A ton of plastic pink flamingoes just appeared in downtown chicago. AirTran is doing a promotion for their increased flights from Chicago to Florida. There's one teal flamingo running around Chicago (I guess there's an AirTran person moving it around the city waiting for someone to take it). If you find that teal flamingo, you win 8 round trip airflight tickets between Chicago and Florida (worth about $4,500). I'm gonna find me the teal flamingo!

Here's the press release, and their official site, http://www.airtran.com/flamingos.

UPDATE:
I took a bunch of photos during my lunch break. You can view them on my pink flamingo flickr set.



UPDATE!!!
We have the winner of the contest. Someone named Ross left a comment in this post that he found the teal flamingo! (read comments below for his full story)


(These two photos are from the winner Ross's livejournal)

Here's a photo of Chicago Cubs' Alfonso Soriano posing during "picture day." It makes me wonder if this is a Chicago Cubs internal "picture day" (for marketing materials) or a MLB.com "picture day." Given the ivy background, I would think this is a Chicago Cubs thing. MLB.com would have a generic background.

But then again a search on yahoo news photos for "picture day" results in other MLB teams.

I'd like to know what cameras and equipment they use. I've always been curious where the photos on the backs of baseball cards come from. And the little bio photos that appear on players profile pages online.

My twin brother, Erik, showed me his avatar on Yahoo Games. Boy howdy it is menacing--especially compared to mine!

Alexander Hamilton is featured on the American 10-dollar bill. The source of this image is John Trumbull's 1805 portrait of Hamilton that belongs to the portrait collection of New York City Hall. Here's animation featuring the portrait overlayed on top of the 1929-2003 $10 bill and the 2003-present $10 bill.

Something I've been pondering lately. What is the difference between the questions, "Who am I?" and "What am I?"

Imagine if nickels were made mostly from copper. Oh wait. They already are! According to CNN, nickels are made mostly of copper, and that pennies are made mostly of zinc.

How bizarre. You'd think it's the other way around, that pennies would be made of copper and nickels made of zinc. Huh. If CNN is right, maybe the coins should look like this instead:

Tribune Media Services (my employer) occupies four floors in the Tribune Tower: 13, 14, 15, and 16. I work and spend 99.5% of my time on floor 14. Visiting the other floors is like visiting a parallel dimenstion, because they are similiar but also different.

Every floor has its own set of unique customs and traditions, here's ours:
--The 14th floor pencil sharpening club
--The 14th floor yearbook (a reference sheet for newbies with everyone's photo on it).
--The 14th floor whiteboard games

I'd imagine other floors have traditions with food. Like when I was on 15 for a couple months, they did something with someone being assigned each friday to bring in snack food for the kitchen.

What are unique customs and traditions specific to the area you work?

We in Chicago just had 22 consecutive days below 32 degrees. That's the longest streak in 23 years. 1984-85 had a string of 33 below freezing days (whoa, 33 days).

You'd think this was one of the coldest 3-week periods in Chicago ever. No. It's only 15th.

From Tom Skilling's blog:


These 22 days were like an endurance test. Bearing on. Always bundling up. We all wondered how long it would last. February is always the hardest month of the winter, because we've had all this cold weather already in November, December, and January. It starts to get old. February is like endurance month. Funny how it's the shortest month. Rather convenient.

Meevee.com is cool. You can save a bunch of your interests as keywords and it will give you a tv grid with just the shows with your interests.

I added dodgeball as an interest, so now it will include any dodgeball championships in my tv grid. But then it also looks in regular tv show listings for shows that have dodgeball. Like, last Friday at 5:30pm on the Disney channel the tv show "That's so Raven" is about "Raven's fierce dodgeball skills earn her the unwanted respect of some school bullies, who decide to make Raven the leader of their clique."

Also, I have "ninja" as an interest, so my tv listsings are saying that "American Ninja 2" will be on tonight.

The "antartica" interest points to 'Emperors of Antarctica' on channel 20 tonight at 8:00pm!

