Gavin Hall dot org

A few years ago while I was in a CodeJam in NY I realized I never had an oyster before. Sitting at a Legal Seafood with people who raved about oysters seemed as good of time as any to go ahead and give them a try.

Curious on how to eat them I asked Brian what the right way to do it was. He instructed me to just dump it into my mouth and just as it passes my lips he goes into a whole speech about how there is really no other way to describe it then chewing on someone else's snot. Texture, smell even the taste really. I just kept chewing and tried to swallow while he just kept going on and on.

It was the first and last time I ever had an oyster.

So it was with great pleasure I was able to send the 2girls1cup video out to the Blogsmith team as a Thanksgiving treat to be thankful for the Internet. I emailed Brian because I know something like this was just up his alley.

His response?

I just had the biggest all you can eat breakfast at The Kitchen. With a very full stomach I finally clicked your link from my laptop.

We are now even for that whole oyster thing!

Brian Alvey

And just like that, I am thankful for the Internet all over again.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The entire Blogsmith team has always been a little...uh crazy...about Bon Jovi. Not really for any other reason then we needed a development blog and Brian already had BlogJovi.com registered.

Mike jumped right in and within a few minutes we had "the most fist pumping site on the interweb!". It's pretty much all been down hill since then.

A while back I happen to be meeting some family over at Disney and noticed there was a Bon Jovi Tribute band.

I know! A tribute to what?

So not only did I snap this picture of their kick ass name but I was able to get a short 15 second video with my camera phone up on YouTube.

You're welcome.

Thinking it was not possible for this to get any better as I am walking out I see a guy wearing a t-shirt that said "Sex, Drugs & Christian Rock".

My life is now complete.

June 1st will be a day I knew was coming but have dreaded for quite a while. Brian has decided to leave AOL/Blogsmith to go full time with his new startup called ComicMix.

To give a little history here is how I started working with Brian. (History O' Blogmsith from Brian)

When I graduated from UCF my plan was to do nothing for three months. I figured most other people took the time to "find themselves" so I could totally pull off a summer of learning how to play video games (since the last one I played was on the original Nintendo). My plan failed when after preparing my resume and talking to Alex about the trouble he was also seeing in the space we decided to launch Emurse.com.

I haven't spent a lot of time on this blog talking about Blogsmith directly but it is what I spend a large portion of my time on (and have so for coming up on two years now).

Sure there are the Pop / Puma CodeJams and some talking of my trips to New York, DC, SxSW but nothing specific.

Luckily my good friend Mike has taken care of it by posting about the new blogsmith.com and the relevant post feature I added in with him. He even throws in some of his kick ass ideas about how the design of a system should begin with a designer (which I 100% believe and he even quotes me! woot!)

But enough of this text what about pictures? Mike has you covered there as well with a gallery of random blogsmith codejam images where you can actually see me in my PJ's "working". It's tough to be me ;)

Working on the most advanced blogging system in the world with some of the greatest people is fantastic (B,A,M,C,Ck,Cw,Mh). We aren't done yet...we have some great things in the pipe. Heck, I might even start updating my blog to talk about them!

Oh, and we are hiring so if you are a kick ass PHP developer/all around bad ass then send me your resume link! Not to worry, there won't be any softball interview questions.