When I was first dabbling in blogging, I put together a post that was a sort of nontraditional resume of sorts. Even though I'm certainly not looking for employment -- I have an awesome job -- I thought it was time to give it a bit of an update.

Sure, I can program. And architect a normalized database. I can write W3C compliant HTML and CSS, and create slick effects with jQuery. I can PHP, e-commerce, and content manage with the best of them. Lots of developers can do that. What sets me apart? I'll tell you.

I can sleep for as many as 20 hours at a time and as few as 20 minutes. I have in the past worked 60 hours in a 64 hour period of time. Given a small space and $35, I can convert any environment into a relaxing, enjoyable place to work.

I can give a cat a bath without sustaining significant injury.

With the right instruments, I simply cannot be stopped. Physically. Walls cannot deter me, locks will not disuade me.

I can manouver very successfully through large crowds of people without disrupting anyone. I can introduce myself to someone, pump them for any information I need, and be forgotten within 10 minutes.

I can eat anything edible.

I can drive a stick shift. I can teach you to drive a stick shift. I can teach you to teach someone to drive a stick shift.

Feigning interest is not a problem; I can listen along with the best of them. Politicians, telemarketers, the elderly: it makes no difference. They will all sincerely believe that I care about what they are talking about.

I can endure hours of repetitive tedium. Standing in line, staking out locations, waiting at airports and bus terminals-- these activities are not an issue.

I know all the warp zones in Super Mario Brothers 1, 2, and 3.

I have yet to lose in a staring contest. I can successfully ignore the constant ringing of telephones. I make a damn good western omelette. Or standard omelete. Or quesadilla. In 3 minutes flat.

I know how to not show astonishment when suddenly confronted with a celebrity personality. I can properly set up a fish tank. Fresh- or salt-water.

I'm not afraid to punch someone in the face. I certainly don't want to -- I'm generally a pretty passive guy -- but I would have no qualms with putting a firm right cross to someone's face if it came in the line of duty.

I can say the word "duty" with a straight face. See? Duty.

I can run a 13 minute mile.

With only 24 hours notice, I could go "off the grid" and completely disappear for up to a month if necessary. Two months with 72 hours notice.

I own my own tuxedo. I clean up real good.

I always know someone who works, or used to work, or knows someone who works or used to work there. I can successfully create a diversion. I can jump off things. Lots of things.

These are just a few of my qualifications. If you are interested in hiring me, putting some sort of crew together, or just organizing your Alpha Team in preparation for some sort of apocalypse scenario, please direct all inquiries to andy@teamsoell.com.

 

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I got a little techincal last week when I mentioned Foursquare, but today I want to talk a little more about the social aspects of the service.  I've been using Foursquare while visiting other cities, such as Washington DC and Chicago, since early August.  When using the location sharing service in these other cities I put very little thought put into the "proper etiquette" of checking in to various locations. I checked in everywhere.  Restaurants, coffee shops, supermarkets, gas stations -- even my hotel every time I stopped in. It didn't matter, I was really just enjoying the novelty of the game. Since I was usually only playing the game for a couple of days at a time, it was really just about the fun of racking up points and seeing how many I could get before I went back home.

Now that Foursquare is available full time in my hometown, and the novelty is slowly wearing off, I'm kind of curious what the Foursquare community at large thinks about these issues.  Strictly speaking, there's nothing wrong with any of the following, but I'm curious what other Foursquare players think about the following practices:

Checking in to gas stations, convenience stores, and other quick locations

I did this all the time when playing Foursquare in other cities but now that it's come to Columbus, I'm finding it kind of pointless checking in on short trips like this. None of my friends care that I'm filling up the car, and they're even less likely to stop in and see me. Sure, you could easily become the Foursquare Mayor of your local gas station, but that doesn't really come with any actual benefits. So the only actual benefit is racking up extra points, which are also meaningless.

Checking in to your own place of employment

To a degree, I think it depends on the type of place you work at.  If you work an office job, and you're just competing with your fellow colleagues to see who can be the Mayor of your office, I don't see a lot of harm there.  But where it's not cool is if you work at a restaurant or some other business that depends on customers.  For example, I'm currently the Foursquare Mayor of my local coffee shop because I stop in there at least every couple of days.  I'd be kind of annoyed if I lost my mayorship to one of the barristas who works there every day.  At the same time, I can see the benefit to checking in to your place of work so that your friends know you're there.  They might be interested in stopping by to say hello if they're in the area.

