Gavin Hall dot org

When being a local in Orlando anytime you visit the parks you have a single goal...to get in the background of as many pictures as possible. Sometime in high school when I would visit Orlando is when this tradition was started.

For some reason when I travel this changes from me being in the background to being in the foreground.

And Vegas was no difference. When Jason said he would give me ten bucks to jump in this girl's picture I was on it. If you look close you can see the cash in my left hand. My Internet girlfriend Willo with her cat like reflexes popped over to capture the moment as well.

Another time when in NYC for a meeting with Weblogs Inc/Blogsmith we decided to go out on our last night to see the town. Some how we ended up at a random bar with three levels. Mike, Alex and myself decided to see what the bar had to offer on all three floors.

First floor was just drinking and TV's playing the game. The second floor was drinking and dancing and the third floor was reserved for a couples going away part (I think they just got married).

Someone was just finishing up a speech and I decided that I also should send this couple off with some sage advise. I raised my glass, said a few words on their behalf and said "cheers!" as a group of confused looking people cheers-ed me back.

Although we never got a picture of the toast I think the couple took my advice to heart..."Let the bridges you burn light your path through life".

Cheers!

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!

When CodeJam LA came in March of last year they flew us out to Santa Monica and we stayed in a hotel called the Viceroy. I think I have talked about that before so I won't go into detail on it.

However a few weeks ago I was at AOL as they were going through the expense report for Brian and someone noted that he can't get reimbursed for personal items that he bought.

Then it hit me...oh crap that was me and Alex.

You see when we got into the hotel it was very strange. Mirrors on all the walls (except none in the bathroom) and when we went up to the hotel room there was free stuff in the bathroom! Alex dug into the bath salt by pouring it in the sink while I lathered myself up with some of their fancy pants shaving cream. We threw on two robes and walked over to where everyone was meeting when someone said..."you guys know that costs money right?".

...We do now...

So Thanks Brian! Sorry about that ;)

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.

The Gavin is good!

See what I did there? Replaced Union with Gavin? Sure it might be a little dated but I have been very busy...

With what you ask?

Sheesh, can't we just hang out without you always asking so many questions?

As I said before I was in NY last week for some work. It turned out that we had nights to ourselves this time so we decided to do mix it up in the Empire State.

You know what that means! Crappy camera phone pics!

Let's go!

First up...The Empire State Building! So large it has it's own zip code. Although as interesting as that is...it's so large you can see all of NYC from it.

And that's what we did, went up to the very top to look at the city below.

It was a very moving moment as I thought of all the people that have been up there when coming to NY and just knew they were going to make it.

All of those broken dreams...you could practically smell them while waiting in line....

I think it was the smell of broken dreams....sorta smelled like a diaper full of shrimp. You decide.

Although just a note to self...if its cold on the streets then it ungodly freezing at the top of the tallest building in NYC.

Yea...seems like common sense now to me as well...but there I was at the top wondering how the water in my eyes just froze.

Yay Global Warming!

So enough of this outdoor crap. The next night we learned our lesson and decided to catch a Broadway Play. Celly said the Producers was good so we bought our tickets from TKTS and wondered up to the theater. Then a so-so night turned into a omg-what-does-that-awesome-sign-say night.

That's right Tony Danza was the lead roll in The Producers!

I know!

We were both surprised he was still alive as well!

And he is just as good as you would expect him to be from watching him on Who's the Boss.

Meh...slightly worse.

But by now we had the Broadway bug and wanted to actually see a good show...

Good news...It just so happened that one of my friends since I was 4 years old was in Wicked.

Bad news...Wicked is so popular that they actually have a permanent sign made up in their lobby that says they are sold out of tickets.

But they give you an option where you can wait outside in the freezing cold for a raffle of 14 tickets with over 300 other people.

Yea...we didn't get them.

But there is a back up option to that back up option. You can stand in the cancellation line and sometimes you get lucky.

And we did. After 7 hours of waiting in line (either outside or inside) we finally were allowed to purchase 2 tickets each at $110 dollars.

To be honest, I would have paid doubled and waited twice as long. Kristina was amazing in the show...but then again I wouldn't have expected anything less.

So now that we got our good Broadway show in it was time to class up the joint with a visit over to Museum of Modern Art.

What might be the most impressive thing is the building itself. Very well done. Although any art in the MoMA can be divided into 3 categories.

