At Least the Madmen Care if I Live or Die

(Note:Some adult content)

"Madmen" being an allusion to advertising guys. In this case, online spammers. God bless them. Yours truly was sitting at home, nose pressed to the grindstone on an assignment, when a 5.5 magnitude earthquake rocked my socks off.

With walls shaking and glass flying out of cupboards, I scrambled out of my apartment only to return a half hour later to the most clever email I've ever gotten. If the Viagra guys were as smooth as this guy was, I'd be harder than a lead pipe till Christmas.

The email was as follows:

Even an earthquake can't shake book prices down, but you can.
Save this number so that you can call it and check for the best prices on your books instantly!
The number is (845)839-8333 It's a NY number, so as long as your cell phone has free long distance, it'll be free to call. Please forgive and report if you encounter errors, as this is very experimental service.

Make sure you update your cell phone's info on the pazap.com website so that when you call in, we'll know who you are. Not only can you shop for the best prices, but you can also sell your books through this number too! We'll be on campus promoting tomorrow. If you see us, you're going to find out why book prices are so high!

Anything else, let me know.

Dominic Son
dom@pazap.com
cell: 408.569.9617


I replied to Son, telling him that I thought the email was funny. He responded:

lol thanks. nice to know you're ok

It's good to know the madmen care.

San Jose ,SJSU ,Soapbox Prophet ,Tech ,blog ,,Web 2.0,,Andrew Venegas,New Media, journalism,Andrew,Venegas,vlog

Boobs, and the Search for Catchy Headlines

The worst posts are the ones that talk about blogging (literally: see previous post for reference). I apologize in advance. I'm trying to attract readers. I've tried changing content, scribbling about gadgets and conferences that people are interested in with mixed results.

People's eyes only seem drawn to four things, in my estimation. The first being the content of writers they already know (friends and famous writers), the second being posts that personally talk about them. Third, people seem drawn to those few posts with catchy titles. I'll let you guess what the last thing is that people are likely to read.

I'm not so famous (cricket, cricket); okay, no one knows me. I can't link to every blog in the world either. So, this post is my ode to Dean Singleton. Boobs.

Let's see if that gets any attention on Technorati.

Literally Metaphorically Speaking

My life continues without a phone - it was blown up by the monsoon of last week. That little Razor was literally dropped from a three story building, run over by a truck, and soldered back together. None of that phased it. In the end, H20 was its downfall.

How embarrassing. That's the equivalent of Bad Pitt being taken down by the pansy arrow in Troy. Like that could really happen.

That man went through the Jen breakup, he can literally handle anything.

And that brings me to the title of this post. I've been pondering the relationship between my colloquialisms and my writing. I literally say, "literally" about four billion times a day (hyperbolizing). So much so, that I can't help the itch to type it into every nook and cranny of my journal entries and blogs (literally).

It's like crack, but less socially accepted (maybe literally, it depends if you're friends are like mine...).

How depressing. The real world is ruining my cyber-prose. For shame. Literally.

Andrew Venegas is, "The Running Man"

I'm hooked on my new ipod nano.

Small screen size aside, there's been such an advance in the interface and customizability since I got my first ipod five years ago (it was a 2nd generation), that even a normal PC user like myself was humbled a little.

The latest add-on to my ipod, a Nike+Ipod. I bought a pair of Nike Plus shoes today, got the microchip that Apple sells, linked it to my nano, and went for my first run today. I also set the goal of running a measly 16 times over the next four weeks. Piece of cake... of course, now that it's online for everyone to read, I guess I really have to do it. Damn.

And that's the real genius of the new ipod. If Apple can get lazy tech geeks like myself to drool over the possibility of running, well, they may just rule the world one day (and that's coming from a PC guy).

Will Not Sleep for Plane Tickets

The RTVJ 50th Anniversary Reunion is over, and it's time for me to move onto my new projects. I'll be updating the Journalism's website at SJSU now, creating a feed page for every type of media in every major/minor.

But first things first, I'm putting all my efforts into recruiting for the Multimedia Bootcamp trip that SJSU is taking to Mexico. Way cool.

And now that I've started the posters for the next set of trips that SJSU will be sending me on, I guess I can tell the world.

Over the next three years, unless I royally mess a bunch of things up, I'll be visiting 11-13 different countries with SJSU, National Geographic photographers, and San Jose Mercury news photographers.

Which countries? Here's just a few: Mexico, South Africa, Ghana, China, Vietnam, South Korea, The Philippines, Dubai, and many others. All the countries are tentative, meaning that insurance, among other things, will play a large factor in whether or not we go to each of them.

