Another field trip!

We headed up to Boston (aka "the big city") late yesterday afternoon for a client kickoff meeting. The meeting lasted a solid four hours, which is amazing since our collective attention span is about 17 minutes. When the meeting ended at 9:30, there were some stomachs growling, which meant only one thing -- sushi! Because, really, what fills you up quicker and easier than sushi? The stuff's like lead.

Here are some pics of the big trip:

Gavin insisted that he drive in a separate car. Something about "executive privilege."

Disclaimer: Skeey Interactive does not endorse taking cellphone pictures while driving. As my old Driver's Ed teacher once said, "I don't care if you smoke dope, do drugs, get drunk....just don't do it while you're driving!"

Right-lane Kane! Right-lane Kane!

This seems like a healthy amount of food for three guys...

This was about 10 minutes later. I don't think we talked during this period. Except one time I leaned back to catch my breath, and Gavin yelled at me. Eating sushi with Gavin is like playing one-on-one with Jordan, or being Tiger's partner in a scramble.

Anguished happiness.

Ugh.....

Today's lesson -- never trust a man with a camera and the password to the Blogger account.

A man of many talents... no B.S.

I found out today that not only is Al a very good programmer, he is also an accomplished bullrider. You think you would know a guy after 6 years and then he pulls the whole, "Yeah guy, Rhode Island is really into its bullriding. I learned to ride before I could talk." Anyway, Al displayed his skills on the bull today during a video shoot for a client. (Full size image removed due to vanity)

Witty Copywriting 10-huh?

Clearly CK never took a class on using exaggerations and non-sensical statements to provide the reader with several seconds of enjoyment, and thus misinterpreted my directions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with directions I would really give to someone who desired such a meal.

And, thus, this debate has ended. I have to go buy more paper towels anyway.

Cooking 10-what?

This is a response to Al's "Cooking 101" post below. There are just too many obscurities to leave this one alone. Show of hands...who the heck makes a peanut butter sandwich like that? OK Al, you can put your hand down now. Peanut butter on both pieces of bread? Moist paper towel? "Side by each"? I have eaten a million peanut butter sandwiches and have never turned it into such an obsessive ritual like this. Who the heck is he? Monk?

Here's my abridged version of how to make a real PB&J...take 2 pieces of bread, slap some peanut butter on one piece, slap some jelly on the other, smush them together and eat. Do not moisten any paper towels, do not worry about anything escaping past the crust, do not cut diagonally, and please, do not use esoteric Woonsocket terms like "side by each".

Cooking 101 with Skeey

For lunch today, we decided to branch out and try something new. And it was great!

Here's what you'll need:

• two pieces of bread
• peanut butter
• jelly

Place the two pieces of bread side by each. Using a knife, spread the peanut butter evenly on both pieces. Don't make the mistake of pressing down too hard with the knife, especially if the bread is new. Then, clean the knife with a moist paper towel and spread some jelly on one of the pieces. Be careful not to use too much jelly; you'll regret it later. Place the non-jelly piece of bread on top of the jelly piece and press firmly. Use another towel to clean any excess jelly that might escape past the crust.

Clean the knife again with another moist towel. Then cut the sandwich diagonally.

Best served with a cold glass of milk and a Fruit Rollup.

March ugliness

Happy Monday afternoon to our loyal (6) readers!

As expected, CK won the NCAA pool. Gavin's hopes were dashed with Duke and BC being knocked out, and my fate was sealed yesterday with UConn pulling a pork job. So that leaves CK, who somehow picked all four of last Thursday's games correctly, as the winner. He celebrated his win by buying another Duncan Sheik poster and asking us if the NCAA tournament was every year or every four years like the Olympics.

That's about it. Also, after a week of strenuous testing, we have decided that Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi is unbelievably tasty.

Jason Priestley Shoutout

We have been working on Jason Priestley's official website over the last few months. We recently met up with him for a video shoot down in NYC, where he was kind enough to give Skeey Interactive a shoutout.

Plane Cookies

Gavin and I went to NYC for a few meetings. The staff on JetBlue was kind enough to give us some snacks during our brief flight and I was excited to sink my teeth into the chocolatey goodness of their delicious looking cookies (which I had incidentally chosen over the terra chips). The packaging had me thinking there was an entire of bag of Nestle's Morsels shoved into one little cookie. Talk about false advertising! My cookie had about 3 chocolate chips in it. I don't know who took the picture on the front of the package, but it must have been taken during the good ol' days before "The Great Chocolate Depression". Ah, those were the days.

