We got some fish cooking for the Super Bowl along with a rack of lamb. Hopefully it all comes out delicious!

On Saturday January 30th, 2010, Craig Savitsky sent me the greatest text message ever recorded. Here it is:

“Just so you know, a man wearing a furry vest & zebra tights just was carried into this bar on a tiger singing Holy Diver…”

Chris Hastings, creator of Dr. McNinja and President of Raptor Bandit Industries, gave a lecture at Rider University on Oct. 26, 2009. This lecture was on “The Business of Web Comics” and was a kick off to further study into E-Commerce for my Undergraduate Management Information Systems class. The lecture went really well, and I think it served as a great jumping off point for our chapter on E-Commerce.

Thanks again to Chris for taking the train on down to visit us in Lawrenceville, NJ for the morning.

Be sure to visit him at: www.drmcninja.com

So its been a while. What have I been up to? How about WRISTWATCHES! Since May, Dave and I have emmersed ourselves into the world of Watches, specifically mechanical watches. I have always had a love affair with the watch. Ever since I got my first Timex Ironman (the first model ever), I have almost always worn a watch. Then sometime in college I stopped. I got tired of falling in love with my watch and then having the battery die and not being able to have it replaced properly. I don’t do well with change. Once I like something and make it a part of my life I don’t give it up easily. (Case in point: I used to crush hard over Britney Spears. Then I gave up on her back in 2004. I have yet to officially replace her with a new celebrity crush.) Over the years I bought many Swiss Army quartz watches. They were a couple hundred bucks but they never gave me the same feeling of satisfaction that my first Swiss Army watch gave me. (I should point out that it was a Chinese knock-off) In the end I went back to my first love of Timex. They were cheap dependable watches. They “Took a Licking and Kept on Ticking”. Then my freshmen year of college I brushed up my watch against a cinderblock wall and scratched the face up real bad. This sucked because I loved that watch. I still wore it with the scratch until it died.

That was the day I stopped wearing watches. Sometime in 2008 I bought this rediculous Swatch Watch that connected to the Internet over FM frequencies. It was big, ugly, and orange but it got me thinking about watches again. Fast forward to May 2009. Dave and I start talking about wristwatches. It turned out that we both had a facination with them and we fed each others minds with information we would discover each day on watches. We made a decision that we would purchase our first REAL DEAL mechanical watches. Our quest began…

I’m guessing at this point that I’ll do individual posts about the watches I’ve acquired since then. I’ll try and feature Dave’s too. Who knows if I’ll ever finish this. It might end up like the Peggy Board; which is still in my closet and I’ll get to it one day. It should come as no surprise to any of you that I tend to leave things unfinished on here…

Till next time.

So I made a new movie. You should watch it. I hope you enjoy!

Today I announced I was leaving Comcast’s Cable TV service behind for good. Turbo and I decided we have had enough of Comcast’s horrible service and we got our lease renewed for another year so we figured now’s the time to switch. I posted the fact that I was leaving on Twitter today and then the following occurred:

seannyfunco: Good Bye Comcast and on Tuesday Hello DirecTV.

ComcastSteve: @seannyfunco don’t go

seannyfunco: @ComcastSteve I’ll be keeping you for Internet but I’ve had enough of your terrible signal quality when it comes to TV.

ComcastSherri: @seannyfunco @comcaststeve sorry to hear that. Are you sure you don’t want us to try to help?

seannyfunco: @ComcastSherri I’ve had about 4 24hr+ outages over the last year in my neighborhood for both Cable and Internet at the same time.
I was w/ Cablevision for 3 years in another town & had ZERO outages not to mention I never had OnDemand or Digital Ch. issues

ComcastSherri: @seannyfunco ouch..

seannyfunco: @ComcastSherri Its your infrastructure’s unreliability that made me switch. I also loath your Internet usage cap too. But you got me there.

ComcastSherri: @seannyfunco Bummer

So I think that for the most part concludes my Twitter experience with Comcast. I will say this, the fact that Comcast is actively seeking out customer issues on Twitter is pretty awesome. The fact that they’re addressing customer concerns via Twitter is incredible. I really give Comcast a lot of credit for what they’re doing there but unfortunately it’s not enough to make me stay a Comcast TV customer. The issues that are making me leave are far bigger then anything a person in Customer Service can handle. Their infrastructure problems and their Internet usage policies are really the breaking points for me. If I was able to go to another provider who could give me Cable modem or faster speed for Internet, I’d switch in a second. But given the nature of that industry and my location in NJ, Comcast is my only option. So you will have my business there Comcast but only until I have another option.

