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This could turn out to be a new category in and of itself. Would it be soda-can acrobatics or LG Chocolate Phone Photography? I am not sure. What I am sure of is that the can in this picture is balancing freely by itself (without any help from the keyboard as it may appear to have at that angle). It has just the right level of liquid inside the can which gives it the right center of gravity to balance on the beveled lip as sort of a cantilever mechanism. An engineer might be able to provide a better description of why this works so, but I am a designer, which means I think it just looks cool so I take a picture of it with my techno-gadgetry and put it on my narcissistic blog.

This picture adequately sums up my life for the past few weeks. Caffeine from diet soda enabling me to push and click the mouse a little longer, captured with my new LG Chocolate phone which has been a bright spot in an otherwise dull and gray work week.

My 21 inch CRT monitor at work has a row of dead pixels about one quarter the way down from the top. It appears as a slightly dashed or dotted line of gray and is particularly visible when I have something with a white or light background up on the screen. Normally it is just an annoyance, but it served me well one day this week when Windows was acting up. I was implementing a design and wanted to test vertical alignment in my browser window versus my mockup, so I had the browser window on top of and to the side of my maximized Fireworks window and was attempting to take a screen shot to put into Photoshop and test alignment with a nice straight Photoshop guide.

As luck would have it, the ‘Print Screen’ function had decided to take a break from working as things in Windows will often do. I knew a simple reboot would restore ‘Print Screen’ as it had in the past but I had my test server spun up with 8 or 9 different browsers for testing my CSS. Sometimes rebooting is a major inconvenience.

Just as I was about to start closing windows, I noticed that familiar gray line of dead pixels hovering about 2-3 pixels above the two elements that I was testing for alignment. Sure enough, the distance between the two elements and the dead pixels was uniform so I knew I had it down to at least within one pixel or so which was good enough for the time being. So basically, I utilized a hardware deficiency in my monitor to overcome a software deficiency of my operating system in order to perform a simple task. I should note this on my performance review under “Problem Solving.”

To the right are some of the very first pictures of the newly redesigned Scion xB and the new model, the xD. My feelings on these two vehicles have ranged from severe disappointed to mild enthusiasm over the time that I have had to reflect upon them. Overall I feel a little let down and at this point I am still not sure if it is because I expected too much or if Scion is just morphing down to plain old re-badged Toyotas. Don’t get me wrong, Toyotas are awesome cars, but the company’s previous attempts to target a younger male market were just horrible. I am speaking specifically about cars like the Echo and the Corolla S. Not bad cars, just a little girly and nothing that would make rush out to buy one.

With the introduction of Scion, they hit the nail on the head. The xB was incredibly unique in the U.S. market, the xA was a superbly affordable hatchback with some pretty cool features for its pricerange and the later addition of the tC brought a budget sports coupe with a killer sunroof into the mix. I had hoped that any addtions or redesigns to the Scion line would be more along the lines of the impact of the xB and the tC on the U.S. market and less like the xA. The first time I had every laid eyes on the xB I said “whoa!” Seeing these first pictures of the new Scions made me say to something to the tune of “inspired by Corolla.”

I think to give proper perspective on my relationship with Scion, I had better give a little background on my interest in the company and their cars. To start, I do not currently own a Scion but this has not always been the case. I saw the Scions in San Jose, CA by chance when they were on a nationwide tour to promote the company. They were letting the public test drive them and I knew after seeing and driving an xB that I wanted one. In a move quite uncharacteristic for me, I went to the dealership about two weeks after they came out and bought an ‘04 xB. The ‘04 Scions were only available in California which is where I lived at the time so I was quite the early adopter.

The rest of the story goes something like xB was fun for a while and fit our family of four quite nicely except on extended trips where the shortage of cargo space meant for some creative packing of baggage (thank goodness the twins did not need any legroom at that time!). Well, our family of four became a family of five and long story short, the xB got traded in for a minivan. I was sad and still am to a certain degree.

I liked the uniqueness of the design in the xB and did not care when I was told it looked like a shoebox, toaster, it was the ugliest car one had ever seen, etc. I know that asthetics and looks are subjective (who in their right mind would ever buy a Pontiac Aztec???) so the negativity just bounced right off of my ears. For every negative comment I had on the car, I had four positive comments. When I moved to AZ, the cars had yet to come out there so they were even more rare. I had folks old and young approach me in parking lots asking about the car. At one point, I had a basic spiel I had memorized including brief background on the Toyota-Scion relationship (like a Lexus, only cheaper!), approximate gas mileage, and MSRP.

I do not get any of those same feelings or emotions welling up inside of me from looking at the new xB and that is why I am disappointed. Sorry Scion, maybe your next round will get back to your roots.

I will admit that watching this on TV was a slight disappointment given that the game was played in the stadium that I pass every day going to and from work. I had looked into getting tickets the week before and even though the cheap seats (and eventually the entire stadium) were sold out, I think I could have still gotten tickets then. Such is my life. Anyhow, as it worked out, I had a fever, chills, coughing, etc. and was not much for moving around anyway so watching the game in my recliner at home turned out to be alright.

Traffic from this event turned my normally 1 hour or so commute into almost 2 hours even with my carpool buddy, Ben, but not even this would dampen my excitement for the game. The only difficulty was splitting my viewing with the new LOST episode (I need a DVR!) but I managed to catch most of the excitement including both goals scored.

This game was radically awesome. Landon Donovan’s goal in the 90th minute had me yelling out loud, much to the displeasure of my wife (Shh! The kids are sleeping!). That game-clinching goal was enough for me to not even get too upset by the cheap shot the Mexican goal keeper threw at one of our boys after getting schooled by Donovan. That goal was amazing though. After his break away Donovan kept looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was close enough to get him but he was way out in front.

I do not care if soccer is the black sheep sport here in the U.S. and I do not care for those soccer snobs who insist that the U.S. is inferior to the Europeans or the South Americans or whatever and how we are lame because we are the only ones that call it soccer, blah blah blah, waah waah waah. Someday when we take the world cup, I will claim true fan status and heap scorn on the fairweather fans that cannot even get excited over wins like this one against Mexico (fairweather fan says “well Mexico is not really a powerhouse these days.”). I just hope that I am not heaping scorn on the fairweather fans from the afterlife.