It's fun to look back at all the different Macintosh models you have used. Here's my list:

• Mac Classic (1993-1997)
  This was the first Mac that I learned Photoshop on at an Art Institute class. Also used at college to write papers, back in the day of double-density floppy discs not being compatible with high-density floppy discs


• Performa (1993-1997)
  All four years of designwork at college was done on one of these pizza boxes. I think it was 80mHz with a 400mb hard drive.


• PowerMac 7200/120 (1996-1999)
  My parents' computer when I was in college, I used it when I lived at home after college.


• PowerMac 7500 (1996-1997, 1997-2000)
  The fastest computer at college, but it was haunted, so nobody used it. I also used this model at my first job out of school (Sales Solutions). That computer wasn't haunted, but the other art director's 7500 was always buggy.


• Powerbook 145 (1998)
  I had a two-hour commute to work each way, and I wanted to use my time better, so I bought this as my first purchase on eBay in 1998. The thing was so heavy it gave me back problems at the time, so now it's archived on my bookshelf.


• G3 beige desktop (2000)
  My first year at Tribune Media Services


• G3 blue and white tower (1999-2002)
  The first computer I bought as I moved out of my parents house in 1999


• G4 12-inch PowerBook (2002-2006, 2007)
  Bought this in 2002 as I was riding the Metra to Aurora every weekend. The hard drive died in 2006. Replaced the HD in 2007.


• G4 tower (2001-2005, 2006-2007)
  Another computer at Tribune Media Services. And my current computer at home as my Powerbook 12-inch died


• G4 eMac (2005-umm)
  My parents current computer


• G4 Tower (2006-2007)
  another G4 Tower at Tribune Media Services


• MacBook MB061LL/A (2007-2011)
  I bought this laptop with the intention of selling it as soon as the newest one came out. But I didn't keep track of new releases, so I hung onto it for four years. The trackpad busted in 2011.


• MacBook Pro. 15.4-inch: 1.83GHz MA463LL/A (2007-2011)
  The laptop I used at work. Has silver keys. It got super turtle slow by 2011.


• iPhone 3G (2009-2011)
  About six weeks after I bought this, the iPhone 3GS got released.


• iPhone 4S (2011-present)
  I got this on the day it released, just in time for my trip to San Francisco!


• MacBook Pro 15.4-Inch: 2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (MC721LL/A) (2011-present)
  The laptop I currently use at work.


• Apple Mac Mini: 2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (MC815LL/A) (2011-present)
  I'm back to using a desktop at home, because it's tethered to external hard drives anyways.


• iPad 4 (2011-present)
  This replaces my laptop.

What Macintosh models have you used?

In general people look kinda dopey when their mouth is open for an extended time and they are not speaking or breathing heavily.

What if a comic strip had a character where his mouth was always open? It would look like he should be speaking, but no words come out of his mouth.

At first I felt kinda bad for city trees when they would shovel snow off the sidewalks and up against the tree. "Oh no! The trees are being buried!" But actually this must help the trees. The water underneath would melt and and give a refreshing drink to the thirsty tree. The snow pile acts like those slow-release water bags they put around trees during periods of no rain in the summer. Just like a nice continous flow of water. Hooray for snow piles around trees!

It's also fun to think that the snow just got up and walked over to the tree to give it a hug.

While watching the tv show 24 on my ipod, I become a lot more critical of the show. "Oh this is such a plot device by the writers!" "Oh the acting!" But I'm not like that as much when I watch it on my 13-inch tv at home and I'm even less like that with my 27-inch tv.

The smaller the screen, the more critical the watcher becomes. Take an ipod, you have the entire show in your hands. It's in your immediate control. There must be something with the brain that has an overriding sense of control when watching tv on an ipod (or maybe I'm crazy). But when the screen gets bigger, we get more and more sucked into the show. Hence why we still see movies on the big screen. That screen just dominates us.

This is also an analogy for God in our lives. He's like the most super-big-awesome being ever. We should be living our lives in a respectful fear of him. But many treat him like he's really small or nothing at all, because we can't see his face. But just look around and you can see all the incredible things he's made and how he still works incredible creative acts today. He's given us the biggest screen ever to see his show.

eBible.com is a site where you can bookmark bible verses and share your notes. Here's the most bookmarked verses:

63 bookmarks: John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

23 bookmarks: Romans 8:28
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

20 bookmarks: Romans 12:2
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

16 bookmarks: Isaiah 40:31
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.

