Welcome to The Very Daily Weblog of Joshua Blankenship

Is there anyone else out there using Skype? Just curious…

Thank you for being the catalyst in allowing me to spend the better part of the afternoon examining the finer points of cold porcelain and unforgiving floor tile. If you were practical joke brownies, your maker will pay dearly. If you were simply badly prepared brownies, not yet ready for human consumption, then I must ask… why me?

TMI,
Joshua

When I woke up yesterday, I didn’t expect i’d have an adventure on Memorial Day. In short, our friend Angela was moving to Nashville yesterday and thought she’d drive the U-Haul and tow her car all by herself. Not happening. Just not an option. Lee and I drove the U-Haul (luckily it was the “gentle-ride van”… I shudder to think what the “rough-ride van” might have been like) while Angela and Ashley followed in Lee’s Jeep. We drove back this morning.

Highlights of the trip are as follows:

1. Lee playing the same three Gavin Degraw bootlegs off his iPod over… and over… and over. (Not that he’s OCD).

2. Seeing a certain dispenser machine in a truck stop bathroom that originally read “FOR THE PREVENTION OF DISEASE AND PREGNANCY” marked out with black marker to say “FOR THE xxEVENTxON xx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxNANCY”

3. Visiting with Steve and Andrea Barlow for a few minutes in Nashville and hearing some of Steve’s new band The Lonely Hearts (formerly Holland).

4. Seeing the Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile pass us this morning on the highway in Tennessee. No joke. In real life.

5. Somehow getting back on some semblance of a normal sleep schedule (having been on third shift for a few weeks now) by driving roundtrip to Nashville in less than 24 hours at short notice. Completely normal.

…the 55104’s own Peter Smith. He has great work on his portfolio BOXCARPRAYERS, especially the typography-based pieces. HRTWRK and BOXCARPRAYERS will definitely be collaborating on some things soon. Keep an eye out.

Thank you for rocking me with your live show tonight. Your band is amazing, tight, and in the pocket. Your lead player is a freak with great tone. Your old songs make me sing loudly, your new tunes are quite lovely and i’m sure will grow on me with time (and with my many forthcoming solo renditions of said songs in my truck), and you’re the best songwriter at crafting a musically perfect bridge that i’ve ever heard. Let’s make a deal, ok? You keep rocking, writing, and singing your pasty white butt off, and i’ll keep telling everyone I know that you’re five hundred times better than most of the singer-songwriter folks you often get lumped in with. Deal?

Stick around awhile,
Joshua

What a wonderful evening with friends. Lee McDerment (dot com) and I went to Atlanta to spend some time with our good friend Katie Brock, who took a night off from her Auburn masters program fashion design studies and braved some ridiculous traffic just to see our pretty faces.

Lee and I grabbed some early dinner at Papadeaux’s and oh my dang they have amazing creole-based seafood. Then we met up with KB for great conversation outside at Starbucks downtown, more great conversation at Eleven50, still yet more conversation while walking around downtown, and then grabbing late dinner at Vortex, which has the best burgers around (and a hysterical late 80’s metal soundtrack at that hour of the evening. I didn’t realize how many Crue, Faster Pussycat, Saigon Kick, and Enuff Z’ Nuff lyrics were downloaded to my brain). I had a camera in tow, so you can see a few photos of the evening’s festivities on my Flickr page.

I really can’t explain to you how much I love the people in my life. They’re all so unique. They all have qualities that make me want to know them. And not just a cursory form of being around them, but really KNOWING them. I’m aware of how trite and tired and cliched that sounds, but things only become cliched because, at one time at least, they meant something. I want to KNOW my friends. That requires so much honesty on our part. Honesty about who we really are and what we really want and what we really struggle with; and those are questions and answers that are, more often than not, left untouched. I think that’s so sad. I think we miss out on life by repressing all the rough edges and strong desires and real thoughts we have. Not that they necessarily need to be entertained or encouraged or even voiced sometimes; but acting like they don’t exist and continually pushing them down for fear that someone might see them and have a different opinion of us that we want them to have isn’t healthy and can’t be GOOD. There’s no way I want to live life with the few cherished friends I have by repressing who I am and who i’m becoming.

Tonight was full of conversations that were honest and open and welcomed. I’m going to bed thankful for knowing people and for being known. It’s a process… more journey than destination… and i’m loving it.

