I really should upload more photos to facebook.  And everyone knows you don’t touch the Poppy.

My DITL creation phase is on a break, but I should mention that I captured a decent amount of video for a TITLE (Tequilacon In The Life, Excellent) and a RITL (Roadtrip In The Life), but I have not made the time to do those the justice they deserve.  I still plan on it, but for now you can have some of my photo collection. 

Perhaps these would be better in something like a flickr album, or maybe a facebook thingy, but for now, they are whall.organisms.

Which one is geeky? BOTH! HA!

SagittariusBoy and LibraGirl

Bellaventa, OhSarahJoy and Libragirl. and drinks.

Hey look! It's that guy. and that girl. I think.

Pink, the adobe.

Some sort of neat thing I took a picture of

This was neat. Neat neat neat

Interestingly, this interesting thing was next to that other one

You might think this is a shot of an silver ornate bench, but really it's just a zoomed out photo of Ren. I'm not that good at photography.

Tequila Mockingbird Con

Had such a great time in Santa Fe, NM and met some fantastic bloggers.  If you ever get a chance to go to a blog meet-up, do it.  It’s pretty neat having a virtual friendship with so many people online for a long time and then get to meet them in person.   I’m sure I’ll get something up here dedicated to the event in the form of pictures, video or possibly aromavision, so stay tuned.

Swine Flu

I’ve believed for a long time now that humanity is ripe for culling.  We’re overpopulated, lazy, gluttonous and atrophied.  Like the bubonic plague in the 1300′s and the Spanish Flu in early 20th century killing 50-100 million, nature is going to come wipe out some of us to remind us of our place and maybe kick-start us into a better way of living.

However, there is something we can do to stave off death.

We can fight back – Eat BBQ

Nature is laughing at our vegetarianism.

Pepsi Swag

I’m not above a little pimping for one of my friend’s blogs, especially if it helps me get another chance to win.  Hmm, wait a second, if people actually go visit and try to get their own chance, that actually REDUCES my chances to win, doesn’t it?

Maybe it’s worth it.  Maybe the Universe will see my only-slightly-greedy intent and think “hey, that’s an improvement! he’s usually a lot more selfish!”

It’s worth a try.  Go check out BlondeBlogger’s PEPSI Swag giveway.

Best of LOLcats

Also, since I’m not a cool kid with an iPhone or camera-enabled Blackberry, you might want to make sure you follow Ren on twitter.  He can live-twitpic on demand.

Pre-BeerHer was a blast as we met up with early arrivals Geeky Tai-Tai, Bellaventa, Karl and LibraGirl for a quick snack, some social lubrication and*ahem* colorful discourse.

As you can see, all the guyfolk were making fun of my arm-reaching avatar.  All the womenfolk were just sitting there being hot.

Ren and I left that group after a couple hours and I waited  in the hotel for what felt like hours while Ren did a bunch of stuff on the computer, making us potentially late for our meeting, and I got all anxious and stuff.

We finally were able to leave.  Ren navigated while I drove (a good combination).  The unofficial BeerHer Pre-TequilaCon meet-up officially started with the two of us being the first to arrive at the Santa Fe Brewing Company, all alone in our lonesome loneliness, smothered in a blanket of solitude.  We scoped the place out a little and waited for the rest to show up.  Yes, you may now laugh at my aforementioned anxiety about tardiness.

Here’s basically what happened:

I met Dawg and laughed at his shirt.

Isn’t that shirt hilarious?!?!?!?  It cracked me up something fierce.  And it’s so true.   I shook his hand (paw?), said hello and then soon thereafter Ren took over and talked cameras and photo shutter speeds and exposurifics and lens capitals and flashonomics or something I caught a few glimpses of Dawg throughout the evening before he left.

Then I met TEH POPPY and got a great hug.

All I got to say about that is… it’s about time we met.  I was so looking forward to her smile, and laugh and funness, not to mention she’s smart and geeky.  Meeting her is truly one of the highlights I was looking forward to this whole trip.  Then Ren monopolized teh Poppy the rest of the evening by talking, you guessed it, camera stuff and this and that and features and facial recognizance and aperture focal planetariums and spot meets and what his focal length was and then she said goodbye.

Serving as the late-yet-incredibly-heralded arrivals, Marty Mankins and his lovely wife Reba showed up.

Although Marty and I differ on a few political beliefs, we have an online kinship that has grown over the last year, with video tributes, a shared love for music, and a mutual respect for each others’ technical prowess.  I was looking forward to chatting it up with him until Ren devoured their attention and cornered the market on MY friends while they immersed themselves in the one person at the meet-up I DIDN’T need to talk to and learn about, forcing me to wallow in the corner curled up in a fetal ball while I talked to my camera and consoled it telling it everything will be better tomorrow.  But then they left.