Out of Office

Gavin and CK are in NYC today taking care of some business (buying bootleg DVDs of "Just Like Heaven"), and I decided to stay down in RI and work from home for the first time since last May. Ooh, that reminds me, "The Price is Right" is on in ten minutes. Gotta go!

We'll be back tomorrow with all new wacky adventures, crazy stories, and scantily clad go-go girls! Or it'll just be the three of us sitting down and looking way too intense. You know, whichever.

Southie Parade

67% of Skeey attended Sully's annual St. Patty's Day party on Sunday. It was a bit cold, but parades aren't for wimps anyway.

Here are some pictures from the festivities:

...for all you ladies out there that like firemen.

...for all you guys out there that like Lord Vader and his imperial guard. (Hi Gavin! Wish you were there! Friends forever though!!!)

...for all you Elvis lovers out there. This impersonator was going for the "fat, balding Elvis" look, which was immediately followed by the "dead Elvis" look.

...for all you ladies out there that always wanted a Carol Brady haircut but didn't have the side bangs to pull it off.

Thanks to Sully for his generosity and willingness to let people loiter way too long in his living room.

Floating Desk

So I installed our magical floating wall desk today. The deli guys upstairs were kind enough to loan me their Philips head screwdriver when CK's power drill battery died. Anyway, the folks at anthro.com make the desk. It is pretty slick, it even comes with a power strip so all your gadgets can be juiced up in one spot. It is a nice way to put another computer in the office for testing without taking up a ton of space. We needed something to put our Mac on instead of the crate that it had been sitting on. Now we can do some browser and OS testing in style.

Best of Times, Worst of Times

Best: it's Onion Ring Friday today.

Worst: CK is winning the NCAA pool after the first day's games. And it's not even close. Serenity now...serenity now.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

March Madness!

We just finished filling out our brackets for the first annual Skeey NCAA tournament pool. No money exchanged hands -- it's all about pride here in the office. Also, it was CK's first time ever filling out a bracket. Raise your hand if that surprises you.

Here's our Final Four picks (winner in bold):

• Gavin: Duke, Kansas, UConn, BC
  
• CK: Texas, Memphis, UNC, Villanova
• Al: Duke, Kansas, UConn, Villanova

Standings will be updated after each round.

Today, aka "Hump Day"

The middle day of the week proved to be darn boring. That is, until Matt Robitaille of The Bustonian called and said he was dropping by. Remember in that episode of Cheers when Sam's brother was visiting and everyone in the bar was excited because something fun and magical always happens when he came to town? That's how we feel about Robo when he comes to Canton. Buckle up!

Also, we added the Hard-Fi Official US site to our portfolio.

Lastly, there's a new question up on Ask Al's Mom.

Update: Nappy graced us with his presence as well. That's the equivalent of being at a wedding, having a nice slice of chocolate cake, and then the person next to you says, "You can have my cake too."

The InterNOT

The Comcast guys were outside installing a new filter this afternoon, so we had no Internet access for a couple hours. Here's what you do when you rely 100% on the Internet for your work, and there is no Internet:

• Complain and repeatedly refresh your browser
• Contemplate what life was like pre-Mosaic (hint: boring)
• Eat a Snickers Almond bar, and convince yourself that it's healthy because it contains a couple almond chunks in it
• Randomly traverse your hard drive and delete files and folders
  
• Have nightmares about the dozens of important emails you just received in the last XX minutes
• Look at your NCAA brackets and still have no idea who the heck is going to advance to the Sweet 16
• Eat a soft-serve ice cream from the deli upstairs (delicious, yet completely unnecessary)
• Refresh the browser; consider potential litigation options
  

Once it came back up, I quickly checked email and only had two work-related emails and some spam. Wasn't sure whether to be happy or disappointed that no one knew I was AWOL for 120 minutes.

On the bright side, we had time to take this picture:

You know it's gonna be a rough day when...

Hello everyone. CK here. This is my first of many meanderings to follow. You know it's gonna be a very long Monday when your hand looks like this.