A few things. I love my roommate. I love my roommate’s music because he’s my friend and I firmly believe you should support your friends in all they do and do your best to make them wildly successful in their endeavors. That being said, if I didn’t know the guy, i’d hope that someone would tell me to go visit Lee McDerment (dot com) and download a few MP3s of last week’s gig at Carpenter’s Cellar because, from a purely musical stand point, he’s amazing and writes music that feels new and fresh to my tired musical ears.

Seriously. What are you waiting on?

(Semi-related sidenote: I love all the songs, but McD’s instrumentals SLAY ME. Chromeo & Juliet forces me to get my head bob on and then stays firmly lodged in my bobbing head for days.)

When nouns become verbs, you know you’re on to something. “Just Google it.” How many times have I said that? They continue to impress, innovate, change, and reinterpret the world of information on the web. There’s a great interview on Information Week with Google CEO Eric Schmidt you should read. It’s mainly about enterprise-level business technology, which most likely has nothing to do with you or your life, but here’s five reasons why you should read it anyway:

1. Because Google is “…a company [that delights] in doing everything differently… because it’s basically all these people who want to change [information technology]…” Keep in mind that Google is IN THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS. It’s what they do. And they want/need/do change everything. Constantly. Do you do this? Professionally? Personally? Take notes. If you want to survive in the new economy in any level of success above the status quo, get used to change and innovation. If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.

2. Because they love simplicity that works.

3. Because they see the big picture and have no plans to focus on what could be perceived as a weakness by some. Google doesn’t niche specify its searches. It would hurt them in the long run and water down their product if they did. They leave that to others. Smart business. Better product. They get point #2, we get better searching capabilities. Everybody wins.

4. Because Google lives and operates in THE NOW. The sense of urgency drives everything. Schmidt says, “…don’t talk to me about long-term strategy. I’m not interested. I want to know why is your product not shipping until next week. And then after this thing is released, tell me what you’re going to do about it.” You can’t control five years from now in your own life, much less in the new economy. Five years? Something changes every five minutes right now… what good is long-term strategy when the world it was created for DOESN’T EVEN EXIST ANYMORE? Start asking yourself what you can do now. Even better, what ARE you doing now? Planning? Stategizing? Wishing? Hoping? How’s that newfound irrelevance treating you so far?

5. Because Schmidt is smarter than the interviewer and occasionally turns the tables, asking his own questions, which is both entertaining and completely insightful as to a facet of why Google is driven to such success.

Smart people asking smart questions and being able to look at their own actions and the market objectively. Most of us ignore the big picture, ignore the reality of the situation we work in, ignore the leadership flaws around us (and IN US), and then wonder why the world passes us by.

Google’s changing the world. What are you doing?

I apologize for pulling out in front of you tonight on Marchbanks Road. But I did want to thank you for your white-hot, blinding brights that engulfed me like an alien abduction directly after the aformentioned poor driving decision. The influx of light allowed me to find various lost items in my truck that might have gone otherwise unnoticed in the darkness that typically accompanies my night-time driving habits.

Here’s to you, High Beam,
Joshua

There’s nothing quite like a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch at 4:00am. It’s amazing. CTC, as they call it in the biz, was approximately 67% responsible for helping me to endure my freshman and sophmore years of college, as the cafeteria in my dorm was only able to produce food that could be categorized as tasting like varying degrees of Bland, Gross, Parched Chicken, Grill, or some amalgam of those options. Up until college, i’d never partaken of what I referred to as “sugary cereals” and what you may know as simply “cereal.”

We weren’t tree huggers by any means, but my childhood pantry was full of such classics as Cheerios, Raisin Brand, Kix, and, less notably to a child, Total, Product 19, Special K, and Shredded Wheat. The Blankenship family loved its health. Hippies.

Thus, like any adolescent sheltered from the world’s temptations, my first college solo trip to the grocery store was the epitome of teenage wasteland. It was like I had dated a homely, boring, unremarkable girl for years and, while I had seen the benefit of such a relationship due to my desire for female companionship, no one had told me that there were also beautiful women who painted and played music and loved thrift stores and foreign films and red meat and still smelled nice (hypothetically… there are women like this… right?) Row after row of sugary goodness… Cookie Crisp, Lucky Charms, Golden Grahams, and the aforementioned CTC all made it into my cart (alongside college classics like brownie mix and cheap microwave pizzas) and I felt sinful and shamed for my actions, yet strangely drawn into them with no hope of staying the need for sucrose satisfaction. My love affair with cereal continues unabated even now.

