I apoligize for not posting in such a long time again. To be honest, there hasn’t been too much to write about. This is like the calm before the storm. Since the last time I posted, I got World Cup tickets with a friend of mine so that’s no longer a ?. I think I’m also going to attempt to go to Lollapalooza in Chicago depending on the lineup.

Enough of what’s coming up, what have I been to? Well, working and just living. February was a quick month in the sense it only had 28 days (even shorter because of that big ass quake in Chile) and that things just went from one to another for me, I didn’t have much time to beathe.

My main project, advancescreenings.com has been going really well. It gets about 2,000 unique hits a day now and people are starting to notice. I’m excited to know this is happening even without me having the opportunity to work on it. I have a lot of things planned but just no time to sit down and get it done.

I started a new project with a couple of friends. It’s in stealthy sexy mode so I can’t say much about it except that it’s called

I worked on whatholidayistoday.com for a few hours..it works, but again, lot to work on, no time. Same with FunnyFact.net, I don’t think I’ve touched that for like a year and now #omgfacts is all popular =/ oh well.

On top of that, I’m launching 2 new blogs, Almost a direct response to going to South by Southwest next weekend. One will be for advancescreenings.com where I’ll cover the film festival as well as site updates and movie news. The other will be my music blog that never got off the ground, onLoop.net. I’ll be posting about the new musicians I see at sxsw as well as the hot fire tracks I come across in my daily lives.

But as I said, this is the calm before the storm, you can expect more posts during South By. But now its going to be a bit seperated since focused movie posts will be on advancescreenings and focused music posts will be on onLoop. I’ll be keeping this blog for my personal perspectives about anything and everything.

I’ve neglected this blog and haven’t posted in a while so I decided to combine a bunch of events and things I’ve done into one big post. The last thing I posted was my Vegas trip so we’ll start from there…

Super Happy Dev House (http://superhappydevhouse.org/)

Super Happy Dev House (shdh) is a great event for developers. There’s no hidden agenda, no real schedule, just a good environment for people to get together and work on stuff. This time it was hosted at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley offices. They did a great job setting up a swank environment with snacks all over the place, catered beer and wine service, dinner for everybody, and demos of some of their products (like surface and xbox). I actually got a lot of work done on advancescreenings.com and launched the 2nd iteration (The first major release was during Google’s Wave Campout).

Silicon Valley Tweetup (http://www.siliconvalleytweetup.com/)

On the following Wednesday, I made my way down to San Jose for a Silicon Valley Tweetup. I met Michael Brito (@britopian) who is one of the founders of the tweetup at CES in Vegas and he invited me to come down, so I did. It was pretty cool, a lot different group than the developer crowd. I need to stop going to these events alone, I’m a pretty shy dude so I’m not use to just going around and introducing myself when people are talking in groups. However, Michael introduced me to a couple people and it was a good time. On top of that, these tweetups are set up to sponsor good causes. This one was for the Twitter Kids of Tansia and the next one is for the San Jose Family Shetler…we’ll see if I can make it out to the next one (and find someone to go with me heh).

San Francisco SketchFest (http://www.sfsketchfest.com/)

San Francisco is amazingly amazing. Events are happening all the time and sometimes you don’t even notice it. I didn’t know about SketchFest until the week it was happening. AND IT WAS AWESOME. I ended up getting tickets for 3 events, A Tribute to Conan O’Brien (which was postponed dude to all the NBC BS), Facebook Improv with 2 of the guys from Human Giant, and Sunday Comics with 2 guys from Reno 911 and Nick Kroll from The League. The last 2 events I got for uber cheap via Goldstar which is an awesome site to get half off and/or free tickets. I love going to see comedians…it’s almost always a good night, I’m definitely adding sketchfest to my yearly to do list for San Francisco.

Great Urban Race: Miami (http://greaturbanrace.com/)

For a weekend, I went back to Miami to surprise my dad for his birthday. Coincidently it was also Great Urban Race’s first race in Miami. I had a great time last year in San Francisco so I decided to do it again. Originally, I was planning to do it with my father but his party was planned during the day instead of the night so he couldn’t do it. Instead, I invited my friend Tony to do it. It was a fun race all kept in Miami Beach. It was such a great day for the race with great weather on the beach and a lot of Miami distractions, if you know what I mean We walked soo far it was ridiculous. The race spanned from 1st street to 41st and all over. We ended up waxing a surfboard, taking a salsa lesson, getting our nails did, and taking a bunch of pictures in front of random things. It’s a great way to really explore a city, I recommend it to anyone. The next race I might do is San Francisco on August 14th, we’ll see…

NFL Pro Bowl (http://www.nfl.com/probowl)

