The song Elf's Lament [lyrics here] on the new Barenaked Ladies holiday album is hilarious.

- mike lee - baltimore

After breakfast, we stopped into the Waverly Farmers Market to buy a pumpkin for a carving party tonight. Then we walked home past the Baltimore Marathoners who are following a route past our house in Charles Village. Just a minute ago, Jake from work ran by the corner of 33rd and Guilford. Go Jake!

- mike lee - baltimore

Cianna is enjoying a breakfast appetizer of veggie puffs.

- mike lee - baltimore

Feel free to ignore this boorish account of why I don't have my Sidekick II yet. The photos of flowers and babies will return tomorrow.

So I ordered my Sidekick II on September 24th after the call-in sweepstakes debacle for a fair $299 without contract. I went on with my busy life, and seven business days later, I checked my tracking number at DHL.com to discover that my package was handed off to the U.S. Postal Service as per the DHL/USPS Alliance that T-Mobile has contracted. I gave it a few more days thinking USPS probably had to go through extra homeland security steps. The package sat in a facility in Rockville, Maryland for another week. When I called DHL to see what was going on, the phone rep passed the buck and said I should check USPS.com. After an unsuccessful try there, DHL tells me "oh, you need to add H to the beginning of the tracking number." Then I call USPS and they have no record of the package. During this time the package ends up back in Georgia, the point of origin, with both DHL and USPS seeing a comment in their shipment history saying "Final Delivery Confirmed." So while DHL and USPS assume no responsibility--both telling me that the activity note about final delivery to Georgia was incorrect--a T-Mobile rep acknowledged today that the package was indeed returned to Georgia, but of course T-Mobile saw fit to bill me for the phone at time of shipment. USPS claims the tag was damaged or fell off. Hmmm, well how did they track it back to Georgia? And why does DHL list a package as arriving at a final destination when it has actually been returned? Now T-Mobile has started a "handset research form" to begin a process to credit me the amount of the first phone, and express ship me another one for delivery by the end of next week. The rep assured me the SKIIs were in stock. We'll see. If this shipment is botched again, my nightmare will be being billed for two phones with nothing in hand. What irritates me most about situations like this is not the inefficiences of companies that don't interoperate well together, I see that all the time in my work, it's that the customer is almost always left with the burden of resolving delivery of their product while all the companies involved happily complete their profit-making activities. In my mind, T-Mobile takes the blame on this one again for contracting the wacky and undoubtedly low bid DHL/USPS alliance.

But, aside from some hassles around this new cell phone, my life is really good.

- mike lee - baltimore

Today marks two years of moblogging, and my 851st post. While I bought the first Sidekick on October 1st, 2002, the first day it was available in stores, I didn't post to hiptop Nation until a couple weeks later. And over two years, there were times when I didn't post for weeks, but other times, such as my blog-a-thon, where I posted multiple times a day. I spent some time last night clicking though my archives and reflecting on how while some of the things I posted seemed mundane and pointless at the time, are interesting to me now. I believe one of the virtues of moblogging iconic moments from everyday life is the archived posts' ability to serve as catalysts for remembering. Each submission was also a pause to celebrate life. Linked above are some selected images and links to posts from the first year. Post titles appear when you roll over the images. I'll post stuff fom the second year after this entry rolls over onto another page.

- mike lee - washington, dc - trying to beat the heartbreak of line breaks and wishing there was a way to correct posts here

src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/10353175362BF46091-1.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="told smithsonian"/>


href="http://hiptop.bedope.com/index.php?FILTER=zyrr@gznvy.pbz&gimme_entry=1526">
src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/10382313429B3D004-2.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="on the commuter ferry to jersey city"/>


src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/1038269472254F2148-6.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="nj 9-11 memorial"/>


href="http://hiptop.bedope.com/index.php?FILTER=zyrr@gznvy.pbz&gimme_entry=2318">
src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/1041407391309407B6-0.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="new years' dinner cruise on hudson river"/>








