Blog of Josh Hall

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Who knew???  Outside.in called Pittsburgh the 3rd most bloggiest city after boston and philly.  I’m a little dissapointed that Philadelphia beat us, but what ever.  Pittsburgh is such a booming place for technology, and I attribute that mostly to carnegie mellon, but also UPMC doing so much research.  CMU has brought in so much google development like the bus routes and street view with google maps.

  There are a bunch of pittsburgh bloggers that i’ve just recently discovered, and I thought I was alone for so long.  I’ve been blogging since October 2003…I wonder If I’m the longest blogger in the city?  that’d be cool. 

"Those who hear not the music think the dancers mad."

–  Chinese proverb

As we reach the end of 2007, I’m going to cross that line into the cliche "here are the highlights of 2007 and here’s what I’d like to see in 2008" post.  Last year, I called it the year of "new things".  If I were to create a label for this year, I’d consider it a year of traveling.  I went to philly at least twice, crossed the atlantic for the first time to italy with my family and then to london for work, I went to vegas, I went to florida, took trips to cleveland to see rachel, took a trip or two to DC, stopped taking daily drives to work and started walking to work,  and i took a few other road trips as well.  I definitely enjoy traveling, and i definitely consider myself blessed to have the means, time, and friends that make it all possible.

So, I’m graduated with my bachelor degree in professional communicated and information systems from robert morris university…finally.  at least i finished before Keren.  Serah officially made me an uncle by giving birth on the 20th.  and I don’t really have too much to complain about at all.   But, I’ll share with you my new years resolutions and we’ll see how well I do with them.

• Call each sister at least once a month just to talk.
• put at least 100 CDs in the hands of strangers
• Pick up 1 new hobby. (haven’t decided yet…)
• READ ALL THE BOOKS I HAVE BUT HAVE NOT READ
• Compete in an urbanathon or some sort of race.

That’s all i got so far.  Should keep me busy.  I forget if the idea is to make goals specific so you know you reach them or not, or to keep them vague so that you don’t get frustrated and quit…oh well.  I’ll be off to DC this weekend to meet my niece, then back to ring in the new year.  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I’m an uncle.  Josephine Jean Pesce was born somewhere around 6pm today, December 20th, the same day that my Grandmother Hall was born!  yay!

i always wanted to take a trip across the world or country and get a jar full of dirt from each spot.  maybe build shelves in my house that had the map of the wall painted behind it, and on each shelve i’d put the jar of dirt from that location.  same thing foes for water from oceans and rivers too..

here’s an idea for a video game i came up with in the airplane.  I call it "queue."  Basically, it’s a sim crossed with lemmings.  The idea is to manage people in lines in different scenarios.  Each scenario would have a prize for passing it and that prize could assist you in later levels.  Perhaps you could chose which level you wanted to play first and have levels unlocked at certain points in the game.  I always liked that about megaman, that you could chose what bosses to fight, and then use their suits later on.  Anyway, here’s a few levels I came up with:

• School field trip to the museum – you have to get all the kids through the museum without them breaking off from the group.   You can place a security guard, 2 shaparones, and some rope lines.  Maybe have doors that need to be opened and closed.  If you pass, you get a gift shop to place in your future levels.
• Concert – manage lines to the bathrooms, mosh pits, signature booths, tshirt huts.  when you win this one, you get a security guard, or maybe a tshirt booth.
• the mall – during holiday season, watch for purse snatchers, people carrying so much stuff they block the walkway, too many couples walking too slowly side by side, too many unattended kids, etc.  for this one you’d get a mascot or person in a costume, like santa.
• the airport – get people through security, make sure they know how to get to their gate, make sure they don’t take over sized bags, etc.  and this is where the inspiration came from, there are those little car things with conveyor belts on the side that will load the luggage onto planes.  those things are friggin sweet.  So you’d get that one for a prize.  I thought it would be cool to sneak up behind people with that thing and ram them so the fal on the conveyor belt and then you’d turn it on and they’d freak out.  Funny stuff.

the lemmings idea comes in because you’d have to place stereotypes of people down and have them go through your set up.  idunno, i’d play it.