gmail in the house – who wants one?

So the hip happenin' thing now is to get on Gmail, Google's free email with a gig of storage (compared to the 250 MB I get from Yahoo). Stuck in eternal beta, they set up an invite system to keep new member sign ups from busting their servers.Tthat's the story anyways.

I think they set up the invite system to create a kind of mystique. We tend to desire that which we cannot have, and hence I've wanted a Gmail account for a while now. I don't know why. I don't need a gig of storage, but it's one of those things I'm sure I'll find a use for. Which leads me to the other advantage of new email – starting fresh, spam free.

I've had the same Yahoo account for the last 6 or 7 years, and man, it's pretty spamtastic. I get roughly 200 emails a day sent right to the bulk mail folder. Back in the day I didn't really care who or where my email went, and if it meant entering my email address to access the download for some free program to turn jpegs into animated gifs, I was there! And of course over the years my Yahoo account has been linked to Napster v1, Morpheus, Kazaa and who remembers what else. Time for some housecleaning.

Next – my login name. It's no secret to anyone reading this – I am an avid Star Wars junkie. I remember sitting in the computer lab at UNT in Denton, TX with my friend Jason Bitkower as he showed my how to create a free Yahoo acount. (I wasn't a student there at the time but my free email experience was so awesome that I ended up moving to Denton and graduating from UNT 6 years later). I was sure I wanted a Star Wars sounding email address and after an hour of trying login names I came up with swepisodeii@yahoo.com, as in Star Wars Episode II. When explaining it to people I told them I was starting the hype early. (This was before the world had been blessed with Jar Jar Binks). As much as I like Star Wars, it's always been a pain explaining it or worse, having to spell it out.

And so enters the year of new emails and reasons to keep looking for something better. I set up a Comcast email for sending out resumes, but I don't want to use it for everything in the event I change service providers and my email address goes obsolete. I have one here at Cheezwhiz (patrick@cheezwhiz.org), but the mail interface isn't nearly as slick as Yahoo, I'm too lazy to set up Outlook, and when my hosting company switched servers I lost my address book and all previous emails.

A few weeks ago I stumbled across this website that networks people looking for invites and those who have them to share. The idea is that you give them your invites once you get signed up and it's all one big happy family. They currently have 285,260 Gmail invites to share. This means that pretty much anyone who wants one can get one and thus Google is stretching the use of the beta concept as far as they can. I entered my name and two weeks later I'm a happy Gmail user. I don't know if it always works that fast but it did for me. I'm thinking that with 285,260 invites, they don't really need mine, though I did send them a nice thank you email.

And in conclusion, I now have a new permanent email – cheezorg@gmail.com

It's like a cyborg made of cheez.

I also have 50 invites to give out so if anyone of the 12 readers of this website needs one, post in the comments or just send an email to my shiny new inbox.

snowboarding toe

Part of moving from Texas to Colorado is experiencing all the things I couldn’t do before – hiking in the mountains, camping in the mountains and now, snowboarding in the mountains.

While most of the trip consisted of drinking massive amounts of beverage, we did manage to get in some quality time on the mountain. I decided to skip the lessons and just get into it, demonstrating both my outstanding athletic agility and my ignorance of all things hazardous to my well being. In the end I fell down a fair amount, but by the second day I felt comfortable enough to operate a video camera while sliding down the side of a mountain with a piece of fiberglass strapped to my feet. Genius!

Luckily I didn’t break anything, but the second toe on my left foot has sinced turned bluish-black and has been that way for more than a month now. This is serious business. I may lose a toe. Check it out -

gene kelly volkswagen commercial

I just saw this today thanks to an interview link at Waxy.org. I'm sure it's been all played out on MTV and the like, but it's new to me and it rules. As a fan of both Singin' in the Rain and VW style, this ad gets to me in an unhealthy way. Plus, a poppin' and lockin' Gene Kelly is just cool.

Read the interview with the dancer behind the cgi at kottke.org

Or if you feel you've read enough already you can just watch the commercial.

nbc will offer tv shows for download

This is a pretty cool idea. There are a ton of TV shows that should be available to purchase like this. It's cheap too!

More details over at pvrblog.com

invasion of the homies

these guys have been around for a while but it’s never too late to jump on the homies bandwagon. they started showing up a few days ago at our work office and I’m pretty sure there’s no stopping them now. I took this poor example of depth-of-field to showcase the newest members of the family. I’ll keep you updated as the invasion continues.

read this really old interview with the homies creator!