Bike and Beyond...

The Shave

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:20:00 +0000

Haven't posted in awhile, sorry. Thing have been great, a lot's happened. Amanda got an amazing job at TripAdvisor.com in the PR department as the lead of their social media department. So make sure you like them on facebook and follow them on twitter! She also got into Boston College's MBA program!! She's supper excited and starts in January.

I've been busy with work, all of our Benihana systems now sell products. We also have custom software running marketing campaigns for Toyota at the Meadowlands Stadium, Duracell in NY, and Charmin in NY. They were all fun to work on and I'm looking forward to more big projects. Also you can't really beat working from home!

Other then that...I shaved courtesy of the straight razor Chan got me as a wedding gift...
(Not sure why the beginning screwed up, something wrong with the uploader)

The Shave from Todd Byron Johnson on Vimeo.

P2S 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 19:18:00 +0000

It's with much regret and sadness I need to talk about this on my blog, but a rider of the exact same ride I was on has passed away during the trip. Paige Hicks.

After all these years, I'm am surprised at how much the new's has had an effect on me. I think it's because it brought back so many fond memories and thoughts of all the riders and friends on my trip. After ridding cross country and everything you go through, you become closer then you can really imagine. I can't think of losing one of those people, even after all this time. I certainly can't imagine losing one of them during a trip. It's going to be a hard thing to deal with for everyone in the Bike & Build community and my thoughts and prayers are with everyone including Paige's family and the other riders on P2S 2010. I also wanted to thank Bike & Build and the leadership for being so quick, transparent, open and thoughtful with their responses.

HERE is a webpage about the sad event.

HERE is a full letter from B&B.

Even when it's though to do...
Ride on!

Happy 4th of July!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 04:16:00 +0000

Re: Watching what we eat...

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:28:00 +0000

Nice

In a message dated 6/17/2010 2:52:57 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, gotnospice@mac.com writes:

Chocolate con Churros y Café
Mmmmmmmmmm!
Wine tasting tour tomorrow in the country!!

Sent from my sweet iPhone

Watching what we eat...

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:52:00 +0000

Chocolate con Churros y Café
Mmmmmmmmmm!
Wine tasting tour tomorrow in the country!!

Cross Country Stats

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Sat, 22 May 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Hmmmmm.....

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Mon, 17 May 2010 01:17:00 +0000

First pee stop, still in CA! ha ha

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Sat, 15 May 2010 18:15:00 +0000

Next big change...

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:50:00 +0000

I know I haven't posted in a long time, and for those few loyal readers who actually check my blog, thanks Dad, I apologize.

I've been swamped with wedding planning, but so far so good. Every thing's gone relatively smoothly so far, knock on wood.

Some of you might not know but Amanda and I are leaving this earthquake infested state and moving back east before the wedding. We have thought about it a lot and we decided it would be too hard and too expensive to move back after we are married. We both grew up on the east coast and to my sister's horror we miss the weather in New England. We will also be much closer to both our families and a lot of old friends.For now we are going to stay with our friend Stephanie in Needham, MA until she can't stand us and we can find a place of our own. Amanda's leaving her job in PR tomorrow and will be spending the next 30 days finishing up any details for the wedding and the move. I am lucky enough to have a company that is going to continue to let me work for them from Boston. It's going to be great for me as I can keep a steady income and healthcare during a huge transition. Hopefully it will also be good for the company to have someone representing and drumming up business for them on the East coast. I'll try to keep you posted and maybe even do a daily blog for the short cross country road trip home.

Until then here is something that will completely blow your minds:

We could be living in a black hole!

Happy Easter!

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 20:38:00 +0000

Holiday Slowdown...

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:11:00 +0000

After the holidays and all the amazing east coast food, my run was a little sporadic today.

Here is a usual 2 Mile Run:

Here is today's 2 Mile Run, haha You can see how all over the place my speed was:

But starting today I'm planning on getting in really good shape for the wedding. Wish me luck I'll need it!

Bored yet?!