On that note I’d still like to thank ComcastSteve and ComcastSherri for attempting to stop my departure. I wish you guys the best and keep doing what you’re doing. I hope more companies follow your lead when it comes to Twitter & customer relations.

The annual SeanPiotrowski.net NCAA Tournament Challenge completed a few weeks ago and we have a winner. Greg Coleman won with 1280 and finished in the 85.9% National Percentile. Congratulations Greg! May your year of bragging rights begin now!

My next post will be soon and it will be about my newest purchase. I finally have committed lock, stock, and barrel to an MP3 player platform and its to a platform you might not think…

Full details will be soon, I promise!

Just wanted to share this article as I felt it raises a very valid point about GameStop and the future of gaming in the retail marketplace.

So I’ve been secretly reading Meghan McCain’s blog for like the past few weeks and I think its time for me to let Meghan know a few things that have been floating around in my mind since I started. I always knew Meghan was blogged during her father’s campaign but I wasn’t interested really in reading what she had to say at the time. You see, like many other Republicans, I just didn’t feel her Dad was the way to go Presidentially. In my old age I see that my ideals float more and more towards a radical libertarian slant. In my mind, the Republican party has historically always stood for many of my most important of libertarian principals, but that hasn’t been the case the past 8 years. Anyway, I digress, so I missed out on Meghan’s blogging prowess during the campaign because I was disinterested in hearing from what I deemed the “McCain political machine”. Then on Feb. 19th everything changed for me…

Meghan McCain authored a post entitled “Why Republicans Don’t Get the Internet” and never before had a title peaked my interest more. Here I am a two time student of Information Technology, a professor of Information Technology, a blogger, and a disenfranchised Republican and Meghan McCain is going to tell me why the GOP doesn’t get the Internet. I couldn’t refuse this opportunity to learn from the inside why it is that the Republican Party as a whole are as computer literate as my Mother. You can read the article for yourself but this article really struck a chord with me. Here was a girl around my age, who might not be as “technical” as me, but sure as hell gets why the Internet is important to a political campaign when it comes to recruiting younger voters. I stood up and took notice. What became obvious to me more then anything while reading this post was that the GOP had an ace up their sleeve with Meghan McCain and they blew it. Instead of listening to her ideas and her perspective on the youth of today they reluctantly gave her a blog to shut her up and didn’t do anything with her suggestions or insight. Did McCain lose the election because of this? Not by a long shot, but there was something to be gained in all of this; relevance to a younger generation. Relevance is something that the GOP is now struggling to regain and it didn’t have to be that way.

Today Meghan posted about why she thinks people like Ann Coulter are bad for the GOP. I know I’ve made statements in the past defending some of Ann’s crazy ramblings but Meghan is onto something here. There are many people in America who do not subscribe lock, stock, and barrel to the GOP agenda/platform and those people who do not believe ALL are shunned by the inner circles of the GOP. I am one of those people and apparently Meghan is also amongst our ranks too. Then someone like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter comes along and spews a bunch of nonsense about whatever and its a turn off. I know I’m tired of it and Meghan is too. She feels that people aren’t supporting the GOP because of people like Ann and Rush and she’s probably right, they are huge turns offs. Why would you want to be associated with the lunacy that is Ann or Rush?

So now I come to my letter:

Dear Meghan McCain,
You’re good at what you do. As you post more and more you will get even better. I’ve been at this whole blogging thing for almost 8 years and I can honestly say I’ve never read an “opinion blog” that has fired me up as much as yours. I think you need to keep exposing the Republican party for what it has become and as long as you remain as independent from them as you are now, I honestly believe you’ll do more good for them then they’d ever admit. I know there is a lot of venom spewed at you in your comments; just ignore it. I’m sure you already do but I just wanted to say it anyway. It’s rare these days that anything gets me to write a nice long lengthy post and you my dear have inspired me to spread the word. I wish you nothing but the best and I look forward to your future posts. Maybe one day we can discuss our philosophies on how the Internet fits into the grand scheme of things and not just the GOP?

Sincerely,
SeanPiotrowski.net

All of the parts for my Peggy Board LED Sign project have arrived. The above slide show shows you what was included. The goal is to make a sign with the blue ghost from Pacman and the word GHOST in green letters. I will keep track of its development here on SeanPiotrowski.net.