Al and I went to see a great band last night called "Augustana". For those of you who don't know what that is on my hand, it's the obnoxious stamp they put on me at the club. Do they use tattoo ink in those things? It's ridiculous. You have to scrub the thing with coarse loofa in order to even make it fade just a little. The loofa didn't work for me. I may try my dad's bench grinder next. Anyway, we had a really fun night, however, I really wish I asked the bartender for O'Doul's. I believe E.T. said it best when he said..."ouch". I just don't bounce back like I used to. So now Al has to listen to me cry all day.

Anyway, back to Augustana. Really good band and they sound just as good live as they do on their album. They have a song called "Boston". I thought for sure the crowd was gonna go nuts when they started playing it, but fortunately, they just clapped just a little. We were joking later saying they change the name of the song every time they're in a new city. They played at TT The Bear's place in Cambridge. I hadn't been there since college, so it was refreshing to see the place is just as dingy as it was back then. My band, The Kane Brothers, has a couple of gigs coming up, so last night kind of gave me the itch to play out again. It's been a few months since we've played out. Well, I'll write more later when I'm not seeing double. I have a long day of designing websites ahead of me.

DVD Roundup

I've been on a Netflix binge lately and have watched some documentaries I probably wouldn't have purchased otherwise. They are:

• Murderball
  Very entertaining movie. Good "characters", engaging plot (think Rocky vs. Drago, now substitute Russia with Canada, and boxing with quadriplegic rugby, and there ya go), and some genuine tearjerker moments. Not that I ever cry, of course. It's also playing on A&E as well, though it's probably a heavily-edited version of it.
  
  
• Grizzly Man
  I actually caught this one on the Discovery Channel, not Netflix. This movie had me transfixed the entire time. For starters, they tell you the ending in the first five minutes, and then spend the rest of the time showing you what led up to it, and how different people view Timothy Treadwell and his actions. Some think he's a compassionate genius, others think he's a tad scooters. Aren't we all though?
  
  
• Enron - The Smartest Guys in the Room
  I wanted to watch this one after reading the book, Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story, an 800 page epic of the whole Enron fiasco. The movie was informative, and it was helpful to attach photos, videos, and soundclips to the names. Interestingly, the movie places the blame more on Lay and Skilling's shoulders, while the book focuses heavily on Andy Fastow (the CFO) and his role in the shenanigans.
  
  On a side note, that's the longest book I've read since being forced to read Chesapeake by James Michener in high school. I remember it being 900 pages or so, and knew I was in trouble when chapter 3 ended with, "And, thus, dirt was created."
  
  
• March of the Penguins
  At 80 minutes, this is the perfect length for this movie. Any longer, and you'd probably start daydreaming. But it's an entertaining movie, especially if you enjoy obtaining new (and useless) knowledge. And the cinematography is unreal. Besides, Morgan Freeman narrates the movie, and that automatically makes any movie kick ass.
  

Springtime is here!

Today is a beautiful 60-degree day in the Boston area. To celebrate, I went to the driving range and hit my first bucket of balls in 2006. There's nothing like shanking a nine-iron to let you know that summer's around the corner, and all will be well. Of course, we'll probably get a blizzard in mid-April. C'est la vie.

Week in Review, 3/6 - 3/10

This past week was pretty quiet and productive. Among the highlights:

• The Juvenile site went live at: www.juvenilerealitycheck.com.
  

• The www.StayClose.org site has received mention via TV and radio ads. Check out the site and support the PFLAG movement.
  
  
• CK's hair is so long, thick, and gnarly that it's actually become distracting to look at. Rumor has it that he's visiting a salon in Southie sometime next week for a little trim. Yup, you heard me, a salon in Southie.
  


• On Friday, Gavin was mysteriously quiet for way too long. Turns out he had integrated a shareware app into our webcam, and now when you're viewing it, it'll show you what song on iTunes we're currently listening to, as well as a link to Amazon to purchase it. Very cool. We're planning on spending all day Monday deleting all the songs that we don't want anyone to know we listen to.
  


• Still convinced that drinking protein shakes will make up for an extremely erratic and poor workout schedule, I got three new containers of Muscle Milk this week -- Mocha Joe, Orange Cream, and Blueberries 'n Cream. All three taste very good, and reaffirm the fact that Muscle Milk is the best-tasting protein powder I've ever tried. Buy it cheap at www.DPSnutrition.com.
  
  
• Stupid Skeey thought of the week: we were wondering if there's ever been someone named "Adea", and if anyone ever got mad at them and said, "Get off my case, Adea!". Say it fast and enjoy the seconds of hilarity that ensues.