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:29:00 +0000

UPDATE: HERE is someone else agreeing with me and Fake Steve Jobs.

UPDATE 2: Building less and making more money, in graphs and charts, click HERE to see them.

(Links from Gizmodo)

Friendly Debate about AT&T

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:57:00 +0000

FYI: Fake Steve Jobs blog is having server issues so if you get an error just refresh and it should load...

If you haven't read the comments on my last post please do, you can click HERE to read them. Chan and I have been having a friendly discussion about the topic.

Fake Steve Jobs is at it again. And in my rebuttal to Chan, one point I made was, they HAVE to buff up their network if they want to compete in the next 10 years. The data network problems they are having now are really just starting. Here is a great quote from Fake "Steve Job's" post HERE.

"But AT&T has a much bigger problem on its hands. The problem is that the wireless data explosion is just beginning. This 3% of AT&T users who are supposedly accounting for 40% of bandwidth use? Pretty soon that 3% is going to become 30%."

And I love how he even begins to criticizes how they are spending their money, because they do have more money to spend on their network with out increasing fees.

"Go look at their financial statements (pdf) and open up the Financial Operations and Statistics Summary and look at capital expenditures over the past eight quarters. I’m no math whiz, but it looks like capex [Capital expenditures are expenditures creating future benefits.] has gone down by about 30% over the time period. Scroll down a bit to the Wireless section and check out data revenues — they’re up 80% over the same period." (Capex definition via Wikipedia)

I also would be up for something like what my friend Mark said. Where I pay $30 for unlimited but if Chan doesn't want unlimited he can pay $10 for a certain amount. But in any situation the network has to work reliably for EVERYONE.

UPDATE: Another funny fake conversation with "Steve Jobs" and "Randall Stephenson" read it HERE.

Apple and AT&T. Again.

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:03:00 +0000

I've posted about the issues with the iPhone and AT&T before, and if you've been following it at all. An AT&T executive (Ralph de la Vega) recently said this:

“We’re going to try to focus on making sure we give incentives to those small percentages to either reduce or modify their usage so they don’t crowd out the other customers in those same cell sites,” said de la Vega according to a transcript of the conference. “And you’ll see us address that more in detail.”
“What’s driving usage on the network and driving these high usage situations are things like video, or audio that keeps playing around the clock,” he said, according to the transcript provided by AT&T. “And so we’ve got to get to those customers and have them recognize that they need to change their pattern, or there will be other things that they are going to have to do to reduce their usage.”

He's also said this:
"3 percent of AT&T users generate 40 percent of the traffic on the network"

This pissed off me and almost every other iPhone user. I'm paying (my work is now, yay!) AT&T $100 a month for service that sucks. Part of that is $30 for UNLIMITED data usage. I have the right to stream video all day everyday 24/7 365 as long as I'm paying $30. So NO I'm not going to go along with any "incentives" and I'm definitely not going to "curb my data usage." AT&T needs to keep expanding their network until it can handle all the traffic. Once they clear up THEIR problems, MORE people will get iPhones and pay $100 a month for them. Considering the #1 reason people aren't getting iPhones is because of the network, AT&T should see this a a priority.

Anyway, there is this blogger who pretends he's Steve Jobs. He blogs as if he IS Steve himself. He has a great sense of humor and really captures Steve's image or at least the image I imagine him to be. He recently wrote a long (but worth reading) post about a "conversation" he had with an AT&T's Randall Stephenson about the recent quote by Ralph de la Vega. It's very, very funny and even though it's meant to be humorous "Steve Jobs" makes some really good points.

Click HERE to read it, and leave me comments as to what you think.

Crazy Spiral Lights Over Norway

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:57:00 +0000

I hope this has nothing to do with the LHC! I've E-mailed my contacts there, I'll let you know if they respond with a statement....
Click HERE to see a summary of the crazy lights over Norway.
I hope it's a giant hoax, cause if it isn't then it's super nutty!

UPDATE: Few! Looks like it was just a rouge Russian rocket that went out of control. They are of course denying it.
Click HERE to read an article on what happened.

