplayer games.

• Dave also got me Salon Premium, which is great, because I never would have gotten it for myself. I consider it to be 'hostageware' in which they hold the wares (content) hostage until you pay for it. For a voracious reader, there's nothing more frustrating than getting hooked by a lead, then getting a message that you can't read the rest of the story.

• Survivor is over and I'm done watching tv on Thursday until it starts again. I'm down to three shows now: Project Greenlight, Good Eats and Six Feet Under when it comes back on. It's a sad day in Star Trekdom when Enterprise can't hold my attention.
  

Put down Harry Potter... The Lost Years of Merlin are here. Throughout literary history, the enigmatic character of Merlin has shown his face in more places that most can count. Yet in all of these scenarios we see our beloved wizard as an aged old man regardless of the time or place, fable or tale. What was his life like before the flowing robes and long grey beard? T. A. Barron has asked himself this very same question and attempted to respectfully answer it.

"In this first book of T.A. Barron's trilogy, a young boy, washed ashore and nearly dead, embarks on a quest to solve the mysteries of his true name and where he spent his earliest years. The imagery of water and waves, the powers of nature and the past, and the strength of tradition all cycle through this gripping story. With his Second Sight, Emrys explores the mythical land of Fincayra and discovers the Lost Treasures."

Although I am sure he intended to write a trilogy, it seems that he has more story to tell than three books will hold. As of right now there are five, and possibly more. As I complete them I'll give you the scoop on their merits. This first installment was a fast, and fascinating read.

Thursday night. Survivor is over, Friends has long since gone by the wayside and I am tired. This is just one of those nights that I like to put a log in the fireplace and read a book.

My landlord doesn't appreciate that though, seeing as I don't have a fireplace and all. Oh well.

Tomorrow is Friday. My last free day before I start working on Monday. I feel like I should do something fun either tomorrow or at least over the weekend. Any suggestions?

Yep, that kid is mine. Do me a favor and don't tell anyone else though, ok? Thanks.

This guy has way too much time on his hands. Not to mention being a little scary.

Harvey the mouse must die.

As of next Tuesday, I will be working for; PerkinElmer Life Sciences. I am pretty excited. Go visit the link if you are interested in seeing what they do.

The last few days have been a bit hectic, but for good reason. On Thursday I was contacted by a recruiter, who thought I might be a good fit for a position he was trying to fill with a bio-tech company called Perkin-Elmer located in Boston.

On Friday he called back and said that they wanted to interview me. I was very excited and couldn't wait. Having worked for a large Environmental Science company, and knowing some of the benefits of working in a large organization, this opportunity was too good to let slip through my grasp.

They brought me in yesterday afternoon and after a few hours of fantastic conversations, I emerged with a very positive outlook on the position and feeling like I had the position in the bag.

I was correct. I start next Tuesday working for Perkin Elmer Life Sciences in the Customer Support group. I am supposed to be helping them in the integration of a new business that they recently purchased, along with a team of six other customer service people. It should be very interesting.

Finally. I finally got my act together and switched the site over to the new look, and functionality offered by Movable Type. The website has a couple of cool features that are a lot of fun. Please take the time to look them over and make use of them.

Comments - You will notice that at the bottom of each post, there is the word "Comments". If you click on this, a popup window will open and allow you to respond to the related post. Give it a try!

Email List - On the right side of the page, there is a box where you can submit your email address to our mailing list. This is great because when we come out with something really interesting, or a great picture of Trevor, we can let you all know right away. Just enter your email address and click "Add".

Archives - This is probably my favorite part, the site automatically archives our postings and displays them on the right side of the screen. Right now we have it archived by month, but may change it later. Keep looking here for old posts that you may have missed!

The overall look of the site is going to change over the next two or three weeks as Tara comes up with some excellent ways to make our site shine. Also, all of our old posts are not uploaded yet and I will slowly get them in place. In the meantime, enjoy the new site and if you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to let us know!

The new year is here and I am still a slacking unemployed loser. I kind of wanted to have the holidays off so that I could hang out, shop for presents and spend time with Trevor. Now I am over that. I need to get out of the house and dress in clothes that I haven't worn in months.

Bring it on!