For the love of pop

Charles and I trekked over to San Diego for a super fast trip this weekend to attend San Diego's International Comic-Con. It was their 38th annual, which means it started a mere weeks before Charles was born. That in itself was flabbergasting to us.

Filled with comic collectors and memorabilia, we also found tons of movies, television shows and pop culture icons. I have to think our favorite thing by far was the Smallville bags they were passing out. Just about everyone there had one. The must measure something like 3'x3'. Little kids were trying to carry them around and they were literally taller than they were. Charles and I totally agreed that it had to be the best marketing gimmick there.

Other booths that really tickled us included the Conduct Happiness booth. They had made comics of peas and had them dressed up and posed for books and cards and t-shirts. My favorite had them dressed in cowboy hats and boots doing the Pea-Pea Dance. Hilarious.

Charles as amazed at how many famous folks he saw including cast members from Star Trek: Next Generation like "Deanna Troi," "Q," "Geordi LaForge," and from Star Trek: Voyager "Harry Kim." He also found quite a few members from Star Gate.

We stood in line for over 2 hours waiting to get in to see a panel of the women of Battlestar Gallactica. Mary McDonald, who plays President Laura Roslin, was absolutely amazing to me partly because she's an older actress who I feel more and more in common with as of late and because she is so eloquent. Included in the scheduled panel was Tricia Helfner "Number Six," Katee Sackhoff "Captain Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace" and series Executive Producer Ron Moore. The ballroom where we watched them held thousands of adoring fans. It was amazing. However, we missed the panel that occurred before Battlestar which was the entire Heroes cast. I hated that, but we literally would have lost about 5 hours had we been there for it.

Oh, and I almost forgot, but Lucy Lawless showed up at the Battlestar panel too.

So without further adieu here are the rest of the cool the photos of the event.

An "unknown" Ninja dude with fabulous Afro.

Bob the Angry Flower

An Elvis Stormtrooper and an adoring fan

Looking out at the sea of people - in 4 days there were over 120,000 attendees! That's a lot of zeros, huh?

I had to pull Charles out of the way of the entrouge and camera crew filming Gene Simmons of Kiss fame. Then I had to pull Charles away as he was in awe that he was that close to Gene!

Our first sighting of the day was George Takei, better known as Sulu from the original Star Trek series.

We thought these caped Knights were cool.

Imagine. We saw the Simpsons as they were paraded onto the exhibit floor.

Charles and Dalek from Dr. Who.

And finally Comic-Con wouldn't be the same without The Incredible Hulk, Lou Ferrigno.

Bring on the Lycopene!

So, I started these little tomato plants when we were living in the apartment and I never planted them into any pots though. I simply kept them in the containers they came in.

I purchased four heirloom tomato plants at Gardens. But Charles complained and asked why I didn't purchase any Beefsteak tomatoes. So, shortly after my first purchase I purchased three additional "normal" tomato plants to appease the boy.

A few weeks after we moved into our new house I finally transplanted the silly little tomatoes and their sister basil, rosemary and their companion marigold plants. I used tomato fertilizer and some nifty organic veggie starter mix that I also purchased at Gardens. See . . .

Oh, and a quick aside, when I was on college one of my jobs was at a great organic garden center, Gardenville, in San Marcos, Texas. It was there that Martha Latta taught me about herbs and companion planting. Marigolds are great with tomatoes because they keep away aphids or at least I thought until I looked it up online to hyperlink you to more info. Either way, click here for more info on companion planting.

In only a matter of a month look what they've become. Okay, so look past the weeds and tall grass growing around their base. We'll get to that soon enough.

So far, I've munched on a few Cherry tomatoes and those seem to be the most prolific, but the heirloom tomatoes are putting on a good show right now.

Whohoo! I love my 'maters! Want some?

Recruiting where the candidates live

According to Wikipedia, podcasting is:

A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.

And it appears that it may be the wave of the future when posting jobs. Walgreens has recently announced that it will begin using this form of media in its recruitng efforts, which absolutely fascinates me.

"This is a great way to speak to the iPod generation of job seekers," says Chris Russell, the founder of Jobs in Pods. "Walgreens is bringing their jobs to life and connecting with today's job seekers in a medium they are comfortable with," he adds.

For more about podcasting for candidates click here.

So long, farwell . . .

So one of Bulldog's semi-newest employees is packing up and leaving fabulous Austin so that his wife and kiddos can be closer to family - in Ohio! Who the heck leaves Austin for Ohio? Everyone wants to move TO Austin, not the other way around.

But as a send off for themselves they hosted a wonderful farwell party this weekend at Stubbs downtown and had Jim Halfpenny and Band play. It was a great evening with yummy barbeque, chips, queso and guacamole and my good friend Jamie who just moved down from Dallas last week came as my date.

Adios, Tim and Julie! Thanks for opening up Bulldog's first official office in Ohio!

Let the geek fest begin

So it's been a few years since my last venture to a sci-fi / comic convention, but we're hitting the air next Friday and attending Comic-Con! I can't wait. For folks that think they know me it's funny when I tell them because they obviously don't see me as a sci-fi geek. And I'm not really. I have a few sci-fi types of shows that I watch, but for the most part I'm currently addicted to watching home improvement shows and my standard Top Chef and soon Project Runway! Yea!

But next week it's all about sci-fi and truth be told, people watching and gawking. We're going to be there with camera clicking and hopefully enough memory on our memory stick to take in all the craziness that's sure to abound.

