Author Archives: aubs

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So much to say, so much to show

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I’ve spent the last 9 days in NYC, basically awesome-ing my way through the hottest city on earth. (Both literally & figuratively – thanks, birthday heatwave!) I will be waxing poetic on all that happened (be prepared for an epic, epic post with so many pics) but until then, I figured I’d share a bit of why my birthday dinner was so amazing.

Behold: My Pseudo-Jewish-Wedding-Birthday

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resolved

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When I got into The University of North Carolina, I spray-painted a king-sized sheet and hung it out the window, stating simply: "UNC Bound". You see, I spoke at my graduation, had accepted three other schools while I continued to hope that I would be chosen off the waitlist to get into the only one I actually was excited about – namely, UNC. Without any connections or being a legacy, getting in as an out-of-state applicant was pretty difficult; they apparently denied over 150 valedictorians my year. Alas, it was a big, exciting accomplishment, and I had many people in my hometown "gunning for me" and hoping that I would get in. My makeshift announcement – via 400 thread-count sheets, no less – not only served the purpose to spread the word but also held me to upholding "my" end of an imagined bargain in doing well in school. After all, I couldn’t let that many people down.

I find myself wanting to hang a banner every once & a while these days to once again keep me to my decisions. While I like to consider myself a person of my word, when you’re talking about matters of the heart, things that were – on paper – black and white very quickly evolve into the more subtle shades of gray. Add in alcohol and I’d be well-suited to have a banner not only reminding me, but also serving as evidence so that others could hold me to my resolutions. Unfortunately, not everything can – or for that matter, should – be publicized, and sheets these days are pretty pricey. So in the meantime, I suppose I can use what I have – this website, Twitter, THE INTERNETS – to help keep me aligned with my own best intentions. So that when I say that I’m done – really, truly, finally DONE – I’m lookin’ to y’all to make sure it stays that way.

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Overwhelmed

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When I started this website seven years ago, it was a novel idea. As I’ve mentioned before, it started as a way to communicate with high school and college friends as I traveled; it was an alternative to email. In fact, the very first post was originally an email I had sent while in New Zealand for work. At the time, I was working as an Information Architect, and since my team had some downtime, my manager suggested I had them teach me how to build a website. From scratch. By hand. And so I did. This was before Movable Type and Blogger and WordPress; posting was not only a chore in terms of finding time to write it, but also to hand-code and put the older post into an archive and make sure everything worked correctly. No "one click posting" existed back then.

Today’s frustration isn’t the same – I’ve been a loyal Typepad/Movable Type user for years, and posting only requires some of my time. Which – as you’ve probably been able to tell lately – I have very little of. And so I try and post some pics and videos while I tell myself (and you!) that I’ll write a longer entry tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. DEFINITELY before the weekend. And yet…yeah. You know how it goes. Life gets in the way, and the content on this website is going downhill, FAST.

And yet I find it amazing that I’m getting daily unsolicited emails – mostly from the various people that follow me on Twitter. I’m used to the occasional comments on this site but daily emails – not only the frequency, but also the often-bizarre topics or requests – continue to surprise me. I thought I’d seen it all, but apparently it’s one of those rare occasions when I’m wrong.

I think the whole nature of communication and digital media are fast changing; I try to post at least a song on DailyTuneage.com every day and find myself using Twitter without abandon. This website is the most formal of all of my endeavors, and I find that it often gets left behind as I’m trying to stay up-to-date with the other mediums. And ‘keeping up’ is only happening if you hold a loose definition of this word. Basically, I’m trying here…

Sites like Facebook & Friendfeed are trying to solve this problem of over-sharing, but frankly, I feel like neither is serving the exact purpose that I want. The problem is that I’m not 100% sure what that is; basically, I need to evaluate just what I’m using this website for, where I want to see it go, and try to merge the two without providing too much information overload. Which of course brings the question: how much IS too much? Aubsessed.com is another "pull" mechanism like Friendfeed which takes & posts my online activity elsewhere into one singular place, but again…seems like too much.

And so I wonder: How are *YOU* balancing all of the communication mechanisms out there? Where do you draw the line? And how are you simplifying it all while still maintaining a presence online? Leave a comment and weigh in…