Establishing your home/apartment as a location and checking in daily

I'm absolutely guilty of this one.  The first day Foursquare became available in Columbus, I created the Team Soell HQ location and saw to it that I got the first Mayorship of my house.  After my third checkin, though, I realized that I was earning badges and racking up points unfairly and laid off it.  Sometimes I do want my friends to know that I'm at home, but I feel back earning points that don't accurately reflect my activity level.

Retroactively checking in to places you forgot to check in at

This is an issue I've seen a lot of varied and passionate opinions on.  What if you're out on the town hitting up a bunch of different places, and your phone dies? You lose out on valuable points and badges. You should be able to check in the next day and get those points, right?  Again, I'm not really sure about this one.  If the main point of Foursquare is to have it present and accurate picture of your social activities, it may be ok.  But I also use it to let my friends know where I am, and they might be a little put off if they see me checking into a restaurant and they stop by and see I'm not actually there.

For me, I'm trying to use Foursquare as a sort of notification system to let my friends -- and maybe other Foursquare users -- know that I'm out at a particular business.  In my day to day use, I generally avoid checking in at locations I don't plan to be at long, like the bank, and focus on using it to show the types of businesses I like.

What do you think about Foursquare -- is it a tool to connect with your friends, or do you use it more as a game, trying to rack up the most badges and points that you can?  Are you guilty of any of these "questionable activities" or is it all fair game?

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Earlier this year on our cross country roadtrip to Los Angeles, January and I kept friends and family updated on our progress with a custom Google Map. Along the way, whomever of us wasn't driving would fire up the laptop, tether it to our iPhone, and upload pictures to the server in order to update this map of our progress.

I'm really glad we took the time to do it, not only because it gave everyone a glimpse into our progress, but it was also great to be able to go back a year later and remember the journey.  It was, however, kind of a pain to pull out the laptop, get it connected to the internet, upload photos over such a slow connection, and update the map manually on Google Map's web site.  I still remember the first night, when we pulled into our hotel at 2 in the morning after driving for 12 hours straight, and sitting down for 20 minutes to update the map instead of crashing.  Kind of inconvenient.

I've whipped up a little project that aims to streamline this process a little more: Tweet My Travel.  It's a web site that I hope to open up to people who are going on long road trips like this, so that they can keep a sort of online journal of their trip.  The idea is simple: After entering your travel dates on TweetMyTravel.com, the site keeps an eye on your Twitter account for updates that have GPS coordinates attached to them.  Twitter recently released their new geotagging features to let Twitter users share their location, and more and more Twitter applications are supporting it.  When Tweet My Travel sees a new update with an attached location, it will automatically add this location to your map along with the text from your update.  I've had a couple of friends testing this out for me over the holiday weekend, and I think we're off to a good start.  Here's a real life map generated by Tweet My Travel from my friends Jason's trip out to Virginia this weekend:

Now, as you can see, it's not nearly as polished as the first map. There are some bugs that need to be worked out, and that's where I'm hoping some of you will come in.  If you're doing any sort of traveling over the next month or so, I want to hear from you.  It doesn't require a lot, and I've outlined some of the details on the Tweet My Travel beta page, but I'd really like to see how people use this in real life to make sure this is going to be a useful and flexible option for people on the road who want to keep a record of their trip.

So, if you're doing any traveling in the coming month, or know heavey Twitter users who are, first read over the list of requirements on the beta page and then drop me a note.  I think this could be a really cool tool for travelers who want to make road trips a little more social and enjoyable.

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Everbody's heard of the Couch to 5k program, and I've whipped up a little program of my own called 5k to 5 mile.  Here's the plan:

• Register for a 5 mile race
• Make yourself go run it

Last month, after I ran my first ever 5k race, I had bold ambitions to keep up the running. I heard about Columbus' Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot and thought it sounded like fun, so I went ahead and signed up.  Unfortunately, this month turned out to be a lot busier than I had anticipated. Between work and personal projects, I didn't run at all for a solid two of the three weeks since then.  But, as much as I wanted to ignore it, the morning of the big race came just the same, and since I hate to waste a $35 registration fee, I got myself up at 7:30 on Thanksgiving morning to meet up with several thousand runners to run my first ever five mile race.

I'm happy to say that I made it!  The first part was a pretty sharp downhill run, which gave me some encouragement for the first leg.  A large part of the second half of the race was completely downhill, which was also nice, but the last mile was just uphill the whole way. I did do a combination of walking and running for that last mile, but I still finished up in just over an hour.

It was a good way to start a holiday that typically revolves around gorging ourselves with food and sitting in front of the TV. I think I'm ready for a little break from races, but I'm glad I was able to do it.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Now, could someone please pass the stuffing?

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