Ummmm...

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:08:00 +0000

He does make a good point, and if he hadn't already, I would have written the same post, hahaha.
In all my posts I was also joking...mostly....but now I'm also not sure....
Again, sorry Chan, haha
Click HERE to read the Gizmodo article.

Here we go again!

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:43:00 +0000

Who want's to make bets that it breaks again before they do some real tests? Anyone?
I'll take that bet, 2012 is closer and closer....
Take a look HERE at all the Big Pictures of the collider.

(Maximilien Brice, © CERN)

Really Funny!

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:01:00 +0000

At least it's funny to me, especially if it's real...
Click HERE to read the post on Gizmodo.com

Choose Your Own Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:41:00 +0000

I used to LOVE Choose Your Own Adventure or CYOA novels as a kid! I would read them over and over again, always making different choices to keep things interesting. I saw this article about CYOA books and it brought wonderful memories flooding back. Click HERE to read it. It reminded me of how much I loved those books, I wonder if they are popular with kids today? Any mom's out there have kids that still read these?

As the article mentions, it seems during their time they were looked down upon as not acceptable literature. I disagreed then and disagree now. They did everything a parent would want. The kid was kept busy for hours, it activated their imaginations, and lastly they were reading! Good literature or not, I think I might go pick one up and read it for old time's sake.

Not much longer till 2012...

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:48:00 +0000

That darn collider, it's just one thing after another! I wonder when it will actually get back online? Hmmmmm....

Click HERE to read how a bird screwed it up this time.

College Town Creeper!

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:41:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:33:00 +0000

Sorry I haven't been posting. Here's some pictures from fishing.

I Dare you AT&T ...

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:50:00 +0000

PC World's Mark Sullivan wrote an article HERE and it's a little scary. Basically, it seem's like he is saying because iPhone users use most of the networks data, that AT&T might consider placing data caps on iPhone users. I quote AT&T Wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega, "We have to manage the network to make sure that the few cannot crowd out the many." Sounds like that means we'll have to manage the iPhone users so our other customers have bandwidth left.

AT&T I assume you realized that when YOU decided to sell the iPhone exclusively, read I have no other option, you also knew iPhones would use a lot of data. Hence the MANDATORY $30 a month UNLIMITED data plan that you force upon every iPhone user. The only phone on your network, until recently, that has such a mandatory requirement. And I suspect the recent change is to get everyone to help pay for your problem.

So NO don't even think about limiting my $30 a month UNLIMITED data. I'd love to see the outrage if they even try it. Hopefully the PR department steps in before that can happen...

UPDATE: A great follow up article HERE from Gizmodo.com about the FCC and wireless carriers.

I'll keep you posted, muhahahaha

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:03:00 +0000

iPhone MMS Update: AT&Tfs Last Stand? - http://mashable.com/2009/09/24/iphone-mms-update
/

Todd

Sent from my sweet iPhone 3Gs

AT&T Fix? I hope not

noreply@blogger.com (Todd Johnson) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:19:00 +0000

During my trip back east, I noticed what everyone has been complaining about with AT&T. My iPhone was basically useless during the Boston game in Fenway. Also once I was in NY, my data service went to crap. I could barely use google maps on my phone while walking around little Italy at 10 pm. I ended up meeting some friends and they were also complaining about the iPhones. They didn't even own one but they knew their service now sucks because OF all the iPhones. So of course I documented the whole thing and when I got home to CA I called up AT&T told them they didn't hold up their end of the contract and got $7 back for lack of data during my trip. I was amazed at how quickly they refunded the money. Seems like a lot of people are asking for money back. This is one situation where I hope the FFC or Attorney Generals from a few states get involved with a class action suit.

So look how nuts this recent AT&T fix is for their junk network. You pay AT&T an EXTRA $20 a month to have a box in the house that boosts your cell reception and sends it through your internet connection that you're all ready paying for! WHAT!? Someone please sue them!

HERE is the article [Gizmodo]