A pup for the Bulldog crew

You'd think with the name of our company being Bulldog Solutions that at least one of us would have a bulldog, but not so until recently. Our president, Todd Davison, finally purchased one for his family. The video below is from Clover's first day at the office. Awww - we love her!



Clover's First Day from kfarwell and Vimeo.

And, yes, there had been a bulldog in the past. Read about Augustus here.

E-mail is so passe!

Digital kids

Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead

By Stefanie OlsenStaff Writer, CNET News.comPublished: July 18, 2006 4:00 AM PDT

SAN FRANCISCO--The future of e-mail might be found on the pages of MySpace.com and Facebook.

Just ask a group of teen Internet entrepreneurs, who readily admit that traditional e-mail's more suited for keeping up professional relationships or communicating with adults.

"I only use e-mail for my business and to get sponsors," Martina Butler, the host of the teen podcast Emo Girl Talk, said during a panel discussion here at the Mashup 2007 conference, which is focused on the technology generation. With friends, Bulter said she only sends notes via a social network.

"Sometimes I say I e-mailed you, but I mean I Myspace'd or Facebook'ed you," she said.

To be sure, much has been written about the demise of e-mail, given the annoyance of spam and the rise of tools like instant messaging, voice over IP and text messaging. But e-mail has hung on to its utility in office environments and at home, even if it's given up some ground to new challengers. It may be that social networks are the most potent new rival to e-mail, one of the Internet's oldest forms of communication. With tens of millions of members on their respective networks, MySpace and Facebook can wield great influence over a generation living online, either through the cell phone or the Internet.

To read the rest of the article go here: http://news.com.com/Kids+say+e-mail+is%2C+like%2C+soooo+dead/2009-1032-6197242.html?part=dht&tag=nl.e703

Video - Why work at Bulldog Solutions

Be sure to check out the cool video link on the right hand side, which helps explain the culture and why everyone should want to work at Bulldog Solutions.

Bulldog Solutions is a fun, fast-paced place to work, with headquarters in Austin, Texas (the Live Music Capital of the World) and European offices in Brussels, Belgium. Our impressive roster of clients includes some of the most recognizable Global 500 brands. We develop and manage online lead-generation campaigns for business-to-business marketers across the technology, finance, science, health care, telecom, insurance and publishing sectors.

Yikes - ID Theft and Texas

From a post today on Freakonomics . . .

I.D.-Theft Watchdog Finds the State of Texas is Wide Open for I.D. Thieves
Steven Peisner, whom Dubner and Levitt wrote about recently in a column on identity theft, has made a career out of trying to stop people from hacking or otherwise stealing valuable information from websites.
So Peisner’s ears perked up when he learned of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s announcement on May 31 that Texas now requires companies to shred documents that list customers’ personal information rather than simply tear them in half. In a televised press conference, Abbott blasted stores like the EZ Pawn chain, charging that its practice of throwing unshredded documents into Dumpsters “put hundreds of Texans at risk” by giving fraudsters access to confidential information. EZ Pawn is being charged with violating the new law, Abbott said, with penalties of up to $50,000 per infraction.

See the whole article here: http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/07/12/id-theft-watchdog-finds-the-state-of-texas-is-wide-open-for-id-thieves/

On a jet plane . . .

Tonight I'm flying up to Dallas and helping one of my dearest friends, Jamie move to Austin tomorrow. I'm so psyched!

Years ago I tried to convince her to move to Austin, but was unsuccessful and as fate would have it I ended up in the Dallas area instead. Fortunately, though, my time in Big D came to an end and Austin welcomed me back with open arms.

She's absolutely going to LOVE her new life here!

Light up our night

One of the unexpected perks we've found with our new home is fireworks! We're not too terribly far from Dell Diamond - home of the Round Rock Express farm-league baseball team and on their Friday night home games and other special nights they shoot fireworks following the game.

Last night Charles called on his way home and I didn't answer the phone and he was close enough to the house that he saw the fireworks and knew immediately where I was - standing out in our driveway watching the show of course.

Tonight I heard them going off and hollered for Charles to come watch with me. He comes bounding down the stairs with a boyish grin. We stood outside in our "jammies" watching. He commented, "Yeah, all the neighbors are saying look at the newbies watching the fireworks. It'll get old fast." I told him, nah, everyone loves fireworks. And no sooner had I said that, but we heard our next door neighbors coming out of their home and then across the street we heard a bunch of teens running out to grab a peak. Hilarious.

So, now you'll know where you can find our wildselves on Fireworks night at the Diamond.

Cute New Place

For those of you who haven't seen the place, okay, can't imagine that's many folks, here is the new place. Love it. Love the color. Love the porch. Love the balcony. Love the front and back yard.

It's been raining a ton here lately, every day in fact, which is exceptionally odd for Central Texas in the summer when we're typically under drought conditions. So this morning after the morning showers I donned my silly gardening hat and slathered on my SkinCeuticals sunblock and headed out for some strenuous weed pulling to try and keep it looking as much like this photo as possible. This is the life!

Oh, my

Found this guy standing and snickering in my kitchen. He looked a lot like my boyfriend, but I fear for this soul living in a rather liberal area of Texas. And just when I had thought I almost had him converted to drinking organic milk.

Hee-hee

Okay, I figured out how to add some additional functionality to my blog today. Very cool. This is fun!

Oh, and this is a pic of me on the left dressed as Betsy Ross for the Meadows 4th of July Bike Parade - circa 1974. Banana seated bikes were soooooo cool; in commemoration of Independence Day.