Bruner Blog

Just in case you moved or are otherwise a lazy citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE IMMEDIATELY (so long as you’re going to vote for Kerry, anyway). One year after moving, I had left it till too late to vote and couldn’t. Boy was I steamed. And don’t count on the major media, obsessed with the horse race and insult politics of the election, to remind you when the deadline for registration is. Allow me: depending on what state you live in, it’s between a couple days and a couple of weeks away (check here or here or here). Please spread the word ASAP.

I wasn’t going to mention this till next week, but MediaPost scooped me: I am taking a full-time job. Starting next Thursday, the 30th, I will be Research Manager at DoubleClick. And yes, I plan to spy on all of your cookies and see what kind of smut you’re surfing all day long.

As many of you who actually know me know, I have been working on my own for the past three and a half years, running a research company called Executive Summary Consulting. That work has actually been quite rewarding, and business has been doing well especially this last year. I wasn’t even looking for a job when this offer came along. But it seemed like a really good fit. So I’m quite happy about it.

It’s a good company, a great team I’ll be working with, benefits are great and no complaints about the salary (especially the fact that I’ll have one at regular intervals, much unlike freelancing), and best of all, it’s in the West Village, so my commute will be painless, and in fact I plan to bike it down the Hudson River Park bike path in all but the worst weather.

Wish me luck!

I have used this blog before to slag off companies that pissed me off, so here’s my chance to earn some karma points back. Big props to UPS; or, in particular, one driver.

I actually have a postal box with a UPS store, which I inherited from Mailboxes Etc. when UPS acquired them. I had just come from checking my mailbox (for a bunch of t-shirts from T-Shirt Hell, which I’m still waiting for). But that was just a coincidence.

I had just finished a six-mile run (yes, I know, I’m a stud; I was carrying a medicine ball, no less). Before I left, I had put a $20 bill in my fanny pack (okay, I’m not that much of a stud, but I don’t know how else to carry keys and stuff when I run). I must have fumbled with the stuff in the pouch at some point, which included my portable radio, but the only time I can think of doing so was when I started my run.

Aaaaanyway, as I was leaving the UPS store, a UPS truck drove by and the driver caught my attention despite my earphones (”All Things Considered”) and pointed out that my $20 was dangling from the back of my fanny pack strap. I can’t figure out how I ran six miles (with a medicine ball, no less) with a $20 dangling on the strap, but there you go.

Thanks UPS! I really believe your commercials now!

If you have anything to do with Hungary and Budapest and you haven’t yet discovered it, go check out Pestiside immediately. Written by an expat living in Budapest, Erik d’Amato, former editor of the Budapest Business Journal, the site seeks to be “the Gawker of Budapest,” according to buddy Steve Carlson. It delivers. It’s a very amusing read. Adi is already hooked.

Interesting to note that he doesn’t have comments turned on. I can only imagine what kind of tirades he’s getting via email from right-wing nutjob Hungarians like this one. Their letters was always one of the joys of running the Budapest Week newspaper back in the early 1990s, but I suspect the Internet liberates them to a whole new level. (Pestiside’s tagline, “The Daily Dish of Cosmopolitan Budapest,” must really have the nationalist pantywaists seeing red, with its ironic allusion to a favorite Hungarian euphamism for Jews.)

If you use Kryptonite locks to secure your bicycle, it’s time to replace it. Kryptonite is well and truly fucked. This is essentially a product failure, but it is also a monumental PR and customer communication failure. I am sure they’ll never recover from this.

I admit, I’m not an afficianado when it comes to “mashup” artists working on the web — those mostly amateur studio production gurus who rework well-known songs for release online — but the guy (?) who writes me as “RX” from ThePartyParty.com has got to be one of the best. His “Dick Is a Killer” remains my favorite, but all of his work is good. His speciality is making George Bush say funny things.

His latest is also definitely worth checking out, “Imagine…Walk on the Wild Side” — a mix of those two classic songs as performed by our beloved president.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I’m sorry to have to do it, but I’m now requiring folks to sign up with TypeKey before commenting here. It’s a bit of a heavy-handed solution, but I am so sick of spammers with tiny penises filling up my comments with garbage. The other day, I had to delete more than 100 of them.

Since only about four of you ever leave comments here with any regularity (like, Pablo, Pablo, Pablo and that other guy), it shouldn’t be too punishing for most of you. Mainly just Pablo.

UPDATE:
Something is snafu with this. I can’t post comments myself! We are experiencing operating difficulties; please stand by.

FUTHER UPDATE:
Well, turns out the problem was with Rick Bruner, not the Bruner Blog. If you’re having trouble commenting here, just remember: it’s probably you. TypeKey, it turns out, is a bit of a pain in the ass. That’s why spammers don’t like it, I guess. Check your settings twice and make sure you didn’t do anything dumb like set a required field to a blank value (ahem).

As if anyone cares, this site is now produced with Movable Type 3.1. Thanks very much to Nick Aster for helping out and generally being an awesome designer and MT jockie.

via GGTH

http://onesimplequestion.blogspot.com/

It’s an absolutely perfect day here in NY. Around 80 degrees, no humidity, clear blue sky. Strange, it was a day just like this one three years ago tomorrow…

(Can’t even enjoy a beautiful day without that thought.)

I haven’t seen anything to back this up, but I’m sure that Seinfeld was heavily into product placement. Over and over, the characters are very deliberately mentioning explicit product names (e.g., “Snapple?”).

Just seeing a favorite rerun, “The Junior Mints.” I wonder how Tootsie Rolls felt about their investment in that episode. (”Those can be very refreshing.”)

(”Mulva?”)

A while ago, Mark sent me photos about the Man of the Year.

Now he sends me these:

It is an axiom of journalism that if a dog bites a man, it’s not news, but if a man bites a dog, that’s news.

But when a dog shoots a man, that’s really news.