I’m not quite sure how, but somehow this otherwise boring Mahalo user testing video has enraptured me.

This song & video from the band Candlemass makes me so happy. Even if you’re not into metal, you should find it entertaining/ridiculous.

Dear Lord Pud,

I’m an overnight gas tation worker. There’s this hot, tattooed & pierced chick I know, who I’d like to take out. I got her number, but I’m a clean-cut guy. How do I get her attention above all the other drooling masses of more hardcore guys she probably deals with?

Phillip
21 years old
Crookston, Minnesota

Phillip,

You sound like me. In fact, we even have the same name (except my “Philip” has one “L”). And I’ve always been relatively clean-cut — but into alternative, punk-rock creative-type girls.

At first, this type of girl is intimidating to us regular guys, because we know that they’re gonna look at any guy they’re dating as an accessory, like a spiked belt or black hair dye. And why would they want to be seen with a dorky, clean-cut guy? You just don’t fit in, right?

Wrong.

She prides herself on being unconventional. And being with you is the most unconventional and alternative thing she could do. Her friends will give her mad respect for dating you.

She understands this. That’s why she gave you her number.

Pud

Pictured: My friend Joanna Angel, nice-Jewish-girl-turned-punk-rock adult entrepreneur (NSFW: BurningAngel.com)

There were so many things I wanted to do when I woke up this morning.

1. Record a new song I’ve been thinking about
2. Go to a friend-of-a-friend’s BBQ/pool party
3. Work on a new Facebook app idea
4. Clean my desk at the office and do a little work
5. See the new Michael Moore movie, “Sicko.”

What did I do? None of the above. Instead I checked email, saw someone commented on one of my YouTube videos, and decided to make a site where I can check all my YouTube comments in one place.

Check it out: MyVideoComments.com. If you want, enter my username: pud

I guess there’s still time to do some of that other stuff.

Pud

Here’s a strangely mesmerizing video of a girl dancing to one of my favorite eletro groups, Daft Punk. They should release this as their next video.

Okay, I broke down and bought an iPhone. No, I didn’t wait in line. I was close to an Apple store (1 block from my office) and decided to walk over and check it out. When I got there, I just walked straight up to the counter and said, “do you have any iPhones in stock?” It was around 5:00 pm on Sunday.

Anyway, here is my review. Note that my old phone was a regular Samsung flip-phone.

Pros:

• Web browsing is sick. I don’t use that term very often. But it is. The browser supports Javascript, Ajax, etc. Web pages do not look screwed up like they do on other mobile devices. No such as thing as “mobile sites” anymore — it’s just the Internet.
• Email integration is awesome, though a friend of mine says Blackberry is better because bb downloads new mail while it’s in your pocket. The iPhone, on the other hand, downloads new mail when you check your mail, which means you have to wait a bit while it’s downloading. But it puts my Gmail and Exchange mail in one easy-to-use interface.
• Apparently battery life is great (8 hours talk time, 10 days (!!) standby), though I’ve had mine for less than 24 hours so far, so I can’t judge
• While not 3g or EVDO or whatever, web browsing seems fast enough. And it does a good job latching onto WiFi signals when present.
• YouTube access is fun. Though it doesn’t yet have every youtube video.. just the ones they’ve converted to mpeg. Apparently the entire youtube library will be online by Fall.
• Ipod interface is great. Flipping through album covers is fun and useful for finding those gems you haven’t listened to in a while…
• Activation was easy
• My new AT&T phone bill will be $20/month cheaper than my Verizon bill was, for roughly the same plan ($80/mo vs $100/mo)

Cons

• 8gb is not a lot of music, relatively speaking. I had to do some serious pruning of my iTunes library to decide which albums to put on it.
• It’s supposed to sync with my Outlook contacts and calendar, but I can’t get it to do either
• The keyboard definitely takes some getting used to. Ask me again in a few weeks if I’ve gotten used to it…
• wtf design oversight: The 1/8″ headphone jack is shaped in such a way that I can’t plug my fucking generic 1/8″ Radio Shack cable into it, to play music in my car. It’s hard to explain, but the female jack is inset, so the moulding of the cable can’t fit in there. And it’s not like it’s a weird cable or anything. I need to hack some plastic off the cable with a knife or something. This means it probably won’t work with certain headphones too. Maybe i’m missing something, like they want me to use an adapter or something. (the white earbuds it comes with have a little mic on the cable… which may mean it requires a different type of plug. but still, it should work with a regular stereo 1/8″ male. wtf). update: omg1 omg2
• Friend of mine says the speakerphone sucks, and the phone gets hot. I haven’t actually made any calls with it yet.
• It doesn’t have gps. My old phone has gps. But iPhone has pretty dope Google Maps so I guess that’s good enough.
• It’s thin, but obviously bigger than my small cell phone. Probably bigger than most pda’s too.
• It costs $600 + tax

There you have it.

In sum, while it has some problems and I’m sure the next version will be better, the web browsing capabilities alone are why it kicks my old phone’s ass. I think I’ll stick with it.