OrangeCoat

Back in Black as performed by a one-man cover band (1:12 is my favorite part). It's not Jack White, somehow, it's Matt Mahaffey.

OrangeCoat's Seats at the Georgia Dome for the Clemson v. 'Bama Game

Thanks to Paivi and her magical powers for my ticket. Jim, Bear, sorry suckers!

Thanks to Adam Steinberg for pointing out that Neil Diamond doesn't settle for less than his best, and he's prepared to prove it.

I don't care if Neil Diamond has a rough voice these days, I wouldn't walk out of his concert. Unless there were packs of ravenous wild dogs with bees in their mouths and when they barked they shot bees at you. That aside, Neil Diamond felt he delivered a poor performance in Ohio recently -- causing some people to leave in disgust. What happened next? Neil refunded all 11,000 people and gave a personal apology. That's probably about 750 thousand dollars in tickets. And I'll bet the stage crew, promoters, and others didn't work for free. So, my guess is that Neil just ate about 300k or so.

Let this be a lesson to anyone about how to treat your fans, customers, clients, and friends. His legend, along with that of Jimmy Carter, continues to grow.

In Georgia, a family member said [tropical storm] Fay's winds knocked an oak tree onto the Plains home of former President Jimmy Carter late on Saturday. One of the former president's sons, Jeff Carter, said both his father and his mother, Rosalynn Carter, were at home at the time but neither was hurt.

Enraged by the storm's attempted assault on his family, the former president proceeded to shake his fist into the heavens, roaring "You insolent bastard." The storm immediately calmed and the skies cleared providing the Carter family with warm sun and a calm breeze for the remainder of the day.

Lord sent this to me because we have this theory that Jimmy Carter can speak to whales and control the weather. There's also some evidence that Jimmy Carter was supposed to replace Ma-ti as the 5th member of the Planeteers. A scheduling conflict nixed the deal and Captain Planet was ruined.

When breaking the ice is like this, sometimes I wish I had become an astronaut.

Athlete Focus is growing pretty fast (5,476 registered action sports athletes as of this writing). With more people using the site, we noticed a gradual decrease in performance. We started talking about hardware upgrades and more advanced caching methods. Then the Yoda of code, Jim, pointed his brain-laser at a couple queries and -- viola -- site runs like a dream. Faster than ever actually. We timed it. It's wizardry like this that you just can't take for granted. Jim likes to downplay these feats by saying things like, "all you gotta do is think about it." But the truth is that he is so indispensable I don't know what we ever did without him.

I never knew Keith Moon and The Who covered the Beach Boys Barbara Ann. They're so young. Except for Peter Townshend, he looks like a forest creature from Pan's Labrynth... or a druid.

Adam Steinberg recently interviewed me for the recently launched South Carolina Startup Blog. Recently. I think he did a much better job asking the questions than I did answering them. Either way, as Rob Johnson tweeted today, it's "a good thing for the sc tech economy." Thanks Adam.

What if fonts are real people who meet at a secret font conference to discuss font business? Watch and see how Baskerville Old Face chides the whipper-snappers.

Toynbee Tiles are cryptic messages cut from colorful linoleum tiles and melted into roadways. They've appeared in many major U.S. cities and several South American locations, however it appears the artist originated near Philadelphia. Most inscriptions follow a similar pattern:

TOYNBEE IDEA:
IN KUBRICK'S 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER.

Paranoia + novel method of expression + bizarre message = art and intrigue. (I listed this post in the self-aware robots must be stopped category because the tiles make direct referrence to 2001 A Space Odyssey, perhaps warning us of an impending robotic doomsday)