9 bookmarks: Ephesians 6:12
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Instead of treating "missing person" postcards like another piece of junk mail, try to think of someone you know that most closely resembles the person in the photo. That will help you to really think if you can recognize the person in the photo.

The person on the right looks like my friend Hope in Maine. And the little boy on the left. Oh man. He kinda looks like someone from my grade school, Juan Delgado (yeah, it's a stretch).

(photo courtesy of tiseb)

Estonian Independence day is a mere two weeks away. Let the celebrations begin!

On February 24, 1918, the Republic of Estonia was declared free from Lenin and his monster Russia. It was actually the Germans who convinced Lenin to let go of Estonia (along with Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, the Ukraine, and Georgia) in exchange for peace between Russia and Germany.

Then a few days later the German Imperial troops marched in and took over Estonia. Nice job, guys. sheesh! Funny thing is that I have both Estonian and German heritage!

Then eight months later, Germany was defeated in World War I thanks in part to America and now Estonia was finally able to breath peacefully. Uh wait, no. Cuz as soon as Germany left, Russia and Lenin tried to take over again. But the Estonian army repelled them. Take THAT, SUCKAS!

(source: everything2.com)

It would be really cool if museums would organize their permanent collections by color. Right now all art museums organize their permanent collection by style which does create for interesting connetions between artworks. However, it does get a little old after awhile. Instead it would be fun to visit a museum and look at the artwork by color. I'm going to the orange section!

In modern art museums the color field artists of the 1960s always tend to appear after the action abstract expressionists of the 1940s and 1950s. It makes sense because of the time sequence. But here's another reason: After seeing all that brutal intense action drip painting, you need something like the color field painters to calm down your eyes.

The Portland Press newspaper asked readers what comic strip they should run to replace the retired 'Foxtrot.' Here's the results: "Wiley's strip collected 180 votes, far outpacing the second-place comic - "Get Fuzzy," with 92."

180 votes. That's it? Granted the Portland Press is a pretty small paper with a 68,100 daily circulation. (To be in the top 100 newspapers nationwide, you need at least 120,632)

180 votes out of 120,632 is a mere 0.001492141389 percent. That's like one-tenth of one percent. Scale this up to the size of a Chicago Tribune with a 957,212 circulation, and that's 1,428 votes. Ok. That's more signficant.

I just wish Brewster Rockit got more votes for the Portland Press. That strip is just classic.

Page views according to
alexaholic.com:


Observations:
1. Flickr rules due to web 2.0 features.
2. Photobucket is rising due to ease of use for MySpace users.
3. Webshots is dying.
4. Deviantart still growing.
5. Snapfish stays low.

I've never heard of this webshots.com before. I guess CNET bought them in July 14, 2004. Which helped their traffic for six months, but then it quieted down at the beginning of 2005.

What a year 2005 was! It saw the emergence of four new photo services. Looks like flickr won two major battles. One in July 2005 and again in March 2006. What happened to make their service jump so high? The only thing I could figure out for the July 2005 flickr jump is that it was a late reaction to Yahoo buying flickr in March 2005. I'd love to know what happened in the flickr March/April 2006 jump.

I'm happy to see that deviantart is still climbing in pageviews. I've been a member of deviantart since 2002 and I always thought they hit their peak years ago. How wrong I am.

Here's where Illinois ranks in terms of population among other nations:

13,881,427: Cambodia
13,547,510: Ecuador
13,013,926: Malawi
12,763,371: Illinois
12,525,094: Niger
12,293,545: Guatemala
12,236,805: Zimbabwe

Here's where Estonia ranks amoung U.S. States.
1,429,096: Idaho
1,324,333: Estonia
1,321,505: Maine
1,309,940: New Hampshire
1,275,194: Hawaii

To view the full list of country and state populations mixed together, view below the fold.