href="http://hiptop.bedope.com/index.php?FILTER=zyrr@gznvy.pbz&gimme_entry=2869">
src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/104411335638A4513F-4.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="shuttle columbia breaks up"/>


src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/104604568015FA6F56-0.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="young love"/>


src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/104714582413C14810-1.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="roadtrip with doggie"/>


src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/1048135696A575B05-2.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="war opens"/>







href="http://hiptop.bedope.com/index.php?FILTER=zyrr@gznvy.pbz&gimme_entry=3848">
src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/10489082161B577AA8-2.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="meeting the work of a master artist"/>


src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/10537900653AE72A15-0.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="goodbye to little soaps"/>


src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/10561238301222332F-0.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="lonely color camera"/>


href="http://hiptop.bedope.com/index.php?FILTER=zyrr@gznvy.pbz&gimme_entry=5014">
src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/105620479622E57070-9.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="early image fom the color sidekick camera"/>






src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/1056331264300C6DAA-1.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="wife's pregnant belly"/>


src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/1058034685C4EE012-2.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="an artbot"/>



src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/10583030301C0E4C25-1.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="last day of a five year job"/>


href="http://hiptop.bedope.com/index.php?FILTER=zyrr@gznvy.pbz&gimme_entry=5558">
src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/10591580831E73CBE4-3.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="mosaic of the great hall of the national building museum"/>






src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/10608643111224AEEE-0.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="bellies bump"/>


src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/1061753734620800C-8.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="heartland happy"/>


src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/106506715528B0A0DF-3.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="one year using the sidekick"/>


src="http://hiptop.bedope.com/pics/10658921704C68347-3.jpg" class="whiteborder" width=120 height=90 hspace="5" vspace="5"

alt="birth class"/>




Today marks two years of moblogging, and my 851st post. While I bought the first Sidekick on October 1st, 2002, the first day it was available in stores, I didn't post to hiptop Nation until a couple weeks later. And over two years, there were times when I didn't post for weeks, but other times, such as my blog-a-thon, where I posted multiple times a day. I spent some time last night clicking though my archives and reflecting on how while some of the things I posted seemed mundane and pointless at the time, are interesting to me now. I believe one of the virtues of moblogging iconic moments from everyday life is the archived posts' ability to serve as catalysts for remembering. Each submission was also a pause to celebrate life. Linked above are some selected images and links to posts from the first year. Post titles appear when you roll over the images. I'll post stuff fom the second year after this entry rolls over onto another page.



- mike lee - washington, dc

The legendary work of the MIT Media Lab's Aesthetics and Computation Group has now been collected in a new book, Creative Code, by Professor John Maeda. The 240 page paperback is crammed full of eye candy by the group's master digital visualization artists. John rebooted the group in 2003 to become the Physical Language Workshop, so this book serves to encapsulate part of an important era in digital media. My only wish is that some of the actual working code examples from the book aren't offered on a CD, or collected on the book's web site. The permanence of digital media artworks is a serious issue. Digital art pieces in the past have been developed in specific coding environments and hardware platforms, which over time become obsolete. Ultimately, all we are left with is paper books. Ironic.

Creative Code will get my juices going again for my next visit to the lab this coming Sunday and Monday.

I also see that John has started a CLOG (Code Log). I'm happy about this, but I don't know when the boy rests given that he's teaching classes, working on an MBA, authoring a children's book, speaking at conferences, continuing his personal experiments, helping to raise four daughters and chasing corporate sponsors like me. I need some of the magic pills he must be taking.

- mike lee - washington, dc

The bar of the District Chop House, our after-work hangout, is reflected in a large framed photo of Miss DC 1938. That was the year talent competitions were added to the Miss America Pagent.

- mike lee - washington, dc

Kale, congratulations on your new job and welcome back to D.C.!

- mike lee

...is so gentle on the senses today.

- mike lee - ellicott city, md