Coincidently, it was also Pro Bowl weekend in Miami (usually the Pro Bowl is in Hawaii and after the Super Bowl). I didn’t plan on going to this, my original ticket back was actually during the Pro Bowl but since my friends had an extra ticket and I only live once (my mom’s advice) I changed my flight and went. The weather was pretty lame and the game wasn’t too exciting since … it’ the Pro Bowl, but it was a good a time. How many people can say they went to a Pro Bowl? But the best part was the cheerleaders! They literally take the best from every team and then put em together…I wonder who gets to vote for that, I would love that job

SF New Tech (http://sfnewtech.com/)

Back to San Francisco, back to techie events. I said for this year I would try and get out to more tech events and network. This was my first New Tech event and it was pretty good. There were a lot of interesting people from different circles and backgrounds. The companies that presented were actually pretty interesting. Well, most of them. I’m still trying to decide if its worth going to the event every month (it does cost $$$ and I would assume its pretty much the same kind of stuff each time) but I definitely would go again in the future. Especially when I have stuff to talk about. Also, I’m pretty sure I have to make business cards for advancescreenings.com …definitely in time for SXSW next month.

SF iNDIEFEST (http://www.sfindie.com/)

Remember how I was saying San Francisco is amazingly amazing? Well here’s another example: the San Francisco Independent Film Festival. Located in the heart of hipster headquarters, the mission, this film festival features films of the indie variety. Since I don’t live in the city yet, I didn’t go to the whole festival. But I did check out opening night (mainly because it was a film about Jamaica). The film is called “Wah Do Dem” (http://www.wahdodem.com/) and is about a Brooklyn hipster who gets dumped by his girlfriend days before a full paid cruise to Jamaica which he eventually goes on by himself. He explores the less traveled paths once he gets to the country and ends up missing the ship and trapped in Jamaica. He has to journey to the US Embassy in Kingston on the other side of the island. It was a pretty good film and you can definitely tell it was made and shot by a couple of guys but they really showed the country in a good light. I was smiling ear to ear throughout the film missing and appreciating the beautiful island and people of Jamaica.

For my first conference of the year, I chose to go to CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) – the largest consumer electronic convention in the world. It was ridiculously big. There were 5 maps/pamphlets to cover the enormous halls. Initially, I was convinced to go by a friend of mine from high school who was going to cover it for his blog. A week before the show, he pulled out, but luckily I convinced my co-worker to go as well. We just went to check it out really, our company doesn’t really have much business being there since this conference isn’t focused on developers but it was a great decision to go and great experience. This might turn into an annual trip.

The hot electronics this year seemed to be 3D, mobile devices, and this bad ass drone toy. But honestly, I could care less. These things will come out eventually and you can see everything on the internet these days. For me, this trip was filled with meeting cool new people. A lot of the social media crowd was there and they’re all about having and making connections with other people. I was invited to this blogger party with a lot of big name tech people (people you’ve probably never heard about). Through a friend I had met in San Francisco, I was introduced to hand full of other people and had a great Vegas night, we’ll just keep it at that even though the blogger party was called “It Won’t Stay in Vegas.”

I will tell you that I went through the AVN conference too (the porn convention). That was pretty interesting. It’s not as crazy as they show in the movies but you still have your girls wrestling, stripper poles all over the place, and questionable uncomfortable toys. It was actually pretty clean, all the girls had to wear pasties and thongs so you don’t really see anything. It was actually pretty similar to CES: bunch of guys walking around and checking out booths. Which begs the question, where are the women? Other than on the stripper poles…and the Ed Hardy booth at CES (which was pretty much as raunchy as AVN).

Vegas kicked the shit out of me. I must’ve walked the strip about 10 times back and forth. If you know me, you may call me cheap. I don’t think I’m cheap…I’m just not going to pay for something I could get cheaper. (And if I have time, I’ll walk rather than take a taxi) You walk up and down the strip, you walk up and down the conference halls, you stand around in clubs, you stand around in casinos…you’re always on your feet. But it’s fun for people watching. You see all kinds of people from all around the world coming to Vegas for a myriad of reasons.

After the conferences, Vegas was pretty deserted. That city is going to have a rough year this year. It was pretty nice being able to walk around without all the crowds, but Vegas is a town designed for crowds, so I dunno, it was kind of weird. I decided to end my trip with a couple of Vegas shows cause what’s a Vegas trip without a show, right? I had to see a Cirque du Soleil show since I’m addicted so I saw “O” which many people claimed was their favorite. I wasn’t too impressed to be honest. I liked the Wynn’s water show “Le Reve” better. Mystere is still my favorite Vegas show, which is Cirque. I have 2 more Vegas Cirque shows to see now which are apparently the worse…”Believe” and the newest, “Viva Elvis.” Before “O” I went to see the Blue Man Group. They were pretty fun but there were a few awkward parts. Again, it wasn’t full, so for the finale where they drop toilet paper on the audience from the back to front, there was nobody in the back … so the workers had to wait, collect a bunch of toilet paper and walk it to the first row with people…weird.

All in all, it was a great trip, probably my best Vegas trip. I love meeting new people and these are the type of people I’m sure I will see at San Francisco events and future conferences like SXSW (which is only a couple months away *waves at Steph*).