I also met the youngun of the group, ohsarahjoy.

L-R: Bellaventa, OhSarahJoy, LibraGirl

If there’s any cause in the world colossal enough to be worthy of an event like “BeerHer”, this has to be it – a soon-to-be-22-year-old drinking her very first beer, surrounded by people she’s never met in a city far away from home.

All-in-all, it was a good start to the vacation and I can’t wait for Ren to overpower my inconsequential presence at tonight’s blogger meet-up!

Really?  That’s weird.  And kinda scary.  I mean, for quirkiness, that takes the cake.  You sure you want to be around here?

Ren and I are traveling to TequilaCon 2009 today – driving from Austin, TX to Santa Fe, NM.  It’s been a fun trip so far – you can read a little more about it with some graphic candy over at his post (warning to people who don’t like pictures of feet).  For now, I’ll give you a shot of some random convertible.

You can follow along with us on the trip in the following ways:

• Follow me and/or Ren on Twitter.  You can see progress of our trip in <140 characters at a time.  Each of us also keep our latest tweets in our blog sidebars.
• Follow me on utterli.  We may or may not be uttering our progress with audio clips that are sure to be unique.  Just like all my other utterz.  Utterz is another thing you can see in my sidebar.
• Follow my blackberry’s location on the earth with Google Latitude.  I’ll call you big brother and give you a big hug, which will be captured on camera, analyzed, sorted, catalogued, reviewed for terrorism and then promptly forgotten.  My google address is the letter j plus wayne at gmail.com.

So on to the etiquette question.

Do you wear your own blog shirt to a blogger meet-up?

I know.  A little creepy, isn’t it?   I’ll tell you right now, that’s my intention.

Follow-up question

How about wearing someone ELSE’S blog shirt to a blogger meet-up?

If you could answer by tomorrow at 8pm Mountain time, that’d be great.  ”Yeah, I’m gonna need you to answer that by Saturday, mkay?”

You see, later this week I’m attending TequilaCon 2009, and it’s my first TC.  It’s actually my first non-Blogography-specific blogger conference, but… you knew it… Dave is an integral part of TequilaCon.  So I might as well confess I’m having his baby.

“having his baby” is blog-speak for “I’m doing a lot of posts involving” a specific blogger.  Actually, I just made up that term, but it’s blog-speak anyway.  In fact, it’s the first reference ever for this particular term used in this way!

So I’m reading Dave’s recent post about Ticketmaster (warning: profanity and one-finger salutes abound) and the fact that he was planning on seeing Duran Duran while traveling.

Ahhh, Duran Duran.  (note to self: Isn’t it convenient that Dave refers to himself as “Dave2″ and Duran Duran can be, and often is, shortened to “D2″?  Coincidence?!?!??!?!?! NOT LIKELY!)

Back to topic.

First off, this band gets a lot of flak.  Often typecast or shunned / laughed at / dismissed solely because of the demographics of their once-largest-fanbase (screaming teenage girls), these chaps are incredibly talented writers, artists and performers.  And to top it off, they know business.  They connect with their fans (a la the VIP packages you could purchase for “meet and greets”) and continue to pump out quality trendsetting music.

I mixed together a couple of ring tones a couple years back because A) my wife is such a fan and B) I liked playing around with Adobe Audition and C) I like to show off.  So Duran Duran was the first band I mixed into a cell phone ringtone.  Check ‘em out:

Ringtone #1:

Ringtone #2:

You shoulda seen her face light up when her phone rang with that second one.  It’s one thing to have a song as a ringtone, but a custom mix?  Someone nominate me for best husband, please.

It’s easy to ignore the trends that D2 has set in their career.  D2 has actually added a lot of “firsts” to their repertoire.

They were the first to have live video cameras and videoscreens in their concerts.  What concert have you gone to lately that doesn’t do that?

They were first artists to make a song available for digital download (Electric Barbarella in 1997).

They were first band to make a pop video entirely using Macromedia Flash.

(I will point out that I snapped the above frame because my coworker was watching my computer screen as I was checking out the video and immediately commented “mmmmm. Silence of the Lambs.”  Creepy much?)

It rubs the lotion on it’s skin;
or else it gets the hose again.

Anyway.

Duran Duran were the first to become citizens and stage an in-world live concert in Second Life and perform a completely virtual concert.

I suspect (but aren’t sure) they were the first to do the widescreen 16:9 video format (think Hungry like the Wolf), and who knows – they may have been the first production-quality video to get banned (Girls on Film).  It’s at least the first one I heard about – once again portraying brilliant marketing.

For me personally, they were the first band I remember getting on my bike and ride ~3 miles to the record store to buy a 45 — their chart-topping single The Reflex.