Jennie Roth

Meet Ike: our new tiny tiger who we picked up on the side of I-270 on the way back from DC. No joke.

Jennie: “What do you think of my new sunglasses?!”

Rob: (simply replies with a a link to the image below…)

I was inspired by a CNN article this morning to dust off my blog and have a little contest. What does your smart phone’s home screen say about you? Could you match up your favorite Twitter personalities to their current home screens?! Let’s find out.

Match the home screen with the Tweeter. Leave your answers in the comments and whoever gets the most correct will win a prize. What’s the prize? Maybe a $10 Pittsburgh Popcorn Company gift card? Does that sound fancy? Hmm?? The flavor of the week starting today in their downtown location is fluffernutter. Just saying.

I’ll probably see most all of you tonight at the MF TweetUp, so, you have until 6:00 tonight to guess. If a lot of people guess correctly, I’ll do a drawing for the gift card.

In the comments, just list the # of the home screen with the correct Tweeter. Each image is numbered, but it’s tricky, because they’re not in order. You have to be challenged some how!

Alright. Here you go.

Contestants: @jenana37 @unclecrappy @aerdin @burghseyewife @superfro432 @nathanmenge @pgha @shadow @robjdlc

Updated: Thank you all for playing along! Abby and Pam got ALL of the answers correct! I did a little drawing out of a hat and Pam will receive a $10 Pittsburgh Popcorn Company gift card!

Here are the answers:

1. @pgha

2. @robjdlc

3. @aerdin

4. @burghseyewife

5. @superfro432

6. @nathanmenge

7. @shadow

8. @unclecrappy

9. @jenana37

Hey little blog, how ya doin? Feeling neglected? Yeah, yeah, tell me about it.

I got my domain renewal notice the other day and went through the same emotions as I did last year about renewing it. I almost didn’t. Then I was wishy washy and got mad at myself for being wishy washy and then just let the automatic renew take place. There’s really no point in blabbering about it but this blog has been around since February 2007 for whatever reason and sometimes I have fun looking back and seeing if I’ve grown up or not.

Relationships.

Muddy, murky, lovely, glorious, painful and rewarding relationships.

 A famous Canadian relationship recently ended and I certainly don’t want to be part of the barrage of commenters or well wishers, but in Raymi’s recent post “And So” she let out some very raw, real emotion that we don’t typically see in her everyday writing. I have no right to comment on her life, but I can’t imagine the pressure of thousands of readers asking what happened and what went wrong with a couple who had been together nearly five years and were recently engaged.

we acted beautifully together for everyone else but us. while alone it was stretches of silences for hours in our own little online worlds until it became dark then we’d get ready and go out to whateverthefuck was going on that nite. most things i didn’t want to do, i often chose his wants over my own. there’s nothing worse than acting for people you don’t even want to hang out with when you don’t feel like hanging out. making other people’s priorities supercede that of your own until you get to a point when you don’t care about anything anymore.

Grandma says “You gotta do you.” This, this is true. And I’ve found that when you do you, you’ve gotta do him too. You can feel whatever you are feeling but if you can’t tell him exactly what that is, even if he looks at you and interrobangs start appearing all over his face, you aren’t really doing you.

In the comments of the post, Raymi’s mom said, “Relationships require work, communication, affection, respect, fairness, give and take and without this, you have a superficial shell of just existing and detachment.” Then she said my most favorite thing ever: “It’s always best to be warm then live in a cold war.”

This shit isn’t one sided. I’ll never again be afraid to say whatever it is that’s crawling around inside my head, because I know he’ll listen until he understands.

And then I’ll get to listen too.

If we happen to die tragically while our kids are young, one day, they’ll have the ability to recreate our entire ego, persona and being by simply checking out our Internet archives.

Every tweet, every blog post, every facebook wall post, it will all be out there, somewhere.

One time a few months ago, I found my old Angelfire website from when I first got a computer. I think I put up a picture of my dog. My sentences were choppy, immature, and ignorant to the world at large. I’m sure I’m still ignorant to the world at large but at least I know I’ve grown somewhat.

It kind of freaked me out, the way you’d take a step back when you found that picture from your disposable camera when you were 10 on a school field trip making weird faces with your best friend at the time.

When I was a kid I was fascinated by looking at my mom’s old pictures from high school and the era of the 1960’s and 1970’s. I think I might have also stumbled upon a journal or two she kept where she wrote her musings to her love interest at the time.

I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like when our kids enter their teen years and start getting curious about what Twitter was like when it first started, what Facebook was like when it was only for certain universities and groups, and what the hell kind of jargon we were using.

They’ll look back and see some reflection of their parents in the words we wrote, the ideas we had, and the timestamps of virtual socialization.

This is all very strange to think about, as PodCamp Pittsburgh 4 has just ended and I just finished the book I’m Not Really Here by Tim Allen. At PodCamp, we came face to face with the realization that our online personas portray versions of ourselves that we became in tune with while interacting with those we follow and who follow us, in real life.

The grit and drama of daily life melted away and we were able to indulge in ridiculousness and get drunk and revel about this Web 2.0 world we live in. it’s like living in the cloud, the one that never goes down or loses your data, filled with fingerhearts and handhugs and 649’s.

It’s our ego, it’s our spirit, it’s our integration with reality -and lack thereof.

It’s really great to be dating someone who can make me laugh my head off at any given moment. For instance, by proclaiming to be the captain of a spaceship in the middle of Ikea.

<3

Social media is the personally regulated integration of each and every one of my friends into my daily life. It is my main news source and window to the world. The connectivity allows me to leverage the talents of others at any given moment for the greater good.

Author Chuck Klosterman noted, during a stop on his book tour in Pittsburgh last year, that the Internet is making the world wider yet shallower at the same time. I feel that the widening of the world is actually creating deeper valleys of knowledge and outreach; it just depends on how each individual chooses to use it.

In the very early stages of Twitter, Tony Pierce captured an informal conversation with the founders of Twitter on a walk during SXSW several years ago. I couldn’t confirm who the speaker was, but when asked what Twitter would become in a few years, he sated: “It will become the pulse of society.” A truer statement couldn’t have been uttered.

Learn. Interact. Apply.