Posted by swedegeek on June 13, 2010
Apparently, I got really pumped by seeing Cholula® Hot Sauce on the shelf at Meijer this morning. Every time we’ve run out of the stuff I’ve scanned Meijer’s hot sauce selection in hopes that they started carrying it. Always disappointment, followed by an annoying trek to Kroger to restock my supply. (FYI, I really don’t care for Kroger, thus the annoyance. The store is right across the street from the Meijer I go to.) However, that disappointment has ended today.
Then, out of lazy Sunday curiosity, I started checking into Cholula’s brand online. It was nice to see they have a decent looking website and some cool “wearables” in their online store. However, their marketing site is entirely in Flash (navigation, forms, content, etc.), the baseball caps have sizes (WTF?) and they have no social networking presence, at least not anything actively operated by them. Apparently I’m feeling semi-activist today, so I chose to write them a letter with a laundry list of my thoughts. Here it is…
Continue reading »
Posted by swedegeek on January 24, 2009
Dang, where did 2008 go??? Well, Happy New Year everyone! I’m starting to get back into blogging a bit. I’ve even been hitting up Twitter quite a bit. You can check out my feed @blakenyquist to see what I’m up to on a more frequent basis. But I doubt many a really that interested in knowing what I’m up to by the day, let alone the hour.
I also have a new blogging project that I started up last week, that’s been going well so far. It’s about something a bit more interesting than my personal life, so hopefully I can get it going and get some readers to enjoy it as well.
Well, that’s enough of an update for now. Cheers!
Posted by swedegeek on February 3, 2008
Day 3 in Cairo, still packed. We started with a couple hours at the Egypt Museum where a massive amount of antiquities are on display. Statues (many many shapes and sizes), sarcophoguses, and numerous other items from daily and pharonic life. Covering 1000s of years of artifacts in 2 hours is no justice but highlight was King Tut collection. So much gold!
We then made it over to the Citadel, a large fortress from 100s of years back which also has an amazing mosque built by the original Muhammed Ali in 1830. Plus a great view over nearly all of Cairo. Our second great tour guide who was amazing to have at the museum did not disappoint at the Citadel either.
Last stop was Cairo market area. This is about exactly what you’d expect from packed little shops as far as you can see trying to peddle their wares to every tourist walking by. Everything is negotiable. Couple good stories from there too.
It’s midnight and we leave in 3 hours for Luxor and Nile cruise. Excited but I should get some sleep. Probably no wifi until retun to Cairo on Friday. Until then, I’ll continue with the picture taking. Peace out.
Posted by swedegeek on February 2, 2008
Posting from my cell phone so this could be rough. Jet lag seems to have hit me as it’s 2am, we got up at 7am and have to get up again at 7… yea in 5 hours.
Well my loss of sleep is this blog’s gain. One word… Pyramids! Wow, how utterly amazing. We went into 2 today. Words nor photos can do them just. They are absolutely immense and amazing.
We were among the very last to get into the Great Pyramid of Cheops today. It’s a bit of trek up into the burial chamber, but very worth it. The chamber was basically emptied out by the time we got there. So we decided to try out the acoustic properties due to the special construction. Amazing echo and reverb for such a small room. Was very cool.
The Sphinx was also part of today’s tour. Its size pales compared to the Great Pyramids, but still extraordinary. Craftmanship of the adjacent buildings is still quite visible and hard to believe considering the lack of precise tools so many thousands of years ago.
After the tour, but much crouching in pyramids and hiking all over, we enjoyed some tea and snacks at the Four Seasons in Giza. Uh, rather nice place. Oh, and Jill had to argue with our assigned security guard, his boss and some police major that we didn’t want him to follow us around for the evening. That’s a story itself.
The evening plans finished with dinner at a great Lebanese restaurant. Then hanging out at Ali’s apartment again. Tomorrow is the Egypt Museum to see even more of this ancient history.
Okay should get some shut-eye so I make it through the day. Good night.
Posted by swedegeek on June 10, 2007
Just a little while ago, I went through approximately 100 posts from the Lifehacker.com. That may seem like a lot, and it kind of was, but I pre-lifehacked my Lifehacker reading. After much cajoling, I finally was convinced to start using Google Reader. To sum it up, it’s awesome. All my favorite sites with an RSS feed can now be read from a single source. How lifehack-ish is that?
Now that my brain is full of all sorts of neat ideas to save time, money and sanity while enjoying it all, I need to share some of these with you my loyal readers. I recommend the following for all three of you. Some of these go to other sites, but I found them first on Lifehacker. Continue reading »
Posted by swedegeek on May 26, 2007
Okay, this one is likely a bit more unrealistic than the Cairo announcement. It’s more of a bizarre story from last week. It was about 5:30 and I was still working away at my desk. I had my headphones on listening to Playdio.se and their crazy Swedish DJs. Out of the corner of my eye, I see this guy walk past my cube. Continue reading »
Posted by swedegeek on April 19, 2007
Last night I went to 2 very different events. Right after work, the head of Google’s Ann Arbor office, Grady Burnett, gave a presentation at the Lansing Center. From there, I stopped at home to pick-up Megan, then we went to a played called “Meeting in Munich” at St. Paul Lutheran Church. Continue reading »
Posted by swedegeek on January 24, 2007
It’s official. 2006 was the year of user-generated content. With the likes of YouTube and MySpace in the vanguard, end-users finally became what really mattered on the Internet. With those two sites alone cashing in over #more-17.5 billion on acquisition deals, more than a few took notice of all the content being created by countless, nameless and often unpaid Internet users. Continue reading »
Posted by swedegeek on January 14, 2007
If you didn’t guess, I’ve been doing some reading on writing lately. Lately, I’ve been trying to post a little more frequently, so I thought I should get better at the whole writing thing. Granted, I’ve come a long way since trying to pen that fantasy novel in seventh grade on a early model IBM PC (don’t ask, I’ve forgotten the entire plot… really!), but composition still doesn’t feel natural to me. There also a few writing projects that are coming my soon, so I figured I could learn a few tricks before I tackled them. Continue reading »
Posted by swedegeek on January 7, 2007
Latter Half of 2006 in Review… with Photos!
Well, here I am again after a rather lengthy hiatus. (I haven’t blogged since last year!) I had a pretty decent streak of postings within about a month this summer, but I apparently fell off the blogging deep end after that. So, to get back on track, here’s a quick rundown of the rest of my 2006 with photos when available. Continue reading »