Favorite cereals… comment section. Go.

Lunch with Mom at Chick-Fil-A? Check. Email networking with magazine Art Directors? Check. Great client meetings in Greenville? Check. Dropping by to see friends at work? Check. Face-to-face networking with ad, marketing, and design firm Creative Directors? Check. Watching the Lost season finale outside with friends, wings, macaroni, lawn chairs, and Coca Cola Classic? Check.

To anyone who’s called or emailed me in the past week or so that i’ve been slack on getting back to, i’m sorry. I’ve been on 3rd shift (whose natural clock tends towards 3rd shift when left to their own devices? That’s crazy…) and a bit out of it. The good news is, i’ve gotten some fun projects done for Verizon that i’ll get to post soon. The other good news is that contact will be made soonly with all of you, my neglected-yet-loved friends.

…THIS. (And maybe this too). Make sure your volume is up for the second one. Both clips via Yewknee, so you can thank Michael for early morning laughter.

Seriously, people… if you’re a photographer, you have to hop on this Flickr bandwagon. I want to have like 10,000 of Flickr’s babies. And not only is the site great, the folks running it seem to have a wonderful sense of humor. Granted, it’s never fun when a site is down for maintenace, but at least when Flickr is, you get a message like “Flickr is having a massage” instead of something boring and souless.

Flickr is HRTWRK-approved. Not that a recommendation from me carries any weight, but at least maybe it will have some girth and you’ll make a mental note of it, if only to make comments under your breath at a later date. Huh?

And yes, to all the folks who have been instilling the goodness of Flickr in me for months, you told me so. You did. Give yourself a hand. Go ahead… right there at your desk… you know who you are. You should be clapping right now.

I owe you an apology. For months now, I have ignored your tasty photo sharing goodness despite several people I know and love encouraging me to try it out. And while I eventually fell prey to the vortex-like pull and caved, creating my own Flickr page weeks ago, I didn’t start uploading photos until yesterday. Driven over the edge by the gift of a free upgrade to Flickr Pro by a friend, I began the process and knew within a few minutes of uploading my first few photos why you are so dang popular. But wait, it gets better, my love.

One of the many sacrifices i’ve had to make in the past few weeks with the job change is prioritizing what software is need-based and what can wait. Unfortunately for my sanity, iView MediaPro, arguably the best photo management software around, isn’t in my budget yet and, oh…. how I miss it. In the mean time of my self-imposed poverty, i’ve been getting by with Mac’s native iPhoto, a good program… but not exactly speedy when it has 10,000+ photos loaded into it. Nonetheless, today I found a handy Mac plugin called Flickr Export which says what it does and does what it says. It seamlessly integrates into iPhoto and uploads whole folders in the background, without tying up my browser of choice. Handy, time-saving.

I Think I’ll Keep You,
Joshua

…Brooke’s Flickr page and check out the graffiti photo set. There’s some wonderful graf around Atlanta, especially the Mr. Fangs shots she took.

Just on principle… Orlando Bloom, Internet Explorer users, guys with bike racks on their cars that don’t actually ride bikes, Ben Stiller, designers of full screen websites, users of the following fonts: Comic Sans, Papyrus, Sand, and anything that looks like a Mexican fiesta just vomited on my monitor, loud talkers, parents who let their daughters dress like that, REM, anyone who likes that whiny Ryan Cabrera song, (speaking of…) guys with haircuts that try too hard, diehard fans of colleges they never attended, and Jessica Simpson.

My good friend Jeremy Cowart, an amazing photographer and all-around great guy, along with Barnes and Wertz, are in Africa right now with an organization called African Leadership. You can read all about why they’re there here (potentially grammtically confusing… I apologize in hindsight) and then you can hop over to Jeremy’s Flickr page to see the first few photos he’s taken.

…Max Wheeler’s photoblog Make No Sound. Max has a few things going for him. He takes really… good… pictures, he lives in Australia, and he has fantastic taste when it comes to reading certain semi-funny blogs.

So that redesign lasted four days. What? I hated it already.

You know you love it.