What will we be doing while there?

Creating photo, audio, print, and video packages for the web, and print inserts for the Spartan Daily when each group returns. The University will be giving 3 units of graduate/undergraduate credit/hours for each trip, which means that by the time all the trips are complete, I'll be done with my Masters Degree. Way cool.

Cocaine and Starbucks

Make all the stimulant jokes you want, but I need to get some sugar in my bloodstream - FAST!

It's currently 4:46 AM on a beautiful Friday morning (it's raining pretty hard outside), and I have been up for over 24 hours straight (48 hours?). What gives with the late night/early morning writing?

Sam Donaldson is coming to SJSU today, and the videos that will be playing at the Reunion Dinner he is speaking at aren't done. In fact, I didn't have an open computer to edit till 3:45 am because of students in Update News that didn't make their deadline. Perfect.

Then I found several of the discs that were given to me for editing were not data discs at all, but dvds. Awesome. That means that I'm stuck converting six to eight hours of video into avi form for editing. Hence the writing in-between conversions. No biggy.

But I do have raccoon eyes now, and apparently I'll be showing the Update News room I am in to alums that have flown into San Jose from all over the world. Super.

Let's hope they have a sense of humor, or at least remember the good ol' days before they all had dedicated machines at their disposal, 24-7.

Or maybe they'll just think I'm taking drugs... man I need some caffeine. Does Yum-Yum doughnuts deliver?

An Incident at Dwight Bentel Hall

Image by Vanina Mutchnik:
Published in Spartan Daily 10/4/07

After the Spartan Daily decided not to run this story on Monday, I decided to run it online this week. Here it is.

On Sunday Morning, Dr. Michael Cheers, a photojournalism professor, and I, were quite surprised to have found a fire extinguisher lying on the ground on the second floor of Dwight Bentel Hall. The whole second floor of the building had been covered in a light, nauseating dust from the tampered device.

Further, the old darkroom on the first floor of DBH had been trashed by an unknown person or persons, with string tied to walls, computers, and chairs. Potato chips had been crumpled and thrown about, and the rooms thermostat had been smashed.

Dr. Cheers calls University Police, who arrived within ten minutes. No charges have been filed (to my knowledge) against any individuals, and DBH was cleaned before students arrived Monday morning.

Speculating as to the motive of the person or persons responsible soon followed. Was it drunk hooligans from homecoming week that decided to trespass over the weekend, or was it possibly related to the Daily's coverage of statue defacing? Or was it possibly related to their coverage of the incident at Hillel House last week, or the student who's car was keyed? Again, this was all speculation, but it made me wonder.

Life in the FAST Lane

So what have I been up to? Where have I been? In what far corners of the internet have I been lurking?

First, I've been doing design like none other. I'm working on an upcoming project involving a international publication that tends to prefer yellow borders and photography. If that doesn't give it away, I can't help you out.

Other projects that I'm working on include the website design for the RTVJ reunion. I can't really take credit for the actual layout either, as it was originally created by another student that was released from his contract at the end of July: enter me and my interaction with it. My job for the last three months has been to keep it updated and keep in touch with alumni from SJSU's broadcast journalism program.

Which brings me to my current project this week, producing a video "newscast" mockup to be presented during the RTVJ (Radio Television Video Journalism) 50th anniversary dinner this Friday. The special guest speaker will be legendary journalist/anchor, Sam Donaldson.

So that's keeping me busy...

Plus I've been doing poster design, and talking up a storm for the upcoming photojournalism trip to Mexico. (Btw, go Blogger for letting me get info up online in a day. The hardest thing was simply unlocking my domain name and switching my DNS address to a Google server. But I digress...)

This past week I just the chance to meet Vanity Fair's David Friend, a man responsible for much change in society's perception of the war in Iraq. A very smart, and friendly man, Friend was on SJSU campus last week to promote his new book and meet with members of the SJSU magazine community.

Oh, and here's a teaser for upcoming events. After traveling to Mexico this spring break with the journalism department here, I'll be traveling to South Africa and Ghana to help produce two more multimedia packages for SJSU and certain newspaper and magazine publications.

AND after that... there's a whole lot more stuff coming down the turnpike for me. I'm starting to get as busy as Kyle Hansen. Ha!

Lastly, I did CampusMovieFest last week, and got jipped if you ask me. Not to brag, but our movie was the Cat's ME-OW (pardon the flash quality).

:)