It’s Just Justin

Ready to Board

I’m about to board my flight to San Francisco, it’s very exciting.

Hard to believe that like a week ago, Ryan was at this same airport doing the same thing.  I sure do wish we could have gone together to San Francisco for Pride 2009 and to see all of our friends.  Instead I’m meeting my family and going to our summer house, where I used to live, in Northern California.  We will be enjoying our time together there until July 6th, then the rest of my family; mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law, will be flying back to Texas.  I will stay on for another week visiting San Francisco.

So look to here and my photoblog (JustinMooreScott.com) for pictures and updates, as well as my Twitter stream, @justex07.  Send me a message and maybe we can meet up.

See you around!  Oh and maybe, JUST maybe this time, I’ll get a good shot of the Golden Gate Bridge.

So, if you’re going to be in the Bay Area July 6-11, let’s hang out.  I’ll be staying with my friend Mark and probably spending my days walking around my old stomping grounds.  Coffee houses and photo ops galore.

Then I fly to Texas to work on my internship and see off my parents.  They’re moving to Saudi Arabia so this trip is our last “big thing” before we say goodbye for a while.

A Legend Lost

It was just a few days ago that I was talking to a friend I’d bumped into about Michael Jackson.  We discussed his upcoming concerts, his weirdness and ended with a round of praise to his being able to release one ground-breaking album after another.  He was truly an incredible artist.

The next day, at the same exact time, his death was announced through Twitter.

Think what you want, the man was a musical genius.  He guided the music industry for decades, created the top selling album of all time and reigned supreme in the pop world as well as the music video industry.  No one could make a music video like Michael Jackson.  Each video told a story and going beyond 10 minutes for a video was totally acceptable.

One of the most famous ones comes from his best selling album, Thriller.

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Michael Jackson died and the world exploded.  We had not seen a reaction like this to the election of Barack Obama, the Iran election and subsequent protests or the deaths of Ed McMahon and Farah Fawcet (who died just hours before Jackson).  In fact, the effect on cellphone towers and the Internet is said to be greater than even September 11, 2001.

No site was safe.  I tweeted at the time that I couldn’t access any news sites with merely a mention of Michael Jackson was inaccessible.  No site was safe, not CNN, not Yahoo!, not even Google!  All reported outages.  AT&T said more text messages were sent that day than any other day in the history of text messaging on their networks.

Twitter, once again the source for breaking news, was completely overwhelmed.  Remarkably, the site was at around 90% stable, more than I’d ever expect out of the infamous fail whale.  A search for Michael Jackson on Twitter’s search page loaded hundreds of new tweets ever few seconds.

You could actually decipher what was going on simply by reading the Twitter Trends.

MTV, Michael Jackon, MJ, Cardiac Arrest, MJ RIP, Hospital, etc

MTV was reporting live and showing tribute videos of Michael Jackson as he was rushed by ambulance to the hospital, with reports of a grim outlook.

Today, a day later, iTunes was a fantastic sample of the impact Jackson’s death had on the world.  His albums, singles and music videos dominated the iTunes Music Store charts, absolutely.

Dominating Music Sales

Dominating Music Video Sales

But it wasn’t all positive.  Perez Hilton continued to disgust with this post on his site, which I will not link to.  Click the picture to open it up a bit bigger so you can read all that Perez Hilton wrote.

This is what Perez originally wrote about Michael Jackson.

Huge thanks to the twitter user than originally posted this image. I’d love to attribute it to him but TwitPic seems to have messed up, the user that actually posted it is not listed as that person today.  Apparently over half a million hits and thousands of comments on a single picture in a single day outdid their servers.

In the end, we’ve lost a legend and for that I am sad.  But perhaps he’s somewhere better, where he doesn’t have to worry so much about his appearance.  A place where his pain isn’t so great.  We know he was a troubled man.  Here’s to hoping that is all lifted.  Let’s put our thoughts on his friends and family, especially his three young children.

And let’s boycott Perez.  Seriously.

For All My Kiwis

I’m not really sure how many New Zealand readers I have here.  Actually, I do know. It’s 91.

Nevertheless, PayPerPost wanted me to spread the word about this new service, KiwiSelect.  They help make this blog possible by sponsoring it through advertisements on the blog.

Interested in saving money, I went to the site kiwisaver and played around with it a bit.

KiwiSelect

The service is beautiful to play around with and allows you to easily calculate how much money you can save by retirement based on your age and “attitude”.  The site allows you to choose an investment risk profile, choose a fund manager, and then to apply online for the best fund choice and pretty much finishes up the whole deal.

If the service is as easy to fully implement as it seems, I say it’s a slam dunk.  Do wish there was something out here, in the United States, that worked similarly.  So far I don’t know of any.  But a quick check with this site had me with $406,000 by retirement age!  That’s not too shabby.

Plus, this whole deal is government backed, to me that’s a good thing, while at the same time it’s free and independently owned.  What more could you ask for?  Plus, whoever did their site certainly had an eye for style.

We need people to save more and prepare for the economies we are in today.  KiwiSelect is a move in the right direction.

When Buying Printer Ink…

Post Sponsored by Pay Per Post

I print the majority of my photography here at home on one of my two Epson photo printers and the ink sure isn’t cheap.  My Epson 3800 costs about $500 each time I need to replace all the cartridges!

A solution might be ink cartridge coupons.  I personally haven’t tried them out but I sure will try next time I buy!

Inkstudy provides ink cartridge coupons, ink cartridge reviews and more.  Check them out.

The Last Airbender

M. Night Shyamalan lost my respect several films ago. The Sixth Sense was awesome but it seemed every film after that was a little bit more horrendous than the one before it.

But maybe that’s changing.  I know it doesn’t really show all that much, and the first half of the trailer looks like it’s going to be some National Lampoons  ninja spoof, but it looks pretty interesting.