1) Very Cool. Picasso's, Monet's and the must have of any girl's dorm room...Van Gogh's Starry Night.

2) Clever. Like a zen garden that...uhh...auto zens itself. Yea...your just gonna have to trust me on that one...

3) Lazy. The all blank white room that had the lights flash on for 5 seconds then off for 5 seconds. I really hope they didn't pay a lot for that one...

Enough of this touristy crap...let's live like the locals!

We did a search on the interweb to find the best rated local restaurant for burgers. The top result was The Corner Bistro on 4th Street. So we hopped on a subway and walked a few blocks to where we found this little hole in the wall place.

The place is a normal size bar and then a little tiny room in the back that seats maybe 20 people when its all filled up. You wait in this line (about 45 minutes) through the bar (where they give you drinks while you wait) to where you can go sit down.
No menus...your choice is Hamburger or Cheeseburger...thats it.

And in fact the waiter never said one thing to us the entire time...some might not dig that but I like a hint of arrogance when someone serves me food.

So how was it? Amazing. Easily one of the top 5 burgers.

And I guess that sums up my trip to NYC...or at least those are the only camera phone pictures I took...

It was really just too damn cold to bring my hands out of my pockets at any point.

Although a girl I once dated said that the only thing she wanted in life was to be in love....

A close second was warm towels when she gets out of the shower.

After this trip...I totally feel her on the warm towel thing. Glad to be back in Florida where its warm =]

Dear Suckers,

Attached to this letter is a picture of the view from the balcony of our hotel room. This trip has been called CodeJam Puma after the large cat like creature with the same name.

Of course it got that name from the Orlando International Airport deciding to make it easy for folks to remember where they parked by associating an animal with the floor level. We were on Level 3, aka Puma Country.

In case anyone from OIA/MCO ever trips across this blog...you're freaking retarded. A puma? Really? Why not just pick random types of snails or Chinese symbols?

Any way this trip went much better then the last one where I lost my sunglasses and all the phone numbers in my cell phone. We also got a ton of stuff done (except sleep of course) and met some very interesting people.

There are a few things that are awesome about staying at the Grand Floridian.

First is that you can wear robes all day long and people accept you. And from when we woke up to our late 4am snack runs to the 24 hour food court Mike and I were donning our robes.

Second is that everyone is so friendly. Everyone sells hello and asks what you are from.

This must have rubbed off on me because I started to chat with only other person who was around our age group when coming down in the elevator for my 4pm cookie snack break. This girl seemed nice enough and she said she was at Disney for business. I too being at Disney for business asked her what type of business she was in.

A parade, she said.

Huh.

I won't lie I was pretty focused on that cookie that was only a few steps away and said it was nice to meet you Lisa and continued on my way.

As I get back to the hotel room with chocolate all over my face and hands I explain the story of how I actually saw someone that was our age and that she was here for a parade. That's where this story would have stopped without a super smart house keeper and the Internet.

Yea...let me explain...

On codejams we really don't leave the room. A quick snack for lunch and then a quick dinner. Other 18 hours a day? Work.

It's like worse version of prison.

Either way we always get to know our house keepers as they have to do their thing while we are in the room. Normally we sit there and chat them up because if you were stuck in a room with geeks all day you would talk to everyone as well ;)

So on our way out we say goodbye to good old Fran and told her the room is all hers. She said that she was assigned to VIP guests and didn't have our room anymore.

VIP I say? More VIP then us? How can this be?

She said they were DoodleBops and here for a parade.

Hmm, a parade you say? A Doodle What?

So with that information in hand I pulled an Alex and was off to Google to see what the hell is a DoodleBop.

Turns out it's some sort of kid show.

I head over to the Who are the DoodleBops and sure enough there is DeeDee the DoodleBop named Lisa Lennox. Although in the elevator she looked less pink. Must have been the lighting.

So what would have just been some random story about meeting a girl in an elevator that was in a parade has turned into a quasi stalkerish type affair.

Is there anything the Internet can't do?!

Well I am off. I hope your week went as well as mine did. Be sure to keep in touch!

Love,

Gavin

So guessing from this picture who would you think would lose their sunglasses and all the numbers in their cell phone?

Nope. It was me.

They say bad things happen in threes so I think it goes without saying that I am very excited to see how my day will end.