A few months ago I flew to Tampa for the ACC Championships where my Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets defeated the Clemson Tigers for the 2nd time in the season. This was the first Tech game I got to go since graduating (it’s kinda hard being on the west coast and all). Anyway, it was an amazing trip, I got to complete a goal of mine which was to hop on a plane with absolutely nothing. I did the goal of hoping on a plane with no luggage back a couple years back in Europe, but I had a backpack … I outdid myself this time . I didn’t have a plan or a ticket to a game, but I’m one of the luckiest people I know. I knew quite a few people going to the game and a couple of em picked me up from the airport. And what do you know, my boy Gabriel (@ghalley) had 2 extra tickets to the game, I took one :p.

Well, we won and that means I had to change my flight back to San Francisco from my holiday break. I originally was coming back on January 5th, but that was the day of the Orange Bowl…and my house in Davie is 20 minutes from the stadium, there was no way I was going to miss Tech’s 1st BCS Bowl. Again, I didn’t have much of a plan or a ticket to the game but my ticket savior came through again and had an extra ticket for me. Well, we lost. But I still had a great time rooting my team. I’m a ramblin wreck from Georgia Tech for life. The sad thing is we could’ve easily won that game and the game against Georgia as well. We just destroyed ourselves. Stupid penalties and decisions in key moments. Our players had/have what it takes and they will definitely be back to prove it next season.

As promised, I’m starting to blog again. It’s funny…as I write this post, I don’t even know what to say. It’s 2010 now, a brand new year, a brand new decade, a brand new way to say the years of the new millennium (Twenty Ten rather than Two Thousand and Ten). But other than that, everything else is pretty much the same. No one magically changes from December 31st at 11:59:59 to January 1st at 00:00:01 unless you’re a baby and your mom waited to push and you became “born”. But even that is up for discussion and argument. The point is, time isn’t magically-it’s relative.

Either way, people use it as an excuse and a reason. I am one of those people and decided to start up a blog again on this new year day. I’ve also used this year to plan a slight shift in my life. For quite a while now I haven’t been able to live my life the way I want. (And I still can’t fully do that – but that’s another story and another blog post) However, I can start making new choices and acting on them. So, for 2010, I’ve set out to do one major event per month. I don’t really follow rules so I may not stick to that to the t, (it’s weird seeing expressions like that wrote out isn’t it) but I have set myself up for quite the beginning of the year. Let’s take a look:

• January: BCS Orange Bowl with my Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (Miami Gardens, FL) and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) (Las Vegas, CA)
• February: Moving to San Francisco/Visit from Mom/Cirque Du Soleil’s OVO (San Jose, CA)
• March: South By Southwest Conferences and Festivals (Austin, TX)
• April: Coachella Music Festival (Indio, CA)
• May: ?
• June: FIFA World Cup? (South Africa)
• July: FIFA World Cup? (South Africa)
• August: Outside Lands Music Festival (San Francisco, CA)
• September: Burning Man (Black Rock Desert, NV)
• October: Treasure Island Music Festival (Treasure Island, CA)
• November: ?
• December: ?

The crazy thing is the only events that are unconfirmed are the ones with a question mark next to it…and it’s only the first day of the year! If you can tell, I love to travel but I don’t travel like normal people. I don’t really care for sightseeing…I like the experiences. And if you’re there to experience something, you’ll see the sights while you’re there. I love entertainment and will go to almost any music festival. I’m going to start adding film festivals to my repertoire. Anyway, more of my personal preferences will come out through this blog.

So what is the point to this blog?

Well for starters, it will document the above events. If you followed my other blog at 5foot12.com, (it doesn’t exist anymore – it just redirects here) you saw that I wrote blog posts of my European adventures for a couple of summers. From festival to festival, to country to country, from experience to experience. But that was before Twitter…where you talk about everything anyway, how is this different? Thanks for asking that question, self. Twitter is 140 characters and what I’m doing at that very moment. This will be a comprehensive overview as well as my reactions and impressions.

On top of that, you’ll be privileged with my philosophical insights and random unconstructive rants. I try to live a stress free life which is at the front of society. (Take that for every meaning you can think of) To me, life is simple, everything is simple. It’s common sense, it’s just right. Doing things wrong makes things difficult and only causes further problems. I try to live my life on those lines but it’s as difficult as trying to explain to others how to do the same. The hardest thing in life is getting people to understand and agree with you.

Wow, so yeah, sometimes I get diarrhea of the fingers and just type away. I dunno if it’s good, if it’s bad, but I know who does, you. So let me know what you think, comment, text me, heaven forbid, give me a call. You can find me on almost any social network and I live in the real world too. . Quick tidbit: I am a techie in every sense of the word, so the third element of this blog will be my expose on Silicon Valley (where Tech is dreamed of, thought of, and made) as well of my own personal side projects.